February 2019 - December 2019
A manufacturer
of medical equipment for the dental industry approached S & S Systems for help adding new products to its quote system. The manufacturer had a system developed in Microsoft Access to provide quotes for
its sales reps. Manufacturer's reps would log on to
the company's server using a remote desktop connection to enter quotes. A new line of cabinets was being introduced and the system needed to be updated so the new items could
be quoted. S & S worked with the technical
team to develop the logic to pick the proper parts to generate a quote for the
cabinets being ordered. The new
version of the quote program provided for images of the cabinets to be displayed, as well as
removing and adding new content in the quote process.
November 2017 - March 2018
S & S Systems was asked to assist a jewelry manufacturer that used a custom-developed
Microsoft Access system for order processing and other business functions. The company used manufacturer's reps to sell its
products. Each
customer had a display of jewelry designed especially for him or her, and reps would
visit the customers to replenish the display. The replenishment orders were called in or faxed in and
customer service personnel would hand-key the replenishment orders into the
order entry system. The
manufacturer wanted to develop a web-based application to permit the reps
to enter replenishment orders online, and then have a facility to upload the
replenishment orders into the order entry system. S & S developed a web
application in ASP.NET to permit the reps to enter replenishment orders based
on the items in the customer display case. The replenishment orders were stored in a SQL server
database. We wrote an application
to export the replenishment orders each day into a file that could be imported
into the order entry system. The
order entry system was developed in Microsoft Access, and S & S developed an Access
macro to import the replenishment orders into the order entry system.
The
manufacturer also wanted to be able to show its product catalog online. S & S developed a web application that
would permit a rep to bring up pictures of all styles in the product
catalog. The rep could also
request pictures of subsets of styles, such as women's or men's rings.
November 2016 - August 2017
A manufacturer
of surgical instruments hired S & S to help with a conversion of a system that tracked special and custom orders for
its line of products. The
tracking system was originally written in dBASE and ran in a DOS environment. S & S Systems was contracted to review the system
and to convert its functionality to an Access program application using the
Access database system. We also developed reports to provide management with visibility into the system.
September 2015 - December 2015
A reseller of
Sage ACCPAC received a contract to upgrade a state agency to a new version of the system, and brought in S & S Systems to help. Our consultants contracted with the
reseller to convert several .NET program customizations in the GL module to use
the new controls in the upgraded Sage ACCPAC system. The database engine was Oracle.
September 2014 - Present
S & S Systems was brought on by a manufacturer of animal feed and related products that was using a custom-developed EDI system. This system was very manual and time-intensive to operate. Each step in the
process necessitated a review of the EDI file being processed or a review of a
report in order to determine whether the procedure ran properly. The company
wanted to streamline the process so EDI purchase orders downloaded from the VAN
could be processed directly through to its business system without manual
intervention. S & S developed a .NET program that would accept an EDI purchase
order file and use data in SQL tables to validate the EDI transaction. A
valid EDI file would be processed directly into the business system, while an
EDI file with errors would be moved to a directory for review. An EDI file
with errors was not modified, but rather the SQL tables that supported the system
were changed if the information was not correct, such as a price increase or a
different unit of measure. If the SQL tables were correct, the trading
partner was notified that the EDI transaction needed to be corrected and
re-sent. Excel workbooks were maintained by users to populate the SQL
tables that supported the .NET program. Our consultants developed an Access application
to load data from the Excel workbooks into the SQL tables. The Access
application would permit the user to select a table to load from a drop-down
box, select the trading partner from a drop-down box, and press a button to
load the appropriate Excel workbook range into the SQL table. S & S also developed a macro that could be run from a command line to load all tables using
the Access application.
This project was expanded to develop .NET programs to process incoming
EDI purchase orders (PO 850 transactions), outbound Advance Shipping Notices
(ASN 856 transactions), and invoices (810 transactions). The inbound
transactions would populate SQL data tables that would interface into a
DataFlex processing system. Outbound transactions would be pushed into SQL
tables from a DataFlex system and the .NET program would generate outbound EDI
transactions.
This project was again expanded to implement EDI transactions for
an additional 13 trading partners taking the number of trading partners from 6
to 19. Additional programming was required based on requirements of the
new trading partners. S & S Systems wrote approximately 50 Crystal Reports to provide
visibility into EDI orders, invoices, and ASNs. These reports were run on
a scheduled basis and emailed to the end users via Crystal Reports
Server. S & S also developed several exception reports that were run
interactively.
During this time the company embarked on a project to implement
SAP. Our consultants worked on the SAP implementation in several areas. We
loaded the legacy customer file into an Access table and wrote VB functions to
cleanse the data and wrote queries to export the customers to Excel to be
loaded into SAP using Winshuttle. We loaded the SAP materials into Access
tables and then created Excel spreadsheets to load CMIR records into SAP using Winshuttle.
EDI transactions were stored in SQL tables. The legacy system
had programs to read the SQL tables to enter POs into it and had programs that
created ASNs and invoices in the SQL tables from legacy data. Interfaces
from the SQL tables to SAP would need to be developed using SAP IDOCs. S & S
developed mapping documents and program specifications to map data fields from
the PO SQL tables to SAP IDOCs and from invoice and ASN IDOCs to the invoice
and ASN SQL tables. Our team wrote .NET programs to create PO IDOCs from the PO
SQL tables and to parse ASN and invoice IDOCs to load data into the ASN and
invoice SQL tables. S & S developed several custom segments to pass data
between the EDI system and SAP. There were some third party shippers that
were sent orders for fulfillment, and they sent back a file that was imported
into SAP as an invoice. The creation of an EDI invoice for these direct
ship orders also resulted in the generation of an ASN by the EDI middleware. SAP
sent back a status message after POs were processed, and this status message
was used to update the total order weight and the SAP order number in the EDI
PO SQL table.
Walmart entered a special department order that needed to be
realigned to a certain plant based on the GLN of the inbound PO. These orders
were placed on hold by the EDI middleware. Our consultants developed an Excel spreadsheet
to read the Walmart orders that were on hold and place the desired plant in a
column that was determined by cross-referencing the GLN to a plant from a table
within the spreadsheet. The scheduled date was suggested by a formula in the
spreadsheet and the user could override this date and cancel line items in the
spreadsheet. A macro would then run to update the POs with this information and
to remove the hold status. After the update was run and the POs were processed
into SAP, the SAP order number would be placed in the spreadsheet by executing
an Excel macro to read the SQL tables for the order to retrieve the SAP order number sent by the SAP
status message.
After the implementation of SAP, more trading partners were
added. Over the next 3 years it
grew from 19 trading partners to 56 trading partners. The new trading partners had requirements for additional
transactions such as 846 inventory advice transactions, 753 request for routing
transactions and 754 routing instruction transactions. These transactions required maintenance
programs to be developed for supporting tables. S & S provided constant support to the company throughout the addition of these trading partners.
In early 2020, an acquisition was made that required
the development of grocery transactions; namely, 875 PO transaction and 880 invoice
transaction. S & S Systems further developed the .NET
programs to process these new transactions.September 2014 - May 2015 A manufacturer of dental equipment hired S & S Systems for support when the programmer who developed its Access quote system for sales reps left the company. Our first task was to upgrade the system to Access
2010 so it could be executed on PCs running Windows 7 or Windows 8. A new government price list was negotiated and S & S updated the
system with these prices. We added new reps to the system and provided
them an executable file that could be downloaded from an FTP site. A new type of light
source was being implemented on one product line and our consultants modified the part
selection process to pick the new light source from the list of available
parts. The quote system included a configuration tool and we modified it to
add an additional product line and enhanced the configuration process by
filtering subsequent option selections based on the preceding selections.
