Cory and Steve were going over labels and sub inventory stuff. Mike Roundtree joined in and was asking about Herbo payment solutions and options for demos. I mentioned to him, if needed, we could help him out by using special accounts, inside of adilas. We will check to see what is already built out and then go from there. Anyways, he has some needs and ideas. We'll see where it goes.

Next, Mike was talking with Sean and Steve about ecommerce, multiple locations, using a single system for multiple different tasks, and making plans for a new demo site for somebody in Hawaii. Shari O. will spin up the new site, Sean will help fill things in, Cory will help Sean where needed. Fun to see them all making plans and coordinating. We also pulled in Bryan briefly to talk about the Herbo (eXPO) payment solutions and what has been automated and integrated. The demo is out a few weeks.

Shari O. had some questions on a bulk inventory update that needed to be done for a client. She and I made a plan and she will be kicking me over an email to get it in writing.

Cory had a list of project that she wanted to go over. We both reviewed a small video from Kelly dealing with needs to be able to search sub inventory status and sub inventory availability. Basically, some new filters may need to be added to some of the advanced reports.

Meeting with John on a code review for his recipe/build pages that he has been working on. He had 5 new pages that he had altered the look and feel (turned into more modern snow owl theme designs). I gave him 2 more pages to work on. We should have those new changes up by the end of the week.

Reviewing a project for Shari O. dealing with an inventory update for a client. On a phone call with Bryan going over projects. Bryan and I spent some time talking about merchant processing and where we are heading with that.

Quick meeting with Bryan going over a question about an invoice that they wanted to turn back into a quote. It doesn't really go that way (backwards). A quote may be converted into an invoice (normal forward process) but it doesn't go the other way. Once it becomes an invoice, it starts hitting financials, inventory levels, sales tax liabilities, accounts receivable, etc. We may need to help educate our people. We may also need to block or not allow those options on an edit. We don't really allow it, but there is an invoice type called "quote" that people may use to feel like they are flipping things backwards. I need a little bit more information before I just remove something.

Working on a custom inventory clean-up for a company. They originally loaded in tons of inventory items (entries from a digital catalog of sorts) and now they don't want the items that they aren't going to carry. Working on a code script that would remove any items that were entered on a setup PO and then never used (no activity) and have not inventory quantities. As a side note, you could see their thinking... maybe I'll order some of these items later on and it will save me time in entering the items. Well, 12,000+ items later, they are now deciding to drop that vendor and not even sell their stuff. Basically, that makes a mess, and they want some help cleaning things up.

Not just our clients, but many clients have huge inventory problems. We are trying to help them out. Shari O. had me work on a new clean-up script to clean up unused items per vendor. Yesterday, we did a clean-up script per setup or inbound PO. Today, we are getting tighter and doing things by vendor, as a whole. I had to make a few changes for the new process. This is not a standard tool that we want to release (special or custom bulk clean-up tool). After that, I touched base with John, Sean, and Michael.

We started out the server meeting and Cory wanted to check on the data 34 server. It was reported that it was running slow. Wayne logged in and looked around. They ordered some more RAM for the database server. Pretty cool to see how quickly they can jump on things.

Next, we started talking about a client and their balance sheet. I mentioned to Cory that we have on our wish list a report that would show known issues (bad dates, things done out of order, or other possible problems that we could detect and/or figure out). That would be so cool. As a side note, the page already exists, it just hasn't been built out yet. Definitely on our wish list for fracture. This could help all of us out and make things more transparent and visible.

Both Wayne and John are working on documenting things on the server level. It's far from done, but they showed up a 3 page document (just the start) of the outline or outline of the server layered architecture design document. Pretty cool. Starting to see that being worked on. I'm excited to see what they come up with.

The next major conversation was dealing with adilas phones, phone trees, and other forms of digital communication. We had some open discussion about do we want to keep it, who is going to support it, who is going to maintain it, and so forth. This piece is kinda flapping in the wind. We also talked about, if we want to, allocating both time and money and getting that code and/or process fully inhouse. Right now, it is a virtual 3rd party entity, even though we technically own it. The prior owner/developer is the only one who really knows what is going on inside there. We talked about different technologies that we could and would use if we brought it fully under our control or under our roof.

The reason that the adilas phones stuff got brought up was because of this document that they are building out for the system architecture and layered plans. Hopefully, we'll uncover other issues and/or dependencies that we need to look at and evaluate (spend/don't spend, maintain/don't maintain, market, pitch, let it die, etc.). We kept getting off on tangents. Cory did a great job keeping the discussion going in a good direction. Once setup, we will provide an open VPN (virtual private network) for our developers to be able to remote into the testing box to push code and make changes.

After that, we got into talking about the testing server and what our plans are for that. We have a client's data that we want to move off of a production server and put in the Amazon cold storage or Amazon Glacier. As we were talking about the testing server, Shari O. was sending questions and comments through the chat feature on the GoToMeeting account. We are making progress there and making headway.

We got into talking about insurance, coverage, errors and omissions, and general cyber security, and data breaches. We have a 3rd party integration that is pushing on us and wanting all kinds of certifications and proof of insurance coverage. Everybody but John and I had to leave to jump on other meetings or calls.

