Cogitate Inc Newsletters Here you can find archives of our newsletters and other important information. 4 November November 2016 Newsletter By SuperUser Account newsletters 0 Comment Rounded Meters in UtilAbility When you setup metered services for your accounts, you need to setup and assign a meter to each of those services. While services can share meters, you need to have at least one meter for each account. This allows you to post your readings to the proper meters, services and accounts so the information can be saved appropriately. The meters contain information such as the Serial Number, Book Number and Read Sequence (for your meter routes), and various other optional information. Meters can also share common characteristics. Rather than repeating that common information in each meter, you would setup various meter types and assign those to your meters. Meter types can be assigned to any meters that share their characteristics. These would include the size, the maximum number of digits (for determining when meters roll over), the factor, and again, various other optional information. The factor is important for your bills to be calculated correctly, because your readings may be gathered from various types of rounded meters. For example, you may gather and post some of your readings in single units with a factor of 1 such as in gallons and some of them in multiple units with a factor of 1000 such as in thousands of gallons (i.e. 5000 or 5 can mean the same thing when multiplied by the appropriate factor). This allows UtilAbility to use the same meter rate tables when calculating your bills regardless of how your meter readings are rounded. When you print your bills, the readings are displayed the way they were gathered and posted and the factored usage (the gathered usage multiplied by the factor) is displayed the way it was used when calculating the bills. Typically this is the actual usage. If you have different types of meters that may round their readings differently and need more help setting up various meter types with the appropriate factors, please see our UtilAbility help documentation or contact our support staff for more information. Read Full November 2016 Newsletter Rounded Meters in UtilAbility When you setup metered services for your accounts, you need to setup and assign a meter to each of those services. While services can share meters, you need to have at least one meter for each account. This allows you to post your readings to the proper meters, services and accounts so the information can be saved appropriately. The meters contain information such as the Serial Number, Book Number and Read Sequence (for your meter routes), and various other optional information. Meters can also share common characteristics. Rather than repeating that common information in each meter, you would setup various meter types and assign those to your meters. Meter types can be assigned to any meters that share their characteristics. These would include the size, the maximum number of digits (for determining when meters roll over), the factor, and again, various other optional information. The factor is important for your bills to be calculated correctly, because your readings may be gathered from various types of rounded meters. For example, you may gather and post some of your readings in single units with a factor of 1 such as in gallons and some of them in multiple units with a factor of 1000 such as in thousands of gallons (i.e. 5000 or 5 can mean the same thing when multiplied by the appropriate factor). This allows UtilAbility to use the same meter rate tables when calculating your bills regardless of how your meter readings are rounded. When you print your bills, the readings are displayed the way they were gathered and posted and the factored usage (the gathered usage multiplied by the factor) is displayed the way it was used when calculating the bills. Typically this is the actual usage. If you have different types of meters that may round their readings differently and need more help setting up various meter types with the appropriate factors, please see our UtilAbility help documentation or contact our support staff for more information. Read Full November 2016 Newsletter Attached Files November 2016 Newsletter 1.04 MB Related Articles November 2015 Newsletter Cogitate Staff Holiday Schedule We here at Cogitate Inc. would like to let you know of our upcoming Holiday schedule. The following days our office will be closed and instead of working, we will spending this time off with our families. Thanksgiving Holiday: Closed Wednesday, November 25, 2015 through Sunday, November 29, 2015. Christmas Holiday: Closed Thursday, December 24, 2015 through Sunday, December 27, 2015. New Year’s Holiday: Closed Thursday December 31, 2015 through Sunday, January 3, 2016 Best Wishes To You And Your Families During The Upcoming Holiday Season! Read Full November 2015 Newsletter March 2016 Newsletter The Windows 10 Free Upgrade