A second phase of this project
implemented a new configuration system for a new line of microscopes. S & S worked
with engineers and tech support personnel to generate the logic needed to pick
the parts for the new microscope. As in earlier versions, as high level systems
were chosen, the parts to configure the various options were chosen and
selections were enabled or disabled based on preceding selections. The new version of the system was deployed using a terminal server,
and the software was deployed to a directory for each rep. Our team developed software
to update the database and programs as modifications to the system were
implemented.
December 2012 - September 2014
S & S Systems was approached by a manufacturing company that was in the process of outsourcing its EDI functions. The primary goal of the project was to support EDI on the IBM mainframe using COBOL interface programs and the Websphere Data Interchange mapping software. We developed inbound and outbound maps for trading partners, as well as modifying maps and interface programs to satisfy mapping needs. Our consultants set up trading partners in WDI as well as setting up their communication profiles in AS2. We also developed several VB programs that sent and received files from servers using FTP. Senior Consultant Andrew Sobey Jr. was promoted to a project team that was developing test files as well as performing comparison of the existing map output to the outsourced map output for the same EDI transaction files. He developed map specifications using logic from the existing bridge programs and the current version of the customer map.
August 2012 - December 2012
S & S Systems was a subcontractor to a company that performed conversions of Oracle forms and reports from any version to any other version. The company used a software package named PITTSCON. This software permits a user to create a database of all his or her forms, reports, PL/SQL code, tables, and libraries. Scripts may be run on the PL/SQL code to determine unused code, non-supported functions, and other inconsistencies between the prior form version and the current form version. Templates of changes can be created to perform mass replaces of the outdated code with new code, or to update functions with the new syntax, or to replace non-supported functions with functions supported by the PITTSCON software package. Our team proceeded to work on conversions of Oracle forms for several companies.
June 2012 - July 2012
S & S was brought on by a fastener manufacturer that used Gentran to perform EDI transactions with its trading partners. The company had used a contractor to perform mapping functions who had departed several years earlier. Its staff was able to run the system to send and receive EDI transactions, but did not have the expertise to develop additional EDI transactions as needed. The company contracted with S & S Systems to develop 810 outbound invoice maps for new trading partners. Our consultants set up the trading partners and developed maps based on the trading partner specifications. The EDI system interfaced to the Glovia business system that used Oracle as its database repository.
March 2012 - May 2012
S & S was hired by a non-profit that had outsourced its order entry function to a web company. Our consultants had previously written interfaces to the web order entry system to accept orders from it, load them into local Oracle tables, and forward the orders to the distribution system. Some of the orders were pre-paid by credit card before they were shipped, and batches were created to generate unearned revenue GL transactions. S & S developed ASP web reports to reconcile the GL batches to the credit card processor settlement. PayPal began to be accepted for pre-paid orders. A new metatag was created to identify credit card orders from PayPal orders. Our team modified the PL/SQL package that loaded the orders to segregate the PayPal orders from the credit card orders and generate the appropriate GL batches. We also modified the ASP web reports to handle credit card and PayPal reconciliation.
February 2012
Our consultants were brought in by a manufacturer that used Dynamics to control its business processes. The manufacturer saved printed documents such as invoices and checks using a web-based document management system called Docuware. Docuware saved the documents in various directories on a website based on document type and permitted a user to request a document image by entering the URL in a browser window and passing the document number as a parameter. The document number passed was in the form of a SQL query WHERE filter in base-64 notation. The company wanted to be able to access the printed image from various Dynamics screens. S & S Systems customized four Dynamics screens to place a button on the screen next to the document number to be retrieved. When the user pressed the Docuware button, the WHERE filter was set up, converted to base-64 notation, and a call to the web site URL was made to retrieve the document.
December 2011 - January 2012 S
& S was contracted to assist a non-profit organization update its
PledgeMaker software package to a newer version. The PledgeMaker
software company, Softrek, was involved to facilitate the update effort.
The non-profit had developed about 200 custom forms using Oracle Forms
6i and 10g, and had about 150 reports developed using Oracle Reports 6i
and 10g. Several hundred stored procedures and triggers encompassing
about 150,000 lines of code had also been developed. Softrek needed to
know which objects these customizations used so they could determine the
scope of work to modify them. S & S documented the tables and
functions used in these forms and reports, and provided that data to
Softrek to aid in the update process.
August 2011 - November 2011
An electrical component manufacturer was adding many EDI trading partners and needed the assistance of S & S Systems in developing maps in ANSI and EDIFACT format to exchange invoices, orders, shipping information, and forecasts. EDI transactions could be entered using EXTOL in a batch mode, EXTOL in an interactive mode (AS/2) or could be entered using BIZTALK. EXTOL ran on the AS/400 using interface programs developed in COBOL, while BIZTALK ran on servers and was programmed in VB. Our consultants developed maps to send and receive EDI transactions to various trading partners using EXTOL. S & S developed several custom programs in COBOL to handle special situations. LOTUS NOTES was used as the transmission medium for the BIZTALK transactions, while FTP was used for the transmission of EXTOL EDI transactions.
June 2011 - July 2011
A medical device manufacturer was upgrading its packaging of packs trays and needed S & S Systems to develop a program that would print labels for the new packaging. In its current system, a Domino C600 printer was installed and the Connect software package was bundled with the printer to generate label formats for printing. An Access database was used by the Connect software to retrieve label information. Labels were printed interactively by the software; that is, a user would manually call for a label to be printed rather than having a command file or other batch process to print it. S & S developed an Access program to retrieve label information from several tables in an AS/400 BPCS system to create a record in an Access table to be used by the Connect software to generate the label. Previously, several manual steps were needed to select the label format, database table, and provide other parameters needed to print it. In order to streamline this process, macro software was installed and the Access program would generate the keystrokes to call the macro to print the label after the Access table was loaded.
May 2011
Senior Consultant Andrew Sobey Jr. taught two Crystal Report classes for an electric co-operative in Missouri for a training company. Each class was two days in duration. The first class was a fundamentals class using the basic tools of Crystal Reports. The second class was an advanced class using features such as graphing, sub-reports, and accessing data from different sources.
November 2010
A
non-profit organization contracted S & S Systems for support with interfaces to its PledgeMaker
business system, many of which were handled using the LockBox utility. At the time,
the interfaces consisted of imports to user data tables not directly
supported by LockBox. The LockBox utility permitted these types of
imports, but the user would need to code logic in the LockBox
pre-processor to handle them. In order to minimize the modifications to
the LockBox pre-processor, our team at S & S developed an application to permit the user
to import a file and process it immediately.
We developed the application in ASP.NET using C#, and it would import a file into a CLOB field in an Oracle database table. The
application permitted the user to browse for the file and had a drop-down box to indicate the type of import being processed. A job stream was associated with each import type and execution parameters could also be entered on the screen. When
the user had set all the fields on the form and pressed the import
button, the file was imported to the CLOB field in the table, and the
job to process it was submitted to the Oracle job queue. The
interface S & S designed was used to support functions such as updating Oracle costs,
loading beginning balances for departmental products, and importing
sales transactions from the BookLog business system.
October 2010 - May 2011
S & S was approached by a non-profit organization that had a web-based order entry system and was outsourcing it to an external provider. Orders were taken on three web based systems and stored in Oracle database tables. From there, the orders would be sent to a distribution center for processing. The orders were then generated from the external order entry web site. Due to differences in accounting methods for credit card and charge-to-account product, all orders from the external order entry system were sent to the non-profit for creating GL transactions, and then forwarded to the distribution center for fulfillment. Orders were sent in XML format using FTP and were processed by enhancing the PledgeMaker LockBox PL/SQL user interface package. Additionally, another change that required a new interface was that downloadable product, such as digital albums and books in .PDF format, were now being handled. These items were sold by the external order entry web site but did not need to be shipped by the distribution center. They did however require sales GL transactions to be recorded. S & S Systems developed new Oracle tables for handling the orders for downloadable product and created PL/SQL stored procedures to process them using the PledgeMaker LockBox user interface.
