S100C – Tune-Up and Invoicing

S100C – Tune-Up and Invoicing 

Run the Tune Up!—Sage 100 Contractor is a database. There is a built-in process to run a Tune Up each evening. For it to run, everyone has to be logged out of the software. When we get a call about performance issues, this is where we start and we often find it has not run in many weeks, or even months. What’s happening?

In some cases, people aren’t logging out of the software. They’re hitting the ‘X’ to close their remote sessions, but that’s like turning off a screen, not logging off. You have to exit Sage 100 Contractor. When you exit that program, you’ll get a message box ‘Exit Sage 100 Contractor’ with a Yes or No. If you didn’t see this message, you didn’t log out.

Next issue—many of you are running third party products such as SSO/SFO or ProCore. These products stay logged in, so the Tune Up can’t run. We recommend that at least once a week, you log in, pause these services, run the Tune Up, then restart. At a minimum you should be doing this once a month when you roll the posting period forward. We recommend once a week! BTW—the F.I.T. System doesn’t cause this issue.

Two Jobs, One Invoice

We’re seeing a lot of changes in how GC’s and Owners are asking to be billed. A recent example involves one contract for two locations. Our client wanted to track each location against separate budgets, and the GC wanted one Progress Bill. Phases would have been an option—Phases have separate budgets; time entries and material orders can be entered by Phase; then all of this rolls up to the one job. There are general reports and phase reports.

But, it turns out they needed Certified Payroll, too. The Certified Payroll reports are not available by Phase, so this option had to come off the table. By running two separate jobs, the number of people who would have work flow changes was minimized. The field would not have to remember to add a phase (although the F.I.T. System does have this option), and we could get the Certified reports. PO’s and AP entry would not be changed, either. So what about billing?

All the billing would be done through the 3-7 Progress Billing screen for one of the jobs. One person on the AR team would be tasked with following the special procedure to move a portion of the revenue under the second job, making Over/Under billing and Job Status reports make sense.  By following the procedure, all cash will be posted to the one Progress Bill, and each job will have revenue and costs.

Before you commit to a solution, or think there’s no way to meet your goal, be sure to make a list of all the requirements (in this case, Certified Payroll was a deciding factor), then let’s go through the options and take advantage of the power in Sage 100 Contractor!- CMW