Bennett/Porter News
Welcome to the latest edition of our Bennett/Porter newsletter! At Bennett/Porter, “People Inspiring Solutions” is more than just a tagline – it’s the driving force behind everything we do. Our personable approach and exceptional customer service make us the ideal partner for your business, providing tailored digital solutions for your enterprise, HR, and IT needs.
Please utilize the Quick Links below to jump directly to the news that interests you.
NEWSLETTER QUICK LINKS
Acumatica News
EXPLORE THE BENEFITS OF THE ACUMATICA COMMUNITY FORUM
The Acumatica Community Forum is rapidly becoming one of the most valuable online resources for the growing ERP community. Here’s why you should join and how it can benefit your business:
Easy Access and Comprehensive Search
Request your login at Community.Acumatica.com using your email, and gain immediate access to a wealth of information. The forum’s robust search capabilities allow you to find relevant content, whether it’s related to specific modules, builds, events, or training sessions.
Connect with Like-Minded Users
Engage with other users who share your interests in areas such as Finance, Retail Commerce, Distribution, and Manufacturing. This platform is an excellent place to ask questions, share experiences, and exchange best practices with peers and experts.
Influence Product Development
Have an idea for a product enhancement? The Acumatica Community is the perfect place to share and discuss these ideas. You can see what others have suggested and add your vote to the ideas you support. Acumatica considers many top suggestions for inclusion in their bi-annual releases, allowing you to play a part in shaping the future of the platform.
Stay Informed and Up-to-Date
With daily posts and a comprehensive archive of historical discussions, the Acumatica Community ensures you stay informed about the latest updates, trends, and solutions in the ERP space. This continuous learning environment helps you keep your skills and knowledge current, ensuring you get the most out of your Acumatica investment.
Join the Acumatica Community today and start leveraging this dynamic resource to enhance your ERP experience. We look forward to seeing you inside!
Sage 100 News
SAGE CONNECT vs. EBizCharge
As mentioned in the last newsletter, Sage Connect is an application for Sage 100 users that enables customers to access their accounts receivable invoices and transaction data through a web portal, which will likely be called Sage Network.
In its first release, Sage Connect will only be a one-way connection, by syncing the AR module with Sage Connect so customers of Sage 100 clients will be able to see their outstanding invoices on the portal. They won’t be able to pay those invoices online – they’ll only be able to see them. We suspect that the payment of those invoices will be in a future release, but clients will have to use whatever processor Sage settles on to do so.
EBizCharge (formerly Century Business) has had a payment portal for Sage 100 customers for several years now, and is a two way sync – both in terms of downloading all of the AR detail into EBizCharge for customers to pay, as well as sending payment information back to Sage 100 into the Cash Receipts program. Payments can be made either using a credit card, or by ACH. (And, as we’ve mentioned before, we think the EBizCharge rates for credit card processing are less than almost any other provider we’ve seen.)
If you are interested in using EBizCharge or would like to learn more, please contact us today!
CAN YOUR VERSION OF SAGE 100 RECEIVE YEAR-END UPDATES?
Sage maintains three versions of Sage 100 at any given time – the newest version and the two versions preceding it (an “n-2” support policy). The versions of Sage 100 which Sage currently supports and releases Product Updates for include versions 2024, 2023 and 2022. Version 2021 was just retired last April, and version 2022 will be retired in April of 2025 when another new Sage 100 version gets released.
However, Sage has a slightly different “n-3” support policy when it comes to year-end updates for Accounts Payable (1099 forms) as well as Payroll support (including year-end version upgrades and W-2 and ACA form updates). The current Sage 100 version plus three versions back can receive this year’s year-end updates – that is, versions 2024, 2023, 2022 and 2021. Clients who are on version 2020 or lower will not be eligible to receive the A/P or Payroll updates.
If you will need to upgrade before the year-end updates are released in December, please contact our office and we’ll get an upgrade project started for you!
