# oneLiners

oneLinerText:
Balance corrections, adjustments & development


oneLinerText:
Don't readily sacrifice long term objectives


oneLinerText:
You cannot saw wood without making sawdust


oneLinerText:
If you don't pay for support, you don't get support


# bmsWebPages

bmsPageText:
Welcome to our website, which is dedicated to the description and support of our realtime, integrated and open Freight System which we call Boffin/Open.This open version of our system has been steadily and continuously developed since June 1988 and is written entirely in Oracle PL/SQL Forms and Reports. Bishopsgate is a member of the Oracle Partner Network (OPN) and under this setup operates an Oracle ASFU Distribution Agreement.



Our company specialises in the continued development of it's open, freight system that can be installed worldwide, without change. Boffin/Open can be run simultaneously in many screen languages and is already running in six countries. Boffin/Open is immediately available to run with all versions of Microsoft Windows servers, SUSE Linux 8.0 Professional, Red Hat Linux 9 and Unix all using Oracle 9i database and Client/Server architecture. Bishopsgate anticipate being able to provide the Boffin/Open application running under Oracle9i on UnitedLinux in late 2003 or early 2004.



Boffin/Open is written entirely in Oracle PL/SQL Forms & Reports with no 3GL programming, thus protecting the hardware independence attribute so expensively gained. The architecture is Client/Server with support for both thin and fat/rich clients. The system will soon be available for installation with the new Oracle 9iAS, which also offers thin-client/server access using the Worldwide Web as the communications link.



If you would like to know more about the various aspects of the product, please use the various links on the left of this screen to view summary information. If you have any further questions, please feel free to email us, we would be pleased to discuss the system and it's technicalities with you. The system is comprehensive and it runs very well.



For those visitors who are looking for a more technical overview, there is a "Microsoft Windows Explorer" style menu which will allow for a more direct path to specific information that is required. Click here.  Alternatively, you can complete the Bishopstrade Passport which will give you access to the finer technical detail inside this website. Click here.



Notices A few points. This website is best viewed with the screen settings at 1280 x 1024 Pixels and 24 bit true colour. If your screen resolution is such that the menu on the left is cut off, you can use the 'Tab' key and 'Shift + Tab' combination to navigate. The manuals that you are able to link to are stored as pdf files and so can be large; depending upon your Internet connection, they may take some time to download. The entire contents of the website and linked documents are liable to change without notice. Notice that all manuals that can be downloaded have a word-processing footer that carries the last amended date in the bottom lefthand corner of the page. No Boffin/Open software source or runtime files or SQL*scripts or any other valuable software files are stored on this website and there is no feedback from the website to our development centre. If you break into the website, please leave it as you find it, thanks.


bmsPageText:
Computer hardware



It should be stressed that our company is not in the business of selling hardware. We are more than happy to assist in this process but our objective will always be to provide a powerful system with a minimum of disturbance to present hardware arrangements. Notice that Bishopsgate are supporters of Open-Systems and so offer Boffin/Open for use on any commercially available platform.



Client/Server architecture



Currently, it is 'fashionable' to setup user installations 
using Client/Server arcitecture where one or more servers running under 
Microsoft Windows or Unix or Linux will support the user's Oracle 9i database. 
The Oracle database will be accessed by practically an unlimited number 
of local fat and thin client personal computers; typically running under 
Microsoft Windows operating system(s) (95/98/XP/Mil/2000 etc). The communications 
making all of the Local Area Network (LAN) possible will probably be high-speed 
Ethernet supporting TCP/IP communications. In such a network, an unlimited 
number of physical printers can be attached and made available to all 
authorised users. For the uninitiated, fat-client computers are equipped 
with a complete copy of the Boffin/Open application and the application 
runs in the client PC, accessing the server for data from the Oracle database. 
Thin-client personal computers do not have a copy of the Boffin/Open application, 
but act as 'dumb terminals' using the complete copy of the Boffin/Open 
application stored on the Oracle server; no additional 'terminal emulation' 
software is required. Any LAN can support a mix of fat and thin-clients.



Web-based thin-client architecture



The introduction of Oracle 9iAS marks a significant 
step forward in the possible architecture and one that will offer extensive 
benefits to the freight industry. If the user's Oracle installation is 
setup with Oracle 9iA/S or later, the following attributes become available. 
All of the Client/Server possibilities including both thin and fat clients 
running on a LAN are still available. Where the user's site is updated 
to become a Website, thewn thin client support for remote personal computers 
becomes possible using the Worldwide Web as the replacement for the copper 
cable or fibre optics used in the Local Area Network. The remote thin-client 
will have an Internet connection and use of a Web Browser through which 
full access to the Boffin/Open application is possible. Consider all of 
those geographic sites where freight companies would like to have occasional 
system access! It is quite common for all stand-alone PC installations 
to have an Internet connection so as to make email, word processing and 
spread sheet facilities available, so the inclusion of a small amount 
of Oracle 9iA/S software makes such a PC into an 'intelligent terminal' 
to the Boffin/Open application. Bishopsgate are testing Oracle 9iA/S at 
present and should be in a position to demonstrate their application soon. 



Server hardware



Any modern, commercially available PC could be used 
as the Oracle server for the Boffin/Open application for small installations 
and such a small server would probably be run with the friendly Microsoft 
Windows 2000 Server operating system. Where the user has a requirement 
for more than perhaps 15client-PCs, then a more powerful server should 
be used. The important hardware aspects of the server would be amount 
of Real Memory (RAM), hard disk controller(s) and number of hard disks. 
In all cases, the rule is 'the more you have the faster the system will 
run'. See below for typical server configurations.



Microsoft versus Unix/Linux



Although not strictly a 'hardware' point, it might be 
useful here to add a word about the relative speed of a reasonable 
server of any given configuration. In Bishopsgate's development centre, 
all development is effected on servers running SUSE Linux, Red Hat Linux 
and Microsoft Windows 2000 Server. The speed at which the servers run 
under Red Hat and SUSE Linux is not a little faster than the same database 
running under Microsoft Windows 2000, it is many times faster, although 
a little less friendly. If one assumes that the Linux server master console 
would be used only for controlling the server; then the adoption of a 
(generic) Unix/Linux operating system for the server should be considered. 
There is also the point that Linux operating systems are free of continueing 
license charges and only a small initial cost of perhaps $120.



Scalability



It is possible to setup a single laptop computer with 
an A4 stationery HP PCL5e or later compliant printer, such as but not 
limited to an HP1150 and run the Boffin/Open application on it. The single 
two-tray printer would be able to print all of the A4 Landscape and Portrait 
reports and operational forms including all sales invoices and credit 
notes.



The system would be able to send emails and facsimiles and process EDIFACT 
messages. There might be a problem connecting an additional matrix printer 
for printing multi-part sets (such as MAWBs/HAWBs) but this shows what can 
be done on the very low end. Bishopsgate have a SONY PCG-FX209K with 512 
Megabytes of RAM and 30 Gigabytes of hard disk setup like this and it runs 
well. On the upper-end of the scalibility spectrum, Bishopsgates 
advice is that there is no practical upper limit to the number or location 
of client-PCs or physical printers that can be attached to any given LAN/WAN 
and be in use, simultaneously. Client PCs are able to operate multiple 
window sessions where all or some of the windows are running the Boffin/Open 
application. There will be a performance problem if the hardware resources 
are insufficient for the 'number of users', but nothing in Boffin/Open 
application will cause a problem. 



Mixing hardware on a LAN/WAN



Boffin/Open is intentionally an Open-System and Bishopsgate 
are not in the business of selling hardware. There is no practical limit 
to the 'manufacturer mix' of hardware within any given installation. The 
limitation, if there is one, is that all of the selected hardware must 
comply with the overall configuration guide supplied by Bishopsgate and 
there is little in this to cause any hardware manufacturer any concern. 



Multiple servers in a LAN/WAN 



There is no practical limit to the number of servers 
that maybe components of any given LAN/WAN, although the normal number 
is one or maybe two if the Oracle 'Replication' facility is to be used. 
All of the Client-PCs that are connected to any given LAN/WAN may access 
any server attached to the network and could even be connected to more 
than one server at any one time. In this case, one connection to server-'a' 
would be through one window and the connection to the other server-'b' 
through another window. 



Oracle 'Replication' support 



It is worth mentioning that as far as Bishopsgate is 
aware, there is nothing in the Boffin/Open application that would cause 
any users to not be able to use any current feature of the Oracle RDBMS 
system or any optional software that Oracle might offer to run with their 
RDBMS. Oracle includes a feature which Oracle call Replication and Bishopsgate 
call Data Mirroring. The facility is available in any Boffin/Open installation 
where there is a use for it. As an interesting 'aside', Bishopsgate have 
this feature running between a SUSE Linux 8.0 based server and a Microsoft 
Windows 2000 based server in their development centre. It will be interesting 
to the reader to note, that once the Oracle Replication has been commissioned 
in any site for a single application table, to add the feature to other 
application tables, is straight-forward and can be effected without a 
visit by Bishopsgate. A current full implementation of Boffin/Open would 
involve about 550 tables.



Printers and printing



There are, of course, many alternatives which we can 
discuss, but the basics are as follows. There is no practical application 
software limit to the number of physical and/or logical printers that 
can be supported simultaneously. There is no requirement to close down 
the application when commissioning additional printer(s). Bishopsgate 
normally recommend printers which will operate entirely on A4 plain, white 
stationery. The appearance and output can be improved by using printers 
with two or three input trays, thereby enabling ordinary letterhead, plain 
white paper 80 gms/m2 with a simple colour logo to be loaded simultaneously. 
This A4 paper would typically have the user's Standard Terms and Conditions 
of Trade pre-printed on the reverse side of each sheet. The right kind 
of paper for any particular document will then be selected automatically, 
by the Boffin/Open application programs. These laser printers must be 
Hewlett Packard PCL/5e (or later) compliant, they are available in varying 
speeds and durabilities depending upon the expected throughput. An example 
of such a printer, would be an HP4000TN. 



Telecommunications 



It is quite normal for users to require one or more 
fax/telex/e-mail/FTP links to be integrated into the system. Boffin makes 
it possible for the computer system to be directly linked into these international 
networks, thus allowing the computer to dial and send messages with or 
without operator involvement. All such messages can be logged/archived 
and costed as an audit trail or as an aid to subsequent charging out. 
We have experience with EDI messaging, but this is a particular subject 
on which there are many misunderstandings and we strongly recommend a 
discussion with one of our technical experts. Internet usage is also integrated 
into Boffin/Open with many extremely useful applications. All Boffin/Open 
application programs are equipped with logic that allows them to be quickly 
updated to enable them to construct and send emails and/or facsimiles, 
without the knowledge of or any involvement from the human operator. 



Links with outside agencies



With the increase in computerisation of the sea and air ports, there is a requirement 
to enable Boffin/Open to communicate directly with the port and customs 
computers. Boffin is already capable of communicating with many official 
schemes in different countries and any specialised requirements can be 
discussed further. A good example of this technology is the Boffin/Open 
ability, without specialist hardware, to receive incoming Shipping Company 
manifests coded in EDIFACT format, extract the data relating to each Bill 
of Lading before booking the cargo details into Boffin/Open for Manifest 
Striking, or any other use that might be required. As a rule of thumb, 
a manifest with 100 Bills of Lading takes less than one second to read 
and process on an ordinary but modern PC. 



Links between Boffin/Open installations 



Where the user wishes to install multiple Boffin/Open 
server(s); there is no application limit to the number of such servers 
that can be installed and no limit to the number of Client-PCs that can 
be supported on each server. Ignoring security issues, where the Wide 
Area Network (WAN) is setup correctly, all Client-PCs are able to work 
with all servers. Boffin/Open application data (such as but not limited 
to cargo bookings) can be sent automatically between servers, my exports 
are your imports; 



Laptop computers 



Laptop computers are becoming very powerful and can 
have extensive hard disk capacity. These attributes together with the 
friendly setup of Microsoft Windows Networking makes it possible and very 
desirable to include such devices in the Boffin/Open scope. There seem 
to be at least three main uses for these devices in a Boffin/Open installation. 



A Laptop can be used as a regular Client-PC, where it 
is possible to effect all of the facilities that a regular desktop Client-PC 
can effect. It follows that some staff members could be equipped with 
reasonably powerful Laptop computers computers that they can attach to 
the Boffin/Open LAN in regular working hours and then be taken home at 
night for homework. 



The managing Director's Laptop; would be attached to 
the LAN during normal working hours. It is possible to export in a friendly 
and easy manner, complete export of the user's Oracle database to the 
hard disk of the Laptop, such that the automatic Oracle export backup 
of the user's database, taken in the small hours each night can be copied 
to the Laptop as an additional off-site backup. 



With the introduction of Oracle 9iA/S, such Laptops 
can be setup, so that they can access the user's Boffin/Open database 
server from anywhere in the world; consider the Managing Director travelling 
around selling the company's products, supported by access to the commercial 
database.


bmsPageText:
Server operating systems 



In principle, Boffin/Open can be supplied for use on 
any server operating system for which the Oracle Corporation offer their 
products RDBMS and software product(s). Bishopsgate effect all of their 
application software development on servers running Microsoft NT Server, 
Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional, SUSE Linux Release 8.0 and Red Hat 
Linux Release 9. It follows that Bishopsgate can supply Boffin/Open for 
these operating systems almost immediately.



Bishopsgate are interested in offering Boffin/Open on 
other operating systems including other dialects of generic Unix platforms, 
provided the project is large enough to warrant the development work involved. 
Bishopsgate intend to offer Boffin/Open for use with UnitedLinux as and 
when the latter is available in a stable form.



Client-PC operating systems

br />
All Client-PCs supported by Bishopsgate at the current 
time are running under Microsoft Windows operating systems from Windows 
(95/98/NT/XP/ME/etc) onwards. This is beneficial for Bishopsgate as so 
many users in the world are already using Windows on their PCs and are 
well trained in using such systems in their regular work. After being 
setup correctly, the human operator's access link to the Boffin/Open application 
is simply an icon added to her existing desktop screen image. It is worth 
pointing out that any given Client-PC is able to connect to an unlimited 
number of Oracle server installations, simply by specifying the Oracle 
server name at the start of a logon session.



Website



Many would-be Boffin/Open users will already have their 
own website. Where this is not true, Bishopsgate would be happy to quote 
for the supply of an attractive, basic, hosted website. Bishopsgate are 
working hard to bring the use of the Boffin/Open operational and accounting 
data, which is stored in an Oracle 9i database, and the user's website 
together in an automated and seamless manner. There are many freight related 
opportunities for the fast and automatic extraction of data from the user's 
Boffin/Open database which can then be attractively published on the website 
and made available for the user's business partners to view and/or download 
and/or print. Bishopsgate see the users operational and accounting database 
and the website becoming very closely coupled in their operation.


bmsPageText:
Oracle RDBMS



Well here we have it, the software that significantly 
changed our company for the better; which is worth a few words of explanation. 



From the inception of the company until late 1978, all 
of the freight application software was written in Wang MVP interpretive 
BASIC-2 and very successful it was. In late 1978, Wang made the VS family 
of computers available, which were expected to use ANSI 74 COBOL and so 
all of the BASIC-2 application software was completely re-written in ANSI 
COBOL with the opportunity being taken to add all of the outstanding Wishlist 
items. Bishopsgate still have customers using Wang VS and the Boffin/VS 
software.



In the middle of 1988; everyone was thinking Unix and 
so Bishopsgate looked for a dialect of ANSI COBOL which was close in dialect 
to the powerful and friendly Wang VS COBOL but also compatible with generic 
Unix. In this investigation, a director of Bishopsgate attended an Oracle 
seminar in the Mayfair Hotel in London, England and the Oracle Corporation 
guest speaker said the magic words (for a software house), If you are 
willing and able to re-write your application entirely in Oracle PL/SQL 
Forms and Reports, you will be 100% compatible with the large and increasing 
number of computer platforms / environments on which Oracle offer their 
RDBMS product.



Bishopsgate had wanted to be hardware and/or operating 
system independent, as increasingly, potential users already had made 
substantial investments in hardware but wanted some/all the Boffin application. 
Bishopsgate joined the Oracle Partner Program, paid their Development 
License Fee and started writing a 'program-for-program' conversion of 
their Boffin/VS product. All of the major components of the Boffin VS 
system are now available within the Boffin/Open application. In addition, 
extensive development work has been completed on new modules and across 
all existing modules.



As indicated above, Bishopsgate have been developing 
with Oracle RDBMS since 1988 and have been through some major changes 
in the PL/SQL language in that time. In recent times, all or parts of 
Boffin/Open have been supplied for use with Oracle 7.3 database (Forms 
3 and Reportwriter 1.1), which has been very successful. Boffin/Open was 
upgraded for Oracle 8i, but due to the timing of the release of Oracle 
9i, the Boffin/Open for Oracle 8i product was never supplied to any user 
site. Recently, Bishopsgate have upgraded to Oracle 9i (Forms 6i and Reports 
6i - which still support the Client/Server architecture) under any 
Microsoft Windows Server, SUSE Linux and Red Hat Linux. 
Oralce9iAS Release 2 is available. Bishopsgate are please to be able to 
inform you that Boffin/Open Release 10i is available both for true client/server 
operation (using Oracle forms6i and reports 6i) and as a remote thin Thin-Client 
using the Worldwide Web as the telecommunications link (using Oracle forms9i 
and reports9i).



There is a move in the Oracle software development community 
to use the Java programming language (J2EE) in order 
to obtain maximum performance of web based applications. Bishopsgate have 
effected a Java development project within which it was possible to see 
the complexity and possible maintenance issues associated with programming 
in Java for Oracle. The results of this excercise show that it is unecessary 
to completely convert the application to Java to obtain good results. 
It probably is worthwhile to rewrite frequently used and or large order 
entry type programmes that will be used over the web in Java. Details 
of the Java development can be viewed by clicking 
here. Now that Boffin/Open release 10i is available and being delivered 
to a live site in January 2004 Bishopsgate will monitor the web based 
performance of the system's front end and rewrite any application components 
in Java as becomes necessary.



Bishopsgate Computer Services Limited is a proud member 
of the latest worldwide Oracle Partner Network (OPN), under which development 
copies of the latest Oracle RDBMS and Tools products can be obtained for 
Development and Demonstration. It is Bishopsgate's intention to make Boffin/Open 
available on future releases of the Oracle RDBMS and probably on an increasing 
number of Operating System platforms.



Notice That the whole of the Boffin/Open 
application is already available to be run in the latest Oracle 
venture of 'Unbreakable Linux Oracle9i'.


bmsPageText:
Boffin/Open structures



One of the things about getting to rewrite one's software for the third time and then, within Oracle's RDBMS environment, is that all or most of the irritating blemishes of the last iteration can be resolved. In Bishopsgate's case, substantial programming had been effected in the previous iterations on subjects like 'normalisation' and 'reporting' on data held within the hierarchical data structures. Re-writing the application from COBOL to Oracle PL/SQL was a great opportunity to refine once more the relationships built into the design in an attempt to comply with a long outstanding wish-list item, which was to be able to print reports at the speed of the fastest printer a user could install. All of the data to drive the reporting functions is held within the Boffin/Open application, but it had never previously been possible to recall it at 'rated printer speeds'. 



It is interesting, on first thoughts, one would expect that there would be some single hierarchical structure that could be sepcified that could be used to fully define the structure of a typical commercial company; unfortunately this is not the case if one wishes to fully define both the operational and accounting aspects; there are at least two models operating at the same time. 



The first hierarchy would be something like Group, Company, Route, Month and Shipment and the second, something like Group, Division, Branch, Section, Route, Month and Shipment and the structures do not stop there; there are others that become apparent when one gets into the detail. It has been interesting within the Boffin/Open design to ensure that each of these structures is considered, making it possible in the reporting aspect of the application to report on the data in all required methods which are dictated by the structures. Most of the support for these structures comes from the structure of the operational check-digit, job numbers, which are issued automatically by the system, when needed. From the job numbers, the application is able to determine many of the other parameters without human intervention; thus avoiding human errors. Bishopsgate have been fortunate in that they ran Boffin in a very large Freight Forwarding company that operated many companies, branches, sections etc, where the theory could be validated over several years and seen to be working. 



There is a link below that will take you to a chapter of our manuals that describes these structures in more detail.


bmsPageText:
Boffin/Open standard facilities



All three variations of the Boffin system have been 
written by the same team of programmers, who have essentially grown up 
with the product. All of the more than 1900 programs and 890 reports of 
Boffin/Open have been written with the same programming style and to a 
common programming standard. There are many facilities built into the 
software, which are designed to make the software both friendly and easy 
to use. 



Continuously available 



This third re-write of the Boffin/Open application has 
allowed Bishopsgate to completely avoid issues that would have meant stopping 
the system and then re-starting it again; this Boffin/Open version is 
designed for continuous running H24 and D366. The system does not even 
have to be stopped and re-started at Accounting Month-end and/or Accounting 
Year-end. With even reasonable planning/consideration, all application 
programs can be run on any Client-PC without regard to what other regular 
system users are doing. Even the Oracle complete export backup of the 
database tables can be run in this environment. 



Data Normalisation 



Normalisation of any system is the process of designing 
the application database tables, so that no data element is stored more 
than once. The Boffin/Open design is an example of a heavily normalised 
system; which has allowed the design to grow over the years to be as powerful 
as it is, without compromising the basic data and causing data error(s). 



Policy on data retention 


In the 'olden days' of the last generation of commercial 
computers, it was a well known parameter that about 33% of the cost of 
data processing was spent on data validation at the time of data input. 
Although this percentage value might well have changed, Bishopsgate would 
suggest that it is likley that the overall aspect of data validation is 
still an expensive aspect of the overall budget. Boffin/Open has avoided 
any necessity to re-key any data, irrespective of how many software modules 
are being used. Hardware has increased in power many times since the last 
generation and hard disk storage is many times cheaper than it was and 
many times faster to access than it was. It follows that having paid to 
get valid data into the Boffin/Open application, we should make the very 
best use of it and make it available for a period of time that allows 
maximum use of it. Considerable detail data is entered into the Boffin/Open 
application, much validation and automatic 'data extension' is effected 
at data-entry time. Nowhere in the application does Bishopsgate summarise 
any of the valuable and rich detail data that has been entered and data 
is only discarded after human confirmation that it can be purged. All 
data purging is effected in an intelligent manner, so that no 'half-stories' 
are left behind to confuse those who look at old data. As an example, 
when surface export cargo bookings are to be physically purged from the 
system, bookings that are part of any given groupage load cannot be purged 
until all of the bookings within the given groupage can be purged together. 
In this way, it is never possible to print a groupage manifest that looks 
correct but is missing some of the detail cargo bookings that were originally 
part of it. 



All operational and accounting data is designed to be online for at least 
two years and after that will only be purged, if the size of the 
database seems to be starting to slow down the overall system performance. 
Bishopsgate would suggest that in a medium sized company and large companies 
with lots of hardware, the Boffin/Open deatil data would be online and 
available for several years, perhaps at least five years. 



No multiple keying of data 



Bishopsgate have given great care in the system design 
so as to ensure that any required data is not re-keyed. All data validation 
is effected at data-entry time and in a manner whereby any errors are 
highlight whilst the source document(s) are still at hand. If user-data 
cannot pass the validation at data-entry time, it does not get in! 



Maximumisation of repetitive data 



A considerable amount of information in the freight 
environment is used repetitively and so Bishopsgate have paid particular 
attention to enabling the user to store such data in online database tables 
in a manner that provides for easy and fast access, saving the need to 
re-enter the information during the normal working periods. Database tables 
containing directories of Ports, Airports, Customs Tariffs etc are all 
made available in the basic design. The data for many of these tables 
is supplied with each new system, provided that the user wishes this to 
be the case. 



Standard method of accessing repetitive data 



A great deal of the data stored within the Boffin/Open 
data tables is codified for example, if a particular Ocean Vessel is involved 
within a consignment, it is not the ocean vessel name that is stored as 
a data element of the cargo booking, it is the internally allocated record 
number from the SHIPS directory that is stored. The advantage of this 
is that the spelling of the ocean vessel name or the amendment of any 
of the ocean vessel's details needs only be made to the single entry in 
the SHIPS directory to have an impact on all bookings involving the ocean 
vessel. 



Standard method of effecting data lookups 



It is very common for a record of standing or not very 
volatile data to have three main methods of access. Each such record would 
have a primary index key, a sort key and a short name. The Primary key 
will be unique within the data table and is used internally for chaining 
records together. Many records in any given table can have the same value 
as their Sort Code and this key is used in the partial alphabetic searching 
access method. Short Names are unique within any given data table and 
can be used in place of a primary key by the operator. Consider the customer 
master file. This table contains a large number of entries, each having 
a unique Account Number, an optional unique Short Name and a non-unique 
Sort Code. When a human operator is required to identify a customer, he/she 
may do this in three different ways, which shows the Boffin/Open standard 
method for such things. Firstly, if the human operator happens to remember 
the customers account number, it can be entered directly and any file 
searching is avoided. If the human operator happens to know the customer 
short name (nickname in English), then this can be used directly and in 
place of the account number to obtain the applicable account number. If 
the operator does not know the customer account number, then he/she is 
able to key-in the first few letters of the customer company name and 
effect a partial alphabetic search of personal accounts with that starting 
letter combination. Accounts are shown one per screen line and the operator 
is able to align the screen cursor to the required account and select 
it by using a keyboard function key. This method and the keyboard function 
key are exactly the same in every Boffin/Open form/program. Attention 
should be made by new users to develop a 'house style' for the issuance 
of account short names and sort codes. Bishopsgate have included the ability 
to create new standing data records from within the Partial Alphabetic 
Search routines so that when looking for an entry,if it does not exist, 
then a new record can be created there and then, without having to exist 
the task in hand, create the new entry and then return to the original 
task. 



Automatic currency conversions 



Boffin/Open is a true multi-currency system. The user 
indicates his home currency (the currency of the local general ledger) 
at the outset and in normal times this will never be changed. As an interesting 
aside a system installed in Paris did have it's home-currency changed 
(over a weekend) when France changed over from French Francs to Euros; 
so Bishopsgate do have the technology to make such a fundamental change. 
Each new system is delivered with a complete table of the Countries of 
the World, which acts as the depository for current exchange rate values. 
The system offers five rates of exchange per currency, so as to cover 
the need for a different exchange rate value for different business tasks, 
conversion of sales invoices and the acceptance of incoming foreign currency 
supplier invoices, for example. All currency conversions are automatic 
and all creation and posting of profit/loss in exchange are automatic 
and immediate this avoiding clerical staff getting the decimal point in 
the wrong place. 



Duplex printing 



Virtually all of the application printing is effected 
on A4 stationery; using Portrait and Landscape modes, as applicable and 
mostly using simplex printing (printing on only one side of each sheet 
of paper). Duplex printing is supported, where the user has a duplex enabled 
printer (such as but not limited to HP4000TN with the Duplex adapter). 
Large General ledger listings (audit Trails) will print in duplex mode 
where the operator has a duplex enabled printer in her list of available 
logical printers or in simplex mode where no duplex enabled printer is 
available. 



Language enabled Forms/programs 



The international freight industry is by it's very nature, 
a multi-country business, with staff in many countries working together 
on the same data to control the movement of cargo. Bishopsgate wish to 
be able to run the single Boffin/Open system (not a different version 
for each country, but the SAME runtime library of Forms and Reports) in 
an increasing number of separate countries, simultaneously. To make this 
possible, every Form/Program in the system has been upgraded so as to 
allow each authorised operator to select a default language in which he/she 
would like to work on the Boffin/Open screens. It is even possible under 
Microsoft Windows for a single Client-PC operator to run one Window in 
one language and another in an alternative language. Where Bishopsgate 
have not effected the (freight industry version) of the translations to 
any given foreign language, the new user requiring use of the additional 
language is expected to make available a freight-knowledgeable staff member 
who is proficient in English and the new language to effect the translations, 
Bishopsgate provide the software to allow for the translations. There 
is no practical limit to the number of languages that any given installation 
can support, simultaneously. 



Email enabled programs 



All businesses are getting used to involving emails 
within their business methods and so this is a facility to which Boffin/Open 
can naturally be interfaced. The whole of the Boffin/Open system has been 
upgraded to make it possible, with the minimum of programming effort, 
to allow any application program to build and to send an email, without 
any involvement or even the knowledge of the human operator! Such emails 
can (option switch) be electronically archived, so that they may be further 
processed, as required by management. This email facility supports both 
versions of Microsoft Email - Outlook Express and Outlook and could be 
updated again to support more email products. 



Every Boffin/Open report that can be printed can be emailed and/or sent by facsimile 



There are more than 1871 Forms/Programs and 800 Reports.The 
entire system has been updated, so that any report that it is possible 
to print can be sent attached to an email, with a minimum of effort and 
printed at destination where any PCL5e (or later) printer macros design 
will be combined with the printed report to form a printed report which 
will be identical to the report had it been printed locally. In a similar 
manner, such a report can be sent by facsimile to obtain exactly the same 
results at the destination address. It is also possible to send such emails 
and/or facsimiles to groups of recipients. 



Automatic electronic archiving of printed reports - The Electronic Job File 



Boffin/Open is designed to be able to produce nearly 
all operational forms and reports and complete any Governmental forms, 
on demand and very quickly and quietly. In recent times, computer speeds 
and online capacity have drastically improved in terms of cost, capacity 
and speed. The Boffin/Open application system contains at least two sales 
invoicing programs per operational suite (main invoicing and supplementary 
invoices and/or credit notes). As an aid to the user's accounts department, 
Bishopsgate upgraded all of the sales invoicing programs so that they 
not only print sales invoice sets but also (option switch) stored a perfect 
copy of the customer copy invoice in a special form and using the unique, 
Boffin/Open issued sales invoice number as an access key. This was so 
successful, that the technology is being spread gently to all other operational 
documents, with a view to this becoming the basis for the Electronic Cost 
File, which is an item that has been on the Bishopsgate Wishlist for many 
years. To-date, all sales invoices, credit notes, Shippers COD, PODs, 
Supplier Remittances. It is worth noting that for each additional document 
that is produced by the system, a maximum of one programmer-day is required 
to add it to the list of documents that are automatically archived. 



Tracking & tracing 



Boffin/Open supports Tracking and Tracing in all of 
the operational suites. Under this system both automated events and manually 
inspired tracking records can be added to each cargo booking in real-time, 
without practical limit. There is no limit to the number of automatic 
sources of 'events' for which a tracking record should be constructed 
and stored chronologically on any given booking. Each tracking record 
carries the logon of the person who caused the 'event' to be recorded 
and a four character 'tracking function code', which allows the type of 
event being recorded to be used as a 'trigger action' for any additional 
processing; such as but not limited to the automatic construction and 
sending of an email. 



Extensive program links 



One of the best attributes of using a Relational Database 
Management System is that the hierarchical manner in which the data is 
logically stored, allows many interesting links between application programs 
to be provided. Within the Boffin/Open application, the opportunity has 
been taken to build in many of the useful links between programs that 
were perhaps too complex or slow in operation in the last generation of 
systems. 



General ledger postings 



The financial or bookkeeping components of the system 
are integrated and heavily normalised; financial records are stored only 
once and in a central location; where all aspects of the accounting system 
can use them. Ignoring Value Added Tax (or Sales Tax) processing for this 
discussion. Taking a very simple example of a sales invoice that has been 
raised against a single shipment booking, which (for example) contains 
two sales charges, perhaps a Freight charge and a Handling charge. 



Throughout the entire system, all operational modules, 
there is an option as to how the user would wish such an invoice to be 
posted to the financial ledgers. Under the basic option, the sales invoice 
is posted to the financial system as a single logical record which debits 
the customer personal accout (and the general ledger Debtors Control) 
and credits the general ledger sales account. Under the second option, 
the sales (example) sales invoice is posted to the integrated accounting 
system as a total record and two detail records. The total record debits 
the customer personal account and each detail record credits individual 
general sales ledger accounts, one for Sales-of-Freight and one for Sales-of-Handling. 
This second option was an upgrade to the entire system, included to support 
the 'Profit by Type of Expense' job costing aspect. In very summary form, 
Profit by Type of Expense allows the user to breakdown his trial balance 
gross profir, so that a gross profit by each type of sales heading can 
be seen. In large companies there is a worry that the gross profit is 
only being made by charging for 'petty items' (postages etc), and not 
because the buying and selling freight rates are properly setup and being 
used correctly. 


Operational accrual accounting 


All of the operational freight-forwarding suites of 
the Boffin/Open application support two methods of operational accrual 
accounting; Full Accrual accounting and Partial Accrual Accounting 
as an option per route/service. 


Under the Full Accrual Accounting, it is arranged that 
all expected direct costs are accrued for as part of the cargo booking 
process. At the time the shipment file is used to produce the 'primary' 
or main sales invoice (which is posted automatically and immediately to 
the financial ledgers), each of the trading accruals setup as memorandum 
records in the operational records is used to create a financial accrual 
within the ledgers. A moment after the main sales invoice and trading 
accruals have been posted, the expected job profit is known and so the 
shipment cost file is 'closed' for the expected gross profit; and then 
logically frozen a that gross profit. 


Under the Partial Accrual method, no trading accruals 
are identified as part of the cargo booking process. The shipment is used 
to produce operational documents and eventually the primary sales invoice 
will be printed and posted to the financial ledgers; which happens on 
a continuing basis. Initial direct supplier costs are accepted against 
the shipment cost file until an agreed 'cut-off point' (imposed by the 
accountants); where all non-closed shipments up to an agreed point must 
be checked on the system and any missing trading accruals entered. After 
the 'missing' trading accruals are identified, the cost file is 'closed' 
and the identified accruals converted into general ledger postings, the 
cost file is then closed for the expected gross profit; the cost file 
is then closed for the expected gross profit; which is logically frozen. 



Under both methods, there is a method of matching outstanding 
trading accruals with actual costs arriving from suppliers. A detailed 
working paper exists for this quite complex feature; those interested 
should make direct contact with Bishopsgate. 


Event logging 


Want to know what Boffin/Open application programs your 
team are using, how often and for how long; well some users do feel this 
would be useful, from time to time. Boffin/Open includes a sub-system 
that Bishopsgate know as 'Event Logging'. This feature can be installed 
in any contracting installation or kept switched-off, as required. When 
switched on, the software records the running of each Boffin/Open Form/Report 
by Logon-id and Form name. Form this information, it is possible to track 
in both directions; who is running what application software and around 
the other way around, who is using each Form, when and for how long etc. 
There does not seem to be any impact on the overall perfomance of the 
installation when this facilities is being used. 


Screen variable, language help text 


Every Boffin/Open program has been updated, so that 
help text can be provided for every entry (screen variable field) that 
the human operator is asked to complete. This help text programming has 
made it possible fore the help text to be displayed in the language that 
the human operator has elected to use in the current logon-session. To 
call up the screen help text, the human operator simply aligns her screen 
cursor over the variable field and waits for a moment or two. After the 
operator has read the text, she simply moves the screen cursor away from 
the variable field at which it is curently aligned. 


Introduction of colour in the screen images 



It seems a long time ago that we were all using character-based, 
single colour terminals and personal computers. The introduction of the 
modern, more advanced Client-PCs with their much more powerful screen 
controllers, has made it possible to use colour in the Boffin/Open application 
screen designs. Users will notice colour being increasingly used in the 
application; making working with the computer a little more attractive. 



Support for internal-debiting 


All versions of the Boffin integrated system offer the 
user the option of using tightly controlled Internal Debit Note 
(ID) processing and a further expansion of this option called Extended 
ID Processing. Boffin allows the user to run all operating departments 
are Profit Centers; to a degree that can report on Net Profit Before Tax 
per operating Department. If this facility is to be honestly supported 
there will be occasions when one operating department effects work for 
another operating department and will wish to be rewarded for the work 
involved. The danger is always that the department effecting the service 
will have every incentive to raise a charge to the 'customer-department', 
but that the 'customer department' will not treat the incoming charge 
as 'real money' and will not formally process that incoming charge and 
accept it as a cost. If this situation is allowed to happen; then there 
will be an over-statement of the company's Gross Profits; which hindsight 
shows can be very dangerous. 


