Sage has invested a great deal in the release of MAS 90 and MAS 200 version 4.4 to deliver another useful business reason for their customers to maintain their annual software subscription/maintenance agreements. As a part of their investment, they have made a tremendous effort to educate everyone about the benefits of the software and to their credit, the release was shipped on time. Now that it is in our hands, we’ve started our own testing and evaluation and will be sure to keep you updated.
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I suspect it is a result of monkey-see, monkey-do but at some point in time some writers got too smart for their own good and started using phrases like:
Best of breed/best in class
Ground-breaking
User-friendly
Robust
Interoperable
Turnkey
Cutting edge
Honestly, who talks like this? Well, I did once while introducing Acuity Solutions as an event sponsor. A (thankfully) blunt friend of mine was kind enough to point it out. After I thought about the nonsense I had spewed, I hung my head and vowed to change my ways.
In The Gobbledygook Manifesto, David Meerman Scott calls for the madness to stop. I find it infuriating to read stuff that is written in this vain and now that I know better, it’s tough to write that way. Please call me on it if you ever catch me slipping.
I hope this takes ground somehow and changes (again) the way we write.
All Sage FAS 50, 100 and 500 end-users with current SupportPlus plans are eligible for the 2009.1.1 release from Sage. You can read the complete list of updated forms, limits, extension in the What’s New document.
A new feature available in this release is the Asset Snap Shot, a dashboard summary of your asset information including charts and statistics. The Asset Snap Shot can be viewed each time FAS is opened or it can be run directly from the Reports menu.
The Snap Shot includes:
- Asset Listing: A table that displays the net value of your active assets.
- Active Assets by Property Type: A pie chart that shows the total acquisition values for the top four property types with all remaining types categorized as other.
- Latest Activity Dates: This section displays the latest date that various activities occurred.
- Placed in Service by Quarter Chart: Displays the total acquired value of the assets placed in service in each quarter of the current year.
- Investment by Remaining Life Chart: Groups active assets into four categories, according to how much time remains before the assets are completely depreciated.
- Five Year Acquisition Comparison Chart: Shows the total acquired value of assets placed in service in each of the last five fiscal years.
- Depreciation Comparison by Book Chart: Compares the total acquired value and total accumulated depreciation for all active assets through the current reporting period for each open FAS book.
Next week we will distribute the latest edition of the *info newsletter. 
Readers of the blog are getting a jump on everyone else with this link.
This issue covers two issues we have been discussing with our customers recently: Paperless Office and the new Sage Communities. Both of these topics are approached from a different perspective as well as the curious ghost asset fixed asset tracking issue.
Around our office questions get asked all the time. Some of the questions are very concrete, tangible. Some of the questions are nebulous. Some of the questions fall somewhere in between. After our MAS 90/200 User Group meeting last week, I asked our team if we had customers or clients.
I explained my reasoning as I had heard it described to me. When the people you do business with get specialized treatment, when the work you do varies, it is customized so you have customers. It is also the custom of the people you work with to have a mutually beneficial relationship (those business have a custom of paying).
Shari’s counter-point said the connotation attached to client is that there is a relationship and the connotation attached to customers is one of many. Clients have open and extended communications; customers exist in a queue, placing their order and moving on without establishing any memories or feelings. I had always imagined the opposite.
Esther shrugged and said that client had “I” in the middle. I commented that customer included “me” to which Esther responded that with customers it is all about “u” and “me.” Sounds like an argument for customer.
We didn’t reach a conclusion and I would really like to establish some common terminology. What do you think?