ACCLIVITY BLOG

ACCLIVITY BLOG

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Thanks for your patience. It’s been a rough week.

As many of you may know, Hurricane Sandy had a definite impact on our New Jersey offices this week. A trying time and yet, through it all, we remain impressed and unsurprised by the patience of our customers and commitment of our employees.

While we fought hard to keep the phone lines open at all costs, we reached a breaking point mid-storm when the power grid simply wouldn’t cooperate. But through the intermittent outages and unpredictable hold times, our customers remained consistently patient and genuinely concerned. Please know that your patience and concern is appreciated.

The resulting property damage, lost power and school closures led to a crazy work week. Employees taking showers at the office, bringing their kids to work and educating each other on the finer points of generators and food spoilage. Then the gas shortage added insult to injury, with three hour lines the norm. And again, through it all, the team remained focused on the task at hand.

Acclivity is fortunate in many ways.

But not everyone was. Our thoughts are with those who were much more than inconvenienced by Sandy. Some were momentarily derailed, some devastated. If you are one of those impacted, and there’s anything, however small, we can do to help, please let us know (800-322-6962).

Sincerely,

Scott and Tom

PS - it’s now snowing in NJ  :)

We support the Red Cross and their efforts in helping Hurricane Sandy victims.

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Update: Hurricane Sandy

Hurricane Sandy is proving to be quite the storm. We’ve made the decision to close the offices on Tuesday, and a crack team of customer care operatives will be handling as many support calls as the can – from their homes – during normal hours: 9 am to 6 pm Eastern. mov

We’re expecting many of us will lose power and telephone service as the hurricane rumbles through New Jersey. If you call in and do not get an answer – please bear with us – there’s a perfect storm outside. :-) If your problem is urgent, your best bet may be our free email support form, found on the support page of our site.

Thank you for your patience and understanding.

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Hurricane Sandy

As Hurricane Sandy moves closer to our fine state of New Jersey, we’re doing our best to keep the support lines open for you. Our entire Customer Care team is working from home for (at least) the next two days, following our normal schedule of 9 am to 6 pm Eastern.

Still, we’re expecting many of us will lose power and telephone service over the next 24-48 hours. If you call in and do not get an answer – please bear with us – there’s a perfect storm outside. :-) If your problem is urgent, your best bet may be our free email support form, found on the support page of our site.

Thank you for your patience and understanding.

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Windows 8

Windows 8
In a few days Microsoft will be launching Windows 8. Here’s what you need to know about Windows 8 and your AccountEdge software.

Most importantly, we’ve identified an issue in Windows 8 that Microsoft has recognized and will be addressing but not until their first update, which is rumored to be released within the next couple weeks. Unfortunately, the issue will prevent some versions of AccountEdge from launching.

US versions
If you are in the U.S. and using AccountEdge Pro 2012 r16.1.8 or later, you are okay and should not experience any issues. If you are using an earlier version of AccountEdge, however, we advise you to delay upgrading to Windows 8 until Microsoft releases their first hot fix update.

Canadian versions
If you are using the Canadian version of AccountEdge, we advise you to delay upgrading to Windows 8 until Microsoft releases their first hot fix update.
We don’t expect to release an update to the 2012 version of AccountEdge Pro until the end of the year, unless Microsoft doesn’t release the fix that we’ve already tested.

Caveat
All of this could be a moot point if Microsoft has incorporated this fix in the commercial version (not the version that was shipped to hardware providers some time ago). In that case, no update would be required.

Windows 8 Support
We only test new Operating Systems with current shipping versions of AccountEdge. So what does this mean? Going forward, if we should need to update AccountEdge because of Windows 8, we’ll do that in the current version only. While we don’t fully test older versions, however, we typically perform a quick check so that we can identify and share what works and what doesn’t. At this point, we’ve only identified the one, aforementioned, issue.

Of course, you can always upgrade to the latest, Windows 8-compatible release, but that choice is up to you..

We’ll continue to post updates to our system requirements page and Windows 8 Compatibility FAQ which you can find here.

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Today marks a(nother) milestone in the life of AccountEdge Mobile, as v1.9 is now live in the App Store for your favorite iOS device.  With this release we bring (metric <g>) tons of great new features to our friends in Canada who can now enjoy all the great stuff released in the last several versions of AccountEdge Mobile.

First, all of our customers in the US, UK, Canada and the rest of the world will enjoy the ability to add a logo from their iOS photo library to their sales pdf’s that they email their customers. We’ve also cleaned up other parts of these pdf’s to make them much better looking. 

