A good discussion between Steve and Sean talking about gift cards and options for training, pitching, and selling just that small feature. Sean has been reaching out to some of our existing clients to see if they need any help setting those things up. I'm hoping to help them out by building a special little page to help new clients just use gift cards. Basically, a mini homepage for quick gift card actions.

Cory joined and was asking about recipe/builds and maybe making some sort of placeholder (variable) recipe/build process. We ended up talking about options to duplicate recipes. At first, we were just talking about the main recipe details and such. It then turned into a full-on duplicate recipe option with options for both main ingredients, outputs, line items, and the main recipe details. Basically, a bulk edit tool for recipes and recipe line items.

Cory and Steve then switched over and were talking about enterprise systems and flow of data from top down and what pieces are done and what ones are not yet done or finished. We are heading in that direction. After that, Cory and Sean were talking about helping out corporations that are doing more and more manufacturing.

Recording notes from the last few days (2/23 to 2/28). Helping Sean with some recipe, build and sell, training with hidden line items and what not.

Bryan and I looking over his rostering settings for elements of time and the horizontal time view page. He's really close to getting all of the advanced rostering stuff (shifts - day, swing, and grave) finished up. We will most likely finalize things tomorrow and push it up. While he was fixing a few things, I was doing some prep work for a meeting later today. We are going to have a potential adilas intern build us a small sub website for a topic of interest. Eventually, that sub web site will point people to the main adilas.biz website. That's the plan right now.

Meeting with Hamid Karbasi, new adilas intern. He will be building a small web site on the topic of the "business zipper" and how we came up with that analogy. Hamid was referred to us by Russell Moore. They had worked together as student and teacher at Bridgerland, in the web development department. Anyways, we got on a Zoom meeting and started going over things. We did a small get to know you session. We then switched over to a small about us and where we came from orientation. I did a light intro into adilas.

We then talked about a small assignment to build a billboard site for the business zipper domain (businesszipper.com). As of right now (3/1/23) it is pointed to the main adilas.biz website. Our goal is to create a new mini site or billboard site (think of a billboard or sign as you are driving down the road that pointed you to something else). In Hamid's words, "all roads lead to adilas". I thought that was good and fun.

We have a number of other domains that we may work on in the future. All of them will be billboard sites or mini sites that point to adilas.biz or a feature or concept within the adilas network/family. We made a small plan and then I gave Hamid a number of resources, info, links, and such. We will get back together in the next couple of weeks to see how things are going.

Talking about data uploads and combing data and other prep work for clients. Steve and Sean have some data uploads that need to be done here in the next few days/weeks. Looking over the chooser pages that John is working on (new look and feel stuff).

Wayne joined the meeting and we did a couple hour work session together. He was showing me some stuff on the Google Workspace and email settings. We were going over SMTP, relay services, and app passwords. We changed the payment options for the Google Workspace account. We then flipped over to a number of other topics. Here are some of my other notes.

- We looked at session values and setting up both application and session values and variables on the server. We talked about a session object manager of sorts. This also includes the main adilas.biz website, shop (ecommerce), web (API sockets), and other public sites. We were thinking of having one session manager object and then passing in special flags based on what section(s) the user/client is using. It may vary or may include a number of different things, at the same time. We talked about sub classes within the session scope or session manager.

- Looking at SQL table joins and going over some options for inner joins, syntax, and converting our older code into different formats. Our goal is to make some of the joins tighter, yet still maintain the agile or flexible interface that we currently have. This is part of the datasource project (splitting up the databases and also being able to combine the databases, if needed).

- We talked a lot about UUID's and how this sometimes slows things down. As a thought, we may just use this (UUID's) on the payee/vendor tables. We spent some time talking about the global id numbers for payees (users and vendors). This lead to a discussion on off coding (altering our current code) to use a combo primary key vs a single auto generated primary key. We went over a number of scenarios and talked through things. We are putting the datasource project at $30K-$60K based on what we are seeing.

- We jumped backed more into session stuff and looking at errors that are undefined in session scope (variables that are used in heads and tops but don't exist in certain situations. We would like to create a master list of all session variables and what their defaults are. If we do this, we will be able to code against things better and really be able to push heavily on the know values. As a side note, we do have some pages that only create session values if a certain task or button is clicked. The code there will need to be changes to check for some other value (is it valid or not). If we do this, it should make our code more simple and more usable and more reliable. That will help.

- Consistency, and always setting things to a known state. Creating that central one-to-many type object.

- Dealing with session values, new rules, and new functions - we don't have to do everything in one swipe. We could do one variable, one page, one function at a time. Once we get it lined out (basically outlining the logic, flow, and template type mentality), we could hand it over to one of our other developers who likes to do processes over and over again. Basically, using our super skilled folk to build it out, then have our lower skilled folks help us push it to all pages and sections. We then would need to oversee things and delegate the tasks to our guys and gals.

Good meeting, making progress!

Work session with Bryan. Standardizing payroll settings. He is going to do some clean-up at Cory's request. We then switched over to advanced rostering and horizontal time view changes and settings. Merged in code and resolved a few conflicts. Testing and working on the demo sites.

Great phone call with Steve. We were talking about direction, options, and how to push the ball to the next level. We talked sales, staff, developers, projects, MVP, plans, adilas jellyfish model, value add-on core model, adilas cafe, adilas marketplace, and adilas university. Tons of different topics. We talked about raising prices, raising funds, selling percentage shares of adilas, and how to help make things smoother and smoother. Who is going to manage what and how to best define certain roles, jobs, and tasks. Great conversation and making progress.

Here are some other random notes:

- Client acquisition costs - Where are they at? Do we fully know or does it change from client to client?

- Increasing development or decreasing development?

- MVP's - minimal viable products and minimal viable plans and minimal viable persons

- Possibly selling up to 51% of adilas percentages and then reinvesting strategically in projects and pieces that we want and/or really need. Plan it all out and then push on what we want.

- As a side note, we went in a number of circles - ok, let's do this... ok, maybe we should do this..., no, let's do this... - next thing you know, you are back where you started. We did this over and over again. The funny thing is, we didn't come up with the same exact plans every time. That means that there is more than one option out there.

- Trying to work the long plan and long play

Aspen got with me and was pitching her ideas on a presentation for world building and trying to get buy in on that subject and topic. She showed me a small PowerPoint slide show (just roughed in) but it had some good stuff. It still needs a lot of work but getting there. We also talked about co-ownership inside of adilas and options there for her as we go throughout this year.

Sean was reporting to Steve about a client meeting and how they (the clients) weren't wanting to do things (prep work or setup). They just wanted it to read their minds and just do it (whatever the task was). Silly, silly. Along those lines, you can see how AI (artificial intelligence) and easy presets would really help things out. You still have to play the game, but maybe helping to make it easier.

Going along with the topic above, they were hoping that it would do multiple tasks at once. For example, bring in inventory, price it, track it, and sell it back out to a single client in one quick process vs the normal processes or tasks. We can do some of that, we just need to know that that is the goal.

Steve and Sean were talking about trailer rentals and tracking those through the system. They are going to get with Shari O. and go over things. While they were talking, I was reading emails and trying to fix a small bug on some formatted dates and times for a custom report.

Shari O. joined the meeting and her and I and Sean did a small training session on using a built-in percentage mark-up tool. We did mark-ups, saleprices, and percentage fees in the cart. We did some light training on existing tools and features. We have a client that needs to charge a credit card processing fee (be able to pass it on to the customer). I showed them the percentage calculators and tools on the add item to cart button. It totally calculates a percentage based on the cart or other given amount. We went through a few examples.

Some of our customers really fight against doing the work that is required to really make things great and really make things work. The tools are there, but the chainsaw doesn't cut the wood by itself.