September 2010 - October 2010
A manufacturing plant used MAS500 to run its business system and hired S & S Systems for support. The company was experiencing an issue when
a routing was updated for a part and used in other bills of material,
but the routing only updated in one place and the other bills would
still point to the prior now-inactive routing. S & S
developed a VB.NET program that would scan all the routings and
generate a list of inactive routings being used. The user could press a button and the system would update these routings to point to the active standard routing.
July 2010 - September 2010
A leasing company required support from S & S Systems while upgrading from Sage ACCPAC version 5.4 to 5.6. Our team had previously developed several triggers and customizations in .NET for the company that needed to be upgraded to use the new database tables. These customizations involved a LockBox processing system for invoices, a charge back system for invoicing, and a system to accumulate accounts receivable transactions in working batches until they were ready to be processed. S & S modified the .NET programs to use the new database version, and we changed the configuration files to support the new version.
April 2010 - June 2010
A manufacturing organization hired S & S Systems to update a system developed to determine shop capacity using VB and Access. The system would present a calendar to a user and permit him or her to select a product family for review. When the product family was selected, the number of units scheduled on a weekly basis was presented as a bar graph showing units scheduled versus the maximum manufacturing capacity. The bar graphs were color coded so the user could easily see capacity issues. The system used the MAS500 item table to determine products and product families, and was loaded into static tables in an Access database. The organization was converting to a later version of MAS500. Our consultants modified this system to be able to access the new database tables, and added forms to permit the user to more easily maintain the products and product families to be displayed on the manufacturing chart. S & S also converted several Crystal Reports to use the new database and modified several others reports per user requirements.
February 2010 - April 2010
A non-profit organization brought in S & S for support using PledgeMaker to handle subscriptions, donations, and pledges. One of the departments in the organization had an Access database with customer mailing lists. The customer could be associated with one or more interests that the organization supported. S & S designed a system that
matched customer addresses in the departmental list to customer
addresses in the PledgeMaker system in order to return the customer ID
in the PledgeMaker system. We then used the PledgeMaker LockBox facility to load the customers in PledgeMaker that were not already loaded in PledgeMaker. S & S
developed procedures to load the PledgeMaker system with the interests
identified by the departmental database using the PledgeMaker ID number
and the interest from the departmental database. After the PledgeMaker
database was loaded, our team developed a web form in ASP.NET using C# to
permit mailing lists to be requested and emailed to the requestor. The user would log into the system, request one of the various lists available, apply filters to the list, and submit it. The list would be emailed to the requestor. One filter that was of particular value was the ability to generate lists within a given mileage range around a zip code. For example, information regarding a conference to be held in Chicago could be sent to individuals within a 200 mile radius of zip code 60606.
February 2010 - March 2010
A non-profit organization brought on S & S when several departmental changes occurred and products from one division were able to be sold by another division on a commission basis. We modified many of the order processing PL/SQL stored procedures to perform the appropriate revenue split for these items when creating the GL transactions. This also applied to splitting revenue on return sales.
August 2009 - January 2010
A non-profit organization hired S & S Systems to modify its order entry system after it began traveling to various events around the country to sell its products. Products sold at events were sourced from the distribution center using a special order sales code. Our consultants modified the existing Oracle PL/SQL order entry interface to move the inventory for event sales from the distribution bin location to an event sales bin location. The inventory for the event was entered into a point of sale system, and when the event was over, an export of the event sales was automatically created. S & S developed a PledgeMaker LockBox interface to load the event sales into working tables. We developed a web form to permit the user to maintain the part number in the working tables since not all parts sold at the event were stocked. The web form also contained an option to permit the user to process the event sales to generate GL and inventory transactions. Our team also modified the order processing interface to account for the inventory that was returned to the distribution center after the event sale was complete.
July 2009 - August 2009
A medical device manufacturer utilized S & S Systems Consultants when replacing several printers used to label its products. The printers being replaced were 15 years old and used a serial interface. The software that printed the labels was custom written in VB and wrote to the printers using the printer command set. Label definitions were stored in an Access database and label data was stored on an AS/400. S & S developed a new system in Access using Label Matrix, and the printers were network connected. When a label was printed, label information would be retrieved from the AS/400, an Access table would be populated with the label data, and the Label Matrix print utility would be called to print the appropriate label definition using data in the Access table.
April 2009 - June 2009
A
retailer hired S & S Systems to support outsourcing the distribution of its products to a third
party. We developed interfaces between its Oracle and PledgeMaker
business systems and the outsourcing company. The retailer had a web
order entry system and S & S developed an Oracle stored procedure to send
these orders to the outsourcing company in an XML format using FTP. The outsourcing company would send back these orders and orders taken
by their personnel, and our consultants would create Oracle GL entries for the sales
(including commission entries) as well as Oracle inventory transactions. The
inventory transactions affected a certain bin location so the retailer
could monitor inventory levels at the outsourcing site by looking at
its own inventory records. The outsourcing company charged for its
services using a two tiered approach. S & S developed a system to enter
the GL transactions into Oracle for these charges. Receipts, purchase
orders, and adjustments were sent from the outsourcing company to the
retailer on a daily basis. These transactions were sent using FTP and
our team developed a PledgeMaker LockBox interface to enter them into the
Oracle inventory system and to receive the purchase orders. We also developed several
web forms to review transactions and orders in the
interface tables.
April 2009 - May 2009
S & S Systems had previously developed an accounts payable interface for a rail car leasing
company from its SQL Server custom database into Sage ACCPAC. Some of
the charges in the payables invoice were actually the responsibility of
the customer and could be billed back to the customer. Our consultants modified the
application which created the AP invoices to create a database with
charges that were the responsibility of the customer. We created
another .NET application to generate AR invoices from the charge back
database. The user interface to this application permitted the user to
create invoices for railroad versus non-railroad customers, and allowed
the user to select the invoices to create for railroad customers.
February 2009 - March 2009
A
windows and door retailer was upgrading from Sage ACCPAC 5.2 to Sage
ACCPAC 5.5. S & S Systems had written several .NET interfaces to the older version of Sage ACCPAC and
needed to revise them to work with version 5.5. One of the biggest
changes was in the handling of optional fields. In version 5.2 the
optional fields were contained in the Sage ACCPAC master and detail
tables, while in version 5.5 the optional fields are in tables of their
own. Our team modified the databases and .NET programs to support the new
version of Sage ACCPAC.
January 2009
A
plastic part molder hired S & S Systems to streamline their order acknowledgment process. The company was currently acknowledging orders by printing them
out and then faxing the printouts to its customers. Some of the
customers had asked about receiving acknowledgments as an email. S & S
modified their SQL database to contain fields to support the email
process, and modified their VB order system to email them. New fields
were added to the screen to permit the entry of the email address, and
then check boxes were added to the order print screen to permit the user
to indicate whether the order acknowledgment should be emailed or not.
January 2009
S & S Systems had previously developed an interface for a plastics manufacturer from
their custom order system to their QuickBooks accounting system. They
had made some changes to the GL accounts and wanted to change the
accounts associated with parts as they were imported into QuickBooks. We made the appropriate database changes to handle the new accounts and
modified the import program to use the new account information.
