| Templates | Virus Info | White Pages | Yellow Pages | Web Search |  

Hi Everyone and we wish you a happy, stress free, prosperous 2006

Not a great deal has happened between Christmas and New year but the Christmas decorations on the newsletter have to come down and the newsletter has to go out come rain or shine. 

This month we have compensated for the lack of news by adding extra "how do I" documents in the AM-Win tips section, another thought provoking article from John Jeffrey our Marketing Director and an article on backing up your outlook express folders along with another couple of handy tips.

But first there are two apologies from Us

Over the Christmas break our password system was down which denied site visitors access to our knowledge base libraries. We were advised of the problem shortly after the break by one of our clients. We apologise to those who tried to access the libraries over the break and advise that the problem has been fixed.

Secondly several library documents that have been added recently to the version seven category had images missing. Most of these documents have been updated and the images have been added. We will be checking each document that has been added recently to ensure that the images are in place and once again our apologies go to all those who were inconvenienced.

A thought:

"Leaders give everyone a cause.  People enlist on behalf of a cause.  They do the impossible for a cause.  For a business, however, they just work." 

Research shows working a shorter, smarter day is more likely to boost the productivity of a business 

By  John Jeffrey- Director AM-Win Software.

New research shows working a shorter day is more likely to boost the productivity of a business.

The impact on the bottom line of the shorter, sharper working day not only increases output and effectiveness, but also ultimately helps the employer to retain valued staff. 

“What About the Bosses?” - an exploratory study on employer approaches to working hours and overtime for the University of Sydney’s Australian Centre for Industrial Relations Research and Teaching, reveals staff who work less are more focused and put in a better effort. “Clear evidence has emerged that people who are working continuously long hours are not doing the same job at the end of a shift as they were at the beginning,” according to the report’s author Brigid van Wanrooy, who believes the ill effects of long hours may also be responsible for hidden costs to a business from increased sick leave to higher staff turnover and poor customer service. 

In a competitive climate, managers and business owners may be reluctant to see the benefits of allowing staff to cut hours, but Ms van Wanrooy believes it is their own interests to insist workers pack up and head home on time. Furthermore, the business owner should be setting the standard by knocking off after a smart eight hours.

“They should be leading by example,” asserts Ms van Wanrooy, who found the impact of long hours on productivity varied between organizations and across sectors 

Longer Hours
 
The most recent figures from the Australia Bureau of Statistics show 27 per cent of Australia’s full-time workforce puts in more than 45 hours per week, with 9 per cent averaging 60 hours or more.

While Working Arrangements, Australia (ABS, 2000) found 2.5 million of Australia’s 7.7 million employees regularly work overtime, the incidence of paid overtime has dwindled and the return of long 12-hour shifts in the mining, resources and telecommunications industries is considered by some human resources experts to be retrograde. 

Finding balance
 
Ms van Wanrooy concludes a 38-40 hours week is a reasonable load for any individual, noting one successful consultancy, which participated in the working hours study had begun with a 35-hour week for all employees.

“People who work less tend to have a better balance between work and family life,” she claims. The upshot, from the employer’s perspective, is those spending enough time with their families are able to concentrate better when working. 
 
Long hours also can make staff unhappy and bad-tempered at work, which has a more subtle flow-through effect to co-workers and customers and will backlash on to the employees’ private lives as well. Eventually this cycle will lead to burnout.

Monitoring staff
 
Monitoring levels of staff health and happiness should go way beyond the basic duty of care stipulated in Occupational Health and Safety guidelines, and is far easier within small and medium-sized enterprises to keep an eye on hours worked and stress levels. 
 
Noticing when people are starting to lag should be intuitive for employers, Ms van Wanrooy believes.
While some will be able to cope effectively with short bursts of working longer hours to meet a special order or complete a project, it is when the prolonged hours are sustained that productivity is most likely to be affected.
“In times when organizations are running lean, most bosses don’t want to think about putting on extra staff, but that is the reality,” says Ms Donohoe.

She points out the overload factor (along with output) will not only vary between industries and the demands of particular roles, but also according to the stage of an individual’s career and personal ambitions.

“There are times when people are more keen to put in the hard yards because their career is their primary focus and they want to build profile.”

Experts agree the solutions to ensuring overworked staff are not affecting productivity begin with having the right staffing levels. If employees are consistently stressed and regularly turning in 10-hour days, then it’s time to start hiring.

There are plenty of inexpensive ways of rewarding hard-working staff.

Ms Donohoe suggests starting with regular get-togethers over pizza lunches and making a ritual of wine on Fridays to signify the end-of-the –week wind down.