Cory was checking in on projects, bugs, and what not. She had a list, and we went through things. We talked about some quotes and numbers for a client dashboard. We need to get to the duplicate recipe project for Kelly. We set a date for the 15th of this month to be finished with that project. We scheduled some time and now we just need to do it.

We spent some time looking at a client's data. Small little fix and trying to help a client with their financials. They had some bad costs of goods sold that didn't have a real backing (they plugged the numbers) and thus it was throwing off the balance sheet.

At the end, Cory was saying that she is trying to help support me and the other developers on our projects and time lines. That is awesome. Sometimes (often) we need the help.

Meeting with Bryan and going over some quick fixes that we had to do this morning on some date/time formatting. Small review. Next, he had done some clean-up on the employee and employer withholding settings for payroll that were launched a few days ago. We pushed up the new code and Bryan ran some update scripts to update the new settings for all corporations.

While Bryan was running the update scripts, I was doing some emails. We then pushed up some new code for Bryan's project management stuff. This is a small custom page that he runs all of his stuff (projects) on.

We spent the last hour looking at time, scheduling, and web availability settings. We did some light review and planned another meeting for tomorrow. Planning the next steps to help with scheduling, rentals, and making internal and online reservations.

Emails, research, and recording notes for entries between 3/1/23 and 3/6/23.

One huge advantage of our system is the visibility and transparency of who does what inside the system. If we don't have it, we could easily add it. We currently have tons of histories, log notes, historical data, and data broken into tons of small transactions, all being monitored and recorded in the background. That is awesome.

The sales guys are gearing up to help sell gift cards. Sean and Michael have been pitching some of our existing clients to see if they could help them get started, for some practice runs (doing gift cards and gift card setup).

As part of the sales meeting, Steve asked me if I had any sales ideas. We started getting into a small pitch of where I think things need to go. Basically, a pitch of our pitch (parts of the adilas master plan). Nothing is in stone, but I had been thinking about some ideas and options over the weekend. I pitched the idea of maybe selling some percentages of adilas in order to raise some money. We are shooting for 2 million and basing a budget off of that. As we were talking, Steve was liking what he was hearing, but he also had some hard or tough questions. I wrote a number of these questions down in a Word Doc that I have been working on, but some of them dealt with things like client acquisition costs, life expectancy for clients, what do our clients really like and need (MVP stuff), and how can we roll things out in packages or make the process smoother? How do we get paid back? What are the timelines? What is the ROI (return on investment)? And other great questions. Good discussion.

Eventually, Steve had to bail out and jump on another call/meeting. He wanted to stay but had to go. He told us to keep planning things out. Sean, Michael, and I kept going, talking and laying out the basic pieces of the plan and/or pitch. It's not ready yet, but we want to build and make our own pitch deck (files, assets, and a presentation) for potential investors and co-owners.

As we were talking and drawing things out, Sean said that he heard this from one of our clients - "You (meaning adilas) are sitting on a gold mine." - Renee Grossman - "You just need to finish it!" - Meaning we have a great thing going and being developed. It just needs to be taken to the next level and fully get the i's dotted and the t's crossed. This comment of "You've just got to finish it" inspired some more discussion on helping people catch and believe the vision of what we have and where we are going.

I was giving the analogy of the Death Star from Star Wars and how it was mostly a work in progress but it finished enough to give you the vision of what it could be. I realize that not everybody likes Star Wars, but I liked the analogy. We went through a number of drawings, light sketches and talking about options. I had a fun time, and the guys were chiming in and having fun as well. Basically, I was trying to pitch them on the adilas master plan and recruit their help in building it out further.

Just for fun... I added a small Star Wars graphic that I modified on 3/13/23 to this element of time, just for fun. See attached.

Small pitch to the guys and gals of what we are planning. I did a small recap of our last sales meeting and went over a few ideas and options. The first two pieces of the plan are the adilas jellyfish model and the value add-on core model. Just trying to keep all of the players up to date and in the loop. Even though it's not done and fully ready yet.

We flipped over to server stuff and going over servers, bugs, questions, and what not. Cory had a list of questions to follow-up about. Wayne was telling Cory about new ways of building and checking objects and memory objects. We went over some options for testing code on data 5 and the value of both data and documentation. Cory asked about a few other client requests. One of the last topics was - Being able to finish and get the projects across the finish line.

For me, I really want to build the value add-on core graphic in put it in the teaching photo gallery. I have to keep drawing it over and over again, and it doesn't really show the whole vision of where we are headed yet. I'll get there.

Working with Bryan on planning for scheduling stuff. I showed him a small pitch on what I showed the guys earlier in our sales meeting. We then flipped over and did a good session on the time settings and scheduling stuff. We were looking at reservations and what else we have already built. So far, we have a fully functional one-to-many assignments that can be attached to reoccurring events (similar to the bike shuttle company). We can do a one-to-many assignment for unique events (similar to what we built out for ski area and their special events). The next major round will be dealing with single events and flow.

We talked a lot about settings, and even reverse settings (what don't you want to schedule may be less than what you want to schedule). We were talking about booking nights, booking days, timeslots, and individual appointments. We got into talks and discussions about showing calendars with availability, restrictions, and taken dates and time. We talked about web availability layers and other calendar layers and ideas.

Bryan is going to build out a small scratch file using the existing date-picker and see if we could use that widget to show availability without having to build the whole thing on our own. We will feed it (the date-picker calendar) with real data, but if it can help us show available and unavailable dates, that would be huge. We will build out a quick scratch file to test things out with hardcoded data and dates before we fully build it into the ecommerce page flow.

One of the last topics was talking about getting data both in and out of the database. This is where the forethought and layering of the calendar comes in. Thinking in database language, what would the SQL (queries) look like to figure out what is taken vs what is available vs what is potentially available (maybe in flux or being modified)? Being able to go backwards and forwards from a known date range or timeslot and figure things out. Maybe even on a multiple or over multiple layers, locations, persons, places, or things. It could get a little interesting.

Notes from meeting with HG, KW and SB on 3.7.23:

Has some redirects that aren’t user friendly. 

1. When you sign in, take to the main order or have shop home more prevalent. ** Put a setting to skip the first page. Take you right to the category page. **You have successfully signed in.
   
2. Add item to the cart, should allow you to keep shopping instead of taking you to the cart. 

   3. Setting to show/hide the display mode. Don’t need to show it.

   4. Can’t sort and prioritize by the item. ie. HG first, then Green Dot as it is alpha-numeric.

**Steve talked about icon app for phone. Michael is interested in this. Will need to add the email templates to HG.

**Steve talked about tiered selections. Ex. Sell burrito, choose what cheese they want to add.
Talked about Leafly integration. There will be some changes in how tiered pricing is set up.  We will need to make sure HG’s settings are all good when the new code comes into place.

You’ll be able to have 10 tiers and name it what you want. It can have a variety of amounts ie 1.3 grams, for example.

Kelly mentioned suggested products… lead customer to an equivalent item or suggestion.

Steve talked about related items (that is more like a cord needed for a product that you purchase)

**Predictive… you may want this as well. Algorithm.  Build in a default so something shows up

Showed Mike Message modal: 

Would be helpful to be able to choose people to message in other ways besides customer type.

Schedule recurring messaging off of birthdates. 

Eric can help with bubble that would show up on your icon app.

Another thing would be to have the customer to reply back.

**Not ready yet: Transitional invoice= instead of doing a quote, you can do this so it holds inventory/reserved. Assures inventory is held.

Emails and then rolling into the duplicate recipe functions and new pages. Took the recipe build prep page and started to recondition it. Working through the main add/edit recipe build form fields and values.

Both a pro and a con - there are so many custom integrations that we have done, nobody knows all of them. Sean and spent 45 minutes going over credit card gateway problems, issues, and options. This could be how credit cards get entered into the system (manual keyed, swiped, or chip reader and other hardware options) or how each gateway acts or reacts (different variables, paths, and requirements).

