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Release 4.481 & 4.482 January 4, 2015 barney

Requires database changes. You will need to log all terminals out during upgrade

This version includes two major additions.

General Ledger

C9 is now backed with an internal general ledger.  The Ledger only covers sales related items at this time. CoGs is mostly complete except for spares CoGs (to be added at a later date).

This change will hopefully make your accountants jobs much simpler through newly included ledger reports.  Making it easier to extract information on sales, GST inputs and liabilities, assets and performing tasks such as reconciling income, cash assets etc.  The Ledger stuff is completely invisible, nothing has been changed in how c9 behaves so for users of c9 they don't need to worry about the ledger or need to learn how to work with it. Under Business is a new section General Ledger which provides all this info.  Note that this change is not retrospective, only sales made after upgrade will appear in the GL.

The chart of accounts is fairly straight forward. For specific questions from accountants about GL structure in c9, contact c9 support.

coa

Selling ordered parts before receiving them into c9

C9 now includes the ability to sell a part put on order before you actually receive it into c9.  Consider, the courier has just dropped off a stack of parts, and one of your customers has at the same time come into pickup some of those parts. Previously c9 would not let you do this until you receive these parts in.

Some dealers have requested c9 include negative qty on hand, we have stridently refused to do this because we believe this 'solution' doesn't model the business problem correctly and creates more problems than it solves. -ve quantities is a mainframe 1980's approach to this problem; modern IT solutions should and can do much better than this!  The problem with -ve is that you don't know why it is negative, how that -ve figure is mixed with actual stocked items and items supplied but not received, and quickly stock levels become a complete mess, we know this from converting other dealer systems to c9 which permit -ves.  This is especially prevalent for shops where inventory management discipline is poor where orders are not received promptly, in such environments, providing tools that create greater opportunity for inventory tracking errors can only increase inventory tracking woes.

Our solution flags parts on order as having being supplied already. So there is a carefully tracked and itemised list of items supplied before being received.  You still need to receive orders into c9, but c9 knows which ones have already been provided and which ones should stil physically be present.  A number of screens and reports around ordering have changed to display quantities already handled.

The solution allows you to sell parts ordered for stock in this way too, as well as supply parts destined for customer prior to receiving the order.

In point of sale, you keyin a part to supply. Normal parts already on order screen appears, pick the customer.  It will import order with part quantities preset to what c9 thinks has been supplied. You can then modify quantities to force supply the item, c9 will interprete  this to mean that parts have physically arrived but not yet received and will flag items on your order book accordingly.

For parts ordered for stock, on forget/order/sell screen if you pick sell c9 will ask you if you are supplying from parts on order but not yet received into c9 and will take appropriate action.

Release 4.480 December 8, 2014 barney

Tweaks to edit web content for image gallery.

  • Preset selection on first gallery item when editing
  • Increase size of allowed URLs/hyperlinks

Bugfix : DB scanner on stock and master broken by recent changes to improve text based searching/indexing of these tables.  Functionality in scanner now restored.

Release 4.479 December 5, 2014 barney
  • Local backup : do not backup images sourced from supplier websites as these can be readily reconstructed
  • Import parts images
    • Do not import images which cannot be reprocessed/resized, such as exotically encoded, CYMK type images.
    • Improve image renaming logic to filter out non ascii and better handle URL encoding
  • Website mapping : only create structure based on stocked items was busted. Now fixed
Release 4.478 December 4, 2014 barney

Includes database changes. You will need to log c9 out during upgrade

  • Added notion of locations into c9.  Very early stages for this functionality.  Can be used to track locations of jobs.
    • Different terminals can be configured with different locations via Setup -> General
    • When creating a job you can set a location. Defaults to terminal location
    • Can modify location
    • In main workshop job screen you can filter jobs by location. either show all jobs or show only jobs that below to a specified location
  • Paypal integration : on select instrument structure it so user has to work hard to select a payment method other than paypal, it is still possible, incase it is ever needed but requires user to unlock other options
  • Unit invoice : fit more on a single page to minimise page overflow
  • New workshop report : todays jobs. Shows jobs expected to be received or jobs starting today
  • Create customer from web order.  Now sets customer contact correctly
  • Browse fiche : behaviour of preset franchise on browse diagram was a bit haywire. Hopefully new logic is both intuitive and useful
Release 4.477 December 2, 2014 barney

Bugfix tweak with paypal integration. Was not detecting parts still on order correctly for closing out paypal based sales with parts on order.

