Survey

Please note that there is no new survey this month.

Feed back and submissions

Want to submit and article or a joke - the e-mail address is webmaster@am-win.com.au We appreciate your feedback and submissions so send them in and those published will win a link to your website.

AM-Win Support Solutions

Remember - All of the AM-Win support solutions published in the newsletter are added to our knowledgebase library. To access the library simply login to our website.

How To Enter GST Charges on imported stock items

If you buy a stock item from overseas, you do not pay GST on the item at the point of sale. Upon receiving the stock item into Australia, customs issue an invoice for the GST payable on the stock item upon entry into Australia. This is how you enter the GST charges on your purchase orders.

Let's look at the example below where we have the following charges.

• Freight charge    88.70
• GST charge      210.04
• Total invoice     298.74

To enter these charges into a purchase/credit order you do the following entries:

• Freight charge No GST $88.70
• GST charge - GST charge - $210.04 x 11 – GST $2310.44
• GST charge - $210.04 x 10 – No GST $-2100.40 (negative)

Having done this you will now have the following result in the ledgers.

• Supplier ledger -298.74 (negative) - (Total invoice amount)
• Freight ledger      88.70
• Item Ledger (e.g. tools, hardware etc)  2100.40
• Item Ledger (e.g. tools, hardware etc) -2100.40 (negative)
• GST ledger 210.04 (being the amount of GST payable on the item)

Percentage Price Changes

We have received a few support calls this month asking how to apply a percentage price increase to a group of products in AM-Win.

Percent Price Changes is used to increase all the prices of stock in a certain group by the same percentage.

To do this, go to the Stock menu at the top of the AM-WIN screen, and choose % Price Changes.  A Price Increase window will appear.

If you want the Percent change to affect all groups, then leave the Stock Group field blank.

To choose a specific group, left click on the More button to the right of the Enter Stock Group field. The Select Stock Group window will appear.

Search for and select the group whose prices you wish to change, and then left click the Select button. This will return you to the Price Change window where the group you have chosen will be displayed.

Using the up and down arrows next to the Enter Increase Percentage field, choose the percentage increase [or decrease] required. You can type in the percentage rather than using the arrows if necessary.

Left click on the arrow next to the Increase For field and choose from Cost Price or Selling Price.

Depending on whether you choose Cost Price or Selling Price, Select boxes will then appear in the blue area of the screen. Left click in the Small boxes to select them.

You can select multiple groups to be re-priced by selecting groups one after the other. If you accidentally select the wrong group you can deselect it by clicking on the Deselect button at the bottom of the screen.

Left click the Clear button to begin the process again without saving any changes you have made.

Left click the Process button to process the changes. A window will appear stating that the process has been completed. You can then choose to make more price changes in other groups, or close the window to finish.

Windows Tips

Remember - All of the Windows, MSWord and Excel  tips published in the newsletter are added to our knowledgebase library. To access the library simply login to our website.

Windows

Own a web site?  - Get a free kick from Google

Did you know that you can list your business with photos on Google maps for free.

Considering that Google rates sites for their importance [the number of visits and the number of links to the site] over any other criteria it's a great opportunity to have your site promoted on the search engine that used by over 70% of web searchers world wide.

Here's the link to the Google maps listing page.

http://www.google.com/local/add/businessCenter?hl=en-au&gl=au

Next month we are going to discuss some sites that will provide links back to your web site and how it will improve your chances of visitors finding you.

Maximize E-mail Marketing Performance

As everything in the Internet, email marketing is constantly changing. A never-ending flow of spam has seen the appearance of new strict anti-spam technologies and filters. It makes it more and more difficult for legitimate opt-in emails to survive and forces e-mail marketers to follow strict anti spam rules to ensure that their mail outs reach the intended recipients.

As email marketers we are continuously searching, testing and experimenting to find new ways to improve our e-mail performance. And this is reasonable because only by using trial and error methods can we discover the email tactics that work best for us.

This month we'll discuss the format of the email message.

You will probably agree that the way you structure your email message does matter. We all like good looking, intuitive, easy to read and understand emails. So, here are some tips for you to consider using when creating a copy of your email template.

Your Subject line

Some email programs allow a limited quantity of characters in the Subject field. Thus, if your Subject is too long, it may be truncated and show in an unreadable manner for some recipients. Try to shorten your Subject to 35 characters first, then to 25. If this is not possible, compose the subject in a way that looks sensible when truncated.

Don't stop at the first Subject that comes into your mind. Put effort into writing down several Subject lines and choose the best one. Better yet if you choose two or three best Subject lines, segment your email list into groups and send the same email to a different group with a different Subject line. Then analyse your responses to see which subject line provided the higher response rate.

Your banner

Find the right place for your banner. If you use a banner in your email template, think about where it fits best. E-mail marketers used to place banners at the top of the messages. However, it's not a rule. Note that many recipients will read your message in their preview screens. So, if your banner takes almost all the space available in the preview screen, consider placing it in a different location. You can arrange your banner vertically by the side or even at the bottom of the email.

Another good idea is to make your banner "active". What do we usually place on our banners? The company logo, slogan, company name, contact information, mail address. Why not add some call-to-action link to the banner? Maybe it's the first thing in your email the readers will look at and it may generate some additional sales for you.

