TUG Tip - General Knowledge

Want to get the most out of your TUG Membership?

Make sure that you read and share the latest TUG Pulse with your fellow employees! Print a hard copy and place it in your break room area for other employees to read.

TUG Tip - General Knowledge

Don't Forget to Update Mileage Rates for 2026!

If your organization reimburses mileage—or you track it in Sage—this is an easy win to start 2026 on the right foot. 🚗 2026 IRS Standard Mileage Rates Effective January 1, 2026, the IRS updated the standard mileage rates as follows: Business use: 72.5¢ per mile ⬆️ (up from 70¢ in 2025) Medical / moving (qualified active-duty): 20.5¢ per mile ⬇️ Charitable use: 14¢ per mile (unchanged) These rates apply to gas, diesel, hybrid, and fully electric vehicles. ✅ Tip: Update Your Mileage Tables Early If you use mileage reimbursement in your ERP or expense workflow (hello, Sage users 👋), make sure your rate tables are updated effective 1/1/2026.

TUG Tip - General Knowledge

Customizing Your Excel Quick Access Toolbar

Tired of searching for those Excel features you use regularly? You can add frequently used features to the Quick Access Toolbar (that displays at the top of Excel by default but can also be moved below the Menu Ribbon).

Right click on the Toolbar to bring up the customization window. Choose CustomizeQuick Access Toolbar. It defaults to Popular Commands, which you can find, Filters, Borders, Conditional Formatting, etc. If you see something you want to add to your own toolbar, select it on the left and click the Add button in the middle to move it to the right. If you don't see what you are looking for, and you don't know the name of the tab that it is located (Microsoft seems to move them around with every update), then choose All Commands from the drop down. They are listed alphabetically so you can find what you want. Warning: it is a very long list! But I have found new functions I didn't even know about until I saw them listed here. Click OK to close the window and see your updated Toolbar. 

TUG Tip - General Knowledge

End of Year Closing

The end of the year is a great time to clean up your current file. As transactions are created, and posted to the current file, they add to the information that Sage must process when any reports or inquiries are run. Moving the old, infrequently accessed, data to the history file will greatly improve Sage’s performance. Remember closed contracts can now also be moved to history!

TUG Tip - General Knowledge

How to Submit a Tip for TUG Social Media

Have you learned a great tip that you think our TUG community would benefit from? Why not share it and begin getting rewarded as a volunteer with TUG Bucks? Submit your tip here:

TUG Tip Submission Form

TUG Tip - General Knowledge

File Names - Short & Clear is Best

When thinking of a file name, we can often include more information than is necessary. This can create a file name that is too long! You could have issues exporting the file later. Keeping your file names consistent, clear and brief is a winning strategy!

TUG Tip - General Knowledge 

Adding Employee Accounts to TUGweb.com

As a master account holder of TUGweb.com, you can add users to the company account including yourself. The benefits of inviting employees to have their own account are they can sign up for free webinar trainings, receive meeting reminders, receive the Pulse newsletter, receive notifications about events, and so much more! To do this go to Manage Profile from the home page and click on Employees. Go to the box to invite new members and enter your employees email addresses. You can also send the direct link above the box to any employee and they can create an account that way. If you are not sure you are the master account holder, you can contact info@tugweb.com to seek assistance.

TUG Tip -- General Knowledge

Save Your Seat!!!!

SAVE YOUR SEAT!!!! Are you attending the National Conference? If so, don't FORGET to select the individual sessions you are planning to attend! Some sessions fill up fast so get your name at the top of the list! Open the Conference App - TUG 2025! Navigate to conference sessions. You can filter sessions by: Date, Time, or even a specific Track! Once you find your desired sessions, click on the little icon that looks like a calendar with a + sign! It is as simple as that!!!! This will then create a "personal" class schedule for you while you are at the conference!

TUG Tip -- General Knowledge

Outlook Meeting Invites Disappearing????

Outlook Meeting Invites “disappearing” after responding to the meeting invite? Update your Outlook Settings in three simple steps!

1. In Outlook, click on File tab in the upper left corner, then go down and click on Options.

2. Then select Mail, then in the mail section scroll down to the Send messages heading. Make sure the Delete meeting requests and notifications from Inbox after responding checkbox is not selected.

3. Click the OK button to close the dialog box.

TUG Tip -- General Knowledge

Need CPE Credits???

You can earn up to 21 CPE Credits at the National Conference August 13-16, 2025, at the Omni Nashville Hotel in Nashville, Tennessee. Please join us in August for education, networking, fun, and 21 CPE Credits!

TUG Tip -- General Knowledge

Sage Desktop Tip for Creating Your Favorite Configuration

When setting up your configuration files to create your “Favorites”, use the “Info Assistant” module. By using this module and selecting report/inquires, it allows the users when running these reports to use the Info Assistant license rather than the other module licenses.