I'm going to request some documentation from Eric, Alan, and Bryan. They have all worked on different merchant processing integrations within adilas. We need to help and gather some of that documentation up for tech support and our sales team. That is much needed information. Otherwise, we are somewhat blind as each integration is so different.

Dustin jumped on the meeting, and I helped him get pointed in the right direction on a required file for doing QR codes. Cory had an icon app email issue and we looked into it for a bit. There seems to be a duplicate number in the email settings. We also chatted with John about the chooser and choose more interfaces. John and Cory were going over changes to the chooser. Lots of different opinions - some like numbered, others like alphabetical, and some want to be able to search.

Once again, nobody knows all of the pieces. That creates a mystery of sorts. Also, it is hard to pick things up (projects) after the fact. Without the knowledge of what was going on and what was requested, some of the pieces, by themselves, don't make much sense. It's all part of a bigger puzzle.

Bryan and I working together on scheduling stuff. Bryan was showing me some date-picker stuff with date ranges, restrictions, and options. This is just on a scratch file, but great for learning, playing and concepting. We did some research and worked on some logic together. It turned into a small practice session. I was showing Bryan how to mix Adobe ColdFusion (server-side code) with JavaScript (client-side code). I also gave him a small list of things that we need to try and test before going forward.

Bryan and I met up again after lunch. Going over progress on his date range date-picker page. He is trying to build out an MVP product for booking a cabin rental. He is mixing it with some of the existing stuff that we did for the bike shuttle and the ski resort for reoccurring and unique events. I see where he is going. We are just trying to make sure we build on what we have but don't get too locked in. The events are a one-to-many where more than one person is participating on an existing event that is already in the calendar. The cabin reservations have to make their own reservation and make a brand new entry or one-to-one relationship with the calendar (new element of time). Anyways, making progress.

We went over the progress, talked about the next steps, cause and effects, and how to get all of the pieces collected together to really make it happen. Hopefully, I wasn't bursting his bubble. They (the scheduling subjects) are close and somewhat related but different animals (a preset trip or event vs claiming a new event on a blank calendar). Trying to drive that point home. Good meeting and making progress.

Looking into the timecard issue for a client. It was skipping the clock out. This was only happening for a single client (to our knowledge). I read over a number of pages, changed variable names, and did some local testing. It looked pretty good to me. Sent them a note with what I did and what I found.

Working on the duplicate recipe project. Cascading new links from page to page to get to the new duplicate recipe page. Working on the bulk line items form and prepping data.

Sean and I started out the morning talking about deployment and how we need to keep offering that as a service. Certain clients are so busy, they really don't have time to deploy or devote time to training and setup. It's not that they don't need or want it, they are just spread too thin. Sean was talking about a current deployment that he is working on and I told him a story of us going into a kitchen ware store and helping to set them up. It took a couple of weeks with a few of us onsite to make it happen. At one point, the lady in charge of the kitchen store said, "If it wasn't for you guys helping us out, we never would have been able to make this transition." That is totally true.

Anyways, I wrote down in my notes that part of the fracture project that we are planning has to take into consideration training, deployment, setup, and other marketable services. We need the support staff to help support what we are trying to do, build, and accomplish. Taking the time to get it done and make sure that the parties that be are in the know and can function on their own. They need to know how to get help, but ideally, they have been trained sufficiently for the task(s) at hand. Another plug for the concept of "education mode" as a setting for helping people to get started.

Steve was on some phone calls and somewhat listening in the background. Sean and Shari O. were talking about merchant processing and where we want to go with that. I mentioned the company Datacap and let them know that we may want to look into doing a 3r party integration and solution with them, as it would open up a number possible merchant processing options. We can do merchant processing right now, but we have to spend time and resources integrating with each gateway, merchant, and/or device. We could really use something to help speed up that process.

As the meeting ended, I was doing emails and other small to do list tasks. I was thinking about small nursery rhymes and how we have used some of those same analogies and stories in our own story. Things like stone soup, the little ren hen, and many others. Kinda fun. We are daily building and hoping that someone will catch the vision and help us along the journey. Like the tortoise and the hair, slow and steady wins the race.

Recording notes and making digital entries in the developer's notebook.

Bryan is working booking rentals and reservations in ecommerce land. Quick check in to make sure we are heading in the right direction. Some of our future development efforts will be going into appointments, reservations, rentals, etc.

Emails, phone call with Eric about bulk tools, enterprise item catalog features, and storing user selections in the session scope. Merged in some code for Dustin. Reviewed some documentation from Bryan on the Digitech payment solution. Paid some bills.

Pushed up some files for Dustin. Working on the duplicate recipe page. Back working on the line items. Prepping to go live, even though it isn't done yet. Pushed up code and sent an email out with the update info to Steve, Cory, and Kelly.

Time zone switches on all servers for daylight savings. Doing this off hours so it wouldn't interrupt normal flow.

Pretty quiet meeting this morning. Just Steve, John, and I were on the meeting. I was showing them the progress on the duplicate recipe functionality. That lead into a discussion on new look and feel stuff. John reported on some new pages and facelift stuff that he was working on. Going over a number of different pages and making some decisions on flow, priorities, and next steps. Steve and John were talking about changes that are needed and direction. Some of that was on the main choose more interfaces pages, page title, verbiage, etc.

Steve had to take off, so John and I switched over and did some code review. We were looking at the advanced deposit search and the advanced expense/receipt search pages. We went over both pages, looking good. After the code review, John and I flipped over to adilas and went over some light plans and financials. Great back and forth with questions and answers. Good session.

Emails, recording notes, and working on a new image for showing work in progress - Star Wars Death Star image. See attached.

Recording notes from 3/7 to 3/12. Phone call with Eric going over some quick questions about forms and JavaScript.

As I was recording notes from last week, I really am feeling the need to make a few new graphics. I really want to create a graphic that shows the adilas value add-on core model. This will have the transactional core and then then the other layers or value add-on's. This is part of our plan and where we want to take things. Along those same lines, I would like to add the graphic for progression of things, Star Wars Death Star (work in progress), rose pedal analogy (building one idea on top of another), and the value add-on core model to the teaching gallery or image gallery that I use for showing the guys certain ideas and concepts.

Two different sessions working on some new graphics. One was from 5:15 pm to 6:30 pm and the other was from 8:45 pm to 10:15 pm. They were both related, so I put then in as one entry.

Working on ideas for a rose analogy and idea farming. See attached. I also spent some time working on a version of the adilas value add-on core model graphic. See attached.

Just for fun, I decided to attach a few other small graphics to this element of time. When I get a chance, I'm going to add these graphics to the teaching gallery that I use when doing training, demos, and working with the guys/gals. I love to use pictures, graphics, and actually drawing on the screen using online video screensharing tools and drawing tools.

Quick update - as of 3/16/23, I have added all four of these images to the teaching photo gallery. See the section for ideas and plans. Here are the thumbnails...

Like the Death Star - We have the vision, it just needs to be finished...

Like the pedals of a rose, adilas.biz is just a bunch of ideas laid on top of each other - we call it idea farming

Things change over time - Are you keeping up? Progression of things...

Adilas Value Add-On Core Model - Every world needs a transactional core - Then you build value by adding layers

Steve had a question on ecommerce redirects. The guys were giving us their sales updates and report (where they are visiting). I showed them some of my new graphics that I have been working on. Michael and Sean showed me a new gift card flyer that they made. See attached. I also did some research on some numbers and sent an email out to Bob with some R&D numbers for expenses.

Cory and John were going over a review of a dashboard mock-up and layout that John was working on. After that, we talked about getting documentation for the main adilas servers. We have like 40 of them. Currently, a lot of the real nuts and bolts are in Wayne's head. We need to get that information out of his head and into a more tangible state (both paper and digital). If we ever needed to get a new server admin guy/gal, we would need this information. John has a bunch of it, but not all of it. Wayne has told us that he is getting close to retiring (at some point).