If Internal Debiting is to be supported then a company 
rule has to be enforced that ALL Internal Debits must be fully and immediately 
accepted by the 'customer-departments'; as with any other incoming charge. 
Where the incoming charge is thought to be excessive or inaccurate; it 
must still be accepted and then made the subject of a query - if necessary 
through the user’s Managing Director. For each operating department that 
is to be involved in Internal Debiting; at least one sales ledger master 
file account record has to be setup that can be internally debited by 
the operating department effecting the service. The sales ledger master 
file record; will be setup in the normal manner; but will have the three 
single character fields Group, Company, Division all set to Yes; which 
will cause the production of Internal Debits instead of Sales Invoices. 



Internal debits are printed in the same format and with 
the same detail as with regular sales invoices and are numbered, for control 
purposes, with all other sales invoices and credit notes; they simply 
have a different printed title "Internal Debit" in place of "Invoice". 
The accounting records produced by Internal Debits are the same as and 
produce the same effect as Sales Invoices; although they bear different 
Boffin accounting type codes; so that they can be financially controlled 
separately and further identified and processed later as a unique group 
of transactions. 


Internal Debits raised by the 'Service-Department' update 
the sales ledger 'Customer department' account, in the same way as a sales 
invoice would do. The acceptance of the incoming Internal Debit by the 
'Customer Department' causes the original debit posting to be copied, 
the sign of it's posting to be reversed, the 'Customer Department's' job 
number to be used on the new posting. The original Debit and the copied 
credit record are then matched in the personal account sense and the 'Customer 
Department' account balance reduced accordingly. 


 In the Profit/Loss statement that Boffin can produce 
at Management Month-end; the value of unaccepted IDs is (or can be) reported 
separately in the report, as it probably is a value by which the company's 
Gross Profit is being OVER-REPORTED! One of the recommended checks and 
controls that are written into the Management Month-end procedure is that 
all Internal Debits that affect the accounting month up to and including 
which are to be reported for Financial Year-to-Date net profit before 
tax reporting is that all IDs used in the period are accepted. 


Close-coupling Oracle Database & website


We live in exciting times! We have a large Oracle 9i 
based business application, named Boffin/Open, covering all of the user's 
operational, accounting, management accounting, sales and marketing and 
customer services facilities. What Bishopsgate call 'Internet data 
publishing' has made it possible to extract any data from the user's 
database and make it available on the a website where his business partners 
can view and/or download it. The variety and quantity of information that 
can be published to the website is only limited to the vision of the user 
and can be accurate to the level of the last applicable transaction processed 
within the user's Boffin/Open Oracle database. Where data is confidential 
between the user and a particular partner, it is possible to publish this 
data in a manner so that it is only accessible to the particular partner. 



These web-based features are all designed to run 
automatically, including startup, closedown and refreshing, triggered 
by commercial and accounting 'events' that are already part of the user's 
business, the posting of a sales invoice, the creation and posting of 
a tracking and tracing record. The last thing that Bishopsgate want to 
do is to offer some beautiful feature that requires human intervention 
or even human involvement in the user's business. These features run totally 
automatically and will run even when key-people are on holiday; they do 
not impinge on the overall performance of the user's Boffin/Open installation. 
Users who would like to introduce these automated systems, will probably 
wish to install broadband telecommunications (ADSL) so that they effectively 
have a constantly open link with the Internet and do not pay per access 
(telephone call) to the website. 


User selection of important partners 


In the Boffin/Open system, it is a fact that all export 
shippers, importers, agents and anyone who pays for third party movements 
has to have at least one sales ledger personal account. Bishopsgate take 
the view, for this discussion, that the user's customers and/or partners 
fall into one of two categories; they are either once-off shippers or 
importers or they are hard core partners who regularly ship with the user 
and, as such, are very important and need to be kept informed. To support 
this notion, Bishopsgate have supplied a single application program which 
can be run at anytime and irrespective of what the other ergular system 
users are doing. This program allows the user to easily nominate and 
denominate sales ledger accounts for the 'Active Service List'; the 
list that controls which business partners should be supported in either 
or both web based Sales Statements and/or Web based Tracking & Tracing 
advices (and each new sevice that Bishopsgate bring to the available repertoire). 
The user selects a new sales account and then indicates for that account 
if the statements and/or tracking is to be supported and then codes an 
initial logon and password for the web access. The system automatically 
emails the new Active Service Account, informing him of the new facility 
and the logon and password after which the facilities will be immediately 
available. Where the user logiocally deletes a sales ledger account which 
is on the Active Service List, the web pages supporting that business 
partner are dropped to make online disk space avaibale for other uses. 
The Website logon and password logic includes a 'Remember my password 
facility'. 


Realtime web-based customer statements 



Boffin/Open includes realtime, integrated financial 
accounting where all of the user's sales, bought and general ledger accounting 
data is held online and available in open-item format. This accounting 
system is updated from an unlimited variety of sources of information, 
some manually keyed data and many program sources, such as the automated 
sales invoicing components of each of the Boffin/Open operational modules. 
It is now possible, as an optional feature, to setup the conditions necessary 
for the user to nominate an unlimited number of important sales ledger 
accounts as being accounts for which an up-to-date sales statement is 
to be published to the user's website, so that the user's customer can 
view and/or download it, at his/her convenience. These sales statements 
are maintained exactly up-to-date, to an accuracy such that the last personal 
account posting to an applicable account will be shown. This software 
is running in the Bishopsgate Johannesburg Development Centre and will 
be installed in a Beta site at the end of the first week in MAY-2003. 
After a month of Beta site running it will be offered to Boffin/Open users 
who will wish to have Bishopsgate host their Active Service Website. 


Realtime web-based tracking & tracing 



Heard it all before; the large freight companis are 
doing it already; yes but at what price! The Boffin/Open application 
has many operational modules, surface exports, surface imports, breakbulk 
air imports etc. All of these modules support the concept of Tracking 
and Tracing, where the local user of the system are able to see and use 
the tracking information within their business processes. It is now possible, 
as an optional feature, to setup the conditions necessary for the user 
to nominate an unlimited and increasing number of important sales ledger 
accounts (shippers, importers, agents - consignes to come next) as being 
accounts for which up-to-date shipment tracking & tracing information 
is to be published by shipment reference to the website. Boffin/Open has 
been updated so that as each tracking and tracing record is added to the 
applicable shipment, the shipment details are searched to determine if 
any of the parties involved with the shipment is one which is to be suppirted 
by the Web based Tracking & tracing feature. If one of the parties involved 
within the shipment is a a nominated account, then a completely up-to-date 
Tracking & Tracing Advice is published to his/her folder on the user's 
website, for the business partner to view and/or download at his/her convenience. 
These Tracking & Tracing Advices are maintained exactly up-to-date, to 
an accuracy such that the last Tracking record posted to the system and 
affecting an applicable account will be shown. The user is able to change 
the number and mix of the accounts for which this facility is to be supported, 
in realtime, without help from outside and irrespective of what the regular 
system users are doing. This software is running in the Bishopsgate Johannesburg 
Development Centre and will be offered to Boffin/Open users shortly. The 
difference is that the Boffin/Open system 'knows' the identity of 
the visitor to the website and from this ia able to determine what shipments 
of his are 'in play' and allows him to select Tracking Advices for one/all 
of those shipments, without knowing the waybill numbers beforehand. The 
website menu offered to the visitor includes the waybill numbers of 'in 
play' shipments, arranged so that the youngest are at the top of the list 
and the oldest at the bottom, sorted by mode of transport, Air exports, 
Air imports, Surface exports etc. 


HP PCL5e printer macro plus print file to PDF  
Excepting MAWB and HAWB printing as six part continuous stationery sets, 
all Boffin/Open printing is effected using HP PCL5e printer macros to 
program laser printer(s) with print form-designs and the printing 'through' 
these designs to obtain a pre-printed form look for operational and accounting 
documents. For the uninitiated, each 'pre-printed form' is the subject 
of an HP PCL5e printer macro that will cause all of the graphic lines 
and static text of the form to be printed together with the data-processing 
print that an application program produces; it works well. Once you have 
understood this and you have any requirement for 'printed report archiving', 
there is a much better way of arching that simply compressing the print 
file and storing it under a unique name somewhere. 


 In Boffin/Open printed report archiving is effected 
in a very clever way, which allows the re-call of a printed document at 
anytime from any server and/or client-PC. The re-called data-processing 
data is logically combined with the contents of the HP PCL5e printer macros 
at bit level and then used to create a new document in Portable Document 
Format (PDF); which can be viewed (free copy of AcrobatReader) 
as a whole document and then printed, as required. The printed combined 
document is indistinguishable from the original. But even better. 
This combined document can be uploaded automatically to the user's website 
and then downloaded, viewed and printed anywhere in the world and 
remember the copy is PERFECT and cannot be distinguished from the 
original! 


That is enough for now, we do not want to spoil 
you, but this section will be updated as we complete or nearly complete 
the development of each new feature. Subjects discussed here are real 
and not simply items from our longterm wish list.  And the smartest 
thing Bishopsgate have done? All of this has been programmed without 
'third party' packages or participation, Bishopsgate have programmed it 
all; have source decks for it all; so are ideally poitioned to continue 
development of the products with their customers and without involvement 
or possible license fees of third parties!


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Container control



Boffin/Open includes a large operational module that is designed to provide realtime, continuous running container control for a Container Base or a Sea Port. The system is designed to cover all of the aspects of the control of the containers for imports, exports and transhipments. There is no practical limit to the number of containers that can be processed and/or can be physically located within the container terminal at any one time. Without change to the application software, containers can be stacked nine high. The application includes many desirable features and interfaces seamlessly with the other Boffin/Open modules.


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National traffic



Boffin/Open includes three National Traffic suites, the original written for the Norwegian market, the second for Germany and the third for South Africa. It is the South African suite that is being described here but all three suites are essentially equivalent. By National Traffic, Bishopsgate mean door/door collections and deliveries all over the country but with no facilities for 'crossing national borders'. 



Cargo terminals



Consider the situation where there are an increasing number of cargo terminals (depots), each of which is responsible for collections and deliveries in their own agreed area and for building and trunking outbound consolidations and breaking inbound units. There is no practical limit to the number of participating cargo terminals that may be involved and new cargo terminals may be added in realtime and irresective of what the regular system users are doing. There is no practical limit to the number of shipments in each consolidation or to the number of consolidations that can be processed simultaneously. 



Each Cargo Terminal can be owned and operated by a different company with self-accounting; there is no limit to the number of cargo terminals that may be operated by the same company. All cargo terminals are encouraged to advertise that they can move cargo door/door from their local area to 'anywhere' in the country with pricing being automatic and coming from a single set of agreed tariffs. Each cargo terminal will be equipped with a copy of the Boffin/Open application software and each can support as many client-PCs as required to process the work. Each cargo terminal will have an open link with the Internet to support realime communications between cargo-terminals and customers. Each cargo terminal may run it's own Boffin/Open database or several cargo terminals may share a database. 



Local operation



Consider the operation in one cargo terminal; which would be duplicated in each terminal. There would be local selling of the services of the network, but the majority of the traffic notified to the local cargo terminal would be from the local business community who would want shipments collected from their local premises and delivered to somewhere else in the country; on the assumption that the package would be collected and then taken directly to the destination address. It will be the case that some local collections will not need trucking, as the delivery address is within the local area and so the local cargo terminal will collect and deliver the package. 



The door/door sales tariff can be published in printed form and/or regular customers can be invited to use a website in which there is a small HTML based program that will provide online, realtime quotations, using the sales tariff located on the Boffin/Open server. Regular and/or special customers would be able to have special discounts. Cargo bookings would be made on client-PCs attached to a Boffin/Open server on which the sales tariff and details of all customers would be available. Cargo booking would be based on a single client-PC screen image, pricing would be in local currency and automatic. 



As each cargo shipment is booked onto the client-PC screen, it is allocated a unique, check-digit, non-transferrable 'through waybill number' (Job Number), which would be a structured number identifying the starting cargo-terminal of the shipment. The computer application would determine from the collection postcode and the delivery postcode what operational cargo terminal the shipment the cargo should be collected by and will delivered by and from this will compute the appropriate Boffin/Open route code. 



Cargo bookings starting their journey anywhere in the country can be booked initially into any of the cargo terminal sub-systems. The cargo booking can/will cause a collection note set to be printed. Copy or second-copy collection note sets can be printed, on demand from any cargo terminal in the network. Cargo received from other freight agents in the area can be booked for previously unknown shippers and consignees with the sales charges being charged to the freight agent who submitted the traffic. 



As new shipments are booked, it is possible to allocate them, immediately, to a 'loading unit', either for local delivery of for trucking. Where cargo bookings are made and cannot be alloacted to an outbound unit, they can left in this unallocated state (Goods on Hand, awaiting shipment) and allocated to a unit just before the unit is closed. Where cargo is received from one cargo terminal and is not for local delivery, the booking can be accepted into the local system and then re-allocated to an outbound unit. The cargo teminal manager effecting these transhipments will get some reward for helping the shipment on it's way.


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Direct air exports



This website is the first that our company has built with the serious intention that it should be our 'interface with the world.' In order that we are able to make it easy to update the website on a continuing basis and so encourage such updating, we have decided that where the website section would be a derivative of one of our application software manual chapters, we will organise a link directly to the latest copy of the manual chapter. We then intend to encourage regular and continuous updating of the manual chapters and the reloading the whole websitese as at the end of each day; as part of our internal backup processes. 



We would like to highlight the fact that the printed manual chapters are 'prettier' that as seen on the website, probably because these are still ;'early days' for us in website design and functionality. We suggest that you can expect some rapid progress now that we know how to manage this new resource, so it might well be worth re-visiting the site. 



Each chapter of the original manual is maintained and developed by Bishopstrade Ltd, using Corel Wordperfect 9.0. which provides the necessary technical resource to allow the individual chapter documents to be published as pdf files which are then copied to the website and made available to you. You will need a copy of Adobe Acrobat Reader to access the chapters; you can arrange to download a free copy of Adobe Acrobat Reader (AcroReader51_ENU.exe) by using the hyperlink below; it is about 8.5 Megabytes of data. 



Notice that using Acrobat Reader, it easily possible to use the Zoom feature to make it possible to show each page of whole page on the screen; the image is still very legible and reading the text of the the selected chapter less stressful; take a moment and get it right! Once you can see each page as a page, reduce the window in which you are viewing it to suit, in the knowledge that AcroBat Reader will retain these settings until you change them.


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Super Consolidations



What is a Super-consol ? Consider a 'simple' air export consolidation; this will comprise of a Master booking (from which the MAWB is produced) for the consol as a whole and then an unlimited series of 'detail shipment bookings'; from which each HAWB is produced. Usually the user would 'deliver the consoilidation into the airline and obtain the Airline Buying Freight Rate applicable to the consol 'totals'. 



Now consider the situation that there are (say) three consolidations leaving Hong Kong for Europe, say one consol for each of Frankfurt, Paris and London and the airline, offers to treat the three consolidations as one consol for the purposes of the Buying Frieght Rate. The User could make an additional booking, which Bishopsgate call the SuperConsol booking which would show the gross aggregate totals of the three consolidations. A new additional MAWB would be produced, which we call the SuperConsol MAWB. 



The airline would charge the user against the Super-Consol and the very best airline freight buying rate negotiable for the sum of the three (in this case) consolidations. The user would accept the airline charge against the Super-Consol cost-file. Boffin/Open includes a set of programs which 'apportion' charges from super-consol master bookings across the constituent master bookings, thus neutralising the charges on the super-consol cost file. Then there is another similar program that apportions charges from the consol master bookings across the detail bookings of the consolidation; leaving no charges on the consolidation master. Sounds complex but it is not. 



Where the user knows that he operates or may have operates super-consol(s); and as part of the Operational Month-end process, usually operated between the last day of the old month and the 7th day of the following month, the user will run the 'SuperConsol apportionment' program. This program very quickly searches the air exports bookings table and locates each SuperConsol Master cost-file. The program checks to determine if there is any net value on the file (including trading accruals if this is in play) and if there is a net value on the cost file (usually only costs), it creates a single general ledger journal, per super-consol master, to neutralise these charges on the super-consol Master, spreading the 'appropriate' values across the constituent consol master bookings that comprised the super-consol. The user then runs a very similar 'Consolidation Apportionment' program, that quickly searches for all consolidation master cost-files and neutralises these by creating a general ledger journal for each. This journal neutralises the charges on the consolidation master file and spreads the value across the constituent detail cargo booking cost files. 



It is appreciated that there is no 'fair' way to apportion super-consol or consolidation master charges across the constituent components; but a reasonable manner in the case described here is to apportion in the ration of the 'Chargeable Kilos'. Notice that the apportionment exercise, even when super-consols are not operated allows us to get a better 'gross profit' per detail cargo booking. Boffin/Open includes a 'Profit by' suite, which allows the user to monitor and aggregate the traffic that each customer is submitting, so as to arrive at a reasonable 'Profit per Customer Month'; amongst many other analyses that are possible. 



The manual for this optional software is being revised and will be made available shortly.


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Breakbulk air imports - summary



The Boffin/Open application includes a specific module that supports a Air Import Breakbulk department. Such a department will receive any number of inbound air cargo consolidations from any number of origin points and allows the staff to process these, simultaneously or sequentially or any mix of the two. Each inbound consolidation will include a single master shipment against which the Master Airway Bill (MAWB) and Manifest will be based and any number of individual shipments, each represented on the manifest and subject to a House Airway Bill (HAWB). It is accepted that sometimes the consolidation manifest may be incorrect for any one or more of a number of possible reasons, which the application is equipped to handle. Although Bishopsgate have never set up such an installation, there is no theoretical restriction to a single user installation having any number of air import breakbulk departments, running simultaneously. 



It will usually be the case, that the inbound consolidation will contain shipments destined for a random mix of for third party Freight Agents and the users own Air Import Department. Depending on the airport where the operation is based as to whether the user's breakbulk department will make a charge for the hand-over of cargo to another agent or not. In London Heathrow, where this application originally 'grew up', there were no hand-over charges levied, however a charge is now usual. 



In terms of inbound collect charges, the system is designed to accept these in detail per HAWB and to ensure that all of the collect charges - in total - extracted from the manifest are passed on and the user's financial position regarding these charges, is protected. 



Each inbound consolidation will be handled by a single human operator and the keyboard task has been reduced to a minimum. The application is designed to allow the human operator to enter some consolidation totals from the inbound manifest and the MAWB followed by a single screen image booking per HAWB, which are stored in memory, until a all HAWB bookings have been keyed; in the same order as they are shown on the manifest. The operator then selects PF'8 Totals at which time the system checks the aggregate of some of the keyed HAWB details with the MAWB/Manifest totals; keyed at the start. If there is an error, then there is a way of checking and correcting any errors and re-running the totalling routine. If there are no errors, then the system creates database bookings for each of the consolidation master (MAWB) and each detail consolidation shipment (HAWB). Where the user is able to receive the inbound consolidation information in electronic means (FTP and/or EDIFACT etc.), this can be accommodated to remove the need for the majority of the keying work. 



Once the hard disk, database bookings have been made, then the application raises a single printed A4 HP-PCL5e (or later) document set for each HAWB booking. The HAWB document set raised, will either be a Hand-over document for bookings where there are no sales charges to be made or a combined sales invoice / hand-over document where sales charges (possible hand-over charge and possible collect charges) are to be rendered. Where charges are being rendered, the online, realtime ledgers (sales and general) are updated immediately and without any possible interruption by the human operator. The inbound total of collect charges is also accepted into the (purchase and general) ledgers are updated. By definition, the Job Costing aspects of the system are updated, immediately. It would now be possible for the module to send an email automatically to agents for whom shipment(s) are arriving, attached to which the Hand-over document or the combined hand-over and sales invoice document could be attached; saving delivery time and workload.


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Surface exports - summary



This is where it all began, all of those years ago, United Kingdom groupage exports to Scandinavia groupage services. This module and perhaps the equivalent Surface Import module are perhaps the most extensive operational modules in the entire system, mainly because the users that have and are using the Boffin/Open application have been the most energetic operators, all looking for 'margin' and angles to reduce 'office staff head-count'. The transition was caused directly by the European Union and the great reduction in the number of Customs Entries that were required to traverse Europe. The Customs Entry charges had been a traditional source of revenue for the Freight Forwarders and this diminished; European freight rates became more competitive; Freight Fowarding blended into the traditional Transport Operators domain and everyone concerned had to become more efficient. 



The Boffin/Open system caters for all of the procedural and documentation requirements of the full load and groupage service operators. Customer quotations are not supported, although they could be; the thought here is that 'real' freight forwarding requires a switched-on operations person to make the best out of each and every shipment processed; relying on a system of automatic and/or semi-automatic quoting would be the first step to the freight-forwarders not thinking about 'gross profit maximisation'. When one considers whether the computer system should cover the issuance of quotations or not, then it suggests that there are two main ways of operating. The first way would be to build a sales charge tariff and operate the business using the tariff and fight to keep to the tariff. The other way is to have a tariff as the basis for the services operated, but to make the forwarding clerk think about each shipment in detail, so as to take and maximise all revenue earning opportunities. There is obviously room for both types of operation, but Bishopsgate have been mainly involved with the latter group. Where a new Boffin/Open user wishes to setup a quotation-type operation, this could be readily effected, as all of the tariffs etc that would be involved are present in the application. 



The pre-booking of cargo is optional; the user is able to await the arrival of the cargo and shipping instructions and then book the cargo fully; thereby avoiding pre-booking altogether. The system offers the ability to pre-book shipments which involves the entry of the very minimum of operational details.From the pre-booking the user is able to arrange collection note and/or combined collection and delivery note printing. Self-adhesive labels are also available, where required for labelling the cargo. When the cargo and documents arrive back at the export cargo terminal, the prebooking will be amended into the full cargo booking with the results of the check-weighing and measuring that will be effected on the cargo. Once the pre-booking has been amended into a full booking, the pre-booking disappears. 



The comprehensive full cargo booking program takes the human operator through a set of screen images in which the operational booking requirements are presented in a logical order and friendly manner. Where booking questions are compulsotry, the booking clerk is forced to complete the input there and then. Where a booking field is optional, the key can be used to pass over the question without supplying an answer. Very many checks and controls are built into the cargo booking process, so as to ensure that all required information will be available 'downstream' for the various steps that may be required and calculations that will be made. Maximum use is made of 'standing data'. 



The system includes a very strong and comprehensive sales tariff system, which Bishopsgate know as 'SuperRates'; all calculations are automated but sales charges (actually charged) are still under the direct control of the human operator. It is possible to operate the sales charging of FOB and Freight Rates, completely automatically, using the SuperRates, where the booking clerks cannot change the automated sales charges being made. The Boffin/Open SuperRates are even able to handle 'three dimensional' sales tariffs, like the one that is used in Germany; 0-10 Kilos sent over 0 - 50 Kilometres at a rate of 9.99 per kilo with a minimum of 8.88 etc. 



The system includes the software,which can be called from within the cargo booking program and/or from the menus, for builing up the Export Customs Entry/Declaration. The Customs Declaration work can be effected as part of the cargo booking - where the shipping instructions are comprehensive or left for later and completed separately. The system includes a copy of the Harmonised Customs Tariff and a Tariff Index which is normally supplied quite well populated and in a condition where the user can build up the content. Customs Declarations can be printed to suit the local country where the Boffin/Open user is working. United Kingdom SAD declarations are already available and the Boffin/VS forerunner systm was connected to most of the United Kindom DTI schemes. Bishopsgate have extensive knowledge and experience in the use of Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and EDIFACT in particular. Although not used in this module, Boffin/Open includes facilities to accept incoming Shipping Company manifests and Customs Declarations using the EDIFACT CUSDEC message format, without any involvement by human operators. 



The application offers optional use of the Partial and Full Trading Accruals facilities and Closed cost-file accounting. This is a ver large subject in it's own right and probably too large to go into in this short summary; see the logically attached Surface Export manual . 



All operational documents are available, on demand and are printed on A4 Portrait or Landscape stationery, as appropriate. All A4 Portrait operational documents are automatically and immediately archived; so that perfect (customer copy) copy-documents can be printed later. A wish-list item is being programmed as we write, which will print perfect copy sales invoices for each sales invoice that is referred to on the customer's statement. These copy invoices will be sent with the (usually) monthend sales statement so that the user's customer cannot say that he 'needs a copy'. Once this is working, a similar update will do the same with Proofs of Delivery (PODs). 



All currency conversions are automatic, as they are throughout the system. The Boffin/Open convention is that on the sales side of the business, the automatic currency conversions cannot be over-ridden by the human operator. On the supplier side of the system, all currency conversions are automatic, but here, the results of the conversion are shown to the human operator, who is able to amend the converted amount to be used. 



Prepaid charge Sales invoicing is effected for each groupage as a whole; all bookings in the unit are invoiced for the value of the prepaid charges in a single program run; so that none of the bookings can be accidentally left out. While the surface export sales invoicing program is printing the pre-paid sales invoices, the ledgers are updated and the aggregate of any collect charges is assesed and then debited to the partner agent at the end of the invoicing run. There is an option to invoice the collect charges on a booking-by-booking basis, instead of in bulk. Where a given shipment has no prepaid charges to cause a prepaid sales invoice to be printed, a zero value invoice (already in a 'paid' state) can be injected into the ledgers to show that the booking was not forgotten, but simply had nothing to be invoiced. The system supports Bulk Sales Invoicing, where individual sales invoices are not raised per cargo booking, but a record is stored in a secret place to await weekly, fornight or monthly Bulk Invoicing. Under Bulk Invoicing, a manifest-like document and a sales invoice are prepared periodically, but the financial postings to the general ledger look exactly as they would from regular invoicing; the customer's statement shows a single invoice line. 



Multiple copies of export manifest(s) are produced as the groupage unit loading is completed. Waybills can be produced in place or as well as the Manifest(s). Export Bordereaux can be produced which should be viewed as Multiple Waybills; the document looks like an export manifest but includes details per booking of collect charges. Certificates of Shipment are available and if requested are printed with the prepaid sales invoices, so that they can be posted within the same envelop as the invoice. Charges 'collect' are typically invoiced to the partner agent, but there are other options here that are under the user's control. Manifests, Bordereaux, Waybills, CMRs etc. are printed, as required. All sales invoicing and supplementary invoicing feeds the online multi-currency financial ledgers, as each invoice is printed. All operational documents are archived, so that perfect copy documents can be printed, on demand. An AMETA Control system can be updated, so as to act as a control list of what AMETA Profit Shares have yet to be processed. Sales and Marketing records are issued to that sub-system. The application includes Tracking & Tracing, which can be 'data-published' to the user's website, from where customers can view and/or download it. A Proof-of-Delivery control system is available. A Shipper's COD control system is available and much more. Where a link is required to the user's website for the 'data publication' of any facet of the surface export shipments, this can be accommodated. Where Electronic Data Interchange is required (EDI), Bishopsgate's preference is for EDIFACT, but other conventions can be accommodated. Bishopsgate feel that they are VERY strong in this area; see the manual for which a link is provided below.


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Surface imports



The Boffin/Open system includes a large and powerful module that offers all of the support for the user to process surface import shipments, both full loads and groupage units. In the case of groupage units, there is no limit to the number of detail shipments that can be included within a single groupage. Full loads are booked as a single booking. Groupage units are booked as a groupage master booking and then one booking for each housebill. In the case of the groupage units, the incoming manifests can be split up and booked by any number of booking clerks simultaneously, to save time, after which the master booking is logically linked with all of it's detail housebill bookings and an unloading manifest is printed. 



Where there is a requirement, Bishopsgate have written software to accept incoming surface imports, electronically, where each incoming booking was represented by an EDI message, which was decoded, expanded and then used to create a cargo booking. During the cargo booking process, all of the systems static or standing information is made available to the cargo bookinmg clerks, so as to make the booking process faster, less effort and less errors. The entire Boffin/Open system has a single way in which it allows this static or standing information to be accessed; which means that the staff soon become aware of how easy it is to search for and recall regularly used information. It is also possible from within the booking process to view recent bookings for the same importer, so that where there is a query about the way he is (say) charged, it can be resolved. Where the user has a regular collection/delivery sub-contractor, it is possible to send this company collection and/or delivery notes for new shipments, electronically. 



The application includes a powerful Customs Declaration build-up program, which can be called into play as part of the initial cargo booking process or called later from the menu; leaving the import clerk to decide when he would prefer to do the Import Entry build-up work. A copy of the Harmonised Customs Tariff is usually supplied with the installation and a copy of the Tariff Index is provided as well. The user is able to maintain and expand these two sets of data. Where the local Customs & Excise offer Tariff updates, Bishopsgate can supply software to allow the user to accept the updates to the local tariff. Bishopsgate have been deeply involved in the United Kingdom Direct Trader Input (DTI) schemes, being connected to most of the Port Systems at one time or another. Import Customs Declaration printing is supplied to meet local requirements. Where the user wishes to have a DTI connection to his local Customs & Excise scheme, this would be developed as required, but Bishopsgate have extensive knowledge in this area and have even written the Customs & Excise system in one country. 



The system is designed to be capable of producing all of the operational and accounting documents that are required to process surface import shipments; these documents are produced on demand, usually in A4 Portrait mode using HP PCL5e or later compliant printers. All operational documents that are produced on A4 Portrait stationery are also immediately and automatically archived, so that perfect copy-documents can be produced at any later date. The repertoire of existing import documents includes Advices of Arrival, Collection Notes, Delivery Notes, Insurance Reseve Letters, Shipper Instructions Acknowledgements, Sales invoices, Duty Invoices, Supplementary invoices and Credit Notes and many more; this is a summary! 



Unlike the surface export system, the surface import system sales invoicing is effected on a booking-by-booking method, as each shipment is delivered. Once again, very powerful sales tariffs are available in the form of Boffin/Open SuperRates. These SuperRates allow the use to have basic sals tariffs for each route/service and then special separate but similar structured tariffs for all sorts of shipper/importer/route combinations. A separate chapter of the Boffin/Open manuals exists on the subject of SuperRates, their structure, setup, use and attributes; which can be supplied to contracting users and serious potential users; we do not make that chapter available on the web, as it contains a great deal of valuable information. Bulk Sales Invoicing is supported, by which individual sales invoicing per shipment is supressed, but a record is stored by the sales invoicing programs on behalf of each shipment, from which a Bulk Sales Invoice can be produced later, perhaps at weekend, fortnightend or monthend. Where primary or supplementary or bulk invoices are produced, the financial ledgers are updated immeduately. Duty/VAT invoicing is available, so that these potentially large amounts can be invoiced ahead of the user's main sales invoice for his own charges. The system maintains a monitor on Duty Invoices and Duty/VAT Payments; which the user is able to use to make sure he spots any mistakes early, while there is time to correct the error(s). 



The surface import module, like all of the other operational modules, offers support for Trading Accrual Accounting in both Partial and Full modes. Closed Cost-file accounting is also available. Now go read the Boffin/Open Surface Import manual for which a hyperlink is porovided below. We suggest that you take a moment to setup your Acrobat Reader correctly, so that reading the manual will be stress free. When you have downloaded the manual, Acrobat will open the document with View settings that are probably not correct. Slect the 'View' option from the Acrobat Reader windo and select the 'Fit Width' and 'Single Page' options. Then make the window size just large enough to see a whole page form the manual at a time and lastly notice that the tool bar contains 'tape recorder' type controls to allow you to scroll around at your convenience; good reading.


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Customer services



The subject of 'customer services' in the frieght industry is very important, frieght quotations are all now very competitive and business is increasingly won on 'service'; what can the freight company offer their customer to make his life easier and less stressful. The freight company should want to maximise the amount of non-confidential information it make available to the 'customer', without telling him so much that it makes life difficult. There are a number of things that can be done from a system such as Boffin/Open, where all of the data that has been keyed and accumulated over the years can be used to help satisfy the customers. 



Who is the 'customer' ?



Well you would think that all of us could agree on who the freight company customer is; but alas there are easier questions. On a surface export shipment, we have the shipper, the payer, the consignee, up to two intermediate agents and our 'partner' agent at destination. To some extent and in different ways, all of them are the freight company's customer; they all contribute (or don't!) to the throughput of traffic on which the Boffin/Open user's company is able to make it's turnover and sometimes, even a profit; so all should be included, where possible in the services that the system can provide. 



Minimise human involvement



We are all aware that the freight industry is a Service Industry and that it is labour intensive. We are all aware that with the reducing margins and the emphasis on 'better service', we want to do our utmost to keep the human involvement in providing customer services to a minimum to save effort, workload and eventually cost. 



Maximise the computer systems involvement



We want to maximise what the Boffin/Open computer system can do for us, while we get on and process the cargo we have. Well here we go; make sure you read all of the text below, there IS a point to it, before the close. 



Important customers wanting to be kept informed



All customers are important, but some are very important as they provide large amounts of freight and/or pay reasonable charge rates. It is a fact that in the Boffin/Open system, all shippers, importers, agents and third party companies who pay for shipment movements have to be represented on the user's sales ledger master file. Bishopsgate have arranged that on each (sales and bought) ledger master file record, there is a place for recording the customers operational email address and another for storing his accounting email address; Boffin/Open does not object to having the same email address in both fields. The Boffin/Open user should try and code both of these fields. 



Tracking & Tracing



All of the Boffin/Open operational modules (surface exports, surface imports etc) include tracking and tracing facilities. The way in which these facilities work in all modules is the same. Where a Boffin/Open cargo booking is part of a consolidation or groupage service and not simply a direct shipment, the system is able to determine this, without human intervention. All consolidations and groupage 'units' in the Boffin/Open comprise of a groupage master booking followed by an unlimited number of detail cargo bookings. The last cargo booking in a groupage unit carries a marker to say that it is the end of the groupage/consolidation 'chain'. Boffin/Open allows the user to issue one or more tracking records to any cargo booking, master and detail booking alike; eithe manually or as the recording of an event being processed by an application program. Where the tracking record is directed to a groupage master, it has been arranged that the tracking record will be issued to the master and all of the groupage details from the single update. Where a tracking record is issued to a detail cargo booking, it is only issued to that booking alone. In this way, it is possible to 'broadcast' tracking records to all components of a groupage unit as well as tag a single detail booking with a tracking record. Certain operational events, like the original cargo booking, the despatch of the unit etc automatically cause the software to update the tracking and tracing of any given cost-file. In this way and with the mixing of manually inspired and automatic event tracking and tracing records, a full picture of the 'life' of the shipment is built. 



Realtime, open-item ledgers



The Boffin/Open system includes a set of realtime, open-item, multi-currency financial ledgers. The importance of this statement is that the ledgers are updated in realtime and so a customers aged balance on the sales ledger is available, on demand. 



Archiving of all operational documents and invoices



All of the operational documents and all sales invoices and credit notes are automatically and immediately archived, within the Boffin/Open application. It is possible, on demand, to recall a perfect copy of any one or all of these documents, as required. 



Web-Data-Publishing



Bishopsgate have built a Web-Publishing system, for use by frieght comanies who wish to make particualr documents available to some/all of their 'customer' base. Under this sceheme, a table is created and maintained, within the Boffin/Open database and this is under the direct control of the user. A table maintenance program is provided, which allows the user to add, delete and amend table entries, in realtime and irrespective of what the other regular system users are doing. Each table entry is the control for the Web Publishing for a given 'customer', the convention is that for any Web Publiching to be directed to the customer, he/she must be represented on this table. The table entry carries the Logon, Password and name of the user together with a software flag for each possible Web Publishing facility; currently Sales Statements and Tracking & Tracing. The user is able to indicate if the given 'customer' is to be 'supported' in the provision of Realtime Sales Statements and/or Tracking & Tracing. Once all of this has been installed and some 'customers' have been nominated, the system works as follows. 



In the case of sales statements, Bishopsgate wish to make available on the user's website or hosted website a sales statement which is accurate to the last financial posting made to the active customer account. In addition, Bishopsgate wish to make the viewing and/or downloading and printing of this statement, confidential to the company it is directed at. Similarly, with Tracking and Tracing information, shown per cargo booking as an A4 portrait sheet. A Tracking Advice Sheet is prepared for each cargo booking where one or more of the 'active customers' is involved with the shipment (Shipper, Payer, Importer, 1st Intermediate Agent, 2nd Intermediate Agent, Final Agent) and a full copy of this advice is placed on the website in a place that only the party to whom it is addressd can see it. Notice that, for example, where a surface export booking involves three customers on the Active List, then a total of three identical copies of the Tracking & Tracing Advice will be placed in approriate places on the website. Once again these Web Published Tracking & Tracing Advices are updated in realtime and are accurate to the last tracking and Tracing record issued to a cargo booking in which a participating customer is involved. 