In addition to that, Canadian users of AccountEdge Pro 2012 can now:

-View Item quantities while creating Sales transactions and in the Item List and detail Item screens (as of the ‘last sync date’)
-Set custom Transaction ID Numbers for sales, activity slips and spend money transactions, or override existing trx numbers
-Create Item Invoices and maintain inventory integrity for items out of stock
-Create new Jobs and edit existing Jobs

And, for the first time in AccountEdge Mobile anywhere, Canadian customers will be able to create Vehicle or Employee Mileage Slips and sync them back to AccountEdge Pro 2012.  This feature will make its way into mobile apps for the US, UK and elsewhere later this year….stay tuned for that, and lots more.

Todd @ Acclivity

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Mountain Lion Compatibility

The latest versions of AccountEdge 2012 and AccountEdge Basic r15.1.3 (just posted) are compatible with Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, scheduled to be released tomorrow. Please be sure to have your to install the latest updates to the 2012 versions.

Mountain Lion introduces a new security feature called Gatekeeper. Here is a link to a Macworld article with more details. This means that by default a new Security and Privacy preference is set to “Mac App Store and identified developers”. Apps that are downloaded outside of the Mac App Store and not signed with a developer’s Apple Developer ID will be prevented from being opened and installed (in the case of an app with an installer) including updates.

The latest updates released in June for the 2012 versions and the just released update to AccountEdge Basic have been signed and no adjustment to the preference is necessary.

AccountEdge 2011 and earlier will run on Mountain Lion if previously installed (before migrating to Mountain Lion). However, if any updates are downloaded and installed or downloaded and reinstalled, users will need to set their preference to “Anywhere” in order to run the software or installer. Once the app has been installed or run for the first time, users can reset the preference and AccountEdge will continue to run. This is the case for all newly downloaded non-signed applications on Mountain Lion not purchased through the Mac App Store or signed using Apple’s developer tools.


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With the latest update to AccountEdge Pro 2012, you can back up your company files to a free Dropbox.com account. Free accounts come with 2GB of space and you can earn additional space by referring others. Of course you can also buy additional space and storage is cheap these days so it’s well worth the investment.

Check out this short video on how to set up AccountEdge to back up to Dropbox.

-Tom

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In this short video, learn all about the Company Data Auditor. 

My favorite part is the Transaction Review.  Being able to scan for improperly dated transactions is super helpful for finding mistakes.  However one that I know our Certified Consultants use often is the “Reconcile Invoices with linked Receivables Account” check.  This ensures that the total owed by adding up the balance of each customer matches up with the actual receivables account.  The check will also point out the possible transactions that caused the imbalance.  Pretty slick.

Todd @ Acclivity

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AccountEdge 2012 comes to Canada

We’re excited to announce the launch 2012 into Canada, which includes all the features introduced in the US 2012 version earlier in the year, plus a few more. You can read all the details here, but the highlights include:
  • New Command Center-AccountEdge’s command center has been redesigned with an emphasis on usability and modernity
  • New Side Bar-The Side Bar lets you get to recently visited places in AccountEdge. 
  • New Welcome Window-The welcome window that opens when you launch AccountEdge has been redesigned with new features added for ease of use. 
  • Multiple Billing Rates-Create a matrix of billing rates, by activity, employee, and customer, so that you can charge different rates for the same activity. 
  • Mileage Log-Whether you depreciate your vehicle, reimburse for mileage, or bill your clients for miles driven, you can use AccountEdge to track your mileage. 
  • Manage Retainers-Set up and manage retainers in AccountEdge, keep a minimum retainer balance, and add expenses to a retainer to pay bills on behalf of clients.
And kudos to our web team for the Canadian site’s new look and feel. We especially like the Acclivity Core Values, Three-card Monte style.

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AccountEdge Mobile 1.87, available now

AEM 1.87 just hit the App store and is available for your favorite iOS device, still at the low-low price of FREE.  This release works with AccountEdge in the US, UK and Canada.

This release gave us a chance to catch our breath and fix a bunch of issues.  Among them:

  • Fixed crashing when selecting Activity first in an Activity Slip
  • When upgrading from older versions, you can now save Spend Money transactions
  • Sort Accounts By Setting appropriately sorts the Accounts List in transactions

And a ton of little things that needed to be addressed sooner or later, and ‘later’ finally became ‘sooner’.

Now we turn our attention to AEM 1.9 (coming in June) and our 2012 Canadian release of AccountEdge Pro, due next week.  This will bring our Canadian customers up to the 2012 feature set on the desktop and with it lots of new capability to support AEM as well.  This will include Custom Transaction Numbers, Inventory Quantities, Item Invoices, Add/Edit Jobs, and for the first time in any country, Mileage Tracking. 

We’re really psyched about Mileage Tracking and look forward to bringing it to customers in our other countries later this year.  Its a natural fit for mobile users and will tie in nicely to our desktop app. 


- Todd -