Month: May 2013

Currency and Tax setup in free Purchase Order Software

We’ve had a few support tickets from folks in the United Kingdom, asking how to change the default currency in SpendMap from dollars ($) to pounds sterling (£).

The question usually comes alongside another question about how to set up Value Added Tax (VAT) as the default sales tax rate in the system.

So this blog post outlines the options for changing the default currency and taxes in the free version of SpendMap.  I’ll use “pounds” and “VAT” as the examples, but SpendMap supports other currencies and taxes too, which you can set up in the Tax and Exchange Rates Master File.

Setup Wizard

First things first, I guess I should mention that you will be prompted to select your currency and default taxes during the Setup Wizard, which will run automatically when you log into your Live (Production) copy of SpendMap for the first time.

If for some reason you want to change the currency or taxes in the Evaluation copy of SpendMap (the sample data in the Evaluation copy uses dollars ($) and a generic tax code of “TAX 1”), or if you just missed that part of the Setup Wizard the first time you ran your Live copy, keep reading to learn how to change the default currency and taxes after-the-fact…

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Upgrading your free Purchase Order Software is easier than you think

We had a couple support tickets from people using the free version of SpendMap in a multiuser/network environment, asking if they have to apply the recent update to each PC workstation.

No, you only need to run the update once, on the PC/workstation of your choice. All other workstations will be updated auto-magically when they run SpendMap the first time after the upgrade, at which time SpendMap will pull the new files down from the server to the individual PCs.

Please update your free Purchase Order system at your earliest convenience, as we would like to eventually stop supporting version 11.64.

Thanks!

Success Story: MCS Wins with Free Purchase Order Software

Managed Care Systems (MCS) was struggling to control their Purchasing, inventory and budgets with a patchwork of outdated systems.  Having grown to over 300 employees, MCS was overdue for an upgrade.  Unfortunately, there was no budget for a new e-procurement system, but that didn’t stop Eric Jeffers, who is responsible for the Purchasing Department at MCS.

“Our old system was written in-house a bunch of years back and it was starting to fall apart,” says Eric.  “The IT Department didn’t want to invest resources to fix it, so we kept limping along.  Plus, as an add-on to the Help Desk system, it was really just an over glorified word processor to start with; it could print a PO and keep some history, but there was still a ton of manual effort and duplicate data entry for each order, and it didn’t track inventory or provide any budget controls, which were big problems.  We were constantly going over budget because the managers who were approving orders couldn’t see the status of budgets real-time.  And we were running out of stock all the time, which meant a big panic, rush orders and extra charges for expedited deliveries”.

So when Eric found SpendMap with its real-time budget and inventory controls fully integrated with its world-class Purchasing functionality, he was optimistic to say the least.  “I have been working in Purchasing departments for 15 years and this is by far the best purchasing software I have ever seen,” says Eric.  “You can’t imagine how disappointed I was when I was told that we had no budget left for a new system and I had to wait until the following year”…

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