The user gets all of this powerful software working, bringing his website or hosted website 'closer' to his Boffin/Open database. As he adds customers to the 'Active Duty List' (!), the system sends a polite email to each customer, informing him/her of the Logon and Password which will be needed to access their Web Published Sales Statement and/or Tracking and Tracing Advices (Notice plural Advices). It is anticipated that the Tracking & Tracing Advices will be maintained, in full detail on the Website and available to the third parties for one month after the sensing of a Proof-of-Delivery (POD). The customer logs on to the website and selects the hyperlink to 'My Data'. This causes the Boffin/Open Java Website control program to issue a request for a Logon and Password. Once the Logon and Password have been checked, the customer is shown his hyperlinks to Sales Statement and Tracking and is able to view any of the documents downloading some/all for printing on his premises. More later, but you have the gist. Notice how this setup does NOT involve staff, except in the process of adding a new party to the Active Duty List. 



Automatic emails



Each customer and supplier account in the user's sales/bought ledger master file has the capacity to store two email addresses; one to which the Boffin/Open system can send emails relating to operational matters and one for use with accounting matters. It is now possible for the Boffin/Open application and/or the new Web Publishing facility to compose and send emails automatically to the user's customers and to archive such emails in a manner that the user is able to see what has been going on! 'Dear customer, thank you for your 2 Kgs of Oracle Books shipment for Swaziland, we are pleased to say that it left our cargo terminal at 16:32 and is expected in Matsapha at 08:29 in the morning'. etc.


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Sales ledger



The Boffin/Open application includes a set of powerful, open-item, multi-company, multi-currency, integrated ledgers. There is no practical limit to the number of user-companies, including daughter and sister companies for which sets of accounts can be maintained, in realtime and simultaneously. The user is able to maintain a complete set of accounts for each user-company; right through to Profit/Loss and Balance Sheet reporting. Where two or more user-companies are to be supported by a single set of accounting records, this can be accommodated and there is no limit as to how many 'trading companies' may utilise the same set of ledgers. New user-companies can be setup in realtime and the system does not need to be re-started before the new company(s) can be activated. Where an accounting installation is supporting a very large user-company and a small user-company, the computer performance is the same for both. 



The Boffin/Open apploication has no practical limits as to the number of Rich and/or Thin client-PCs that can be connected to it or to the number of physical printers that can be attached. If one ignores security, then all human operators have the same complete access to the realtime bookkeeping system, irrespective of the time of day or their geographic location. Bishopsgate favour Rich Clients (the client-PC has it's own copy of the Boffin/Open application and runs the softwar in the PC and not in the server cpu. There is no restriction at all on the 'mix' of Rich and Thin client-PCs. Printers need to be Hewlett Packard PCL5e (or later) compliant and equipped for A4 portrait and landscape printing; duplex printing (printing on both sides of each sheet of paper) is also supported. The realtime ledgers are also available in realtime as a source of information to any Boffin/Open operational program. 



Sales and Bought ledger personal accounts may be created in realtime and irrespective of what other regular system users are doing. Personal account numbers are automatically issued and are check-digit and unique to any given installation, irrespective of how many user-companies are being supported; these take the form A12345 (Max A999999999). Personal accounts can have unique short names which are inter-changeable with the account numbers. All personal accounts have sort keys of up to twelve uppercase characters by which partial alphabetic searching can be used to locate an account. At ALL places within the application where the human operator is required to identify a personal account, the account number or short name can be entered or a partial alphabetic search can be effected. Where a third party customer/supplier has multiple personal accounts (Agents etc), these can be annotated into families by which the overall position between the user-company and the third-party can be readily seen, which is known as Related Accounts. Related accounts can be in any mix of currencies. Personal account Credit-Status and Credit-Limits are supported. 



The accounting system is open-item and aged, it is maintained in realtime and designed to run continuously H24 D365 even at accounting month-end and year-end; no longer only from 'eight 'till late'. The entire system has been upgraded so that it is able to handle individual posting values to a maximum size of (S9(18).99) or +/-999,999,999,999,999,999.99), which was necessary when the system was run in Mozambique where about 1500 MZM = US$1.00. It follows that the system can be run in Italy, Mozambique and other countries with 'internationally weak' currencies. Personal account balances, used in credit control and debt collection, are accurate to the last financial posting made and are therefore useful in the operational cargo booking programs where a credit limit check can be included. Boffin/Open allows more than a single financial year to be open at anytime; which is very useful at financial year-end and the first few months of the new accounting year. A financial year comprises twelve accounting months which can start with any calendar month and end after 12 months. Statistical months are EXACTLY in line with calendar months, the changing of accounting months is under the control of the user, who is recommended to try and change the accounting month as ealy as possible on the first day of each month. Financial transactions being posted to the system can be either manually inspired (such as manually produced sales invoices from a small outpost) or generated by one of the many sales invoicing programs that are embedded within the operational suites. There is no practical limit to the number of sources of financial postings that can be accommodated; new sources can be introduced wwithout any need to re-start the system. The system effects very stringent validation checks on all accounting vouchers being submitted and will only post the derived financial postings if the whole voucher and all of the postings that it might cause, pass all of the tests. It is a fact that all accounting records derived from any given accounting voucher will be posted to the same accounting month; single vouchers are never split over accounting montyh boundaries. An optional feature called Extended Accounting Month is available, where by an accounting voucher which entirely 'refers' to a past (usually last) accounting period can be posted to that period up to a user controlled cut-off point (after which the financial year-to-date result up to and including the 'old' month are to be finalised. The general ledger is updated as each financial postingh is made; such that even in a very large system a Trial Balance report may be produced at the speed of the fastest printer up to a nominated accounting month cut-off. 



Boffin/Open offers all of the usual reports and facilities requirted of any sales ledger, but includes many logical links from application program to application program to make it's operation easy and enjoyable; it is also fast. The system has been updated, so that customer statements - accurate to the last financial posting - can be automatically generated and placed on the user's website, so that the user's customers are able to download them, at their convenience. Copy sales invoices and Proofs-of-Delivery will be similarly available on the website with the current sales statement. There is much more to tell, but we leave this here and invite you to browse the manual, using the hyperlink below.


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The Boffin/Open design includes a fully integrated set of sales, bought and general ledgers. There is no practical limit to the number of personal accounts that can be supported at any one time; account numbers are check-digit numbers and take the form A123456789; these are issued by the system as they are needed and there are no duplicates (in any ledger or user-company or elsewhere) in any given user-group. New personal accounts can be created in realtime and irrespective of what the other system users are doing; new accounts are immeduately fully usable after they have been created. All personal accounts have a 12 character sort key to support partial alphabetic searching for accounts. All accounts can have unique twelve character short-names (nicknames in English) which are completely inter-changeable with the account number, through the entire system. In the whole system, where a search is effected for a personal account and the account does not exist, it is possible to create the 'missing account', on the 'fly' so that on exiting the search, the account number of the supplier is available. The system supports the notion of Related Accounts; under this notion, sales and/or boughht ledger accounts can be annotated so that they forma 'families'. This feature makes it possible to have personal account enquiries against a family of accounts which allows the user to see his/her personal account exposure with the third-party; useful with Agents accounts. The system supports the notion of Alternate Accounts; useful when dealing with many outlets of the same company; each outlet of the supplier is setup with a personal account, but all financial transactions are diverted to one of the accounts. The Bought ledger accounts can be split into Ledger Sections, so that Creditors reports by Ledger Section can be supported; there is no limit to the num,ber of ledger sections that can be used at anytime; new ledger sections can be added in realtime etc. The logon-id of the eprson creating any new personal account is held in memorandum form on the accounts created. Various lists of new accounts etc are available.The user has control of which currencies he/she wishes to support for personal accounting; new currencies can be switched on in realtime, without programmer intervention and are immediately available for use. Rates of exchange are monitored on a daily basis; five or six rates per currency, selling rate, house rate, airline weekly rate, central bank rate, management rate etc. New personal accounts are allocated their currency at the time of creation and the currency can only be one that is switched-on or authorised by the user. There is much more.



The financial transactions are held in open-item format. Because the system supports a powerful Job Costing subset, the bought ledger supports the financial posting of both simple 'single-line' and sometimes very complex and large 'multi-line' vouchers. A simple on-line voucher would be a supplier invoice charged against one of the user's job numbers. A complex and large voucher would be a supplie invoice from a Cartage subcontractor referencing an unlimited number of the user's job numbers. Input to the bought ledger can come from a large and increasing number of sources, manually keyed supplier invoices covers the majority of input, but suppliiers submitting their vouchers by EDI can be accommodated. All vouchers posted to the accounting system are annotated with the logon-id of the person who effected the data-entry, the calendar adte of input and the source of the input. Extensive validation is effected at data-entry time, when the original voucher is still available; if the voucher cannot pass all checks on input; it will not be accepted at all. All currency conversions are automatic but allow the input clerk to change the default conversion by up to n%. Vouchers posted are immediately and completely processed; updating all facets of the accounting and management accounting system, as required. The system effects a logical search as the vouchers are keyed; checking to detrmine if the voucher seems to have been posted earliuer; if this looks possible, then the booking clerk is warned and is able to continue or abort the voucher posting, pending investigation. The personal accounts (master records) carry an aged breakdown of the account balance, which is accurate to the last posting made to the accounts. All bought ledger postings carry the foreign currency values of the supplier invoice (etc) in addition to the home-currency (currency of the local general ledger) conversion at the time of data entry. The system supports three methods of the payment process, two of which can cause Remitances and cheques to be printed in realtime. When suppliers invoices (etc) are paid, differences in exchange are calculated and posted automatically and fully. The Profit/Loss in Exchange is said to happen at the point of payment. Programs are available to allow the user to compute his currency exposure and separately his profit/loss in exchange by currency and month. 



The system produces all of the normal reports and displays, such as but not limited to Account Enquiries, Creditors aged Balances Lists, Supplier Statements, Remittances, Cheque/Remittance combinations. The system is Value Added Tax (VAT) enabled and the two methods of VAT processing are supported - Reporting by Invoice acceptance date and Reporting by Payment date. All VAT reports are available and the system includes a single subroutine per country (where the system is being operated) so that the anomalies of VAT per country can be accommodated. For example the operation of VAT in France and United Kingdom should be the same, but they are not. The whole application has been Language enabled, so that users around the world can expect to operate the software with the screens displayed in their own language and (simultaneously) any other languages. The system supports the optional notion of Extenbde Accounting Months; where vouchers being posted in the first few days (under the user's control) of the new accountying month that refer completely to the previous accounting month (either by virue of their voucher date of the user's job numbers that are to be charged) can be posted back into the last month to save retrospective journalling in the general ledger. 



It has always been Bishopsgate policy to effect the following technical aspects. Heavy and complete validation at data-entry time; if a voucher cannot pass the checks on data-entry, then it cannot be accepted into the financial ledgers; No partial acceptance with the 'empty' promises by the users that they will come back later and correct the error/omission. Totally realtime processing, machines are getting faster and logically bigger; there is no need to summarise or discard any data. Maximum use of standing/static data and a single method of accessing it throughout the whole application. No multiple keying of any data in the bought ledger or anywhere else in the application. The ability to run multiple accounting months and years, simultaneously, so that accounting month-ends and year-ends are no longer stressful events. There is much more.


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Cash Office operation - summary


  
Boffin/Open is built around an integrated, open-item, 'multi-everything' accounting system, covering sales, bought and general ledgers. One aspect of this accounting system is the Cash Office operation, for which application software is also included. The Cash Office operation software covers all of the required activities and includes varitaions for both large and small user-companies. The software offers support for both home-currency (currency of the local general ledger) and foreign currency bank accounts, but does not support multi-currency bank accounts. Bishopsgate had one user who was supplied with a cheque book and was permitted to write cheques in any (supported) currency and in random order! If anyone needs this, then they should make contact directly with Bishopsgate who would be pleased to take on the software development on a fee basis.



There is no practical limit to the number of bank accounts that can be supported and used, simultaneously. There is no limit to the number of sources of data-entry for cash office operation. The application supports a Bank Reconciliation facility.



In the case of Cash receipts, these will be received and processed on a continuous basis, but usually processed as a single cycle, once per day; this is not critical. The incoming cheques and drafts are processed separately and the receipts are segregated into batches, for deposit into discrete bank accounts. All of the cheques and cash for any given bank account are prelisted and a value check-total arrived at. The same items are then keyed, as a batch of data, into a specialist Boffin/Open program. The program effects the normal stringent data validation on the detail input line-entries and computes a 'batch-total'. The batch total is compared with the pre-list total so as to confirm that no line-entries have been missed or keyed twice. Error routines are available to correct any errors. Optionally, a Bank Paying-in slip can be printed. The total of the batch is posted to the Bank Reconciliation system and the detail line-entries to the personal accounts and general ledger, as appropriate. Where cheques/cash are received which cannot be identified to a personal account, this is posted to a Cash Suspense account in the Sales Ledger to await identification. Where previously unidentified cash receipts have been posted to the single Cash Suspense account, these can be reallocated to the correct personal account(s), easily and at any later date. Where Bank Drafts are received, these are processed in exactly the same way as 'regular' cash receipts, but as an 'identifiable data type', so that some additional data-processing can be performed in the area of Credit Control; the drafts are not assumed to be immediately cleared through the banking system and an allowance of 21 days is made before the value of the draft is taken into account for credit control purposes. In large companies, where it could be the user's desire to 'split' the processing of cash receipts and the allocation of those receipts to the personal accounts; this is catered for. In the posting of the cash receipts, there is no attempt to identify the personal account to which the payment is directed, but the company name that issued the cheque is free-typed; all cash receipts are posted to the Cash Suspense Account. As a totally separate operation, different staff members use remittance advices received with the cash to identify the unallocated receipts in the cash suspense account and then 'move' this from the suspense account to the correct personal account. The allocation of cash items moved from the cash suspense account to the applicable personal account is monitored and a 'dayend' report produced to show, for each movement, the free-typed issuing company name from the cheque and the name on the personal account to which the cash receipt was 'finally' posted.



In the case of 'Cash payments' the system has many options. Firstly the payment of suppliers invoices etc is based on the notion that the user will NOT wish to pay any supplier invoice, unless that invoice has been 'authorised for posting' to the bought ledger and appears on the supplier accouint enquiry screen as being unpaid'. The reader is reminded that a check is effected as supplier invoices are entered, so that where duplicates are posted, there is a good chance that they will be highlighted before the second and any subsequent copy is posted. The simplest method of paying a supplier invoice(s etc.) is simply to hand-write a cheque, give the cheque to the supplier, post the cheque to the system and then use the personal account matching program to match the invoice(s etc) with the cash payment. The act of matching personal account items in the overall system, is the point at which any profit/loss in exchange is said to have occured; where it occurs, the system generates and posts general ledger postings to take this into account. The system also includes a more 'production line' type of option, that would be useful in larger companies. Supplier invoices etc are posted. Each items is annotated with the 'valuta', the expected payment date by logically adding the voucher date to a calendar period computed from the Terms of Trade indicator stored on the supplier account. The user can manually 'select items for payment' and/or automatic software can be supplied to select items for payment or a mixture of the two. Lists can be produced showing items selected for payment with sub-totals shown at change of personal account. It is possible to de-select previously selected items. Selection of items to pay is a continuing process, such that there can be many selected families of items awaiting payment in any personal account. At any later date, the user is able to call for a Remittance Advice for particular families of selected items from within a nominated personal account. The remittance is printed and can be taken to the cash office where a request for the 'cheque' to be produced can be made. The cash office call for a cheque against the remittance, the cheque is printed on the system, the cash payment is posted and is matched with the outstanding items being paid. Optionally, combined Remittance/Cheques can be produced, where the Remittance is the top 75% of the A4 portrait document and the cheque is the bottom 25%. In this latter method of producing combined Remittances and Cheques, all of the same ledger posting and matching is performed. Usually the combined remittance/cheque will print on pre-printed documents, loaded into the manual feed of a laser printer manual feed hopper.



Bank statements are received and are keyed into the Bank reconcilliation system. Alterntively, the data that is printed on bank statements can be accepted electronically. The system matches the bank statement items with the items fed into the bank reconcilitaion from the cash posting and cheque writing activities; so as to produce an internal reconciliation of the bank statements and cashbook(s). After matching, the remaining items can be printed to produce a reconcilitaion per bank account. This printed reconciliation shows, in detail, the difference between the Cashbook Balance and the Bank Account Balance; typically, cheques raised but not yet presented and receipts made directly to the user's bank account by customers.



Notice that the general ledger is maintained in open-item format and that as the system is totally integrated, the posting of a (for example) a cash receipt to a customers account, will show up - in detail - in the applicable general ledger account, in full detail.


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Boffin/Open includes, as it's kernel an integrated, realtime, open-item, multi-company, multi-currency accounting system comprising of sales, bought and general ledgers. The accounting system is designed for continuous running even at accounting month and year-ends; multiple financial years can be run simultaneously, thereby removing any stress at accounting month and year-ends. The general ledger has system 'subsets', such as but not limited to Job Costing, Closed cost-file job-costing, Trading Accrual accounting, Departmental Overhead Expense Analysis and more that will be added here as we go. The application is very modern in that it is essentially hardware and operating system independent and entirely written in Oracle PL/SQL Forms and Reports for Client/Server architecture. The recent introduction of Oracle 9iAS Release 2 means that the application will soon be available as an Internet Application Server system. There is no practical limit to the number of open-item transactions that can be supported online and available, or the number of users accessing the data or printers available to print reports in simplex and/or duplex mode, situated both locally and around the world. Even purging (very) old financial transactions is something that can be effected during normal working periods and irrespective of what the other regular system users are doing. All report printing from the General ledger is effected on A4 stationery, 80 gms/cms photocopier paper; usually in Landscape format; so no computer listing paper is required and A4 photocopier paper can be purchased in increased bulk and hopefully reduced cost.



The general ledger main coding is effected through the use of a four digit (0000 - 9999) Cost Centre number and a four digit (0000 - 9999) Main/Sub Account. There is already an upgrade being effected at Bishopsgate to increase the Main/Sub account size to a six digit code, so that account numbering conventions in some countries (e.g Mozambique and France) can be adopted, as published. This exercise is not large as the internal logical records can be updated in about thirty seconds through SQL, but all input and reporting functions in the 1900 programs and 900 Reports suite need to be checked out to make sure they print the full new six digit number. The notion of Cost Centre Families is supported so that (e.g.) Trial Balance and Profit/Loss (etc) reporting is available not only per cost centre but for each Family of Cost Centres. Convention is that Cost Centre 0000 is not used; Cost Centre 9999 is used for the TRAINING Company only. General ledger account account 0000 is not used. 



The application accepts new data input from a large and increasing number of other application programs and from 'manual input' keyed by the Management Accountants. There is no limit to the number or type of additional sources of human inspired data-entry and/or automated data-entry coming from other applications. The general ledger application is built on a single open-item transaction table, within which all of the various record types have a common format, with some fields of some record types not used; encoded with nulls. This convention has made the system very friendly for the use of SQL*Query, as everyone gets used to the field names and coding conventions. All of the detail submitted by the various data sources is retained in it's original detail, with many data element extensions being effected by the system at data-entry time (such as items with a job number are automatically coded with the appropriate cost centre number), detailed information is NEVER summarised in the internal workings of the system, so as to protect the ability to continue expanding the scope of the system.



The system has an option within it, which is known as 'Extended Accounting Month'. Normally ALL new accounting input entered to the integrated accounting system is posted to the then-current system Accounting Month; with the one exception that general ledger journals default to this accounting month, but allow the human operator to nominate the past accounting month to which he/she wish the voucher to be posted. This is setup on the basis that staff submitting general ledger journals know what they are doing. However, consider the period from the first day of the new accounting month until the close of business on the day after which the Financial Year-to-Date Management Accounts will be produced. If we do nothing, then all new accounting records will be posted to the new accounting month, wheteher they refer to old month or new month trading. Where a trading voucher is posted in this period and the voucher wholely refers to last month job numbers (or it can be setup to use voucher date), it could be wholely posted to the last accounting month to make the old month more accurate and to avoid having to effect so much journalling later. When the user reaches the end of the day after which the Management Accounts will be produced, he will wish to stop further vouchers (of these types - trading) from being posted back and so he is able to set a software switch to indicate the old month is now closed, even for Extended Accounting Month option usage; in which case all further input goes to the new month. 



The application supports  Overhead Cost Periodisation, where overhead charge vouchers can be keyed in a manner that indicates the overhead charge is to be split evenly over a series of consecutive accounting months, with the possible 'spare penny' being added to the last period of the series. This is invaluable at financial year-end as the task of assessing the overhead accruals and prepayments becomes an automatic bye-product of the normal running of the application.



The application supports  Multi-layer Reallocation of Overhead Costs, where a large number of Reallocation Cost Centres can be setup in a manner that will allow financial postings to be made to them. For each of these reallocation cost centres, the user is able to setup and to maintain a list of Cost Centres each with a percentage, which will be the recipients of a proportion of the original reallocation cost centre charges. The system ensures that 100% of the reallocation cost centre's charges are reallocated. The system supports multi-layered reallocation and protects itself against any infinite loops where reallocated costs are dirtected 'back up the chain'. The way in which the system has been setup means that full reporting (such as but not limited to Trial Balances and P&L reports) is available on both the original reallocation cost centre and each of the cost centres that has it's own direct costs and receives reallocated costs.



The application has extensive facilities in the area of Job costing, where the Boffin/Open stuctured job number and other index-keys that Bishopsgate have arranged mean that the job costing is available at all times from every user client-PC, irrespective of what other system users are doing. Reports are available in summary and in detail, with the lowest detail level shows detail costs that have originated as detail line-entries on supplier invoices. Irrespective of how sales invoices look to the customers, posting these to the financial ledgers can be effected in two ways, summary and detail. Where sales invoices are posted in summary form, they will typically debit the customer and Debtors control and credit 'sales to outsiders'. Where these invoices are posted in detail, the debit side remains the same, but there will be a series of credits, typically to 'Freight sales', 'Handling sales', Shipper's COD etc. The naming of the cost centres and accounts is totally under the control of the user!



Where the user elects to post sales invoices in detail, he is invited to identify incoming trading costs (at voucher level) by type of expense (Freight, Insurance, Handling etc), so that incoming costs are not only registered to their applicable job number, but can be identified to a type-of-expense. Boffin/Open includes a reporting job costing module entitles 'Gross Profit by Type of Expense', which not only provides the detail (individual sales and purchase items) and/or summary (one print line per job, totals of income, expense, gross profit) traditional job costing reports showing gross profit per job by Department\Month\Job Number but a total at the end of the departmental reports showing summaries of income and expense by type of income and expense. This facilities helps the user to determine such things as the fact that he is only makling a profit because he cahrges for postages and petties and not because he charges appropriate Freight Rates.



Where the user wishes to reliably report his financial year-to-date result very quickly after an accounting month-end, it is imperative that some form of Trading Accrual and Closed Cost-file Accounting is implemented. (The gross profit on a closed cost-file cannot be changed, except by general ledger journal, and there is a confidential way that a closed cost file can be re-opened). Without accurate trading accruals the result will not be much more than a guess; where the trading accruals exercise is effected manually, it is a boring task for the operational managers and open to errors. Boffin/Open includes both a closed cost-file job-costing system and a system of enterring Trading Accruals at departmental level and then monitoring these at company level to ensure that the monitoring and maintenance required to accurately use an automated trading accruals system is adhered to. Departmental managers are able to close or accrue and close their own operational cost files at their convenience using the client-PC to show the detail postings fo each successive cost-file. This cost-file closing may be effected in randon job number order and there is no penalty for closing cost-files very early. In the first (seven) days of the new month, one would expect the managers to be closing the remaining open cost files from last month, but there is nothing to stop the managers closing the easier or more straight-forward new month cost files as well. The subject of closed cost-file accounting with Trading Accruals is a subject in it's own right and Bishopsgate have a separate chapter on the topic for serious potential and existing customers. Bishopsgate have customers who have been using the Closed Cost File and Trading Accruals aspects of the system for many years and so we KNOW that it works.



The application provides for all of the normal facilities and reports, including VAT Reporting (the whole system is Value Added Tax (VAT) 'enabled') and there are many 'checks and controls' built into the system to try and prevent users making silly errors. All voucher posting is effected in 'double-entry' format and due to the open-item nature of the application there is a powerful audit trail that can be used. All vouchers are annotated with the system date, time and the logon-id of the person making the financial posting, so that there is an easy way to get at the person who created the journal and get details of what he/she was trying to do. There are many audit reports that interrogate various aspects of the system, right up to a (now famous) reporting program (NLISTALL) which will print the entire general ledger details of one or a consecutive series of accounting months in duplex (uses both sides of the A4 stationer) printing mode or simplex mode if duplex is not supported. There is a French version of this program, that one Boffin/Open user's auditors say fulfills the French National Requirements. 



The general ledger module allows reports to be printed at anytime, irrespective of what the other regular system users are doing. Trial Balances by Cost Centre, Cost Centre Family, Company and/or General Ledger (In general ledger account/cost centre order) account can be produced for nominated costs centres, families of cost centres and for the current and (at least) the prior year, on demand. The same information is available on the calling terminal screen, where summary totals can be (screen cursor) 'exploded' so that the original vouchers that caused the summary total can be viewed. The system includes a powerful Management Report Pack (NTRIALMH); which is run at the appropriate Management Month-end point to produce a full set of reports that cross-cast. This program produces at least the following reports (and more could be added) for a runtime nominated accounting month cut-off:- 




  Trial Balance by accounting month and year-to-date total 

  Profit/Loss 

  Balance sheet 

  Trial Balance audit trail by cost centre/account 

  Debtors list that agrees with Sales control account total 

  Creditors list that agrees with Bought control account total 

  Doubtful debts list 

  Gross Profit Summary report by Branch/Section/Month, one line per section, 
  monthly totals 

  Gross Profit Detail report by Branch/Section/Month, one line per job 
  number 

  Some others, etc.


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Job costing



Boffin/Open is a truly integrated application, where the operational modules can be thought of as being wrapped around the centralised accounting system. The realtime, Sales, Bought and General ledgers are integrated, so that any posting to either the sales or bought ledger is by defintion a posting to the General Ledger. Data can, of course, be input to the General ledger, directly. There is no limit to the number of sources of financial data that can be posted either manually or by application programs to the sales, bought and general ledgers, irrespective of what other regular system users are doing. There is no practical limit to the number of open-item transactions that may be posted to the integrated ledgers; the 'largest' Boffin/Open installation was one in which the integrated ledgers contained more than 1.5 million postings. It is also possible to process more than a single financial year simultaneously, so as to avoid the stress at accounting year-end; in fact the initial part of an accounting year-end is simple the accounting month-end. The system optionally supports Trading Accruals and a closed cost-file method of accrueing and closing operational files. There are two methods of using the Trading Accrual Accounting; Bishopstare call these the Full and Partial Accrual systems; the system systems can be mixed, with one operational department using one method and another using the other method. There is a separate chapter of the Boffin/Open manuals that discusses the Trading Accruals and how they work, which contracting users can access. It is worth highlighting that operational managers now view individual cost files on their client-PCs and make trading accruals directly to the system, as part of closing each cost file.



When the accounting system was originally built-up, the design was effected in conjunction with a large general, freight forwarder who (it was said) had all of the problems of the industry; very large turnover (if one includes Duty/VAT) and 'paper-thin' net profits; such that a very few operational mistakes and the net profit could easily be wiped out. The company also experienced the industry problem of the fact that the aggregate gross profits declared by the operational managers were quite different from the financial equivalent value; the managers always felt they were making more gross profit than the 'bookkeepers' said they were making. The worst part of this dilema was that the company did not know where to look for the discrepancy and so effected internal audits by operating department in an attempt to locate the problem. Enter Bishopsgate backed with a desire to build a powerful integrated accounting system with a customer who was desparate to have a system that would provide compatible 'manual' and financial profit returns; the user was also large enough to have a budget for the task.



Due to the background situation, great care was taken to design a system and lay down some rules that would 'guarantee' a successful outcome. The accounting system had to be able to support all of the tradiional functions as well as offer the basic data for a method of continuous job costing that would highlight the reason(s) for the departmental managers overstating their results. A few of the important basics imposed were. Job numbers are structured and check-digit in nature. All Trading items posted to the financial ledgers carry job numbers and all non-trading postings do not carry job numbers (- hindsight shows there is one exception to this which is very controlled). All accounting transactions were carefully controlled as to the accounting month in which they were posted and and the validity of the job numbers they carried. Foreign currency conversions were monitored on a posting-by-posting so that any 'bad' conversions would be reported and would require correction; foreign currency financial postings stored within the bookkeeping system carry both the orginal currency amount and the local general ledger conversion, so as to provide additional information 'down-stream'. 



In the early stages of the new system, the operational managers were asked to continue reporting in their traditional way, so that their Profit Returns per month could be compared in summary and in detail with those produced by the new system. As time went by, the list of discrepancies were very interesting. Not all are mentioned here, but those listed are real examples. Airline confidential commissions were being taken directly into the company's general ledger and not passed through the manual version of the job costing. Because the airfreight managers often shipped consignm,ents where the only element of gross profit was this confidential commission, so the managers (wanting to show a profit) were including these commissions in their Profit Returns; the outcome was that the commissions were being reported twice. One surface traffic department operated a 'Cartage Book' into which all delivery and collection charges submitted by hauliers would be 'accepted'. Then each actual shipment cost file would be charged for haulier costs an amount 'that the job could stand' and the operators of this cartage book were convinced that the book would show a gross profit at the end of each year! This method came about becuase the department handled some traffic where containers had to 'come back' empty and the cost of the container round-trip was too much for the true cost file to stand. The 'error' only came to light when the person who operated the cartage book went on holiday and he replacement charged the whole round trip cost to an actual cost file, which then showed an unhealthy gross loss and was investigated. It was also proved to the operational staff that the 'cartage book' did not end up in progfit; in fact it had a substantial loss which no one knew how to report. Another area that came under close examination was the issuance of trading cost credit notes. As a consequence, Boffin/Open includes an optional and confidential system of controlling trading charge credit notes. To cut a long story down, the outcome from these early days of job costing where the values were being extracted from the company's controlled financial books' was that the manual reporting was stopped and the Boffin/Open system produced monthly summary and detail reports (from the controlled financial books of the company)that the managers checked and were permitted to query. In the event that the managers could find no errors, then the computer generated reports were the result. 



The outcome of all of this early work is that Boffin/Open has integrated, multi-currency financial ledgers and a very powerful job costing system with optional accrual accounting (sometimes known as closed-file accounting. The key to the whole job costing aspect is that Boffin/Open contains many summary and detail reports that show the Departmental Profit Reports agree with the Financial Profit/Loss of the company for the same period. There is a lot more to tell, but we must leave that for those of you who elect to come with us.


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Boffin/Open housekeeping



The Boffin/Open application is designed to run continuously and so most of the housekeeping routines have been built into each of the Oracle and Boffin/Open products and so there is not a lot that we want you to do. We will start listing items on this website page that occur to us as we help existing customers manage their installation, but do not expect any 'earth shattering' tasks to suddenly appear.



Staff leaving your employ



We all have the issue of staff leaving our employment. When this happens, you need to consider the Logon and password issued to the person and decide what to do with these. There are three levels of logon that have to be considered, the one in the operating sytem, the one in the Oracle setup and the one inside Boffin/Open. The ones in the Operating System and in the Oracle setup should be removed completely, deleted. The one inside Boffin/Open (PEOPLE) should NOT BE REMOVED or DELETED, but should have all of the Rights removed, change the 'R' or 'W' or 'E' to a space and resave the record. It is important that you do not damage the logon itself or the name of the ex-employee, as there are many accounting and operational records within Boffin/Open that this person created and we still need to be able to determine this, even though they have gone.



Concatinating the Oracle databse extents 



Like everything in life, there is the right way of doing things and then there is the quick and practical way. When Bishopsgate build a new 'empty' database for a new customer, they do not go and locate all of the Boffin/Open Database SQL table creation scripts; although all of these are nicely listed and documented and in a book. The way that a new user's database tables are created involves exporting one of the Bishopsgate development databases and loading it into a 'spare' machine running under the same operating system as the new user has contracted for. Then a copy of the Boffin/Open master list of required database tables is compared with what we have, to ensure we send you a complete copy. Many tables are emptied, some are recreated to restart sequence numbers and the like. Anyway, the long and short of this tale is that the <amount of hard disk capacity> allocated to each table is a sensible 'starting amount' and not some scientific calculation based on your business volumes; even if you knew them.



After you have been live on the system for perhaps 6 - 8 months, it might be a good idea to export all of your Boffin/Open tables, drop the tables from the Boffin/Open database and then re-import the previously backed up data. This is NOT something that you should do on your own and/or without proper planning, but it is something that should be done to get the best out of your installations. We now await some guru to call and tell us that this is no longer needed under Oracle 9i, because the system takes care of it.


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Customs & Excise



Bishopstrade have been working with the Kenya Revenue Authority on the computerisation of the Customs & Excise department since late 1988. The whole of the Customs & Excise functionality, both front and back office processes are included. The World Trade Organisation, Kyoto accord recommendations such things as smuggling have been included.



A network of several computers, located at all of the larger longroom locations are networked to the Head Office site in Nairobi.



Incoming shipping company manifests are received electronically, decoded from their EDIFACT format and booked automatically into the system to facilitate 'Manifest striking' and shortly, it will be possible for the trade to submit Customs Declarations using electronic lodgement processes utilising EDIFACT message types, such as but not limited to CUSDEC.



Bishopstrade Ltd are editing a description and overview of the application for inclusion here, which will be published as soon as it becomes available. Parties who have particular interest in this area, will probably wish to identify themselves to Bishopstrade Ltd, so that they can be advised when the information becomes available. The intention is to make this application available for the open-systems environment using Linux/Oracle9iA/S and based on all of the open-systems, realtime, continuous operation (H24, D365) software that is already available within Boffin/Open.


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Website Publishing and Hosting



Bishopsgate have developed a very poweful and comprehensive computerised freight system covering all aspects of the freight company's business. All of the users data is stored in an Oracle Relational Databased which means that any data can be retrieved and used with the minimum of time and effort. None of the detail information keyed by the user and his team or the extended information that can be derived from this input is summarised or discarded without the direct input and agreement of the user. The Boffin/Open database contains a great deal of valuable information. Bishopsgate came 'late' to the Internet, missing the boo.com era where the 'trendies' came and lost a great deal of money involving themselves in a business that does not concern them. Pity they did not know that 'it is the second mouse that gets the cheese'. Bishopsgate were inspired by Oracle South Africa to create a new website on which details of the Boffin/Open system could be included, so as to promote future sales. During the creation of the website, itr became apparent that there was great scope in the notion of logically bringing the website technology close to the Boffin/Open database, so as to make the pair indivisible, with the database driving the website, without any intervention or eventhe knowledge of the human operators.



Bishopsgate wanted to write some Oracle PL/SQL software that would run, automatically in the Boffin/Open database on a continuous basis, which would be asleep most of the time (so as to not degrade the application), but would 'awake' and immediately act upon the events as and when they occurred; without human intenvention. These events would usually cause the publication to a specific place in a specific website a new or revised document/advice; where the new or revised Advice was being published in place of an older copy; then the older copy would be discarded, automatically to keep things tidy and the use of hard disk space at a sensible minimum. Bishopsgate was spoiled for choice in that anything within the user's database could be subject to such a trigger and could be the subject to some form of advice. It was decided that the user was best placed to decide which of his customers and business partners would be best served by such advices, so a program was produced to allow the suer to control 'publication' at a high level. It was also decided that data published on behalf of the user would, generally speaking, be published in a confidential manner, where only the user and the particular customer r partner would be able to view and or print the information. This involved two aspects. One was 'website security' which was addressed by Bishopsgate with some Java programming on the website side of things and secondly by some very clever Oracle PL/SQL programming within the Boffin/Open application. 



