Includes DB changes you need to log all terminals out during upgrade

Not yet released. In a few days to a week

C9 Locks

This version includes significant changes to how locks are managed. The expectation is the dreaded 'deal Y is locked on terminal X messages' when in fact the terminal hasn't locked the deal should all but disappear.

The previous system relied on robust network connectivity between terminals and servers; as 'locks' were linked to the connection. If anything interfered with connection such as computers falling off network in a way the server didn't detect the disconnect then locks would stay in place until you restarted server.

The new architecture is functionally the same but is alot more resilient with network issues.  In event of a stuck/stale lock it will only remain stuck for 5 minutes; after which the new terimal will gain the lock. If the prior computer which held the lock somehow gets unstuck (.e.g. the computer was just in sleep mode), c9 will see that the lock was taken by some other terminal and will force the c9 to close.

Expectation is that this architecture will be alot more resilient and much less disruptive in handling edge cases and hardware niggles around deals and job cards. Network issues will not trigger perma-locks which can only be cleared with a database restart. The new behaviour of killing stale c9s which woke up to found their locks where taken is anticipated to be both rare and minimally disruptive.

PayDay Super

Some ongoing refinements and fixes

• Certain system or network errors could permanently locks a stream upload in c9 as finished but failed. Some refinements here
  • wait for 5 consequetive system errors before flagging a payday upload as perma failed
  • Add a button : force refresh to allow a finished payday upload to forcefully reevaluate payday super result
• Manual payday : was not working as expected. Was not correctly detecting payment due and advising operator and instead was flagging as an error. Now fixed.
• pending payday block backup verify. Still wasn't 100% fixed and was still pausing backup verify. Hopefully now is sorted.

Single Touch Payroll - Security changes

The ATO are mandating some modifications to how STP data is transmitted and will only accept STP data coming from systems you are pre-authorised via ATO portal. This will create a new process you need to perform to advise ATO for your business C9 is allowed to transmit STP data.

All this work will come into play around July 1.  There are still some elements of this not yet 100% completed. More details will come out in next month or two.

Other Tweaks and fixes

• Add new franchise : screen could accidently pickup random note from unrelated part of c9 for notes to print on order sheets. For example if you were printing a workshop job just before and workshop jobs have configured fineprint that also prints, that fine print would drop into new franchise as notes to print on daily order sheets. Now fixed

Low level changes

• Messenger location is no longer sensitive to primary /secondary terminal installation when 'Restrict messenger setting is in play'. In this case check the messenger setting to assess whether or not to wake up messenger on a given terminal.

 

Includes DB changes you need to log all terminals out during upgrade

Alerts and promos. When you open c9 at startup after login it may now display some sort of alert or promo. we are initially using this as part of marketing campaign but plan to use it for important notes and updates. Contours of current marketing popup : will pop up just once a week on each terminal and can be permanently disabled by clicking checkbox to don't show again.

Tweaks and fixes

•  Contacts
  • View Contact -> units tab. An option to filter archived units
  • Add licence expiry field to contacts
• Biz Health Report - was not including rebates where unit was still on the floor. Now fixed
• Business -> activity lock. Improved design of screen to drive better GL lock outcomes
  • previously would only lock on month boundaries. Include an option to specify if BAS is monthly or quarterly. Work off that. Default to Quarterly
  • clear locks would completely open things up when typically what is wanted is ability to tweak last BAS period only. Clerk locks has been renamed to 'unlock last period' and it sets locks to prior period to prevent any accident distant past alterations
  • Colour code buttons so it is obvious which lock regime is in play
• Jobs / Estimates
  • edit completion date in modify job screen
  • planner - fix font. Screen was fully bolded making alot of text on screen hard to read. Been this way for years but was only picked up after recent font antialiasing issues
  • estimates - option in all estimates tab to filter estimates with references. Idea is 'all estimates' becomes list of once of quotes, not standard repairs
• c9 repo : reorganise repo into a tree Structure. So all honda sub products sit under 'Honda', all Mojo affiliated brands under Mojo etc. Often a dealer with multiple products will mess up ensuring all relevant sub products are imported. New design will hopefully reduce instances of this problem
• Deals - salesperson filter can now work on all tabs, not just active deals tab
• Spares Docket receipts : footer was originally just two lines of text. Now allow multiline text
• Husky Integrations :  update new website URL. epc import working again. Magician inventory check working again.
• Browse images/attachments on jobs, customers etc: button to save highlighted attachment/image locally. Button to save all attachments/images locally
• WA Paperwork
  • Add page numbers to proscribed Contract T&C to distinguish particulars from T&C
  • Updated forms: VL12 and MR9B
• Payroll
  • Print individual payslip. Default email addr email on staff accnt incase operator goes from preview to email
  • Button to print all payslips. Unconditionally prints them all, ignoring the preference setting
  • Edit staff : show staff code in window title so when on other tabs it is easy to track staff being edited
  • Payday Super tweak : when payrun is prepared days before actual run, payday super was interfeerring with online backup verification. Verify will not run until after payday. Root cause was constant traffic with super clearing house was logging events in c9 database and resetting verify process. Tweaked to reduce network traffic to clearing house.

