Both your Sales and Purchase VAT rates are affected; typically users will have 3 codes to deal with: one on Sales and two on Purchases (goods for re-sale and for non-resale) – these need to be amended.

You may need dual rates for a period; allowing 21% to apply on invoices dated before Jan. 1st and 23% on invoices after 31st December. These rates can be set-up immediately; you do not have to wait until January. Step-by-step guides to setting up new rates in the different
software versions are available on our website:

• Pegasus Opera 3
• Pegasus Opera II
• Pegasus Opera for Windows/DOS

We advise you to invoice all possible SOP/Invoicing documents on or before the last working day of December 2011.

You must use the new rate of 23% (where applicable) for all invoices that you issue on or after 1st January 2012.

If you have version 6.7x of Pegasus Opera II (or later) or Opera 3 the following will not apply as the software will automatically use the correct rate based on the date of the invoice.

Once in January, if you need to progress any existing Invoice document to Credit Note or re-Invoice the same Invoice for a second time – You should only do this if your new Invoice or Credit Note will be dated prior to January 1st so that the same VAT rates apply.

If you have existing un-invoiced Invoicing/SOP documents (Contracts, Quotes, Proformas, Sales Orders, Deliveries) they will need to be manually edited on each line in order to ensure that the new VAT rate applies when you decide to progress.

There is no end to pressures that distract us from this all important focus, and when we yield to them we always pay the price – be it through missed opportunities, higher costs or ultimately, facing closure.

Business managers need to pay attention to the old 80:20 rule:

• 80% of your profits come from 20% of your customers
• 80% of your complaints come from 20% of your customers
• 80% of your profits come from 20% of the time you spend
• 80% of your sales come from 20% of your products

Focus in the mind of the business manager is the first step to getting things right, the above rule-of-thumb will be true for most enterprises.

XL Reports gives you control of your data

The SME sector, in particular, is under pressure

These days SME’s need to respond quickly to the demands placed on them, there are no bailouts or ‘white knight’ banks coming to save them from their mistakes.  In fact the opposite is true, pressure on SME’s from banks is increasing, credit facilities are tightening, credit agencies are chasing for settlements.  Pressure exists and at the other end too, customers, many of whom are themselves in difficulties, are slower to pay accounts and are forcing down margins all the time.

One spin off of the economic downturn is that we are all forced to look at what we are doing much more keenly, there is little room for frills.  But how do we do this?

Users of Pegasus Opera have the advantage

All of the Pegasus Opera range of products, including the legacy ‘Opera for Windows’ system (now called Opera 1), the existing flagship Opera II, and now Opera 3, are built on a logically designed database and can tell you valuable things about a business.

Pegasus Opera users have been searching for better ways to manage the data in their systems, and there are many solutions available.   Opera users have invested in custom development to have reporting systems created that match their needs – every Pegasus Business Partner will have this experience.

The advantage to Pegasus users is this logical design of their database, however, many users have been unable to make a reality of this open design to improve their business information flow.

It is possible to actually Manage your Opera data!

Our main theme in this article is that spending isn’t necessarily the best solution to any problem, users should look to getting more from their existing systems.  Upgrades do provide new functionality and are often needed for technical reasons, however, they don’t necessarily provide the best solution to managing your data and monitoring business performance.

‘XL Reports for Pegasus Opera’ v2.17 is available

Users of any release of Pegasus Opera, including the old Opera 1, the current Opera II, and now Opera 3, can manage their data using the two main XL Reports modules – taking data out of Opera, working on it, and bring it back in again (Data Manager).  There is no other product offering the range of functionality, ease of use or better value that this product – we highly recommend it.

As a recession beater and as a boost for this holiday period ONE Systems are pleased to announce that it is offering these modules at a massive 30% discount on RRP for the software.  The module prices are the same as the Pegasus per-module price, i.e. it depends on the concurrent user-count of your system.

This offer is valid for orders received up to the end of August 2011, discount does not apply to license fees.

If you would like to discuss your needs with a long standing ‘Pegasus Expert’ please call our office and we will be happy to assist you.

This trend of following the latest IT fad has even reached the circles of government  - they are desperate to see any way forward from the dead end of their economic non-planning.

In Ireland, the programme for government states: “We will make Ireland a leader in the emerging IT market of cloud computing by promoting greater use of cloud computing in the public sector.”

