 |
| |
Minotaur Customer Works with ONTRACE and OIMP
On Pilot Traceability Project |
| |
 |
Minotaur customer, Halenda’s Fine Foods and the Meat Depot, located in Oshawa, Ontario, participated in a pilot traceability project with the Ontario Independent Meat Producers (OIMP) and ONTRACE involving several producers, suppliers and further processors. ONTRACE is an organization working with OMAFRA within a national framework to provide traceability knowledge with the vision to realize whole-chain traceability from “Farm Gate to Dinner Plate.” ONTRACE are also the body responsible for administering the premises ID number program. |
|
| |
The purpose of the pilot project was to document current traceability activities and identify any additional opportunities for increased sharing of information up and down the supply chain in an effort to track where farm product originated from, in addition to what products it produced, yields achieved and end retailers that sold the products to consumers.
ONTRACE was able to pull together information from the various providers creating a full picture of product moving throughout the supply chain. |
 |
|
| |
| Halenda’s Meats combines Minotaur’s hand held technology for receiving product with Minotaur’s touch screen technology on the plant floor to track disassembly procedures and the creating of finished products which are weighed and labelled for eventual scan out to each customer. |
| |
| Brian Sterling, CEO of ONTRACE, commented how great both Halenda’s Meats and Minotaur Software were to work with; with Minotaur responding quickly to ensure the output from Halenda’s system was easy for the ONTRACE system to work with and interpret. Congratulations to all the participants on a successful outcome on a forward-thinking project and demonstrating that end-to-end lot traceability is doable with current technology. A full report will be published by ONTRACE to the OIMP in the coming weeks. |
| |
| Minotaur Welcomes New Customers |
| |
 |
Nexpharma, located in London, Ontario are importers and distributors of nutritional and pharmaceutical raw materials. They are also a licensed manufacturer and distributor of Ephedrine. Their products are sold to pharmaceutical and nutraceutical |
|
| manufacturers and distributors throughout North America. For a listing of the available raw materials, please visit their website at http://www.nexpharma.ca/index.html |
| |
 |
Chai Kosher Poultry, located in Toronto, Ontario is a federally, HACCP certified producer of kosher poultry products. They sell to major retailers both in Canada and the US as well as to food service providers. For information on purchasing products from Chai Poultry, please call 416-462-1313. |
|
| |
 Minotaur Software supports Sleeping Children around the World, the Canadian 100% charity. In fact, Judith is an ambassador for the Pinehurst Club, a group of business people that came together to help support the great work this charity does for needy children in developing countries. We invite you to join us in supporting this wonderful organization by attending the upcoming breakfast for business people on May 5th at the Royal York hotel. It is a very inspiring event with Christine Magee of Sleep Country Canada leading off as keynote speaker. Our contest prize for this newsletter is a ticket (worth $150) to join Judith downtown at this wonderful event. Even if you don’t win this month's contest, you are invited to attend this wonderful event and sit at a Minotaur table. To order tickets with your credit card online visit www.scaw.org. |
|
|
|
 |
INSIDE THIS ISSUE |
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
User Generated Sales Reports —Level 2 |
|
 |
|
| |
| If you are ready to start adding calculated columns to your sales reports or simply need a refresher on using the base functionality, join us at Minotaur for the level 2 session of user defined sales reports. We will review the functionality discussed in level 1 and then move on to adding columns for comparative year over year information. |
| |
The course will be held on Tuesday April 20th from 9am to 12pm and is open to all Minotaur Users. The cost of the course is $100 per person. To register, please contact Toni Johnson at 905-458-7575 Ext. 101 or email
toni@minotaursoftware.com. |
| |
| Unable to attend in person? We are pleased to offer our out of the GTA customers the option to take any of our training courses remotely. In order to be able to take the course remotely you will need access to 2 computers, both with internet access. The first will be used to see the instructor’s screen and the second for the hands on portion which will allow you to do the activities in our demo system. |
| |
| Remote connections are limited so if you are interested in taking this course remotely make sure to register early to ensure a spot. |
|
| |
| Linking Files to Items in Your Minotaur System |
| Do you need to store documents or images associated with the items you purchase or sell? |
| Minotaur now has the ability to store PDF, Excel, Word and image documents for instance on the item master. Whether you need to store certificates of analysis, organic certifications or simply wish to better manage your files, file association within your Minotaur system may be the answer. If you would like to associate files with items in your Minotaur system for quick and easy access, please contact your project manager for more information. |
| |
 |
| |
| Minotaur participated in the OIMP Annual Conference and Tabletop and the SAFE Food Symposium during February and March. |
| |
| A good turn out was enjoyed at both events with participants from across Canada attending the SAFE Food Symposium as pressure from customers, consumers and government increases with the demand for fast and accurate traceability systems. Whether you want to trace product based on supplier, finished goods or work in progress lot numbers, your Minotaur system can provide you with the information you need to quickly take action. The system also traces lot numbers based on production dates including any subsequent production using work in progress. If you are interested in implementing a lot traceability system in your company, please give us a call to find out how. |
 |
|
| |
| Harmonized Sales Tax — Important Dates |
July 1, 2010
Harmonized Sales Tax or HST will be implemented in Ontario and British Columbia
May 1, 2010—June 30, 2010
Transitional Period
The HST will apply to a taxable supply that becomes payable or is paid after this date and relates to the supply of goods and services to be provided on or after July 1, 2010. For instance, annual service agreements which are invoiced in May or June and cover periods post July 1st; HST will apply to amounts relating to post July 1/10.
