SQLWorks includes a range of accounting locks which allow data entry for business accounting to be restricted to certain time periods.

SQLWorks operates date based-accounting rather than ‘Period-based accounting’ in the commonly understood sense – this gives companies greater granularity over how accounting is controlled.

Because of this, SQLWorks accounting can be locked down* based on a number of different periods and conditions, depending on your preference:

• Financial Year Level Locking
• Monthly Locking
• VAT Period /  Quarterly Locking
• Appropriation Locking

 

Financial Year Level Lock

Year Level Locking is available from Audit > Audit by Year in the main SQLWorks Navbar, by right-clicking on the financial year and selecting ‘Lock Year’.

Financial years that have been locked will display a ‘Yes’ in the ‘Lock’ column of the financial years list, and will prevent SQLWorks users from making any changes to financial transactions within that year. However, nominal journals may still be posted to a locked year.

This lock should only be used by your SQLWorks Accounting Admin, and acts independently of all other accounting conditions.

 

Monthly Lock (Current Financial Year Only)

This lock can be made available in your Accounts Prefs, where individual months, or months within specific ledgers, can be locked or unlocked for current financial year.

By default, users can only post in the designated active financial year – however transitionary options are available here to allow temporary posting into the final period of the previous financial year if this is still Year Level unlocked.

Because this lock can be turned on/off by a user with sufficient privileges and are always reversible, this forms a ’soft’ lock accounting managers can deploy as a highly flexible ‘Month-end’ control or similar.

 

VAT Locking (Quarterly Lock)

The SQLWorks VAT Ledger allows users to calculate the UK tax return due for each VAT Quarter.

Once the VAT return has been complete, the date period covered by the specified VAT Quarter will be automatically locked against further accounting entries.

Reporting VAT accurately is a legal obligation, and additional transaction entries will not be permitted into the locked Quarter once VAT has been calculated for reporting to HMRC. Journaling between nominal codes is still permitted.

 

Appropriation Locking

Once you have set retained profit for a financial year (‘appropriated’ profit) the financial year will be locked, even if the financial year has not yet been Month, VAT or Year Level locked yet. No further transactions may be created in this year.

Because of this, Appropriation is usually only completed once year-end processing for that financial year has already been completed. For more information, please read: “1.1.2.4 – How to Set Retained Profit.”

 

*Under certain circumstances some accounting locks can be reversed – please speak to your SQLWorks team about this in more detail.

With SQLWorks Version 8 debuting later this year, we’re gathering feedback on what our clients would like to see after the upcoming major upgrade.

Version 8 will be our opportunity to make considerable improvements to both the technical capabilities and user experience of SQLWorks.

Our team’s development priorities have been shaped by the feedback our users have given us in recent weeks and months – please let us know your thoughts below:

 

Lineal will be launching a new major version of SQLWorks in 2017.

Version 8 will bring a host of new features to our flagship business management software, as well as provide existing SQLWorks customers a greatly improved user-experience.

Managing Director of Lineal Mike Matthews explained: “We were determined to release a major new version of SQLWorks this year, and wanted to implement the customer feedback we’ve been gathering in recent months.”

“By changing to the StudioWorks 8 framework, SQLWorks Version 8 will allow us to update the technology behind our business software – modernising the visual ‘look-and-feel’ to be more intuitive, adding greater flexibility, and offering more options for integration.”

Version 8 is expected to be available from Autumn 2017 – check back for more soon!

Phone logs

If your business fields a lot of phone calls, accurate record keeping is an important part of your interactions with customers. SQLWorks includes a Phone Logs tool to keep track of calls, to manage workloads, and to produce valuable insights from this data.

The Phone Log itself can be found in the Navbar under CRM (1), and opens a table showing all recent phone logs to your business, who called, and other information. SQLWorks does not record audio from phone calls (unless uploaded), but creates a convenient admin trail for tracing calls and the work that was associated to them.