Along those same lines, there is so much to know and coordinate to really make everything work smoothly. John was talking about doing a software architecture drawing and doing some systems design work. We have been building this thing for over 20 years, it sure would be nice to build out something to show the visual architecture, flowcharts, and database model. We have it all, we just don't have the visuals or 10,000 foot level models. Think of all of the natural and possible connections and relationships. That could be a pretty hefty project, to document all of that. Anyways, we talked about some projects to get that information out of the minds of a few and into our hands to distribute as needed (paper, visual, and digital models).

I won't go into all of it, but we went over ideas for setting up those visual models and then keeping those things updated. There will be some ongoing maintenance that will be required. Who is going to do what? Who does do what (right now)? etc. Figuring out ways to transferer knowledge and be able to store and search that knowledge. John has some server docs where we could record things. Wayne joined the meeting and we briefly covered some of these same topics over again with him.

The next major topic was dealing with how we build and deploy custom code. Basically, we went over the progression of the black box  and black box code from the ecommerce site and side of the fence into the secured environment. Wayne had some questions and was trying to follow some of the logic for different black box code sections. He would love to help us standardize things and make it more uniform. We have lots of comments in our code, but we are really lacking in real documentation on almost all levels. In a way, that's a form of technical debt. We will keep circling back around and pick up the pieces as we are able. Ideally, we will figure out and document the best practices. We will then really try to stick by those practices. Another big part of this is making sure that all of our guys/gals follow those best practices.

The conversation progressed and we started talking about moving our older code out of linear processes and more into services and functions. Once this happens (on all levels) we would not be as bound to our linear flow and would be able to jump around more, as needed. We have already been making this move and Alan has been refactoring and building out all kinds of services. This is just a pitch to make it more global and system-wide.

Next, we got into some bug tracking and error logs. We have seen a number of errors in the logs but no one has reported those errors, especially out in ecommerce. We have a feeling that it is automated traffic, outside hackers, and/or bot traffic. It seems like instead of following existing patterns and page flow, the automated traffic is skipping steps and thus introducing certain flow errors that we can't duplicate by doing normal processes. Anyways, we spent some time looking at the error logs.

Cory was asking about why we care about those other errors. Wayne was explaining that certain errors, especially if we get a bunch of them, then to crowd out other more important errors (they get buried in the midst of all of the non-important errors). Currently, our goal is to fix what we can along the way. This lead to more discussion on documentation and being able to show people what our way is and why we do it that way.

Some of our projects are being delayed due to waiting patterns and/or approvals. We have things ready and planned but are either lacking approval, budgeted funds, or something else if waiting in the wings that needs to come first and/or before some other step (virtual fires and priorities). Cory really wants us to try to focus on getting the system architecture stuff documented and creating those visual models. Internally, we will book some of this time as server training time.

Eventually, we will need to do documentation and training on backend stuff as well as frontend stuff. Wayne and John are going to start doing some of the backend architecture stuff here in the next few weeks and months. We will keep chipping away at things.

Just Cory and I were on this meeting. I was reporting on projects and timelines. I showed her my progress on the duplicate recipe project.

Emails and watching the gift card setup demo from Sean (recording of Sean and some clients). Sean was talking about next round options for gift cards. There is a lot of setup (currently) to get them going. Once that is done, it is pretty quick and slick. There are a few things that are kinda quirky dealing with session stuff and turning things on/off. Instead of it just switching a switch, they had to logout and then back in for it to reset the session. We'll get that fixed. They were talking about physical and virtual cards. Sean was doing a great job showing options. See attached if you want to see the 26 minute clip. The first part is just setup stuff. The last part is using the gift cards and going over options.

Working on the duplicate recipe project. Spent time working primarily on the action page. Going over loops, logic, and validation stuff. Some of the loops are over complex data structures.

Sean and I were talking about parent attributes, ecommerce settings, and making things easier. We then talked about gift cards and quick setup options. Trying to round out corners and speed things up. John jumped in and we talked about some new print style or print CSS stuff. We talked about moving dollar amounts over to the right on printable pages (PO's, invoices, deposits, and expense/receipts). John and I then looked at the chooser page (new code) and made a small tweak to the page. John just barely redid the page to update the look and feel. He also took two chooser pages and combined them together as a single page. Good stuff.

As a side note, I saw an email from Steve about being onsite to help a client and help them with deployment and setup for a couple of days. We gain a lot by being there, on site with the client, seeing workflow, personalities, staff, and general flavor of the company. It's fun, great, helpful, but it does take time and resources. We may have to do more of this to really get things going.

Quick GoToMeeting session with Bryan. Looking into his code on the multi date select for the date-picker stuff. He is working on a scratch file and playing around with functionality. We talked about using AJAX and smaller helper pages to load the date-picker calendar and visual assets.

Working on the duplicate recipe project. Most of my time was spent on the line items section. Validation, looping, and inserting correct values. Lots of local testing and doing some page sign-off. Running through scenarios and then merged in code and pushed up to servers. Sent an email to Cory and Steve that the project was completed. Still need to work on help files and other small clean-up stuff.

Steve and Sean were talking about deployment and how we need to be onsite, at times, to help the people get going. Sometimes there really isn't a good time, we just have to do it and let other things flow around us. Sean is making some plans to go help a company with a new setup and deployment down in Texas. Steve was encouraging him to grab it by the horns and go for it. That's how we used to do it, back in the day.

Steve had some questions about searching Microsoft Excel for field lengths. We looked it up and found that you can use the function =LEN(D12) where D12 is the cell address. That will give you the character count or string length. That is very similar to how we do things in other languages. Anyways, just a little tidbit.

John and I started talking about the need for a testing server. Steve and Sean took off and it was just John and I on the meeting. Some of our developers have been asking for a dedicated testing server. We kinda have one, but it still contains some older live customer data. That company got purchased by another company and isn't actively using the server, but it has things that we need to leave alone and not touch/destroy. We used to have a dedicated testing server, but we weren't actively using it and decided to shut it down. We have a need sometimes and then it chills out and we won't need it for a month or two.

The two of us did a good long session and came up with some pros and cons, budgets, and advantages of getting a new dedicated testing server. John started a Google doc and we put some info on it. Here were a few things that we came up with (these may change in the future - just a quick copy of what we were working on):

Pros

- No clients on that box - able to beat it up and even kill it without affecting anybody
- Be able to swap out the database - at will - really test with real client data without causing problems with their data
- Mock things up without worrying about cleaning it up
- Be able to point any code branch to that server so that it could interact with the data
- Code stability and testing
- Eventually move over to Lucee (as the backend server-side scripting language) - This could save us $20K per year - if we could cut out the Adobe ColdFusion licensing ($100/month per server). This is a recurring monthly fee.

Cons

- Cost per month or cost per year
- Another server to maintain
- We have to get with Wayne or John to get things planned and changed around, plus all of the current changes on live testing on servers while clients are still actively using those same boxes.
- Admin team only sees the costs not the benefits of getting a good testing environment - in John’s words, “They are not out in the weeds banging around. We need this.”
- We have a number of huge projects that haven't fully gone live yet, due to some little hitch or merge or overwriting code. Thousands of dollars of development that we can't use or sell yet.

Maybe use data 5 - Currently about $400/month - $200 CF and $200 DB

Budget of 5K per year

What does it cost in other resources and labor - Wayne, John, other devs?

Timing (when to do things - during business hours or after hours), loads (time of day and tasks and amount of data), and planning (looking ahead and when do we do this or that)

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John and I will fill in more details later. After the meeting ended, I wrote a few other things down that were going through my mind during the meeting. Here a few other notes:

- Taking the time to listen. Sometimes that is really hard. Often, we are going a million miles an hour and are almost being too efficient. If we slow down a bit, we could gain some valuable insight and information. Our normal is push, push, push. That is good sometimes, but not for every case. Slow down and take the time to listen - at home, at work, and with others.

