Q.W. Page Associates - What's New for NV DOS

What's New for NewViews DOS Version

NewViews Procedure Library Update!

Q.W.Page is pleased to annouce the release of an update to the NewViews Procedure Library for NewViews version 1.41b. This new Procedure Library, Version 12, offers many significant enhancements of benefit to NewViews users.

NewViews Procedure Library Version 12 was created to allow more control over procedure date formatting and to overcome some deficiencies in Version 10b. The new date formatting features will be of major interest to users concerned with the Y2K issue. Although NewViews is already fully Y2K compliant, NewViews Procedure Library Version 12 offers even more control over date formats in procedure prompts and printed reports for the Year 2000 and beyond. In addition, this new Procedure Library provides NewViews users with added options for several existing procedures and some new procedures to simplify daily operations.

Following are the highlights of NewViews Procedure Library Version 12, divided into three sections: Date Formats, Procedure Changes and New Procedures. Read through this information carefully to see how this new Procedure Library will benefit YOU! You can order your NewViews Procecdure Library Update (Version 12) for only $99. Use the order form that has been provided on this web site or contact the Q.W.Page Update Department at 1-800-267-PAGE (7243).

ADDED BONUS! NewViews users who are currently running NewViews version 1.40, 1.41, or 1.41a will receive NewViews version 1.41b (program files) AT NO CHARGE when they order their NewViews Procedure Library Update!

DATE FORMATS

Prior versions of the NewViews Procedure Library contained inconsistencies in the treatment of date formats. For example:

While some printing procedures honored the date format specified in the Odds & Ends document, others did not.

There was no simple method of changing the date format printed on checks, invoices, etc. This problem was becoming especially acute with the coming of the year 2000 - many users were asking for the full 4 digits of the year to be printed on checks, etc.
On procedure prompts, it was easy to enter an incorrect date without realizing it, since the century component of the year was not displayed. For example, if you entered 30111198 instead of 30111998, the date displayed on the screen would be Nov 30,98 which looks correct, but could lead to unusual results since the century is in fact wrong.

In Version 12, the dates on ALL procedure prompts and printed documents now conform to the date format number you choose on the Odds & Ends document.

PROCEDURE CHANGES

EXPSETUP

EXPSETUP may now be run from:

A block of reports on the Home document
A block of accounts on a report Setup view

Prompt options have been added to allow the inclusion or omission of account notes and report text lines.

EXPTRANS

EXPTRANS may now be run from:

A block of reports on the Home document
A block of accounts on a report (Setup or Analysis view)
A block of transactions in an account (any view\order)

In the first two cases, you may specify a range of transactions to be exported from every account in the block. The range can be a date, reference, or reconcile range. You may also specify any combination of Debits, Credits, Open, & Closed items to be included. In the third case, the ledger items in the block are exported.

IMPORT

The number of allowable date formats in transaction records has been changed.

Added:

Format 17 for dates in the ccyymmdd format (for example 19981130 for Nov. 30, 1998)
Format 18 for dates in the mmddccyy format (for example 11301998 for Nov. 30, 1998)

Removed:

All date formats from 0 to 15 have been eliminated. This leaves a remainder of four allowable date formats:

-1     ddmmccyy           30111998
16     ddMmmccyy      30Nov1998
17     ccyymmdd          19981130
18     mmddccyy          11301998

The formats 0 to 15 were eliminated because they did not specify either the century component of the date, or did not specify both the century and year. The inclusion of these formats was an invitation to error and confusion.

To accomodate existing cases where imported data uses one of the disallowed date formats, and modification of the program supplying the data is not an option, a notes line switch may be used to restore the original behaviour of the IMPORT procedure.

IMPORT

Prior versions of IMPORT forced the books to a "safe-point" after every 100 lines had been imported. A safe-point means that all updates to the books as a result of the imported lines have been written to disk, and the DATAR.NV (recovery) file is reset back to a zero size. This kept the DATAR.NV file from growing too large. The disadvantage of periodically bringing the books to a safe-point is that if the import is terminated by a power outage or system crash, part of the import is completed but there is no way of restarting the import at the point where the crash occured. For this reason, the safe-points have been removed from the IMPORT procedure. Now, if an import is terminated through a system problem, NewViews’ crash-recovery system will roll the books back to their original state before the import was started. The import then can be performed again as usual without the problem of duplicate data being imported.