Pressing ‘F6’ at any time in SQLWorks opens the window to create a new phone log (2), and this can be launched quickly during/after a call. Choosing a company from your company’s list opens its lists of contacts, and the user can either select a known contact (automatically entering all their details) or right click on the contact list to add a new caller’s details.

Below this are fields for giving the detail from the call to a SQLWorks user within your company (e.g.: for assigning a new task) and you can choose a user/group to email with the call detail.

On the right hand side of the new call log window are tabs to simultaneously create new tasks, project links or sales leads using the data from the new phone log (3.) Each tab automatically copies across the data from the phone log, and provides the extra fields needed to also create these new entries, for example: task priority or lead conversion chance.

When new phone logs are saved, they are logged to the phone log table itself, and under each specific company’s Phone Logs tab in the company’s list. If used, the task, project and lead tables also receive the new entries.

SQLWorks phone log is an immensely versatile tool, which forms the backbone of a structured help desk or office environment – helping to keep track of call volumes, agent workloads and customer interaction. The phone log itself can be exported with timestamped entries for further analysis of busy periods or repeat customers, and by clicking ‘Reports’ users can produce reports on number of calls received from a list of companies.

The new phone log screen (remember: press F6!) can be customised extensively by the SQLWorks team to record information commonly taken over the phone from enquiries to your business, and to help you populate the task list, advance projects or manage sales leads elsewhere in SQLWorks more carefully.

For CRM support and advice, contact the SQLWorks team today.

quoting tips

Quoting a customer can be a delicate process, and sometimes you need to be able to issue a quote with detailed options. We’ve collated a few handy tips to help your sales team build the perfect SQLWorks quote.

If you’re putting together a more complex quote, it can sometimes be useful to give a customer options. You can create these by right-clicking on the line numbers on the left of each quote line, and selecting ‘Choose Option Group’ to place groups of lines under ‘Option 1’ ‘Option 2’ subheadings (1.)

These options are normally alternatives to each other, so you typically won’t want SQLWorks to total them together. You can remove the overall total by switching to the to ‘Extras and Project’ Tab in the top right of the quote header, and unchecking the ‘Print Totals’ checkbox (2.) This will remove the ‘grand total’ from the bottom of the normal quote template (please note that if you exclude VAT you’ll need to include an amendment to this effect, as depending on your settings, the total VAT may no longer be visible.)

If you need to include sub-total lines instead for each option group, the easiest way is to add a sub-total line at the end of each group. By right clicking on the grey background of any given line, you can choose ‘Toggle Line Type’ to change a line to display the sub-total of the group immediately above it, to be hidden or to become a comment line without any costs (3.)

The area around the line number will change to a different colour to reflect the line type (1), and the quote template will change to incorporate the new line type. This is useful to help keep your quote clear and tidy – to add a running sub-total, line gaps or comments.

With these extras it’s easy to build more complex quotes from SQLWorks, and give customers an informative choice.

A Quick Disclaimer: if you have a custom quotations window for your company/organisation, one or more of these quoting tips features may be disabled. If you need them – speak to the SQLWorks team!

sales leads

Need to manage a sales leads pipeline for your business? SQLWorks CRM includes a comprehensive sales leads module which can help you manage your customer outreach.

Leads can be accessed within the CRM section of the main navbar (1.) and will load a table of leads with multiple coloured panels representing your sales stages (2.)

You can double click on a lead to open it, reorder your leads by clicking the column headers or click the ‘Q1’ ‘Q2’ ‘Q3 ‘Q4’ buttons along the top toolbar to filter by financial quarter.

Once a lead has been opened, you can record common sales qualification data including priority level, log a lead source, assign categorisation and note the contact details of your contact in the top half of the edit Lead window (3.) You can also give each lead speculative value, profit and conversion chance, and set a follow up date for further action which can display in the SQLWorks diary. In the lower panel (4) are your normal SQLWorks CRM tools – you can link phone logs, emails, tasks and drag in documents to be saved against your lead, and save a record of actions performed to progress the lead with a time/date.

By clicking the [+] button above the lead stages you can unlock each new lead stage – moving your lead down the sales pipeline.