Systems  / Setup etc

• System settings : new setting to enforce one copy of c9 per Java instance. Added for one computer on one new customer which seems to be problematic for some unknown reason. Recommended setting for this new option is to leave off, as default, as it will cause c9 to take longer to open when you click on c9 icon on desktop
• System settings  : hide / show button to toggle password mode for remote password; to protect against accidental screencap of sensitive details
• When you install c9 it asks primary or secondary. This influences whether or not messenger starts on computer when computer first logs in. We want to change this mechanism to implement better mechanism for controlling this. The changes will require a couple of updates to c9. This first update is non functional but sets some things in place to ensure next update contains the required functional changes
• Deployed version of rustdesk is supposed to be codesigned. But appears it isn't. Deploy new version signed by c9's code signing key.

More work on fixing font anti-aliasing regressions introduced in 5.2.147.  Fairly confident this is sorted now

Root cause : we had to switch some graphics drawing commands as older commands work with Java8 but do not work with later java versions. The 'substitutes' don't work the same and we didn't realise this.  Reviewing original java source code which is no longer supported but latest javas fairly confident now we have replicated the original removed behaviours now.

To enable yamaha service reporting

Spares -> utilities -> add/edit franchise

Modify the Yamaha Franchise

Magician / Network Tab

Make sure following is done:

• Parts Magician is set to Spares - Motorcycles - Yamaha
• You have ticked option to enable automated distributor reporting
• Order Dealer Code is correct code for your Yamaha franchise

Screenshot of what it shoud look like

Read more...

Bugfix  : recent bankrec payroll alert wasn't supposed to stop access to payroll until July 1. Tidied so alert is a soft alert for now.

Includes DB changes you need to log all terminals out

Fixes and tweaks

• Fixed antialiasing issue introduced in 5.2.147
• Finish payrun will pop a warning about payday super not being configured : suppress this for now. Relates to changes coming in next month or so
• Fixed a subtle bug with f7 buy/sell info.  This screen is supposed to show all connected supercessions but a change to how supers are merged into price files back in October broke this. The screen still sort of worked but any supers changes from  that version onwards would not always show up in this screen. Now fixed. Previously pre-cached supers data in database would store both next part and final part in a chain. The changes in Oct dumped tracking next part since it isn't needed to resolve a supers. But it was needed with creating a reverse supers tree. Tidied up.

Includes DB Changes. Log all terminals out before upgrading

Tweaks and fixes

• EPC importing
  • Honda should be working with newer PE epc
  • Mojo : added a link for Surron
• Magician : tweak link / cykel qty output slightly so works correctly with online based inventory check; for dealers with websites when link/cykel parts are viewed on these websites. Old format was "qty (level)", e.g. "83 (high)", will now render as "high: 83" in c9, which is a better format for website supplier check integration
• Includes a couple of new GL codes intended for 5.3 only
• Change part : rename 'margin %' to 'markup %' to reflect actual computation applied
• Super / PayDay Super changes
  • Super report : was breaking staff entries that involve recurring vol super payments into two lines. The figures where fine, just didn't aggregate records fully. Now fixed
  • Super report : rerunning report would not reset the tally row at bottom of report, making tally figure progressively increase on every 'run report' button hit
  • Add special logic when payday is 7 days in future, generate the file but don't upload it immediately. Delay upload until payday.
  • Integrate payday into stp / finalise workflow
  • Add an alert into payroll that checks and warns about overdue bank recs linked to the payroll account. From July 1 use of c9s payroll system must be accompanied with a regular bankrec.
• Till Pay Terminal integration : improve handling on network errors. Previously would log network errors as failures but this is not necessarily the case. The till terminal could still progress to success in some circumstances. Exact changes:
  • In event of a network error assume txn is still in progress. Indicate txn is in state of network error. after 30 seconds pop an alert to really draw attention to this
  • If operator forces cancel on c9 and there are network errors still, write eftjournal status as unknown. Don't assume it failed
• Unit profit report : was not displaying '-' for -ve Line Margin results but if you exported the report as CSV it was there. Visual bug with report itself. Now fixed.
• Spares -> price change report. Name of report incorrectly was a copy / paste of a completely different report, creating confusion when report is saved, previewed or in print queue. Now fixed
• Weborder browsing : is pretty slow since changes six months ago to include order status / funds clearing & deposit holding to help with order finalisation. Screen performance should now be dramatically improved
• Email AR/AP txns :  embed transaction type into the email subject so it is obvious from email subject that a bill payment is a Remittance Advise for example.
• Fixed a subtle visual bug with some screens with lists and tabsd, when they are resized if you ta back and forth the # of columns shown will be wrong and weird. Obvious in a resized estimates screen when screen defaults to second tab. Tab back to first and it will be wrong. Note this fix may not fix remote c9 sessions; that will require a rebuild of remote c9 at some point. The bug is probably too minor to justify that effort at this stage.
• Cash till details report : was incorrectly printing online till clearing txns as till no #2.  suppress till_no for payment gateway clearing txns
• View customer : invoiced units tab. Show invoice price + GST
• View spares invoice : new button to edit notify method (no notification, notify any , notify all)
• Payroll leave backdating and overpay : subtle bug with computing overpay on backdated leave.
  • If there exists an active unbackdated leave record which was previously partially applied in prior payrun, any additional backdated record, even on a completely different employee can cause the slip to incorrectly compute a backdate reduction on pay. The system fails to recognise that some/all of that leave pay was successfully applied in a prior run so it tries to undo it.
  • Payroll system internally computes for each staff member a lastpay and that computation was broken. The effects of this are very subtle and unlikely to be bumped into.  Influences:
    • Prorata computation involving backdated LWP entries AND either payslip gap or overlapping payslips
    • Overlapping payrun filtering