Added new system monitor/reminders for workshop

  • When jobs in progress are still inprogress after their promise date
  • When jobs scheduled to be received have not yet been received
  • For jobs with parts on order where parts are on order for longer than X # of days

4.476 : a bugfix tweak with importing parts images where part image filename contained spaces.

Release 4.475 November 28, 2014 barney

Includes database changes. You need to log all terminals out during upgrade

  • Receive stock : check invoice number as soon as it is typed in for duplicates. Not when user presses F10 continue
  • Internal tweaks to how price file items are mapped onto websites (no functional change)
  • Magican backorder availability : remember if a magician category is cancelled and stop nagging user everytime try to lookup a part of that same franchise
  • Browse active orders : show order item created date, not created order date. Also optimised things so it runs really quickly, even when scanning historical data.
  • Work on price files
    • Track/Use pack qty data
    • Track attributes
    • Greatly Improved fast search options. See a bit more below
    • Tracking attributes on price files, things like size/colour etc. Importable from generic price files.
  • Web image/meta data import
    • import from KTM Dealer Net. Also import Dealer Net's web order descriptions too
    • Import attributes from Monza/Cassons/Mcleods
  • Mapping parts onto website - provide tools to quickly map a structure and parts onto a website based on part attributes
    • Create structure based on part attributes. i.e. automatically create menu tree for type, brand for say, Monza
    • Map parts onto that structure.

Improved text search.

In previous versions of c9, if you searched for '300/275/21' , usually would return nothing.  Text search indexing is now optimised to better handle descriptions we get in price file so rapid searches like this are now possible:

tubesearch

Bonus: the order you type it in doesn't matter. '300/275/21' is the same as '21/300/275' is the same as '300 275 21'.

Only list Fox Stuff from Monza

attrfx

 

Price File Attributes November 26, 2014 barney

Working on some interesting changes in c9 : price file attributes. On price file items you can add arbitrary price file attributes, things like size, type, colour etc. These can be imported via generic. I am also going to importing this data from dealer extranet systtems provided by Monza etc too.

You can search on these attributes, see screen shot below:

attr

 

attredit

These attributes will be used to better help organise items into websites for dealers that run websites. To allow for quick wins in terms of getting parts onto a website.  Down the track we will look at using attributes for shopping selection.

Other changes in play include importing pack quantity information from supplier price files and configuring pack qty behaviour on a per part basis.

Release 4.473 November 20, 2014 barney
  • Import generic. Cope with fact that BRP excel files label supercession column with misspelt name: Subtitude_Part
  • Find part : list would do weird things and render in loops and jump around a bit.  This was caused substantially by recent changes to increase maximum # of franchises beyond 255, though I also fixed a few other little bugs here too which might be contributing.
  • Find part : ability to view/modify part while in find part
  • Subtle bug with the following scenario.  You do split payment (i.e. cash + credit card) where one payment method tenders change and the other incurs a surcharge.  The system would miscalculate the amount to tender by the value of the surcharge, resulting in incorrect tendering and in the case of spare parts sales, weird invoices claiming the surcharge was put on account.  Now fixed.
  • Workshop pickup : option to print two copies. Made two copies and print hours options checkboxes on the print screen.
  • View job : show discount and proper totals like most other workshop screens (modify/complete/pickup etc)
  • Print job in progress: print discount line items and print discount text properly
  • Modify Deal : change add/remove deposit display so it is more obvious how deposit management behaviour is.  Previously was unintuitive as it was not clear that deposit changes are uncommitted until you press OK button. Hopefully you display which shows current and uncommitted deposit value will make more sense.
  • Spare parts : put commonly used barcode and reprint invoice option under the 'spare parts' menu.  Is also still in reports. Under spares should make it easier to get to.
Release 4.472 November 14, 2014 barney

Requires database changes, you'll need to log all terminals out during upgrade

  • Completely redesigned Profit Summary report
    • Show columns for price, discount, cogs and retail as a table. So easier to read
    • Realise profit on spare parts at point that parts leave the building, i.e. bolted on a workshop job or a unit as part of pre-delivery. Not when parts leave the spares department
    • Realise profit on workshop pre-delivery when the unit is sold, not when job is finished
    • Report unrealised profit in various forms such as:
      • Predelivery charges not billed on the final unit sale invoice
      • internal/dealership workjob jobs department consumption of spares
  • Add new customer : if there is a clash or codes/names upon highlighting code field in add customer, jump to the bottom of the list highlighting record to allow user to proceed with creating a new customer
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