TUG Tip -- General Knowledge

Right Click to Replace a Picture

While editing all of my conference material with screenshots of the updated sample data, I realized this great shortcut that saved my existing formatting in my word documents. If you right click on your existing image there is an option to "change picture". If you used the snipping tool to snip your new picture you can choose from clipboard and voila!

TUG Tip -- General Knowledge

Standard Mileage Rate for Business 2025

TUG Tip -- General Knowledge

Email Tip

Ever send an email before you meant to? An easy way to prevent this is to fill in the "To" last. Compose your email, attach your documents, once the email is the way you want, go back and fill in who you want to send it to.

TUG Tip -- General Knowledge 

Using the ampersand "&" as a shortcut for the concatenate function in Excel

The CONCATENATE or CONCAT function in Excel can be used to join data from multiple cells into one string. Instead of typing out CONCATENATE or CONCAT, an ampersand "&" can be used instead. For example instead of =CONCATENATE(A1,B1) use the "&" to shorten to =A1&B1

TUG Tip -- General Knowledge

File Names - Short & Clear is Best

When thinking of a file name, we can often include more information than is necessary. This can create a file name that is too long! You could have issues exporting the file later. Keeping your file names consistent, clear and brief is a winning strategy!

TUG Tip --General Knowledge

Excel Filter Function

Excel Tip: Excel has a feature called AutoFilter which allows you to filter a data range. The limitation to the AutoFilter is that it is anchored to the data range being filtered. What happens when you want to filter your data and put the results in another location on your worksheet or in the workbook.

Excel has a function for that, the FILTER Function. The Excel FILTER function is used to extract matching values from data based on one or more conditions. The output from FILTER is dynamic. This makes FILTER a flexible way to isolate and inspect data without altering the original dataset.

Below is the syntax for the FILTER Function:

=FILTER(array, include, [if_empty])

Look for Excel webinars from the TUG Construction Accounting (CA) Community this summer for demonstrations of this function and other Excel Tips and Tricks.

TUG Tip -- General Knowledge

Save Your Seat!!

SAVE YOUR SEAT!!! Attending National Conference?  Don’t FORGET to select the individual sessions you are planning to attend!  Some sessions fill up fast so get your name at the top of the list! Open the Conference App TUG 2024! Navigate to conference sessions. You can filter sessions by: Date, Time or even a specific Track! Once you find your desired sessions click on the little icon that looks like a calendar with a + sign!  It’s as simple as that!!!!   This will then create a “personal” class schedule for you while you are at the conference!

TUG Tip --General Knowledge

Need CPE Credits???

You can earn up to 21 CPE Credits at the National Conference June 4-7 at the JW Marriott Miami Turnberry Resort & Spa outside of Miami, Florida. Please join us in June for education, networking, fun, and 21 CPE Credits!

TUG Tip -- General Knowledge

Get more out of your Paintbrush

Do you need to copy formatting to several places in your document or spreadsheet?  Double click on the paintbrush to store the setting for use throughout your document.  When you are finished, click on the paintbrush again to clear the stored formatting.

TUG Tip -- General Knowledge

Right Click to Replace a Picture

 While editing all of my conference material with screenshots of the updated sample data, I realized this great shortcut that saved my existing formatting in my word documents. If you right click on your existing image there is an option to "change picture". If you used the snipping tool to snip your new picture you can choose from clipboard and voila!

TUG Tip -- Excel Tips

Navigating Multiple Sheets

When working in an Excel spreadsheet with multiple sheets(tabs) it can be cumbersome to move between sheets. A quick way to find the sheet you are looking for is to right click on the arrows in the lower left of the screen. The software gives this tip if you hover over the arrows, but many people never notice.

TUG Tip --Excel Tips

If Function

This video tip will demonstrate the basics of Excel’s IF Function. Click here to watch. 

TUG Tip -- General

Snagit Software

There is a software called Snagit by TechSmith that I have found to be an invaluable. SnagIt is marketed as a video, tutorial building software but I have found various every day uses for it. My favorite is basically creating a screenshot of the days banking transactions to review/reconcile while not being online and not having to print out and then shred . I use it in lieu of screenshot because I can modify almost anything. We also created our in-house Sage manuals with it. (see example attached) It works on documents, and websites.

TUG Tip -- Year End

Year-End File Maintenance 

Make sure that you do your file maintenance at year end and that you move checks, invoices, jobs, vendors, employees, etc. to history files. It is hard to make the time to do it during the year, and if you don’t do it, your files get so big that your processing becomes extremely slooooowww.

Also, move history files to history files. Take your old transactions and copy them to another history file identified by the type and year. They then can be either saved on disk or on your network for future access. (To access, turn on named files for that file type and select the old history file.)

Since you are already dedicating so much time to your files, take the time to clean up your report and public formula “wasteland”. In other words, delete unused reports and formulas that you have created.