The Menu System
Overview
The Publishers' Assistant menu system is always present at the top of your screen. Press the ALT key to activate the menu. Once you have activated the menu, you can use your arrow keys to move to the desired menu option. As you move through the menu system, the "Help Line" at the bottom of your screen will present you with helpful information about the menu option currently highlighted. Press ENTER to execute the option you have highlighted. Once you have activated the menu, you can also select a menu option directly by pressing the highlighted (or "Hot Key") character for the option.
To select a specific menu option directly (i.e. without first activating the menu bar), press and hold down the ALT key and press the highlighted character for the menu option desired. As you travel through the menu system, you will also see that several options can be activated directly by using the short-cut key combinations that appear next to the option in the menu. For example, CTRL+S will call up the System-Wide Options Screen from almost anywhere in the application. CTRL+A will bring forth the list of valid state abbreviations and their sales tax rates.
The system menu will change depending on the activity you are performing. For example when entering a new customer order, the menu will change to items that pertain to that activity. The bottom line of the screen will always contain helpful information for each menu and sub-menu option that is highlighted.
The main menu in Publishers' Assistant if defined for major business functions. Each functional area also contains a menu option for reports that pertain to that business function. The following sections outline the main menu options.
File
The File menu contains options to directly access the validation files, report definitions, system-wide options, and to exit the Publishers' Assistant for Windows application.
There are several "Validation Files" that you can edit. For example, you can update the list of valid states and their tax rates. A County tax rate system has been implemented as well. You can specify your own receipt types, courier services used for shipping, and of course, maintain your list of customer and marketing codes. Several of the validation file menu options have a sub-menu option to "Restore" the file to the values originally shipped with Publishers' Assistant.
You may tailor the behavior of Publishers' Assistant through a variety of user preferences made available through the System-Wide Options Screen.
The Report Definitions "Maintenance" option allows you to modify any of the report definitions throughout the Publishers' Assistant application. The Restore submenu option will restore the standard definitions that were shipped with Publishers' Assistant, but will attempt to save any changes you have made. The names of reports that indicate changes will be prefixed with "UDR:" which indicates a "User Defined Report". Note that this will NOT restore the original report or label forms. If you have made changes to the standard Publishers' Assistant report or label forms, you must reinstall in order to restore those forms. If you do so your changes will be overwritten. Whenever you make changes to a report or label form, it’s a good idea to save those changes to a new form file.
The File menu will often remain available when the remaining menu options change — such as when a transaction screen is active.
Sales
The sales menu will present you with several options all having to do with entering, processing, and printing customer orders, returns and general sales information. You may enter new orders, edit existing ones, process standing orders, or print off invoices that have been placed on the print batch. There are also several options for manipulating the print batch.
Finance
Customer payments ("Receipts") and payments you make to your vendors are made via the Finance menu. There are also several reporting menu options here for your financial reports and statements.
Inventory
Purchase orders and inventory corrections are found in this menu. Also, the screens that maintain data on the titles or items you sell are found here. You may prepare subscription mailings (which removes the periodicals from inventory) from this menu as well.
Marketing
Entering names and addresses into the mail list can be done here. There are also a variety of reports that help you get a handle on who are your best customers (by customer codes), which are your best selling titles, and which marketing strategies are producing the most sales.
There is also a "Scan Duplicate Contacts" utility in the marketing menu that will assist you in finding and eliminating duplicate mail list entries.
Tools
The Tools menu contains many of the administrative functions needed to maintain the Publishers' Assistant application. These include system maintenance functions like "Archival", "Data Integrity Tests", "Packing" the database, "Reindexing", and others.
There are also a number of useful utilities available through the Tools menu. For instance, there is a personal calendar, and an on-line calculator. You can capture information from the screen to paste it elsewhere — perhaps in a report. And you can define and store macros to create your own short-cuts to functions you often use.
Help
There are two Help menu options. The first calls forth this Windows help file which contains topics on the Publishers' Assistant for Windows application. The second option, "About Publishers' Assistant" will present you with useful information about the version of Publishers' Assistant you are running, and the location and size of your database.
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