People Savvy HCM News
COMPLIANCE HUB FOR ALL YOUR COMPLIANCE NEEDS
Though it never feels like a good time, it is almost always the right time to think about compliance. That’s because compliance is one of the biggest concerns and financial liabilities for organizations, and specifically the HR departments of those organizations. Keep in mind that ‘compliance’ isn’t just one thing. Whether it’s EEO or veteran reporting, ACA, COBRA, data retention, meal and rest breaks, Leave of Absence, Workers’ Compensation, or employee classifications, the list goes on and on…as does the need to stay apprised of the constantly changing requirements occurring in all these areas. (If any of the terms above are unfamiliar to you, keep reading!) If your company is considering a new Human Capital Management (HCM) solution to make payroll processing and HR management easier, People Savvy HCM has yet another reason for you to consider it.
Compliance Hub, built right into People Savvy HCM, offers a centralized location for all compliance-related tools. It connects you to valuable resources based on your company’s size, such as checklists, guides, and much more. Compliance Hub also provides government required forms, pre-filled with existing employee information.
Example 1: EEO reporting can be completed quickly and easily with demographic information that was already captured in each employee’s profile upon hire, so that component 1 and 2 forms are auto-populated with information and immediately ready for transmission. Compliant? ✅
Example 2: OSHA 300 forms, pre-populated with safety data can be generated, and current and historical versions all stored in one place electronically. Compliant? ✅
With Compliance Hub’s powerful, built in rules engine, you’ll enjoy proactive, real-time, automated updates to pay, time, and HR rules, giving you access to the latest information so you can easily meet regulatory standards. Plus, because the rules engine is continuously running in the background, you’ll receive alerts when rules aren’t being met to reduce risk of noncompliance before it ever becomes a costly issue.
If you have concerns about the best way to keep your company compliant, please contact us today. People Savvy HCM can provide peace of mind by helping you stay compliant at every stage of the employee journey.
Managed IT Services News
WHAT CAN WE ALL LEARN FROM THE CROWDSTRIKE DISASTER?
On July 18th and 19th, a massive chunk of the world’s technology infrastructure and business was brought to a screeching halt. The culprit? Not a massive cyberattack or coordinated malicious activity like businesses are (hopefully) always preparing for—it was what was supposed to be a minor and unnoticeable software/configuration update to a product that a large chunk of enterprises use to prevent those very threats.
The recovery for this incident was incredibly difficult for a lot of businesses. Security conscious tech teams likely use Microsoft’s built-in disk encryption, which added a massive hurdle to remediate every machine affected by requiring a unique code created for each machine—which was also further compounded by the servers storing those keys also being unable to boot due to the bad update.
Even if you weren’t affected by this incident, there are still a lot of valuable lessons to learn from the situation.
First of all: Not everything that is going to trigger a Disaster Recovery Plan is going to be a natural disaster or even anything physical. The best time to create your Disaster Recovery Plan and documentation is before you needed it. The second-best time is now.
While even with the most robust plan in the world repairing this would have been time consuming, it would have been a lot less frantic and damaging to a business that has a plan in place for:
- Communicating with employees and customers what’s happening and how/when it is being fixed.
- A priority list for core infrastructure pieces (Billing first? Files? CRM?)
- Continuity plans for critical business functions to keep going even in a heavily degraded way (pen and paper?)
Second: How quick and reliable are your backups in the event something can’t be efficiently repaired? The servers holding those encryption keys needing to be repaired themselves could have been mitigated with a backup solution like the one we utilize (Datto) that allows for quick virtual booting of backed up servers.
The biggest take away is that not every catastrophic disaster happens in an expected way. It may not be a natural disaster or a cybersecurity incident; sometimes it’s as simple as a mangled software or configuration update or something outside your control being down. The best thing you can do to protect yourself is ensure your business has generic but robust plans to deal with a variety of failures and downtimes, because when everything is down, every second counts!
Reach out to us today to discover how Bennett/Porter’s Managed IT Services will give you the tools be prepared for whatever life has in store.
