PC Spray Manual

PC Spray Instruction Manual

Version 3.1

AgSync, Inc., 29769 CR 40 Wakarusa, IN 46573

1-800-437-5319 •

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Features 3

System Requirements 4

Getting Started 5

Basic Concepts 5

Introduction

PC Spray is a Windows based program designed to organize and simplify common tasks associated with running your aerial application business in ways to help you operate your business more efficiently. We have worked to produce a program that is intuitive and easy to use in order to minimize the learning curve, yet powerful and flexible enough to address your specific needs. If you are familiar with other Windows based programs, then becoming proficient with PC Spray should be a simple and painless process.

PC Spray makes extensive use of type ahead and drag & drop functions to minimize keystrokes and to make entering or recovering information extremely fast.

Type Ahead?

In many of the places where you are required to enter information, as soon as you type the first letter it is compared to a list of existing information. The first item of the list automatically fills in the field for you. The list is narrowed down as you continue to type. As soon as you see the item you are looking for, simply tab out of the field. In many cases two or three keystrokes will take you to the item you are looking for.

Getting Help

The screens in PC Spray are referred to as forms and the form you are working in is referred to as the active form. Pressing the F1 Key will take you to the help for the active form.

So What does it Do?

The basic functions of PC Spray are as follows:

Customers/Fields

The customer rolodex stores information about all your customers. If your customer list is stored in a file that can be output to a common standard database format (Microsoft Access, Comma Separated Text, Tab Separated Text etc.), Icarus Software can convert your file to the format compatible with PC Spray.

The Field Manager and map creation and editing functions organize information about the customer's application sites and are accessible through this component.

Chemical Database

The chemical database stores particulars about the chemical you apply. Information such as the units they are purchased in, the units they are sold in, and how much you want to charge for the product.

Recording Sales Information

When you record the sale of a product or application job the information is recorded on a work order. The transaction can either be recorded as a "Spray Job" for application or a "Counter Sale" for someone that comes to you for a product only.

Billing Sales

When a work order has been completed it is billed. Any splits are applied at this time. PC Spray allows you to split application and material separately, each up to ten ways using decimals or fractions. If you wish to alter work order or splits information after a work order has already been billed, simply make your changes and re-bill the work order. If you delete a work order, all billing information associated with the work order is deleted as well.

Producing Invoices

The invoice process involves a few simple steps to produce finished invoices you send out to your customers. The program searches for billed work orders that have not yet been invoiced and prompts you to assign the date you want

to appear on your invoices. The work orders are then assigned to an invoice and printed. This enables you to fit

several work orders on one invoice page, typically 4 to 6 depending on the complexity of the work order (number of products and so forth).

Recording Payments

As payments arrive they are recorded on the payments form. Type in the check information and simply drag it to the invoice and work order being paid. Credits, debits, discounts and service charges are also recorded on this form, more about these items later.

Generating Reports

The reports form enables you to generate over 60 reports that fall broadly into two groups:

Financial Reports: Items such as Aging, Statements, Credits/Debits, Receivables, Payments, Pilot Wages, etc. Some of these provide information that is sent to the customer, and some of them provide information that can either be used in your ledger or is important to know.

Business Reports: A number of reports, many of them graphical, that provide information about the functioning of your business.

Reports can be exported to a variety of formats including Access, Excel, Word, HTML or character separated text.

Keeping Track Of Products

Products are recorded as they are received from or returned to the vendors. Products are subtracted from your inventory as they are sold or applied, and added back to your inventory when returned by a customer.

Writing Letters

Form letters or labels can be produced for selected groups of customers using a variety of selection criteria.

Features

· Simple interface.

· Fast data input.

· Duplicate work order feature fills in most of the information for you when doing a lot of one type of work.

· Individually split application and product billing up to ten ways each. Use fractions or percent.

· Remembers split information for previously treated fields.

· Multiple work orders per invoice or single work order per invoice.

· Elect to pay your pilots a percentage of application, or individually specify a wage for each pilot and type of work.

· Simple drag and drop entry of payments received.

· Report library of over 80 different reports, many graphical, lets you see your business in new ways.

· Generate Restricted Use Pesticide reports.

· Track your program chemical use. Every chemical can be a member of multiple programs.

· Ability to give incentive discounts to promote prompt payment. Discount product, application or both.

· Assign and manage service charges on past due work.

· Individually assign customer eligibility for discounts and service charges.

· Assign surcharges to application work.

· Point of sale option allows you to create invoices "on the fly" for walk in customers.

· Assign sales tax by individual product, customer and location.

· Icarus Software can customize your program with your business logo or special reports.

· Create letters or labels based on information you specify.

· Tracks inventory. See what products you have on hand at the click of a button.

· Export any report to a number of formats including Word, Excel, character separated text or HTML.

