March
Welcome to the March issue of the Jonas Insider. The snow is melting and Spring is in the Air!
If you conduct business in the Canadian provinces of Ontario or British Columbia, this month’s Featured Article is a must read to learn how to implement the upcoming changes for HST.
The Important Reminders section outlines new payroll changes for the state of Florida.
Find out about two upcoming trade shows Jonas is attending this March in the News and Events section.
Save 25% on all online training sessions! Find out how to take advantage of the savings in the Upcoming Webinars section.
Don’t miss out on our final complimentary training for Design Your Own Forms. Time’s running out so check the Continuous Improvement section in order to take advantage of this time-limited offer.
Meet one of the latest additions to the Jonas support team, Stephanie Stevens, in the Know Your Support Rep section.
Save yourself a support call and become your own Jonas expert. Read the FAQ’s and Helpful Hints section.
We are still welcoming submissions for our Stump the Staff contest. You could win a valuable prize! Enter as many times as you like by submitting issues you are having trouble with to Evelyn Garnet.
If you have missed previous issues of the Insider, please click here.
Please remember to share the Insider with your staff.
We want to hear from you! If you have ideas or suggestions for improving the Jonas Insider, please forward these to us via e-mail.
If you conduct business in either Ontario or British Columbia, Canada, you are probably well aware of an upcoming major change in the federal sales tax structure effective July 1,2010.
Rest assured that the Jonas development team has been very busy preparing our software to make this transition as easy and seamless as possible for our clients.
As well as writing code, we have also prepared an instruction booklet for our clients to follow to assist in understanding the changes that are coming and how best to handle them in Jonas.
Please note that government regulations are still subject to further modifications and therefore this project is still a work in progress.
For detailed information on the tax changes, refer to the appropriate government agency’s website.
Please note that you must upgrade your Jonas software to version 11.9 or higher by May 1, 2010 to properly implement the modifications for HST.
If you have not already done so, and cannot locate your v 11.9 CD, please contact our Support Team for a replacement at your earliest convenience.
Please click HERE to access the Jonas instruction booklet.
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Florida’s State Unemployment Wage base had originally increased to $8,500 for 2010. The State Government has just passed legislation to put it back to $7,000.
Jonas clients in the state of Florida will need to update their wage base (and possibly the rate as well) under Payroll Profile >SWH/SUI button. The quarterly SUI report will reflect the revised wage base and the resulting tax based on the updated figures. In other words, the report will show the correct amount of tax they should have paid. If they overpaid due to employees already exceeding the $7000, then they will have to deal with the state as far as getting a refund.
(State Unemployment in Florida is an Employer only tax there is no impact on the employee’s pay.)
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Jonas Software is proud to announce its attendance at 2010 CMX Ciphex Show.
This year's show will take place from March 25, 2010 to March 27, 2010 at the Metro Toronto Convention Center in Toronto, Ontario.
Visit Jonas at Booth # 1422
For more information on the CMX Ciphex show visit their website: http://www.cmxciphexshow.com/
Jonas Software is proud to announce its attendance at MCAA 2010 Annual Convention.
This year's show will take place March 30th 2010 at the San Francisco Marriott Marquis in San Francisco, California.
Visit Jonas at Booth # 29
For more information on the show visit the show website at: http://www.mcaa.org/mcaa2010/
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Jonas is a very large and flexible system within which there is always something you can learn to improve your business. Training on your software system is one of the best investments you can make, providing you with a high ROI. Jonas will be offering online one-to-one Webex training at $125 an hour (a saving of $50 an hour) between April 1st until June 30th.
One-to-one Webex training allows you to get time with an experienced Jonas trainer to improve the setup of your system or increase your functional knowledge. With Webex training you can get time in smaller blocks and there is no need to pay for travel time or expenses.
Jonas Trainers can work with you on any area of your choosing. Here are but a few ideas to consider:
- Month End Procedures: How to complete month end in Jonas complete with documentation and reconciliations. If you follow these steps, your year end will become considerably easier.
- Job Cost for Project Managers: Learn the basics of creating and managing jobs with Jonas Job Cost, the report generator and Project Management without having to get deep into accounting.
- Tax Reporting: Learn to use Jonas reporting tools to make tax reporting across Payroll, Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable easier.
- Tips and Tricks: A variety of good to know short cuts in Jonas including the use of Excel to upload long journal entries, using date functions for time series job cost reports and undoing invoices and work orders.
- Choose your own Topic: Provide us with a list of questions on business process, functionality, reporting or anything else, and our trainers will prepare some answers to help you use the system better.
If you are interested in pursuing training in any of these or other areas, please email Karoline Lapko or call us at 1-888-789-9073 to schedule your training session.
Date & Location: Friday, March 19th, 2010
Session Length: 3 hours
Session Time: 1:00pm-4:00pm ST
Location: Webex
Fee: $200 per connection
Trainer: Gary Nowak
Course Description: This course will cover everything there is to know about creating informative reports using the report generation module. This advanced session will present task-based, real-world scenarios covering the design, coding, and implementation of reports. You will quickly learn how to use the data fields, set conditions, understand the coding and secure key reports.