How to cut short a hard day

In a perfect world, management will lead by example to keep hours down. Establish a culture that values productivity over being a “desk potato” by building reasonable working hours into the business from the outset, advises Ms van Wanrooy.

Offering flexibility in the employment contracts will have a positive impact on the hours worked and the levels of staff motivation. Allow them to work some longer and shorter working days or to work part-time.

When it is clear an employee is overdoing it and risking burnout, tell them to take a break. Make it clear you care about their state of mind and well being.

The prevalence of open-plan offices has increased the need for breakout spaces-places where employees can go and get away from it all, play a game, have a chat and chill out.

Increase incentives by offering time out on you or in lieu.

Next month - Privacy laws and how they affect your business.

AM-Win Tips

You have overcharged a client, forgotten to give them a discount, invoiced them twice or maybe they have just returned an item that they have bought from you. So now the customer's account is in credit and you need to give them a refund. 

This document describes the method of applying the transaction so that all amounts including the client's account and your bank account are updated correctly.

Open the Customer Payment screen, click Code F10 and select the customer. 

If you are giving them a cheque refund select the method of "DDEP" as this is linked to your 1020 bank account, otherwise select the method of the refund (cash or eft or alternative bank account).

Type in a description e.g. Refund. Now enter YOUR cheque number in the Cheq/Ref field if you are giving them a cheque and enter a MINUS amount in the Amount field. 

Click Accept and Process and say ''''yes'''' and ''''ok'''' to the messages that follow.

The customers'' account will now be cleared and your cheque will come out of your bank a/c.

How do I reverse a Wage Entry

To reverse a wage entry:

Go into the Wage Entry screen, enter the date of the entry, the bank, description, which could be "Reverse Wage Entry" or something similar if you like.  Type in a reference, then in the amount, type in a MINUS amount. 

Follow through as normal with inserting each employee, but on each entry put a minus amount instead of the normal positve in each field.

This document has been added to our document library on our web site for future reference.

To reverse a cheque entry.

Open the Cheque Entry screen, enter the same information as the normal entry but in the amount field, type in a MINUS amount. Process as normal.

This document has been added to our document library on our web site for future reference.

A vehicle that you've seen before drives in and out steps a stranger. I bought this off Mary and she said to bring it here to get it serviced. Now you're faced with having a job item number [rego] attached to the wrong owner of the item.

Ok - this is how we fix the situation. 

Open the Job Item Masterfile, (Customers, Job Item File or the Big Red Toolbox 5th icon from the left) and type in the item no (rego no.) required.

Now move down to the middle of the screen and click on the "Cust" button, which brings up the Select Customer screen where you can locate and select the customer. 

Click save to apply the changes.

Setting up your own background image in Am-win

Did you know that you can set up your own background image so that it shows when you open AM-Win - Here's how:

Pre-requisites: the image must be in the Am-win Data directory (usually amwin/data 1) and must be named ‘LOGO.bmp’

The logo.bmp file must be in BMP format. To save the image as a bmp, left click once on the image that you wish to use to select it,  then right click to display your menu. Now select open with and select Paint,  The Paint program will open the image.  Now click on file/‘save as and select bmp format.  Save as logo.bmp

Now that you have ensured that the image that you wish to use is in BMP format and named logo.bmp save it or copy it to the Am-win data directory.

Click on “Yes” to the messages. [file exists - do you wish to overwrite]

Re-open Am-win and your new background image should appear!

This document has been added to our document library on our web site for future reference.

How do I change a Vehicle or Item to a New Owner 

To change a Job Item, e.g. rego number, to a new owner open the Job Item Masterfile, (Customers, Job Item File or the Big Red Toolbox 5th icon from the left) .

Type in the item no (rego no.) then down in the middle of the screen, click on the "Cust" button. The  Select Customer screen, will now be displayed. Locate and select the customer. Then click on 'Save' and that's it!

This document has been added to our document library on our web site for future reference.

Windows XP Tips

You can use a camera card for backup purposes.

Did you know that a camera card can store computer data. If you have a camera card and a card reader fitted to your computer then your computer sees the camera card as another disk drive. Some of the later laptops even provide a slot that takes a camera card so that you don't even need a separate card reader.

Camera cards come in all sorts of sizes from the 4 megabyte that's provided with the camera to cards of 3000 megabyte [three gigabyte] and up.

So for backup purposes a camera card can be used to backup data. The downside is that the cards are physically small and could be easily lost so you'll need to store them in a safe place.

