The first quarter of the year has produced over a dozen releases of GrowPoint.  Here is a summary of the major changes and features that we have added.  

Payroll

January always proves to be a challenge for payroll users to meet government deadlines with W2’s, 1099’s, and ACA reporting of the 1095/1094 forms. The forms within the system for the 941, 943, W4 and I-9 were all updated to the new year. This year we were prepared for the new 1099 NEC (Non-employee Compensation) form as well as the requirements for reporting the FFCRA wages and leave on the W2.  We added the Gross Wages and Hours Summary report in payroll, designed to meet the needs for verification for the Payroll Protection Program Forgiveness – a program that has been extended till May 31^st of this year.  Check for whether you are eligible for additional funds here Paycheck Protection Program from the SBA.   Our report lists the gross wages and hours worked for a date range by employee and includes the last 4 digits of their SSN for IRS verification.  There is an option for detail or summary by employee.  Most lending institutions are accepting it.  There is also an option for export to Excel should you need to modify it.  

Accounts Receivable

It’s a busy time of year for our growers which keeps us busy with custom enhancements for reports, pull slips, invoices, and custom documents requested by our users to make the shipping season go smoothly.  

New Features

Inside GrowPoint, we’ve added new features as well to accommodate credit card processing by instituting “cash credits” through the Enter Credit screen and Refund Credits screen.  If a customer pays by credit card and later you find that you need to refund that customer all or part of their payment, you may now simply put in a credit to the cash account on the credit screen and GrowPoint, knowing that it is linked to a checkbook, will create a “cash credit” record in the Bank Deposit file.  This allows for reconciliation with a credit card daily settlement slip that includes chargebacks and carries over to the Check Reconciliation screen so that now a user can match the daily settlements appearing on their bank statement with the Bank Deposits.  The Cash Credits also now appear on the Cash Receipts Journal and the AR posting summary shows the net deposit to cash if refunds were involved. You can still use the original method of refunding credits by running them through Accounts Payable and cutting a check.  However, if your transactions all transpire through your credit card machine, this allows for an easier reversal.

Improvements

We have made some changes to how the credit memos display on the search grid by omitting the posted credits and payments as we do on the sales order grid.  The Enter Payments screen will now retain the first date you enter so that you can easily batch your payments for the same day if you’d like.

The Sales Order Utility button in the lower right-hand corner of the Sales Order screen has additional options to allow you to speed up the selection of what is ready to post. If you have not incorporated this screen into the management of shipping multiple orders, look again.  We have added features that allow you to rapidly change a group of orders to be allocated, shipped and ready to post, or to rapidly change the choices you have already made.

Inventory

We’ve included some suggestions from our users such as the Quick Item Reference screen now includes the general memo and the Item Size has been added to the Fast Entry grid in the Purchase Order screen.  Customized inventory needs have been handled as well on a customer by customer basis. 

Accounts Payable/Purchase Order

The 1099 for magnetic media submission was added for the NEC Form.  We now display our transaction number in the Calculate Checks grid for choosing payments, the Purchase Order report was expanded to more digits, and there is a new 1099 Review report which allows you to review the 1099’s that the system will print so that you can flag corrections that need to be made before printing on your forms.   The “On Order” amounts for PO have been added to the Add Item on the Sales Order.

It has been another busy first quarter in which we continue to make advancements in GrowPoint.  Contact your representative for an update if you see some new features that you would like to use or a sales representative if you’d like to join the GrowPoint family of users.