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| Minotaur’s Newsletter Gets a Face Lift |
| Minotaur’s Newsletter has a new look to mesh with our email HTML version released last issue. If you would prefer to receive this newsletter by email, or if there are others in your office who would like to receive a printed or emailed copy of the Minotaur newsletter, please let us know. |
| Email: michelle@minotaursoftware.com |
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Mark Your Calendars!
Minotaur’s 2006 User Conference
Workshops with our Customers’ Needs in Mind |
| The Minotaur Annual User Conference will be held on the week of October 23 to 27. The actual day we are looking at holding the conference is Thursday October 26th. We are still working on selecting a venue for this years conference. Once we have confirmed the venue, we will email everyone with the actual date and location. |
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| Each year, we host a User Conference to bring you up to date on new options available. It’s free, we provide lunch, and we also offer training sessions on advanced features like our report writers, while giving you a chance to connect with fellow users. This one day event will give you an opportunity to check out developments in Minotaur technology in the past year as well as give you a glimpse into what directions we are taking in the future. Invest a day of your time to ensure that you’re getting the most from your Minotaur system. |
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| If you have a workshop topic that you would like us to address in this years conference, send an email to michelle@ minotaursoftware.com by September 1st and we will do our best to include it. |
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| Wait for your invitation in the mail and mark your calendars. We look forward to seeing you! |
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| Minotaur Welcomes Our Newest Customers |
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Aliya’s Food Limited- Located in Sherwood Park, Alberta, Aliya’s is the manufacturer of Chef Bombay brand Samosas. Chef Bombay Samosas are available in 3 delicious flavours, beef, chicken and vegetable. Visit them on the Web at www.aliyasfoods.com.
L’Orignal Packaging- In 1971 Jean-Guy Bonneau purchased a small local butcher shop, located in L’Orignal, Ontario. With time they became a food distributor specializing in meat in the Eastern Ontario Region. Today his 3 children, André, Christine and Benoît, would be happy to serve you with their team. Their clientele includes restaurants, catering companies, nursing homes and a retail outlet. They are also recognized for their famous and delicious homemade “Mignon” hams. |
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| Welcome and Thanks for Choosing Minotaur! |
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| Minotaur has recently developed a Hand-Held module which allows users to generate receipts and shipments using hand-held devices, in turn saving you time on the data entry process. Here are some of the features of the Minotaur Hand-Held Module: |
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Bar Codes
The HH scanning module uses UCC/EAN-128 bar Code symbols. The key to this process is the Application Identifiers (AI) which identify the various field in the bar code. An example of a typical label is shown below. In this example 3 AI's are used. 01 defines the Global Trade Item Number (GTIN), 3102 defines the weight in KG with 2 decimal places and (10) defines the lot number. The HH module identifies the product by looking up the GTIN in the UPC tables and in this example recognizes that 6 KG of lot 621002 has been received. |
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Receiving Products with Hand Held Computers
Purchase orders can be printed with a barcode of the purchase order number, so that the receiver can either scan or key the PO number into the program. |
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Once the PO has been identified, the program goes to the receiving scan screen. The receiver simply scans the barcodes on the cartons received. There are counters on this screen to track the number of cartons scanned. There is also a REPORT action button that will generate a report summarizing the items and quantities scanned. The other action button is SAVE. Tapping the save button causes the program to interpret the codes scanned and build the regular receiving screen showing the quantities ordered and received along with related lot numbers. |
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Shipping Using Hand Held Computers
This procedure is designed to ship any product identified with a barcode defining the GTIN, the weight and the lot number of the product being shipped. |
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The user will start by identifying the sales order they are shipping. A bar code of the sales order number is printed on the picking slip so the information can be scanned. The shipping process will look for an open shipment against the sales order. If an open shipment exists, then the product shipped in this session will be added to that shipment otherwise a new shipment will be created. An open shipment is defined as a shipment that has not been invoiced. |
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Once the sales order has been identified, a scan screen will come up. The user would proceed to scan the bar codes of the cartons being shipped. As the cartons are scanned a register will record the number of cartons shipped. There are 2 action buttons on this screen—REPORT and SAVE. If the REPORT button is tapped, a report will be generated summarizing the items scanned to date and the quantity on order. If the SAVE button is tapped, the program will process all the labels scanned. |
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An example of a scan screen is shown at right. The Item and Qty fields display the information from the last scan. The count field defines the number of scans processed. This is a special hand-held screen with no menus. The user sets up icons for the various functions. |
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The far right shows the report generated when the Report Button is tapped. The report shows what is on the order as well as what has been scanned. |
