| What's
new or important to note
Our next Update
The next update will be on August 10th, and the deadline on that day at 2:00 (EST).
June
Update
There has been some inadvertent
duplication of the data. Please advise the Masterpoint Centre as soon as
possible of any errors so that adjustments can be made to both invoices and
masterpoints.
Your cooperation in
forwarding information to the Masterpoint Centre in a timely fashion is most
appreciated.
Inactive Players in ABF
sponsored Events.
It is important that the conveners of these events check their
entry lists for inactive players. ABF regulations expressly state that
players must be paid up (active) members of an ABF affiliated club in order
to enter and play in any state and national championship, as well as in all
congress-type events sponsored by ABF whether or not they are run in
conjunction with a championship.
Our program, NAT4WIN, provides an easy way of checking for inactive players.
Any standard text file in which each line begins with the player's ABF
number, can be opened and check in NAT4WIN.
To check your file, open NAT4WIN, click on Players and then on
Extract Selected Players. Next, tick the spot marked Inactive Players
(Text File). That will open a dialogue window which allows you to locate
and click on your entry text file. Once you have selected your file, the
program automatically creates the inactive.txt file (in the same
directory as your source file). That file will contain the details of all
inactive players found in your entry file (if any).
Date-of-Birth details
As from May 1st 2006, the date and month must be
included on the Player Details forms when registering, activating or
transferring players. We would like the full details, but the year remains
optional. It has become necessary to insist upon this compulsory inclusion
because of the many duplications occurring.
We are not asking people to reveal their
age, just the date and the month. There is no privacy issue here.
Peoples' addresses are far more intrusive than 4 numbers which means nothing
to anyone outside the Bridge administration, but are essential to us for the
legitimate purpose of avoiding duplications.
Banking: Pay by transfer to our Account
The ABF Masterpoint Centre now accepts
payments by direct transfer to our account.
This feature has been requested by several clubs and
anyone wishing to take advantage of this means of payment, should
contact the Centre for further details. Our account details are also printed
on our invoices and statements.
This is especially relevant now that ABF charges for overdue amounts.
Please remember: To avoid the late fee being charged, all invoices
issued must be paid within 90 days. We
will check our bank statement and make the necessary adjustments immediately
prior to our end-of-quarter update.
Please remember to use your club number as your reference. This
is very important. Invoice numbers are a poor substitute as it slows
down the entry procedure and if you fail to include any reference, we may
not be able to identify the remunerator.
Submitting Totals with Award
Files
Because we repeatedly have to re-do
files which turns out to be incorrect for various reasons, I have now
decided, albeit reluctantly, that from now on, we will refuse to accept any
masterpoint file arriving without a total.
We supply no less than three different tools (the versatile
Nat4win and the dedicated
Abfcheck and
Mpfiles programs) for the
specific purpose of checking the masterpoint files with a couple of key
strokes or "clicks". So please co-operate and help preventing mistakes by
spending another minute or so by checking your files before sending them to
the Masterpoint Centre.
The programs are all available from our web site. Just click on the link to
download.
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