After that, John and I spent some time doing a code review on his recipe/build rework stuff. We talked about a new possible user-level setting for using the time-pickers vs an open entry time field. John likes the time-pickers. I had to take them out the other day due to a few clients complaining. That sounds like a perfect option for a user-level setting. We also went over new options for showing progress bars and helping the users know which step they are on and what is still needed to complete a certain task and/or process.

As a final comment for the meeting, John said - "The ROI (return on investment) for the testing server will be internal peace of mind." I liked that.

Phone call with Shari O. going over special inventory clean-up processes and requests. We have a client that wants to totally remove all activity of a certain vendor. We will do it but will also document it via log notes, emails, and sign-off's.

Special inventory clean-up project and process for a client. We will record all activity on an update PO. I went in manually into the system and started to make a number of changes, including setting up a new update PO. Decided to build out a bulk tool to flip things around in a more efficient manner. I'm thinking of a mix between a bulk tool and the normal update inventory count tools. Spent a couple hours working on the new code. Not quite yet finished with the changes. It should be a good time saver when finished.

Cory jumped on and had some questions about the adilas label builder. I got her pointed in the right direction. Both Sean and John checked in as well. Other than that, it was a pretty quiet morning. I did emails and started to record some notes from the past few days.

Recording notes and working on a list of known issues. See top_secret/secure/known_issues.cfm for more information.

For fun, here is a list of some of the items listed on that page. This list originally was started in 2009. Small list of what are known problems. Some of these things are real problems and some are just warnings. Lots of things have changed since then. It may need to be updated, added to, and some of the items removed, that have been patched, fixed, and/or finished.

1. Invoice pmts on account with something different than 0.00 value.


2. Receipt pmts on account with something different than 0.00 value.


3. Reimbursements (rei's) with a bank assigned on the receipt pmt.


4. Invoices with mismatch between main and line items.


5. Deposits with mismatch between main and line items.


6. Receipts with mismatch between main and line items.


7. PO's with mismatch between main and line items.


8. Non verified payments (outstanding deposits and checks).


9. Duplicates ???


10. Dates prior to the corp start date or prior to the bank start date. See bank_balance_helper.cfm page.


11. Dates in the future. see bank_balance_helper.cfm page.


12. Internal invoices that are not marked as paid.


13. Receipt payments that are verified but the main is not verified.


14. Difference between invoices and stock numbers. Created a number of flags to show disconnect.


15. When paying back splits and rei's - what about both (main and subs) being assigned to income statement expense types? This could double things up on the income statement. Defaulted special multi build (rei and splits) to b.s. items for expense types. Still possible problem on original e/r that may get assigned to the balance sheet.


16. Update PO's not tied to a balance sheet item (say a loss account or something).


17. Lien payoff line items on invoice with a 0 cost. The cost and the price should be the same otherwise it puffs up the profit. Did run a report at one time to fix this. Also added code to the cart to match cost and price for lien payoff stuff.


18. PO payments that have the wrong date and thus the po_paid date is wrong. The system was using the current date as the payment date even if the payment was actually made in the past. Small disconnect between actual payment date (e/r payment date and PO paid date).


19. Check auto dates that are actually used in I.S. reports or B.S. reports. Need a way to manually change the auto dates if really being used. Check the unit payments, PO payments, other system made payments. The system seems to be ok, the problem is with dates and being able to either set the date when using or edit the date if defaulted to today's date.


20. Blank expense/receipts (payee_id = 1).


21. Voided items but part of it is still in play or not fully voided. Need to get to a voided list quickly.


22. Denied check requests on payables page.


23. Sales tax problem with work in progress invoices. They don't show up on sales tax reports until they get flipped back to a customer invoice. The problem is that the date (main invoice date - if not moved forward) will not show up on the next month’s tax reports. If this happens, the invoice will fall through the cracks and not be counted for sales tax. Possible option for sales tax, Steve thought that it might be cool to have a point and click interface that we physically pay taxes on certain invoices. That way, they never fall through the cracks and we only pay taxes once we collect the monies. This would also help with a system-maintained b.s. item for accrued sales tax. As an update, Eric was working on a sales tax aggregate project to automate this.


24. Along with sales tax problems, how do we show this on the balance sheet? We need to show collected, paid, and owed values. Once again, Eric has been working on this in his sales tax aggerate project.


25. Payroll has similar problems with regards to what has been paid on, what is still needed, and how do we show this info on the financials.


26. See idea in note book about showing all daily transactions. This is different than a history transaction record. This is what really hit in and out on this day in time according to the system. This is not a known issue but may help with finding issues. Daily monitoring of each account per location, per day, per account or category. This would be awesome.


27. Check for master/slave relationships between date changes. For instance main invoice date compared with invoice line items dates. PO main date with PO line items date.


28. Known issue with PO dates. Do we run off the main PO date or the PO received date? Need to standardize. Leaning towards PO received date.


29. Known issue with location based payables. Both expense/receipts and deposits have the location on the line items not the main. This means that monies could potentially get split between stores which would alter bank balances if only part of the money went in/out of the bank. Known problem here. Solution might be that banks are what they are (full monies in/out) and all sub lines and types are location specific. This could give a false indication as to how much money was available for each location.


