Month: April 2009

Reporting number of employees for Maryland Unemployment with Maxwell Systems Management Suite

As part of the quarterly payroll reporting, the state of Maryland requires employers to file the Maryland Quarterly Unemployment Insurance Contribution/Employment Report (DLLR / OUI 15) with a count of employees working on the 12th day of each month in the quarter. Specifically, line 20 of that report requires employers to

Enter the number of full-time and part-time workers (subject to the Maryland Unemployment Insurance Law) who worked during or received pay for any part of any payroll period which includes the 12th of the month.

But, the Maxwell Systems Management Suite (MSMS) State Unemployment Report does not provide the count of employees, so here’s how to gather that information.

The trick to getting the employees that worked on the 12th day of any month is to print the YTD Detail Payroll Register for the check date range that includes the 12th of each month. For example, for January 2009, figure out what check date include the pay for January 12th, then run the YTD Detail Payroll Register and use that check date as the beginning and ending check date.

Now for the hard part — print the report to the screen, then count how many employees are printed on the report. That’s the number to use when completing line 20 of the Maryland Quarterly Unemployment Insurance Contribution/Employment Report.

Another possible solution is to create a Payroll Formatted Report using Prefix PR7, define a Formatter Field called Counter with the definition simply as 1 (just the number 1), then print that report, for the date range that include the 12th day of pay for each month, and look at the total of the counter field at the end of the report.

Either way, to determine the information needed by Maryland requires printing a report for each month that includes that 12th day.

Reporting service call volume with Maxwell Systems Management Suite

The Maxwell Systems Management Suite (MSMS) Service Management Systems records all the service calls made by customers. Recently, someone wanted to track a customer activity to determine if a service technician had not visit a site in the last 60 days. Unfortunately, there is no reporting mechanism that would allow that kind of analysis.

But, with the use of the Formatted Report ability in MSMS, you can at least see all the calls that were made to customer site in the last 60 days. I know, not the same as seeing sites NOT visited in the last 60 days, but still useful.

The trick is using an Advanced Filter that only reports those calls marked as completed in the last 60 days. For this example, use the Formatted Report Prefix SPB and create a filter called Date Completed, and under the Advanced tab, add this filter:

NOT(NUL(DATE_COMPLETED$)) AND 
JUL(NUM(MID(X$,37,2)),NUM(MID(X$,31,2)),NUM(MID(X$,34,2))) - 
JUL(NUM(MID(DATE_COMPLETED$,3,2)),NUM(MID(DATE_COMPLETED$,5,2)),
NUM(MID(DATE_COMPLETED$,7,2))) < 60

Essentially that says, if the Date Completed field is not empty AND the Terminal Date minus the Date Completed is less than 60 days, include the Work Order on the report. Note the JUL function is used to convert the two dates to a Julian date so the dates can be subtracted from each other.

Not the cleanest method of analyzing call history, but certainly this method gives a service manager a meaningful tool to determine if a customer’s needs are being addressed.

Limits to where PDF files can be printed and stored

Some people try to be true to the whole “paperless” society concept by printing all reports to PDF. But, a problem can arise if the path and filename for that PDF exceeds too many digits.

A customer was trying to print an Open Accounts Payable Report to PDF and used the following Path/Filename: “F:\Mxw\PDF\Jason Builders and Service, Inc\Accounts Payable\2009\20090430\Open Accounts Payable Report.pdf” but kept getting a message that the file did not have an extension. It’s clear that .pdf is the extension.

After a bit of playing around, we changed the name of the folder “Jason Builders and Service, Inc” to just Jason, and sure enough the PDF successfully was created and saved.

So the moral of the story is, “keep the Path/Filename combination of PDFs to fewer than 100 characters”.

How to set the Aged AR Trial Balance default Aging Date

It’s always a pain to have to change the Default Aging Date field when printing the AR Aged Trial Balance by Job report. It’s an easy program change, but the Maxwell Management Suite requires adding a line of code to the standard CARRE0 program that prints that report. Here’s that line of code:

10041 IF X$(41,2)+X$(37,2)+X$(31,2)=FISCAL_YR.VAL$+FISCAL_PD.VAL$ 
THEN LET AGING_DATE.VAL$=X$(41,2)+X$(37,2)+X$(31,2)+X$(34,2)

This change will set the Default Aging Date to the current terminal date, only if the current terminal date is in the Period and Fiscal Year ending date selected for the report.