Adding a Calculator to Cougar Mountain Software
My name is Brian Jennings, Director of Product Management and I wanted to show you how to add a calculator to Cougar Mountain Software. Sometimes it’s the little things that make the difference, and that’s what I think of when I consider the value of the Moffsoft FreeCalc™.
Accounting is largely about adding and subtracting which is one of the great things any accounting package does for you because it calculates all the math for you. However there are those situations in which doing simple math and/or checking with a calculator, is a great benefit to any number of accounting, inventory management, or point of sale scenarios. In fact, one of our new customers commented positively on the easy access to a calculator in a program he used previously, noting the weaknesses of using Microsoft’s built in calculator.
I did a quick search on the internet and came across Moffsoft FreeCalc™. This is a basic calculator with the one thing any accountant likely misses from most computer calculators —a ticker tape or history of the numbers entered. This reminded me of the Custom Menu that Cougar Mountain added to the software a few versions back.
Although it seems to be such a little thing, the feedback from the customer reaffirmed the value of something as simple a calculator, and after finding this free product, I thought I’d share it with all our customers.
Here’s how you can find it, go to www.moffsoft.com and download the free version of their calculator. If you like it and can benefit from the more advanced features you can always pay for an upgrade to a beefier version.
Once I downloaded the application I installed it on my computer. This is all elementary but the following steps will walk you through how to add this to the Custom Menu option in all our modules to make this tool readily available from within Cougar Mountain Software.
To start I opened Cougar Mountain Software and selected Define Custom Menus from the Options menu.
From there I entered the name of the product and then found the .exe for the program as shown below:
As soon as I made the first entry, I added it to each module so that it was accessible throughout the program. To simplify the process I “cut and paste” so that I didn’t need to re-type the description or navigate down to the .exe for each module since I could past the path from the first line into the Path: box. Once I was done it looked something like this:
I clicked OK to save the settings and now I can easily access and enjoy the benefits of this simple but useful product anywhere in Cougar Mountain Software!
Here is what it looks like in Accounts Payable:
Below is an example of what it might look like if you were entering a direct expense in Accounts Payable and knew the total cost for 5 items you were purchasing but needed the calculator to help get the exact Cost Per Unit needed to enter the line detail.
Brian
Product Development
November 19th, 2008 at 10:51 am
Is there a way to “feed” the calculator result into the CMS field?