November 2008 - January 2009
A
non-profit was partnering with an external firm to be able to share customer data with them, and hired S & S to assist with a required file conversion. Our team assisted in the conversion of four
DMAS customer files to send to an external organization. S & S created a
query on the AS/400 to convert all fields in the files to character
format and download them to a PC. We developed the SQL loader control
files and shell scripts to load them into temporary tables. Our consultants moved
the data to working tables, and in the process, converted the date
fields and set the precision on the numeric fields. We matched the DMAS
customer records to the existing records in PledgeMaker and loaded
those that were not already in PledgeMaker using the LockBox facility. S & S then used the PledgeMaker customer, telephone, and address tables in
conjunction with the DMAS tables to create customer and ship-to
records in the format provided by the external organization.
November 2008
S & S Systems had previously developed an AR invoice automation program for a rail car
leasing company. This program took information from a SQL server
database containing rail car charges and created AR invoices in a Sage
ACCPAC system using Sage ACCPAC APIs. Data fields which did not map
directly from one system to another could be contained in Sage ACCPAC
optional fields on the appropriate table. The leasing company wanted 3
additional fields added to the AR invoice detail table to facilitate
lookup between the two systems. S & S modified the .NET program which
created the AR invoices to add the optional fields.
August 2008 - November 2008
An
audit firm that audits payables from customers to look for
inconsistencies approached S & S Systems to develop a system for demonstrating their software to
potential customers. We created a virtual machine with their software
and sample data that could be used to demonstrate the features of the
software, such as locating duplicate payments and missed discounts. The virtual machine was saved on a disc and could be copied to a
PC for use whenever needed. Data could be manipulated during the
demonstration, and then could be refreshed by copying it again from the disc. The concept was further enhanced to use virtual machines to perform
audits. S & S set up the software to run on a virtual machine and
procedures to integrate next year's data with the present data.
October 2008
A
legal firm was migrating from GroupWise and WordPerfect to Microsoft
Outlook 2007 and Word 2007, and hired Senior Consultant Andrew Sobey Jr. to help with training. Just one week before implementation, the client required classes taught in Word 2007 and Outlook 2007. The one-day
classes were overhauled for the client to be condensed to half a day, and Andrew taught 13 half-day sessions.
July 2008
A state government agency utilized S & S Systems Consultants to
convert an Oracle system of approximately 15 forms and 10 reports from Forms
version 6 to Forms version 10g. We then documented the procedure for
converting from Oracle Forms and Reports version 6 to version 10g. This included configuring the application server and using the report
object. In order to customize the reporting process, S & S created a custom table to hold a record for each user. The table contained a
report server name, the report source path, and the report output
path. This enabled different versions of a report to be printed
based on the user ID, and to place output files on the server in a
user's secure directory.
June 2008 - July 2008
A
manufacturer of medical instruments hired S & S Systems to modify its packs labeling
system, which was written in VB and utilized data from both an Access
database and an AS/400. We developed a labeling system that would permit the
user to enter a shop order number into a screen and then the system
would display labeling information for the part number associated with
the shop order. The user would be prompted to mount the proper pouch
size for the pack and then the system would download the label format
to the printer. The system tracked each time a label was printed by
date and user, and a report was developed to provide shop order label
printing history.
January 2008 - June 2008
A
non-profit contracted with S & S Systems to streamline its business processes and make changes
to some of its existing systems and procedures. In January we designed a .NET interface between the web order system in an Oracle
database and the shipping system in a MS SQL server database. The .NET
program read the Oracle web order table looking for records that had
not yet been processed. It would create a record in the MS SQL
shipping table using data from the web order table. When the order was
shipped, the shipping system would create a tracking record in a MS SQL
table. The .NET would read the tracking table and update the web order
with the tracking information.
In March S & S wrote an ASP.NET
application to permit members to electronically renew their memberships
from the web. The application would place a record in an Oracle
tracking table for the membership year including a randomly generated
PIN number. An Oracle report was developed to generate a renewal
letter to be sent to a member including his or her ID number, PIN number, and
a website address. Our team wrote the web application to permit members
to enter their ID number and PIN and renew their membership online, as well as
update their record in the Oracle database.
In May S & S Systems
planned and implemented the PledgeMaker credit card encryption
feature. This included enabling the credit card encryption facility,
running a script to convert all credit cards from human readable to
encrypted format, and modifying all user procedures to use the
encrypted credit card field. The LockBox import specifications and
procedures were also modified to use encrypted credit card information.
In
June our team moved retirement fund records from an S/36 file to
an Access database, and then sent the records to a third party
administrator. This included developing Access tables to hold the
data, moving the data to another Access table with decimal fields
properly set, and then exporting the table to an Excel spreadsheet for
transmission to the administrator. S & S wrote several queries to sum the dollar amounts by department to reconcile them with
totals from the S/36 file. The retirement funds withheld from the
payroll system needed to be forwarded to the third party administrator as
a spreadsheet. We wrote a .NET program that accepted a text file from the
payroll system, entered it into an Oracle table, and then used OLE
automation to start Excel and create the spreadsheet from the Oracle
table. The program also created GL transactions for the Oracle GL
system and placed them in the GL interface table.
October 2007 - January 2008
A
manufacturer of medical instruments utilized S & S Systems' help while modifying its labeling
process. The proposed labeling system would permit the user to enter a
shop order number and then print the corresponding labels by
pressing a foot pedal. The label templates would be
created using the Label Matrix software package. A barcoded shop order
number would be scanned into the system. S & S created a system using
VB that read shop order information from the AS/400
using an ODBC connection. The part number from the shop order was
used to access other AS/400 tables to get description information,
language information, and other fields to be printed on the labels, such
as temperature range and expiration date. The system printed a
sample label when the shop order was accessed, and printed a closing label
with label counts when the shop order was closed. An audit report was
also available to print shop order statistics.
September 2007 - December 2007
A
floral wholesaler hired S & S to support while upgrading its Sage ACCPAC system and
implementing the EPOS cash register system to front-end the order entry
and invoice process. The EPOS program that placed invoices into the
Sage ACCPAC did not insert the custom fields at the header level and
did not properly set the accounting information. Our team wrote a .NET
program to read all EPOS orders, credit orders, and layaway orders that
had not yet been processed through day-end and inserted the
appropriate fields at the header level, changed the GL accounts, and
set the sales rep based on fields in the EPOS order. The .NET program
was later to be executed using the Process Scheduler application. When
the Process Scheduler executed a program, 4 command line parameters
were passed to it. One of the parameters was a log file name. This
log file was written to at the completion of the program with a status
indicating if the process completed successfully or not. S & S Systems modified
the .NET program to accept the 4 parameters and write to the log file. We also modified the program to monitor the EPOS directory,
so as not to start unless the directory was empty.
August 2007 - September 2007
A
manufacturing company was implementing Quick Books as its accounting
system, and contracted S & S Systems to assist. The company had a custom-written system to process orders and
invoices. The system was written in VB and the data was stored in an
Access database. We modified the system to produce import files for
Quick Books whenever invoices were printed, finished goods were placed into
inventory, and items were shipped.
July 2007
An
instrument manufacturer approached S & S to help convert from a MAX ERP system to MAS500. Some of the data from the MAX business system would not migrate to
MAS500 due to incompatibilities between the systems. As a result, many
personnel required two computers at their desks. The previous system used a BTRIEVE database on a Novell
server, and the company was concerned about what would happen to the data if the Novell server went down. Our team downloaded the data from
the BTRIEVE database tables and loaded the data into a SQL server
database with the same structure as existed in BTRIEVE. S & S then modified the Crystal
Reports that had been written against the BTRIEVE database to use the SQL database. Employees would now require just one computer.
