C9 has for some time now offered a complete end to end web solution that permits online shopping.

But for dealers that already have a website,  your web site developers now can access your c9 database from within the website, to browse spares, units, and place web orders that appear automatically within c9 point of sale!  The access, just like c9 provided website, works 24x7 and does not require you to have your c9 system running all the time.  This will allow you to engage your web site provider to provide a polished web shopping front to your business that perfectly preserves your websites looks and feel and is tightly integrated into c9.

Technical details for web developers

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• Spares point of sale : include option to allow users to merge parts on order onto an existing invoice.  This helps keep parts to pickup list sensible and allows you to deal with situation where customer orders parts multiple occasions but you want to limit number of subsequent 'pickup' invoices that are issued.
• Pickup workshop job : make screen flow like create new job.  Forces users to inspect costs and tallys with the intention of minimizing human error during workshop pickup
• Bug on pickup receive order. If you add additional parts to the invoice the system will actually remove those parts from stock twice.  Bug has been in place since 4.84
• Bug on Print Estimate. Under some circumstances the list of items on the estimate would not print completely. Now fixed
• Add new customer. Default to cash customer
• Merge web order. On add new customer, default to cash customer. Also default limits etc appropriately
• MYOB sync : use received order date, not today's date for syncing spares invoices

The C9 system is increasingly becoming more sophisticated and intelligent in terms of its capacity to meaningfully crunch the business data it collects and provide meaningful feedback, for things such as recommended stocking levels and useful charts such as customer retention analysis.  Normally, c9 users need not worry about this, it is barney's headache (actually a hobby). But there are some areas you need to be aware of, that the information you are looking at needs to be considered in light of the underlying processes used to derive it.

Consider a chart report; customer retention. Here is such a report taken from live data.

Note the bit I have highlighted in green.  It appears as though retention is dropping off, but this is not necessarily so. It could be a statistical artefect.

Consider a customer who brings their bike in every 12 months for a service.  Their last service was 3 months ago. I run the customer retention report.  Obviously between 3 months ago and when he first become a customer he is counted as a retained customer. But what about today. In order to count him as a retained customer we need to assume that he will come back in 9 months.  The above c9 report does indeed do this, it looks at individual customers, their return rates and makes a prediction when he comes back.  If the customer comes back every 12 months like clock work then it is easy. But what happens if there is variance? i.e. he comes in after 9 months one year, 14 months the next etc etc.  c9 needs to be able to cope with this variance and make a reasonable prediction. But it is only a prediction; so the tail end of the graph is somewhat inaccurate. Also, consider customers c9 has only seen once, currently c9 lacks a means/model to make a guess whether or not they are new retained customers or once off customers only.    So never read too much into the tail end of a graph such as this one.

MYOB Integration tweaks

• Detect if MYOB supplier that c9 maps to has been deleted; if so then request user to remap any c9 suppliers during sync
• Configuration option to skip syncing a certain c9 suppliers. Setting is memorized only for the duration of the sync operation. Next sync user has to map the supplier and skip it again.  Note that skipped invoices are not flagged as synced, so if you run sync again, c9 will try to resync prior skipped invoices.
• Configure mapping, include option to refresh list of MYOB suppliers and account lists.  Useful when you go to map a supplier and find that card is missing in MYOB. You can switch to MYOB, add the card, switch back to c9 click refresh and see the newly added card
• Bugfix : under some circumstances during configuration of MYOB, c9 would crash. (Caused by incorrect database access)

• Business activity report; cash/accrual filter on report was incorrect for invoiced sales/invoiced payments
• Publish website. Include ability to add consignment units
• Browse part : show retail price in browse
• Browse received orders. Display supplier if known. This was happening previously. It was displaying 'accessories - <supplier>' but window design you could only see 'accessories' you had to expand the column to see supplier. Fixed by shortening accessories - to 'Acc -'
• Sell parts to a job. Permit creation of a new job at this point.
• Complete job : warn user if job contains items with zero line item value. Some dealers will initiate line item value to 0.00 because cost of item is unknown at time item is added. But forget to check it on completion. Warning is to remind such users.
• Receive order. On receive print output, display SMS notification setting for customer orders

• Added ability to generate HTML based email mailouts.  This allows you to mess with fonts, colors, insert images, links and tables into miner generated emails. (Previously only plain emails were supported)
• Minor tweaks and usability annoyances
• cash till report : included a simplified version of detail report. (Prior was a print of biz activity report which is potentially too complicated for cash till analysis)
• Browse dealer units, could not keyin VIN number to search until click mouse in list of units. Now fixed
• Clockoff on different day. Disallow time travel (user specifying clockoff date/time that occurs before clockon)
• Spares deposit. If spares invoice is of invoice type then open account deposit taking window
• Create/convert account. Default balance limit to $0.01
• Built-in spell checker works properly on mail merge edits (bulk printer or new HTML/email system)
• Pickup workshop job : include big colorful banner at top of the window that indicates if pickup is cash/account/dealer/etc
• Cash till : till taking for initial workshop deposit would incorrectly record on job start date, not date job is entered into system
• Pickup Reserve order.  Default invoice type to either receipt or invoice depending on type of customer

Note 4.230 addition of HTML contained some bugs which were only obvious to me when testing under Windows. 4.231 fixes these.