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Once all the product has been shipped your office staff could invoice the shipments individually or create them in batch mode using the Invoice All Shipments menu option. |
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For further information on the Minotaur Hand-Held module or if you wish to receive a quote for implementing this module, please contact your Minotaur account representative. |
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| LOOK FOR THESE EXCITING NEW FEATURES WITH YOUR NEXT MINOTAUR UPDATE |
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We have recently added several new features to the generic Minotaur system. For customers with up-to-date systems, these features may be included in your next system update, otherwise we can provide you with a quote. |
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F12 Function Key on Sales Orders
Minotaur has released the new F12 Function Key on Sales orders. By simply pressing the F12 function key while on the detailed Order Entry screen the user is able to view history for the given customer. The sales history period is a parameter that you are able to set to determine how far back in time you wish to view history. You may wish to view sales history for the last 6 months or the last 10 weeks. When F12 is pressed, the system will display the following information for each product sold to that customer in that period of time: The Item Code and Name, Pack Size, Last Sale Date, Quantity Sold, Unit Price |
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| The user is then able to select the quantity of each item they wish to add to the sales order. The user can then manually add additional items to the sales order before saving the order. |
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Batch Edit Invoices
Minotaur has created a new Batch Edit Invoices option which gives you the ability to conveniently edit invoices in bulk, without having to enter each invoice number and progress through the screens. The user enters a range of invoice dates, and an optional sales rep. and route. The system will then edit each of the invoices that fall into the range that you specified and update the costs to the most current costs for the items on the invoices being edited. This new option is located in the System Administration menu under AMIA. |
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Certificate of Analysis
The system now gives you the option to print a Certificate of Analysis showing the various quality control test results performed on products. The Minotaur Customer Criteria option allows you to define the criteria that you measure, such as pH, Fat, density, viscosity, etc. For each lot controlled finished item, or finished item category, you are able to define which criteria are required for a lot of that item to be shipped. You can record what the results for a given test session were. This is done by editing the production run where the items were made, and adding the test results. The test results are stored as special non-inventory items in the raw materials section of the production run. When you attempt to ship lot-controlled items, the system will check each lot, and when it was made. It will check and make sure that each criteria that the item requires has been entered onto the production run. If a criteria is missing, the system will alert the user, and refuse to save the transaction. The criteria system also allows you to define ranges of acceptable criteria by customer, such as what range of densities are acceptable to a given customer for a product. The Customer Item Criteria report shows you which lots of an item would be acceptable to a given customer, based on their criteria. When you make a packing slip for a shipment that has lot controlled items, with test results stored on production, the system can generate a Certificate of Analysis to go with the shipment. The Certificate of Analysis is set up using a standard Minotaur report output file, so that a properly trained user could modify it, including setting it up to have different formats for different customers. Alternatively, if none of your users wants to learn how to do this, Minotaur could do the work for you and charge you on an hourly basis for the time required. |
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Coming Soon!
Minotaur will soon release an update that will support dates after 2009. Dates will now be covered up to at least 2030. We will include this with your next system update. |
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Congratulations to Sean Maguire of Hayter’s Turkey Products Inc. in Dashwood, Ontario for winning the June newsletter contest.
Sean is the lucky winner of a 5 page web design from RWR Technology.
Hayter’s Turkey is a family owned and operated turkey farm and primary processor of quality fresh and frozen turkey products. Their web site offers lots of recipes, trivia and tips for buying and serving great turkey.
You can visit Hayter's Turkey online at www.hayterturkey.com |
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| Expanding the Minotaur Team |
| Minotaur welcomes Yuhua Liu as our newest team member. Yuhua has recently joined Minotaur as a software programmer and is working exclusively on Minotaur’s next generation .NET project. |
| Yuhua has more then ten years’ hands-on software analyzing and programming experience as well as a Masters of Science degree in Electrical Engineering. He has a solid knowledge in database design and graphics user interface design for Client/Server system applications. |
| Welcome to the Minotaur Team! |
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| Minotaur’s Newsletter is used to keep our current and future customers up to date on software enhancements and happenings at our company. For a free subscription to this publication, just click this link SIGN ME UP. |
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Out of the Maze is a publication of Minotaur Software Ltd.
18 Automatic Road, Unit 27
Brampton, ON L6S 5N5
Phone: (905)458-7575 Fax: (905)458-5585, Copyright 2006
Please write to us with your comments.
info@minotaursoftware.com |
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| Out of the Maze is published to inform our current and potential customers of the latest events and happenings at Minotaur. |
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| 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. |
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