Welcome to the Masterpiece Manager Help. It is designed to help you quickly learn how to use the Masterpiece Manager. Along the way, you will learn the basic steps for creating a management environment we believe you will use "All Day - Every Day." You will also discover some of our favorite tips so you can be more productive with this management tool.
These quick and easy lessons take you step-by-step through the process of setting up your system. In just an hour or so, you will be ready to begin using Masterpiece FOR REAL.
In the Basic Lessons, you will learn how to configure the system and add information. This includes setting up your Company, Staff, Taxes, Categories, Types and Mediums, Stock Locations, Contacts (artists/vendors/customers), adding a Unique Item, and Making a Simple Sale.
In the Advanced Lessons, you'll learn how to add Limited Editions, Open Editions, and Non-Stock items (such as shipping or installation charges). You will learn about multi-part payments (Layaways), Returns, Purchase Orders, entering standard costs (like Framing costs), and other powerful features.
We also have videos that you can watch at www.masterpiecemanager.com/videos.html.
NOTE: This help system is being updated to reflect the changes within the new Arete version of Masterpiece ( i.e. Resizable Screens, Additional new fields, Credit and Gift card processing, etc.) If you still have the older Masterpiece 2000 or Masterpiece V8 version, some of the features shown may not apply to your version.
ARTIST VERSION: Many functions such as Consignments and Commissions are not included in the Artist version of the software. As such, images of menus and screens shown in this help system may not exactly reflect what you see on your screen.
Design Background
This system was originally produced to manage a photographic art gallery in Breckenridge Colorado, starting in 1994. Items sold at the gallery included many different combinations such as Unframed Photographs, Framed and Matted Photographs, Books, and Postcards. The pieces on display could be totally owned by the gallery or totally on consignment. These were easy to manage. The bookkeeping became difficult when a consignment piece (which was still owned by the artist) had the gallery's mats or frame on it. We looked for software to handle these headaches, but there just wasn't anything we liked available. The one or two art systems out there were hard to use, and seemed to be based more on collections than a retail operation.
This system will easily track who owns what. It will then produce a variety of reports which will keep bookkeeping to a minimum. Once a piece is entered in the system, the gallery manager will not have to worry about that piece again unless it changes for some reason (i.e. a frame is added or mats are changed). The system will compute the consignments due for each vendor based on sales for the period. It will issue management reports showing the total costs and net profit for the period. (These can be protected so that only authorized users may access this information).
The system was written using Visual FoxPro
™. This is an extremely popular database management system. If you have experience with DBASE, XBASE, FoxBASE, or other database management systems, you will probably be able to access the raw data and import it into other systems such as word processors and spreadsheets. The data is YOURS. We do not hide it in any way. You should feel free to use the data in any way you wish. WARNING: If you corrupt the database it may not be repairable. Even if it is repairable, there will be a charge to attempt this repair. This charge will be levied regardless of success. Use copies of the databases and MAKE GOOD DAILY BACKUPS. The system is also fully scalable. By using SQL databases, large gallery operators can connect multiple computers in multiple locations - in REAL time.
The system has come a very long way since 1994. Literally hundreds of new features have been added over the years. But we have also been careful to keep each part of the system as easy to use as possible.
If you would like to review the license agreement that you agreed to as part of the installation process, you will find the entire license in the LICENSE.TXT file in your main Masterpiece folder on your hard drive.
You may also obtain a copy of the License by contacting the Author at:
Masterpiece Solutions
19590 East Mainstreet
Suite 203
Parker, CO 80138
Minimum
Windows 2000, XP
and Vista.
(Highly Recommend Windows XP
PRO or Vista)
Pentium III or Higher Processor.
200MB of Free Hard Drive Disk Space.
256MB Ram (512MB with XP PRO).
SVGA Monitor with 800x600 Resolution.
Recommended
Everything above except increase the RAM to 1 GIG of RAM.
Please Note: The minimum requirements indicate the configuration to RUN Masterpiece. Under the minimum configuration, you may find that the system is SLOW. As your business grows, and the amount of data you track increases, you may find that you need to upgrade the amount of memory in your computer, or upgrade your whole computer. If your data grows really large you will need to consider upgrading Masterpiece to the Enterprise SQL Version.
In a Network environment, the individual Work Stations An individual computer within a Company or Gallery. have the same minimum requirements as shown above. The designated Server which can also function as a workstation, should be as fast as possible and should have at least 512 MB of RAM. More memory is always better than less! The primary bottleneck will be the speed of your network. We strongly recommend a 100 Mbit, or faster, ethernet network running TCP/IP (only) protocol.
We DO NOT recommend using a wireless network! The reason being is, we have found that wireless networks have not been very stable. When you lose connection while Masterpiece is running you may get an error.
The server should be running NT Server 6.5 or later. (We prefer Windows XP Pro). There are significant speed improvements with a dual processor server running as much memory as possible.
The Workstations have the same minimum requirements as shown above and will require ODBC connections to the server computer via TCP/IP connections. Masterpiece will automatically make any required configurations.
When we released the second generation of Masterpiece, back in 2000, just about every part of the system was new or changed. In the release of Masterpiece Manager V8, we have made every effort to keep as much as possible looking the SAME as it was in Masterpiece 2000. There are a few specific changes, such as the way sales taxes are generated, that you should read about by clicking HERE. The main differences you will see include:
When printing reports, there are now email and graph options.
You can change screen and background colors and Masterpiece will use your Windows XP (or Vista) color scheme.
Sales Taxes have been done in a much different way, allowing you much more control over how a piece is taxed.
There are many changes we have made "under the covers" as well, though our goal was to make these changes in a way that you, as users, would not even notice the changes. For example, the system now supports SQL2000 and SQL2003. With the release of Arete, we will be coming to an end of updates for V8. To continue to receive updates, you must upgrade to Arete.
This third generation of Masterpiece has Microsoft's latest V9 engine. You will notice the difference of more options when modifying your reports and faster speed. Other features include...
Gift card processing
Memberships
Credit card processing with Merchant Warehouse. They offer competitive rates and have great customer support. Click here to visit their website...merchantwarehouse.com
More search options and longer title fields.
Continued updates.
The best way to work with the Masterpiece Help is to open the help screen to full screen and complete the Basic Lessons and Advanced Lessons in order. We encourage using the help full screen and flipping between Masterpiece and Help so you can learn to navigate the Help and learn how to find what you are looking for as we update the Help periodically. Another reason not to print the help is we update it periodically.
You can review the Help here and switch between the tutorial and the Masterpiece program by pressing ALT-TAB on your keyboard while both the tutorial and the Masterpiece program are running, or use your mouse.
The table of contents is an expandable list of lessons. To view the table of contents, click the Contents tab and then click a page to view the corresponding lesson in the right-hand pane.
To see a list of index entries, click the Index tab, scroll through the list, and then double-click the keyword. When you double-click a keyword, the corresponding topic appears on the right. (You'll notice a slight delay before the topic content appears because the HTML Help viewer must open the topic, find the bookmark, and then scroll to the area in the topic where the keyword-bookmark is linked.)
To locate every occurrence of a word or phrase in the help, click the Search tab, and then type the word.
Print features in Masterpiece Help depend on which help you are using, either Online Help or the Help in Masterpiece Manager.
For printing the Online Help found HERE, click the Print button on your browser's toolbar. The Print dialog appears and will include one or more options for printing.
For the Help in Masterpiece Manager, which can be accessed by going to Help, Masterpiece Help, click on the Print icon on the toolbar across the top. The Print dialog appears and will include one or more options for printing.