This version will modify the database; it will force you to log all terminals out during upgrade

• Unit quotes. Generate quotes and convert quotes into invoices
• Browse/Select unit.  Various browse unit screens now contain a filter option that allows you to only display units that match the filter. i.e.  all Generators, or all bikes whose model contains '250'
• Purchase unit.  Add option for purchase similar unit : it will add another unit to the list of units being purchased by cloning the selected unit.  Useful for processing a purchase order of a bunch of brush cutters of the same model type for example
• Accounts - ability to define type of phone. i.e. instead of 'Alt Phone' you can write 'Bobs Phone', or 'Bills Mobile'
• When browsing lists where search mechanism allows you to search by a date or an invoice number etc, automatically position the list at the bottom of the list. i.e. 99.9% of the time user is interested in last invoices, not first invoice ever raised in the system
• Stocktake sheets. Print barcode
• Stocktake entry.  Redesign so list reflects exact same as printed output. Also tune interface to make data entry quicker
• Receive orders : new column : line total.
• Cash Till Report. Option to print detailed report on all transactions involved in the reporting period.
• Redesign of point of sale screens so sale finalization works more efficiently.
• Tender amount occurs after select payment method
• Tender is only asked if instrument is tenderable (only first Cash is tenderable, configurable via setup) and invoice amount is greater than
• Tender display only occurs if tendered amount is neither 0 or invoice value. i.e. there is change to tender.
• This change has implications.  Specifically you can no longer book an account payment on invoice sale during point of sale. You now have to goto accounts separately and book payment. Arguably this implication yields better software too, as the way system used to work was a frequent cause of human error.
• Ability to open till on all sales; even if print docket is not selected
• Franchises - ability to 'archive' franchises. i.e. parts in franchise can no longer be accessed via POS but old profit reports etc still work
• Receive order : print invoice and order line item notes if any
• Bugfix - if you try to add certain items to the database (i.e. staff or jobitem), and trigger an error like 'Duplicate Clerk Key'; fixing the duplicate and clicking on OK again does not have expected result. Saved data is incorrect.  Now fixed.
• Bugfix : buy sell report would not report received order items that were free-form added/modified onto a receive order at point of receive. Would only report received items which were formally ordered on either daily or stock order (regression caused by introduction of reserve/picklist)
• Bugfix: miner join of unit chains was not working correctly

Bugfix. Ability to copy read only strings displayed in windows onto the clipboard caused an annoying defect with some buttons, especially in point of sale. The buttons could no longer be accessed via the mouse, unless you click on the edge of the button (hotkeys still worked).  Workaround by disabling copy to clipboard for strings which are not dynamic. i.e. On screen in view acocunt for example you will see "Address: 10 Bourke St".  The "Address:" bit cannot be copied, but the dynamic "10 Bourke St" can.

• Monthly passwords.  C9 now includes a facility to fetch passwords from the Internet.  If  status of your bill account with c9 is up-2-date then you can fetch next password by clicking a button in enter password.   Existing methods still work, i.e. manually key in password.
• Right mouse button click on many controls in c9 to copy/paste content. Works on strings, entry, text controls and images.
• Manage images - provide ability to crop and rotate images
• Add ability to store images against units and workshop jobs. Motivated for Victoria RWC changes but can track many images for different purposes against either a job or a unit. Note that this feature is only available if you have online backups enabled.

• When you have many c9 instances running it is hard to tell on taskbar which one is which.  New change, the taskbar description changes depending on what module you are in. i.e. 'C9 Spares', or 'C9 Workshop' etc
• F12 Customer pickup - includes option to print list
• F12 Customer pickup - include search option. e.g. search by name or order description
• F12 customer pickup - dramatically improved performance of loading/displaying the list. Especially when there are lots of items in the list
• Receive order - new checkbox to print barcodes after receive. When checked, after receive print barcode is displayed with all of the stock received items preloaded ready for printing
• Bugfix tweaks on processing internet orders requested by Drew.
• Bugfix - last version of c9 modified invoice attachments so name of the shop would be built into the name of the PDF file.  But there is a limit to length of the name of an attachment.  If too long then attachment name would be incorrect and many computers will not be able to open attachment.  Example:  "Really Long business name Bikes & bits" would generate an invalid name of a invoice. New change shortens a name using various algorithms, such as remove "Pty Ltd" etc. So above example becomes "Really Long business name Bikes Spare Parts invoice #123456.pdf".  Tested the algorithm with all c9 customer business names and results generated work well.