Is Nearing Its End! Windows 10 was released on July 29, 2015 and is a highly recommended operating system upgrade. Microsoft is currently helping out by giving Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 8.1 users the chance to upgrade to Windows 10 for FREE until July 2016. With that being said, there is a limitation to this upgrade offer: Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows RT, and all Enterprise versions of Windows are not included in this upgrade offer. Where does Cogitate stand on this? We recommend that if you are looking for new hardware in the near future to purchase new PCs with Windows 10 already installed. For those of us who are not looking for new hardware, if you are running Windows 7 then we recommend performing the Windows 10 upgrade as soon as possible so that you can take advantage of Microsoft’s great offer if you qualify. All of our current software including the PFA Works Timecard application is supported on Windows 10. If you would like to learn more about Windows 10 and the FREE upgrade offer, please take a look at the following link: https:// www.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/windows-10-faq Read Full March 2016 Newsletter November 2014 Newsletter Support For MERS Defined Contributions Cogitate is proud to announce a new program to help you in reporting the MERS Defined Contributions for both Employee and Employer contributions. The following procedures will help you in setting up your files to make this program work. Special Note Please note that this new procedure should be started AT THE BEGINNING OF A MONTH. Payroll Setup A special deduction code is to define each participating employee’s contribution. You can use any Deduction Code you desire, but something like MDC would be easily remembered. In the Deductions’ description there must be ‘MERS’ and ‘Contribution’ present. For example: “MERS Defined Contribution”. Multiple deduction codes can be set up as your needs dictate. Short Name: Can be anything, for example, ‘MERS DC’ Calc Type: Can be any valid calculation type, EXCEPT 12 (the standard MERS calculation). 6 for flat amount and/or percent is preferred. Deferred Comp Flag: Needs to be checked Calc Order: Should be 28 W2Info: Should be 414-H2 Tax Code: Should be Box 14 In the deduction’s ‘PR/PRS Parameters Titles’ tab: Parameter 3 description should be set to ‘Match Amt’ Parameter 5 description should be set to ‘Match Pct’ These titles will then show up when adding or editing the deduction code for an employee Employee Setup Each participating employee should have this deduction code added to their list of deductions. The parameters will vary depending on the calculation type you specified. Matching amounts are defined on the employee’s deduction code parameters dialog by filling in the Match Amt and Match Pct fields. If the match is 100%, then 100.00 should be entered in the Match Pct field. Creation of the MERS Defined Contribution Data File The MERS Defined Contribution data file is created once a month. Under the Payroll menu item, click on the ‘MERS Contribution File’ entry and a dialog will appear title ‘MERS Contribution Plan Datafile creation’. This is similar in layout and operation as the MERS EPass program. Enter the first day of the month that you will be reporting Enter the MERS Plan Name Enter MERS Plan number (6 digits) Enter IRS Number (9 digits, no dashes) The last 3 items will be saved and will appear automatically each time you run the program Once the above “header” information is entered, press the FIND PAYROLL DATES BUTTON. This will cause the Deduction codes that have in their description the words ‘MERS’ and ‘CONTRIBUTION’ to be listed. This confirms that there are valid MERS Defined Contribution deductions defined and that they have been used in a payroll calculation. There will also be listed the payroll dates of payrolls where those deduction codes have to be used to create deductions. Press the ‘Create MERS Contribution File’ button to create the file. You will receive a confirmation of the files creation and the total amount of the contributions. The file will be named ‘MERS Contribution xxxxxx.txt’ where the ‘xxxxxx’ will be your MERS Defined Contribution plan number. The file is usually stored in the Pro Fund Accounting Output directory. (Employer) Matching Amounts Unlike the employee’s Defined contribution that is arrived at by the deduction code and its calculation type, the employer’s matching amount (if any) is not defined by a separate deduction calculation since the amounts are not deducted from the employee’s paycheck. Instead, the matching amount is calculated at the time the data file is created based upon the contents of the ‘Match Amt’ and ‘Match Pct’ parameter fields. Reporting In the Reports/Payroll folder, there is a new report named MERS Defined Contribution List. Parameters include date range, employees, deduction codes and others. It shows details and total of the contribution amount and