- We had a need for some specific training this morning, but no one knew where to find it or if we even have it. I know we have it, because I did it years ago, but it has sat un cataloged and undocumented. We really need to go in and go through our older videos and do some cataloging and documentation of what we've got. Even if we want to do some new training, it would be great to see what we already have, even if it for nothing more than training the trainers. There is good content, drawings, explanations, demos, questions, and solutions. Eventually, this all needs to be a part of the adilas university site and media catalog. This hasn't been cataloged yet, but here is the Adilas.biz YouTube channel with hundreds of videos, that need to be cataloged.

Working on the help file for the duplicate recipe project. This was a custom project that we rolled out as a new feature/tool for all of our users. After writing the help file, I then had to cascade it to all of the other servers. While in there, I also updated all other tables that are shared or synced between servers. This task takes a while.

As a future project, we may need to get in there and add a last modified date and maybe rework the API socket calls so that it only grabs the data that has changed vs all records (thousands and thousands). It could be much tighter and more efficient.

While I was waiting for some of the page reloads (transferring thousands of records between servers), I was thinking about documentation and training. We need good help files, tips, how-to's, samples, and documentation. This could be for internal tools, API sockets, client facing tools and features, etc. All levels. Eventually, we will need content for beginners, intermediates, and advanced users and clients. These subjects have been weighing more on my mind lately. Not sure why, but they feel like they are in need of some loving.

Recording notes from earlier entries this week and today. Ended up flipping over and adding the new graphics and images to the teaching and training photo gallery. I added 4 new images. They are the Star Wars Death Star image, the rose pedal model, the progression of things image, and the adilas value add-on core model graphic. See element of time # 9967 for more info and to see the actual graphics.

Talking with Sean about making a tighter game plan for credit card payments and which merchant account types we will allow and support. Currently, we are super open which is nice, but it also introduces too many variables. We have done integrations with a number of different companies and vendors, but not all. It gets really tricky when new hardware is introduced and chip or EMV requirements are needed. Anyways, we'll work on refining our options and how we approach custom solutions.

Eric joined the meeting and had a few questions. He let me know that there was a problem with the Herbo server (most likely a test branch of code). We also chatted briefly about some other MVP special account options that we would like to get to. We talked about in-store credit, round two on gift cards, coupons, and promotion codes. We also mentioned that we may need to do a full review of what we call our standard merchant processing setup and credit card payment options.

Emails, reviewing some videos on a time formatting bug/complaint on employee timecards. We used to leave it very open and allowed users to enter times as they see fit (for example: 5 pm, 5:30 pm, or 5:30:00 pm). The new time pickers require a certain format and some of our clients have been complaining about the requirements. We had time-pickers for hours and minutes, as well as one that required hours, minutes, and seconds. Basically, they want it back open where they can just quickly slam in a time vs having to comply with specific formats.

Prep work and checking out a reported bug/issue on the time-picker. It actually wasn't a bug, it was just forcing the users to play clear out to the minutes and seconds, based on some settings.

Cory joined and we spent some time catching up and talking about projects and issues. We talked about it and we will take off the time-picker for most of the pages that allow for user time inputs (files like add new timecard, clock in/out for users, edit timecards, customer logs, follow-ups, and both main and sub entries for elements of time). We did a search and it only looked like a few (20+) pages that need to be edited.

As we were talking, Cory gave me a few other small projects that need to be done and finished. She will send me some emails with more details, but it sounds like a data clean-up for a client that had the wrong cost of goods based on manual changes. There is also a request to add a few new search filters to a sub inventory PO based advanced search. We went over a few other projects and requests as well. Cory and I finished up around 11:30 am.

I then started working on the project to remove the time-picker from certain files. I uploaded new code to all servers and let Cory and Shari O. know about the update. Small work session.

Multiple different sessions between 2 pm and 6:30 pm - recording notes from last week and today (3/14 to 3/20). Also met with Bryan for half an hour to go over AJAX and date-picker stuff. He is working on a scratch file to help with some concepts for booking reservations and rentals through the adilas ecommerce system.

Met with Hamid to go over his wireframe for the business zipper website. This is a small side project that Hamid is doing as somewhat of an internship for adilas. Eventually, he'd like to get into some backend coding and database stuff. See attached for a couple of mock-up and wireframes.

Sean, Shari O., Michael, John, and I were on the morning meeting. We all checked in and said what we were working on. After that, we all either left or went on mute and worked in the background. Shari O. had to take a tech support call and Sean was waiting to chat with her once she was finished. John had some flex grid tie-in questions. I was doing some research on MVP's and past data that we had recorded for what we wanted in some of our MVP (minimal viable product) stuff.

Here is a short MVP list that I'm thinking about - for the record, we already have some of this, we just need to refine it and make it watertight:

- Special accounts and in-store credit - We already have loyalty points, and round 1 for gift cards. Eventually, we would like to do in-store credit, vendor credits, punch cards, and other ones. The next biggest need is for the in-store credit stuff (in my opinion).

- Round 2 on gift cards - We've been gathering ideas and wants and needs

- Coupons and promotion codes - clear out and through ecommerce and internal shopping carts

- Take Calvin's adilas label builder to the next level - we've already done some planning and prep work there

- Standardize the merchant processing options - We have like 9 different integrations. Here's my next goal, pick one, make sure it flows from start to finish and is super simple. I want to do normal sales, pre-auths, captures, tips, refunds, voids, and reoccurring payments, etc. We have to be able to do manual key (like ecommerce mode), swipe, chip/EMV, and tap to pay hardware integrations. I want to do and offer all of the merchant processing functions. I was thinking that we could do a big push and try to get all hooked up with Datacap and then let them handle all of the different hardware pieces and different merchant gateways. That's my thoughts right now.

- Revamp the internal shopping cart, my cart favorite buttons, and general look and feel. I would love to head towards the fracture project - we have a bunch of R&D on where we want to go with that.

There are tons of other things on my list, but that is my quick MVP list for right now.

Cory and Eric were talking about enterprise level stuff and the new item catalog that they are working on. We then switched over and were talking about a 3rd party API socket connection that has been in place for a couple of years. They had some questions and want us to do some research. We feel like they should pay for it (new maintenance and new development). We looked around in our code repository a bit to see if we could find any changes that happened on our side of the fence.

Wayne joined the meeting and reported on some mandatory Adobe ColdFusion updates (patches) that had to be applied to all production server (security risk stuff). We talked about getting server documentation and helping to transfer that server and backend knowledge to the other developers or whomever might be taking over, once Wayne retires. Wayne has been making some notes and doing some screen recording or screen capture videos.

We then rolled into a discussion on a dedicated testing server. I'll cover more of that in a minute. At the end of the meeting, John was reporting on progress on CSS and look and feel changes. He is working on printable deposits and printable expense/receipts. He is also making some small tweaks to the layouts and where certain dollar figure data is located. Good stuff. Cory and John were talking about plans on the discount engine and making plans.

Going back to the dedicated testing server - We went over a proposal to get a real testing server up and going. We currently have a number of testing bottlenecks. We talked about reverse merging in master code to the working branches, to help keep them up to date. We have had problems when a project takes weeks or months and it has not been kept up with the master code branch. When we go to merge it, sometimes there are huge differences, conflicts, and some of the underlying application structure has changed. That merge process then takes a while to sort out and make sure that everything gets fully tested and verified again. Anyways, it is an issue that we deal with.

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We then had a small discussion about pros and cons for getting or having a dedicated testing server. This was all recorded on a google doc, but I'll paste it here for searchability. Here are some of our notes from today:

Group discussion notes

Cory - We’ve tried this before - what would be different this time?