The Boffin/Open PL/SQL programming was particularly clever as it actually builds a sub-website within the Bishopsgate/Users hosted website for the user's customer/partner's data, that only the user's customer/partner can view and/or download from. The sub-website is built in a fraction of time and within the Boffin/Open environment and then sent to the sub-website where it installed and made available; hence the need for a broadband connection from the users Boffin/Open server to the Internet. 



Bishopsgate have started the repertoire of their 'Web Data Publishing' with the two obvious applications; (1) placing a totally up-to-date customer statement on the sub-website, so that important user-cleints can see their outstanding, aged account detail and (2) the Tracking and Tracing for each cargo booking that the user's customer/partner is currently involved in. It should be noticed here that the visitor to the sub-website does not need to know his waybill number(s) as he does with the courier company systems (DHL etc.) as with the Boffin/Open system, we know who the visitor is and which 'incomplete' (up to POD date plus a margin) shipments his company is involved in!



When the user nominates a customer/agent to join the Active Service List of customers for whome some/all available information is to be published, he/she will setup an initial logo-id and password for the party. Boffin/Open will then validate the uniqueness or otherwise of this information and will construct and send an email to the party, informing him/her of the increased facilities and giving the logon-id and password to be used. From this point forward, the Boffin/Open system will monitor the party's sales account and will keep a totally up-to-date statement on the sub-website; accurate to the last personal account transaction to the account. The system will also monitor all carg bookings in all operational suites (Air exports, Air imports, surface exports, surface imports etc) checking the Tracking and Tracing updates being issued within the system. Where such an update affects any consignment within which the customer/agent party is involved (in any capacity), then a new/revised Tracking Advice will be issued to the applicable place on the sub-website for the shipment. Notice that where a shipment involves more than one Active Service List account, the Tracking & Tracing update will update the Tracking of each individual party; so there could be several parties informed by a single tracking record update being applied to a shipment booking (Shipper, Payer, 1st Intermediate Agent, 2nd Intermediate Agent, Destination Agent). 



How is this all implemented? Bishopsgate have setup a Master Website, in fact the one you are now viewing. Each participating Boffin/Open user will obtain his own Broadband link with the Internet, so as to be able to make as many calls to the Internet as required without paying 'per phonecall'. Each participating Boffin/Open user will either obtain their own Domain Name or will commission Bishopsgate to do this for them. Once the user has one or more Domain Names, a minimal web-hosting agreement is setup with the same Internet Service Provider (ISP) as is used by Bishopsgate. Bishopsgate arrange to have a Website Alias setup, which re-directs all visitors to the Boffin/Open users website re-directed to a sub-website within the Bishopsgate website; all of which is totally seamless and not apparent to the website visitors. Bishopsgate will bring the Boffin/Openinstallation up to Boffin/Open Release 09.2003.02 or later, which includes all of the normal facilities but is known to contain all of the updated background comonents that support these facilities. he user will then add one program to his Boffin/Open menus, which is where he/she is able to setup the Boffin/Open Link to Website parameters and to nominate customers to the Active Service List. The user will then nominate in random order and 'as and when he requires' customer and agent accounts for which the facilities are required to be used. This will trigger the system into life. From time-to-time, Bishopsgate will notify contracting parties of additional 'Web Data Publishing features'; such as Copy Invoices, Proofs-of-Delivery copies (PODs) and Cash-on Delivery notifications (CODs). 



Notice: Bishopsgate have setup the infrastructure for this Web Data Publication software and users who wish to make use of it will need to host a Domain Name with Bishopsgate's ISP (amounting to currently perhaps US$100 for two year period). All of the various but relatively inexpensive setup costs will be payable by the user (perhaps US$200). Provision of a broadband telephone link to the internet (such as ADSL) will be paid by the user. There will be a monthly charge made for the website facilities, disk space and access (perhaps US$100), again not much cost here. Bishopsgate will also make a monthly charge for hosting the website and looking after the user's interests (currently Statements (US$200) and Tracking & Tracing (US$200)).


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Technology sales



In the development of the Boffin/Open product, Bishopsgate have been called upon to develop quite a lot of technology that would be useful to any third party involved in software development, even if that development is not associated with the Freight and/or Transportation industry. Bishopsgate, or their assign, not being the users are the clear Copyright holders of all of the Boffin/Open software including all associated Intellectual Property Rights.



In a reasonably controlled manner, Bishopsgate are willing to sell some of these technologies to any third party who might be interested in saving themselves a lot of time and expense by taking the technology as at the state to which Bishopsgate have developed it and then continuing their own development. For each 'technology demonstrator' that the third party might wish to purchase, their would be an single US$ price for which Bishopsgate would supply a working paper, a source deck and if possible a runtime Form and/or Report. In the case where the unit includes or is solely a dataset, then this can be supplied in one of many ways; with the particular supply-method being agreed with individual customers.



Listed below, Bishopsgate intend to add summaries of the various technologies that might be of interest to third parties who are probably working in the software development industry. Where a third party wishes to have details of any one or more of these 'technology demonstrators', contact should be made with Derek May by email at btlsa@global.co.za in the initial instance, providing full name and address, contact details (telephone, Facsimile, email, website) and details of the interesting item(s).



To come, soon



Email us


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User support



Welcome to the embryo user-support page; which was first created on the 21-APR-2003. If you are a contracting customer with a valid support contract, we invite you to call Derek May on his South African mobile telephone, the number of which is (+27)-82-851-8997 or on his email service at btlsa@global.co.za. South Africa is generally one hour ahead of London and DMay is a 'morning person'; rising at about 05:00 South African local time - usually to a fabulous African sunrise. Although he may be grumpy in the middle of the night, give him a moment to wake up and we are sure that he will get things moving to help you in your difficulties.



It is our intention that we will gently expand this website page in light of what help our customers actually ask for; not many customers call us, these days.


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Help desk



Welcome to the embryo Helpdesk page; which was first created on the 21-APR-2003. If you are a contracting customer with a valid support contract, we invite you to call Derek May on his South African mobile telephone, the number of which is (+27)-82-851-8997 or on his email service at btlsa@global.co.za. South Africa is generally one hour ahead of London and DMay is a 'morning person'; rising at about 05:00 South African local time - usually to a fabulous African sunrise. Although he may be grumpy in the middle of the night, give him a moment to wake up and we are sure that he will get things moving to help you in your difficulties.



It is our intention that we will gently expand this website page in light of what help our customers actually ask for.


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Licenses and pricing



The second quarter of 2003 finds Bishopsgate at the 
start of a new era. The Boffin/Open integrated frieght system has been 
re-written from the original ANSI COBOL into Oracle PL/SQL and Reports 
for Oracle 9i in a manner that makes the product available over a very 
wide range of hardware and operating systems. The application runs to-day 
in servers running under SUSE Linux 8.0 and Microsoft Windows (NT/2000 
Servers) and has run (and probably still would run) under Sco Open-Server; 
it is likely to run under Red Hat Linux to reflect the Oracle route forward. 
Oracle ahve recently anounced their 'Unbreakable Linux Oracle 9i' event 
and Bishopsgate finds itself ahead of the market (for once). The setup 
and development of this website is progressing at a fast arte and everything 
shown on the website, including Bishopsgate's Licenses, Prices and Terms 
of Trade are Subject to Change without notice and any offers made 
or implied here are Subject to Contract. 


The Boffin/Open Freight software 


The Boffin/Open software is a single, large collection 
of fourth generation Oracle PL/SQL Forms (programs), Reports and SQL scripts 
compatible with Oracle 9i database but using Client/Server architecture 
as 100% supported by Oracle Forms 6i and Reports 6i. The Software is known 
to run in both thin-client and fat-client (sometimes called Rich-Clients) 
modes without application software change. The software is known to be 
compatible with an installation built on SUSE Linux 8.0 and Oracle 9i 
for Linux server(s) and Microsoft Windows (95,98,XP,2000,Mil etc) equipped 
client-PCs. The software is known to be compatible with an installation 
built on Microsoft NT/2000 Server and Oracle 9i for Windows server(s) 
and Microsoft Windows equipped Client-PCs without application software 
change. Notice that the same runtime application program library 
is supplied to both Linux and Windows installations. Where warranted, 
Boffin/Open can be demonstrated running in each of these environments, 
immediately. In this iteration of the application, Bishopsgate have discarded 
all large servers and desktop computers and have built servers and clients 
on (logically) large Laptop computers, so that these may be taken at a 
moments notice (well say 24 hours) to any place in the workd for exhibitions 
and demonstrations. 


Continuous development 


Quoting the late and great Dr. Wang of Wang Laboratories 
Incorporated, computer software is not invented, it evolves. Boffin/Open 
is in a state of continuous correction, development and expansion. The 
following price and license information relates to the Boffin/Open application 
software excluding the very large Customs & Excise application. 


Data migration from legacy systems being replaced 



It will be very common for new Boffin/Open installations 
to replace legacy computer installations and for there to be a requirement 
to download the user's data from the user's legacy system and uploaded 
into the Boffin/Open Oracle database. Bishopsgate have extensive experience 
in this field and will usually be happy to provide a quotation to the 
user for this specialist once-off service. It follows that no one, including 
Bishopsgate, would be able to download the data from any legacy system 
and upload it in any new system unless detailed knowledge is available 
on the way the data was organised and and stored and any coding conventions 
worked. All such data migration work effected by Bishopsgate Computer 
Services Limited is outside the scope of their standard supply agreement 
and any the software support and maintenance agreement and is subject 
to written quotation and written acceptance before any work can be addressed. 



Source code, Modifications and Copyright 



Bishopsgate has all of the program source code for the 
entire system, which puts them in a position where all sensible changes 
and developments can be considered and usually implemented. User inspired 
changes are welcome and can be accomodated on a chargeable basis. Where 
a user requested change is adopted, this will usually be effected on a 
chargable basis and the Copyright of the New or Amended software will 
be vested in Bishopstrade or it's assign, not being the user. When a user 
requests a change for which the user wishes to maintain the Copyright, 
Bishopsgate reserves the right to refuse to effect the programming on 
the basis that it might impinge on the clean Copyright that alread exists 
and secondly where such software is produced, then the charge will reflect 
the user's wish to retain the Copyright. There is no aspect of the existing 
Boffin/Open application, as at 1st April 2003 where Bishopstrade Limited 
or it's assign is not the Copyright owner. 


The normal way of licensing the Boffin/Open application 
or part therof, is for Bishopsgate Computer Services to issue directly 
a Runtime License in Perpetuity to the end-user; even if the end user 
business was initially conducted through an authorised dealer. All such 
licenses start from the Bishopsgate Standard License Agreement, which 
is subject to change without notice but can be updated, expanded and/or 
changed as a result of individual negotiations. Subject to contract, the 
Licensee is licensed to use the application or parts therof in named installation(s) 
and for a maximum number of concurrent-users and/or devices license for 
his own use and not as a bureau service to other companies in server computers 
with four or less processors. There is a minimum number of concurrent-users/devices 
in any given license of five which falls in line with the minimum imposed 
by Oracle for their runtime sub-licenses. Bishopsgate Computer Services 
Limited is a member of the Oracle Partner Network with an Oracle Distribution 
Agreement in place, and, as such, is able to sell Oracle runtime sub-licenses 
in support of Boffin/Open licenses. 


Two ways of paying for the Boffin/Open lruntime 
license 


The first method is one where an single license 
fee is paid at the outset for which the user is able to use the runtime 
Oracle and Boffin/Open software in perpetuity without further payment 
but only on the server initially identified and only for the maximum number 
of licensed concurrent-users/devices agreed at the outset and with four 
or less processors in the server. If the server is upgraded with additional 
memory and/or other peripherals, but not replaced, there is no license 
fee implication. In the event that the server is exchanged, the Oracle 
and Bishopsgate license(s) immediately expire. The Bishopsgate License 
fee does not include a component for the applicable perpetual Oracle runtime 
license. All requested changes and/or additions to the Boffin/Open 
software are chargable at the then-current daily programming rate for 
each man-day or part therof and are subject to written quotation and written 
acceptance of the quotation. No chargable work can be effected for any 
customers who have outstanding account balances with Bishopsgate Computer 
Services Limited. The current rate for this method of license payment 
for the complete application is US$4,500.00. 


The second method is one where Bishopsgate charge, 
at their then current daily rate, to cover the initial installation, commissioning 
and training; the amount of which is controlled by the client. From the 
end of the month in which the Boffin/Open application software was delivered 
by Bishopsgate to the site, a monthly rental charge is levied, per concurrent-user/device, 
in advance for use of the runtime Oracle RDBMS and necessary Oracle runtime 
products and the agreed Boffin/Open runtime application software. Where 
the user increases the number of licensed concurrent-users/devices, the 
monthly, in advance rental charges will be increased pro-rata from the 
end of the month in which the increased number of concurrent-users/devices 
was implemented. The Bishopsgate License fee does not include a component 
for the Oracle runtime licenses. All requested changes and/or additions 
to the Boffin/Open software are chargable at the then-current daily programming 
rate for each day or part therof and are subject to written quotation 
and written acceptance of the quotation. No chargable work can be effected 
for any customers who have outstanding account balances with Bishopsgate 
Computer Services Limited. There is a minimum number of 5 license seats 
that can be supplied under this method, in line with Oracle's licensing 
policy. The current rate for this method of license payment for the complete 
application is US$187.50 per concurrent-user/device per month; 
being one twenty-fourth of the License Fee; which does not stop after 
24 months, but continues indefinately. 


Annual software support and maintenance 



Optionally, the user is able to enter into a separate, 
annual Software Support and Maintenace Agreement which runs for twelve 
months at a time, from the Boffin/Open software Delivery Date to 
the site and ending at the end of the then-current year. If an Annual 
Software Support and Maintenance Agreement is to be put in place, this 
must be at the outset of the Supply Agreement and cannot be setup later; 
unless all past payments starting from the end of the month of Boffin/Open 
software delivery are paid as a single payment. The annual fee is charged 
in advance, at a rate of 22% of the Initial License fee. Where 
this annual software support and maintenance agreement is in place, Bishopsgate 
will make available a completely new replacement runtime program directoryt, 
four times per year, which can be downloaded from the Bishopsgate Development 
Centre website; after the user has been supplied with a logon and password 
to the confidential area of the website. 


Billing currency and Payment Terms 


Bishopsgate will invoice customers in United States 
dollars and require payment of the that currency within 30 days of invoice 
date. Customers are responsible for any banking charges associated with 
the payment of Bishopsgate charges. Customers are encouraged to make payments 
by bank transfer quoting the Bishopsgate invoice number as the payment 
reference. Customers who are behind in their payments will need to bring 
their payment plan up-to-date before requesting any additional services. 
Customers on rental terms who fall more than two months overdue (three 
months from invoice date) will cause the rental system to cease operation 
without damaging the user's data, automatically, in which case the rental 
system can be re-started by full payment of the overdue amount; in which 
case the re-start of the system will have to wait until Bishopsgate have 
'cleared funds'. Bishopsgate are willing to negotiate with new customers 
regarding the currency of payment where it can be seen to that paying 
in United States dollars would be difficult. 


Bishopsgate daily rate 


The current rate for a man-day is US$750.00 plus 
any Value Added Tax and/or similar taxes and/or duties that are correctly 
chargeable, which will be separately shown on the Bishopsgate invoice. 
Any direct expenses in travel and/or subsistance that are necessary will 
be charged at cost to the user. Where a customer commissions Bishopsgate 
to produce some New or Amended application software, Bishopsgate will 
assess the work and include the expected number of man-days to be charged 
in the written quotation. It is appreciated that the customer has no real 
way of checking the number of days used, but Bishopsgate undertake to 
be reasonable in their estimates and control. Bishopsgate are not in 
the business of supplying technical people for projects; so this is 
reflected in the rate. A man-day comprises 7 hours which equates to a 
day starting at 09:00 and ending at 17:00 with a one hour lunch break. 
Customers should be aware that Bishopsgate staff, along with very many 
software engineers, often work very long hours. Where a Bishopsgate operative 
works longer than seven hours per day, billing for that day will vary, 
pro-rata on the seven hour day. 


Cost of building a Rich/FAT Client-PC 



Desktop and Laptop computers of suitable configuration 
can be used as either Thin or Rich/Fat Client-PCs. Bishopsgate publish 
the recommended minimum configuration for both Boffin/Open Oracle servers 
and Client-PCs and instructions for contracting customers who wish to 
build their own systems 'from scratch'. Where Bishopsgate are asked to 
build a Client-PC, the user will normally supply the machine, with the 
applicable operating system already installed and working, to a Bishopsgate 
office or Bishopsgate will be at the customer's site effecting other work. 
The customer can elect to pay Bishopsgate for building Client-PCs using 
the Bishopsgate then-current man-day rate for time and materials, described 
above or pay a fixed charge of US$400 or US$600 per client-PC. The charge 
of US$400 is applicable where the Client-PC is already runnning under 
the desired operating system and the charge of US$600 is applicable where 
a change of operating system is involved; in which case the customer is 
expected to supply the new operating system software with applicable license(s). 
Where the user wishes to have several Client-PCs built, it will be less 
expensive for the customer to pay the Bishopsgate man-day rate plus direct 
expenses, at cost. 


Cost of building a Boffin/Open Oracle Server 



Desktop and Laptop computers and larger machines of 
suitable configuration can be used as Boffin/Open Oracle servers. Bishopsgate 
publish the recommended minimum configuration for Boffin/Open Oracle servers 
and instructions for contracting customers who wish to build their own 
systems 'from scratch'. Where Bishopsgate are asked to build a Boffin/Open 
Oracle Server, the user will normally supply the machine, with the applicable 
operating system already installed and working, to a Bishopsgate office 
or Bishopsgate will be at the customer's site effecting other work. The 
customer can elect to pay Bishopsgate for building a server using the 
Bishopsgate then-current man-day charge rate for time and materials, described 
above or pay a fixed charge of US$2,500 per server plus any direct expenses, 
at cost. Building a Boffin/Open server includes all necessary installation 
actions to get the operating system, Oracle and Boffin/Open running well, 
it does NOT include installing other third-party software products. Where 
the customer wishes Bishopsgate to install other third-party software 
products, this work will be the subject to a written quotation and written 
acceptance. 


Source licenses 


The Boffin/Open design can be traced back to 1975, five 
years after Bishopsgate Computer Services Limited was first formed. The 
current Boffin/Open product is therefore the result of about 28 years 
of design and development; the source code of the product is the 'jewel 
in the crown' of our company and it may be taken that we take great care 
of our possession. 


Where a user wishes to take a copy of the latest Bofin/Open 
product and use it as his own 'starting point' for an in-house system, 
this is quite reasonable and can be accommodated but there will be a substantial 
up-front, single payment charge for the source license, documentation 
and hand-over period. 


The source license agreement will not permit anyone 
to take a source license and then become a competitor to Bishopstrade 
Limited. Where a third party takes a Source License Agreement, he will 
need to demonstrate that he already holds an appropriate Oracle Development 
License or obtain such a license from Bishopsgate, after which time a 
Laptop computer will be built for the licensee on which all of the software 
development tools, source code and datatables will be setup and ready 
for use. From this laptop computer the licensee will be able to do any 
technical work that Bishopsgate would be able to do. Payment for Source 
Code Licenses is all made before the Source Code License material is handed-over. 
Only Bishopstrade Limited is able to issue Source Code Licenses.


bmsPageText:
Worldwide partners



Bishopsgate are the sole developers of Boffin/Open and 
enjoy this function. Traditionally, Bishopsgate has not advertised it's 
software products but has relied upon 'word of mouth'. The time has come 
(the walrus said, to speak of many things....) when the Boffin/Open product 
is becoming quite refined and even being documented(!) and it is necessary 
to make the freight community around the world aware of it and it's contents. 
To fulfil this, Bishopsgate have built this website and are appointing 
a few very competent dealers around the world. 


Dealers will promote and support the Boffin/Open software 
and users in their region, identifying and qualifying potential users 
on a non-exclusive basis and supporting the existing customer base with 
knowledge and practical support. 


Bishopsgate is interested in additional dealers/partners 
who can demonstrate that they have the technical expertise, background 
and commercial skills necessary to form a successful relationship which 
is to the benefit of all concerned, including users, partners, Oracle 
and Bishopsgate. 


Bishopsgate wants to have a successful, long-term relationship 
with it's partner dealers and so will endeavour to setup the Dealer Agreements 
in a correct and carefully thought through manner. To help in this task, 
a new Standard Dealer Agreement has been drawn-up by a very long established 
firm of Copyright, Patent and Trademark Attorneys located in Joahnnesburg, 
South Africa. 


The Boffin/Open application is a large system and no 
body expects the partner dealers to have as much product knowledge as 
the designers, but it is expected and hopes that the dealer's knowledge 
will dramatically increase with time. Bishopsgate expects to be involved 
in pre-sales technical discussions relating to all sales-leads, so that 
all future installations will have a good foundation. Bishopsgate will 
be in direct contact with all end-users using email as the first method 
of contact for both correspondence and the supply of new and/or amended 
software. 


All Boffin/Open Supply contracts and Softwar Support 
& Maintenance Contracts will be between Bishopsgate and the end-users, 
with the agreement of the authorised dealers. Customers will be able to 
obtain help and assistance from the dealers as well as from Bishopsgate, 
so as to provide both local practical help and remote high-product-knowledge 
help and technical assistance. The way in which Bishopsgate have setup 
their Dealer Agreements, it is in everybody's interest to make the user's 
Boffin/Open installation a success. 


Grant Systems
72 Hammersmith Road

London W14 8TH

England
Contact:

Email:

Office:

Website:
David Naber

dnaber@grantsys.co.uk

(+44)-207-559-9778 

www.grantsys.co.uk
Neutrix Logistic Systems (Pty) Ltd
12 Kareeberg Place

Albertsdal, Alberton

South Africa
Contact:

Email:

Office:

Facsimile:
Vernon Breet
 neutrix@pixie.co.za

(+27)-11-900-4398

(+27)-11-900-1960


bmsPageText:
Supply Agreement



The hyperlink below, provides access to a draft Boffin/Open Supply Agreement, which is subject to change without notice but it does represent a reasonable starting point for any new customer negotiation. It is Bishopsgate's intention to continually update and expand this draft, so as to address issues that arise in the normal course of business. 



Bishopsgate are not in the practice of selling hardware. Occassionally, Bishopsgate have to supply hardware as the customer insists on a turnkey solution, where everything that is required is supplied by Bishopsgate. In the case where Bishopsgate are forced into the commercial position of having to supply hardware, this will not be effected at any discounted hardware prices. Typically, new customers will have personal computers within their organisation, which undoubtably can be upgraded to suit the requirements of Boffin/Open client-PCs. Old personal computers should be discarded and given to the local schools. Upgrading existing personal computers for use with Boffin/Open is not normally an expensive exercise. Bishopsgate are happy to provide verbal help to new customers in deciding what hardware upgrade(s) should be installed. 



Bishopsgate are not in the business of selling or installing Operating System software. The latest recommendation for the server operating system is (generic) Linux, which is available from many sources and is open-software. Bishopsgate run SUSE Linux 8.0 in their development shop, which runs very well, is trouble free and cost about US$120 to purchase for a complete copy. There are no restrictions of the number of concurrent users imposed with this Linux license. Installing Linux can be 'fiddly' although not hard and Bishopsgate are happy to provide a copoy of their internal SUSE Linux Server setup procedures to new customers. It should be emphasised that the Oracle Corporation have close commercial connections with Red Hat Linux and so this would be the preferred Linux 'flavour' for the future. Boffin/Open servers can also be supplied for use with LAN Servers running under Microsoft Windows 2000 etc. 



Bishopsgate are part of the Oracle Partner Network (OPN) and under this scheme hold a Distributor Agreement. Under this program, Bishopsgate are encouraged to make their Boffin/Open application available with Oracle RDBMS and other Oracle products. Bishopsgate are in the business of supplying Oracle products with Boffin/Open and would expect new customers to purchase their required Oracle products from Bishopsgate at normal retail prices and terms. Where a new Boffin/Open customer already enjoys an appropriate Orcale license, then Bishopsgate are very happy that Oracle products are obtained by the new customer from Oracle directly or from an approved Oracle dealer. It should be highlighted that where the new user elects to obtain Oracle products from a party other than Bishopsgate, Bishopsgate would not expect to get involved in the supply, installation, commissioning, support or development of the Oracle aspect of the installation. 



Bishopsgate are not normally in the business of selling third party software. There are third party software products available in the marketplace, which Bishopsgate use in their development centre, which are often free and always useful; examples would be Samba and Acrobat reader. Where the new user would benefit from obtaining such products, Bishopsgate are happy to inform the new user about the products and where they may be obtained, leaving it up to the new user to obtain legal copies for their own use. If Bishopsgate are asked to obtain, install, commission and integrate such products, then this will be treated as a chargeable exercise at the then-current daily rate.


bmsPageText:
Maintenance agreements



The hyperlink below, provides access to a draft Boffin/Open Software Support & Maintenance Agreement, which is subject to change without notice but it does represent a reasonable starting point for any new customer negotiation. It is Bishopsgate's intention to continually update and expand this draft, so as to address issues that arise in the normal course of business. 



In respect of their own Boffin/Open Software Support & Maintenance charges, Bishopsgate follow the industry standards. Software support and maintenance years are exactly aligned to calendar years. Where a user installs the system in the middle of a year, a pro-rata charge will be made for the period to the first calendar year end. There are no discounts available for Software Support & Maintenance; even if a discount was given on the Initial License fee, the annual software suport and maintenance charges are based on the non-discounted published initial license fees. The user is able to opt out of software support and maintenance totally and simply use what is delivered, preferring not to have updates or access to the helpdesk; in this case the software license allows the user to use the licensed software, in perpetuity on the system for which it was supplied. Alternatively, the user can opt out of having the updates but contract for the Helpdesk facilities at the 5% rate. Alternatively, the user can opt out of having the Helpdesk but contract for the Updates facilities at the 17% rate. The message is clear, the user can opt for the level of support he requires, but if he wishes to have either of both of the available facilities, then these have to be paid for; Software Development and Support use expensive people and expensive people have to be paid. 



Bishopsgate (1) charge 22% annually in advance, (2) Split the annual software support and maintenance charge into two components, one for the software updates (17%) and one for a helpdesk facility (5%) (3) base their first year annual charge on the amount the user paid as a License fee for products supplied and (4) base second and subsequent annual software support Updates charge on the aggregate of the previous year's Update charge plus the 17% of the aggregate. 



For example, and ignoring VAT/Sales Tax, if a software license was originally charged as US$100, the first year software support and maintenance charge would be US$22 split US$17 for Updates and US$5 for helpdesk facilities. In the second year the charge would be still 22% but (17% of (US$100 plus US$17) for Updates) and (5% of (US$100 plus US$5)) for Helpdesk. The theory behind this is that the updates are continuously making the system larger and so more support is being provided. 



Where a user takes software support and then either stops for a period or defaults on payment, the following methid applies. The break in support cannot be less than 6 months. When support is resummed, a charge of 150% of what the support charges would have been for the intervening period is made before the user is brought back up to date, by Bishopsgate supplying a then-current release of the software that the user had contracted for; which will contain updates etc that have been missed. When the user re-starts the software supprt and maintenance, it will be necessary for a new contact to be entered into, which may not be the same as the old one, but will be the then-current software support and maintenance offering; which of course could be at a higher rate than 22%. 



Bishopsgate are not in the hardware maintenance business and leave this issue to the Boffin/Open users. It goes without saying that Bishopsgate would recommend that all users take out regular hardware maintenance contracts to cover at least the essential components of their installations such as server, important printers and maybe a few client-PCs. Bishopsgate have taken a different approach for themselves, in that they have no maintenance agreement, preferring to purchase good equipment, look after it and underwrite the risk of problems, themselves. Generally this approach has served Bishopsgate well but once in a while, we get irritating faults at which time a locally based hardware engineer is located and asked to fix the problem. This, you will say is Okay for Bishopsgate as they can afford to be down for a day or two (very) occassionally without hurting their business too much. Bishopsgate would argue that this is not really true, but the company 'takes the point' and purchases some hardware that provides some redundancy into the system. This approach can be taken by customers but they will need to think the subject through for themselves. It is worth suggesting that the annual hardware fee be multiplied by (perhaps) four and then add interest to see what the 'capitalisation' value of the hardware maintenance will be from which a 'budget' for redundant hardware could be calculated. 



Bishopsgate are not in the Operating System business and consciously do not contract for support services for any operating systems that they use, preferring to learn as much as possible from people and companies in the same businesss as themselves and then organising to download software patches as they occur and/or as something new does not work as expected. 



Bishopsgate use a few third party software products but in no cases is any software support and maintenance paid for these items. When the items are included within the Bishopsgate normal business method, they are used and expected to work. The only time that such items need to be re-assessed is perhaps after a major operating system upgrade, when a new version will need to be obtained; this usually being effected as a download from the Internet. Bishopsgate would suggest that their users do the same. 



In terms of Oracle RDBMS, Bishopsgate do not contract for continuing software support and maintenance for themselves; preferring to rebuild their development systems occassionally with the then-latest releases of Oracle obtained under the Partner Program become available. In the case of Boffin/Open users, the choice is theirs but the following points are worth noting. Where Bishopsgate license Boffin/Open to a new customer who had no previous Oracle license, Bishopsgate is responsible for first line support for those Oracle products that it supplied. Because Bishopsgate are so specialised, they feel that they can fix any problems in the user's Oracle installation from the knowledge they already have. Where a user wishes to contract with Oracle software support and maintenance, this costs about 17% of the ex-VAT aggregate retail price of the Oracle runtime License(s) that have been contracted for and this amount is paid annually, in advance. Where end-users contract for Oracle software support and maintenance, they will generally be entitled to receive a copy of each new Oracle release, as it becomes available. If such a user then wished to install such a new release (e.g. Oracle 8i to Oracle 9i), in practice, Bishopsgate would need to effect the exercise, which would be a chargeable item, charged at the then-current daily rate.


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In the Bishopsgate development centre software corrections, developments, tuning and ex are processed through a single control stream which is termed "Developments". The documents that you are about to examine therefore show a mixed list of these categories arranged in ascending chronological order by request date. The engineering associated with each item is not necessarily effected in the same order as the requested items are arranged. Immediately a requested item passes trough the development cetnre it will be removed from the requests manual and deposited in the completed manual with comment indicating what software changes and additions were required, including application program names. It is intended that contracting users will then be able to download and install the nesecceray software to update their own installations, more later. The two revised manuals will be updated on the website as at the end of each working day.


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Boffin/Open modifications for release 10: outstanding 


Boffin/Open modifications for release 10: completed



Release 10 represents Bishopsgate's major development to "Closely Couple" the web site and the Boffin/Open Oracle database application.


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Boffin/Open modifications for releases earlier than 10: outstanding 


Boffin/Open modifications for releases earlier than 10: completed


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Frequently asked questions



01-APR-2003 Tue 09:30 JNB DJM Subject - Availability of Boffin/Open source code - All of the Boffin/Open application software has been written by Bishopsgate or by sister companies of Bishopsgate who are all owned by the same single beneficial shareholder. Bishopsgate have access to all of the source code of the application and are the only people who have that access. No source license(s) for all of part of the Boffin/Open product have been supplied to anyone. Source licensing will be considered, where this is of interest to any user.



01-APR-2003 Tue 09:40 JNB DJM Subject - Modifications and improvements for users - Bishopsgate do undertake software modifications and the writing of new application programs for users. New Software is considered to be application software which did not exist at the time a new user contracted for all or any part of Boffin/Open but was recognised as being needed. Additional Software is considered to be Boffin/Open software that has been written since a new user contracted for all of part of the Boffin/Open system. In all cases, Bishopsgate retain clear and absolute ownership and Copyright of the software and the price charged reflects this. Where a user wishes to have Additional Software written and wishes to own the Copyright of that software, then this must be disclosed at the time of requesting the Additional Software. Bishopsgate retain the right to avoid decline the commission under this condition, where this would or might inhibit their own expected development. In the event that Bishopsgate agree to produce such user-copyrighted software, then the price will be significantly greater than it would otherwise be. 



09-APR-2003 Wed 10:00 LON DJM Subject - Oracle's 'Unbreakable Linux event' - Bishopsgate have been invited to take part in Oracle Corporation's 'Unbreakable Linux Event' which has just been announced in London, England to-day. Oracle Corporation feel that so much progress has been made with Linux over the last year or so, that the operating system represents a significant step forward and combined with Oracle's products will be a real success. Bishopsgate have already ported the whole of their Boffin/Open Integrated Freight System to Linux with Oracle 9i database and have this running and available for demonstration and delivery; it is FAST.



09-APR-2003 Wed 13:00 JNB DJM Subject - Any 3GL program code used within the application? - There is no Third Generation Programming Language (3GL) code within the Boffin/Open application, whatsoever. All application programs/forms are written in Oracle PL/SQL using Forms 6i and all reports are written in Oracle Reports 6i. The reason why the software is using Oracle Forms and Reports 6i with an Oracle 9i database is that the application is currently running under Client/Server architecture. All database tables are created with their own specific SQL script, within which all of the required attributes of the table are addressed, index keys, size, compression, sequence numbers etc. All website programming is effected in HTML with Java applets. Bishopsgate are interested in PERL for Oracle but this has not yet been used.



10-APR-2003 Thu 08:55 JNB DJM Subject - Does the system support Rich and Thin clients? - Yes. Bishopsgate recommend Rich/FAT Clients, as the application programs then run within the client's processor, freeing up the server(s) and making the overall system faster for all users. There is no reason why any given installation should not support Rich and Thin Clients simultaniously. Bishopsgate look forward to implementing Oracle 9iA/S, so that remote thin clients can be supported over the Internet, using the web browser to access the application.



12-APR-2003 Sat 13:00 JNB DJM Subject - Does the system support publishing data to the website? - Yes. Bishopsgate recommend that their users have a website, even if it is a hosted website initially. If the customer is concerned about or incapable of building the website, this is something that Bishopsgate can construct for a modest charge. Part of the website can be configured in line with Bishopsgate's standards so that the user's Boffin/Open installation can publish data to the website, making this available to the user's ebusiness partners. All of the user's data that comprises the Boffin/Open Oracle database is 'available' for automatic, realtime extraction and publishing to the website, without any involvement by the user's staff. As of to-day's date, customer statements, shipment tracking and tracing shipment lists are available. Over the next couple of months the Boffin/Open application will be capable of publsihing many more data elements and reports. A Thought, imagine publishing export groupage manifests (etc) to the website and letting the destination agent/partners download what they want, at their convenience.



13-APR-2003 Sun 11:00 JNB DJM Subject - Can the application be supplied in any other language? - Yes. All new application software is initially written with English language screen texts. All existing application programs and all new programs that become available are upgraded in a standard manner, so that they can be made to run with 'screen languages' other than English. Where the user is the first to require Boffin/Open in a new language, Bishopsgate supply the software and extracted English screen texts and the user is responsible for the transalations. The transalations are added to the Boffin/Open database and are then available for use in the application programs. Each Boffin/Open user logon is able to be annotated with the preferred screen language and this preference may be changed within a logon session; so as to make it possible to run one client Window in one language and another in another language, both working freely with the same operational and accounting data etc. Notice that a multi-language installation still only requirtes a single Boffin/Open runtime program library; not one for each supported language. In terms of the reports; these are run using HP PCL5e printer macros; within which the static text of the report is stored. These printer macros are delivered to each site as part of the initial setup and then are under the control of the user. The text within these printer macros can be edited from the default English to whatever the user desires. Users should expect an new translations to involve a competant (freight enabled) translator to effect the transaltions within perhaps 6 working days.



13-APR-2003 Sun 12:00 JNB DJM Subject - Does Boffin/Open stop any Oracle facility being used? - No, as far as Bishopsgate are aware, none of the programming contained within the Boffin/Open application would in any way inhibit the adoption and/or use of any feature of the Oracle RDBMS and associated software tools and accessories. Although it is never totally true, Bishopsgate do think that keeping such a large system 'simple and make it work' is a good maxim, which in turn, keeps the application away from the more complex Oracle features where there might be a conflict.



13-APR-2003 Sun 12:05 JNB DJM Subject - Are all of Oracles features available in a Boffin/Open installation? - Yes, as far as Bishopsgate are aware and from the technical perspective all Oracle features are available to be used within a Boffin/Open application site. The normal Oracle content of a Boffin/Open installation is that Bishopsgate only include those Oracle software elements that are required to make the Boffin/Open installation perform fully, leaving the user free to obtain and install other Oracle features as he sees fit, either obtaining these through Bishopsgate, another Oracle partner or Oracle directly.