As leads move through your pipeline, your brightly coloured lead stages in the main screen (2) display how many leads are active at that stage, what the total value of these are in turnover, and the total likely profit (calculated by multiplying each lead’s percentage by it’s turnover value and adding the sum of that stages leads these together.) You can load the leads active at any single stage by clicking on that stage, and the stages themselves can be set to match your own sales pipeline. ‘Receipted’ and ‘Lost’ sales leads will always default their quantity to 100% of value converted or lost, and will move a lead to ‘Closed.’ By clicking the ‘Load Open’ button in the top toolbar you can filter your list to exclude these closed leads, and just work on those that are active.

If you need a quick way to record new enquiries over the phone, you can create a new lead when making a new phone log by clicking the ‘leads’ tab in the new phone log screen. To save time, the details of your new lead will be automatically populated from those you recorded in the phone log.

Your leads are kept isolated from your main companies list to prevent bigger sales departments with large numbers of cold contacts swamping your SQLWorks Sales Ledger with non-customers.

At any time however, (for example when a Lead becomes a customer) you can click the ‘Conversion Tab’ in the lower half of the edit lead window to automatically save the company details gathered by your Sales agent as a new company in your main SQLWorks companies list.

In this way SQLWorks makes it simple to log new leads, record progress in detail between multiple sales staff, and estimate future conversion rates.

For CRM guidance and help: contact us today.

EurOmnis

Our SQLWorks team recently exhibited at the 2016 EuroOmnis developers conference in Tuscany, Italy – joining Omnis developers conference from more than a dozen countries around the globe.

EurOmnis is an annual educational event designed to bring Omnis programmers together to share knowledge and to showcase the very latest in software development.

“Lineal have been part of, and latterly helped organise, this international conference of Omnis developers since 1999” explained Managing Director Mike Matthews. “As a member of the Omnis developers group (ODEV), our SQLWorks Business Management Software undergoes an ongoing process of learning and development – and we’re always looking at what features future versions of SQLWorks will need to stay at the forefront.”

“The best businesses are always looking to the latest technology for an extra edge, so both our team and SQLWorks software need to be just as agile.”

Attendees enjoyed classes, discussions and more surrounding the latest advances in Omnis software development, including javascript web tools, responsive graphs and visualisation aids, and Omnis development for portable devices such as smartphones and tablets.

Representatives from Omnis were also present, to host seminars informing and updating attendees on the platform’s latest news, as well as explore likely developments in the near future and gather feedback.

The conference also gives developers a chance to showcase what they have been working on to other developers, drawing on software projects undertaken across countless industries and sectors.

To learn more about SQLWorks: contact us today.

Banking

SQLWorks includes a Banking Ledger to your record and plan all financial interactions with your bank accounts, monitor your statements and reconcile transactions.

Bank Accounts can be found under the ‘Bank’ button within ‘Accounts’ (1) and your bank accounts are displayed in the top left (2) – with the details of the selected account (including branch address, account numbers, sort code, balances and currency) all shown on the top panel. (3) From the Bank section you can also access your ‘Sundry Cash Ledger’ (for cash accounting), ‘Petty Cash Accounts’ and Foreign Exchange data (under ‘ForX.’)

Your unreconciled transactions are displayed under the main ‘Unreconciled transactions’ tab in date order. To reconcile, move to the ‘Statements’ tab, select a statement, and double click on an unreconciled item to set it as reconciled (or vice versa)

If you use printed cheques as a part of your business, you can access your unprinted cheques via the ‘Unprinted Cheques’ tab, which can be used in conjunction with a cheque printing machine or dot matrix printer.

Should you need to add a new bank account for your business, you can do so from the top toolbar by clicking the ‘Add A/C’ button. Each new Bank Account will require a unique Nominal Ledger code for that account and a currency chosen from your list of default currencies.

Your new account can be set as the default bank account in Accounts Preferences by saving its number in the ‘Default Bank Account’ field under the ‘Finance’ Tab. SQLWorks should normally be used to treat Credit Cards as bank accounts, with statements processed in a similar manner.