There seems to be a determination to build our future in this ‘cloud’, universities and institutes of technology are being advised to gear up for it.  And of course, the SME business sector is being advised that this is the way of the future, but is it?

Experience tells us to beware of buzzwords in IT, there have been many flops.  Is there anything really new in this ‘cloud’ that is being recommended to us?

The idea of running applications and storing data on remote servers, however accessed, by wired connection, through leased lines, through ISDN or PSTN connections or even via the Internet is absolutely nothing new in terms of technology – it’s been happening for decades now.  The idea of making these applications and services available as ‘on demand’ services for use by other enterprises or the fact of how this is charged for, whether outright purchase or rental, is still nothing new in technology.

Selling old rope?

Perhaps this cloud is just the re-presentation of an already existing technology, the re-packaging in a new box of an existing product and a new distribution and marketing channel.  Is there anything new in this concept of re-branding in any industry, not just IT – of course not, it is common practice.

Maybe this cloud is about re-vitalising an industry, all the major IT corporations, including Microsoft, Apple, SAP, Oracle and others and promoting and investing in this ‘cloud’ – good luck to them and to their share prices – the DOT.COM ‘boom’ comes to mind.

Anyway, despite Irish government official policy to promote the ‘cloud’ here is an interesting quote, and maybe it gets to the heart of the issue when one considers the position of SME’s:

Regarding deployment of ‘cloud’ applications: “the Chief State Solicitor’s Office have advised that issues such as data protection, confidentiality and security and liability are not necessarily dealt with in a manner that would be necessary for public sector responsibilities”.

And here is a serious warning:

Dropbox, a leading provider of file sharing and ‘cloud’ services apparently exposed their customers data last weekend, see article here.

Data is critical to any SME and sound management dictates that an enterprise must maintain full control of it, protect it, ensure it is available when needed, and be able to manipulate it without restriction, this is not ‘cloud’ stuff.

So, are we advocating the Luddite approach?

No, we are not against technology advance, we just want to sound caution and advise that we look on these ‘cloud’ developments in light of business requirements.  Most SMEs, those not in the IT business anyway, do not nead to be pathfinders in technology, they need to focus on their core business.  It is very easy to get sidetracked by systems and new technology, spending money doesn’t solve all problems, and sometimes it can create new ones.

By Diarmaid Ó Cadhla, Managing Direct at ONE Systems, offering IT business and software services to the SME sector since the early 1980′s, all inquiries welcome.

Read more about Pegasus Opera 3 here »

CRM Uplift: With over 60 new enhancements, this release truly expands the functionality and flexibility of the CRM applications. Enhancements include:

Please note, Opera 3 (1.20) has been tested on Windows 7 Professional Service Pack 1, Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 and Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1.

Did you ever want to recalculate In Stock quantities across your Pegasus Opera data? Well now you can, simple!

The ever-popular Data Manager for Pegasus Opera, which offers a broad range of tools for manipulating & updating your data from standard Microsoft Excel worksheets now has a new tool added – its simply called “Recalculate”

The utility requires licensing for both the XL Reports framework and Data Manager and allows warehouse managers to force the recalculation of in-stock quantities from the stock transaction file.

Things must add up!

Just like any Debtors or Creditors Ledger card, the quantity of goods recorded as being “in stock” should be a function of the total Receipts less the total Issues (write-off’s etc.) – on a per warehouse basis.  However, the reality for a lot of Pegasus users is that, for many reasons, the stock figures are inaccurate and can often produce different results for quantity depending on how valuations/counts are conducted, e.g. FIFO, non-FIFO etc.

The open-design of Pegasus Opera has both advantages & disadvantages.

We are not for one minute suggesting the Pegasus Opera doesn’t count stocks correctly, of course it does.  However, as Pegasus Opera uses an ‘open design’ database many end users have had custom or ‘back door’ updates of their stock, maybe during initial setup or during some upgrade.  It is also the case that many updates carried out on end user data have not been completed properly, maybe due to lack of knowledge, maybe due to too much haste etc.  On the other hand, it is this ‘open design’ that is one of the more popular aspects of the Pegasus Opera suite of accounting, distribution and inventory applications.  Approximately 50% of Pegasus users are in wholesale, distribution and/or  need good warehouse management.

Whatever the reason for inconsistency in the stock data, it can now be fixed and very quickly and simply.

This same Recalculate Utility also includes a routine for the recalculation of Sales and Purchase Order balances across both the stock data and the Sales and Purchase Order processing systems.

