Sage 100

Any suggestions on a good label design program that either integrates directly with MAS90 or at least uses ODBC?

We've used Bartender. We started using that with MAS 500 and have had very good results. Also you can send it a text file of label information and Commander watches for that file and as soon as it sees it, it produces a label. This is good for automation.

I have three MAS 90 clients that use Label Matrix from www.teklynx.com. One exports the Purchase Order information to csv file and Label Matrix reads the csv file like it was a database. The second client uses an Excel spreadsheet for daily Production Scheduling. Label Matrix reads a colum in the spreadsheet to identify today's production and then prints the label from data in other colums in the spreadsheet. I know Label Matrix supports ODBC, but never used ODBC to connect direct with MAS 90.

I have used label matrix too but I think bartender is cheaper

I'll second @DawnAnastasi on BarTender. It's pretty easy to set up and maintain, plus the Commander is good automation.

Excuse my ignorance - link to Bartender?

http://www.seagullscientific.com/aspx/bar-code-label-software.aspx

http://www.seagullscientific.com/aspx/welcome.aspx Seagull doesn't sell direct, so you'll need to find a reseller to purchase it. I think there are a few on this forum.

I may have a need for a Bartender reseller myself.

I would third Bartender although it USED to be a much simpler install before it started with the licensing and bloated versions. The older versions didn't include the new scripting capability which works well with MAS 90's scripting.

Use it with every client that needs label, even if they don't have bar codes.

I use Label Matrix. I think what you use is what you get used to. We print ROG receipt labels prior to updating in MAS. Lable Matrix is linked to MAS via and Access db pass through query. This allows us to print the SN/Lot #. Several other labels templates are linked to MAS in this manner. Works very well. Nothing is automated but I would expect LM to have this functionality. And to echo Myron's statement, this is a great way to quickly print product labels even if you don't use the bar code to scan. Trying to get a client to start using this system for their inventory. Presently, physical inventory valuation takes two plus months because none of the product is labeled PLUS they have too many descriptions that say ""angle bracket"" And once everything is labeled with a bar code, then you can start scanning your physical inventory...............

dos anyone know what the ballpark, entry level pricing is - BarTender and/or Label Matrix?

Back in March 2010 a client purchased a 3 user network version of Label Matrix from a dealer for $800. Annual maintenance March of this year was $350.

Back in August of last year the SLP for the Bartender automation capable version for 3 printers and unlimited users was $795 (street pricess around $500)

Eric Anderson there are various levels of Bartender. Not all levels have ODBC capabilities. Some have unlimted users with a set number of printers while some versions have a set number of users and unlimited printers. Pricing is on their web page but you can generally get lower prices from a reseller.

Purchased Bartender from ScanTexas. Contact Pat Dunnegan at pat@scantexas.com

thanks for the quick responses - I'll check into it

With Bartender's scripting, I wrote a couple of button scripts that allow any MAS 200 user to queue labels and the user that is local to the printer to print everyone's labels from that queue. The only problem is that MAS randomly throws an error 88 for no apparent reason. Engineering can reproduce and acknowledges the issue and they have tried fixing it in the last couple of 4.40 point releases, but so far not. The bug relates to having two buttons on the same screen where one runs on the server and the other runs at the client. It doesn't affect the function of the enhancement. Only the esthetic.

this particular client wants to trigger inventory labels to print (to a Zebra label printer) at the time of SO pick sheet printing - is this similar to anything you've done?

Mine was for Receipt of Goods. I remember Myron wrote one for S/O. My user also opted for the cheaper single user Bartender to save money which in the end was a poor choice. Since the only user with the printer was a client workstation, my script had to run on that client and not on the server. This meant that advanced scripting was not available to retrieve the labels. Thus there were two buttons. One to queue labels that ran on the server and one to print labels that ran on the client. A side benefit was that anyone could queue labels that the user with the printer could print.

@MyronStevenson - do you have a script written that does something similar to this: When customer prints pick sheet for sales order, also print labels to Zebra thermal label printer based on SO/pick sheet lines (one label for each line) - with Item #, Description, and quantity?

@MyronStevenson I am also interested if you were able to accomplish that with a script as well.

If this helps, we had a customer that wanted to print labels when they printed a pick sheet. So they just printed their pick sheet ON label stock (laser labels) and aligned the form to print the line items side by side -- one side for the pickers and the other side for the labels. Killed two birds with one stone.

@EricAnderson @BrianBuck SInce I am familiar with BarTender and advanced scripting, if either or both of you would write up your requirements I would look at giving you a bid.

will do - I'll take this offline and send you a private message, thanks

@DawnAnastasi - I do like the idea of reformatting the pick sheet form and kicking it to a label printer, but I've had very little success going straight from MAS/crystal to a thermal label printer. I saw a different post here recently about that, but it seems like it's close to impossible to ever get it working properly.

I've done it a bunch of times. What is the sticking point?

I've done it too.

I can't remember exactly the issues were. I think we had to set the label printer as the Windows Default.

If you set the default Windows printer to the label printer, my suggestion is to avoid printing anything to Paperless Office on that workstation/session. I've run into situations where the PDF is formated to the size of the label.