ICommander brings you the Paperless Office NOW. A major part of the Paperless
Office is the ARCHIVING of reports online.
ICommander was developed by a CPA with considerable audit experience. This led to a paper trail of all updates to permanent files. This paper trail is now an online trail. Every posting process creates reports documenting transactions that were updated. The ICommander Report Archiving Function allows automatically flagging ALL POSTING REGISTERS for AUTOMATIC Archiving. These reports are available to actually send to a printer, if desired by the user at the point of posting. However, there is little need to actually print because the reports are available at any time by using the ICommander General Utilities Report Archiving functions.
In addition to the posting registers, any report may be flagged for automatic archiving. Reports not flagged may be archived at the user's option from the ICommander Print Utility.
Any archived report may be viewed/searched with the powerful Vim Editor. This tool can be used on reports with many thousands of lines to find any desired pattern with unbelievable speed. If all information needed is visible on the screen, a simple print screen provides a hard copy. The archived report may be copied into the ICommander Print Utility to select a range of pages to print or to print the whole report when needed for auditors or others. The Print Utility also easily allows output of any report as a PDF File so auditors do not have to deal with a gigantic stack of paper either.
The Vim Editor's easy method of jumping to the bottom of a report or any particular section makes it simple to get needed totals from a report in just seconds.
Archived reports may also be explored with the powerful ICommander File Manager function. This includes the ability to list files in alphabetical or descending date order and to invoke searches across all files or filenames matching a pattern by simply entering a text string to search for. A list of each file with a match is quickly generated and displayed on the screen. This allows, for instance, quickly locating which P/R Posting Register archive has a particular check number.
In ADDITION to the online archiving of reports, ICommander provides many other tools to avoid the need for paper reports. The ability to convert any ICommander report to a PDF file, as noted above, is not limited to archived reports. ANY report may be output to a PDF File. This may be via any one of several tools built into ICommander. If a user has a PDF Writer on his or her PC, it may be used to create the PDF file by having ICommander route the report to it. If you don't have a PDF Writer on your PC, we recommend PDF Factory. It is inexpensive but very capable.
A PDF Writer on your PC provides the most flexibility for capturing the full effect of the ICommander Enhanced Printing Format Options. However, Linux users have a number of other tools that enable converting plain text versions of any ICommander report to PDF.
Linux users also have ANOTHER powerful option for output of reports online but in graphical form. Any report may be AUTOMATICALLY converted to a Web Page that may be for either temporary browsing or retained for later review. Any such Web Page may also be optionally routed to a Private Internet (Intranet) area to make available to management or other staff members who are not ICommander users.
The ICommander Free-Form Data Extraction tool is YET ANOTHER way to output information in electronic form. Output can be in the form of tab-delimited files for import into spreadsheets or database programs (with formatting, totals, etc. already in place and preserved for spreadsheets). Output may also be in the form of plain text files for viewing/searching with Vim. There is also the option to apply the ICommander Enhanced Printing Format Options to create very attractive reports for printing, converting to PDF, or converting into Web Pages. Output may also be directly to Web Pages either for individual use or for routing to the Intranet (which ICommander staff sets up for you and shows you how to maintain it yourself via ICommander).
ICommander File Manager is another major piece of how ICommander makes the Paperless Office a Reality. This powerful tool has MANY features (its use in connection with Archived Reports was mentioned earlier). It enables simple but controlled access to directories and files to easily access both ICommander and other information online. Information of all types is accommodated with File Manager invoking the applicable PC, Linux, or Browser function to enable working with selected files. This includes automatic downloading of files to a remote PC when accessing ICommander via a tunnel through the Internet.
File Manager may also be used to easily build an organized structure of directories and files for automatically generating Web Pages. The ICommander Links Page installed when your Intranet is setup is an example of this. The Web Page with the links is generated by ICommander File Manager by traversing all directories and files in a particular area to build tables with the links and an index to the categories. This may be applied to any number of needs.
Secure remote access to ICommander itself and to the Intranet via the Internet is yet another piece of the Paperless Office. Private Use of the Internet using proprietary methods provided by ICommander enable accessing online information from anywhere for authorized users. We even provide a way to access your home PC from work or your work PC from home using a tunnel through the Intranet and free software tools.
The Paperless Office IS HERE NOW, if you are using ICommander!