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Future software - near term



The introduction of broadband-telephony makes it possible to include some exciting developments to the already extensive Boffin/Open application. It is worth highlighting that the standing monthly payment for broadband communications includes a practically unlimited facility for uploading information from the Oracle Database to the website without extra charges. The telephone link from the user's server to the website is permanently open and costs no more than the fixed monthly rental to use continuously. Not only does this facility offer a link to the website but to all other suitable configured machines in the world.



South African Customs CCA1, Export Declarations



For several years Boffin/Open has been used to prepare South African Customs CCA1 Export Declarations in printed format. From the last quarter of 2003, the South African customs are promoting an extension to their CCA1 processing where freight forwarders and/or transport companies will be able to transmit EDIFACT CUSDEC Electronic Declarations to customs ahead of the printed Manifest arriving at the border crossing point with the truck and the cargo. South African Customs expect this new modern facility to dramatically reduce the time taken to clear groupage traffic through the border. Bishopsgate expect to have this facility running in beta test mode before the end of 2003.



COMESA compliance in customs software



Boffin/Open includes a very large suite of software designed to provide customs and excise with the computer processing facilities they need to fulfill their obligations. In East Africa the customs and excise departments of 20 governments have grouped together under the COMESA banner and are discussing changes and additions to their procedures to make each participating department more efficient and better equipped to do their work. In November 2003 COMESA participants expect to receive the first set of agreed changes to their systems, many of which will effect their computer systems. Bishopsgate has agreed that it will program these changes and additions free of cost in order to maintain the "COMESA compliance" that they have promised. It is not possible at this time to provide a deadline for these new computer facilities until the extent of the changes is part published.



(Africa's first free trade zone - Angola, Burundi, Comoros, Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Namibia, Rwanda, Seychelles, Sudan, Swaziland, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Visit COMESA's website for more information.)


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About us - History


 
Bishopsgate Computer Services Limited was formed on 6th April 1970 as a software house specialising in providing computer software, hardware and associated services to the transportation industry, especially the Freight-Forwarding community. Over the past 32 years the system has been continuously developed and has been completely re-written twice; once from Wang Interpretive BASIC-2 to Wang VS ANSI '74 COBOL and then once again to Oracle PL/SQL each time providing an opportunity to include a large number of 'wishlist' items. The resultant system is a mature, stable open, 4GL database system which we call Boffin/Open. Boffin/Open is designed to run with Oracle RDBMS and contains no 3GL code; consequently is therefore 'hardware and operating system independent' available for all modern commercial computer environments for which Oracle offer their product(s).



About us - Current position 



Our company is completely independent and is not controlled in any way by any freight or transportation interests. We specialise exclusively in providing computer solutions to the freight and transport industries. We have many freight forwarders, customs brokers, and international transport operators amongst our customers with installations widley distributed around the world including the United Kingdom, France, Kenya, South Africa and Zimbawe. We number one government on our client list. You can see from this that our system is extremely flexible. Moreover, it is available now, it can be demonstrated shortly and installed within a relatively short period of time. In order to support the application in an increasing number of countries, we have 'screen-language-enabled' all of the programs, so that users may run the application in any mix of supported languages. Adding another language to the then-existing repertoire is not a large task and can be completed within about ten working days.



Boffin/Open is a family of systems designed to provide freight forwarders and international transport operators with integrated systems to cover the operational, accounting, management and marketing aspects of their business. The system is modular in design and allows new users to select all or only those aspects for which they have an immediate use, leaving other aspects until there is a requirement.



We believe that life for companies in these trades is ruled by the four imperatives of speed, service, competition and control. Industry today needs its goods moved quickly, efficiently and predictably. If the business is like others we have seen, the margins are relatively small, but the administrative and control problems are those of a company which typically in manufacturing industry might be many times larger. Costs saved and mis-routings avoided can result in customers kept and a very marked improvement in net profits.



The design of Boffin/Open encourages forwarders and transport operators to book their consignments as early as possible thus allowing the system to maintain positive control of the cargo. Many common sense - and some more subtle - checks and controls have been included in the product to highlight potential problems either before they occur or before they become costly. Credit checks on customers, searches for special rates and instructions, looking at details of previous cargo for that same customer, are all , for example, immediately available to the operator.



The greatest overheads in the industry tends to be the cost of labor, followed closely by communications. To reduce the amount of wasted labour, the designers have ensured that the maximum amount of repetitive or standing information has been catalogued inside the system. Access to this repetitive data is either automatic or is easily invoked. It is all at the finger tips of the intelligent and interested operator. There is no multiple keying of data and rigorous data-validation is always effected at data-entry time when the original documentation is still at hand. All modules are completely compatible and are designed to cover both Air, Surface and National transport. There are other specialised modules and very powerful multi-currency, open-item financial and management accounting.



Making all of the company's operational, marketing and accounting data immediately accessible will increase throughput, reduce errors and make operator's jobs more interesting. This in turn tends to lead to fewer mistakes, fewer corrections and more control. It is generally felt that good operators are difficult to find, expensive to train and should not be employed on menial, repetitive tasks.



We want to make clear, that we are able to provide turnkey systems, developing, installing, training and maintaining the Boffin/Open software system. Boffin/Open is also a system which companies of any size can use and grow with a clear, proven, upgrade path. We would be very pleased to talk with you about the application.


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Bishopsgate Customers - all proud users of Boffin on various platforms.



Anderberg International, Mauritius

Compass International, London, Heathrow, UK

Danzas Air And Ocean, Harare, Zimbabwe

Danzas Air And Ocean, Lusaka, Zambia

DHL, Zimbabwe

Kenya Customs & Excise, Six sites in Kenya

Master Logistics, Paris, France

Phoenix Freight, London, UK

Phoenix Freight, Paris, France

Speedy Overborder Services (Pty) Ltd, Johannesburg, South Africa


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© Copyright Bishopstrade Limited 2003, All Rights Reserved 



Bishopstrade Limited believes and supports the notion of Copyright, including Software Copyright. All of the software, manuals, diagrams, designs, programs, formulae used in all versions of the Boffin application software and this website including variations and derivatives are covered by Copyright. The copyright of absolutely all of this material is vested in Bishopstrade Limited or it's assign not being the website visitor.



Every page of the website and every page of the Portable Document Format (pdf) documents that can be downloaded, carries appropriate Copyright nomenclature and Bishopstrade Limited expect their Rights under Copyright to be respected.



No part of this website or any Boffin application software may be changed, reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of Bishopstrade Limited. 



Bishopstrade Limited agrees that all visitors to this website may download the various descriptive material in the form of Portable Document Format files for information purposes only in the visitor being able to evaluate the Boffin/Open application software.


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Privacy



Any personal information that Bishopstrade Limited obtains from users and the general public will only be used by the company in the operation of it's own business. None of your personal information will be disclosed to anyone without your explicit permission.



Bishopstrade are using Extreme Tracker in this website, to collect a lot of information regarding access to the website. Nevertheless, in respect to visitors, no personal information such as names, email addresses etc are being tracked.



Bishopstrade Limited's website does not issue any 'cookies'.


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Welcome to our website, which is dedicated to the description and support of our realtime, integrated and open Freight System which we call Boffin/Open.This open version of our system has been steadily and continuously developed since June 1988 and is written entirely in Oracle PL/SQL Forms and Reports. Bishopsgate is a member of the Oracle Partner Network (OPN) and under this setup operates an Oracle ASFU Distribution Agreement.



Our company specialises in the continued development of it's open, freight system that can be installed worldwide, without change. Boffin/Open can be run simultaneously in many screen languages and is already running in six countries. Boffin/Open is immediately available to run with all versions of Microsoft Windows servers, SUSE Linux 8.0 Professional, Red Hat Linux 9 and Unix all using Oracle 9i database and Client/Server architecture. Bishopsgate anticipate being able to provide the Boffin/Open application running under Oracle9i on UnitedLinux in late 2003 or early 2004.



Boffin/Open is written entirely in Oracle PL/SQL Forms & Reports with no 3GL programming, thus protecting the hardware independence attribute so expensively gained. The architecture is Client/Server with support for both thin and fat/rich clients. The system will soon be available for installation with the new Oracle 9iAS, which also offers thin-client/server access using the Worldwide Web as the communications link.



If you would like to know more about the various aspects of the product, please use the various links on the left of this screen to view summary information. If you have any further questions, please feel free to email us, we would be pleased to discuss the system and it's technicalities with you. The system is comprehensive and it runs very well.



For those visitors who are looking for a more technical overview, there is a "Microsoft Windows Explorer" style menu which will allow for a more direct path to specific information that is required. Click here.  Alternatively, you can complete the Bishopstrade Passport which will give you access to the finer technical detail inside this website. Click here.



Notices A few points. This website is best viewed with the screen settings at 1280 x 1024 Pixels and 24 bit true colour. The manuals that you are able to link to are stored as pdf files and so can be large; depending upon your Internet connection, they may take some time to download. The entire contents of the website and linked documents are liable to change without notice. Notice that all manuals that can be downloaded have a word-processing footer that carries the last amended date in the bottom lefthand corner of the page. No Boffin/Open software source or runtime files or SQL*scripts or any other valuable software files are stored on this website and there is no feedback from the website to our development centre. If you break into the website, please leave it as you find it, thanks.


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Computer hardware



It should be stressed that our company is not in the business of selling hardware. We are more than happy to assist in this process but our objective will always be to provide a powerful system with a minimum of disturbance to present hardware arrangements. Notice that Bishopsgate are supporters of Open-Systems and so offer Boffin/Open for use on any commercially available platform.


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Client/Server architecture



Currently, it is 'fashionable' to setup user installations using Client/Server arcitecture where one or more servers running under Microsoft Windows or Unix or Linux will support the user's Oracle 9i database. The Oracle database will be accessed by practically an unlimited number of local fat and thin client personal computers; typically running under Microsoft Windows operating system(s) (95/98/XP/Mil/2000 etc). The communications making all of the Local Area Network (LAN) possible will probably be high-speed Ethernet supporting TCP/IP communications. In such a network, an unlimited number of physical printers can be attached and made available to all authorised users. For the uninitiated, fat-client computers are equipped with a complete copy of the Boffin/Open application and the application runs in the client PC, accessing the server for data from the Oracle database. Thin-client personal computers do not have a copy of the Boffin/Open application, but act as 'dumb terminals' using the complete copy of the Boffin/Open application stored on the Oracle server; no additional 'terminal emulation' software is required. Any LAN can support a mix of fat and thin-clients.


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Web-based thin-client architecture



The introduction of Oracle 9iAS marks a significant step forward in the possible architecture and one that will offer extensive benefits to the freight industry. If the user's Oracle installation is setup with Oracle 9iA/S or later, the following attributes become available. All of the Client/Server possibilities including both thin and fat clients running on a LAN are still available. Where the user's site is updated to become a Website, thewn thin client support for remote personal computers becomes possible using the Worldwide Web as the replacement for the copper cable or fibre optics used in the Local Area Network. The remote thin-client will have an Internet connection and use of a Web Browser through which full access to the Boffin/Open application is possible. Consider all of those geographic sites where freight companies would like to have occasional system access! It is quite common for all stand-alone PC installations to have an Internet connection so as to make email, word processing and spread sheet facilities available, so the inclusion of a small amount of Oracle 9iA/S software makes such a PC into an 'intelligent terminal' to the Boffin/Open application. Bishopsgate are testing Oracle 9iA/S at present and should be in a position to demonstrate their application soon.


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Server hardware



Any modern, commercially available PC could be used as the Oracle server for the Boffin/Open application for small installations and such a small server would probably be run with the friendly Microsoft Windows 2000 Server operating system. Where the user has a requirement for more than perhaps 15client-PCs, then a more powerful server should be used. The important hardware aspects of the server would be amount of Real Memory (RAM), hard disk controller(s) and number of hard disks. In all cases, the rule is 'the more you have the faster the system will run'. See below for typical server configurations.


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Microsoft versus Unix/Linux



Although not strictly a 'hardware' point, it might be useful here to add a word about the relative speed of a reasonable server of any given configuration. In Bishopsgate's development centre, all development is effected on servers running SUSE Linux, Red Hat Linux and Microsoft Windows 2000 Server. The speed at which the servers run under Red Hat and SUSE Linux is not a little faster than the same database running under Microsoft Windows 2000, it is many times faster, although a little less friendly. If one assumes that the Linux server master console would be used only for controlling the server; then the adoption of a (generic) Unix/Linux operating system for the server should be considered. There is also the point that Linux operating systems are free of continueing license charges and only a small initial cost of perhaps $120.


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Scalability



It is possible to setup a single laptop computer with an A4 stationery HP PCL5e or later compliant printer, such as but not limited to an HP1150 and run the Boffin/Open application on it. The single two-tray printer would be able to print all of the A4 Landscape and Portrait reports and operational forms including all sales invoices and credit notes.



The system would be able to send emails and facsimiles and process EDIFACT messages. There might be a problem connecting an additional matrix printer for printing multi-part sets (such as MAWBs/HAWBs) but this shows what can be done on the very low end. Bishopsgate have a SONY PCG-FX209K with 512 Megabytes of RAM and 30 Gigabytes of hard disk setup like this and it runs well. On the upper-end of the scalibility spectrum, Bishopsgates advice is that there is no practical upper limit to the number or location of client-PCs or physical printers that can be attached to any given LAN/WAN and be in use, simultaneously. Client PCs are able to operate multiple window sessions where all or some of the windows are running the Boffin/Open application. There will be a performance problem if the hardware resources are insufficient for the 'number of users', but nothing in Boffin/Open application will cause a problem.


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Mixing hardware on a LAN/WAN



Boffin/Open is intentionally an Open-System and Bishopsgate are not in the business of selling hardware. There is no practical limit to the 'manufacturer mix' of hardware within any given installation. The limitation, if there is one, is that all of the selected hardware must comply with the overall configuration guide supplied by Bishopsgate and there is little in this to cause any hardware manufacturer any concern.


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Multiple servers in a LAN/WAN 



There is no practical limit to the number of servers that maybe components of any given LAN/WAN, although the normal number is one or maybe two if the Oracle 'Replication' facility is to be used. All of the Client-PCs that are connected to any given LAN/WAN may access any server attached to the network and could even be connected to more than one server at any one time. In this case, one connection to server-'a' would be through one window and the connection to the other server-'b' through another window.


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Oracle 'Replication' support 



It is worth mentioning that as far as Bishopsgate is aware, there is nothing in the Boffin/Open application that would cause any users to not be able to use any current feature of the Oracle RDBMS system or any optional software that Oracle might offer to run with their RDBMS. Oracle includes a feature which Oracle call Replication and Bishopsgate call Data Mirroring. The facility is available in any Boffin/Open installation where there is a use for it. As an interesting 'aside', Bishopsgate have this feature running between a SUSE Linux 8.0 based server and a Microsoft Windows 2000 based server in their development centre. It will be interesting to the reader to note, that once the Oracle Replication has been commissioned in any site for a single application table, to add the feature to other application tables, is straight-forward and can be effected without a visit by Bishopsgate. A current full implementation of Boffin/Open would involve about 550 tables.


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Printers and printing



There are, of course, many alternatives which we can discuss, but the basics are as follows. There is no practical application software limit to the number of physical and/or logical printers that can be supported simultaneously. There is no requirement to close down the application when commissioning additional printer(s). Bishopsgate normally recommend printers which will operate entirely on A4 plain, white stationery. The appearance and output can be improved by using printers with two or three input trays, thereby enabling ordinary letterhead, plain white paper 80 gms/m2 with a simple colour logo to be loaded simultaneously. This A4 paper would typically have the user's Standard Terms and Conditions of Trade pre-printed on the reverse side of each sheet. The right kind of paper for any particular document will then be selected automatically, by the Boffin/Open application programs. These laser printers must be Hewlett Packard PCL/5e (or later) compliant, they are available in varying speeds and durabilities depending upon the expected throughput. An example of such a printer, would be an HP4000TN.


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Telecommunications 



It is quite normal for users to require one or more fax/telex/e-mail/FTP links to be integrated into the system. Boffin makes it possible for the computer system to be directly linked into these international networks, thus allowing the computer to dial and send messages with or without operator involvement. All such messages can be logged/archived and costed as an audit trail or as an aid to subsequent charging out. We have experience with EDI messaging, but this is a particular subject on which there are many misunderstandings and we strongly recommend a discussion with one of our technical experts. Internet usage is also integrated into Boffin/Open with many extremely useful applications. All Boffin/Open application programs are equipped with logic that allows them to be quickly updated to enable them to construct and send emails and/or facsimiles, without the knowledge of or any involvement from the human operator.


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Links with outside agencies



With the increase in computerisation of the sea and air ports, there is a requirement to enable Boffin/Open to communicate directly with the port and customs computers. Boffin is already capable of communicating with many official schemes in different countries and any specialised requirements can be discussed further. A good example of this technology is the Boffin/Open ability, without specialist hardware, to receive incoming Shipping Company manifests coded in EDIFACT format, extract the data relating to each Bill of Lading before booking the cargo details into Boffin/Open for Manifest Striking, or any other use that might be required. As a rule of thumb, a manifest with 100 Bills of Lading takes less than one second to read and process on an ordinary but modern PC.


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Links between Boffin/Open installations 



Where the user wishes to install multiple Boffin/Open server(s); there is no application limit to the number of such servers that can be installed and no limit to the number of Client-PCs that can be supported on each server. Ignoring security issues, where the Wide Area Network (WAN) is setup correctly, all Client-PCs are able to work with all servers. Boffin/Open application data (such as but not limited to cargo bookings) can be sent automatically between servers, my exports are your imports;


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Laptop computers 



Laptop computers are becoming very powerful and can have extensive hard disk capacity. These attributes together with the friendly setup of Microsoft Windows Networking makes it possible and very desirable to include such devices in the Boffin/Open scope. There seem to be at least three main uses for these devices in a Boffin/Open installation. 



A Laptop can be used as a regular Client-PC, where it is possible to effect all of the facilities that a regular desktop Client-PC can effect. It follows that some staff members could be equipped with reasonably powerful Laptop computers computers that they can attach to the Boffin/Open LAN in regular working hours and then be taken home at night for homework. 



The managing Director's Laptop; would be attached to the LAN during normal working hours. It is possible to export in a friendly and easy manner, complete export of the user's Oracle database to the hard disk of the Laptop, such that the automatic Oracle export backup of the user's database, taken in the small hours each night can be copied to the Laptop as an additional off-site backup. 



With the introduction of Oracle 9iA/S, such Laptops can be setup, so that they can access the user's Boffin/Open database server from anywhere in the world; consider the Managing Director travelling around selling the company's products, supported by access to the commercial database.


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Server operating systems 



In principle, Boffin/Open can be supplied for use on any server operating system for which the Oracle Corporation offer their products RDBMS and software product(s). Bishopsgate effect all of their application software development on servers running Microsoft NT Server, Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional, SUSE Linux Release 8.0 and Red Hat Linux Release 9. It follows that Bishopsgate can supply Boffin/Open for these operating systems almost immediately.



Bishopsgate are interested in offering Boffin/Open on other operating systems including other dialects of generic Unix platforms, provided the project is large enough to warrant the development work involved. Bishopsgate intend to offer Boffin/Open for use with UnitedLinux as and when the latter is available in a stable form.


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Client-PC operating systems



All Client-PCs supported by Bishopsgate at the current time are running under Microsoft Windows operating systems from Windows (95/98/NT/XP/ME/etc) onwards. This is beneficial for Bishopsgate as so many users in the world are already using Windows on their PCs and are well trained in using such systems in their regular work. After being setup correctly, the human operator's access link to the Boffin/Open application is simply an icon added to her existing desktop screen image. It is worth pointing out that any given Client-PC is able to connect to an unlimited number of Oracle server installations, simply by specifying the Oracle server name at the start of a logon session.


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Website



Many would-be Boffin/Open users will already have their own website. Where this is not true, Bishopsgate would be happy to quote for the supply of an attractive, basic, hosted website. Bishopsgate are working hard to bring the use of the Boffin/Open operational and accounting data, which is stored in an Oracle 9i database, and the user's website together in an automated and seamless manner. There are many freight related opportunities for the fast and automatic extraction of data from the user's Boffin/Open database which can then be attractively published on the website and made available for the user's business partners to view and/or download and/or print. Bishopsgate see the users operational and accounting database and the website becoming very closely coupled in their operation.


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Oracle RDBMS



Well here we have it, the software that significantly changed our company for the better; which is worth a few words of explanation. 



From the inception of the company until late 1978, all of the freight application software was written in Wang MVP interpretive BASIC-2 and very successful it was. In late 1978, Wang made the VS family of computers available, which were expected to use ANSI 74 COBOL and so all of the BASIC-2 application software was completely re-written in ANSI COBOL with the opportunity being taken to add all of the outstanding Wishlist items. Bishopsgate still have customers using Wang VS and the Boffin/VS software.



In the middle of 1988; everyone was thinking Unix and so Bishopsgate looked for a dialect of ANSI COBOL which was close in dialect to the powerful and friendly Wang VS COBOL but also compatible with generic Unix. In this investigation, a director of Bishopsgate attended an Oracle seminar in the Mayfair Hotel in London, England and the Oracle Corporation guest speaker said the magic words (for a software house), If you are willing and able to re-write your application entirely in Oracle PL/SQL Forms and Reports, you will be 100% compatible with the large and increasing number of computer platforms / environments on which Oracle offer their RDBMS product.



Bishopsgate had wanted to be hardware and/or operating system independent, as increasingly, potential users already had made substantial investments in hardware but wanted some/all the Boffin application. Bishopsgate joined the Oracle Partner Program, paid their Development License Fee and started writing a 'program-for-program' conversion of their Boffin/VS product. All of the major components of the Boffin VS system are now available within the Boffin/Open application. In addition, extensive development work has been completed on new modules and across all existing modules.



As indicated above, Bishopsgate have been developing with Oracle RDBMS since 1988 and have been through some major changes in the PL/SQL language in that time. In recent times, all or parts of Boffin/Open have been supplied for use with Oracle 7.3 database (Forms 3 and Reportwriter 1.1), which has been very successful. Boffin/Open was upgraded for Oracle 8i, but due to the timing of the release of Oracle 9i, the Boffin/Open for Oracle 8i product was never supplied to any user site. Recently, Bishopsgate have upgraded to Oracle 9i (Forms 6i and Reports 6i - which still support the Client/Server architecture) under any Microsoft Windows Server, SUSE Linux and Red Hat Linux. Oralce9iAS Release 2 is available. Bishopsgate are please to be able to inform you that Boffin/Open Release 10i is available both for true client/server operation (using Oracle forms6i and reports 6i) and as a remote thin Thin-Client using the Worldwide Web as the telecommunications link (using Oracle forms9i and reports9i).



There is a move in the Oracle software development community to use the Java programming language (J2EE) in order to obtain maximum performance of web based applications. Bishopsgate have effected a Java development project within which it was possible to see the complexity and possible maintenance issues associated with programming in Java for Oracle. The results of this excercise show that it is unecessary to completely convert the application to Java to obtain good results. It probably is worthwhile to rewrite frequently used and or large order entry type programmes that will be used over the web in Java. Details of the Java development can be viewed by clicking here. Now that Boffin/Open release 10i is available and being delivered to a live site in January 2004 Bishopsgate will monitor the web based performance of the system's front end and rewrite any application components in Java as becomes necessary.



Bishopsgate Computer Services Limited is a proud member of the latest worldwide Oracle Partner Network (OPN), under which development copies of the latest Oracle RDBMS and Tools products can be obtained for Development and Demonstration. It is Bishopsgate's intention to make Boffin/Open available on future releases of the Oracle RDBMS and probably on an increasing number of Operating System platforms.



Notice That the whole of the Boffin/Open application is already available to be run in the latest Oracle venture of 'Unbreakable Linux Oracle9i'.


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Boffin/Open structures



One of the things about getting to rewrite one's software for the third time and then, within Oracle's RDBMS environment, is that all or most of the irritating blemishes of the last iteration can be resolved. In Bishopsgate's case, substantial programming had been effected in the previous iterations on subjects like 'normalisation' and 'reporting' on data held within the hierarchical data structures. Re-writing the application from COBOL to Oracle PL/SQL was a great opportunity to refine once more the relationships built into the design in an attempt to comply with a long outstanding wish-list item, which was to be able to print reports at the speed of the fastest printer a user could install. All of the data to drive the reporting functions is held within the Boffin/Open application, but it had never previously been possible to recall it at 'rated printer speeds'. 



It is interesting, on first thoughts, one would expect that there would be some single hierarchical structure that could be sepcified that could be used to fully define the structure of a typical commercial company; unfortunately this is not the case if one wishes to fully define both the operational and accounting aspects; there are at least two models operating at the same time. 



The first hierarchy would be something like Group, Company, Route, Month and Shipment and the second, something like Group, Division, Branch, Section, Route, Month and Shipment and the structures do not stop there; there are others that become apparent when one gets into the detail. It has been interesting within the Boffin/Open design to ensure that each of these structures is considered, making it possible in the reporting aspect of the application to report on the data in all required methods which are dictated by the structures. Most of the support for these structures comes from the structure of the operational check-digit, job numbers, which are issued automatically by the system, when needed. From the job numbers, the application is able to determine many of the other parameters without human intervention; thus avoiding human errors. Bishopsgate have been fortunate in that they ran Boffin in a very large Freight Forwarding company that operated many companies, branches, sections etc, where the theory could be validated over several years and seen to be working. 



There is a link below that will take you to a chapter of our manuals that describes these structures in more detail.


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Boffin/Open standard facilities



All three variations of the Boffin system have been written by the same team of programmers, who have essentially grown up with the product. All of the more than 1900 programs and 890 reports of Boffin/Open have been written with the same programming style and to a common programming standard. There are many facilities built into the software, which are designed to make the software both friendly and easy to use.


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Continuously available 



This third re-write of the Boffin/Open application has allowed Bishopsgate to completely avoid issues that would have meant stopping the system and then re-starting it again; this Boffin/Open version is designed for continuous running H24 and D366. The system does not even have to be stopped and re-started at Accounting Month-end and/or Accounting Year-end. With even reasonable planning/consideration, all application programs can be run on any Client-PC without regard to what other regular system users are doing. Even the Oracle complete export backup of the database tables can be run in this environment.


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Data Normalisation 



Normalisation of any system is the process of designing the application database tables, so that no data element is stored more than once. The Boffin/Open design is an example of a heavily normalised system; which has allowed the design to grow over the years to be as powerful as it is, without compromising the basic data and causing data error(s).


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Policy on data retention



In the 'olden days' of the last generation of commercial computers, it was a well known parameter that about 33% of the cost of data processing was spent on data validation at the time of data input. Although this percentage value might well have changed, Bishopsgate would suggest that it is likley that the overall aspect of data validation is still an expensive aspect of the overall budget. Boffin/Open has avoided any necessity to re-key any data, irrespective of how many software modules are being used. Hardware has increased in power many times since the last generation and hard disk storage is many times cheaper than it was and many times faster to access than it was. It follows that having paid to get valid data into the Boffin/Open application, we should make the very best use of it and make it available for a period of time that allows maximum use of it. Considerable detail data is entered into the Boffin/Open application, much validation and automatic 'data extension' is effected at data-entry time. Nowhere in the application does Bishopsgate summarise any of the valuable and rich detail data that has been entered and data is only discarded after human confirmation that it can be purged. All data purging is effected in an intelligent manner, so that no 'half-stories' are left behind to confuse those who look at old data. As an example, when surface export cargo bookings are to be physically purged from the system, bookings that are part of any given groupage load cannot be purged until all of the bookings within the given groupage can be purged together. In this way, it is never possible to print a groupage manifest that looks correct but is missing some of the detail cargo bookings that were originally part of it. 



All operational and accounting data is designed to be online for at least two years and after that will only be purged, if the size of the database seems to be starting to slow down the overall system performance. Bishopsgate would suggest that in a medium sized company and large companies with lots of hardware, the Boffin/Open deatil data would be online and available for several years, perhaps at least five years.


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No multiple keying of data 



Bishopsgate have given great care in the system design so as to ensure that any required data is not re-keyed. All data validation is effected at data-entry time and in a manner whereby any errors are highlight whilst the source document(s) are still at hand. If user-data cannot pass the validation at data-entry time, it does not get in!


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Maximumisation of repetitive data 



A considerable amount of information in the freight environment is used repetitively and so Bishopsgate have paid particular attention to enabling the user to store such data in online database tables in a manner that provides for easy and fast access, saving the need to re-enter the information during the normal working periods. Database tables containing directories of Ports, Airports, Customs Tariffs etc are all made available in the basic design. The data for many of these tables is supplied with each new system, provided that the user wishes this to be the case.


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Standard method of accessing repetitive data 



A great deal of the data stored within the Boffin/Open data tables is codified for example, if a particular Ocean Vessel is involved within a consignment, it is not the ocean vessel name that is stored as a data element of the cargo booking, it is the internally allocated record number from the SHIPS directory that is stored. The advantage of this is that the spelling of the ocean vessel name or the amendment of any of the ocean vessel's details needs only be made to the single entry in the SHIPS directory to have an impact on all bookings involving the ocean vessel.


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Standard method of effecting data lookups 



It is very common for a record of standing or not very volatile data to have three main methods of access. Each such record would have a primary index key, a sort key and a short name. The Primary key will be unique within the data table and is used internally for chaining records together. Many records in any given table can have the same value as their Sort Code and this key is used in the partial alphabetic searching access method. Short Names are unique within any given data table and can be used in place of a primary key by the operator. Consider the customer master file. This table contains a large number of entries, each having a unique Account Number, an optional unique Short Name and a non-unique Sort Code. When a human operator is required to identify a customer, he/she may do this in three different ways, which shows the Boffin/Open standard method for such things. Firstly, if the human operator happens to remember the customers account number, it can be entered directly and any file searching is avoided. If the human operator happens to know the customer short name (nickname in English), then this can be used directly and in place of the account number to obtain the applicable account number. If the operator does not know the customer account number, then he/she is able to key-in the first few letters of the customer company name and effect a partial alphabetic search of personal accounts with that starting letter combination. Accounts are shown one per screen line and the operator is able to align the screen cursor to the required account and select it by using a keyboard function key. This method and the keyboard function key are exactly the same in every Boffin/Open form/program. Attention should be made by new users to develop a 'house style' for the issuance of account short names and sort codes. Bishopsgate have included the ability to create new standing data records from within the Partial Alphabetic Search routines so that when looking for an entry,if it does not exist, then a new record can be created there and then, without having to exist the task in hand, create the new entry and then return to the original task.


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Automatic currency conversions 



Boffin/Open is a true multi-currency system. The user indicates his home currency (the currency of the local general ledger) at the outset and in normal times this will never be changed. As an interesting aside a system installed in Paris did have it's home-currency changed (over a weekend) when France changed over from French Francs to Euros; so Bishopsgate do have the technology to make such a fundamental change. Each new system is delivered with a complete table of the Countries of the World, which acts as the depository for current exchange rate values. The system offers five rates of exchange per currency, so as to cover the need for a different exchange rate value for different business tasks, conversion of sales invoices and the acceptance of incoming foreign currency supplier invoices, for example. All currency conversions are automatic and all creation and posting of profit/loss in exchange are automatic and immediate this avoiding clerical staff getting the decimal point in the wrong place.


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Duplex printing 



Virtually all of the application printing is effected on A4 stationery; using Portrait and Landscape modes, as applicable and mostly using simplex printing (printing on only one side of each sheet of paper). Duplex printing is supported, where the user has a duplex enabled printer (such as but not limited to HP4000TN with the Duplex adapter). Large General ledger listings (audit Trails) will print in duplex mode where the operator has a duplex enabled printer in her list of available logical printers or in simplex mode where no duplex enabled printer is available.


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Language enabled Forms/programs 



The international freight industry is by it's very nature, a multi-country business, with staff in many countries working together on the same data to control the movement of cargo. Bishopsgate wish to be able to run the single Boffin/Open system (not a different version for each country, but the SAME runtime library of Forms and Reports) in an increasing number of separate countries, simultaneously. To make this possible, every Form/Program in the system has been upgraded so as to allow each authorised operator to select a default language in which he/she would like to work on the Boffin/Open screens. It is even possible under Microsoft Windows for a single Client-PC operator to run one Window in one language and another in an alternative language. Where Bishopsgate have not effected the (freight industry version) of the translations to any given foreign language, the new user requiring use of the additional language is expected to make available a freight-knowledgeable staff member who is proficient in English and the new language to effect the translations, Bishopsgate provide the software to allow for the translations. There is no practical limit to the number of languages that any given installation can support, simultaneously.


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Email enabled programs 



All businesses are getting used to involving emails within their business methods and so this is a facility to which Boffin/Open can naturally be interfaced. The whole of the Boffin/Open system has been upgraded to make it possible, with the minimum of programming effort, to allow any application program to build and to send an email, without any involvement or even the knowledge of the human operator! Such emails can (option switch) be electronically archived, so that they may be further processed, as required by management. This email facility supports both versions of Microsoft Email - Outlook Express and Outlook and could be updated again to support more email products.


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Every Boffin/Open report that can be printed can be emailed and/or sent by facsimile 



There are more than 1871 Forms/Programs and 800 Reports. The entire system has been updated, so that any report that it is possible to print can be sent attached to an email, with a minimum of effort and printed at destination where any PCL5e (or later) printer macros design will be combined with the printed report to form a printed report which will be identical to the report had it been printed locally. In a similar manner, such a report can be sent by facsimile to obtain exactly the same results at the destination address. It is also possible to send such emails and/or facsimiles to groups of recipients.


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Automatic electronic archiving of printed reports - The Electronic Job File 



Boffin/Open is designed to be able to produce nearly all operational forms and reports and complete any Governmental forms, on demand and very quickly and quietly. In recent times, computer speeds and online capacity have drastically improved in terms of cost, capacity and speed. The Boffin/Open application system contains at least two sales invoicing programs per operational suite (main invoicing and supplementary invoices and/or credit notes). As an aid to the user's accounts department, Bishopsgate upgraded all of the sales invoicing programs so that they not only print sales invoice sets but also (option switch) stored a perfect copy of the customer copy invoice in a special form and using the unique, Boffin/Open issued sales invoice number as an access key. This was so successful, that the technology is being spread gently to all other operational documents, with a view to this becoming the basis for the Electronic Cost File, which is an item that has been on the Bishopsgate Wishlist for many years. To-date, all sales invoices, credit notes, Shippers COD, PODs, Supplier Remittances. It is worth noting that for each additional document that is produced by the system, a maximum of one programmer-day is required to add it to the list of documents that are automatically archived.


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Tracking & tracing 



Boffin/Open supports Tracking and Tracing in all of the operational suites. Under this system both automated events and manually inspired tracking records can be added to each cargo booking in real-time, without practical limit. There is no limit to the number of automatic sources of 'events' for which a tracking record should be constructed and stored chronologically on any given booking. Each tracking record carries the logon of the person who caused the 'event' to be recorded and a four character 'tracking function code', which allows the type of event being recorded to be used as a 'trigger action' for any additional processing; such as but not limited to the automatic construction and sending of an email.


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Extensive program links 



One of the best attributes of using a Relational Database Management System is that the hierarchical manner in which the data is logically stored, allows many interesting links between application programs to be provided. Within the Boffin/Open application, the opportunity has been taken to build in many of the useful links between programs that were perhaps too complex or slow in operation in the last generation of systems.


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General ledger postings 



The financial or bookkeeping components of the system are integrated and heavily normalised; financial records are stored only once and in a central location; where all aspects of the accounting system can use them. Ignoring Value Added Tax (or Sales Tax) processing for this discussion. Taking a very simple example of a sales invoice that has been raised against a single shipment booking, which (for example) contains two sales charges, perhaps a Freight charge and a Handling charge. 