· Calculates Loads

· Smart Splits: Remembers your customer splits.

· Surcharges: Assign surcharges or ferry fees to application work.

· Automatic backup to local drive on program exit.

New for 3.0!

· Graphic maps. Scan or create and edit maps using the custom PC Spray map editor.

· Enhanced data backup and file recovery using the new Recovery Wizard.

· Field management allows you to edit and store field information that can be automatically inserted into work orders.

· Custom discount rates by customer.

· Updated Grid and Report engines to increase speed and flexibility.

· Enhanced Letters. Now supports an unlimited number of letters and Rich Text Formatting.

New for 2013

· QuickBooks interface

System Requirements

Minimum System Requirements

CPU: Pentium 400 Mhz

RAM: 128 MB

Video Adaptor: 1024 X 768 @ 256 color

Operating System

Windows 98 , ME or XP

The above specifications are practical minimums.

*Run PC Spray in compatibility mode in later Windows versions

System Recommendations

CPU: Pentium 1 Ghz

RAM: 256 MB

17" Monitor

Video Adaptor: 1024 X 768 @ 16 bit color

The program will display at a monitor resolution of 800 X 600 but will be much easier to work with at a resolution of 1024 X 768 or higher.

Although it is not strictly necessary, it is highly desirable to have the computer on which PC Spray resides configured to connect to the internet and to be able to send and receive email.

Installation of PC Spray will initially require approximately 30 megabytes of free disk space.

Printer

Any quality Laser or Ink jet printer designed for business use should work fine.

Some customers are using dot-matrix printers but this is generally not supported.

There is a formatting issue with certain models of Okidata printers.

Material that is sent to the customer is formatted to be folded into thirds and used with a #10 window envelope (left side window).

Getting Started

Basic Concepts

Databases

A database is merely a collection of information in your computer. PC Spray uses what is called a "relational database" design in which the information is organized in groups called tables that are related to each other. The information in a table that deals with a particular item is referred to as a record. For instance, in a customer table all of the information that pertains to a single customer would be the record for that customer. Records are further divided into fields. A field is the smallest unit of information in the database, for example, the Zip Code in the customer record would be a field.

PC Spray uses three relational databases which are then related together. The first database will be named whatever you decide to name it and contains information on all of your business transactions. This is done so that it is unnecessary to redundantly store infrequently changed information with every instance of your business database, thus minimizing file size for backups or archives, and also to eliminate the need to copy or import the same information every time you create a new database.

While you can make as many business databases as you want (if, for instance you have multiple businesses), we recommend creating and using one business database for each year of operation.

The second database will always be named donotdel.mdb and resides in the data sub-folder of the installation directory. It has that name because we are rather hoping that you do not delete it. donotdel.mdb contains information that is not subject to frequent changes. It has the chemical database, customer rolodex, pilot information and most of the information you will set up in your program preferences.

The third database is named fields.mdb and also resides in the data sub-folder of the installation directory. This database contains application area data and splits information relative to that area.

One more database you might notice is empty.mdb. Empty.mdb contains the complete business database structure, but has no records. When you create a new database the program finds this file then saves a copy of this file with whatever name you assign. Obviously if you delete empty.mdb you will be unable to create a new database.

The Data Control

While working with many of the forms in PC Spray you are interacting with the database. The data control enables you to navigate sequentially through a group of records. (TIP: While in the work order form hold the Alt Key down and press the < or > keys to cycle through the records. This will keep your hands on the keyboard when entering work orders)

Grids

PC Spray contains a number of grids. Think of a grid as a sort of window directly into your database. Information entered into the grid is updated into the database. New information is entered into the bottom row with the asterisk at the left. Information in many cases can be edited in the grid. A grid records information to the database when:

1. You select the Update, Apply or OK Button if available.

2. You move off of the row in which you edited the information by clicking on a different row of the grid.

Deleting a record from a grid is a three step process.

1. You click into a field in the record you want to delete (this is called giving the grid focus)

2. You click on the gray button at the left of the row, highlighting the row.

3. You hit the delete key.

More On Grids

Grids are used at various places in the program and a basic understanding of what they do and how to manipulate them is important to running the program. Grids are quite simple really. Think of them as windows in the program through which you are looking at your data. The data is arranged in records, which are rows in the grid, and fields, which are the columns. The current record (the one you are dealing with) is indicated by a little arrowhead on the small buttons to the left of all the rows.

The center row in this example is the current row. You can change the current row by clicking another row in the grid (not the little button on the left).

If you do click on the little button on the left side of the row you will select the row.

You can see that the entire row is highlighted (selected). The difference between the row being current and selected is not very big except in the case of editing a value (where the specific field must be highlighted) and deleting a record (for which the entire row must be highlighted.