• Usability Tweaks to recently added find part function.
• Export dead stock, consider parts not sold since a given date to be dead. Same as the report itself
• View account - show summary information on parts on order; retail value of parts, less anticipated discount to be awarded; deposits on invoice held etc.

This version requires database updates and will force you to log all terminals out as part of upgrade

• Point of sale : F2 part lookup completely redesigned to be more powerful and flexible.
• Stock parts : make ability to organise parts into 'additional groups' more prominent on F6 modify part.  Above F2 changes permit filtering based on these additional groups
• Visual tweak to displaying of dates in modify workshop job; so date can completely fit in the visible space in the field

• Fix layout of items on pickup job. Some graphics controls were overlapping others
• Under some rare circumstances, receive order would misprint number of parts required for a given invoice
• modify workshop spares item. Allow user to override spares line item price. Recent changes to make adjusting qty automatically update line item price inadvertently damaged this facility
• Print customer code on units and spares invoice (already printed on workshop invoice)
• Print received barcodes, flush any existing items on barcode list first

• Web and Email
• Fixed anti-aliasing method used for rescaled images in HTML emails and web content. Look much nicer now.
• Improved ability to import HTML source from other HTML generators for HTML bulk email
• Bulk Email : include ability to attach files
• Bug fixes
• Adjust qty of spares items on workshop job. Does not update price of the line item. Now fixed.
• Pass workshop costs onto unit sale;  should not work for deleted jobs.
• Workshop dashboard would allow you to 'modify' a job even if no job was selected. Fixed
• Auto restart of messenger can crash C9 (rare situation, only affects Bolton's because they run 3 separate copies of c9 simultaneously).
• Tweaks
• Select part from master file franchise. Display stock description over price file descrption. Also optimised performance of the list.

• Messenger network connect is now more resilient in the face of intermittent network connectivity
• Printing large notes such as workshop description on workshop invoice. If the length of the notes exceeded a single page, then c9 would previously only print first page of notes.  New version i more intelligent and is able to break up notes across multiple pages. The change also permits printing of notes where there is substantial space on a page, but not quite enough to print the entire notes. It will also break notes into multiple chunks in such cases
• Miner : memorize list widths and use adjusted widths when printing miner reports
• HTML mail merge:  size limit was too small. Increase capacity for HTML emails by x8
• Javaw.exe is still running errors : recent update of java for windows would mean c9 would 'hang' during windows shutdown on some computers.  Added a workaround.

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

Read more...

• 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