My 1099-MISC Solution

Is anyone else having trouble using BIP to get their 1099-MISC forms how they want them? Well, at my company we previously used pre-printed triplicate forms where Copy B and Copy 2 were sent to the recipient and Copy C was kept by us (the payer). The forms caused issues with alignment on the pin feed printer and were also time consuming because they had to be torn apart. Pin feed printer? Are those still around? Anyway....

Enter XML Publisher and the laser printer solution! Oracle provides a 1099-MISC template. The seeded template (called 1099 Forms if you want to do a template search) is a .PDF template and only contains Copy B that will print 1 recipient per page. The document doesn't have IRS wording on it and would require your company to include an additional piece of paper in the envelope. This format didn't meet our needs, so BIPgirl was called upon to save the day!

What was our solution? Create new .rdf templates of course! Seeing that we've been sending recipients Copy B and Copy 2, I created 1 .rtf template with those 2 layouts on it (going by what is on the IRS website). When inserting the XML tags from the seeded report APXT7F99, I have the same recipient's information print on 1 page. I then created a second template with Copy C. In this template I have 2 recipients print per page.

But what about the IRS wording? I was hoping that you wanted to know about that. Going back to how time consuming the triplicate forms were, we didn't want to stuff extra pieces of paper into envelopes. To get around this, we contacted our paper vendor and ordered custom stock. This new stock has a perforation in the middle so that Copy B and Copy 2 can be torn apart by the recipient and folded to fit into window envelopes by us. Then we had the IRS wording printed on the back of Copy B and viola! we have our forms to mail out in our custom window envelopes. As for Copy C, we just keep them for our records so they could be printed on white paper to save on the custom stock cost.

So if anyone else is out there struggling or spending too much time dealing with pre-printed forms, try this solution. It really saved us a lot of time and money!

Demystifying BIPgirl

OK Tim... so you tagged me! Now I have to reveal 8 things that my readers didn't know about me.

For those of you who didn't see Tim's 1/8/08 post (Oracle BI Publisher Blog) , he blog tagged me! So I'm 'It' and I have to reveal my deepest darkest secrets. Haha.. I don't think so!

1. I am a Boston Red Sox fan and live in upstate NY.
2. Along with my CIS degree, I also have a degree in Early Childhood Education. I decided right after I received my Early Childhood degree that I would probably prefer hanging out in a cube all day to finger painting. I still feel that way, so I guess I made the right choice!
3. I am a cleaning fanatic. Monica on Friends... yes, that's me. Yet another reason why finger painting and I don't mix (see #2)
4. Every night when I get home from work I get on my treadmill and run just like a hamster on a wheel. I think exercise is great for clearing your mind!
5. I hate talking on the phone, which is weird because I remember falling asleep talking on the phone when I was a teenager. Email me, text me I'll get back to ya.
6. I am engaged to a .net developer! Check out his sites, they're great! http://www.sivatar.com and http://www.earnmoneytoblog.com
   
7. I play Halo 3 online (another good stress reliever), but I refuse to wear the headset and talk to people.
8. What is the one thing that is guaranteed to put a smile on my face? Buddy the wonder cat
   

Enough about me, let's hear from some other bloggers. Here are a couple of sites that I've been to recently (sorry, I don't have 8)

1. Oracle Newbies Blog - Lisa Dobson
2. Oracle & Google Technical Blog and More - Greg Partenach
3. MattTopper.com - Matt Topper