Last week's supreme court ruling has changed the sales tax game. Originally, states could only charge sales tax if a company had nexus in that state. While nexus rules were complicated, they generally limited states to only being able to go after sales tax from companies with a physical presence. However, this rule has been repealed, meaning states are free to make their own rules regarding sales tax. Unsurprisingly, this is making big waves for anyone making out of state sales.

With these changes, it's critical to understand where you're doing business and what rules you must follow. Our sales tax partner, Avalara, plays a crucial role with their sales tax products. They will be hosting a webinar on Thursday, June 28th, to answer anyone's questions. It goes for one hour and is totally free, so make sure to sign up! For BirdDog customers, we offer an Avalara Sales Tax Connector. If you make out of state sales where you have historically not charged sales tax, the game has changed.

Don't get caught unaware.

Don't know if you have heard all the hubbub about SSL 2.0 / SSL 3.0 / TLS 1.0 being deprecated, but it will no longer be in PCI compliance after June 30th, 2018. Good article on it here:

http://www.lexiconn.com/blog/2015/12/pci-council-pushes-back-tls-1-0-end-of-life-date-to-june-2018/

Originally, it was to be deprecated by the PCI council on June 30th, 2016. Another good article here:

http://blog.varonis.com/ssl-and-tls-1-0-no-longer-acceptable-for-pci-compliance/

The official push back on the end of life date is here:

http://blog.pcisecuritystandards.org/migrating-from-ssl-and-early-tls

The reason for the delay is that there are still older browsers and devices in circulation that only support TLS 1.0, so disabling support will stop these devices from placing orders.

Browser and device support can be seen here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:TLS/SSL_support_history_of_web_browsers

BirdDog's issue is that only Microsoft .Net 4.0 and later support TLS 1.1. So, as long as you are running 9.6.4 or later (where we converted to .Net 4.0 for all applications) you should be fine. However, all versions before that will not be.

On top of that, all web sites are in a mad rush to remove TLS 1.0, so even if you aren't doing credit cards, you could still be impacted. For example, UPS and FedEx are expected to take down TLS 1.0 in June of this year, which will impact our ability to rate freight with older software.

Recommended Action:

• Make sure you are running version 9.6.4 or later of all BirdDog applications.
• Consider disabling SSL 2.0, SSL 3.0, and TLS 1.0 on your web server.

I have two items I want to share with you today about changes at BirdDog Software:

One of our goals at BirdDog Software is continuous and rapid improvement. Our customers live in a world that is changing rapidly and we have to do the same to keep their software investments relevant and valuable. In the past, this continuous improvement cycle gave us and our customers heartburn with stability problems. It also made it difficult to explain every feature and bug fix in a specific version of the software. The good news was, we're moving fast! The bad news was, we're moving fast!

In the fall of 2014, we introduced a new development model where every new feature and bug fix would be developed and tested in isolation before being allowed back into any release of the software. The feature or bug fix would then be tested again in the final version to confirm that there were no unexpected issues with other features and bug fixes. This new development and Quality Assurance process has not only increased the stability of our releases, but has also increased the velocity at which we can confidently release bug fixes. Another benefit to the process has been the increased level of visibility and documentation of the process. We now have a steady drum beat of development with a code freeze occurring every month and releases being announced on Facebook as soon as the version passes Final QA.

In addition to the new development process, we've also created a What's New section on the web site to show everything that is in a release. Each item is notated with New (brand new features), Better (enhancements of existing features), or Fixed (bug fixes).



I am very excited about the new process and recommend that you visit the What’s New section of our site to see all of the progress we’ve made this year. By browsing the What’s New section, you will see over 250 enhancements and bug fixes that have been released this year alone for versions 9.6, 9.7, and 9.8. On top of that, we have another 200 enhancements and bug fixes scheduled to be released before the end of the year!

On September 11th, we released our latest version, 9.8.1. This version alone included over 50 enhancements and bug fixes. Check it out in the 9.8 section of What’s New.

Like Us on Facebook for real time notices of updates and upgrades!

Thanks for your support of BirdDog Software where we strive to be Your Company’s Ultimate Best Friend!

Robin Zwirtz

President