Bentonville BASE2 Software

2010 Pricing Reduction for Retrieve Report Manager

2010-05-16T15:17:00.001-05:00

In an effort to share the success of BASE2 Software with our customers over these past 3 years, we are pleased to announce new reduced pricing for Retrieve Report Manager for 2010. All prices have been reduced by 20%!

New 2010 Pricing

Retrieve Standard
Retrieve 1.x single PC software license (1 copies) : MSRP $1,295
Retrieve 1.x single PC software license (2-4 copies) : MSRP $1,195
Retrieve 1.x single PC software license (5-9 copies) : MSRP $1,095
Retrieve 1.x single PC software license (10+ copies) : MSRP $795

Retrieve Enterprise
Retrieve 1.x single PC software license (1 PC, 2 Users) : MSRP $2,595
Retrieve 1.x single PC software license (1 PC, 3 Users) : MSRP $2,795
Retrieve 1.x single PC software license (1 PC, 5 Users) : MSRP $3,000
Retrieve 1.x single PC software license (1 PC, 10 Users) : MSRP $3,395

Retrieve Yearly Maintenance Fees (due after initial 12 months)
Yearly maintenance is $395/year for Retrieve Standard and $595/year for Retrieve Enterprise.

All pricing is per machine. A license is valid for one machine only.

Retrieve 1.4.9 Released To Public

2010-05-16T15:09:00.003-05:00

We are pleased to announce that Retrieve 1.4.9 has been released to the public.

New features for the new release include:

Remove print_titles from Retail Link generated XLS files. This forces Excel 2007 compatibility so users will no longer be prompted to rename the print range when opening these files.
Submit Reports to server via script. Power users can now use Retrieve Report Manager to submit reports for execution on Retail Link on their own schedule.
Technical updates and code clean-up.

Windows 7 First Impressions

2009-11-09T20:36:00.003-06:00

I have been running Windows 7 Professional on my new PC for a few weeks now. I haven't spent much hands on time with the beta so the experience was new for me. Here are a few of my observations which for the most part mirror the numerous "professional" reviews.

Windows Task Bar
Windows Aero eye candy
Performance
99% application / driver compatibility
Folder Navigation

The Jury is still out on if I like the "Libraries" concept. This may be due to the fact that I have changed the default locations of the standard libraries to a separate hard drive. The main problem is that Win 7 Library un-aware applications will still default their save paths to the old My Documents folder resulting having 2 variations of My Documents which as you can imagine is more difficult to manage and keep track of. The Libraries like a good idea in theory but in practice they are not working as I would like them to.

Application compatibility is an issue for a few of my games so I'm waiting on new video drivers which will hopefully solve the issue in the near future.

Geoff

Must Have Free Windows Apps

2009-03-14T16:44:00.004-05:00

The following list of free applications are my must-have Windows Apps.

Notepad replacement

NoteTab Lite (www.notetab.com)

Full featured text editor.

Paint replacement

Paint.Net (www.getpaint.net)

Simply the best free alternative to Photoshop.

Web Browsers

1st Choice

Firefox (www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox)

Fast browser and huge variety of plug-ins available (hint: ad-block)

2nd Choice

Google Chrome (www.google.com/chrome)

Very fast browser & simple interface

Image Viewer / Organizer

Picasa 3 (picasa.google.com)

Easy photo management and basic tune-up correction.

FTP Client

FileZilla (filezilla-project.org)

Easy to use, just works.

Programming IDE

Microsoft Visual Studio Express Editions (www.microsoft.com/express)

Perfect for the hobbiest programmer. Vast community support.

There are plenty of others but I use the above almost daily.

Easy 13 Digit UPC Fields in Excel Tip

2009-02-17T17:30:00.001-06:00

Over the years I have seen and used several methods to format a UPC field in Excel with leading zeros, forcing it to use 13 characters. More recently, I have always used the =TEXT(A1,"0000000000000") formula next to a column of UPCs and then copy/paste special values over the original data.

However just the other day I read about the easiest formatting method I have yet to witness for formatting 13 digit UPC fields (or other similar fields) with leading zeros. I can't take credit for the following tip but it is well worth sharing and making sure everyone is aware of it.

1) Select the entire column of UPCs
2) CTRL-1 to bring up Format Cells dialog
3) Select "Custom" under Category on the Number tab. (Custom Number Format)
4) In the "Type:" field, change from General to 13 zeros: 0000000000000
5) Done

UPDATE 2/20/09
Well it appears that this is not the be-all-end-all solution that I was hoping for.
When you change the cell formatting as mentioned above, that is all you are doing, changing the format of how Excel displays the number with-in the cell. So if you try to use VLOOKUP or another similar reference function on these UPC numbers, it will fail to find the reference if one cell range is text and the other is a number, despite both ranges being formatted to appear the same.