Low level changes

• v9.0 txnengine : fix loc_id type on mv_txnqty materialization. Do not materialize v5.3 orderbook link hints to mv_txnqty.
• This version should now open up with later versions of java. Long term goal is to target java LTS 25 and sit with that for a few years. At this time later java vers remain untested and unsupported but this is some progress towards that. This version warns you if you are using a version later than java 8. Note at this time c9remote is still strictly java 8. A rebuild of remote client will be made at some point as well.

Latest version, 5.2.145 was incorrectly alerting about a missed payday super upload. Alert is a false alert, tidied in this version of c9

Includes DB changes, you need to log all terminals out during upgrade.

PayDay super and SuperStream Integration

This version of c9 does alot of technical work to introduce a heap of new screens and processes to allow super payments to be managed via c9

• push button automatically deduct super payments from your bank and pay super funds; done part of a pay run in lieu of payday super requirements coming on July 1 2026
• Works similar to single touch : shows super status in payrun browse list.
• Like Single touch : this will be a costed service, pricing to be announced later but expected to be fairly similar to existing STP pricing.

Actual rollout, we will invite a few dealers to try it out in February , will make it generally available from March 2026 onwards

Other tweaks and fixes

• Memorize surcharge on payments : remove c9's behaviour of memorising changes to surcharging during point of sale. This behaviour causes more problems than it solves, generally c9 will move away from memorising 'configuration' changes which in the middle of things like point of sale; we realise generally 'configuration' changes should only stick if they are made in configuration screens do avoid situations where changes in normal workflows are made accidently
• Some internal tweaks to fiche installation which will help us with some fiddly fiche/website projects for a couple of OEMs we currently do not have EPC for.
• Deals : view cancell deals tab : shown date was rendering as a number, not a date. Now fixed.
• Contract or sale particulars : when fiance amount is set, print this on contract, not the inferred amount under finance based on outstanding balance. Note this can mean finance amount and outstanding can differ on contract particulars.  Inference is any difference is the difference in deposit still to collect.
• Deal fake deposit on pro forma invoice : was limited in size to $9,999,  increase to $999,999
• unit lines : have buttons to change order of things; but they were broken in some situations. The 'order' on reload of a deal might not match actual changes previously made. Very obvious after making changes to order after previously saving the the line items in an earlier edit. Now fixed.
• Purchase unit, write the supplied invoice no on first unit as txn reference, visible in AP txn list.
• Edit txn : sometimes after editing an AR/AP txn, the system would randomly jump to top of txnlist when returning to view transactions screen. Hopefully fixed now
• Supplier Credit / refund supplier credit: allow operator to select GL code. For suppliers with a preset GL code, supplier credits will default to that code.
• Paperwork Fixes
  • QLD - F5245 - letter of authority - dealer name was incorrectly printing in section 10, should be section 11
  • NSW - Forms C and B updated to most recent versions
• Import from parts catalogue, added a new import method: generic CSV. Looks at file header and tries to figure out columns.

 

Recently added amount finance input was limited to inputs under 10k, making it fairly functionally useless. Increased size of screen input to allow bigger values.