xTupler #11 | November 2009
Dear Community —
Here in the U.S. we are about to take a couple days off to be with our families, eat turkey, and go shopping. That's right, this Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, has become the biggest shopping day of the year. We want to get in on a little of this action ourselves--don't miss our announcements about year-end training deals and half-off paper forms, below.
We're thankful for many things at xTuple, including the geniuses at Qt (Nokia) and the PostgreSQL database group who keep working to improve the components we use to build xTuple ERP. We're thankful for our customers who keep us in business and push us to add features and improvements. We're thankful for our partners who provide excellent on-site services all around the world. And we're thankful to our community, the hundreds of thousands of users who have downloaded PostBooks, and who hang around xTuple.org to discuss the software, share ideas, and contribute back their own innovations so that others can benefit from their efforts.
There has been a steady stream of community contributions lately, and we are excited to have the xTuple xChange, a place where we can make these packages available to the community. Be sure to visit the xChange, and read more about some specific packages below.
Read on for more exciting announcements, and thanks as always for your interest in xTuple!
Best regards,
BC Wilson
Director of Internet Communications
Year-end Training Promotions
From now through the end of December 2009, xTuple will be extending the following holiday cheer to the community.
- xTuple commercial customers: Send one student to the next "Intro to xTuple" training class, the week of January 18th, and bring another student, free. That's a savings of $1,500!
- All community members (including PostBooks users): Send one student to the January 18 "Intro" class, and your next class will be 50% off. (There's a Power User class the week of February 8.)
Isn't that what you REALLY wanted this year for the holidays?
All classes related to this promotion must be taken in calendar 2010. You can register and find more about the about the January class, and all of our training offerings, at http://www.xtuple.com/training/classes.
50% Off New Tax Forms Now Through January 29, 2010
- Personalized Checks personalized with your company's logo and information, pre-printed for use with xTuple ERP, all Editions.
- Pre-printed Form 1099s for printing the U.S. tax reports for miscellaneous vendor payments, directly from xTuple ERP, all Editions.
- Enter promo code P119C-182 at check out to receive 50% off tax form purchases.
To use the custom checks and 1099s, you'll need to get these new free report definitions from the xChange:
Free Webinar, December 2
If you'd like to learn more about xTuple ERP, please attend. We'll reserve time at the end of each demo for live questions and answers from registered attendees. If you'd like to attend, please pre-register now to help us prepare.
And remember, we also offer an extensive catalog of free training videos as well, all of which can be viewed on demand.
New xTensions in the xChange
Let's be honest, maintaining your contact list - in any application - can be a pain. It's easy to enter duplicates, where some information is associated with one version of the contact and not with the other. xProvare's Contact Merge solves this problem with powerdul tools to merge, purge, and selectively copy and maintain elements of multiple contacts in xTuple's CRM module.
xTuple's incident managment tools offer a great way to interact with your customers. The basic tool works well for most, but if you're a heavy user of CRM you'll want to take a look at the Advanced Incident Workbench, an xTension script for xTuple ERP that adds helpful options for filtering and sorting incidents. Use the categories and severity filters to help your customer care staff prioritize their work and resolve customer issues more quickly. And use color coding for an at-a-glace guide to current issue statuses.
And don't forget about the Executive Summary Dashboard, by Yellow Dog Consulting -a powerful and configurable tool for viewing all your critical business metrics on a single screen.
Community Corner
Superstar U.K. community member Julian Standring, winner of the Dell NetBook in our Bug Derby earlier this year, has been hard at work on extensions for xTuple ERP. We're adding his contributions to the xChange as free downloads as quickly as we can approve them. For instance:
- Purchase Order Progress Tracking, a tool for following a purchase order through an approval process.!
FAQ (Fully Answered Questions)
Steve Buttgereit, the xTuple partner profiled in the segment below, is quickly gaining a reputation for the depth and breadth of his responses to questions on the forums. Check out:
- How to set up PostBooks on a secure server connection.
- How to set up PostBooks for a company that offers services, rather than goods for sale.
Thanks to Steve, Julian, and the many many others who contribute to the growth and development of the xTuple online community every day!
Employee Showcase
Implementing an ERP system is serious business. It takes an experienced hand to guide a company through setting up data, mapping existing business processes to the system, and all the tasks associated with getting started with ERP. Carolyn Callaham is the woman with the answers.
Carolyn joined xTuple in 2007 and has helped over 100 customers get xTuple ERP up and running. She works on site and remotely to anticipate problems before they can interfere with a successful implementation.
Here's April Kennedy, purchasing manager from Cordeck, a supplier to the construction trade: "Carolyn was energetic, aggressive and eager to provide us with excellent service while leading us through the implementation process. We couldn't have done it without her!" You can stop blushing now, Carolyn. We know it's true.
Carolyn will take you to school in nearly any board game. On lunch breaks, she terrorizes the office with her ferocious Boggle skills, and outside of work she and her family engage in epic Rummikub matches.
Partner Showcase
Steven C. Buttgereit - Founder, Muse Systems
If you've spent any time on the xTuple forums you probably already know this month's featured partner. Steve Buttgereit, is the founder of Muse Systems based in San Francisco, CA. Steve founded Muse Systems with the belief that open source technologies have primed the business application market for a revolution that will bring more effective solutions to a broader customer base, and do it for significantly less cost.
xTuple ERP is a great example of this shift. Muse Systems adopted xTuple as a key technology due to its strengths as a business application as well as a platform well suited for building extensions and derivative products. When he's not helping other users on the forums, Steve supports users of both the PostBooks and commercial Editions of xTuple ERP in the greater Bay Area.
Steve's formal education was in music composition at both the Berklee College of Music and the University of Utah, and he has performed professionally in venues ranging from cathedrals in Boston to smoky bars in the wilds of Wyoming. In his spare time he enjoys going to amusement parks with his wife Shirley, sailing, and diving into physics/astronomy, history, and philosophy.