June 2007 - August 2007 A
supplier of organs for medical transplant hired S & S Systems for help implementing the Sage ACCPAC software system to run its business. The company had a requirement that a
certificate of authenticity be on file for certain types of organs before
they could be received, as well as providing other fields of data
related to the certificate. The Field Extender package from Accu-Dart
was used to provide support for the additional fields. The team at S & S wrote an
enhancement to the receiving screen that checked whether the part required a
certificate of authenticity, and if one were required, our modification checked the
additional fields tables in order to determine whether the certificate were on
file or not. If the certificate were on file, receiving would proceed normally; if the certificate were not on file, the user would not
receive it but could have a supervisor override the system to receive
it, even though the certificate of authenticity were not on file. June 2007
S & S Systems was hired to help a customer running a MAS500 system streamline its customer record keeping. The company assigned a sales rep and territory manager to each
customer based on its zip code. As reps or managers were changed, each
customer record for the rep or manager in the zip code would need to be
changed to reflect the new rep or manager. The list of reps and managers
assigned to each zip code was maintained in an Excel spreadsheet. S & S developed a VB.NET program to change the reps and managers using the
data from the Excel spreadsheet. The .NET program our consultants developed imported the
spreadsheet into a MS SQL table using DTS and then matched the current
records with records in a history table. If a rep or manager in the
current table were different than one in the history table, the records
for that zip code would update to reflect the new rep or manager.
February 2007 - March 2007S & S Systems worked on several procedures to automate the reversal of PledgeMaker
batch transactions. This automation was motivated by the amount of work needed to
locate a transaction for an individual and then to reverse it. It was
also motivated by the fact that one subscriber could support multiple
individuals (more than 100). When the transaction was keyed, one
transaction could be keyed to pay all the individuals for the
subscriber, and multiple payment records would be created. When the
transactions needed to be reversed, however, each transaction had to be
reversed individually. This could take as long as 4 hours for a large
subscriber. The team at S & S developed an Oracle form to permit the user to enter the
batch number and the ID number to be reversed, and all payments for that
transaction would be reversed. The reversals were placed in a batch
using the LockBox facility. January 2007 - April 2007
A
rail car leasing company had just split off from its parent company and contracted with S & S Systems to provide accounting and other services for the new entity. The company utilized Sage ACCPAC software for its accounting. Invoices needed
to be imported
from another system for mileage, railroad, and equalization transactions. We developed a .NET program to read tables in a
custom database and create A/R invoice batches for these invoices. Other invoices from a separate source also needed to be imported into Sage
ACCPAC, and S & S wrote a .NET program to create invoices for these
transactions. These invoices, however, were not complete when entered
into the invoice batch. As such, they were entered into a working
batch and updated in the working batch as information concerning the
invoice arrived. When the invoice information was complete, an optional field value would update to indicate the invoice was complete,
and a .NET program written by our team would run to move the completed invoices from the
working batch to a new batch for processing.
January 2007
A
manufacturer hired S & S to streamline the label printing process for its products. The
quantity of labels needed was determined by the quantity of parts for
each item on the shop order. The labels were printed with Crystal
Reports, but there was no facility in Crystal Reports to permit you to
print multiple labels based on a data field. The manufacturer used MS
SQL server for its database manager, so S & S developed a stored procedure that
accepted the shop order number and returned a record set with the
appropriate number of label records based on the quantity of parts on
the shop order. The stored procedure was then used as the record source
for the report. December 2006 - March 2007
Senior Consultant Andrew Sobey Jr. learned the Microsoft CRM 3.0 software package. He installed the system
and made several customizations to it, including
implementing assembly-into-workflow rules and creating new
entities. He developed custom reports using these new entities, and
created several Excel pivot table reports.
Andrew then went on to teach the
8526 Microsoft CRM 3.0 Installation and Configuration course and 8525
Microsoft CRM 3.0 Customization course.
November 2006 The
department of transportation for a state government approached S & S for support during a conversion of its
fuel tax system from a mainframe system written in COBOL to Sage ACCPAC.
The routine for computing taxes and interest was written in COBOL. The team at S & S Systems
reviewed the COBOL code and documented its logic so the new system could
mimic it. March 2006
Senior Consultant Andrew Sobey Jr. taught a one-week course in RPG for a group of consultants. The course
included RPG III, RPG IV, PRG ILE, and RPG Free. The consultants were using
a fourth generation language for most of their development work, and the
development tool generated RPG code. The consultants could not
effectively debug their own code since they did not know RPG, so Andrew's course
provided them with the tools to debug their code.
January 2006 - March 2006 A
carpet wholesaler contracted S & S Systems Consultants to design customizations for the
Dynamics screens to enforce business logic and enhance the application. Our team
modified the sales order entry screen to force two fields to be
required and to place the order on hold if the customer were on hold. S & S placed a button on the sales batch entry screen to print a copy of the
invoice. Product could be sold in various units of measure such as
square feet, cartons, or pallets. We developed a customization that would
permit the user to convert from one unit of measure to another. When users pressed the unit of measure conversion button, a screen opened
for them with the product number already populated. Users would enter the
unit of measure and the quantity followed by the unit of measure to
be converted to, and the conversion would be
calculated. In order to assist with the shipping of product, the pick
ticket was modified to show the picker how many pallets, cartons, and
square feet to pick.
January 2006 A
distribution center contracted S & S Systems to create an interface from its web based order entry
using an Oracle database to its MS SQL shipping system. Our team developed a
.NET program to read orders from the Oracle database and create a record
in the MS SQL shipping table. The shipping system would ship the orders
and then create a record in a MS SQL tracking table. The program S & S developed would read the
MS SQL tracking table and insert a record in the Oracle order tracking
table for the corresponding order. December 2005 - October 2006
A
health care facility called on S & S Systems Consultants when implementing the ACCPAC accounting software. The facility needed to import invoices from three different sources. S & S wrote
several custom applications in .NET to automate this process. The
.NET programs we developed read invoice transaction files and converted them into a
format that could be imported using the ACCPAC import facility. The
ACCPAC import API was called by the .NET program, and the invoices were
moved to a success or failure directory depending on the results of the
import. Some of the transactions did not contain valid ACCPAC
information. As the conversion of the data occurred, the ACCPAC
database was accessed in order to determine if setup information was
available to process the transactions. If the data were present, the
transaction would be created normally. If setup information were not
present, default information would be used to import the transactions. The
user would complete the setup information and execute a .NET program to
reprocess the data in the ACCPAC transaction batches.
November 2005 A
medical facility approached S & S Systems for support while installing Sage ACCPAC. The company needed to input
invoices from several other systems into ACCPAC for accounting
purposes. The team at S & S developed a VB.NET program to import the invoices using the ACCPAC import facility. If the import were successful the import
file would move to a successful directory, and if the import were not
successful the import file would move to a rejected directory. The
process was later modified to break the batches into three different
types: normal batches where all the information was present, missing batches where information was missing, and review batches that
needed to be reviewed before being processed. For missing batches,
default information was substituted to permit the transaction to be
placed in the batch. The user could correct the missing information, and S & S Systems
developed an ACCPAC macro to reprocess the batch using the corrected
information.
July 2005 - August 2005
A
state department of agriculture approached S & S Systems for help implementing ACCPAC as its general
ledger package. The first department to be effected was the Bureau of
Weights and Measures. This department provided inspection and
certification of scales, pumps, and other measuring devices. As
customers were invoiced for their inspections, some did not pay
promptly. A collection procedure was followed in order to track the
customer invoice status as it moved through the collection process.
Status information for each invoice was tracked using ACCPAC
optional fields at the invoice header level. S & S wrote an ACCPAC VBA
macro to permit a user to maintain the optional fields in order to
track the status of invoices. Our team also provided training for users on
Crystal Reports and writing VBA macros.
