Members of all SIGs are able to view and vote on the MBE's for 2002-Q3 lists for each SIG are available on the SIGs web page in the Members Club, and provision has been made to submit your votes online. Members who vote this way will NOT get an acknowledgement as with bookings for meetings - your votes will however be counted and the results published.

• Commodity codes and country of origin need to be entered at the product creation stage using the EC details option of the Product Set up screen (full stock details)
• Methods of ensuring that EC details are completed include pop up boxes and making the completion of the relevant fields mandatory.
• It is also worth considering converting unused fields on the full stock details set up screen to be used as Customs Commodity codes and Country of Origin entry lines. It is then easier to make their completion mandatory.
• It is not compulsory to use Customs exchange rates. This avoids a problem with exchange differences at the reporting and reconciliation stage.
• Companies do not use the standard Sage Intrastat reports but use reporting tools to produce Intrastat reports.
• FOC invoices are picked up as part of the reporting procedure and a value is inserted for Customs purposes

• Most members thought that the Euro was just another currency.
• Most members set up new accounts for customers and suppliers when they converted to Euro.
• Some members had successfully converted accounts using the currency conversion option. This removed the need for separate accounts.
• Some members had experienced problems with currency differences on purchase ledger payments where the currency difference was calculated by simply deducting £ from €. This was normally solved by new binaries.

NEXT BREAKOUT SESSION - Topics for the June ISTUG meeting were agreed as follows.
- Maximising User Licenses (Martyn Walmsley)
- Archiving
- Interfacing General aspects
- Systems Performance
A vote will be taken at the beginning of the breakout session to decide which topics are discussed.

MSIG - A minor gathering took place on 6/3/02 apologies had been received from John Landreth who had a throat infection and was unable to attend - we hope he is now better. There was nothing major to report. Go to the MSIG web page.

RSIG - Vicky Wilson did a canvass for members for this new SIG and came away with a good set of names to get this fledgling SIG off to a good start - any other prospective members should contact the ISTUG help Desk or email istug@aol.com

Andy Birch from Sage Enterprise Solutions gave a presentation on this subject, his presentation can be viewed in the Members Club area of the ISTUG web site - unlike with previous presentations Andy has produced a set of notes attached to each slide explaining in more detail the content.

In order to read the notes you will need to download the PowerPoint presentation from the Members Club - you would be well advised to do so as the information is well worth reading. Find out all about Version 5.0 and what it has in terms of new functionality, and possible release dates.

As part of his presentation Andy Birch gave us an update on the MBE program, listing the status of all the MBE's previously defined as not delivered. Many of these have moved into the delivered status, others have moved forward to Work in Progress, and there are additions.

This information has been compiled into a full listing which is now available for viewing online from any of the SIG pages in the ISTUG Members Club web site. View the MBE List online.
Go to the DSIG web page.
Go to the FSIG web page.
Go to the MSIG web page.

The knowledge base is still growing thanks to members asking questions and others supplying the answers, the depth and breadth of product knowledge out there amongst our members is quite staggering.

We have now added Technology Blocks into this area that will save companies a lot of time and energy looking for information around defined technologies. We will be looking to extend this information as we gather more information. Refer to the previous article about Technology Blocks. Look at Technology Blocks online.

All the presentations from the March Meeting and the AGM in December can be viewed online from the News Page - the presentations from the March Meeting have been created in a slightly larger format. A new addition is the text pages from the SES Presentation by Andy Birch.

This newsletter along with the December newsletter are available as online views with dynamic links to related data, and of course are in full colour.