John - No FTP access to the testing server - there are pros and cons to that

Wayne - We need to test one branch at a time

John - He would like to see it (use of the testing server) go in a line (testing schedule or queue) - I’m next, you’re after me, etc.

Wayne - If we need to, we wipe it clean and then start over again. That’s the process and the beauty of it. We test on it, beat it up, and then wipe it clean for the next round.

John - We can get a full copy of a client’s database and then kick the crap out of it. When done, we just flush it. We never mess with live data. We just make a copy and then test and push against that. Much better look (at live data - copied) then our own fake development data.

Wayne - We need a way to turn off outside 3rd party API’s - either mocking it (pretending) or muting it (silent send outs).

Cory - Sometimes we have big issues with Metrc and other outside parties and doing testing that flows into outside 3rd party API sockets and feeds.

Cory - Currently we are using the Herbo server for some testing. We have been having problems with that. What is going on?

Wayne was commenting on the Herbo server - We are mixing branches, there is still FTP access, it is pointed to a non-master branch, and we have certain things that we can’t change for demos or other needs. Basically, we are using a live server, we have live clients on it, and we are trying to test on it. Too many mix and blend variables... Hard to manage.

Wayne - Would like to see some project scheduling - project A on this day, project B on this day, etc. Keep it tight (ish).

Cory - Con of having just Wayne and John having access to the testing servers. The scenario is, if we find an error, we can fix it right away (whoever the developer or testers are) but then we have to contact either John or Wayne to help that new code get pushed up and deployed. That becomes another bottleneck.

Wayne - We could change the timeframe or auto deploy time cycle to make it faster.

Cory - What about data 5? That is an option, but we would have to make a full copy of the database and all of the corp specific files (images, PDF’s, csv files, etc.). We could then order a new hard drive or put those files somewhere on the current hard drive that we could get back to if needed.

John - Talking about paying bills (meaning our clients)… If a client doesn’t pay, we should be able to just shut them off.

Cory - Question - How much does it cost to put things in cold storage? How much does it cost to bring it back up live?

John and Cory - Talking about costs. John was saying that we need to build in this cost ($400-$600 per month) as an operating cost. We are a software company. We kind of need this. Just like being a foundation company and not having access to a cement truck. It creates a problem.

There are ways to lower the cost, if needed. We could lower CPU’s, RAM, etc. We could also spin things up/down as needed.

Wayne - Rough cost to spin up a server is 2+ hours (somewhere in that neighborhood)

Cory - Really liked the video idea of Wayne recording what he does as future training things and visual assets. Good idea. We just need to be careful of who gets those… This is the whole backend access zone stuff. We just need to keep it tight.

John - He has some server docs and would like to get that put into a private repo that only has access to Wayne, Brandon, and John. Small group.

Cory - Figuring out a way to force some of these clients to pay for cold storage and reanimation or redeployment of the servers. It comes down to if you don’t pay your bills, we get full control of what happens. We need to do what we said that we will do. Forcing the hand by making them pay for the backup data.

John - We just need to have our plans and procedures in place. We need something to stand on.

Brandon - We could do some cold storage on the same servers. Either with a different drive or a partitioned area where we could store things. As a group, we were talking about other possible storage options within the same box. We could make copies of ColdFusion files, client files, and SQL data dumps. Put them all out of reach but on the same server. Then if needed, we could restore things as needed.

John and Cory - If we need to reanimate or redeploy - here are the params and timelines and costs - Part of the plan. Some of these values may change in the future as well.

John - If the crap hits the fan… He doesn’t want to be in the spray zone of that fan. We need to protect ourselves.

Quick meeting with Bryan. We were going over some progress on his AJAX code for selecting items to do bookings and reservations. He got with Dustin and the two of them made some good progress (code wise). They also used some ChatGPT to get some ideas and answers (open AI - artificial intelligence). Making progress.

Various different things. Small data fix for a client and their costs of goods sold. Flipped a bunch of costs to $0.00 for unlimited items. They had a cost associated with those items and it was throwing off the balance sheet. Part way through, I noticed that some of the items on my list were actually real inventory items tied to sub inventory. I stopped and made some notes. I called and left a message for Cory.

Did some emails, light tech support, text messages, and finally heard back from Cory. I jumped back on the data clean-up project and only modified the unlimited items. Light backend database updates and changes for a client. Little clean-up project. Sent an email out to Cory and Shari O. with notes on what I ended up doing.

Looking into a reported timeclock issue with the AFB timeclock stuff. Read through a few pages and wrote down some notes and a possible small plan for things that we could do to help. My head wasn't in it, I'll have to actually code it tomorrow. It wouldn't have worked today.

Touching base with Sean. John jumped on and was updating the printable expense/receipts to show verified payments. I merged in some code for Dustin and then started working through emails. John jumped off to work with Wayne on server documentation stuff. I spent the rest of the time recording notes from yesterday (3/21/23).

Emails and a phone call with Shari O. about corp specific tables and Metrc compliance settings. Light tech support and looking things up with Shari O., while on the phone. Sent out an email to Alan about filters, settings, and corp specific tables.

Meeting with Bryan. Spent time going over progress on the online rentals and reservation stuff that Bryan is working on. We worked a bunch on dynamic variables and passing the correctly converted data and values between pages. Lots of mixing between Adobe ColdFusion and client-side AJAX and JavaScript. Small work session on the date range date-picker and dynamically populating good and bad date ranges (availability).

Sean was the only one who checked in this morning. We briefly went over a list of things that we want to get done as an MVP level product. These things came from a list that I made yesterday. We went over some of those ideas and concepts. It's like we are close but still not able to break over the crest of the hill.

Spent the rest of the time doing emails and recording notes. Added in a new tooltip option on elements of time on the time homepage where the entries span between timeslots. Also upped the auto page refresh value from 2 minutes to 30 minutes for the time homepage.

Cory and Steve were going over labels and sub inventory stuff. Mike Roundtree joined in and was asking about Herbo payment solutions and options for demos. I mentioned to him, if needed, we could help him out by using special accounts, inside of adilas. We will check to see what is already built out and then go from there. Anyways, he has some needs and ideas. We'll see where it goes.

Next, Mike was talking with Sean and Steve about ecommerce, multiple locations, using a single system for multiple different tasks, and making plans for a new demo site for somebody in Hawaii. Shari O. will spin up the new site, Sean will help fill things in, Cory will help Sean where needed. Fun to see them all making plans and coordinating. We also pulled in Bryan briefly to talk about the Herbo (eXPO) payment solutions and what has been automated and integrated. The demo is out a few weeks.

Shari O. had some questions on a bulk inventory update that needed to be done for a client. She and I made a plan and she will be kicking me over an email to get it in writing.

Cory had a list of project that she wanted to go over. We both reviewed a small video from Kelly dealing with needs to be able to search sub inventory status and sub inventory availability. Basically, some new filters may need to be added to some of the advanced reports.

Meeting with John on a code review for his recipe/build pages that he has been working on. He had 5 new pages that he had altered the look and feel (turned into more modern snow owl theme designs). I gave him 2 more pages to work on. We should have those new changes up by the end of the week.

Reviewing a project for Shari O. dealing with an inventory update for a client. On a phone call with Bryan going over projects. Bryan and I spent some time talking about merchant processing and where we are heading with that.

Quick meeting with Bryan going over a question about an invoice that they wanted to turn back into a quote. It doesn't really go that way (backwards). A quote may be converted into an invoice (normal forward process) but it doesn't go the other way. Once it becomes an invoice, it starts hitting financials, inventory levels, sales tax liabilities, accounts receivable, etc. We may need to help educate our people. We may also need to block or not allow those options on an edit. We don't really allow it, but there is an invoice type called "quote" that people may use to feel like they are flipping things backwards. I need a little bit more information before I just remove something.