June 2005 - March 2006
A
college was installing a point of sale system and a software package
called CampusVue to track students, and hired S & S Systems to develop an interface between CampusVue and the college's ACCPAC GL. This involved our team writing triggers on the CampusVue MS SQL database, as well
as writing triggers on the ACCPAC MS SQL database to keep the two
systems in sync. We then also generated transactions in XML format to
pass information to ACCPAC from CampusVue.
November 2004 - December 2004
A non-profit organization called upon S & S Systems for support when it was upgrading to version 4.1 of PledgeMaker. This version changed the tables used during batch processing. S & S spearheaded the conversion of the PledgeMaker software, including modifying programs to use the new batch tables, modifying triggers,
modifying LockBox definitions and procedures to use the new tables, and
writing the user custom posting routine for posting pledge transaction
batches.
August 2004 - June 2005
S & S Systems was brought on board a project for a microscope manufacturer to convert from their
existing MAX business system to MAS500. Our team helped with the mapping of
data from the existing system to the new system, and wrote conversion
programs, queries, and functions to take data from MAX and format it to
be loaded into MAS500. This conversion required us to migrate the existing
BTRIEVE database to several Access databases on the Novell server. S & S placed the
Access databases on a Windows 2003 server, and we performed queries to create tables with transaction data that could be exported
to text files and subsequently imported into MAS500 using MAS500 APIs. Our team also downloaded data and placed it into a format that could be used
by a keystroke generator (macro) program in order to load data into
MAS500 that was not supported by an API. After the conversion we continued
to write custom reports against the MAS500 MS SQL database.
June 2004 - December 2006
A state department of transportation called on S & S Systems to
design and implement a method to replace the existing system used for
collecting licenses, fees, and taxes. The new system we developed used the ACCPAC
General Ledger application on an Oracle database platform. Our team wrote
several Oracle triggers that enforced business rules, facilitated the
processing of credit cards, updated customer records and invoices when
a check was returned for insufficient funds, and provided a method for
performing modified cash accounting.
March 2004 - May 2004
A
corporate holding company contracted with S & S Systems while consolidating one of its divisions into
its corporate structure. We wrote programs to convert open purchase
orders from the division's JBA system to the corporate JD Edwards
system. This entailed using the JDE address book to cross-reference
division vendors, utilizing the JDE item file, location file, and constant
file to pick up other necessary information. S & S performed this conversion for several business units including a foreign business unit.
Our team also converted a stand-alone system that inventoried the artwork and
display samples used to exhibit and demonstrate products. This
entailed us adding data elements to the JDE data dictionary, using
Software Versions Repository (SVR) to describe files, adding elements
to the JDE User Defined Code Types (UDC) table, and using JDE action
code authority to validate users. S & S used the TURNOVER software package to track all objects associated with the system as they were
promoted from test to production.
S & S Systems wrote specifications
for the conversion and validation of these systems in
Microsoft Word. These specifications included mapping documents,
program descriptions, file descriptions, and testing procedures. We also developed showcase queries and reports, SQL queries, and other AS/400 RPG reports to assist with system validation.
March 2004
Senior Consultant Andrew Sobey Jr. was invited to serve on the Vatterott College Accounting with Data Processing (ADP) Advisory Committee.
February 2004 - June 2004
S & S worked with a college on a project to consolidate individual ACCPAC
systems at remote campuses to one centralized ACCPAC system at corporate
headquarters. Our team customized several ACCPAC screens used in accounts
receivable, payables batch processing, and customer maintenance. Our
customizations were written in VB, and were used to limit the access of
data so only the campus at which the student was enrolled would be able
to see his or her information. A trigger was written in the ACCPAC SQL Server
database to place the account set in the description of adjustment
batches.
The
college later purchased another school in Texas that used Excel to track
billing for each student. S & S wrote macros in VB to extract data from
these billing spreadsheets to create credit, debit, and cash
transactions to be entered into ACCPAC.
October 2003 - March 2004
S & S Systems worked on a project to automate the interfaces between the corporate
information system and an ACCPAC business system of a supplier of
windows and doors. Our team developed a
system in .NET to read comma separated value files of proposal
information created by the Proposal Writer software package. The
proposals were loaded into a Microsoft SQL Server database for
subsequent acceptance and tracking. As proposals were accepted,
non-company parts would have ACCPAC purchase orders created for them. Company parts would wait in the database to be acknowledged by the
corporate system. An interface was developed to read the corporate
acknowledgment file, match and accept the proposals, and send them to
the ACCPAC purchasing system.
S & S also developed a system in .NET to handle accessory inventory. The
system would read a text file of ASN
information and create a database in SQL Server of accessory items. These items would be received into the system and await subsequent
issue to a job site. Our system also made a provision to permit the items to
be sent to a third party for outside processing. S & S Systems developed Crystal Reports to track the items and to issue picking and packing tickets
for them.
Our team also developed a third system in .NET to track sales for individual sales
people. It provided a means to set goals for sales people
on a weekly basis, and then track the actual sales against the goal. The system S & S developed also tracked profit margin dollars and percents.
August 2003 - October 2003
Senior Consultant Andrew Sobey Jr. participated
in a four-week program for the University of Phoenix and became
certified to teach in their online program. Andrew went on to teach Business Analysis classes at the University of Phoenix Online.
March 2003
S & S Systems developed a customer contact management system for a local supply company. The system we developed provided the company the ability
to maintain customer information and follow-up information on its
customers. The company gained the ability to enter data on tabs that are used
to organize the information for the customer. S & S created a tab for call
logs that is used to track phone calls and visits to the customer
site. We added a customer profile tab that describes the customer's
business. Additionally, our team designed a tab for comments about the customer, another one
that identifies the types of products the customer purchases, and
another that tracks competitive information.
March 2003
Senior Consultant Andrew Sobey Jr. completed comprehensive training at Computer Associates in Plano, TX to become a Visual Basic developer for the ACCPAC software product.
June 2001 - July 2006
S & S Systems provided
consulting and programming services for a plastic molding company. The company had converted its order system
from dBase to Visual Basic and Access, but their programmer had left. S & S supported the system and provided enhancements to it. We developed
Crystal Reports and automated several paper-intensive functions, such as
scheduling cards and standard review board forms. Our team also helped
during the relocation of the business by providing support for the network and
workstations. S & S migrated the software from VB version 5 to VB 6, and the
database from Access 97 to Access 2000.
January 2001
Senior Consultant Andrew Sobey Jr. passed the examination to become a certified VBA developer for the Great Plains Dynamics software product.
June 2000 - December 2004
S & S Systems worked
on the implementation of Oracle and PledgeMaker for the world headquarters of a non-profit organization. Our team
was initially involved with converting data from several custom-written
systems and DMAS running on an AS/400 computer and a S/36 computer. S & S
wrote programs to load data into batches for importing into Oracle
using SQL loader. We also loaded data directly into Oracle tables using Access queries with an ODBC connection.
After
the conversion effort was over S & S Systems began to develop programs in PL/SQL,
SQL, Form Builder and Report builder to support, enhance, and interface
the two applications. Our team wrote programs to bring transactions into many
of the Oracle open interface tables, such as GL, projects, inventory,
AP, and bank statements for reconciliation. We also wrote programs to
extract data from Oracle tables and place it into a format for
importing into other custom applications, such as an Access system that
printed certificates.