* Minimum four client registration required.
Webinars are subject to cancellation.
Please notify us 48 hours in advance before a cancellation notice or you will be billed.
Date & Location: Thursday, March 25th, 2010
Session Length: 2 hours
Session Time: 2:00pm-4:00pm EST
Location: Webex
Fee: $200 per connection
Trainer: Anne Stevenson
Course Description: This two hour session will cover basic accounting concepts necessary to fully utilize Jonas. Topics include:
- Debits and Credits
- Accounts Receivable/Accounts Payable basics
- Ledgers and Sub-ledgers
- Journal Entries
- Financial Statements
- Generally Accepted Accounting Principles
* Minimum four client registration required.
Webinars are subject to cancellation.
Please notify us 48 hours in advance before a cancellation notice or you will be billed.
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In April 2009, Jonas Construction introduced the exciting new Design Your Own Forms application. By utilizing the flexibility of the Microsoft Word editing functionality, Jonas users can now create professional-looking documents in-house according to their own requirements. Beginning with just three basic templates last spring, less than a year later the application now includes eleven templates which can be used to create Purchase Orders, Job Invoicing, Change Order Management documents, and Service Billing invoices, work order tickets and quotations.
To assist our clients with the implementation of this product enhancement, complimentary webinars have been offered periodically over the last year. The last of this series of complimentary webinars will be offered on March 31, 2010.
Moving forward, we will continue to develop the application by adding new forms, fields and functionality. Group Webinars will be scheduled based on demand or, if you prefer, on a one-on-one basis.
Date & Location: Wednesday, March 31st, 2010
Session Length: 90 minutes
Session Time: 2:00pm EST
Trainer: Anne Stevenson
Are you looking for increased flexibility and functionality when designing your company’s forms? Jonas’ new Design Your Own Forms feature provides this added flexibility with Micorosoft Word editing options. Join us for a 90 minute online demonstration exploring the benefits of Designing Your Own Forms.
This will be the final complimentary DYOF webinar. All future sessions will be billable
- The installation process of Design Your Own Forms.
- Design Your Own Forms template design including basic Microsoft Word editing.
- Integration of your new template into Jonas.
- Review of the Design Your Own Forms templates including Service Billing, Job Cost, Purchase Orders, Customer Statements and Change Order Management.
- Troubleshooting and FAQ's
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Stephanie graduated from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario in April 2009 with an Honours Bachelor of Commerce degree. While studying, she worked for 2 years as an accounting intern for one of Jonas’ clients, McNally Construction. Stephanie says, “I am very pleased that my work experience has led me to a customer support position in such a dynamic and friendly work environment. “
Stephanie is a very active person and does not like to sit still for long. In her spare time, she enjoys exercising, shopping, and, of course, “hanging out” with friends. When there isn’t a foot of snow on the ground, you will find her running or rollerblading at the beach.
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Q. How do I release retainage when using the AIA form?
A. Simply reduce the retainage amount on each billing line item to the new retainage percentage. The previous retainage amount in excess of the new percentage will be released.
Q. On the dispatch board, we receive a message every 15 minutes saying that the Dispatch Board has had no activity in the last 15 minutes. We refresh our screen every minute. Why has it started to do this and how can we turn this off?
A. In the dispatch system profile – options screen, if the priority alarm is activated a timer is turned on. The number of minutes in the next field does not pop the message - it is for another function. If after 15 minutes, the user hasn’t touched anything in the dispatch board, the warning message will appear. This is to try to preserve resources as the dispatch board has many files open and uses a lot of memory.
What to do if your system “freezes” or “locks up”
Jonas is designed to work in a multi-user environment and as such deliberately does not lock files in applications. However, Microsoft Windows Updates do just that – they turn on as the default setting in workstation registries a setting called “Opportunistic locking”.
Turning on this setting will result in file conflicts in multi-user environments.
E.G. Jonas does not lock records but the Operating system of the workstations or the server will lock records if the Oplocks setting is turned on. Since Jonas applications can open 50+ files, and virtually every one opens the company file, if Opportunistic locking is turned on, the first workstation to open the file will hold that file until the application has ended leaving other workstations to appear to freeze – they are actually waiting for files and are not “frozen”.
To correct this, you need to turn this setting off in the registry in all workstations and the server.
Fortunately, a third party has developed a quick test that can be run on your server and on all workstations and only takes seconds to correct the settings. There is no charge for this test.
The site for this is www.tabs3.com
Select Support > Utilities and download and save “redrtest.exe”.
There is excellent documentation on this site about this test.
Note that as soon as another Windows update is installed, the setting will change back again. We recommend that Automatic Windows updates be turned OFF and that the redirector test be run regularly. It can be stored on the desktop for easy access.
For more information on Opportunistic locking you can check the Microsoft website.
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