Throughout the entire system, all operational modules, there is an option as to how the user would wish such an invoice to be posted to the financial ledgers. Under the basic option, the sales invoice is posted to the financial system as a single logical record which debits the customer personal accout (and the general ledger Debtors Control) and credits the general ledger sales account. Under the second option, the sales (example) sales invoice is posted to the integrated accounting system as a total record and two detail records. The total record debits the customer personal account and each detail record credits individual general sales ledger accounts, one for Sales-of-Freight and one for Sales-of-Handling. This second option was an upgrade to the entire system, included to support the 'Profit by Type of Expense' job costing aspect. In very summary form, Profit by Type of Expense allows the user to breakdown his trial balance gross profir, so that a gross profit by each type of sales heading can be seen. In large companies there is a worry that the gross profit is only being made by charging for 'petty items' (postages etc), and not because the buying and selling freight rates are properly setup and being used correctly.


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Operational accrual accounting



All of the operational freight-forwarding suites of the Boffin/Open application support two methods of operational accrual accounting; Full Accrual accounting and Partial Accrual Accounting as an option per route/service.



Under the Full Accrual Accounting, it is arranged that all expected direct costs are accrued for as part of the cargo booking process. At the time the shipment file is used to produce the 'primary' or main sales invoice (which is posted automatically and immediately to the financial ledgers), each of the trading accruals setup as memorandum records in the operational records is used to create a financial accrual within the ledgers. A moment after the main sales invoice and trading accruals have been posted, the expected job profit is known and so the shipment cost file is 'closed' for the expected gross profit; and then logically frozen a that gross profit.



Under the Partial Accrual method, no trading accruals are identified as part of the cargo booking process. The shipment is used to produce operational documents and eventually the primary sales invoice will be printed and posted to the financial ledgers; which happens on a continuing basis. Initial direct supplier costs are accepted against the shipment cost file until an agreed 'cut-off point' (imposed by the accountants); where all non-closed shipments up to an agreed point must be checked on the system and any missing trading accruals entered. After the 'missing' trading accruals are identified, the cost file is 'closed' and the identified accruals converted into general ledger postings, the cost file is then closed for the expected gross profit; the cost file is then closed for the expected gross profit; which is logically frozen. 



Under both methods, there is a method of matching outstanding trading accruals with actual costs arriving from suppliers. A detailed working paper exists for this quite complex feature; those interested should make direct contact with Bishopsgate.


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Event logging



Want to know what Boffin/Open application programs your team are using, how often and for how long; well some users do feel this would be useful, from time to time. Boffin/Open includes a sub-system that Bishopsgate know as 'Event Logging'. This feature can be installed in any contracting installation or kept switched-off, as required. When switched on, the software records the running of each Boffin/Open Form/Report by Logon-id and Form name. Form this information, it is possible to track in both directions; who is running what application software and around the other way around, who is using each Form, when and for how long etc. There does not seem to be any impact on the overall perfomance of the installation when this facilities is being used.


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Screen variable, language help text



Every Boffin/Open program has been updated, so that help text can be provided for every entry (screen variable field) that the human operator is asked to complete. This help text programming has made it possible fore the help text to be displayed in the language that the human operator has elected to use in the current logon-session. To call up the screen help text, the human operator simply aligns her screen cursor over the variable field and waits for a moment or two. After the operator has read the text, she simply moves the screen cursor away from the variable field at which it is curently aligned.


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Introduction of colour in the screen images 



It seems a long time ago that we were all using character-based, single colour terminals and personal computers. The introduction of the modern, more advanced Client-PCs with their much more powerful screen controllers, has made it possible to use colour in the Boffin/Open application screen designs. Users will notice colour being increasingly used in the application; making working with the computer a little more attractive.


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Support for internal-debiting



All versions of the Boffin integrated system offer the user the option of using tightly controlled Internal Debit Note (ID) processing and a further expansion of this option called Extended ID Processing. Boffin allows the user to run all operating departments are Profit Centers; to a degree that can report on Net Profit Before Tax per operating Department. If this facility is to be honestly supported there will be occasions when one operating department effects work for another operating department and will wish to be rewarded for the work involved. The danger is always that the department effecting the service will have every incentive to raise a charge to the 'customer-department', but that the 'customer department' will not treat the incoming charge as 'real money' and will not formally process that incoming charge and accept it as a cost. If this situation is allowed to happen; then there will be an over-statement of the company's Gross Profits; which hindsight shows can be very dangerous.



If Internal Debiting is to be supported then a company rule has to be enforced that ALL Internal Debits must be fully and immediately accepted by the 'customer-departments'; as with any other incoming charge. Where the incoming charge is thought to be excessive or inaccurate; it must still be accepted and then made the subject of a query - if necessary through the user’s Managing Director. For each operating department that is to be involved in Internal Debiting; at least one sales ledger master file account record has to be setup that can be internally debited by the operating department effecting the service. The sales ledger master file record; will be setup in the normal manner; but will have the three single character fields Group, Company, Division all set to Yes; which will cause the production of Internal Debits instead of Sales Invoices. 



Internal debits are printed in the same format and with the same detail as with regular sales invoices and are numbered, for control purposes, with all other sales invoices and credit notes; they simply have a different printed title "Internal Debit" in place of "Invoice". The accounting records produced by Internal Debits are the same as and produce the same effect as Sales Invoices; although they bear different Boffin accounting type codes; so that they can be financially controlled separately and further identified and processed later as a unique group of transactions.



Internal Debits raised by the 'Service-Department' update the sales ledger 'Customer department' account, in the same way as a sales invoice would do. The acceptance of the incoming Internal Debit by the 'Customer Department' causes the original debit posting to be copied, the sign of it's posting to be reversed, the 'Customer Department's' job number to be used on the new posting. The original Debit and the copied credit record are then matched in the personal account sense and the 'Customer Department' account balance reduced accordingly.



In the Profit/Loss statement that Boffin can produce at Management Month-end; the value of unaccepted IDs is (or can be) reported separately in the report, as it probably is a value by which the company's Gross Profit is being OVER-REPORTED! One of the recommended checks and controls that are written into the Management Month-end procedure is that all Internal Debits that affect the accounting month up to and including which are to be reported for Financial Year-to-Date net profit before tax reporting is that all IDs used in the period are accepted.


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Close-coupling Oracle Database & website



We live in exciting times! We have a large Oracle 9i based business application, named Boffin/Open, covering all of the user's operational, accounting, management accounting, sales and marketing and customer services facilities. What Bishopsgate call 'Internet data publishing' has made it possible to extract any data from the user's database and make it available on the a website where his business partners can view and/or download it. The variety and quantity of information that can be published to the website is only limited to the vision of the user and can be accurate to the level of the last applicable transaction processed within the user's Boffin/Open Oracle database. Where data is confidential between the user and a particular partner, it is possible to publish this data in a manner so that it is only accessible to the particular partner. 



These web-based features are all designed to run automatically, including startup, closedown and refreshing, triggered by commercial and accounting 'events' that are already part of the user's business, the posting of a sales invoice, the creation and posting of a tracking and tracing record. The last thing that Bishopsgate want to do is to offer some beautiful feature that requires human intervention or even human involvement in the user's business. These features run totally automatically and will run even when key-people are on holiday; they do not impinge on the overall performance of the user's Boffin/Open installation. Users who would like to introduce these automated systems, will probably wish to install broadband telecommunications (ADSL) so that they effectively have a constantly open link with the Internet and do not pay per access (telephone call) to the website.


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User selection of important partners



In the Boffin/Open system, it is a fact that all export shippers, importers, agents and anyone who pays for third party movements has to have at least one sales ledger personal account. Bishopsgate take the view, for this discussion, that the user's customers and/or partners fall into one of two categories; they are either once-off shippers or importers or they are hard core partners who regularly ship with the user and, as such, are very important and need to be kept informed. To support this notion, Bishopsgate have supplied a single application program which can be run at anytime and irrespective of what the other ergular system users are doing. This program allows the user to easily nominate and denominate sales ledger accounts for the 'Active Service List'; the list that controls which business partners should be supported in either or both web based Sales Statements and/or Web based Tracking & Tracing advices (and each new sevice that Bishopsgate bring to the available repertoire). The user selects a new sales account and then indicates for that account if the statements and/or tracking is to be supported and then codes an initial logon and password for the web access. The system automatically emails the new Active Service Account, informing him of the new facility and the logon and password after which the facilities will be immediately available. Where the user logiocally deletes a sales ledger account which is on the Active Service List, the web pages supporting that business partner are dropped to make online disk space avaibale for other uses. The Website logon and password logic includes a 'Remember my password facility'.


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Realtime web-based customer statements 



Boffin/Open includes realtime, integrated financial accounting where all of the user's sales, bought and general ledger accounting data is held online and available in open-item format. This accounting system is updated from an unlimited variety of sources of information, some manually keyed data and many program sources, such as the automated sales invoicing components of each of the Boffin/Open operational modules. It is now possible, as an optional feature, to setup the conditions necessary for the user to nominate an unlimited number of important sales ledger accounts as being accounts for which an up-to-date sales statement is to be published to the user's website, so that the user's customer can view and/or download it, at his/her convenience. These sales statements are maintained exactly up-to-date, to an accuracy such that the last personal account posting to an applicable account will be shown. This software is running in the Bishopsgate Johannesburg Development Centre and will be installed in a Beta site at the end of the first week in MAY-2003. After a month of Beta site running it will be offered to Boffin/Open users who will wish to have Bishopsgate host their Active Service Website.


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Realtime web-based tracking & tracing 



Heard it all before; the large freight companis are doing it already; yes but at what price! The Boffin/Open application has many operational modules, surface exports, surface imports, breakbulk air imports etc. All of these modules support the concept of Tracking and Tracing, where the local user of the system are able to see and use the tracking information within their business processes. It is now possible, as an optional feature, to setup the conditions necessary for the user to nominate an unlimited and increasing number of important sales ledger accounts (shippers, importers, agents - consignes to come next) as being accounts for which up-to-date shipment tracking & tracing information is to be published by shipment reference to the website. Boffin/Open has been updated so that as each tracking and tracing record is added to the applicable shipment, the shipment details are searched to determine if any of the parties involved with the shipment is one which is to be suppirted by the Web based Tracking & tracing feature. If one of the parties involved within the shipment is a a nominated account, then a completely up-to-date Tracking & Tracing Advice is published to his/her folder on the user's website, for the business partner to view and/or download at his/her convenience. These Tracking & Tracing Advices are maintained exactly up-to-date, to an accuracy such that the last Tracking record posted to the system and affecting an applicable account will be shown. The user is able to change the number and mix of the accounts for which this facility is to be supported, in realtime, without help from outside and irrespective of what the regular system users are doing. This software is running in the Bishopsgate Johannesburg Development Centre and will be offered to Boffin/Open users shortly. The difference is that the Boffin/Open system 'knows' the identity of the visitor to the website and from this ia able to determine what shipments of his are 'in play' and allows him to select Tracking Advices for one/all of those shipments, without knowing the waybill numbers beforehand. The website menu offered to the visitor includes the waybill numbers of 'in play' shipments, arranged so that the youngest are at the top of the list and the oldest at the bottom, sorted by mode of transport, Air exports, Air imports, Surface exports etc.


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HP PCL5e printer macro plus print file to PDF



Excepting MAWB and HAWB printing as six part continuous stationery sets, all Boffin/Open printing is effected using HP PCL5e printer macros to program laser printer(s) with print form-designs and the printing 'through' these designs to obtain a pre-printed form look for operational and accounting documents. For the uninitiated, each 'pre-printed form' is the subject of an HP PCL5e printer macro that will cause all of the graphic lines and static text of the form to be printed together with the data-processing print that an application program produces; it works well. Once you have understood this and you have any requirement for 'printed report archiving', there is a much better way of arching that simply compressing the print file and storing it under a unique name somewhere.



In Boffin/Open printed report archiving is effected in a very clever way, which allows the re-call of a printed document at anytime from any server and/or client-PC. The re-called data-processing data is logically combined with the contents of the HP PCL5e printer macros at bit level and then used to create a new document in Portable Document Format (PDF); which can be viewed (free copy of AcrobatReader) as a whole document and then printed, as required. The printed combined document is indistinguishable from the original. But even better. This combined document can be uploaded automatically to the user's website and then downloaded, viewed and printed anywhere in the world and remember the copy is PERFECT and cannot be distinguished from the original!



That is enough for now, we do not want to spoil you, but this section will be updated as we complete or nearly complete the development of each new feature. Subjects discussed here are real and not simply items from our longterm wish list.  And the smartest thing Bishopsgate have done? All of this has been programmed without 'third party' packages or participation, Bishopsgate have programmed it all; have source decks for it all; so are ideally poitioned to continue development of the products with their customers and without involvement or possible license fees of third parties!


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Container control



Boffin/Open includes a large operational module that is designed to provide realtime, continuous running container control for a Container Base or a Sea Port. The system is designed to cover all of the aspects of the control of the containers for imports, exports and transhipments. There is no practical limit to the number of containers that can be processed and/or can be physically located within the container terminal at any one time. Without change to the application software, containers can be stacked nine high. The application includes many desirable features and interfaces seamlessly with the other Boffin/Open modules.


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National traffic



Boffin/Open includes three National Traffic suites, the original written for the Norwegian market, the second for Germany and the third for South Africa. It is the South African suite that is being described here but all three suites are essentially equivalent. By National Traffic, Bishopsgate mean door/door collections and deliveries all over the country but with no facilities for 'crossing national borders'.


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Cargo terminals



Consider the situation where there are an increasing number of cargo terminals (depots), each of which is responsible for collections and deliveries in their own agreed area and for building and trunking outbound consolidations and breaking inbound units. There is no practical limit to the number of participating cargo terminals that may be involved and new cargo terminals may be added in realtime and irresective of what the regular system users are doing. There is no practical limit to the number of shipments in each consolidation or to the number of consolidations that can be processed simultaneously. 



Each Cargo Terminal can be owned and operated by a different company with self-accounting; there is no limit to the number of cargo terminals that may be operated by the same company. All cargo terminals are encouraged to advertise that they can move cargo door/door from their local area to 'anywhere' in the country with pricing being automatic and coming from a single set of agreed tariffs. Each cargo terminal will be equipped with a copy of the Boffin/Open application software and each can support as many client-PCs as required to process the work. Each cargo terminal will have an open link with the Internet to support realime communications between cargo-terminals and customers. Each cargo terminal may run it's own Boffin/Open database or several cargo terminals may share a database.


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Local operation



Consider the operation in one cargo terminal; which would be duplicated in each terminal. There would be local selling of the services of the network, but the majority of the traffic notified to the local cargo terminal would be from the local business community who would want shipments collected from their local premises and delivered to somewhere else in the country; on the assumption that the package would be collected and then taken directly to the destination address. It will be the case that some local collections will not need trucking, as the delivery address is within the local area and so the local cargo terminal will collect and deliver the package. 



The door/door sales tariff can be published in printed form and/or regular customers can be invited to use a website in which there is a small HTML based program that will provide online, realtime quotations, using the sales tariff located on the Boffin/Open server. Regular and/or special customers would be able to have special discounts. Cargo bookings would be made on client-PCs attached to a Boffin/Open server on which the sales tariff and details of all customers would be available. Cargo booking would be based on a single client-PC screen image, pricing would be in local currency and automatic. 



As each cargo shipment is booked onto the client-PC screen, it is allocated a unique, check-digit, non-transferrable 'through waybill number' (Job Number), which would be a structured number identifying the starting cargo-terminal of the shipment. The computer application would determine from the collection postcode and the delivery postcode what operational cargo terminal the shipment the cargo should be collected by and will delivered by and from this will compute the appropriate Boffin/Open route code. 



Cargo bookings starting their journey anywhere in the country can be booked initially into any of the cargo terminal sub-systems. The cargo booking can/will cause a collection note set to be printed. Copy or second-copy collection note sets can be printed, on demand from any cargo terminal in the network. Cargo received from other freight agents in the area can be booked for previously unknown shippers and consignees with the sales charges being charged to the freight agent who submitted the traffic. 



As new shipments are booked, it is possible to allocate them, immediately, to a 'loading unit', either for local delivery of for trucking. Where cargo bookings are made and cannot be alloacted to an outbound unit, they can left in this unallocated state (Goods on Hand, awaiting shipment) and allocated to a unit just before the unit is closed. Where cargo is received from one cargo terminal and is not for local delivery, the booking can be accepted into the local system and then re-allocated to an outbound unit. The cargo teminal manager effecting these transhipments will get some reward for helping the shipment on it's way.


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Direct air exports



This website is the first that our company has built with the serious intention that it should be our 'interface with the world.' In order that we are able to make it easy to update the website on a continuing basis and so encourage such updating, we have decided that where the website section would be a derivative of one of our application software manual chapters, we will organise a link directly to the latest copy of the manual chapter. We then intend to encourage regular and continuous updating of the manual chapters and the reloading the whole websitese as at the end of each day; as part of our internal backup processes. 



We would like to highlight the fact that the printed manual chapters are 'prettier' that as seen on the website, probably because these are still ;'early days' for us in website design and functionality. We suggest that you can expect some rapid progress now that we know how to manage this new resource, so it might well be worth re-visiting the site. 



Each chapter of the original manual is maintained and developed by Bishopstrade Ltd, using Corel Wordperfect 9.0. which provides the necessary technical resource to allow the individual chapter documents to be published as pdf files which are then copied to the website and made available to you. You will need a copy of Adobe Acrobat Reader to access the chapters; you can arrange to download a free copy of Adobe Acrobat Reader (AcroReader51_ENU.exe) by using the hyperlink below; it is about 8.5 Megabytes of data. 



Notice that using Acrobat Reader, it easily possible to use the Zoom feature to make it possible to show each page of whole page on the screen; the image is still very legible and reading the text of the the selected chapter less stressful; take a moment and get it right! Once you can see each page as a page, reduce the window in which you are viewing it to suit, in the knowledge that AcroBat Reader will retain these settings until you change them.


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Super Consolidations



What is a Super-consol ? Consider a 'simple' air export consolidation; this will comprise of a Master booking (from which the MAWB is produced) for the consol as a whole and then an unlimited series of 'detail shipment bookings'; from which each HAWB is produced. Usually the user would 'deliver the consoilidation into the airline and obtain the Airline Buying Freight Rate applicable to the consol 'totals'. 



Now consider the situation that there are (say) three consolidations leaving Hong Kong for Europe, say one consol for each of Frankfurt, Paris and London and the airline, offers to treat the three consolidations as one consol for the purposes of the Buying Frieght Rate. The User could make an additional booking, which Bishopsgate call the SuperConsol booking which would show the gross aggregate totals of the three consolidations. A new additional MAWB would be produced, which we call the SuperConsol MAWB. 



The airline would charge the user against the Super-Consol and the very best airline freight buying rate negotiable for the sum of the three (in this case) consolidations. The user would accept the airline charge against the Super-Consol cost-file. Boffin/Open includes a set of programs which 'apportion' charges from super-consol master bookings across the constituent master bookings, thus neutralising the charges on the super-consol cost file. Then there is another similar program that apportions charges from the consol master bookings across the detail bookings of the consolidation; leaving no charges on the consolidation master. Sounds complex but it is not. 



Where the user knows that he operates or may have operates super-consol(s); and as part of the Operational Month-end process, usually operated between the last day of the old month and the 7th day of the following month, the user will run the 'SuperConsol apportionment' program. This program very quickly searches the air exports bookings table and locates each SuperConsol Master cost-file. The program checks to determine if there is any net value on the file (including trading accruals if this is in play) and if there is a net value on the cost file (usually only costs), it creates a single general ledger journal, per super-consol master, to neutralise these charges on the super-consol Master, spreading the 'appropriate' values across the constituent consol master bookings that comprised the super-consol. The user then runs a very similar 'Consolidation Apportionment' program, that quickly searches for all consolidation master cost-files and neutralises these by creating a general ledger journal for each. This journal neutralises the charges on the consolidation master file and spreads the value across the constituent detail cargo booking cost files. 



It is appreciated that there is no 'fair' way to apportion super-consol or consolidation master charges across the constituent components; but a reasonable manner in the case described here is to apportion in the ration of the 'Chargeable Kilos'. Notice that the apportionment exercise, even when super-consols are not operated allows us to get a better 'gross profit' per detail cargo booking. Boffin/Open includes a 'Profit by' suite, which allows the user to monitor and aggregate the traffic that each customer is submitting, so as to arrive at a reasonable 'Profit per Customer Month'; amongst many other analyses that are possible. 



The manual for this optional software is being revised and will be made available shortly.


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Breakbulk air imports - summary



The Boffin/Open application includes a specific module that supports a Air Import Breakbulk department. Such a department will receive any number of inbound air cargo consolidations from any number of origin points and allows the staff to process these, simultaneously or sequentially or any mix of the two. Each inbound consolidation will include a single master shipment against which the Master Airway Bill (MAWB) and Manifest will be based and any number of individual shipments, each represented on the manifest and subject to a House Airway Bill (HAWB). It is accepted that sometimes the consolidation manifest may be incorrect for any one or more of a number of possible reasons, which the application is equipped to handle. Although Bishopsgate have never set up such an installation, there is no theoretical restriction to a single user installation having any number of air import breakbulk departments, running simultaneously. 



It will usually be the case, that the inbound consolidation will contain shipments destined for a random mix of for third party Freight Agents and the users own Air Import Department. Depending on the airport where the operation is based as to whether the user's breakbulk department will make a charge for the hand-over of cargo to another agent or not. In London Heathrow, where this application originally 'grew up', there were no hand-over charges levied, however a charge is now usual. 



In terms of inbound collect charges, the system is designed to accept these in detail per HAWB and to ensure that all of the collect charges - in total - extracted from the manifest are passed on and the user's financial position regarding these charges, is protected. 



Each inbound consolidation will be handled by a single human operator and the keyboard task has been reduced to a minimum. The application is designed to allow the human operator to enter some consolidation totals from the inbound manifest and the MAWB followed by a single screen image booking per HAWB, which are stored in memory, until a all HAWB bookings have been keyed; in the same order as they are shown on the manifest. The operator then selects PF'8 Totals at which time the system checks the aggregate of some of the keyed HAWB details with the MAWB/Manifest totals; keyed at the start. If there is an error, then there is a way of checking and correcting any errors and re-running the totalling routine. If there are no errors, then the system creates database bookings for each of the consolidation master (MAWB) and each detail consolidation shipment (HAWB). Where the user is able to receive the inbound consolidation information in electronic means (FTP and/or EDIFACT etc.), this can be accommodated to remove the need for the majority of the keying work. 



Once the hard disk, database bookings have been made, then the application raises a single printed A4 HP-PCL5e (or later) document set for each HAWB booking. The HAWB document set raised, will either be a Hand-over document for bookings where there are no sales charges to be made or a combined sales invoice / hand-over document where sales charges (possible hand-over charge and possible collect charges) are to be rendered. Where charges are being rendered, the online, realtime ledgers (sales and general) are updated immediately and without any possible interruption by the human operator. The inbound total of collect charges is also accepted into the (purchase and general) ledgers are updated. By definition, the Job Costing aspects of the system are updated, immediately. It would now be possible for the module to send an email automatically to agents for whom shipment(s) are arriving, attached to which the Hand-over document or the combined hand-over and sales invoice document could be attached; saving delivery time and workload.


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Surface exports - summary



This is where it all began, all of those years ago, United Kingdom groupage exports to Scandinavia groupage services. This module and perhaps the equivalent Surface Import module are perhaps the most extensive operational modules in the entire system, mainly because the users that have and are using the Boffin/Open application have been the most energetic operators, all looking for 'margin' and angles to reduce 'office staff head-count'. The transition was caused directly by the European Union and the great reduction in the number of Customs Entries that were required to traverse Europe. The Customs Entry charges had been a traditional source of revenue for the Freight Forwarders and this diminished; European freight rates became more competitive; Freight Fowarding blended into the traditional Transport Operators domain and everyone concerned had to become more efficient. 



The Boffin/Open system caters for all of the procedural and documentation requirements of the full load and groupage service operators. Customer quotations are not supported, although they could be; the thought here is that 'real' freight forwarding requires a switched-on operations person to make the best out of each and every shipment processed; relying on a system of automatic and/or semi-automatic quoting would be the first step to the freight-forwarders not thinking about 'gross profit maximisation'. When one considers whether the computer system should cover the issuance of quotations or not, then it suggests that there are two main ways of operating. The first way would be to build a sales charge tariff and operate the business using the tariff and fight to keep to the tariff. The other way is to have a tariff as the basis for the services operated, but to make the forwarding clerk think about each shipment in detail, so as to take and maximise all revenue earning opportunities. There is obviously room for both types of operation, but Bishopsgate have been mainly involved with the latter group. Where a new Boffin/Open user wishes to setup a quotation-type operation, this could be readily effected, as all of the tariffs etc that would be involved are present in the application. 



The pre-booking of cargo is optional; the user is able to await the arrival of the cargo and shipping instructions and then book the cargo fully; thereby avoiding pre-booking altogether. The system offers the ability to pre-book shipments which involves the entry of the very minimum of operational details.From the pre-booking the user is able to arrange collection note and/or combined collection and delivery note printing. Self-adhesive labels are also available, where required for labelling the cargo. When the cargo and documents arrive back at the export cargo terminal, the prebooking will be amended into the full cargo booking with the results of the check-weighing and measuring that will be effected on the cargo. Once the pre-booking has been amended into a full booking, the pre-booking disappears. 



The comprehensive full cargo booking program takes the human operator through a set of screen images in which the operational booking requirements are presented in a logical order and friendly manner. Where booking questions are compulsotry, the booking clerk is forced to complete the input there and then. Where a booking field is optional, the key can be used to pass over the question without supplying an answer. Very many checks and controls are built into the cargo booking process, so as to ensure that all required information will be available 'downstream' for the various steps that may be required and calculations that will be made. Maximum use is made of 'standing data'. 



The system includes a very strong and comprehensive sales tariff system, which Bishopsgate know as 'SuperRates'; all calculations are automated but sales charges (actually charged) are still under the direct control of the human operator. It is possible to operate the sales charging of FOB and Freight Rates, completely automatically, using the SuperRates, where the booking clerks cannot change the automated sales charges being made. The Boffin/Open SuperRates are even able to handle 'three dimensional' sales tariffs, like the one that is used in Germany; 0-10 Kilos sent over 0 - 50 Kilometres at a rate of 9.99 per kilo with a minimum of 8.88 etc. 



The system includes the software,which can be called from within the cargo booking program and/or from the menus, for builing up the Export Customs Entry/Declaration. The Customs Declaration work can be effected as part of the cargo booking - where the shipping instructions are comprehensive or left for later and completed separately. The system includes a copy of the Harmonised Customs Tariff and a Tariff Index which is normally supplied quite well populated and in a condition where the user can build up the content. Customs Declarations can be printed to suit the local country where the Boffin/Open user is working. United Kingdom SAD declarations are already available and the Boffin/VS forerunner systm was connected to most of the United Kindom DTI schemes. Bishopsgate have extensive knowledge and experience in the use of Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and EDIFACT in particular. Although not used in this module, Boffin/Open includes facilities to accept incoming Shipping Company manifests and Customs Declarations using the EDIFACT CUSDEC message format, without any involvement by human operators. 



The application offers optional use of the Partial and Full Trading Accruals facilities and Closed cost-file accounting. This is a ver large subject in it's own right and probably too large to go into in this short summary; see the logically attached Surface Export manual . 



All operational documents are available, on demand and are printed on A4 Portrait or Landscape stationery, as appropriate. All A4 Portrait operational documents are automatically and immediately archived; so that perfect (customer copy) copy-documents can be printed later. A wish-list item is being programmed as we write, which will print perfect copy sales invoices for each sales invoice that is referred to on the customer's statement. These copy invoices will be sent with the (usually) monthend sales statement so that the user's customer cannot say that he 'needs a copy'. Once this is working, a similar update will do the same with Proofs of Delivery (PODs). 



All currency conversions are automatic, as they are throughout the system. The Boffin/Open convention is that on the sales side of the business, the automatic currency conversions cannot be over-ridden by the human operator. On the supplier side of the system, all currency conversions are automatic, but here, the results of the conversion are shown to the human operator, who is able to amend the converted amount to be used. 



Prepaid charge Sales invoicing is effected for each groupage as a whole; all bookings in the unit are invoiced for the value of the prepaid charges in a single program run; so that none of the bookings can be accidentally left out. While the surface export sales invoicing program is printing the pre-paid sales invoices, the ledgers are updated and the aggregate of any collect charges is assesed and then debited to the partner agent at the end of the invoicing run. There is an option to invoice the collect charges on a booking-by-booking basis, instead of in bulk. Where a given shipment has no prepaid charges to cause a prepaid sales invoice to be printed, a zero value invoice (already in a 'paid' state) can be injected into the ledgers to show that the booking was not forgotten, but simply had nothing to be invoiced. The system supports Bulk Sales Invoicing, where individual sales invoices are not raised per cargo booking, but a record is stored in a secret place to await weekly, fornight or monthly Bulk Invoicing. Under Bulk Invoicing, a manifest-like document and a sales invoice are prepared periodically, but the financial postings to the general ledger look exactly as they would from regular invoicing; the customer's statement shows a single invoice line. 



Multiple copies of export manifest(s) are produced as the groupage unit loading is completed. Waybills can be produced in place or as well as the Manifest(s). Export Bordereaux can be produced which should be viewed as Multiple Waybills; the document looks like an export manifest but includes details per booking of collect charges. Certificates of Shipment are available and if requested are printed with the prepaid sales invoices, so that they can be posted within the same envelop as the invoice. Charges 'collect' are typically invoiced to the partner agent, but there are other options here that are under the user's control. Manifests, Bordereaux, Waybills, CMRs etc. are printed, as required. All sales invoicing and supplementary invoicing feeds the online multi-currency financial ledgers, as each invoice is printed. All operational documents are archived, so that perfect copy documents can be printed, on demand. An AMETA Control system can be updated, so as to act as a control list of what AMETA Profit Shares have yet to be processed. Sales and Marketing records are issued to that sub-system. The application includes Tracking & Tracing, which can be 'data-published' to the user's website, from where customers can view and/or download it. A Proof-of-Delivery control system is available. A Shipper's COD control system is available and much more. Where a link is required to the user's website for the 'data publication' of any facet of the surface export shipments, this can be accommodated. Where Electronic Data Interchange is required (EDI), Bishopsgate's preference is for EDIFACT, but other conventions can be accommodated. Bishopsgate feel that they are VERY strong in this area; see the manual for which a link is provided below.


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Surface imports



The Boffin/Open system includes a large and powerful module that offers all of the support for the user to process surface import shipments, both full loads and groupage units. In the case of groupage units, there is no limit to the number of detail shipments that can be included within a single groupage. Full loads are booked as a single booking. Groupage units are booked as a groupage master booking and then one booking for each housebill. In the case of the groupage units, the incoming manifests can be split up and booked by any number of booking clerks simultaneously, to save time, after which the master booking is logically linked with all of it's detail housebill bookings and an unloading manifest is printed. 



Where there is a requirement, Bishopsgate have written software to accept incoming surface imports, electronically, where each incoming booking was represented by an EDI message, which was decoded, expanded and then used to create a cargo booking. During the cargo booking process, all of the systems static or standing information is made available to the cargo bookinmg clerks, so as to make the booking process faster, less effort and less errors. The entire Boffin/Open system has a single way in which it allows this static or standing information to be accessed; which means that the staff soon become aware of how easy it is to search for and recall regularly used information. It is also possible from within the booking process to view recent bookings for the same importer, so that where there is a query about the way he is (say) charged, it can be resolved. Where the user has a regular collection/delivery sub-contractor, it is possible to send this company collection and/or delivery notes for new shipments, electronically. 



The application includes a powerful Customs Declaration build-up program, which can be called into play as part of the initial cargo booking process or called later from the menu; leaving the import clerk to decide when he would prefer to do the Import Entry build-up work. A copy of the Harmonised Customs Tariff is usually supplied with the installation and a copy of the Tariff Index is provided as well. The user is able to maintain and expand these two sets of data. Where the local Customs & Excise offer Tariff updates, Bishopsgate can supply software to allow the user to accept the updates to the local tariff. Bishopsgate have been deeply involved in the United Kingdom Direct Trader Input (DTI) schemes, being connected to most of the Port Systems at one time or another. Import Customs Declaration printing is supplied to meet local requirements. Where the user wishes to have a DTI connection to his local Customs & Excise scheme, this would be developed as required, but Bishopsgate have extensive knowledge in this area and have even written the Customs & Excise system in one country. 



The system is designed to be capable of producing all of the operational and accounting documents that are required to process surface import shipments; these documents are produced on demand, usually in A4 Portrait mode using HP PCL5e or later compliant printers. All operational documents that are produced on A4 Portrait stationery are also immediately and automatically archived, so that perfect copy-documents can be produced at any later date. The repertoire of existing import documents includes Advices of Arrival, Collection Notes, Delivery Notes, Insurance Reseve Letters, Shipper Instructions Acknowledgements, Sales invoices, Duty Invoices, Supplementary invoices and Credit Notes and many more; this is a summary! 



Unlike the surface export system, the surface import system sales invoicing is effected on a booking-by-booking method, as each shipment is delivered. Once again, very powerful sales tariffs are available in the form of Boffin/Open SuperRates. These SuperRates allow the use to have basic sals tariffs for each route/service and then special separate but similar structured tariffs for all sorts of shipper/importer/route combinations. A separate chapter of the Boffin/Open manuals exists on the subject of SuperRates, their structure, setup, use and attributes; which can be supplied to contracting users and serious potential users; we do not make that chapter available on the web, as it contains a great deal of valuable information. Bulk Sales Invoicing is supported, by which individual sales invoicing per shipment is supressed, but a record is stored by the sales invoicing programs on behalf of each shipment, from which a Bulk Sales Invoice can be produced later, perhaps at weekend, fortnightend or monthend. Where primary or supplementary or bulk invoices are produced, the financial ledgers are updated immeduately. Duty/VAT invoicing is available, so that these potentially large amounts can be invoiced ahead of the user's main sales invoice for his own charges. The system maintains a monitor on Duty Invoices and Duty/VAT Payments; which the user is able to use to make sure he spots any mistakes early, while there is time to correct the error(s). 



The surface import module, like all of the other operational modules, offers support for Trading Accrual Accounting in both Partial and Full modes. Closed Cost-file accounting is also available. Now go read the Boffin/Open Surface Import manual for which a hyperlink is porovided below. We suggest that you take a moment to setup your Acrobat Reader correctly, so that reading the manual will be stress free. When you have downloaded the manual, Acrobat will open the document with View settings that are probably not correct. Slect the 'View' option from the Acrobat Reader windo and select the 'Fit Width' and 'Single Page' options. Then make the window size just large enough to see a whole page form the manual at a time and lastly notice that the tool bar contains 'tape recorder' type controls to allow you to scroll around at your convenience; good reading.


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Customer services



The subject of 'customer services' in the frieght industry is very important, frieght quotations are all now very competitive and business is increasingly won on 'service'; what can the freight company offer their customer to make his life easier and less stressful. The freight company should want to maximise the amount of non-confidential information it make available to the 'customer', without telling him so much that it makes life difficult. There are a number of things that can be done from a system such as Boffin/Open, where all of the data that has been keyed and accumulated over the years can be used to help satisfy the customers.


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Who is the 'customer' ?



Well you would think that all of us could agree on who the freight company customer is; but alas there are easier questions. On a surface export shipment, we have the shipper, the payer, the consignee, up to two intermediate agents and our 'partner' agent at destination. To some extent and in different ways, all of them are the freight company's customer; they all contribute (or don't!) to the throughput of traffic on which the Boffin/Open user's company is able to make it's turnover and sometimes, even a profit; so all should be included, where possible in the services that the system can provide.


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Minimise human involvement



We are all aware that the freight industry is a Service Industry and that it is labour intensive. We are all aware that with the reducing margins and the emphasis on 'better service', we want to do our utmost to keep the human involvement in providing customer services to a minimum to save effort, workload and eventually cost.


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Maximise the computer systems involvement



We want to maximise what the Boffin/Open computer system can do for us, while we get on and process the cargo we have. Well here we go; make sure you read all of the text below, there IS a point to it, before the close.


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Important customers wanting to be kept informed



All customers are important, but some are very important as they provide large amounts of freight and/or pay reasonable charge rates. It is a fact that in the Boffin/Open system, all shippers, importers, agents and third party companies who pay for shipment movements have to be represented on the user's sales ledger master file. Bishopsgate have arranged that on each (sales and bought) ledger master file record, there is a place for recording the customers operational email address and another for storing his accounting email address; Boffin/Open does not object to having the same email address in both fields. The Boffin/Open user should try and code both of these fields.