S & S wrote database triggers and fine-grain security predicate statements, and
developed procedures to send email messages. We used a Gateway to gain
access to a SQL server database containing time clock information for
interfacing to Oracle. Our team also used database packages to send email
using SMTP and to send email with attachments using the OLE package to
interface to the local Outlook email system. S & S wrote CL programs on
the AS/400 and shell scripts on the UNIX server to FTP files between
the two systems to keep inventory records reconciled.
In
October 2002 we wrote a system that interfaces to the PrimeTime time
clock system. The system used an Oracle Gateway database to point to
the SQL server time clock database and the local Oracle database. The
system retrieved time clock punches from the SQL server and computed
the hours to be paid to the employee. The system S & S developed provided the ability to enter
holiday, vacation, sick, and extra pay into the system, as well as to
maintain the amount of hours to be paid. Our team wrote edit reports to
assist with data maintenance, and we provided an export function to
create transactions to be sent to Oracle payroll as well as the
existing payroll system running on the AS/400.
In
January 2003 S & S began a project to automate the processing of monthly
allotment transactions for the company's Foreign Missions Department. This
allotment process equated to a payroll for Foreign Missions. The
system needed to handle a monthly support amount (paycheck), as well as
provide the ability to handle other transactions such as housing
allowances, COLA adjustments, retirement payments, and school allowances,
as well as deductions and additions to other projects or items such as schools, libraries, car insurance, telephones, etc.
The
allotment process we developed was performed on a monthly basis, and there were about
1,200 transactions that are created and sent each month. The
transactions were sent as invoices to Accounts Payables through the open
interface file and were imported into the Oracle system. The transactions were
processed and payments were made by check, by wire, and by electronic
funds transfers. Some of these transactions hit Oracle Projects, and
they were coded in such a way that W2 information would be generated from
them. The prior system took 3 employees 5 workdays to perform the allotment
function, while the system S & S developed took 3 employees about half a day to perform
the allotment function, while also providing superior
reporting capabilities.
In
October 2003 S & S Systems began a project to automate the company's Canadian self employment tax payment calculation. Each month an estimated tax
payment needed to be made by the Canadian missionaries to the Canadian
government. Spreadsheets had been used to perform this function, with one spreadsheet for each missionary and spouse. Each year
all spreadsheets were modified to reflect changes in tax code
percentages and exemption amounts. A new system designed by S & S provided tables for
maintaining tax codes and forms for maintaining missionary tax
information. It provided a user interface to retrieve expenditures
from the projects tables that had tax implications, process them, and
create a .PDF report file and an Excel spreadsheet. These could then be sent to
the Canadian representative to be used for filing the taxes and sending
the self employment tax payments to the Canadian government.
In
June 2004 our team wrote an application to print registration badges. The company was holding conferences throughout the United States and needed
a method to print registration badges at remote locations. Registration information was contained in an Oracle database located in
St. Louis, MO. S & S Systems developed a web application to select records that
had not yet been printed and place them in a text file on the web
server. We wrote an application in Access to print the
badges, which provided the following features and
functions: accessed the web page to create the text file of
registrations to be printed; used FTP to transfer the text file from
the remote site to the local PC; imported the text file into an Access
table for printing; printed the badges in batches. The application
was parameter driven to support printing for various conferences, batch
sizes, file names, and file locations.
From
November 2004 through December 2004 S & S Systems worked on a conversion of the
PledgeMaker software. This included us modifying programs to use the new
batch tables, modifying triggers, modifying LockBox definitions and
procedures to use the new tables, and writing the user a custom posting
routine for posting pledge transaction batches.
January 2000 - May 2000
S & S Systems provided
consulting and programming services for a manufacturer of scales that
was located in Chicago IL. We worked on a project to stabilize the
implementation of JD Edwards and its associated EDI transactions using
the Harbinger EDI translator. Our team provided mapping services and
programming services to enhance the functionality of JD Edwards and
satisfy customer requirements for orders, shipping transactions, and
invoices. S & S developed several SQL script utilities to move orders,
shipping notices, and invoices from one environment to another for
testing. We also documented the EDI order processing flow to facilitate
the testing process.
December 1999
Senior Consultant Andrew Sobey Jr. taught
a two-week course in COBOL for a state government agency. The course
was aimed at new employees and was designed to give them a strong
foundation in the COBOL language, as well as with sequential and indexed
files. Andrew also included in his curriculum lessons on how to use Panvalet to submit JCL job
streams, and how to view and print programs and output from within
Panvalet.
November 1999 - December 1999
S & S Systems worked
with the Foreign Missions Division of a non-profit organization to develop a system for printing certificates of
appreciation. Several certificate forms were developed containing
pictures, graphics, and text fields depending on the type of missionary
being supported. Each certificate was printed in its entirety on a
blank sheet of paper using a color laser printer. The system S & S developed permitted
a user to select a group of certificates to be printed using various
selection criteria. During the print process, the certificates were
grouped by mailing address, the appropriate certificate type was
generated, and a mailing label was printed after the last certificate
for an address was processed. The certificates were stuffed into a
window envelop along with the label and were ready for mailing. The
new system designed by S & S Systems greatly reduced the handling and costs associated with
printing 65,000 certificates.
September 1999 - October 1999
S & S Systems Consultants worked on the development of EDI 820 electronic funds transfers for a shipping
company located in Greenwich CT. The funds transactions were
generated by JD Edwards in five operating environments. They were
placed in intermediate files and read by the Extol EDI package for
mapping to Citibank. There were four types of transaction sets that
were created based on the type of wire transfer that was being sent. Data transmissions were all encrypted using a black box encryption
device. Passwords were required to validate all communications
sessions and were required to be changed every thirty days. S & S
developed maps, Extol custom conversion routines, and a system to
automate the changing of the password.
June 1999 - September 1999
S & S was brought on during the implementation of Dynamics at a company that
refurbishes and repairs aircraft. S & S Systems developed an interface from
Dynamics into the company's custom Work Order system that was written in Access. The interface added items to a work order as
purchase orders were entered into Dynamics. It also tracked parts that
were sent out to other vendors for repair (sublet parts) and updated
the Access Work Order system with the cost of these parts as they were
received. Our team also developed an interface from the Access Work Order
system to send invoices from Access to Dynamics by creating invoice
batches in Dynamics. S & S developed the Dynamics interface and Access interface using Visual Basic and ODBC connectivity.
December 1998
We provided
programming services for a window distribution company to modify the processing of commissions by their Dynamics business
system. Dynamics supports Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), and S & S
enhanced the invoice creation process to generate commissions based on
customer requirements using VBA. Our team of consultants also wrote several Crystal Reports
for management.
August 1998 - June 1999
A manufacturer of
smoke detection devices brought on S & S Systems to provide consulting and programming services. We performed mapping functions for EDI
transactions to upgrade trading partners to version 4010, a Y2K
compliant version of EDI. S & S modified JBA programs and custom-written
programs to support release 3.5 of JBA. Senior Consultant Andrew Sobey Jr. also taught Visual Basic 6
courses for the Information Systems Department. He worked with a member
of the IT staff to develop an Excel function using VB commands to
generate a text file that would be used to generate an AS/400 Client
Access data entry macro to update a customer database. Monarch was
also used to format AS/400 print file data so it could be loaded into a
PC based system.
April 1998 - May 1999
S & S designed
and developed a Visual Basic 5 program for a grocery chain to interface a point-of-sale system into a GL system. The POS system created an ASCII text report file with
account totals that needed to be imported into the GL system. The VB
program used an Access database to hold configuration data for the
stores, data offsets into the report file for GL account names, and a
cross-reference table for converting POS account names to GL account
numbers. S & S Systems replaced the POS system with a new version, and we updated the VB
program to version 6 when modifications were made to it to
process the new text file report formats. The VB program we created used radio
buttons, command line parameters, and the printer object.