30. What about transition invoices that have the main invoice date overlapping the transition (wip/qti) invoice date range. They don't show up anywhere other than on the main invoice homepage which doesn't tie to anything. Added a small fix on view_transition_dates.cfm page. Still need to check for possible mismatches.


31. Disconnect between sold date on units and invoice date. This is a disconnect that is unmonitored and will only show up if pulling a sold report (units) and an invoice report for the same time frame.


32. When backing up the main bank start date, there is a problem with expense payments and deposits that have a date before the main start date and a verified date after the main date. The payment or deposit date is not counted but the verified date is. I had the same problem with Leanna in Poncha and with Drew Middlemiss doing his first bank statement. What a pain. See the bank_balance_helper.cfm report (5/16/09) for small fix. Still a known problem with a starting bank balance not being 0.00.


33. Advanced pmt on invoices (pre-paid). They hit the bank because they were deposited but they also need to show up as a liability to offset the deposit or cash going up. This should be a system maintained item.


34. What about deposit types of other income that are assigned to invoices (double counted)? The default is an invoice hits the p&l and only deposit line items that are under other income and revenue adjustments hit or the p&l.


35. What about bad debt? Do we want to create a system maintained items for this?


36. What about deposits that are made before pmts are posted to invoices. This is not backward compatible.


37. Know disconnect between PO dates. The main PO date is currently used as the main search date. The PO received date is the main b.s. date. We are thinking that the main date may become somewhat of a request date or a age player only. The main date will become the received date with the received flag.


38. If a check request gets approved and assigned to a bank but never written out (bank never sees it), there seems to be a problem. There is also a problem with older check requests and the dates that are set in the background. They are uneditable once the request changes into a normal e/r.


39. Known issue with i.s. (income statement) deposit types. If used, without an invoice, they don't show up on the income statement. They may also be double booked if on an invoice and also recorded as other income or revenue adjustment.


40. What about payments made on a PO before it was received. This could happen with a request PO or a basic PO that has not yet been received.


41. What about inactive (status) on parts and subs. If we have details (activity) but something is inactive, that could cause problems.


42. Levels of inventory - this could deal with parents, subs, and usage details. We may need to check costs, quantities, dates, etc. Sub inventory was added way after 2009 (original date of this report). We may want to spend a whole session just going over sub inventory levels and possible pit falls.


43. Steve, Kelly, Molly, and others have lists of balance sheet challenges and other known issues. Check with them and get their lists.


44. Ecommerce and what plays into the real mix from there - invoices, taxes, costs, prices, discounts, payments, quantities, elements of time, etc. Good questions? Some of this is already figured out, it just needs a little bit of loving.


45. What about aggregates (somewhat new for us and just barely getting rolled out) and making sure things match up. Category (could be whatever), by day, by location - are there update processes that may be ran to keep things up to date. Manual updates, API sockets, watchers and feeders.


46. What about backorders? Steve did a whole section on backorders but I'm not sure if we tied in everything to the balance sheet and P&L. Anyways, may need to circle back around.


47. What about banks that get turned on/off (active/inactive). If we go back in time, we need to know if they were playing.


48. Same is turn with location. If they get turned on/off (active/inactive), we need to know when they were playing. We may need a start and end date and then be able to pull things accordingly, even if the current state or status is inactive.


49. What about cost of goods sold on unlimited or special line items? They should be a $0.00 cost because they are unlimited (like a labor or a service). If a cost is needed, it needs to be allocated through an expense to the COGS section or distributed in a thing called SG&A costs. SG&A (selling, general and administrative expenses - aka accounting for general costs by attributing them to a single unit and thus incorporating the true costs into an item). Basically, you take a normal expense like the electric bill or rent and build it into the individual cost of each unit by unitizing the expenses and virtually spreading a bigger general cost to smaller pieces. Sometimes that type of process (SG&A) is required for certain manufacturing and/or production type products. Basically, they (the IRS) don't allow you to expense off the whole expense (rent, insurance, waste, electric, etc.) as a bulk item. It has to be distributed to each smaller piece. If you do real SG&A, it helps assimilate those costs in smaller percentages and thus passing on a truer look at real costs of goods sold.


50. Anything that is currently marked inactive but may have played a role at some point. This could be locations, banks, part categories, items, vendors, customers, etc. Often, if we make them inactive, they don't get pulled (but maybe we need them at some time in the past).


51. Other special account options such as in-store credits, vendor credits, punch cards, etc. We already have loyalty points and gift cards that use special accounts. Maybe expand on this and allow for custom options or other digital payment accounts or payment solutions.


52. I'd love to map out all of the existing balance sheet and P&L values. Make it more widely known and really put it out there. Right now, it all happens behind the scenes and is kinda like a magic box. I'd love to get it all mapped out and presented to the public. We'll get feedback, refinement, and maybe even some other really good ideas. That's my vote, let's get it all out there in the public eye and public realm.

Recording notes from earlier this week and finished up a small list of known issues that we would like to work on. Finished up notes from 3/27 to 3/29.