MN SOS Voter List is Updated

Can you believe it?  It's only taken 4 months for the counties to report their results to the SOS.  There is still one county that has not reported.  Email Tom at tschunk.trailblz.com if you need to know who that is (he loves email, so feel free to email him early and often <g>).  

What We Just Did Today!

A new version has just been released.

 

Attributes and Pivots
 
- Attribute columns have been added to the Pivot's summable fields.  In the picture below I have totalled my membership levels (Gold, Silver, Bronze) by Gender.
 
 
  

Events

We are still working on the Event system to tighten the bolts on it. These were added today:

  - Duplicate event feature.

  - Deletion of order lines, including tickets

  - Search panel on Product list

 
Walk Lists 

Odd/Even criteria has been added to the address search list.  Useful if you want to pull ONLY those addresses on a particular side of the street. 

We NEVER Stop Working For You - more changes in the last update

Most of these were direct requests from you.


Misc

- Trail Blazer's YouTube channel can be opened from with the Trail Blazer Help Menu.

- Add Max Household Member count to Create Household dialog. Allows user to decide how big the households may be before separating into single households.

- In walk lists, a page break is caused by either a street name or a precinct code change.  This was causing page breaks in cases where the precinct code was missing.  Trail Blazer was updated to ignore such cases and to consider only non-blank precinct codes when breaking pages.

Events

- Desktop refinements:

  - On the Order-Line tab, the product type control was not being set correctly when the underlying record was an existing record.  Fixed.

  - With the Order-Line tab, the Delete button was activated for merchandise-type orderlines.

  - With the Order tab, you can delete the order when when:

    - the order amount is 0

    - the amount paid is 0

    - the amount open is 0

    - the order line count is 0

    - the ticket count is 0


Financial

- Allowing deposits of contributions, receipts, etc. from committees other than primary committee.

- VA Reporting - Schedule E was over reporting loan information. Corrected.

- Renamed in menu what was a Transferer List from 'Transfers In' to 'Transferers'.

- Enhancements to the Lender/Loan area.

- Deposit List - no longer preloads list.  You must click the Search button.

 

FEC  

- The FEC reporting code will now include a contribution where the absolute value of an individual contribution amount exceeds the itemization threshold.  This assures that in a reattribution situation, both contribution records are included in the report if the reattribution amount is greater than the itemization threshold.

- Added a 'force itemization' checkbox to the voter contribution data entry panel.

 

Microsoft Will Be Retiring Windows XP

I realize this is probaby known to you and it's still 12 months away.  For some of you it deserves some attention.

On April 08, 2014 Microsoft will no longer provide any support for Windows XP. Of course your machines will continue to operate just fine...  as long as you never need anything more than what you have now... and nothing breaks.

Windows XP was released in August of 2001 and has had a great life. 

What if I don't want to upgrade?

I know, change is hard.  Especially when what you have is working just fine.  Well, it will continue to work just fine... until it doesn't.  Then you will likely be forced into an upgrade that is not on your schedule.

My advice?

Be pro-active.  KNOW that you will be unsupported after 4/8/2014.  Consider setting money aside each month to pay for any upgrades you may need in 2014. Set your expectations.

Good News for Trail Blazer customers.

Trail Blazer recently required a .Net software upgrade of all of our customers.  We are good for several years.  If Trail Blazer is currently running on your PC, it will continue to do so into the foreseeable future.

Tax Deductible Amounts Can Now Be Entered on Each Contribution

For our nonprofit customers you may now enter a tax deductible amount on each of your contributions.  

You may update prior transactions en mass to back fill your data.  You can select specific types of transactions and then set the tax deductible amount to be equal to donation amount, not deductible at all, or even a percentage of the donation amount.

The tax deductible amount can also be included in your thank you letters.

Learn more.