E-Mail link

What will generate the best click-through rate, a regular link in your email body or in the banner? Once again you can split your mailing into groups and send mail with the link in the banner to one group and the link in the body to another group.

Using Alt Text for your images and photos

Don't forget about "Alt Text" for your images and photos. Alt text is used to ensure that text is viewed as a replacement for your image if the image can't be displayed. While a picture says a thousand words it's no good if your email readers have the images disabled by default. If this is the case you need to motivate them to load your images. You can do this by using the alt text for the images. When you insert an image, don't forget to write an attractive alt text that clearly tells the reader what the picture is about. Avoid using a vague alt text like "Click Here" as it can look doubtful and therefore not to be trusted.

Content

Work out your email content. You have probably noticed that a long email copy often works better than a short copy. But to keep the reader's attention till the end of your message, you should present it in the easy to read and understand manner.

Introduction

Introduce your email with a powerful sentence to instantly engage the readers into the rest of the story. But don't make the first paragraph longer than a sentence or two.

Follow-up

Other paragraphs should contain 3-4 sentences each. If you feel you need to write longer paragraphs, alternate them with short, snappy paragraphs to emphasize some text passage.

Use bolded text or bullets for emphasis: Bolded or underlined paragraph titles catch the reader's eyes immediately. You can also use the bold font or underlining to bring the reader's attention to the most important parts of your email. If appropriate, use a bulleted list to describe your product's features, benefits, or some other characteristics. Bullets make it easy to rapidly read and understand what your email is about.

Disperse your links all over the message: Your most important links should repeat after every third paragraph. And don't forget to place your call-to-action link at the end of your email. Many people click the URL at the very end of the email copy.

Add a powerful P.S: If you have something important to remind to your readers or just want to say something that is worth the reader's attention, it's a good idea to add a P.S after your signature. People used to read P.S because it generally gives as important information as the email copy itself and even more.

MS Word

Wrap your text around the edges of a graphic

Summary: Place a graphic in your document, and you may want to make sure that your document text "wraps" around the edges of the graphic. There are several wrapping methods you can instruct Word to use; here's how to do it. (This tip works with Microsoft Word 97, Word 2000, Word 2002, Word 2003, and Word 2007.)

After you have inserted a picture in your document, you can control how surrounding text flows around it. You can either turn wrapping off, or you can cause Word to flow text around the image. To control text wrapping for a graphic, follow these steps:

• Insert your graphic as you normally would.
• Right-click your mouse on the graphic.
• Word displays a Context menu.
• Choose the Format Picture option from the Context menu. Word displays the Format Picture dialog box. Click on the Layout tab (or, in Word 97, the Wrapping tab).
  
  
• Select a method of text wrapping in the Wrapping Style area of the dialog box.
• Click on OK.

Excel

A macro to create a single worksheet for each month of the year.

One common type of workbook used in offices is one that contains a single worksheet for each month of the year. If you need to create these types of workbooks frequently, you'll love the macro highlighted in this tip. Works with Microsoft Excel 97, Excel 2000, Excel 2002, Excel 2003, and Excel 2007.

When you are starting a new workbook, it is very common to name each worksheet after a different month of the year. If you do this quite a bit, you know it can be tiresome to rename each worksheet, in turn, to exactly what you need.

The following macro was developed to help in these situations. It checks the names of the worksheets in your workbook, renaming them to the months of the year if they begin with the letters "Sheet". If there are not enough sheets in the workbook, it adds sheets, as necessary, for each month of the year.

Sub DoMonths()
Dim J As Integer
Dim K As Integer
Dim sMo(12) As String

sMo(1) = "January"
sMo(2) = "February"
sMo(3) = "March"
sMo(4) = "April"
sMo(5) = "May"
sMo(6) = "June"
sMo(7) = "July"
sMo(8) = "August"
sMo(9) = "September"
sMo(10) = "October"
sMo(11) = "November"
sMo(12) = "December"

For J = 1 To 12
If J <= Sheets.Count Then
If Left(Sheets(J).Name, 5) = "Sheet" Then
Sheets(J).Name = sMo(J)
Else
Sheets.Add.Move after:=Sheets(Sheets.Count)
ActiveSheet.Name = sMo(J)
End If
Else
Sheets.Add.Move after:=Sheets(Sheets.Count)
ActiveSheet.Name = sMo(J)
End If
Next J

For J = 1 To 12
If Sheets(J).Name <> sMo(J) Then
For K = J + 1 To Sheets.Count
If Sheets(K).Name = sMo(J) Then
Sheets(K).Move Before:=Sheets(J)
End If
Next K
End If
Next J

Sheets(1).Activate
End Sub

The last step in the macro is that it places the worksheets in proper order, for the months 1 through 12. The result is that if you have any other worksheets left in the workbook (in other words, you had some that did not begin with the letters "Sheet", then those worksheets end up at the end of the workbook, after the 12 months.

Tip in a tip

Don't cut and paste the above macro code straight into Excel because it contains html coding from the website. Copy it from this page and paste it into notepad first.  Note pad will remove any HTML [web page] formatting and reduce the content to plain unformatted text.  Then cut and paste from notepad to excel.

Note:

Please note that we do not provide support for our Word and Excel tips as they are provided by a third party. If you need further information why not try using Google - Cut and paste the heading of our tip into Google's search box [e.g. this months tip heading is "A macro to create a single worksheet for each month of the year"]. You'll be amazed at the information available.

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