SQLWorks is designed to keep your banking as transparent as possible, and ensure that it’s always easy to match up the contents of your bank ledger to your real world finances.

 

For accounting software that matches your business: speak to us about SQLWorks today.

email marketing

If you have SQLWorks linked to your email account, SQLWorks can be used for email marketing and mailshots, bulk sending emails with custom designs.

Accessed within SQLWorks CRM, users can create a new email campaign by making a new mailshot project, and create multiple mass emails within a campaign.

Right clicking in the main list and selecting ‘New Mailshot’ will open a new email creation window, where users can give the mailshot a unique name, choose an email from address, subject line, and ‘drag-and-drop’ in attachments.

The list of intended recipients can be chosen from the ‘Client Lists’ dropdown, selecting from one of your custom client lists, which you can build from your saved SQLWorks CRM contacts.

For the design of an email, you can choose from a wide range of tools from within the formatting pallet on the right of the main email editing window – get creative with different fonts and text sizes, colours, bulletpoints and alignment, insert images, tables and more!

You can format elements by highlighting them and clicking the format buttons, and confine the margins of your email by setting these measurements in the ‘Document’ tab.

For tidy formatting, we recommend creating a borderless table in which to align all the elements of your email marketing email – to ensure any custom designs are displayed consistently in the inboxes of recipients.

SQLWorks database tags can be input into the main email body so that each email contains mail merged custom data from elsewhere in your contact directory. This can be used for targeting with ‘informal’ detail (e.g.: a first name – ‘Dear John’) and a “fall-through” function which pulls in substitute data as a ‘formal’ backup (e.g.: surnames – ‘Dear Mr Smith’) where the main data is unavailable. These functions can be customised by our SQLWorks team, to email your contacts using any piece of data from your SQLWorks CRM, Accounts or Stock Control data.

SQLWorks allows you to preview each version of a mailmerged email to check for errors by clicking the ‘Prev’ / ‘Next’ buttons, and ensure each email is correctly personalised. Using the spellcheck function, and undo/redo buttons, email marketeers can also avoid any errors being broadcast to a wide audience.

If you wish to remove all formatting, and send your email as a ‘plain text’ email to improve chances of deliverability, simply tick the ‘Send as Plain Text’ checkbox at the top of the Mailshot window. Using the ‘Show Plain Text’ checkbox, you can also check how this email is likely to be seen by email inbox previews.

Deploying these tools, you can field imaginative, targeted and ongoing email campaigns, linking all the intelligence of your SQLWorks data together with your marketing.

 

For expert CRM tools, contact us about SQLWorks today:

task prioritisation

SQLWorks’ task list can prioritise your tasks in order of important with a simple colour-coding system: here’s how to use this.

When creating or editing a task, you can choose a priority level from the ‘Priority’ dropdown menu, which by default contains 3 levels. After saving the task with a task prioritisation:

All ‘Normal’ Tasks go in the main (grey) default task window. You can use the main task list as a to-do list for today’s tasks, filtering the list, sending reminders and closing jobs as they are completed. Your SQLWorks admin can also be given control over closing tasks, and recording the time taken to finish each job.

All ‘Low’ priority Tasks go to the green task panel on the left hand side – you can use this to hold tasks that are not important, or have no imminent deadlines.

All ‘High’ priority tasks go to the red task panel on the left hand side – you should reserve this list for only the most urgent tasks. When a new task enters this list, SQLWorks will also email the person who this task is assigned to, letting them know they have a very urgent task to complete.

The yellow task panel is an especially useful area, reserved for ‘Future‘ tasks that are dated ahead of time. You can do this by post-dating the ‘Open Date’ on a task before saving it. Your future tasks will remain in the yellow list until the ‘Open Date’ (and time) passes – at which point your task will be moved by SQLWorks to your main grey list to be worked on.

This is a handy tool for keeping tomorrow’s work clear from today’s to-do list, and populating tomorrow’s to-do list automatically when tomorrow arrives.

For a professional CRM solution on either Windows or Mac, contact us today.