So... I plan to still use my =text(A1,"0000000000000") copy/paste values as the primary method for saving 0 leading UPCs in a column.

Bottom line, if you just need your UPCs to be formatted as a leading zero cell, by all means, use the custom format trick. Just be aware that you won't be able to easy reference the cell value as a zero lead UPC...

Geoff

Retrieve Report Manager 1.4.8 Released

2009-02-15T20:42:00.003-06:00

We are pleased to announce that Retrieve Report Manager 1.4.8 is officially released.

Some of the new features include
- New color scheme and GUI improvements
- Retrieve Scripts now support embedded passwords
- Retrieve Scripts can be placed and run from alternative folder locations
- Check Reports button will only select only "Done" reports on click
- Check Reports button will check both "Done" and "Retrieved" reports on CTRL-Click

Current customers and those who wish to try out Retrieve for free can download the installer package on our Web Site.

VBA - Save Excel Workbook as a PDF

2009-02-13T20:30:00.002-06:00

I wrote this vba code the other day which prints every worksheet in an Excel 2007 workbook to PDF. With the Excel 2007 "Save As PDF" plug-in from Microsoft this is an extremely easy and best of all (FREE) way to convert your workbooks to PDF using VBA.

What the code does:
Loops through each worksheet with-in a workbook and saves the worksheet as a PDF with the same file name as the tab name.

CODE LISTING


Public Sub SaveWorksheetsAsPDF()
' DESCRIPTION: Loops through each worksheet in a workbook and prints each page as it own unique PDF
' The PDF name is the same as the worksheet tab name.
' Update April 2009, now prints entire worksheet (with multiple pages) instead of just first page of sheet.

' REQUIREMENTS: Excel 2007 with Microsoft's Save As PDF plugin.
' NOTES: Default quality is set to "xlQualityMinimum" to keep file sizes reasonable. You can change this to
' "xlQualityStandard" if you want the best detail. I have found that the xlQualityMinimum quality is fine in most cases.
' By Default this code will over-write a file of the same name if it exists in the output folder.
'

On Error Resume Next

Dim i As Integer
Dim sName As String
Dim sOutputPath As String

sOutputPath = "C:\Storage\pdftest\"


For i = 1 To ActiveWorkbook.Sheets.Count

sName = Sheets(i).Name

Debug.Print Worksheets(sName).Index & " " & sOutputPath & sName

ActiveWorkbook.Sheets(i).ExportAsFixedFormat Type:=xlTypePDF, Filename:= _
sOutputPath & sName, Quality:=xlQualityMinimum _
, IncludeDocProperties:=True, IgnorePrintAreas:=False, OpenAfterPublish:=False

Next

End Sub

Feel free to share and use as you see fit.

Save All Worksheets As PDF by Geoff Rathmell is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from geoff @ bentonvillebase2.com

Walmart Retail Link Download Application

2009-02-13T20:30:00.000-06:00

Shameless Plug Post!

Tired of spending countless hours downloading and managing your Retail Link reports? We have a solution to your problem.

Take a look at our Walmart Retail Link Download application, "Retrieve Report Manager"

Just some of the features found in Retrieve
Easy to use graphical interface.
Download Multiple Reports at a time.
Save Reports to unique folders.
Unzip Compressed reports.
Submit saved reports.
Multi-User support with the Enterprise Version.
Competitive pricing.

Welcome

2009-02-13T18:00:00.000-06:00

Welcome to the new BASE2 Software Blog.

Let me introduce myself and my company, BASE2 Software. My name is Geoff and I currently work for a merchandising company which sells to major retailers, including Walmart. I have transitioned from multiple roles over the years, starting in Information Systems and most recently working in the category management area. All along I have used my IT and programming knowledge to increase efficiencies of the teams I work with; applying new technologies and automating reporting and analysis along the way.

Intention of this Blog
After years of learning from others in the IT and Retail Sales business I feel it is time for me to start giving back to the community which I am involved. I can't promise that I will break any new ground with this blog but anything that helps fellow retail business analysts find a shortcut to problem solving surely can't hurt.

History of BASE2 Software
A few years ago, after a renewed interest in programming more than just VBA macros, I was challenged with writing a Retail Link download application for Wal-mart's Retail Link system for a previous employer. The needs were immediate as we had several analysts who downloaded upwards of 50 reports a week and one who downloaded over 200 reports every Monday which was at least a half days worth of work. Long story short the download tool was a success and I knew about another company actively selling such an application (which has since then gone out of business). Therefore BASE2 Software was started in November of 2006 and has been steadily growing in size over the past 2 years.