Wednesday, February 08, 2006
Further computer problems
This time it's our work computer. It is our POS system, it is where we create work orders for our clients work. It does it all. We run a proprietary software program that is just amazing (for the most part). When a customer picks up their finished piece, we post the work order to an invoice and select the payment method and complete the transaction. Done. The end.
On Saturday, the system lost its mind. As I was off on Saturday, I received a call on my useless cell phone from my business partner (BP) asking if I had any problems with the computer on Friday. Nope, no major problems for me. Unfortunately, it wasn't so for BP. A customer picked up her finished pieces of art, and when BP went to post her work order to an invoice, it connected every work order that had never been posted before. Estimates, On Holds, Unfinished work. Everything. Nineteen pages later, her invoice was done. BP just looked at it with his eyes wide open. The customer looked at him and asked if everything was ok. He told her that as things stood, she owed us about $88,000. Needless to say, he had to do some manual work to figure out everything for her.
The problem remained that now every piece of work was listed as being posted to an invoice, but posted to some totally different customer and there was no way to repost it to the correct person. On top of that, everytime we see a work order is posted, it indicates to us that the invoice has been paid for. Grief all around.
We contacted the software company, and after a few conversations, a lot of digging in the brains of the software, and a few plans of attack, we were able to get to a list of all work orders and change "posted" to "not posted". There were about 400 work orders to change over. Luckily we had the invoice from Hell to use as a guide as to which work orders to change back. So a couple of hours later and all was well in our world again. WHEW!
Computers....gotta love 'em!
On Saturday, the system lost its mind. As I was off on Saturday, I received a call on my useless cell phone from my business partner (BP) asking if I had any problems with the computer on Friday. Nope, no major problems for me. Unfortunately, it wasn't so for BP. A customer picked up her finished pieces of art, and when BP went to post her work order to an invoice, it connected every work order that had never been posted before. Estimates, On Holds, Unfinished work. Everything. Nineteen pages later, her invoice was done. BP just looked at it with his eyes wide open. The customer looked at him and asked if everything was ok. He told her that as things stood, she owed us about $88,000. Needless to say, he had to do some manual work to figure out everything for her.
The problem remained that now every piece of work was listed as being posted to an invoice, but posted to some totally different customer and there was no way to repost it to the correct person. On top of that, everytime we see a work order is posted, it indicates to us that the invoice has been paid for. Grief all around.
We contacted the software company, and after a few conversations, a lot of digging in the brains of the software, and a few plans of attack, we were able to get to a list of all work orders and change "posted" to "not posted". There were about 400 work orders to change over. Luckily we had the invoice from Hell to use as a guide as to which work orders to change back. So a couple of hours later and all was well in our world again. WHEW!
Computers....gotta love 'em!
# posted by Dave @ 12:20 PM 
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POS to me = Piece of Shit, so I had to wrap my mind around the fact that you didn't mean that in this case. ;-)
Ya, I actually meant Point Of Sale, but you weren't that far off. This computer has its fair share of problems. The most annoying is that one in five times when I try to get on-line it will not connect, so I have to unplug our router and modem and wait a few minutes and then reconnect them and wait a few minutes. I tell you, this high speed phone connection blows goats. I'mthisclose to getting cable here at the shop.
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