Working on a custom inventory clean-up for a company. They originally loaded in tons of inventory items (entries from a digital catalog of sorts) and now they don't want the items that they aren't going to carry. Working on a code script that would remove any items that were entered on a setup PO and then never used (no activity) and have not inventory quantities. As a side note, you could see their thinking... maybe I'll order some of these items later on and it will save me time in entering the items. Well, 12,000+ items later, they are now deciding to drop that vendor and not even sell their stuff. Basically, that makes a mess, and they want some help cleaning things up.

Not just our clients, but many clients have huge inventory problems. We are trying to help them out. Shari O. had me work on a new clean-up script to clean up unused items per vendor. Yesterday, we did a clean-up script per setup or inbound PO. Today, we are getting tighter and doing things by vendor, as a whole. I had to make a few changes for the new process. This is not a standard tool that we want to release (special or custom bulk clean-up tool). After that, I touched base with John, Sean, and Michael.

We started out the server meeting and Cory wanted to check on the data 34 server. It was reported that it was running slow. Wayne logged in and looked around. They ordered some more RAM for the database server. Pretty cool to see how quickly they can jump on things.

Next, we started talking about a client and their balance sheet. I mentioned to Cory that we have on our wish list a report that would show known issues (bad dates, things done out of order, or other possible problems that we could detect and/or figure out). That would be so cool. As a side note, the page already exists, it just hasn't been built out yet. Definitely on our wish list for fracture. This could help all of us out and make things more transparent and visible.

Both Wayne and John are working on documenting things on the server level. It's far from done, but they showed up a 3 page document (just the start) of the outline or outline of the server layered architecture design document. Pretty cool. Starting to see that being worked on. I'm excited to see what they come up with.

The next major conversation was dealing with adilas phones, phone trees, and other forms of digital communication. We had some open discussion about do we want to keep it, who is going to support it, who is going to maintain it, and so forth. This piece is kinda flapping in the wind. We also talked about, if we want to, allocating both time and money and getting that code and/or process fully inhouse. Right now, it is a virtual 3rd party entity, even though we technically own it. The prior owner/developer is the only one who really knows what is going on inside there. We talked about different technologies that we could and would use if we brought it fully under our control or under our roof.

The reason that the adilas phones stuff got brought up was because of this document that they are building out for the system architecture and layered plans. Hopefully, we'll uncover other issues and/or dependencies that we need to look at and evaluate (spend/don't spend, maintain/don't maintain, market, pitch, let it die, etc.). We kept getting off on tangents. Cory did a great job keeping the discussion going in a good direction. Once setup, we will provide an open VPN (virtual private network) for our developers to be able to remote into the testing box to push code and make changes.

After that, we got into talking about the testing server and what our plans are for that. We have a client's data that we want to move off of a production server and put in the Amazon cold storage or Amazon Glacier. As we were talking about the testing server, Shari O. was sending questions and comments through the chat feature on the GoToMeeting account. We are making progress there and making headway.

We got into talking about insurance, coverage, errors and omissions, and general cyber security, and data breaches. We have a 3rd party integration that is pushing on us and wanting all kinds of certifications and proof of insurance coverage. Everybody but John and I had to leave to jump on other meetings or calls.

After that, John and I spent some time doing a code review on his recipe/build rework stuff. We talked about a new possible user-level setting for using the time-pickers vs an open entry time field. John likes the time-pickers. I had to take them out the other day due to a few clients complaining. That sounds like a perfect option for a user-level setting. We also went over new options for showing progress bars and helping the users know which step they are on and what is still needed to complete a certain task and/or process.

As a final comment for the meeting, John said - "The ROI (return on investment) for the testing server will be internal peace of mind." I liked that.

Phone call with Shari O. going over special inventory clean-up processes and requests. We have a client that wants to totally remove all activity of a certain vendor. We will do it but will also document it via log notes, emails, and sign-off's.

Special inventory clean-up project and process for a client. We will record all activity on an update PO. I went in manually into the system and started to make a number of changes, including setting up a new update PO. Decided to build out a bulk tool to flip things around in a more efficient manner. I'm thinking of a mix between a bulk tool and the normal update inventory count tools. Spent a couple hours working on the new code. Not quite yet finished with the changes. It should be a good time saver when finished.

Cory jumped on and had some questions about the adilas label builder. I got her pointed in the right direction. Both Sean and John checked in as well. Other than that, it was a pretty quiet morning. I did emails and started to record some notes from the past few days.

Recording notes and working on a list of known issues. See top_secret/secure/known_issues.cfm for more information.

For fun, here is a list of some of the items listed on that page. This list originally was started in 2009. Small list of what are known problems. Some of these things are real problems and some are just warnings. Lots of things have changed since then. It may need to be updated, added to, and some of the items removed, that have been patched, fixed, and/or finished.

1. Invoice pmts on account with something different than 0.00 value.


2. Receipt pmts on account with something different than 0.00 value.


3. Reimbursements (rei's) with a bank assigned on the receipt pmt.


4. Invoices with mismatch between main and line items.


5. Deposits with mismatch between main and line items.


6. Receipts with mismatch between main and line items.


7. PO's with mismatch between main and line items.


8. Non verified payments (outstanding deposits and checks).


9. Duplicates ???


10. Dates prior to the corp start date or prior to the bank start date. See bank_balance_helper.cfm page.


11. Dates in the future. see bank_balance_helper.cfm page.


12. Internal invoices that are not marked as paid.


13. Receipt payments that are verified but the main is not verified.


14. Difference between invoices and stock numbers. Created a number of flags to show disconnect.


15. When paying back splits and rei's - what about both (main and subs) being assigned to income statement expense types? This could double things up on the income statement. Defaulted special multi build (rei and splits) to b.s. items for expense types. Still possible problem on original e/r that may get assigned to the balance sheet.


16. Update PO's not tied to a balance sheet item (say a loss account or something).


17. Lien payoff line items on invoice with a 0 cost. The cost and the price should be the same otherwise it puffs up the profit. Did run a report at one time to fix this. Also added code to the cart to match cost and price for lien payoff stuff.


18. PO payments that have the wrong date and thus the po_paid date is wrong. The system was using the current date as the payment date even if the payment was actually made in the past. Small disconnect between actual payment date (e/r payment date and PO paid date).


19. Check auto dates that are actually used in I.S. reports or B.S. reports. Need a way to manually change the auto dates if really being used. Check the unit payments, PO payments, other system made payments. The system seems to be ok, the problem is with dates and being able to either set the date when using or edit the date if defaulted to today's date.


20. Blank expense/receipts (payee_id = 1).


21. Voided items but part of it is still in play or not fully voided. Need to get to a voided list quickly.


22. Denied check requests on payables page.


23. Sales tax problem with work in progress invoices. They don't show up on sales tax reports until they get flipped back to a customer invoice. The problem is that the date (main invoice date - if not moved forward) will not show up on the next month’s tax reports. If this happens, the invoice will fall through the cracks and not be counted for sales tax. Possible option for sales tax, Steve thought that it might be cool to have a point and click interface that we physically pay taxes on certain invoices. That way, they never fall through the cracks and we only pay taxes once we collect the monies. This would also help with a system-maintained b.s. item for accrued sales tax. As an update, Eric was working on a sales tax aggregate project to automate this.


24. Along with sales tax problems, how do we show this on the balance sheet? We need to show collected, paid, and owed values. Once again, Eric has been working on this in his sales tax aggerate project.


25. Payroll has similar problems with regards to what has been paid on, what is still needed, and how do we show this info on the financials.


26. See idea in note book about showing all daily transactions. This is different than a history transaction record. This is what really hit in and out on this day in time according to the system. This is not a known issue but may help with finding issues. Daily monitoring of each account per location, per day, per account or category. This would be awesome.


27. Check for master/slave relationships between date changes. For instance main invoice date compared with invoice line items dates. PO main date with PO line items date.