Checking a Hard Disk for Errors 

Today's hard drives rarely have errors, so you probably don't need to check for any. But if you think your hard drive's acting strangely and defragmenting it doesn't fix the problem, tell Windows XP to check it for errors. 

Make sure that you close all programs first. Open My Computer, right-click on your hard drive, and choose Properties. Click the Tools tab and click the Check Now button. (Leave the two options blank.) 

Click the Start button, and you hear your hard drive whirring away as Windows probes it for problems. If it finds any, follow the Windows instructions for making repair attempts. Also start saving your cash and backing up your data -- repeated errors mean your hard drive may be on its last legs. 

Backing up your Outlook Express Folders.

We back up our business data religiously [or I hope we do]. But what about all those e-mails containing business correspondence, technical information etc etc. The mail comes in - we discard the rubbish, read and discard the jokes and maybe move technical or business information from the inbox to other folders so that we it's all nicely stored and sorted.  Years of information and correspondence.

But what if something goes wrong and you have a hard drive failure - the whole lot may be lost,  or,  a large Outlook e-mail file gets corrupted
and refuses to open and you can't access your outlook express or any of your e-mails.  So lets look at how we can make a backup copy that can be stored on a CDROM or other types of media.

Firstly we Identify Your Outlook Express Store Folder

All your emails are in Outlook Express, sure, but they are also somewhere on your disk. Locating the folder where Outlook Express keeps folders and messages is not obvious, but it's not difficult either.

To find your Outlook Express folder:

Select "Tools | Options..." from the menu in Outlook Express

Now we need to find the folder in Windows Explorer.

To open the Outlook Express Store Folder in Windows Explorer

When you used Ctrl-C to copy the path to your store folder the information was stored in your clipboard. It's easy to find and go to that folder in Windows Explorer:

Select Start | Run

The Outlook Express store folder will open in a Windows Explorer window.

Select "Edit | Select All" from the menu in this folder

Select "Edit | Copy" from the menu to copy the files

Open the folder where you want to keep the backup copies in Windows Explorer. 

Now you have the files and folders in a backup folder you can write them to CD or copy to any other backup media.

Next month we'll cover the restore process.

Note: If you would like to print the above article only click here. We have created a no frills printer friendly page. It will open in a new Window so to return to the newsletter just close the new page after you've printed the document.

Jokes 

Thanks to Brian Taylor [and to whoever sent them to him] for our first two yarns.

Are you a real cowboy?

An old cowboy sat down at a bar and ordered a drink.

As he sat sipping his drink, a young woman sat down next to him. 

She turned to the cowboy and asked, "Are you a real cowboy?"

He replied well, I've spent my whole life breaking colts, working cows, going to rodeos, fixing fences, pulling calves, bailing hay, doctoring calves, cleaning my barn, working on tractors, and feeding my dogs, so I guess I am a cowboy."

She said "I'm a lesbian! I spend my whole day just thinking about women. As soon as I get up in the morning, I think about women. When I shower, I think about women. When I watch TV, I think about women. I even think about women when I eat. It seems that everything makes me think of women."

The two sat sipping in silence.

A little while later, a man sat down on the other side of the old cowboy and asked, "Are you a real cowboy?"

He replied, "I always thought I was, but I just found out that I'm a lesbian!"

How do you feel about sex

An elderly couple had been dancing partners since both their partners had passed away some years earlier.

Their friends and family members kept saying how well they looked together and enjoyed each other's company and kept urging them to get married before they got too old.

They decided to meet at her home one Saturday afternoon to discuss the details - which of their homes they would live in, what furniture each would bring to the family home, finances etc etc.

All this went well and finally, the old gentleman decided it was time to approach the subject of their physical relationship.

How often do you like sex he asked, rather hesitantly.

Well," she said, responding very carefully, "I'd have to say...I would like it infrequently.

The old gentleman sat quietly for a moment, then over his glasses, he looked her in the eye and asked "Infrequently - Is that one word or two?"

Thanks to Mike Rusling for the next offering

There's no way we can afford it. 

For his birthday, little Patrick asked for a10-speed bicycle.  His father said, "Son, we'd give you one, but the mortgage on this house is $480,000 & your mother just lost her job. There's no way we can afford it. 

"The next day the father saw little Patrick heading out the front door with a suitcase. So he asked, "Son, where are you going?" 

Little Patrick told him, "I was walking past your room last night heard you telling Mom you had had enough and that you were were pulling out. Then I heard her tell you to wait because she was coming too. And I'll be damned if I'm staying here by myself with a $480,000 mortgage & no bike!"

Have a great month

Copyright 2000 AMWin Australia ©