PRTACCTS

The starting page number is now taken from the "Start Page #" field of the Print Options screen, if set.

PRTADDRS

Accounts with no address in the Notes view are now skipped automatically.

PRTCHKS

Now runs from any "ledger" view (i.e. any view that contains ledger items) in any sort order. When run from views other than the Credit view, any items in the block with an amount greater than 0.00 are skipped.

PRTPAY

A partial payment option has been added to the procedure. The "Confirm invoices" field on the main prompt has been changed to "Confirm\partial pay invoices". When this field is set to "Yes", a prompt is displayed for each invoice with which you may specify both the amount to be paid and a discount amount.

REPORT

Two new fields have been added to the four printing options screens. Your choices are now:

Printer
Allows entry of the printer configuration name to be used for printing the report.

Use Form Feeds
When set to Yes, page advances use the printer’s form-feed instruction. (This choice should be set to Yes when printing on a laser printer.) The options available when exporting to an ASCII file have been increased. New fields on the export prompt are:

Delimiter (Comma or Tab)
Comma would normally be used unless the software you are exporting to requires tabs.

Include text lines
Set to Yes to include non-account lines in the output. Set to No to export account lines only.

Identifier (Name, Desc)
Any combination of the account name and description may be exported at the start of the line. Pressing "N" toggles the Name choice and pressing"D" toggles the description choice. For example, to export the name and then the description you would press [Del] (to clear the selection) then ND.

Accounts
You may restrict the export to total accounts only or posting accounts only. A choice of "Both" exports all accounts.

NEW PROCEDURES

SIMPINT

The SIMPINT procedure is used to calculate and charge interest on overdue accounts. Interest is charged using the rate you specify on all transactions in the date range and on the view you choose. Its operation differs from the INTEREST procedure in the following ways:

A "flat" rate of interest is charged (INTEREST performs daily interest calculations).
You specify the interest rate on the procedure prompt (INTEREST uses the rate specified in the customer account notes or SETUPS).
You may charge interest on items in any date range and view (INTEREST charges interest on all open items up to a given date).

SIMPINT may be run from one of the following locations:

An account ledger; interest is charged on items in the current account.
A block of accounts on a report; interest is charged to all the posting accounts in the block.
A block of reports on the Home document: interest is charged to all the posting accounts on all reports in the block.

COPYDESC

The COPYDESC procedure is a simple data entry aid for copying the ledger description (from the header of a distribution) to a new or existing distribution line.

When run, if the cursor is on an existing distribution line, the ledger description is copied to the current distribution.

If the cursor is not on a distribution line (i.e. it is in the header or below the last item), a new distribution line is added, the description is copied, and the XACCT procedure is invoked to assist in the entry of the cross-acount.

MAKEDIST

The MAKEDIST procedure is a tool used by Customer Support when repairing damaged books. The procedure converts blocks of ledger items into distribution lines. (Damaged books frequently end up with distribution lines being recreated as simple ledger items.)

Although we don’t know of any specific requests for such a procedure, we are including in the library simply because you may encounter a situation in which it may be useful.

BIGACCTS

Account ledgers in NewViews have a limit of 65,530 items that may entered in the ledger. Once this limit is reached, no further items may be posted in or to that account. The only options are to start a new account and use it instead of the old account, or to purge some of the entries from the account and reorganize the books. We have worked with users that import data from other systems that cannot be modified to use different account names, which poses a real problem if the limit in an account is reached unexpectadly.

BIGACCTS is a simple procedure used to identify accounts in your books that may be approaching the limit on the number of ledger items. Knowing what accounts are reaching the limit beforehand means you can solve the problem before it happens.

BIGACCTS can be run from anywhere in the books. You enter the threshold number of items and the procedure will print out a list of any accounts that contain that many or more ledger items.