News & Resources

Feature article:  Keep Your Business Running Efficiently & Profitably with These Tools

Feature article:  Practical and Effective Fuel Logistic Improvements

Enhance payment security while possibly saving some money!

AIMS has partnered with AP Technology to offer you a check-printing solution that produces secure checks off of a laser printer using blank check stock. "SecureCheck 8" by AP Technology delivers next-generation functionality for check and form issuance that enhances both the security and productivity of your organization’s disbursement process. This might be of particular interest to you if you operate multiple companies on your COMPAS software and/or have multiple bank accounts on which you issue checks.

If you could put cash back in the bank equivalent to 10% of your typical on-hand fuel inventories, that would make for a good day. For operators of c-stores and suppliers of consignment dealers, AutoSend has proven over and over again to be at least that valuable. Since 1990, AutoSend has been used by hundreds of marketers to keep track of every gallon of product in the UST's and AST's that they own or manage. They use it to schedule purchasing and delivery that achieve reduced and balanced inventories at retail and bulk plant locations.

AIMS now offers hosting services for both UNIX- and Windows-based systems.

Changing tax tables (adding a new jurisdiction or a new type of product, for example) can be done by the user either in COMPAS 8.0 or COMPAS Commander; however, some users will ask AIMS to make such changes.

COMPAS Commander provides excellent access to your data for the purposes of number-crunching or ad hoc reporting. Any standard Commander report can be exported directly to Excel, with headers intact. For people familiar with Excel, it is not difficult to adjust column widths, delete unneeded columns or rows, etc. To export a report, click on the export button which is found on the top left of the screen that your report displays on. Follow the prompts to select the format of the export that you want, the destination of your export and the name you want to give it. (To better familiarize yourself with the contents of Commander's standard reports, consult the Help file in Commander; choose the "Reports" folder and explore the contents and filtering options of the standard reports.)

Would you like to know more about some of the valuable products and services provided by AIMS' Partners, such as Disaster Recovery, Off-site Data Backup, Payroll Software and Services, and UST/AST & Wet Stock Managment?

Both COMPAS 8.0 and COMPAS Commander provide electronic document distribution by fax or email. It is possible to off-load the sending of faxes from your server by using an Internet faxing service by Metrofax. Basically, your fax jobs are sent to Metrofax from your server as emails. Metrofax uses your customer's fax number, which is part of the email message, to actually send the fax on your behalf from Metrofax' servers. The advantage to you is that your faxes of invoices, EFT notices, etc. all go out faster. If you have any fax recipients outside your primary area code, using Metrofax also eliminates long-distance toll charges.

You can see Metrofax pricing here.

AIMS will help you get set up with Metrofax.

Think "AutoTax" when you need a way to meet e-filing requirements, because no matter what the requirements are, AutoTax can meet them. AutoTax can be the universal bridge between your company and any state revenue agency that you deal with.

If you are in the lubricants business and your suppliers offer rebate programs, COMPAS Commander's new Rebates module will be of interest to you!

If you are using AUTOSEND but have not upgraded it to AUTOSIR, now you have a chance to try in-house SIR processing for free for 30 days! Unlike out-sourced SIR, which gives you one analysis of each UST per month, AUTOSIR lets you do statistical leak detection at any interval you wish--even daily. And AUTOSIR is the only way you can sit in your office and find miscalibrated pump meters. The benefits of having on-demand SIR are numerous.

For COMPAS 7.0 and COMPAS 8.0 Payroll software users, there will be no programming changes if you are filing paper W2's or paper 1099-MISC for the payroll year ending in 2011. However, if you are filing W2s electronically (EFW2), there will be a change. We will be sending out a Payroll upgrade that can be installed any time before the end of the year. The End of Year procedures will be sent to you as soon as the IRS publishes Circular E with 2011 tax rates. This is usually done around December 15th.

For COMPAS 7.0 and COMPAS 8.0 Payroll software users, there will be no programming changes if you are filing paper W2's or paper 1099-MISC for the payroll year ending in 2011. However, if you are filing W2s electronically (EFW2), there will be a change. We will be sending out a Payroll upgrade that can be installed any time before the end of the year. The End of Year procedures will be sent to you as soon as the IRS publishes Circular E with 2011 tax rates. This is usually done around December 15th.

Best practices for data backup involve a multi-layered approach. Adequate data backup is the foundation for a proper business recovery plan.  Because the cost of per/gigabyte storage has dramatically decreased in the past few years, there is no justifiable reason for not having redundant backup solutions.  As an example: you can purchase a one terabyte external hard drive for less than $100.00 and a cloud  backup solution costs less that $3.00/gigabyte per month. 

AIMS has partnered with Backup Manager, an Alberta, Canada-based company, to provide you with a "backup for your backup." For a very small amount of money per month, Backup Manager will continuously and automatically back-up anything you want backed up--not just your AIMS data.

Customer service web portals are becoming one of the competitive advantages that petroleum marketers can exploit. COMPAS 8.0 users can give their customers password-protected access to information and documents, around the clock, every day. The COMPAS 8.0 web portal can be part of your company's website, or it can be hosted elsewhere.

AIMS isn't just a jobber accounting software provider! We have many years of experience dealing with fuel inventory logistics and tank gauging. No matter what mix of old or new equipment, no matter what makes and models of ATG's, and no matter what makes and models of POS devices that you have in place now, AIMS can get them all reporting to you every day--automatically, with no human intervention.

With the launch of our new website, http://www.aims1.com/, in December, we are able to host self-running video presentations of various features of COMPAS Commander. This makes it convenient for our customers and potential customers to see Commander in action. If your company is considering converting to Commander, click on this link to view a 13-minute high-level presentation. Depending on your Internet connection, it might take up to a minute for the video to download.

AIMS is very pleased and excited to announce the launch of our new website! It's at the same address, http://www.aims1.com/, but the content is brand-new and so is the look! As content-rich as the old website, we arranged the new one into these sections:

Ready to sell renewable fuels? Your COMPAS software is! - If you are not selling fuels containing renewable components (biodiesel or ethanol), you probably will be  soon. Your COMPAS software, whether version 8.0 or Commander, is built to handle the proper accounting for renewable fuels transactions.

Some key new features in the latest COMPAS Commander release

Let Commander's G/L Audit Report
Help You Find Answers Quickly!

The G/L Audit Report is a great tool for researching transactions. This report can be found by going to: Core System | G/L Reports | G/L Audit Report.

From group number to update type, you can search for information using a variety of different fields. In the below example, we are searching for all the tax entries related to customer #550 for a given fiscal period.

Handling splash blending is easy with COMPAS Commander. Whether blending product at the rack (or from different racks), or combining product sourced at the rack with product you have in your bulk plant, Commander processes these transactions exactly as they should be done since Commander is real jobber software.