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Tracking & Tracing



All of the Boffin/Open operational modules (surface exports, surface imports etc) include tracking and tracing facilities. The way in which these facilities work in all modules is the same. Where a Boffin/Open cargo booking is part of a consolidation or groupage service and not simply a direct shipment, the system is able to determine this, without human intervention. All consolidations and groupage 'units' in the Boffin/Open comprise of a groupage master booking followed by an unlimited number of detail cargo bookings. The last cargo booking in a groupage unit carries a marker to say that it is the end of the groupage/consolidation 'chain'. Boffin/Open allows the user to issue one or more tracking records to any cargo booking, master and detail booking alike; eithe manually or as the recording of an event being processed by an application program. Where the tracking record is directed to a groupage master, it has been arranged that the tracking record will be issued to the master and all of the groupage details from the single update. Where a tracking record is issued to a detail cargo booking, it is only issued to that booking alone. In this way, it is possible to 'broadcast' tracking records to all components of a groupage unit as well as tag a single detail booking with a tracking record. Certain operational events, like the original cargo booking, the despatch of the unit etc automatically cause the software to update the tracking and tracing of any given cost-file. In this way and with the mixing of manually inspired and automatic event tracking and tracing records, a full picture of the 'life' of the shipment is built.


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Realtime, open-item ledgers



The Boffin/Open system includes a set of realtime, open-item, multi-currency financial ledgers. The importance of this statement is that the ledgers are updated in realtime and so a customers aged balance on the sales ledger is available, on demand.


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Archiving of all operational documents and invoices



All of the operational documents and all sales invoices and credit notes are automatically and immediately archived, within the Boffin/Open application. It is possible, on demand, to recall a perfect copy of any one or all of these documents, as required.


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Web-Data-Publishing



Bishopsgate have built a Web-Publishing system, for use by frieght comanies who wish to make particualr documents available to some/all of their 'customer' base. Under this sceheme, a table is created and maintained, within the Boffin/Open database and this is under the direct control of the user. A table maintenance program is provided, which allows the user to add, delete and amend table entries, in realtime and irrespective of what the other regular system users are doing. Each table entry is the control for the Web Publishing for a given 'customer', the convention is that for any Web Publiching to be directed to the customer, he/she must be represented on this table. The table entry carries the Logon, Password and name of the user together with a software flag for each possible Web Publishing facility; currently Sales Statements and Tracking & Tracing. The user is able to indicate if the given 'customer' is to be 'supported' in the provision of Realtime Sales Statements and/or Tracking & Tracing. Once all of this has been installed and some 'customers' have been nominated, the system works as follows. 



In the case of sales statements, Bishopsgate wish to make available on the user's website or hosted website a sales statement which is accurate to the last financial posting made to the active customer account. In addition, Bishopsgate wish to make the viewing and/or downloading and printing of this statement, confidential to the company it is directed at. Similarly, with Tracking and Tracing information, shown per cargo booking as an A4 portrait sheet. A Tracking Advice Sheet is prepared for each cargo booking where one or more of the 'active customers' is involved with the shipment (Shipper, Payer, Importer, 1st Intermediate Agent, 2nd Intermediate Agent, Final Agent) and a full copy of this advice is placed on the website in a place that only the party to whom it is addressd can see it. Notice that, for example, where a surface export booking involves three customers on the Active List, then a total of three identical copies of the Tracking & Tracing Advice will be placed in approriate places on the website. Once again these Web Published Tracking & Tracing Advices are updated in realtime and are accurate to the last tracking and Tracing record issued to a cargo booking in which a participating customer is involved. 



The user gets all of this powerful software working, bringing his website or hosted website 'closer' to his Boffin/Open database. As he adds customers to the 'Active Duty List' (!), the system sends a polite email to each customer, informing him/her of the Logon and Password which will be needed to access their Web Published Sales Statement and/or Tracking and Tracing Advices (Notice plural Advices). It is anticipated that the Tracking & Tracing Advices will be maintained, in full detail on the Website and available to the third parties for one month after the sensing of a Proof-of-Delivery (POD). The customer logs on to the website and selects the hyperlink to 'My Data'. This causes the Boffin/Open Java Website control program to issue a request for a Logon and Password. Once the Logon and Password have been checked, the customer is shown his hyperlinks to Sales Statement and Tracking and is able to view any of the documents downloading some/all for printing on his premises. More later, but you have the gist. Notice how this setup does NOT involve staff, except in the process of adding a new party to the Active Duty List.


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Automatic emails



Each customer and supplier account in the user's sales/bought ledger master file has the capacity to store two email addresses; one to which the Boffin/Open system can send emails relating to operational matters and one for use with accounting matters. It is now possible for the Boffin/Open application and/or the new Web Publishing facility to compose and send emails automatically to the user's customers and to archive such emails in a manner that the user is able to see what has been going on! 'Dear customer, thank you for your 2 Kgs of Oracle Books shipment for Swaziland, we are pleased to say that it left our cargo terminal at 16:32 and is expected in Matsapha at 08:29 in the morning'. etc.


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Sales ledger



The Boffin/Open application includes a set of powerful, open-item, multi-company, multi-currency, integrated ledgers. There is no practical limit to the number of user-companies, including daughter and sister companies for which sets of accounts can be maintained, in realtime and simultaneously. The user is able to maintain a complete set of accounts for each user-company; right through to Profit/Loss and Balance Sheet reporting. Where two or more user-companies are to be supported by a single set of accounting records, this can be accommodated and there is no limit as to how many 'trading companies' may utilise the same set of ledgers. New user-companies can be setup in realtime and the system does not need to be re-started before the new company(s) can be activated. Where an accounting installation is supporting a very large user-company and a small user-company, the computer performance is the same for both. 



The Boffin/Open apploication has no practical limits as to the number of Rich and/or Thin client-PCs that can be connected to it or to the number of physical printers that can be attached. If one ignores security, then all human operators have the same complete access to the realtime bookkeeping system, irrespective of the time of day or their geographic location. Bishopsgate favour Rich Clients (the client-PC has it's own copy of the Boffin/Open application and runs the softwar in the PC and not in the server cpu. There is no restriction at all on the 'mix' of Rich and Thin client-PCs. Printers need to be Hewlett Packard PCL5e (or later) compliant and equipped for A4 portrait and landscape printing; duplex printing (printing on both sides of each sheet of paper) is also supported. The realtime ledgers are also available in realtime as a source of information to any Boffin/Open operational program. 



Sales and Bought ledger personal accounts may be created in realtime and irrespective of what other regular system users are doing. Personal account numbers are automatically issued and are check-digit and unique to any given installation, irrespective of how many user-companies are being supported; these take the form A12345 (Max A999999999). Personal accounts can have unique short names which are inter-changeable with the account numbers. All personal accounts have sort keys of up to twelve uppercase characters by which partial alphabetic searching can be used to locate an account. At ALL places within the application where the human operator is required to identify a personal account, the account number or short name can be entered or a partial alphabetic search can be effected. Where a third party customer/supplier has multiple personal accounts (Agents etc), these can be annotated into families by which the overall position between the user-company and the third-party can be readily seen, which is known as Related Accounts. Related accounts can be in any mix of currencies. Personal account Credit-Status and Credit-Limits are supported. 



The accounting system is open-item and aged, it is maintained in realtime and designed to run continuously H24 D365 even at accounting month-end and year-end; no longer only from 'eight 'till late'. The entire system has been upgraded so that it is able to handle individual posting values to a maximum size of (S9(18).99) or +/-999,999,999,999,999,999.99), which was necessary when the system was run in Mozambique where about 1500 MZM = US$1.00. It follows that the system can be run in Italy, Mozambique and other countries with 'internationally weak' currencies. Personal account balances, used in credit control and debt collection, are accurate to the last financial posting made and are therefore useful in the operational cargo booking programs where a credit limit check can be included. Boffin/Open allows more than a single financial year to be open at anytime; which is very useful at financial year-end and the first few months of the new accounting year. A financial year comprises twelve accounting months which can start with any calendar month and end after 12 months. Statistical months are EXACTLY in line with calendar months, the changing of accounting months is under the control of the user, who is recommended to try and change the accounting month as ealy as possible on the first day of each month. Financial transactions being posted to the system can be either manually inspired (such as manually produced sales invoices from a small outpost) or generated by one of the many sales invoicing programs that are embedded within the operational suites. There is no practical limit to the number of sources of financial postings that can be accommodated; new sources can be introduced wwithout any need to re-start the system. The system effects very stringent validation checks on all accounting vouchers being submitted and will only post the derived financial postings if the whole voucher and all of the postings that it might cause, pass all of the tests. It is a fact that all accounting records derived from any given accounting voucher will be posted to the same accounting month; single vouchers are never split over accounting montyh boundaries. An optional feature called Extended Accounting Month is available, where by an accounting voucher which entirely 'refers' to a past (usually last) accounting period can be posted to that period up to a user controlled cut-off point (after which the financial year-to-date result up to and including the 'old' month are to be finalised. The general ledger is updated as each financial postingh is made; such that even in a very large system a Trial Balance report may be produced at the speed of the fastest printer up to a nominated accounting month cut-off. 



Boffin/Open offers all of the usual reports and facilities requirted of any sales ledger, but includes many logical links from application program to application program to make it's operation easy and enjoyable; it is also fast. The system has been updated, so that customer statements - accurate to the last financial posting - can be automatically generated and placed on the user's website, so that the user's customers are able to download them, at their convenience. Copy sales invoices and Proofs-of-Delivery will be similarly available on the website with the current sales statement. There is much more to tell, but we leave this here and invite you to browse the manual, using the hyperlink below.


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Bought Ledger



The Boffin/Open design includes a fully integrated set of sales, bought and general ledgers. There is no practical limit to the number of personal accounts that can be supported at any one time; account numbers are check-digit numbers and take the form A123456789; these are issued by the system as they are needed and there are no duplicates (in any ledger or user-company or elsewhere) in any given user-group. New personal accounts can be created in realtime and irrespective of what the other system users are doing; new accounts are immeduately fully usable after they have been created. All personal accounts have a 12 character sort key to support partial alphabetic searching for accounts. All accounts can have unique twelve character short-names (nicknames in English) which are completely inter-changeable with the account number, through the entire system. In the whole system, where a search is effected for a personal account and the account does not exist, it is possible to create the 'missing account', on the 'fly' so that on exiting the search, the account number of the supplier is available. The system supports the notion of Related Accounts; under this notion, sales and/or boughht ledger accounts can be annotated so that they forma 'families'. This feature makes it possible to have personal account enquiries against a family of accounts which allows the user to see his/her personal account exposure with the third-party; useful with Agents accounts. The system supports the notion of Alternate Accounts; useful when dealing with many outlets of the same company; each outlet of the supplier is setup with a personal account, but all financial transactions are diverted to one of the accounts. The Bought ledger accounts can be split into Ledger Sections, so that Creditors reports by Ledger Section can be supported; there is no limit to the num,ber of ledger sections that can be used at anytime; new ledger sections can be added in realtime etc. The logon-id of the eprson creating any new personal account is held in memorandum form on the accounts created. Various lists of new accounts etc are available.The user has control of which currencies he/she wishes to support for personal accounting; new currencies can be switched on in realtime, without programmer intervention and are immediately available for use. Rates of exchange are monitored on a daily basis; five or six rates per currency, selling rate, house rate, airline weekly rate, central bank rate, management rate etc. New personal accounts are allocated their currency at the time of creation and the currency can only be one that is switched-on or authorised by the user. There is much more.



The financial transactions are held in open-item format. Because the system supports a powerful Job Costing subset, the bought ledger supports the financial posting of both simple 'single-line' and sometimes very complex and large 'multi-line' vouchers. A simple on-line voucher would be a supplier invoice charged against one of the user's job numbers. A complex and large voucher would be a supplie invoice from a Cartage subcontractor referencing an unlimited number of the user's job numbers. Input to the bought ledger can come from a large and increasing number of sources, manually keyed supplier invoices covers the majority of input, but suppliiers submitting their vouchers by EDI can be accommodated. All vouchers posted to the accounting system are annotated with the logon-id of the person who effected the data-entry, the calendar adte of input and the source of the input. Extensive validation is effected at data-entry time, when the original voucher is still available; if the voucher cannot pass all checks on input; it will not be accepted at all. All currency conversions are automatic but allow the input clerk to change the default conversion by up to n%. Vouchers posted are immediately and completely processed; updating all facets of the accounting and management accounting system, as required. The system effects a logical search as the vouchers are keyed; checking to detrmine if the voucher seems to have been posted earliuer; if this looks possible, then the booking clerk is warned and is able to continue or abort the voucher posting, pending investigation. The personal accounts (master records) carry an aged breakdown of the account balance, which is accurate to the last posting made to the accounts. All bought ledger postings carry the foreign currency values of the supplier invoice (etc) in addition to the home-currency (currency of the local general ledger) conversion at the time of data entry. The system supports three methods of the payment process, two of which can cause Remitances and cheques to be printed in realtime. When suppliers invoices (etc) are paid, differences in exchange are calculated and posted automatically and fully. The Profit/Loss in Exchange is said to happen at the point of payment. Programs are available to allow the user to compute his currency exposure and separately his profit/loss in exchange by currency and month. 



The system produces all of the normal reports and displays, such as but not limited to Account Enquiries, Creditors aged Balances Lists, Supplier Statements, Remittances, Cheque/Remittance combinations. The system is Value Added Tax (VAT) enabled and the two methods of VAT processing are supported - Reporting by Invoice acceptance date and Reporting by Payment date. All VAT reports are available and the system includes a single subroutine per country (where the system is being operated) so that the anomalies of VAT per country can be accommodated. For example the operation of VAT in France and United Kingdom should be the same, but they are not. The whole application has been Language enabled, so that users around the world can expect to operate the software with the screens displayed in their own language and (simultaneously) any other languages. The system supports the optional notion of Extenbde Accounting Months; where vouchers being posted in the first few days (under the user's control) of the new accountying month that refer completely to the previous accounting month (either by virue of their voucher date of the user's job numbers that are to be charged) can be posted back into the last month to save retrospective journalling in the general ledger. 



It has always been Bishopsgate policy to effect the following technical aspects. Heavy and complete validation at data-entry time; if a voucher cannot pass the checks on data-entry, then it cannot be accepted into the financial ledgers; No partial acceptance with the 'empty' promises by the users that they will come back later and correct the error/omission. Totally realtime processing, machines are getting faster and logically bigger; there is no need to summarise or discard any data. Maximum use of standing/static data and a single method of accessing it throughout the whole application. No multiple keying of any data in the bought ledger or anywhere else in the application. The ability to run multiple accounting months and years, simultaneously, so that accounting month-ends and year-ends are no longer stressful events. There is much more.


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Cash Office operation - summary


  
Boffin/Open is built around an integrated, open-item, 'multi-everything' accounting system, covering sales, bought and general ledgers. One aspect of this accounting system is the Cash Office operation, for which application software is also included. The Cash Office operation software covers all of the required activities and includes varitaions for both large and small user-companies. The software offers support for both home-currency (currency of the local general ledger) and foreign currency bank accounts, but does not support multi-currency bank accounts. Bishopsgate had one user who was supplied with a cheque book and was permitted to write cheques in any (supported) currency and in random order! If anyone needs this, then they should make contact directly with Bishopsgate who would be pleased to take on the software development on a fee basis.



There is no practical limit to the number of bank accounts that can be supported and used, simultaneously. There is no limit to the number of sources of data-entry for cash office operation. The application supports a Bank Reconciliation facility.



In the case of Cash receipts, these will be received and processed on a continuous basis, but usually processed as a single cycle, once per day; this is not critical. The incoming cheques and drafts are processed separately and the receipts are segregated into batches, for deposit into discrete bank accounts. All of the cheques and cash for any given bank account are prelisted and a value check-total arrived at. The same items are then keyed, as a batch of data, into a specialist Boffin/Open program. The program effects the normal stringent data validation on the detail input line-entries and computes a 'batch-total'. The batch total is compared with the pre-list total so as to confirm that no line-entries have been missed or keyed twice. Error routines are available to correct any errors. Optionally, a Bank Paying-in slip can be printed. The total of the batch is posted to the Bank Reconciliation system and the detail line-entries to the personal accounts and general ledger, as appropriate. Where cheques/cash are received which cannot be identified to a personal account, this is posted to a Cash Suspense account in the Sales Ledger to await identification. Where previously unidentified cash receipts have been posted to the single Cash Suspense account, these can be reallocated to the correct personal account(s), easily and at any later date. Where Bank Drafts are received, these are processed in exactly the same way as 'regular' cash receipts, but as an 'identifiable data type', so that some additional data-processing can be performed in the area of Credit Control; the drafts are not assumed to be immediately cleared through the banking system and an allowance of 21 days is made before the value of the draft is taken into account for credit control purposes. In large companies, where it could be the user's desire to 'split' the processing of cash receipts and the allocation of those receipts to the personal accounts; this is catered for. In the posting of the cash receipts, there is no attempt to identify the personal account to which the payment is directed, but the company name that issued the cheque is free-typed; all cash receipts are posted to the Cash Suspense Account. As a totally separate operation, different staff members use remittance advices received with the cash to identify the unallocated receipts in the cash suspense account and then 'move' this from the suspense account to the correct personal account. The allocation of cash items moved from the cash suspense account to the applicable personal account is monitored and a 'dayend' report produced to show, for each movement, the free-typed issuing company name from the cheque and the name on the personal account to which the cash receipt was 'finally' posted.



In the case of 'Cash payments' the system has many options. Firstly the payment of suppliers invoices etc is based on the notion that the user will NOT wish to pay any supplier invoice, unless that invoice has been 'authorised for posting' to the bought ledger and appears on the supplier accouint enquiry screen as being unpaid'. The reader is reminded that a check is effected as supplier invoices are entered, so that where duplicates are posted, there is a good chance that they will be highlighted before the second and any subsequent copy is posted. The simplest method of paying a supplier invoice(s etc.) is simply to hand-write a cheque, give the cheque to the supplier, post the cheque to the system and then use the personal account matching program to match the invoice(s etc) with the cash payment. The act of matching personal account items in the overall system, is the point at which any profit/loss in exchange is said to have occured; where it occurs, the system generates and posts general ledger postings to take this into account. The system also includes a more 'production line' type of option, that would be useful in larger companies. Supplier invoices etc are posted. Each items is annotated with the 'valuta', the expected payment date by logically adding the voucher date to a calendar period computed from the Terms of Trade indicator stored on the supplier account. The user can manually 'select items for payment' and/or automatic software can be supplied to select items for payment or a mixture of the two. Lists can be produced showing items selected for payment with sub-totals shown at change of personal account. It is possible to de-select previously selected items. Selection of items to pay is a continuing process, such that there can be many selected families of items awaiting payment in any personal account. At any later date, the user is able to call for a Remittance Advice for particular families of selected items from within a nominated personal account. The remittance is printed and can be taken to the cash office where a request for the 'cheque' to be produced can be made. The cash office call for a cheque against the remittance, the cheque is printed on the system, the cash payment is posted and is matched with the outstanding items being paid. Optionally, combined Remittance/Cheques can be produced, where the Remittance is the top 75% of the A4 portrait document and the cheque is the bottom 25%. In this latter method of producing combined Remittances and Cheques, all of the same ledger posting and matching is performed. Usually the combined remittance/cheque will print on pre-printed documents, loaded into the manual feed of a laser printer manual feed hopper.



Bank statements are received and are keyed into the Bank reconcilliation system. Alterntively, the data that is printed on bank statements can be accepted electronically. The system matches the bank statement items with the items fed into the bank reconcilitaion from the cash posting and cheque writing activities; so as to produce an internal reconciliation of the bank statements and cashbook(s). After matching, the remaining items can be printed to produce a reconcilitaion per bank account. This printed reconciliation shows, in detail, the difference between the Cashbook Balance and the Bank Account Balance; typically, cheques raised but not yet presented and receipts made directly to the user's bank account by customers.



Notice that the general ledger is maintained in open-item format and that as the system is totally integrated, the posting of a (for example) a cash receipt to a customers account, will show up - in detail - in the applicable general ledger account, in full detail.


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General Ledger



Boffin/Open includes, as it's kernel an integrated, realtime, open-item, multi-company, multi-currency accounting system comprising of sales, bought and general ledgers. The accounting system is designed for continuous running even at accounting month and year-ends; multiple financial years can be run simultaneously, thereby removing any stress at accounting month and year-ends. The general ledger has system 'subsets', such as but not limited to Job Costing, Closed cost-file job-costing, Trading Accrual accounting, Departmental Overhead Expense Analysis and more that will be added here as we go. The application is very modern in that it is essentially hardware and operating system independent and entirely written in Oracle PL/SQL Forms and Reports for Client/Server architecture. The recent introduction of Oracle 9iAS Release 2 means that the application will soon be available as an Internet Application Server system. There is no practical limit to the number of open-item transactions that can be supported online and available, or the number of users accessing the data or printers available to print reports in simplex and/or duplex mode, situated both locally and around the world. Even purging (very) old financial transactions is something that can be effected during normal working periods and irrespective of what the other regular system users are doing. All report printing from the General ledger is effected on A4 stationery, 80 gms/cms photocopier paper; usually in Landscape format; so no computer listing paper is required and A4 photocopier paper can be purchased in increased bulk and hopefully reduced cost.



The general ledger main coding is effected through the use of a four digit (0000 - 9999) Cost Centre number and a four digit (0000 - 9999) Main/Sub Account. There is already an upgrade being effected at Bishopsgate to increase the Main/Sub account size to a six digit code, so that account numbering conventions in some countries (e.g Mozambique and France) can be adopted, as published. This exercise is not large as the internal logical records can be updated in about thirty seconds through SQL, but all input and reporting functions in the 1900 programs and 900 Reports suite need to be checked out to make sure they print the full new six digit number. The notion of Cost Centre Families is supported so that (e.g.) Trial Balance and Profit/Loss (etc) reporting is available not only per cost centre but for each Family of Cost Centres. Convention is that Cost Centre 0000 is not used; Cost Centre 9999 is used for the TRAINING Company only. General ledger account account 0000 is not used. 



The application accepts new data input from a large and increasing number of other application programs and from 'manual input' keyed by the Management Accountants. There is no limit to the number or type of additional sources of human inspired data-entry and/or automated data-entry coming from other applications. The general ledger application is built on a single open-item transaction table, within which all of the various record types have a common format, with some fields of some record types not used; encoded with nulls. This convention has made the system very friendly for the use of SQL*Query, as everyone gets used to the field names and coding conventions. All of the detail submitted by the various data sources is retained in it's original detail, with many data element extensions being effected by the system at data-entry time (such as items with a job number are automatically coded with the appropriate cost centre number), detailed information is NEVER summarised in the internal workings of the system, so as to protect the ability to continue expanding the scope of the system.



The system has an option within it, which is known as 'Extended Accounting Month'. Normally ALL new accounting input entered to the integrated accounting system is posted to the then-current system Accounting Month; with the one exception that general ledger journals default to this accounting month, but allow the human operator to nominate the past accounting month to which he/she wish the voucher to be posted. This is setup on the basis that staff submitting general ledger journals know what they are doing. However, consider the period from the first day of the new accounting month until the close of business on the day after which the Financial Year-to-Date Management Accounts will be produced. If we do nothing, then all new accounting records will be posted to the new accounting month, wheteher they refer to old month or new month trading. Where a trading voucher is posted in this period and the voucher wholely refers to last month job numbers (or it can be setup to use voucher date), it could be wholely posted to the last accounting month to make the old month more accurate and to avoid having to effect so much journalling later. When the user reaches the end of the day after which the Management Accounts will be produced, he will wish to stop further vouchers (of these types - trading) from being posted back and so he is able to set a software switch to indicate the old month is now closed, even for Extended Accounting Month option usage; in which case all further input goes to the new month. 



The application supports  Overhead Cost Periodisation, where overhead charge vouchers can be keyed in a manner that indicates the overhead charge is to be split evenly over a series of consecutive accounting months, with the possible 'spare penny' being added to the last period of the series. This is invaluable at financial year-end as the task of assessing the overhead accruals and prepayments becomes an automatic bye-product of the normal running of the application.



The application supports  Multi-layer Reallocation of Overhead Costs, where a large number of Reallocation Cost Centres can be setup in a manner that will allow financial postings to be made to them. For each of these reallocation cost centres, the user is able to setup and to maintain a list of Cost Centres each with a percentage, which will be the recipients of a proportion of the original reallocation cost centre charges. The system ensures that 100% of the reallocation cost centre's charges are reallocated. The system supports multi-layered reallocation and protects itself against any infinite loops where reallocated costs are dirtected 'back up the chain'. The way in which the system has been setup means that full reporting (such as but not limited to Trial Balances and P&L reports) is available on both the original reallocation cost centre and each of the cost centres that has it's own direct costs and receives reallocated costs.



The application has extensive facilities in the area of Job costing, where the Boffin/Open stuctured job number and other index-keys that Bishopsgate have arranged mean that the job costing is available at all times from every user client-PC, irrespective of what other system users are doing. Reports are available in summary and in detail, with the lowest detail level shows detail costs that have originated as detail line-entries on supplier invoices. Irrespective of how sales invoices look to the customers, posting these to the financial ledgers can be effected in two ways, summary and detail. Where sales invoices are posted in summary form, they will typically debit the customer and Debtors control and credit 'sales to outsiders'. Where these invoices are posted in detail, the debit side remains the same, but there will be a series of credits, typically to 'Freight sales', 'Handling sales', Shipper's COD etc. The naming of the cost centres and accounts is totally under the control of the user!



Where the user elects to post sales invoices in detail, he is invited to identify incoming trading costs (at voucher level) by type of expense (Freight, Insurance, Handling etc), so that incoming costs are not only registered to their applicable job number, but can be identified to a type-of-expense. Boffin/Open includes a reporting job costing module entitles 'Gross Profit by Type of Expense', which not only provides the detail (individual sales and purchase items) and/or summary (one print line per job, totals of income, expense, gross profit) traditional job costing reports showing gross profit per job by Department\Month\Job Number but a total at the end of the departmental reports showing summaries of income and expense by type of income and expense. This facilities helps the user to determine such things as the fact that he is only makling a profit because he cahrges for postages and petties and not because he charges appropriate Freight Rates.



Where the user wishes to reliably report his financial year-to-date result very quickly after an accounting month-end, it is imperative that some form of Trading Accrual and Closed Cost-file Accounting is implemented. (The gross profit on a closed cost-file cannot be changed, except by general ledger journal, and there is a confidential way that a closed cost file can be re-opened). Without accurate trading accruals the result will not be much more than a guess; where the trading accruals exercise is effected manually, it is a boring task for the operational managers and open to errors. Boffin/Open includes both a closed cost-file job-costing system and a system of enterring Trading Accruals at departmental level and then monitoring these at company level to ensure that the monitoring and maintenance required to accurately use an automated trading accruals system is adhered to. Departmental managers are able to close or accrue and close their own operational cost files at their convenience using the client-PC to show the detail postings fo each successive cost-file. This cost-file closing may be effected in randon job number order and there is no penalty for closing cost-files very early. In the first (seven) days of the new month, one would expect the managers to be closing the remaining open cost files from last month, but there is nothing to stop the managers closing the easier or more straight-forward new month cost files as well. The subject of closed cost-file accounting with Trading Accruals is a subject in it's own right and Bishopsgate have a separate chapter on the topic for serious potential and existing customers. Bishopsgate have customers who have been using the Closed Cost File and Trading Accruals aspects of the system for many years and so we KNOW that it works.



The application provides for all of the normal facilities and reports, including VAT Reporting (the whole system is Value Added Tax (VAT) 'enabled') and there are many 'checks and controls' built into the system to try and prevent users making silly errors. All voucher posting is effected in 'double-entry' format and due to the open-item nature of the application there is a powerful audit trail that can be used. All vouchers are annotated with the system date, time and the logon-id of the person making the financial posting, so that there is an easy way to get at the person who created the journal and get details of what he/she was trying to do. There are many audit reports that interrogate various aspects of the system, right up to a (now famous) reporting program (NLISTALL) which will print the entire general ledger details of one or a consecutive series of accounting months in duplex (uses both sides of the A4 stationer) printing mode or simplex mode if duplex is not supported. There is a French version of this program, that one Boffin/Open user's auditors say fulfills the French National Requirements. 



The general ledger module allows reports to be printed at anytime, irrespective of what the other regular system users are doing. Trial Balances by Cost Centre, Cost Centre Family, Company and/or General Ledger (In general ledger account/cost centre order) account can be produced for nominated costs centres, families of cost centres and for the current and (at least) the prior year, on demand. The same information is available on the calling terminal screen, where summary totals can be (screen cursor) 'exploded' so that the original vouchers that caused the summary total can be viewed. The system includes a powerful Management Report Pack (NTRIALMH); which is run at the appropriate Management Month-end point to produce a full set of reports that cross-cast. This program produces at least the following reports (and more could be added) for a runtime nominated accounting month cut-off:- 




  Trial Balance by accounting month and year-to-date total 

  Profit/Loss 

  Balance sheet 

  Trial Balance audit trail by cost centre/account 

  Debtors list that agrees with Sales control account total 

  Creditors list that agrees with Bought control account total 

  Doubtful debts list 

  Gross Profit Summary report by Branch/Section/Month, one line per section, 
  monthly totals 

  Gross Profit Detail report by Branch/Section/Month, one line per job 
  number 

  Some others, etc.


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Job costing



Boffin/Open is a truly integrated application, where the operational modules can be thought of as being wrapped around the centralised accounting system. The realtime, Sales, Bought and General ledgers are integrated, so that any posting to either the sales or bought ledger is by defintion a posting to the General Ledger. Data can, of course, be input to the General ledger, directly. There is no limit to the number of sources of financial data that can be posted either manually or by application programs to the sales, bought and general ledgers, irrespective of what other regular system users are doing. There is no practical limit to the number of open-item transactions that may be posted to the integrated ledgers; the 'largest' Boffin/Open installation was one in which the integrated ledgers contained more than 1.5 million postings. It is also possible to process more than a single financial year simultaneously, so as to avoid the stress at accounting year-end; in fact the initial part of an accounting year-end is simple the accounting month-end. The system optionally supports Trading Accruals and a closed cost-file method of accrueing and closing operational files. There are two methods of using the Trading Accrual Accounting; Bishopstare call these the Full and Partial Accrual systems; the system systems can be mixed, with one operational department using one method and another using the other method. There is a separate chapter of the Boffin/Open manuals that discusses the Trading Accruals and how they work, which contracting users can access. It is worth highlighting that operational managers now view individual cost files on their client-PCs and make trading accruals directly to the system, as part of closing each cost file.



When the accounting system was originally built-up, the design was effected in conjunction with a large general, freight forwarder who (it was said) had all of the problems of the industry; very large turnover (if one includes Duty/VAT) and 'paper-thin' net profits; such that a very few operational mistakes and the net profit could easily be wiped out. The company also experienced the industry problem of the fact that the aggregate gross profits declared by the operational managers were quite different from the financial equivalent value; the managers always felt they were making more gross profit than the 'bookkeepers' said they were making. The worst part of this dilema was that the company did not know where to look for the discrepancy and so effected internal audits by operating department in an attempt to locate the problem. Enter Bishopsgate backed with a desire to build a powerful integrated accounting system with a customer who was desparate to have a system that would provide compatible 'manual' and financial profit returns; the user was also large enough to have a budget for the task.



Due to the background situation, great care was taken to design a system and lay down some rules that would 'guarantee' a successful outcome. The accounting system had to be able to support all of the tradiional functions as well as offer the basic data for a method of continuous job costing that would highlight the reason(s) for the departmental managers overstating their results. A few of the important basics imposed were. Job numbers are structured and check-digit in nature. All Trading items posted to the financial ledgers carry job numbers and all non-trading postings do not carry job numbers (- hindsight shows there is one exception to this which is very controlled). All accounting transactions were carefully controlled as to the accounting month in which they were posted and and the validity of the job numbers they carried. Foreign currency conversions were monitored on a posting-by-posting so that any 'bad' conversions would be reported and would require correction; foreign currency financial postings stored within the bookkeeping system carry both the orginal currency amount and the local general ledger conversion, so as to provide additional information 'down-stream'. 



In the early stages of the new system, the operational managers were asked to continue reporting in their traditional way, so that their Profit Returns per month could be compared in summary and in detail with those produced by the new system. As time went by, the list of discrepancies were very interesting. Not all are mentioned here, but those listed are real examples. Airline confidential commissions were being taken directly into the company's general ledger and not passed through the manual version of the job costing. Because the airfreight managers often shipped consignm,ents where the only element of gross profit was this confidential commission, so the managers (wanting to show a profit) were including these commissions in their Profit Returns; the outcome was that the commissions were being reported twice. One surface traffic department operated a 'Cartage Book' into which all delivery and collection charges submitted by hauliers would be 'accepted'. Then each actual shipment cost file would be charged for haulier costs an amount 'that the job could stand' and the operators of this cartage book were convinced that the book would show a gross profit at the end of each year! This method came about becuase the department handled some traffic where containers had to 'come back' empty and the cost of the container round-trip was too much for the true cost file to stand. The 'error' only came to light when the person who operated the cartage book went on holiday and he replacement charged the whole round trip cost to an actual cost file, which then showed an unhealthy gross loss and was investigated. It was also proved to the operational staff that the 'cartage book' did not end up in progfit; in fact it had a substantial loss which no one knew how to report. Another area that came under close examination was the issuance of trading cost credit notes. As a consequence, Boffin/Open includes an optional and confidential system of controlling trading charge credit notes. To cut a long story down, the outcome from these early days of job costing where the values were being extracted from the company's controlled financial books' was that the manual reporting was stopped and the Boffin/Open system produced monthly summary and detail reports (from the controlled financial books of the company)that the managers checked and were permitted to query. In the event that the managers could find no errors, then the computer generated reports were the result. 



The outcome of all of this early work is that Boffin/Open has integrated, multi-currency financial ledgers and a very powerful job costing system with optional accrual accounting (sometimes known as closed-file accounting. The key to the whole job costing aspect is that Boffin/Open contains many summary and detail reports that show the Departmental Profit Reports agree with the Financial Profit/Loss of the company for the same period. There is a lot more to tell, but we must leave that for those of you who elect to come with us.


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Boffin/Open housekeeping



The Boffin/Open application is designed to run continuously and so most of the housekeeping routines have been built into each of the Oracle and Boffin/Open products and so there is not a lot that we want you to do. We will start listing items on this website page that occur to us as we help existing customers manage their installation, but do not expect any 'earth shattering' tasks to suddenly appear.


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Staff leaving your employ



We all have the issue of staff leaving our employment. When this happens, you need to consider the Logon and password issued to the person and decide what to do with these. There are three levels of logon that have to be considered, the one in the operating sytem, the one in the Oracle setup and the one inside Boffin/Open. The ones in the Operating System and in the Oracle setup should be removed completely, deleted. The one inside Boffin/Open (PEOPLE) should NOT BE REMOVED or DELETED, but should have all of the Rights removed, change the 'R' or 'W' or 'E' to a space and resave the record. It is important that you do not damage the logon itself or the name of the ex-employee, as there are many accounting and operational records within Boffin/Open that this person created and we still need to be able to determine this, even though they have gone.


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Concatinating the Oracle databse extents 



Like everything in life, there is the right way of doing things and then there is the quick and practical way. When Bishopsgate build a new 'empty' database for a new customer, they do not go and locate all of the Boffin/Open Database SQL table creation scripts; although all of these are nicely listed and documented and in a book. The way that a new user's database tables are created involves exporting one of the Bishopsgate development databases and loading it into a 'spare' machine running under the same operating system as the new user has contracted for. Then a copy of the Boffin/Open master list of required database tables is compared with what we have, to ensure we send you a complete copy. Many tables are emptied, some are recreated to restart sequence numbers and the like. Anyway, the long and short of this tale is that the <amount of hard disk capacity> allocated to each table is a sensible 'starting amount' and not some scientific calculation based on your business volumes; even if you knew them.



After you have been live on the system for perhaps 6 - 8 months, it might be a good idea to export all of your Boffin/Open tables, drop the tables from the Boffin/Open database and then re-import the previously backed up data. This is NOT something that you should do on your own and/or without proper planning, but it is something that should be done to get the best out of your installations. We now await some guru to call and tell us that this is no longer needed under Oracle 9i, because the system takes care of it.


