AMWAY CONTROL SYSTEM STR Review This program is dedicated to Amway =============================== COMPUTER ORDER PLUS ST ====================== by James Nolan So, you're sitting at home in your office on order night when the phone rings. As you answer it and find out who the distributor or customer is, you bring up their record on the computer and start entering their order. When you're done, you print out a copy with all the totals - PV, BV, and cost. All of this is done WITHOUT filling out a BA1 or SA1. Next you start adding this to your group order. Then the phone rings again... Rarely does a program package come along that can really get someone excited and keep them that way. Then after prolonged use, the same program prompts the user to keep asking himself while giggling, "How did I ever survive without this jewel?" These are the feelings I experienced while using the fine product "COMPUTER ORDER PLUS ST" written by Robert Re of Pacifica, California. This program is strictly dedicated to Amway distributors who are building a multi-level marketing business. Yes, I said AMWAY, the 3.2 billion dollar MLM giant out of Ada, Michigan. So if you're not involved in the best of two worlds, meaning "Power Without the Price" teamed with the time leveraging/income diversifying advantages the Amway opportunity provides, this article really may not light your fire. If, however, you are one of those rare networking entrepreneurs with an Atari ST looking for a way to speed up your business, this is IT! If you've been considering buying the networking software from Amway and run- ning it in the IBM mode, hold your keyboard until you've checked this one out. The program, comes on 2 disks with complete docs in a handsome binder. It is readily evident that a lot of time and effort went into making the docs simple and easy to read and follow. the same conscientious effort is evident in the development of the program. It's hard to explain in detail all of the great features that this program has to offer but I will touch lightly on most of them. C.O.P. ST is very user friendly. It can be installed on the hard drive or run from floppies as program and data disks. If you're using disk drives, C.O.P. ST will prompt you when to change data disks. It will also number the disks itself to ensure the right one is in use. I tested the program on a monochrome system but it also runs in medium resolution and allows you to set the colors for each of the different screens within the program. An especially nice feature is the security code access. This is helpful if the system is set up in a warehouse environment. The code can be changed or bypassed. From what I can see, anything you could do before can now be done with the program (and much faster). This includes but is not limited to: generation of orders, optional inventory control, back order tracking, catalog updating, performance bonus statements, year end reports, add/delete new distributors, "family trees", and sort & print orders ac- cepted by the RDCs. There are separate programs for database utilities, generating year end reports and for ordering from the Personal Shoppers catalog. The data utility module allows you to create new or fix old databases. With it you can move, copy or merge different groups in your network. This is extremely useful when your group reaches close to 1000 distributors and you want to set different databases for each leg. I really like this feature because as your business grows, the software doesn't slow you down. Year end reports information such as group or in- dividual bonuses, PV/BV totals, orders and sales tax, bonuses received and total cost PV/BV totals are generated giving you some excellent tax stats for your IRS returns. You shouldn't rely solely on these reports for your tax return but it can help tremendously. You will also be able to deter- mine if you need to submit a 1099 form for any of your distributors. At present, the Personal Shoppers module only contains items handled by the RDCs but other items can be added up to a total of 2000. Other features of C.O.P. ST include single unit pricing, editable printer codes from within the program, the ability to jump between functions without exiting the program - ie. jump out of a distributor's order screen to update an item in the catalog and then back again, auto creation of folders for new months, ghosting of unusable options in the pull down menus, saving of payment info right on the SA1 (date & check#) and setting of state sales tax and shipping charges. You can even set variable char- ges on retail for your customers as % increase, % decrease or flat rates. Another nice speed feature used throughout the program is the use of ALT keys for various functions such as catalog item find, printing, sor- ting orders, totals, RDC credits, back order marking and SCO charges. That's all we'll cover this issue. Next time we'll go more in depth into the main program and all of its abilities. "COMPUTER ORDER PLUS ST" written by Robert Re 501 Ebken St. Pacifica, California 94044 _____________________________________________________________