28. Known issue with PO dates. Do we run off the main PO date or the PO received date? Need to standardize. Leaning towards PO received date.


29. Known issue with location based payables. Both expense/receipts and deposits have the location on the line items not the main. This means that monies could potentially get split between stores which would alter bank balances if only part of the money went in/out of the bank. Known problem here. Solution might be that banks are what they are (full monies in/out) and all sub lines and types are location specific. This could give a false indication as to how much money was available for each location.


30. What about transition invoices that have the main invoice date overlapping the transition (wip/qti) invoice date range. They don't show up anywhere other than on the main invoice homepage which doesn't tie to anything. Added a small fix on view_transition_dates.cfm page. Still need to check for possible mismatches.


31. Disconnect between sold date on units and invoice date. This is a disconnect that is unmonitored and will only show up if pulling a sold report (units) and an invoice report for the same time frame.


32. When backing up the main bank start date, there is a problem with expense payments and deposits that have a date before the main start date and a verified date after the main date. The payment or deposit date is not counted but the verified date is. I had the same problem with Leanna in Poncha and with Drew Middlemiss doing his first bank statement. What a pain. See the bank_balance_helper.cfm report (5/16/09) for small fix. Still a known problem with a starting bank balance not being 0.00.


33. Advanced pmt on invoices (pre-paid). They hit the bank because they were deposited but they also need to show up as a liability to offset the deposit or cash going up. This should be a system maintained item.


34. What about deposit types of other income that are assigned to invoices (double counted)? The default is an invoice hits the p&l and only deposit line items that are under other income and revenue adjustments hit or the p&l.


35. What about bad debt? Do we want to create a system maintained items for this?


36. What about deposits that are made before pmts are posted to invoices. This is not backward compatible.


37. Know disconnect between PO dates. The main PO date is currently used as the main search date. The PO received date is the main b.s. date. We are thinking that the main date may become somewhat of a request date or a age player only. The main date will become the received date with the received flag.


38. If a check request gets approved and assigned to a bank but never written out (bank never sees it), there seems to be a problem. There is also a problem with older check requests and the dates that are set in the background. They are uneditable once the request changes into a normal e/r.


39. Known issue with i.s. (income statement) deposit types. If used, without an invoice, they don't show up on the income statement. They may also be double booked if on an invoice and also recorded as other income or revenue adjustment.


40. What about payments made on a PO before it was received. This could happen with a request PO or a basic PO that has not yet been received.


41. What about inactive (status) on parts and subs. If we have details (activity) but something is inactive, that could cause problems.


42. Levels of inventory - this could deal with parents, subs, and usage details. We may need to check costs, quantities, dates, etc. Sub inventory was added way after 2009 (original date of this report). We may want to spend a whole session just going over sub inventory levels and possible pit falls.


43. Steve, Kelly, Molly, and others have lists of balance sheet challenges and other known issues. Check with them and get their lists.


44. Ecommerce and what plays into the real mix from there - invoices, taxes, costs, prices, discounts, payments, quantities, elements of time, etc. Good questions? Some of this is already figured out, it just needs a little bit of loving.


45. What about aggregates (somewhat new for us and just barely getting rolled out) and making sure things match up. Category (could be whatever), by day, by location - are there update processes that may be ran to keep things up to date. Manual updates, API sockets, watchers and feeders.


46. What about backorders? Steve did a whole section on backorders but I'm not sure if we tied in everything to the balance sheet and P&L. Anyways, may need to circle back around.


47. What about banks that get turned on/off (active/inactive). If we go back in time, we need to know if they were playing.


48. Same is turn with location. If they get turned on/off (active/inactive), we need to know when they were playing. We may need a start and end date and then be able to pull things accordingly, even if the current state or status is inactive.


49. What about cost of goods sold on unlimited or special line items? They should be a $0.00 cost because they are unlimited (like a labor or a service). If a cost is needed, it needs to be allocated through an expense to the COGS section or distributed in a thing called SG&A costs. SG&A (selling, general and administrative expenses - aka accounting for general costs by attributing them to a single unit and thus incorporating the true costs into an item). Basically, you take a normal expense like the electric bill or rent and build it into the individual cost of each unit by unitizing the expenses and virtually spreading a bigger general cost to smaller pieces. Sometimes that type of process (SG&A) is required for certain manufacturing and/or production type products. Basically, they (the IRS) don't allow you to expense off the whole expense (rent, insurance, waste, electric, etc.) as a bulk item. It has to be distributed to each smaller piece. If you do real SG&A, it helps assimilate those costs in smaller percentages and thus passing on a truer look at real costs of goods sold.


50. Anything that is currently marked inactive but may have played a role at some point. This could be locations, banks, part categories, items, vendors, customers, etc. Often, if we make them inactive, they don't get pulled (but maybe we need them at some time in the past).


51. Other special account options such as in-store credits, vendor credits, punch cards, etc. We already have loyalty points and gift cards that use special accounts. Maybe expand on this and allow for custom options or other digital payment accounts or payment solutions.


52. I'd love to map out all of the existing balance sheet and P&L values. Make it more widely known and really put it out there. Right now, it all happens behind the scenes and is kinda like a magic box. I'd love to get it all mapped out and presented to the public. We'll get feedback, refinement, and maybe even some other really good ideas. That's my vote, let's get it all out there in the public eye and public realm.

Recording notes from earlier this week and finished up a small list of known issues that we would like to work on. Finished up notes from 3/27 to 3/29.

WordPress was down and this caused our main website to be down. I contacted Chuck via text, then a phone call. Sent emails to Wayne with some instructions and suggestions from Chuck. Trying to get things figured out. Luckily, you could bypass the main website and do a direct login by changing the URL (web path) to the login page.

Jumped on the GoToMeeting session and was having audio problems. Cory had some questions about the adilas label builder and getting images pulled in. Kelly needs some sub inventory reports. Some of that gets pretty dynamic and pretty deep. After that, John and I talked about our WordPress site and getting our stuff off of an outside content management software package, WordPress. We couldn't get ahold of either Wayne or Chuck to get help. We need to get some documentation from both or have John help with that documentation. Our eventual goal is working towards standardizing and using best practices for all of our developers. Constant processing of pivoting, updating, and changing to fit and fill our needs.

Chuck was able to meet with me and I jumped back on the GoToMeeting session. John jumped back on as well. We were trying to fix the WordPress stuff for our site. Chuck was helping John try to navigate to a certain file folder and make some changes. We kept running into issues. Cory jumped on and we made a quick fix for her on a cross corp invoice to PO transaction (special cross corp page). Once we finished that up, back on with John going over plans and what not.

Went into Smithfield to meet with my dad and his friend Harry. We chatted about updates, changes, and plans. I offered to help get them started and/or pay for an adilas power user to help them get started. It may be a great way to help people get going and get started. Basically, assign them a buddy to get them up and going and then they can take over and/or sub it out. After Harry left, I went over some new developments with my dad and lightly was pitching him on our master plan and possible ways of raising funds for adilas projects. That was kinda fun and he was a good listener and was encouraging me to keep pushing on things. We'll see how it all plays out. One of the biggest distractions is time... it takes time to make these plans and then it takes time and funds to make them happen.

Working with Aspen and meeting with her to go over her proposal, presentation, and progress on the world building project and presentation. Looking good. She has been working on verbiage and content for her PowerPoint slide presentation. It's almost 70 slides right now. I'm curious to see where it ends up. Part of it is more marketing focused that what I saw last time we met. I can tell that she is working on it. I got her a check and all paid up.

Touching base with Hamid, an adilas intern. He is starting to code his website project for the business zipper site. It's still pretty basic but a fun first little site. He's been putting in a little bit of time each day, working on things. This new site will end up being a form of a billboard type site - a separate smaller site that promotes a bigger site (the main adilas.biz site).