ONE Systems have been associated with the business software marketplace for nearly 30 years and have gained a broad experience in getting the best from a system.  We know that getting the most from what you already have is likely to be the best strategy for any business for whom market conditions are tightening.

In these conditions ONE Systems are pleased to offer a two pronged approach to clients, their accounting and business systems:

We are all too well aware of the serious economic downturn and the pressures facing business everywhere – lack of credit facilities, bad debts and lack of investment in the economy generally.  The climate has instilled in businesses a ‘wait and see’ approach to investment and to the release of new product where the market simply may not be able to take it up.  Still, business must go on, but caution must be exercised …  A key factor in these times must be to reduce the running costs of business, to be efficient, to fine tune what business we are actually in.  Look at the 80:20 rule, identify what brings in revenue and adds to your gross margin and what doesn’t but uses up resources.  In our experience a lot of business enterprises are happy to consolidate what they have and try to ride out the storm, in the hope of better times down the road.  A golden rule to remember is that it is always easier to sell to your existing customers than to win new ones – so mind your existing clients.

What would help your business to grow in the current conditions?

Independent of whatever systems you have we would like to hear your view of what would help your business to survive and hopefully grown in these times.  What you need might include:

• Creating an optimised web presence so that you can interact where your customers already are – on the Internet, searching Google, in forums etc.
• Do you need to sell online?  Do you need to integrate your back office Opera database with your website?
• Using Customer Relationship Management software/techniques to manage your marketing activities and internal business organisation/administration.
• Improve your use of software tools to have relevant and on-time reporting of key business data.

Later we will report on some of the reasons why you might consider Opera 3 for upgrade, but for now we would like to hear from you – please tell us what you need.

A reporting tool you can use and that brings your data to life

The powerful analysis options available in Excel unlock the Opera database to create meaningful reports quickly and easily – without the need for time consuming report formatting, selecting or grouping techniques.  You don’t even need training on XL Reports, it just works – your biggest task might be going through the reports to decide which functions are of most interest.

For Pegasus Opera users the unique facilities available in Data Manager, running within the XL Reports Framework, provides an easy way to update stocks, price lists, supplier products, optimised stock re-order reporting, import purchase orders, stock transactions etc. all using standard Excel worksheets.  In addition several customers have invested in Stock Manager, using standard Windows CE handheld devices to process stock movements, complete stock takes and more.

Seeing is believing

This easy to use Excel reporting interface can be downloaded on a free trial basis, downloading required that you register on our website, this is FREE of charge and also gives you access to ourPegasus Opera Support Forum.  Once downloaded, if you email or phone our support team they will send out an activation code.  We will even help you setup the software, it is simple and only takes a few minutes to get it working.

A new function has just been released for Data Manager (needs XL Reports for Opera framework) which allows an operator to extract stock for any combination of Category or Warehouse into a standard Excel sheet, modify the quantities as required and then write the changes back into Opera.

In order to make calculating the optimum levels and quantities the operator can optionally include values such as:

• Last Issued and Received Dates.
• Current In-Stock Level, PO Quantity, SO Qualtity, Allocations & Free Stock.
• Issues history per period for the last year.

This new functionality has been requested a number of times by users who need to keep up to date with their stock control, avoid over and under stocking and keep the cost of holding stock as low as possible.  Taken together with other functionality released recently:

• Allowing for the import of Purchase Order Requisitions from Excel.
• Using an automated re-order report in Excel to generate data for this PO import.
• Management of Supplier Product lists via Excel.
• Stock Additions/Update via Excel
• Stock-Take updates and the import of Issues/Receipts/Adjustments from Excel.

The software is available completely free of charge to any existing users of Data Manager, it can be downloaded on a trial basis by anyone who would like to access it.

If there are any particular requirements that Opera users have we would be more than happy to discuss them, either in the free online forum, by telephone, or via message on the web site.

Pegasus Opera II v6.81 – Latest release.

The most recent release of the 2009 Award Winning suite of software – Pegasus Opera II – has significant improvements in the following areas, users with up-to-date Annual Maintenance are entitled to these updates free of charge.

• Improved Dashboards
• Improved Document Management
• Fixed Assets Excel Import
• More BACS options in Purchase Ledger
• Batch Emailing of Invoices to customers.
• SQL Server 2008 Support.
• Microsoft Windows 7 Support.

Please contact our HelpDesk to schedule your system upgrade to the latest Pegasus Opera II