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Customs & Excise



Bishopstrade have been working with the Kenya Revenue Authority on the computerisation of the Customs & Excise department since late 1988. The whole of the Customs & Excise functionality, both front and back office processes are included. The World Trade Organisation, Kyoto accord recommendations such things as smuggling have been included.



A network of several computers, located at all of the larger longroom locations are networked to the Head Office site in Nairobi.



Incoming shipping company manifests are received electronically, decoded from their EDIFACT format and booked automatically into the system to facilitate 'Manifest striking' and shortly, it will be possible for the trade to submit Customs Declarations using electronic lodgement processes utilising EDIFACT message types, such as but not limited to CUSDEC.



Bishopstrade Ltd are editing a description and overview of the application for inclusion here, which will be published as soon as it becomes available. Parties who have particular interest in this area, will probably wish to identify themselves to Bishopstrade Ltd, so that they can be advised when the information becomes available. The intention is to make this application available for the open-systems environment using Linux/Oracle9iA/S and based on all of the open-systems, realtime, continuous operation (H24, D365) software that is already available within Boffin/Open.


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Website Publishing and Hosting



Bishopsgate have developed a very poweful and comprehensive computerised freight system covering all aspects of the freight company's business. All of the users data is stored in an Oracle Relational Databased which means that any data can be retrieved and used with the minimum of time and effort. None of the detail information keyed by the user and his team or the extended information that can be derived from this input is summarised or discarded without the direct input and agreement of the user. The Boffin/Open database contains a great deal of valuable information. Bishopsgate came 'late' to the Internet, missing the boo.com era where the 'trendies' came and lost a great deal of money involving themselves in a business that does not concern them. Pity they did not know that 'it is the second mouse that gets the cheese'. Bishopsgate were inspired by Oracle South Africa to create a new website on which details of the Boffin/Open system could be included, so as to promote future sales. During the creation of the website, itr became apparent that there was great scope in the notion of logically bringing the website technology close to the Boffin/Open database, so as to make the pair indivisible, with the database driving the website, without any intervention or eventhe knowledge of the human operators.



Bishopsgate wanted to write some Oracle PL/SQL software that would run, automatically in the Boffin/Open database on a continuous basis, which would be asleep most of the time (so as to not degrade the application), but would 'awake' and immediately act upon the events as and when they occurred; without human intenvention. These events would usually cause the publication to a specific place in a specific website a new or revised document/advice; where the new or revised Advice was being published in place of an older copy; then the older copy would be discarded, automatically to keep things tidy and the use of hard disk space at a sensible minimum. Bishopsgate was spoiled for choice in that anything within the user's database could be subject to such a trigger and could be the subject to some form of advice. It was decided that the user was best placed to decide which of his customers and business partners would be best served by such advices, so a program was produced to allow the suer to control 'publication' at a high level. It was also decided that data published on behalf of the user would, generally speaking, be published in a confidential manner, where only the user and the particular customer r partner would be able to view and or print the information. This involved two aspects. One was 'website security' which was addressed by Bishopsgate with some Java programming on the website side of things and secondly by some very clever Oracle PL/SQL programming within the Boffin/Open application. 



The Boffin/Open PL/SQL programming was particularly clever as it actually builds a sub-website within the Bishopsgate/Users hosted website for the user's customer/partner's data, that only the user's customer/partner can view and/or download from. The sub-website is built in a fraction of time and within the Boffin/Open environment and then sent to the sub-website where it installed and made available; hence the need for a broadband connection from the users Boffin/Open server to the Internet. 



Bishopsgate have started the repertoire of their 'Web Data Publishing' with the two obvious applications; (1) placing a totally up-to-date customer statement on the sub-website, so that important user-cleints can see their outstanding, aged account detail and (2) the Tracking and Tracing for each cargo booking that the user's customer/partner is currently involved in. It should be noticed here that the visitor to the sub-website does not need to know his waybill number(s) as he does with the courier company systems (DHL etc.) as with the Boffin/Open system, we know who the visitor is and which 'incomplete' (up to POD date plus a margin) shipments his company is involved in!



When the user nominates a customer/agent to join the Active Service List of customers for whome some/all available information is to be published, he/she will setup an initial logo-id and password for the party. Boffin/Open will then validate the uniqueness or otherwise of this information and will construct and send an email to the party, informing him/her of the increased facilities and giving the logon-id and password to be used. From this point forward, the Boffin/Open system will monitor the party's sales account and will keep a totally up-to-date statement on the sub-website; accurate to the last personal account transaction to the account. The system will also monitor all carg bookings in all operational suites (Air exports, Air imports, surface exports, surface imports etc) checking the Tracking and Tracing updates being issued within the system. Where such an update affects any consignment within which the customer/agent party is involved (in any capacity), then a new/revised Tracking Advice will be issued to the applicable place on the sub-website for the shipment. Notice that where a shipment involves more than one Active Service List account, the Tracking & Tracing update will update the Tracking of each individual party; so there could be several parties informed by a single tracking record update being applied to a shipment booking (Shipper, Payer, 1st Intermediate Agent, 2nd Intermediate Agent, Destination Agent). 



How is this all implemented? Bishopsgate have setup a Master Website, in fact the one you are now viewing. Each participating Boffin/Open user will obtain his own Broadband link with the Internet, so as to be able to make as many calls to the Internet as required without paying 'per phonecall'. Each participating Boffin/Open user will either obtain their own Domain Name or will commission Bishopsgate to do this for them. Once the user has one or more Domain Names, a minimal web-hosting agreement is setup with the same Internet Service Provider (ISP) as is used by Bishopsgate. Bishopsgate arrange to have a Website Alias setup, which re-directs all visitors to the Boffin/Open users website re-directed to a sub-website within the Bishopsgate website; all of which is totally seamless and not apparent to the website visitors. Bishopsgate will bring the Boffin/Openinstallation up to Boffin/Open Release 09.2003.02 or later, which includes all of the normal facilities but is known to contain all of the updated background comonents that support these facilities. he user will then add one program to his Boffin/Open menus, which is where he/she is able to setup the Boffin/Open Link to Website parameters and to nominate customers to the Active Service List. The user will then nominate in random order and 'as and when he requires' customer and agent accounts for which the facilities are required to be used. This will trigger the system into life. From time-to-time, Bishopsgate will notify contracting parties of additional 'Web Data Publishing features'; such as Copy Invoices, Proofs-of-Delivery copies (PODs) and Cash-on Delivery notifications (CODs). 



Notice: Bishopsgate have setup the infrastructure for this Web Data Publication software and users who wish to make use of it will need to host a Domain Name with Bishopsgate's ISP (amounting to currently perhaps US$100 for two year period). All of the various but relatively inexpensive setup costs will be payable by the user (perhaps US$200). Provision of a broadband telephone link to the internet (such as ADSL) will be paid by the user. There will be a monthly charge made for the website facilities, disk space and access (perhaps US$100), again not much cost here. Bishopsgate will also make a monthly charge for hosting the website and looking after the user's interests (currently Statements (US$200) and Tracking & Tracing (US$200)).


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Technology sales



In the development of the Boffin/Open product, Bishopsgate have been called upon to develop quite a lot of technology that would be useful to any third party involved in software development, even if that development is not associated with the Freight and/or Transportation industry. Bishopsgate, or their assign, not being the users are the clear Copyright holders of all of the Boffin/Open software including all associated Intellectual Property Rights.



In a reasonably controlled manner, Bishopsgate are willing to sell some of these technologies to any third party who might be interested in saving themselves a lot of time and expense by taking the technology as at the state to which Bishopsgate have developed it and then continuing their own development. For each 'technology demonstrator' that the third party might wish to purchase, their would be an single US$ price for which Bishopsgate would supply a working paper, a source deck and if possible a runtime Form and/or Report. In the case where the unit includes or is solely a dataset, then this can be supplied in one of many ways; with the particular supply-method being agreed with individual customers.



Listed below, Bishopsgate intend to add summaries of the various technologies that might be of interest to third parties who are probably working in the software development industry. Where a third party wishes to have details of any one or more of these 'technology demonstrators', contact should be made with Derek May by email at btlsa@global.co.za in the initial instance, providing full name and address, contact details (telephone, Facsimile, email, website) and details of the interesting item(s).



To come, soon



Email us


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User support



Welcome to the embryo user-support page; which was first created on the 21-APR-2003. If you are a contracting customer with a valid support contract, we invite you to call Derek May on his South African mobile telephone, the number of which is (+27)-82-851-8997 or on his email service at btlsa@global.co.za. South Africa is generally one hour ahead of London and DMay is a 'morning person'; rising at about 05:00 South African local time - usually to a fabulous African sunrise. Although he may be grumpy in the middle of the night, give him a moment to wake up and we are sure that he will get things moving to help you in your difficulties.



It is our intention that we will gently expand this website page in light of what help our customers actually ask for; not many customers call us, these days.


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Help desk



Welcome to the embryo Helpdesk page; which was first created on the 21-APR-2003. If you are a contracting customer with a valid support contract, we invite you to call Derek May on his South African mobile telephone, the number of which is (+27)-82-851-8997 or on his email service at btlsa@global.co.za. South Africa is generally one hour ahead of London and DMay is a 'morning person'; rising at about 05:00 South African local time - usually to a fabulous African sunrise. Although he may be grumpy in the middle of the night, give him a moment to wake up and we are sure that he will get things moving to help you in your difficulties.



It is our intention that we will gently expand this website page in light of what help our customers actually ask for.


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Licenses and pricing



The second quarter of 2003 finds Bishopsgate at the start of a new era. The Boffin/Open integrated frieght system has been re-written from the original ANSI COBOL into Oracle PL/SQL and Reports for Oracle 9i in a manner that makes the product available over a very wide range of hardware and operating systems. The application runs to-day in servers running under SUSE Linux 8.0 and Microsoft Windows (NT/2000 Servers) and has run (and probably still would run) under Sco Open-Server; it is likely to run under Red Hat Linux to reflect the Oracle route forward. Oracle ahve recently anounced their 'Unbreakable Linux Oracle 9i' event and Bishopsgate finds itself ahead of the market (for once). The setup and development of this website is progressing at a fast arte and everything shown on the website, including Bishopsgate's Licenses, Prices and Terms of Trade are Subject to Change without notice and any offers made or implied here are Subject to Contract.


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The Boffin/Open Freight software



The Boffin/Open software is a single, large collection of fourth generation Oracle PL/SQL Forms (programs), Reports and SQL scripts compatible with Oracle 9i database but using Client/Server architecture as 100% supported by Oracle Forms 6i and Reports 6i. The Software is known to run in both thin-client and fat-client (sometimes called Rich-Clients) modes without application software change. The software is known to be compatible with an installation built on SUSE Linux 8.0 and Oracle 9i for Linux server(s) and Microsoft Windows (95,98,XP,2000,Mil etc) equipped client-PCs. The software is known to be compatible with an installation built on Microsoft NT/2000 Server and Oracle 9i for Windows server(s) and Microsoft Windows equipped Client-PCs without application software change. Notice that the same runtime application program library is supplied to both Linux and Windows installations. Where warranted, Boffin/Open can be demonstrated running in each of these environments, immediately. In this iteration of the application, Bishopsgate have discarded all large servers and desktop computers and have built servers and clients on (logically) large Laptop computers, so that these may be taken at a moments notice (well say 24 hours) to any place in the workd for exhibitions and demonstrations.


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Continuous development



Quoting the late and great Dr. Wang of Wang Laboratories Incorporated, computer software is not invented, it evolves. Boffin/Open is in a state of continuous correction, development and expansion. The following price and license information relates to the Boffin/Open application software excluding the very large Customs & Excise application.


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Data migration from legacy systems being replaced 



It will be very common for new Boffin/Open installations to replace legacy computer installations and for there to be a requirement to download the user's data from the user's legacy system and uploaded into the Boffin/Open Oracle database. Bishopsgate have extensive experience in this field and will usually be happy to provide a quotation to the user for this specialist once-off service. It follows that no one, including Bishopsgate, would be able to download the data from any legacy system and upload it in any new system unless detailed knowledge is available on the way the data was organised and and stored and any coding conventions worked. All such data migration work effected by Bishopsgate Computer Services Limited is outside the scope of their standard supply agreement and any the software support and maintenance agreement and is subject to written quotation and written acceptance before any work can be addressed.


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Source code, Modifications and Copyright 



Bishopsgate has all of the program source code for the entire system, which puts them in a position where all sensible changes and developments can be considered and usually implemented. User inspired changes are welcome and can be accomodated on a chargeable basis. Where a user requested change is adopted, this will usually be effected on a chargable basis and the Copyright of the New or Amended software will be vested in Bishopstrade or it's assign, not being the user. When a user requests a change for which the user wishes to maintain the Copyright, Bishopsgate reserves the right to refuse to effect the programming on the basis that it might impinge on the clean Copyright that alread exists and secondly where such software is produced, then the charge will reflect the user's wish to retain the Copyright. There is no aspect of the existing Boffin/Open application, as at 1st April 2003 where Bishopstrade Limited or it's assign is not the Copyright owner.



The normal way of licensing the Boffin/Open application or part therof, is for Bishopsgate Computer Services to issue directly a Runtime License in Perpetuity to the end-user; even if the end user business was initially conducted through an authorised dealer. All such licenses start from the Bishopsgate Standard License Agreement, which is subject to change without notice but can be updated, expanded and/or changed as a result of individual negotiations. Subject to contract, the Licensee is licensed to use the application or parts therof in named installation(s) and for a maximum number of concurrent-users and/or devices license for his own use and not as a bureau service to other companies in server computers with four or less processors. There is a minimum number of concurrent-users/devices in any given license of five which falls in line with the minimum imposed by Oracle for their runtime sub-licenses. Bishopsgate Computer Services Limited is a member of the Oracle Partner Network with an Oracle Distribution Agreement in place, and, as such, is able to sell Oracle runtime sub-licenses in support of Boffin/Open licenses.


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Two ways of paying for the Boffin/Open lruntime license



The first method is one where an single license 
fee is paid at the outset for which the user is able to use the runtime 
Oracle and Boffin/Open software in perpetuity without further payment 
but only on the server initially identified and only for the maximum number 
of licensed concurrent-users/devices agreed at the outset and with four 
or less processors in the server. If the server is upgraded with additional 
memory and/or other peripherals, but not replaced, there is no license 
fee implication. In the event that the server is exchanged, the Oracle 
and Bishopsgate license(s) immediately expire. The Bishopsgate License 
fee does not include a component for the applicable perpetual Oracle runtime 
license. All requested changes and/or additions to the Boffin/Open 
software are chargable at the then-current daily programming rate for 
each man-day or part therof and are subject to written quotation and written 
acceptance of the quotation. No chargable work can be effected for any 
customers who have outstanding account balances with Bishopsgate Computer 
Services Limited. The current rate for this method of license payment 
for the complete application is US$4,500.00.



The second method is one where Bishopsgate charge, 
at their then current daily rate, to cover the initial installation, commissioning 
and training; the amount of which is controlled by the client. From the 
end of the month in which the Boffin/Open application software was delivered 
by Bishopsgate to the site, a monthly rental charge is levied, per concurrent-user/device, 
in advance for use of the runtime Oracle RDBMS and necessary Oracle runtime 
products and the agreed Boffin/Open runtime application software. Where 
the user increases the number of licensed concurrent-users/devices, the 
monthly, in advance rental charges will be increased pro-rata from the 
end of the month in which the increased number of concurrent-users/devices 
was implemented. The Bishopsgate License fee does not include a component 
for the Oracle runtime licenses. All requested changes and/or additions 
to the Boffin/Open software are chargable at the then-current daily programming 
rate for each day or part therof and are subject to written quotation 
and written acceptance of the quotation. No chargable work can be effected 
for any customers who have outstanding account balances with Bishopsgate 
Computer Services Limited. There is a minimum number of 5 license seats 
that can be supplied under this method, in line with Oracle's licensing 
policy. The current rate for this method of license payment for the complete 
application is US$187.50 per concurrent-user/device per month; 
being one twenty-fourth of the License Fee; which does not stop after 
24 months, but continues indefinately.


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Annual software support and maintenance 



Optionally, the user is able to enter into a separate, 
annual Software Support and Maintenace Agreement which runs for twelve 
months at a time, from the Boffin/Open software Delivery Date to 
the site and ending at the end of the then-current year. If an Annual 
Software Support and Maintenance Agreement is to be put in place, this 
must be at the outset of the Supply Agreement and cannot be setup later; 
unless all past payments starting from the end of the month of Boffin/Open 
software delivery are paid as a single payment. The annual fee is charged 
in advance, at a rate of 22% of the Initial License fee. Where 
this annual software support and maintenance agreement is in place, Bishopsgate 
will make available a completely new replacement runtime program directoryt, 
four times per year, which can be downloaded from the Bishopsgate Development 
Centre website; after the user has been supplied with a logon and password 
to the confidential area of the website.


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Billing currency and Payment Terms



Bishopsgate will invoice customers in United States 
dollars and require payment of the that currency within 30 days of invoice 
date. Customers are responsible for any banking charges associated with 
the payment of Bishopsgate charges. Customers are encouraged to make payments 
by bank transfer quoting the Bishopsgate invoice number as the payment 
reference. Customers who are behind in their payments will need to bring 
their payment plan up-to-date before requesting any additional services. 
Customers on rental terms who fall more than two months overdue (three 
months from invoice date) will cause the rental system to cease operation 
without damaging the user's data, automatically, in which case the rental 
system can be re-started by full payment of the overdue amount; in which 
case the re-start of the system will have to wait until Bishopsgate have 
'cleared funds'. Bishopsgate are willing to negotiate with new customers 
regarding the currency of payment where it can be seen to that paying 
in United States dollars would be difficult.


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Bishopsgate daily rate



The current rate for a man-day is US$750.00 plus 
any Value Added Tax and/or similar taxes and/or duties that are correctly 
chargeable, which will be separately shown on the Bishopsgate invoice. 
Any direct expenses in travel and/or subsistance that are necessary will 
be charged at cost to the user. Where a customer commissions Bishopsgate 
to produce some New or Amended application software, Bishopsgate will 
assess the work and include the expected number of man-days to be charged 
in the written quotation. It is appreciated that the customer has no real 
way of checking the number of days used, but Bishopsgate undertake to 
be reasonable in their estimates and control. Bishopsgate are not in 
the business of supplying technical people for projects; so this is 
reflected in the rate. A man-day comprises 7 hours which equates to a 
day starting at 09:00 and ending at 17:00 with a one hour lunch break. 
Customers should be aware that Bishopsgate staff, along with very many 
software engineers, often work very long hours. Where a Bishopsgate operative 
works longer than seven hours per day, billing for that day will vary, 
pro-rata on the seven hour day.


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Cost of building a Rich/FAT Client-PC 



Desktop and Laptop computers of suitable configuration 
can be used as either Thin or Rich/Fat Client-PCs. Bishopsgate publish 
the recommended minimum configuration for both Boffin/Open Oracle servers 
and Client-PCs and instructions for contracting customers who wish to 
build their own systems 'from scratch'. Where Bishopsgate are asked to 
build a Client-PC, the user will normally supply the machine, with the 
applicable operating system already installed and working, to a Bishopsgate 
office or Bishopsgate will be at the customer's site effecting other work. 
The customer can elect to pay Bishopsgate for building Client-PCs using 
the Bishopsgate then-current man-day rate for time and materials, described 
above or pay a fixed charge of US$400 or US$600 per client-PC. The charge 
of US$400 is applicable where the Client-PC is already runnning under 
the desired operating system and the charge of US$600 is applicable where 
a change of operating system is involved; in which case the customer is 
expected to supply the new operating system software with applicable license(s). 
Where the user wishes to have several Client-PCs built, it will be less 
expensive for the customer to pay the Bishopsgate man-day rate plus direct 
expenses, at cost.


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Cost of building a Boffin/Open Oracle Server 



Desktop and Laptop computers and larger machines of 
suitable configuration can be used as Boffin/Open Oracle servers. Bishopsgate 
publish the recommended minimum configuration for Boffin/Open Oracle servers 
and instructions for contracting customers who wish to build their own 
systems 'from scratch'. Where Bishopsgate are asked to build a Boffin/Open 
Oracle Server, the user will normally supply the machine, with the applicable 
operating system already installed and working, to a Bishopsgate office 
or Bishopsgate will be at the customer's site effecting other work. The 
customer can elect to pay Bishopsgate for building a server using the 
Bishopsgate then-current man-day charge rate for time and materials, described 
above or pay a fixed charge of US$2,500 per server plus any direct expenses, 
at cost. Building a Boffin/Open server includes all necessary installation 
actions to get the operating system, Oracle and Boffin/Open running well, 
it does NOT include installing other third-party software products. Where 
the customer wishes Bishopsgate to install other third-party software 
products, this work will be the subject to a written quotation and written 
acceptance.


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Source licenses



The Boffin/Open design can be traced back to 1975, five 
years after Bishopsgate Computer Services Limited was first formed. The 
current Boffin/Open product is therefore the result of about 28 years 
of design and development; the source code of the product is the 'jewel 
in the crown' of our company and it may be taken that we take great care 
of our possession.



Where a user wishes to take a copy of the latest Bofin/Open 
product and use it as his own 'starting point' for an in-house system, 
this is quite reasonable and can be accommodated but there will be a substantial 
up-front, single payment charge for the source license, documentation 
and hand-over period.



The source license agreement will not permit anyone 
to take a source license and then become a competitor to Bishopstrade 
Limited. Where a third party takes a Source License Agreement, he will 
need to demonstrate that he already holds an appropriate Oracle Development 
License or obtain such a license from Bishopsgate, after which time a 
Laptop computer will be built for the licensee on which all of the software 
development tools, source code and datatables will be setup and ready 
for use. From this laptop computer the licensee will be able to do any 
technical work that Bishopsgate would be able to do. Payment for Source 
Code Licenses is all made before the Source Code License material is handed-over. 
Only Bishopstrade Limited is able to issue Source Code Licenses.


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Worldwide partners



Bishopsgate are the sole developers of Boffin/Open and enjoy this function. Traditionally, Bishopsgate has not advertised it's software products but has relied upon 'word of mouth'. The time has come (the walrus said, to speak of many things....) when the Boffin/Open product is becoming quite refined and even being documented(!) and it is necessary to make the freight community around the world aware of it and it's contents. To fulfil this, Bishopsgate have built this website and are appointing a few very competent dealers around the world.



Dealers will promote and support the Boffin/Open software and users in their region, identifying and qualifying potential users on a non-exclusive basis and supporting the existing customer base with knowledge and practical support.



Bishopsgate is interested in additional dealers/partners who can demonstrate that they have the technical expertise, background and commercial skills necessary to form a successful relationship which is to the benefit of all concerned, including users, partners, Oracle and Bishopsgate.



Bishopsgate wants to have a successful, long-term relationship with it's partner dealers and so will endeavour to setup the Dealer Agreements in a correct and carefully thought through manner. To help in this task, a new Standard Dealer Agreement has been drawn-up by a very long established firm of Copyright, Patent and Trademark Attorneys located in Joahnnesburg, South Africa.



The Boffin/Open application is a large system and no body expects the partner dealers to have as much product knowledge as the designers, but it is expected and hopes that the dealer's knowledge will dramatically increase with time. Bishopsgate expects to be involved in pre-sales technical discussions relating to all sales-leads, so that all future installations will have a good foundation. Bishopsgate will be in direct contact with all end-users using email as the first method of contact for both correspondence and the supply of new and/or amended software.



All Boffin/Open Supply contracts and Softwar Support & Maintenance Contracts will be between Bishopsgate and the end-users, with the agreement of the authorised dealers. Customers will be able to obtain help and assistance from the dealers as well as from Bishopsgate, so as to provide both local practical help and remote high-product-knowledge help and technical assistance. The way in which Bishopsgate have setup their Dealer Agreements, it is in everybody's interest to make the user's Boffin/Open installation a success.


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Grant Systems
72 Hammersmith Road
London W14 8TH
England
Contact:
David Naber
Email:
dnaber@grantsys.co.uk
Office:
(+44)-207-559-9778
Website:
www.grantsys.co.uk


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Neutrix Logistic Systems (Pty) Ltd
12 Kareeberg Place
Albertsdal, Alberton
South Africa
Contact:
Vernon Breet
Email:
neutrix@pixie.co.za
Office:
(+27)-11-900-4398
Facsimile:
(+27)-11-900-1960


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Supply Agreement



The hyperlink below, provides access to a draft Boffin/Open Supply Agreement, which is subject to change without notice but it does represent a reasonable starting point for any new customer negotiation. It is Bishopsgate's intention to continually update and expand this draft, so as to address issues that arise in the normal course of business. 



Bishopsgate are not in the practice of selling hardware. Occassionally, Bishopsgate have to supply hardware as the customer insists on a turnkey solution, where everything that is required is supplied by Bishopsgate. In the case where Bishopsgate are forced into the commercial position of having to supply hardware, this will not be effected at any discounted hardware prices. Typically, new customers will have personal computers within their organisation, which undoubtably can be upgraded to suit the requirements of Boffin/Open client-PCs. Old personal computers should be discarded and given to the local schools. Upgrading existing personal computers for use with Boffin/Open is not normally an expensive exercise. Bishopsgate are happy to provide verbal help to new customers in deciding what hardware upgrade(s) should be installed. 



Bishopsgate are not in the business of selling or installing Operating System software. The latest recommendation for the server operating system is (generic) Linux, which is available from many sources and is open-software. Bishopsgate run SUSE Linux 8.0 in their development shop, which runs very well, is trouble free and cost about US$120 to purchase for a complete copy. There are no restrictions of the number of concurrent users imposed with this Linux license. Installing Linux can be 'fiddly' although not hard and Bishopsgate are happy to provide a copoy of their internal SUSE Linux Server setup procedures to new customers. It should be emphasised that the Oracle Corporation have close commercial connections with Red Hat Linux and so this would be the preferred Linux 'flavour' for the future. Boffin/Open servers can also be supplied for use with LAN Servers running under Microsoft Windows 2000 etc. 



Bishopsgate are part of the Oracle Partner Network (OPN) and under this scheme hold a Distributor Agreement. Under this program, Bishopsgate are encouraged to make their Boffin/Open application available with Oracle RDBMS and other Oracle products. Bishopsgate are in the business of supplying Oracle products with Boffin/Open and would expect new customers to purchase their required Oracle products from Bishopsgate at normal retail prices and terms. Where a new Boffin/Open customer already enjoys an appropriate Orcale license, then Bishopsgate are very happy that Oracle products are obtained by the new customer from Oracle directly or from an approved Oracle dealer. It should be highlighted that where the new user elects to obtain Oracle products from a party other than Bishopsgate, Bishopsgate would not expect to get involved in the supply, installation, commissioning, support or development of the Oracle aspect of the installation. 



Bishopsgate are not normally in the business of selling third party software. There are third party software products available in the marketplace, which Bishopsgate use in their development centre, which are often free and always useful; examples would be Samba and Acrobat reader. Where the new user would benefit from obtaining such products, Bishopsgate are happy to inform the new user about the products and where they may be obtained, leaving it up to the new user to obtain legal copies for their own use. If Bishopsgate are asked to obtain, install, commission and integrate such products, then this will be treated as a chargeable exercise at the then-current daily rate.


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Maintenance agreements



The hyperlink below, provides access to a draft Boffin/Open Software Support & Maintenance Agreement, which is subject to change without notice but it does represent a reasonable starting point for any new customer negotiation. It is Bishopsgate's intention to continually update and expand this draft, so as to address issues that arise in the normal course of business. 



In respect of their own Boffin/Open Software Support & Maintenance charges, Bishopsgate follow the industry standards. Software support and maintenance years are exactly aligned to calendar years. Where a user installs the system in the middle of a year, a pro-rata charge will be made for the period to the first calendar year end. There are no discounts available for Software Support & Maintenance; even if a discount was given on the Initial License fee, the annual software suport and maintenance charges are based on the non-discounted published initial license fees. The user is able to opt out of software support and maintenance totally and simply use what is delivered, preferring not to have updates or access to the helpdesk; in this case the software license allows the user to use the licensed software, in perpetuity on the system for which it was supplied. Alternatively, the user can opt out of having the updates but contract for the Helpdesk facilities at the 5% rate. Alternatively, the user can opt out of having the Helpdesk but contract for the Updates facilities at the 17% rate. The message is clear, the user can opt for the level of support he requires, but if he wishes to have either of both of the available facilities, then these have to be paid for; Software Development and Support use expensive people and expensive people have to be paid. 



Bishopsgate (1) charge 22% annually in advance, (2) Split the annual software support and maintenance charge into two components, one for the software updates (17%) and one for a helpdesk facility (5%) (3) base their first year annual charge on the amount the user paid as a License fee for products supplied and (4) base second and subsequent annual software support Updates charge on the aggregate of the previous year's Update charge plus the 17% of the aggregate. 



For example, and ignoring VAT/Sales Tax, if a software license was originally charged as US$100, the first year software support and maintenance charge would be US$22 split US$17 for Updates and US$5 for helpdesk facilities. In the second year the charge would be still 22% but (17% of (US$100 plus US$17) for Updates) and (5% of (US$100 plus US$5)) for Helpdesk. The theory behind this is that the updates are continuously making the system larger and so more support is being provided. 



Where a user takes software support and then either stops for a period or defaults on payment, the following methid applies. The break in support cannot be less than 6 months. When support is resummed, a charge of 150% of what the support charges would have been for the intervening period is made before the user is brought back up to date, by Bishopsgate supplying a then-current release of the software that the user had contracted for; which will contain updates etc that have been missed. When the user re-starts the software supprt and maintenance, it will be necessary for a new contact to be entered into, which may not be the same as the old one, but will be the then-current software support and maintenance offering; which of course could be at a higher rate than 22%. 



Bishopsgate are not in the hardware maintenance business and leave this issue to the Boffin/Open users. It goes without saying that Bishopsgate would recommend that all users take out regular hardware maintenance contracts to cover at least the essential components of their installations such as server, important printers and maybe a few client-PCs. Bishopsgate have taken a different approach for themselves, in that they have no maintenance agreement, preferring to purchase good equipment, look after it and underwrite the risk of problems, themselves. Generally this approach has served Bishopsgate well but once in a while, we get irritating faults at which time a locally based hardware engineer is located and asked to fix the problem. This, you will say is Okay for Bishopsgate as they can afford to be down for a day or two (very) occassionally without hurting their business too much. Bishopsgate would argue that this is not really true, but the company 'takes the point' and purchases some hardware that provides some redundancy into the system. This approach can be taken by customers but they will need to think the subject through for themselves. It is worth suggesting that the annual hardware fee be multiplied by (perhaps) four and then add interest to see what the 'capitalisation' value of the hardware maintenance will be from which a 'budget' for redundant hardware could be calculated. 



Bishopsgate are not in the Operating System business and consciously do not contract for support services for any operating systems that they use, preferring to learn as much as possible from people and companies in the same businesss as themselves and then organising to download software patches as they occur and/or as something new does not work as expected. 



Bishopsgate use a few third party software products but in no cases is any software support and maintenance paid for these items. When the items are included within the Bishopsgate normal business method, they are used and expected to work. The only time that such items need to be re-assessed is perhaps after a major operating system upgrade, when a new version will need to be obtained; this usually being effected as a download from the Internet. Bishopsgate would suggest that their users do the same. 



In terms of Oracle RDBMS, Bishopsgate do not contract for continuing software support and maintenance for themselves; preferring to rebuild their development systems occassionally with the then-latest releases of Oracle obtained under the Partner Program become available. In the case of Boffin/Open users, the choice is theirs but the following points are worth noting. Where Bishopsgate license Boffin/Open to a new customer who had no previous Oracle license, Bishopsgate is responsible for first line support for those Oracle products that it supplied. Because Bishopsgate are so specialised, they feel that they can fix any problems in the user's Oracle installation from the knowledge they already have. Where a user wishes to contract with Oracle software support and maintenance, this costs about 17% of the ex-VAT aggregate retail price of the Oracle runtime License(s) that have been contracted for and this amount is paid annually, in advance. Where end-users contract for Oracle software support and maintenance, they will generally be entitled to receive a copy of each new Oracle release, as it becomes available. If such a user then wished to install such a new release (e.g. Oracle 8i to Oracle 9i), in practice, Bishopsgate would need to effect the exercise, which would be a chargeable item, charged at the then-current daily rate.


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Modifications



In the Bishopsgate development centre software corrections, developments, tuning and ex are processed through a single control stream which is termed "Developments". The documents that you are about to examine therefore show a mixed list of these categories arranged in ascending chronological order by request date. The engineering associated with each item is not necessarily effected in the same order as the requested items are arranged. Immediately a requested item passes trough the development cetnre it will be removed from the requests manual and deposited in the completed manual with comment indicating what software changes and additions were required, including application program names. It is intended that contracting users will then be able to download and install the nesecceray software to update their own installations, more later. The two revised manuals will be updated on the website as at the end of each working day.


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Boffin/Open modifications for release 10: outstanding 


Boffin/Open modifications for release 10: completed



Release 10 represents Bishopsgate's major development to "Closely Couple" the web site and the Boffin/Open Oracle database application.


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Boffin/Open modifications for releases earlier than 10: outstanding 


Boffin/Open modifications for releases earlier than 10: completed


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01-APR-2003 Tue 09:30 JNB DJM


Subject - Availability of Boffin/Open source code



All of the Boffin/Open application software has been written by Bishopsgate or by sister companies of Bishopsgate who are all owned by the same single beneficial shareholder. Bishopsgate have access to all of the source code of the application and are the only people who have that access. No source license(s) for all of part of the Boffin/Open product have been supplied to anyone. Source licensing will be considered, where this is of interest to any user.


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01-APR-2003 Tue 09:40 JNB DJM


Subject - Modifications and improvements for users



Bishopsgate do undertake software modifications and the writing of new application programs for users. New Software is considered to be application software which did not exist at the time a new user contracted for all or any part of Boffin/Open but was recognised as being needed. Additional Software is considered to be Boffin/Open software that has been written since a new user contracted for all of part of the Boffin/Open system. In all cases, Bishopsgate retain clear and absolute ownership and Copyright of the software and the price charged reflects this. Where a user wishes to have Additional Software written and wishes to own the Copyright of that software, then this must be disclosed at the time of requesting the Additional Software. Bishopsgate retain the right to avoid decline the commission under this condition, where this would or might inhibit their own expected development. In the event that Bishopsgate agree to produce such user-copyrighted software, then the price will be significantly greater than it would otherwise be.


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09-APR-2003 Wed 10:00 LON DJM


Subject - Oracle's 'Unbreakable Linux event'



Bishopsgate have been invited to take part in Oracle Corporation's 'Unbreakable Linux Event' which has just been announced in London, England to-day. Oracle Corporation feel that so much progress has been made with Linux over the last year or so, that the operating system represents a significant step forward and combined with Oracle's products will be a real success. Bishopsgate have already ported the whole of their Boffin/Open Integrated Freight System to Linux with Oracle 9i database and have this running and available for demonstration and delivery; it is FAST.


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09-APR-2003 Wed 13:00 JNB DJM


Subject - Is there any 3GL program code used within the application?



There is no Third Generation Programming Language (3GL) code within the Boffin/Open application, whatsoever. All application programs/forms are written in Oracle PL/SQL using Forms 6i and all reports are written in Oracle Reports 6i. The reason why the software is using Oracle Forms and Reports 6i with an Oracle 9i database is that the application is currently running under Client/Server architecture. All database tables are created with their own specific SQL script, within which all of the required attributes of the table are addressed, index keys, size, compression, sequence numbers etc. All website programming is effected in HTML with Java applets. Bishopsgate are interested in PERL for Oracle but this has not yet been used.


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10-APR-2003 Thu 08:55 JNB DJM


Subject - Does the system support Rich and Thin clients?



Yes. Bishopsgate recommend Rich/FAT Clients, as the application programs then run within the client's processor, freeing up the server(s) and making the overall system faster for all users. There is no reason why any given installation should not support Rich and Thin Clients simultaniously. Bishopsgate look forward to implementing Oracle 9iA/S, so that remote thin clients can be supported over the Internet, using the web browser to access the application.


