This time of the year our tech support gets a large amount of calls relating to not being able to post Payroll or Accounts Payable. The BPA software allows you to post information up to 1 year ahead of the current accounting year the software is set to. If you have not been using the general ledger in the BPA software many times this accounting period will remain unchanged. When you try to post you will see the following message.

This error is easily corrected by following these simple steps.

1) Go to Business System>General Ledger.

2) Select Change G/L Accounting Period.

3) Move the accounting period forward one month at a time until you get to the current year. In other words if it is set to 12/2010 you need to put in 1/2011 and hit enter. Enter “Y” to continue and hit enter again. Repeat these steps until you get to 1/2012.

It is important to remember that once you move your accounting period forward to the current year that you can no longer post to past years. If you are using Accounts Payable and still have payments that need to be posted to last year be sure to do so before you move all the way into 2012.

Moving the accounting period forward also affects one report that many of our customers use – the Product Activity Report. This report shows product quantities sold for each month throughout the year. When the accounting period is moved forward it updates this report to show quantities for the current year.

The following features have been added to the Business Plus Accounting software packages:

Restaurant Pro, Delivery Pro, and Retail Touch POS Customers

As you may know, within Business Plus Accounting, you can specify different colors of your menu items.  However, depending on the color you choose, it may be difficult to read the text on the button.  With our latest update, we now automatically change the text color on the button to black or white, depending on the button color you choose. 

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In 2010, we sent emails to all of our customers (using the email address we have on file) explaining that your POS system will need to be updated to be in compliance with PCI standards. The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) was created to ensure that information on their credit card accounts will be protected from fraud.

If you have not received this PCI update from Business Software Solutions, please give us a call as soon as possible to schedule an update.

Note:  Though you may have received PCI updates from your credit card merchant, if you have not received the update for your Business Plus Accounting software, you are not in compliance with PCI Standards.

We have noticed that many states are changing their sales tax rates this summer.  The following will walk you through how to change the default sales tax rate in BPA:

For Restaurant/Delivery POS Customers

• Go to Business System -->Definitions-->Sales Tax Table
• In the section for Sales Tax, for Tax Code 1, enter the new tax rate
• Press Save and Exit when finished

For Retail POS Customers

• Go to Definitions-->Sales Tax Table
• In the section for Sales Tax, for Tax Code 1, enter the new tax rate
• Press Save and Exit when finished

To help with your End of Day functions, we’ve have created checklist templates for your employees and managers to use to ensure your business is properly closed at the end of the day.  The checklists are Microsoft Word documents…feel free to download and customize them for your business needs.

If you do not have software installed to edit the checklists, such as Microsoft Word, you can download Open Office for free at http://www.openoffice.org/

Restaurant POS Customers

Restaurant Employee Checklist

Restaurant Manager Checklist

Pizza/Delivery POS Customers

Pizza/Delivery Employee Checklist

Pizza/Delivery Manager Checklist

Retail POS Customers

Retail Employee Checklist

Retail Manager Checklist

Hotel Customers

Hotel Employee Checklist

Hotel Manager Checklist

Do you have the Business Plus Accounting POS software package installed at multiple locations?  With our Online Gift Card processing add-on, you can sell a gift card at one location, and your customer can redeem that same gift card at another location. 

Give us a call at 801-336-3303 for more information.

Here is the Quick Start Guide for your BPA Hotel and Property Management Software.  This will walk you through how to setup your hotel system.

BPA Hotel and Property Management Software – How to Setup Your Hotel System

If you are a hotel owner or manager, you know the problem with most hotel systems…not enough features, or too many features that add little value to your business. 

The Business Plus Accounting Hotel and Property Management system is designed to alleviate those issues, and give you a solution tailored to the hotel industry.  Here are just some of the benefits of our system.

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Employee cards are used by your employees to clock in and out of the time clock, and to log into sales screen to ring up sales (Restaurant Sales, POS Sales, or the Front Desk). The following are instructions to setup employee cards.  If you would like to purchase employee cards for your system, give our sales staff a call at 801-336-3303.

For Restaurant POS, Delivery POS, and Hotel customers

1. Go to Restaurant System—>Manager Functions—>Assign Employee Card Numbers

2. Press Yes on the next screen

3. Enter the Employee number of the person you want to assign a card to.  If you do not know the employee number, press the F8 key on your keyboard for a list of employees.

4. In the “Swipe Card” field, swipe the employee card.

5. Repeat steps 1-4 until all cards are assigned.

6. When you have distributed all of the cards to your employees, you will need to go to

Restaurant System—>Manager Functions—>Misc Definitions—>Manager.  Change the field “Log employees using” to “Employee Cards.”

For Retail Touch POS customer:

1. Go to Touch Screen POS—>POS Manager Functions—>Assign Employee Card Numbers

2. Press Yes on the next screen

3. Enter the Employee number of the person you want to assign a card to.  If you do not know the employee number, press the F8 key on your keyboard for a list of employees.

4. In the “Swipe Card” field, swipe the employee card.

5. Repeat steps 1-4 until all cards are assigned.

6. When you have distributed all of the cards to your employees, you will need to go to

Touch Screen POS—>POS Manager Functions—>Misc Definitions—>Manager.  Change the field “Log employees using” to “Employee Cards.”

Have you noticed that the BPA software on your client computers are running slow?  Follow these steps:

NOTE: If you have not done this before, performing these steps may take anywhere from 5-20 minutes. 

1.  Completely close the BPA Software on all client computers.

2.  On the main Server computer, open the BPA software.

3.  Go to Files—>Pack Data Files.

4.  The next screen will ask you to confirm that the BPA software is closed on all other computers.  Click Yes to confirm this.

To keep your system up to speed, we recommend that you perform this at least once a week.  If you process a lot of transactions through BPA, you may want to perform this once every couple of days.