For transitional information relating to your company, please visit the Ministry website for your province. The Ontario site can be found at: http://www.rev.gov.on.ca/en/notices/hst/03.html
In general, Minotaur systems purchased within the last 10 years and most older systems, with a few exceptions, will be able to handle the introduction of HST similar to how the system currently handles taxes in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, etc. The province master record contains an HST flag. The province master is located under the customer data menu (CTPE) in most systems. We will be forwarding detailed information as it relates to Minotaur in the next couple of weeks.
Some items to keep in mind when preparing for this implementation:
- Review ongoing or long-term contracts that straddle the harmonization date to ensure the correct sales rate is applied (e.g., service agreements, licences, memberships and leases).
- Amend automated system-generated entries (e.g., monthly inter-company charges, monthly rent charges or management fees to reflect the new sales tax codes/rates).
- Do a product and service sales tax analysis. Many goods, services, intangible personal property and real property nontaxable under the old Ontario sales tax legislation will now become taxable as a result of harmonization. Testing should include ensuring the handling of HST in your system meets your needs. If not, please contact your project manager.
|
|
|
|
|
| Phasing Out MBS6 |
We are now ready to start phasing out our MBS6 version. Over the last few years, most of our customers have switched to MBS7, and we are fully satisfied that it is better than MBS6. Phasing out MBS6 will allow us to be more efficient and able to focus primarily on MBS7.
The remaining aspect of MBS7 that is not complete is the thin client remote access. As such, we will continue to support MBS6 for those few customers that use the MBS6 remote access, until that feature is available in MBS7. For other customers, there is no reason not to switch. If you haven’t seen the MBS7 interface with the desktop shortcuts, Excel integration, etc, please email wendy@minotaursoftware.com for a review of these features via a brief remote demonstration. We will continue to supply MBS4 versions also, as they can be useful for data loading, and there is very little maintenance involved with MBS4.
Increasingly, new features, such as File Links, and the newly rewritten Enter Customer Payment program, require MBS7 to run, so it becomes less and less worthwhile to stay with MBS6.
Our goal is to have eliminated MBS6 by the end of 2010. If you have not had MBS7 installed on your system yet, please contact your project manager to make arrangements to do so. If you have had MBS7 installed, but you are still using MBS6, please let us know what issues might be preventing you from switching, so that we can help you to address them. We can provide MBS7 training, either in our training room or at your site, in order to help your users become comfortable with making the switch.
If you have stopped using MBS6, but we are still sending you updates with MBS6, please let us know immediately so we can stop sending it, as this will make our whole testing and sending process more efficient.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
 |
|
Spring Crossword |
|
 |
|
|
| |
 |
|
Spring is in the air!
Find all the words in our spring crossword puzzle for your chance to win.
Our contest prize for this newsletter is a ticket (worth $150) to join Judith downtown for the SCAW Annual Breakfast Fundraiser.
Please be sure you are free the morning of May 5 when you enter the contest—you’ll leave motivated and well fed knowing you helped children around the world get a better nights sleep!
For additional information about this event, please see page 1 of this newsletter or visit www.scaw.org.
All entries must be received by April 12, 2010. |
|
| |
Congratulations to February’s
Contest Winner |
Congratulations to Ana Costa of Unicer Foods Ltd. and Deb Rouleau of Barclay Lamps Inc. for winning February’s Valentine’s word search contest. Both Ana and Deb have won a $25 gift card each for Starbucks Coffee.
Ana works in the accounts receivables dept at Unicer Foods and has been with the company for 4 years. She enjoys travelling in her spare time.
Deb is the office manager for Barclay Lamps and has been with the company for 12 years. Her hobbies include lob-ball, biking and walking.
We hope you enjoy your gift! |
 |
| |
|
|
Fax your entries to 905-458-5585 or email to toni@minotaursoftware.com by
April 12, 2010.
Name: _______________________ Company: _____________________ |
|
| |
| Flexible Keyboard Winner from the OIMP Conference |
| |
Brita Ball is a PhD student in Food Safety at the University of Guelph and is Acting Manager of The Food Safety Network.
Congratulations Brita! |
 |
|
| |
Come out and see us at the Bakery Showcase at
The International Centre May 16-18th.
We have a number of free tickets available. If you are interested in receiving any tickets,
please contact
Judith at judith@minotaursoftware.com.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| The information in this newsletter is provided to customers to use at their own risk. It is not intended as a substitute for professional advice. |
|
|
|
|