August 1997 - June 1998
S & S Systems provided
consulting and programming services for a manufacturer of medical
devices to develop a labeling system. The
system had to satisfy ISO 9000 and FDA requirements for labeling. The
system had to be able to access data in real-time from an AS/400 that
contained labeling information. The system developed by S & S read and maintained an Access label specification database residing on a Novell
network. It also provided drivers for three different printers: a
label printer only; a label printer that printed labels then applied
them to a box; and a label printer that printed on plastics bags that
were subsequently filled with product, heat-sealed, and then cut. Our team developed the
system in Visual Basic 5. It used ODBC and RDA objects
to access data on the AS/400 and the Access database. We developed Visual Basic
classes to define label properties, field properties,
and printer drivers. Command line parameters were used to customize
each workstation at startup to select the appropriate printer type. Collections were used to hold data internally that was needed to build
the printer commands. The MSCOMM control was used to write to the
serial printer devices. The system S & S developed also downloaded fonts and
bitmaps for each device type to properly print text and graphics on the
labels.
March 1997 - December 1998
A non-profit organization hired S & S Systems to provide consulting and programming services. Senior Consultant Andrew Sobey Jr. served as a member
of a project team to evaluate hardware and software solutions for a
business system to run the ten diverse divisions of the organization. He also
provided consulting and programming services for the Foreign Missions
Division to install a network and to develop a Microsoft Access
database that could be used to run its business. Data from the
church's AS/400 would be uploaded daily to a PC in the Foreign Missions
department. Andrew wrote a Visual Basic 5 program to upload the data. The
data would either be in an AS/400 report format or would be a fixed-width data file. An Access table was used to determine which
processing routine to execute based on the name of the AS/400 data
file. The Microsoft Jet Engine and its associated database objects
were used to connect the Access database to the VB application. SQL
statements were used to access the tables to insert, update, and delete
records. Visual Basic command line parameters were used to automate
the process and the user could click an icon on the desktop that
contained the appropriate configuration commands. S & S compiled a series of about 10
Crystal Reports and installed them on user's PCs to provide
the ability to access, sort, and filter the data. S & S Systems also assisted
another programmer with Access macros and functions on this database
and several other Access databases that she had previously developed.
May 1995 - April 1997
S & S Systems Consultants provided
design and programming services for an electrical equipment
manufacturer in order to develop an engineering
system for the Enclosed Control product line. Our team of consultants wrote the engineering portion
of the system on the PC in FoxPro for Windows, and was used
to convert a smart catalog number consisting of over a million possible
combinations into a bill of material. This bill of material would be
printed for the shop and would be passed to the AS/400 for processing
as a MAPICS batch. Labels would also be created and passed to the
AS/400 for storage. When the labels for the order were requested, they
would be placed on an AS/400 shared folder. A Visual Basic 4 program
used a timer control to monitor the AS/400 shared folder for these labels, and would send them to the appropriate Weber
printer for printing. The Visual Basic program used INI files for
determining which forms were mounted in the four printers, and used
asynchronous processing to start a DOS batch file that was built by the
VB program to ultimately print the labels. This system developed by S & S won a corporate
award for its impact on the business process.
A modification
center had been built at the plant to handle quick turn-around
products. The mod center would assemble common generic products that
could easily be modified by the addition of lights, push-buttons, or
meters. The Product Line Manager had developed an Excel spreadsheet
with a series of about 30 tables that could be used to determine which
catalog numbers fell into the mod category, which assembly would be
used as the base to modify, and what parts to use to create the end
product. S & S Systems developed Excel macros using VBA
to automate this process. The macros contained more than 2,000 lines of
VB code. Each of the 1,400 base assemblies had to be loaded into the
MAPICS product structure file on the AS/400. We developed another macro
using VBA to build a sequential file containing the transactions needed
to load the item master and product structure files.
August 1994 - April 1995
We designed
and developed AS/400 RPG programs to manage complaints for an
intra-ocular lens company. The system S & S designed was
used to follow inquiries concerning products and to determine if the
inquiry was considered to be a complaint by FDA guidelines. If the
inquiry were considered to be a complaint, MDR reports would be
generated using information gathered from the inquiry. Our system
also interfaced to a dBase system that tracked serial numbers and lots
to determine whether a problem were an isolated case or would be related to an
entire lot. Monarch was used to extract data from the AS/400 to be
sent to the dBase system for review.
March 1994 - June 1999
A microscope manufacturer asked S & S Systems Consultants to assist with
selecting hardware and software to run their business system. We also supported the implementation of its business system, including
training, conversion program specification, and network support. S & S continued to support the company by writing more than 150 Crystal
Reports to manage their business. Our team wrote several applications in Visual
Basic 3 to enhance the company's business system. These applications included
a system to cost their bills of material using data from the business
system, from an Excel worksheet, and from a FoxPro database; a system
to help them forecast using quantity projections contained in an Excel
spreadsheet that were massaged to match financial projections; and a system
to help schedule manufacturing based on the availability of required
documents such as purchase orders, deposits, letters of credit, etc.
The VB programs S & S Systems developed used database objects to access BTRIEVE, Access, and FoxPro databases, and used OLE automation to start
and access Excel applications and objects.
January 1994 - February 1995
Senior Consultant Andrew Sobey Jr. taught classes in Word, Excel, Visual Basic 3, and Visual Basic 4 at a local community college.
August 1993 - April 1994
The team at S & S Systems wrote
COBOL programs on an IBM mainframe for an electrical equipment
manufacturer to receive EDI purchase orders (850
transactions). These transactions were used to build intermediate
files that loaded customer orders into a Dunn & Bradstreet business
system. S & S also wrote COBOL programs to build the intermediate invoice
files, as well as reconciliation reports for the transaction sets using
EASYTRIEVE.
August 1992 - September 1993
S & S provided
consulting services for an electrical equipment repair facility to help them select hardware and software for
processing their business. Our team also wrote a disaster recovery plan for
their network, and arranged for off-site backup of their AS/400 system
backups.
August 1992 - September 1992
S & S Systems was approached to write dBase programs for a company to track consignment inventory of
intra-ocular lenses. In the system we developed, the issuance of a lens from consignment inventory
would occur by scanning a bar-coded serial number. This would result in
an invoice being generated for the sale of the lens, as well as a
replenishment order being issued for a replacement. These transactions
were transmitted to an AS/400 by modem for processing. Replenishment
order information was also transmitted to the dBase program by modem,
and receipt processing occurred by reconciling the items received to
the electronic replenishment on a serial number basis.
November 1991 - September 1992
S & S Systems wrote
COBOL programs on a DEC VAX platform for an electrical equipment
manufacturer to accept EDI invoices (810 transactions). These
transactions were written to a VAX database for matching against
purchase orders and receivers, and then loaded into the accounts payable
system if they matched. Our team also wrote FoxPro programs on the DEC VAX to
interface the invoice information to the FoxPro shipping system.
February 1991 - October 1991
Our team at S & S Systems wrote COBOL programs on a DEC VAX for a transformer manufacturer to accept
EDI purchase orders (850 transactions) and change orders (860
transactions). These transaction sets built data files that were input
to the manufacturer's order entry system for processing. S & S used SQL commands to
create views and procedures to produce reports and queries for users.
July 1990 - January 1991
Senior Consultant Andrew Sobey Jr. wrote
course material and taught classes for a local community college. Andrew's curriculum covered such topics as AS/400 command language (CL), Office/400, and RPG/400.
July 1990 - October 1991
The staff at S & S Systems performed CAD drafting for an electrical manufacturer. S & S employed four drafters to create electrical diagrams and drawings for the manufacturer.
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