the match amount. Read Full November 2014 Newsletter January 2016 Newsletter Changing Service Codes UtilAbility provides several utilities for various tasks that aren’t necessarily part of your typical day to day operations. We have talked about some of these utilities before. Many of them were designed to allow you to make changes to several records at once, where it would otherwise be difficult or time consuming to perform these changes manually. Today we are going to discuss the Change Service Code utility. This utility does exactly what its title says. However, this isn’t necessarily as simple as it sounds… Have you ever thought about changing the code you use for a particular service? Maybe the code isn’t working very well for some reason or you were never happy with the one that was setup in the first place and you simply want to use another one. You may have thought about changing such a code, and then decided that it’s not worth the trouble. To make a change like this you would have to change a lot of records from many different tables. In fact, changing a service code currently affects as many as nine different tables within the UtilAbility database and some of these may include thousands of records that would be affected by your change. Fortunately, UtilAbility does all this for you. You don’t have to think about tables and records let alone make any manual changes. You simply supply the old service code and the new one. UtilAbility will change all references from the old code to the new one in every table and every record as necessary. You can find the Change Service Code utility and other helpful utilities under Tools|Utilities from the menu on the main screen in UtilAbility. Please take a look at these as they may save you a lot of time and effort. If you have any questions about Changing Service Codes or any of the other utilities, please see the UtilAbility help documentation or contact our support staff for more information. Read Full January 2016 Newsletter April 2016 Newsletter Pro Fund Accounting Evolution I was at the coffee shop and was surprised to see how young many of the patrons were. Looking around the place and observing the next generation interacting with their devices, I wondered about the lack of person to person contact that is missing. As I was finishing my large overpriced coffee and remarking to myself ‘I just don’t get it’, I remembered when my father would say that about me when I would play the Atari videogames on the TV for hours. Since the generations have evolved, we are beginning the evolution of the entire Pro Fund Accounting software. The last few months many of the changes we made have been related to the ‘insides’ to enable the software to gradually evolve. A key component of the changes will be the input we get from our customers. I know you are all very busy and do not want a lot of change in your life. With this in mind, we will be evolving small pieces of Pro Fund Accounting. Communication with you will be through email, webinars, real phone calls and yes, even text messages, about each piece that will be changed. We want to allow you time to share your thoughts so we can factor those into the software before we change it. This brings me to the first part we will evolve and that is security. We will be sending out more information soon, so be ready. Read Full April 2016 Newsletter July 2016 Newsletter Pursuit Of Maintenance A little bit ago we were working on the development of the new inventory and work order/preventative maintenance program. One of the road commissions supervisors asked us to look at the VMRS. VMRS? What is that you may ask like we did. It is an industry standard used for vehicle maintenance developed and maintained by the ATA (American Trucking Association), but let them describe the system better. Developed by the American Trucking Associations’ Technology & Maintenance Council (TMC), the leading voice on industry best practices, VMRS™ is the universal language of maintenance reporting—the vital link between the shop floor and management. ATA’s VMRS helps you create a single process to: Simplify, Clarify and Unify with ATA’s Technology & Maintenance Council Vehicle Maintenance Reporting Standards Create a Single Concise Method to Manage Fleet Assets and Analyze Maintenance Operations and Costs Document when, why, and how maintenance is performed on equipment. Improve equipment and parts inventory control. Identify where money is spent. Help control costs and create greater efficiency. Manage a wide variety of equipment, including trucks of all types cars, buses, vans, construction equipment, and more. We would like to fully embrace the methods and codes that this system entails. But before we spend any more time, is this what the maintenance and inventory people want? So please check out the VMRS system and let us know, via email to president@cogitateinc.com, what you think. George Loescher, President Read Full July 2016 Newsletter Comments are closed.