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

• Tweaks and fixes
  • Bulk linkable barcode generation
    • Was broken when changes to barcodes from a few years ago. Now working again (I guess noone ever uses this?)
    • Ability to reprint last batch of barcodes instead of generating new ones
    • Ability to suppress plaintext number on output
    • Option to export results to a CSV file instead of print
    • Some slight ergonomic improvements. e.g. keep screen open from print to print to allow fine tuning etc
    • Tweak unsupercede alert so it is explicit what its behaviour is (superceding part is physically deleted )
  • View customer.
    • Access notification history from here
    • Got rid of correct aged balance variation. Utility of this is long gone since open invoice tracking is now years established for c9
  • Add alternatives, access this view view part / view change part preloaded with the viewed part
  • SMS Billing : some internal tweaks with how we track SMS for billing.  No real functional changes except that SMS billing will now bill for delivered SMS right up until date of invoice where previously we would only bill for SMS sent upto 3 days prior, so next bill might be a tiny smidge more than what would of been generated previously. This change is mostly to support further changes coming with additional billable service offerings (rego lookup). More details to come in a direct email shortly which will only become relevant in a version or two from now

 

Part number formatting

10+ years ago most OEM suppliers provided quality price files  where part numbers are formatted to be easy to read and conveyed additional information about type and era of bikes the parts fit based on grouping of spaces and dashes. More and more suppliers are forgetting how to do this (and forgetting how to do IT well in general) and instead price files land as big clumps of difficult to read numbers. Several major OEMs now do this.

As an example.

Old pricefile:     901 03 940 044 01S 
Current Pricefile: 9010394004401S

Solving this problem in a proper and safe way is fiddly because of concerns about what happens when you present a part number back to a supplier which has been reformatted? Will they accept it or not?  To work around this, c9 tracks the 'format' the supplier provide and your 'reformat' .  Supplier 'format' is presented on things like order export.  This may have some implications. See below for details on KTM order export.

To enable the feature, in edit franchise , advanced (2) tab you'll see this:

The rule is a complex bit of code that tells c9 how to format the part. Use radio buttons at bottom to pick a recipe.  KTM rule is complex. Others are alot simpler. e.g.

After making the change. You need to reimport price file. For repo price files, reimport the price file and pick the option 'Reimport full pricefile' e.g.:

Other tweaks and fixes

• VicRoads Rego grab disabled. Working on replacement options... will be a few weeks away
• Bugfix with rolling back factory units.  Rollback unit would hose out general ledger stuff but would leave unit in stock. Second rollback would fix it.  Bug is related to more recent changes. PReviously factory rollback would throw up a weird looking alert screen but would work. The fix for that suppressed the alert screen ,but injectation new & functionally incorrect behaviour. Now fixed.
• KTM Order export : tweaked to send 'formatted' part number. This reworked KTM order export requires you have latest repo pricefile installed to grab correct 'formatted' part. This is needed to contend with parts with a space in the KTM supplied part nos. Like Piston Kits. The previous dodgy piston kit detect hack to deal with piston kit parts has been removed in favour of using  supplier provided formatted part numbers.

KTM Order Export Advice

If you are using Generic export, It is recommended you change export pattern from PQR to FQR to include formatted part as formatted by KTM. Necessary to make sure parts with spaces in them from KTM, like Piston Kits have correct formatting.

e.g. in advanced tab:

 

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

• Couple of tweaks
  • Workshop, reschedule clear job would throw up an error on the screen. The actual clear scheduled mechanic operation would work so the error message was an annoyance. (caused by recent location based changes on mechanics.) Now fixed
  • A subtle performance bug with installing price files into a master file with existing pathalogical supers issues. More details below

supers resolution performance details

Some price files have baked into them a supercession which is really just a NLA flag. For example supers to 9999999 means all these parts are NLA. In a file, 50k or more such parts could supercede this way. On initial install this is okay, but on subsequent changes, merging those changes would result in install price file failing to complete due to excessive inefficiencies, which was originally designed assuming supers graph would only be 100 or so parts max, not 10k+ -> 100k+ parts.

More backstory: Changes made to c9 about 18 months ago, in part to support v5 project, dramatically reworked how supers resolve.  supers resolution in c9 is now 'front loaded' during price file manipulation / installation so that the heavy work is done at this point to resolve supers. When later on when you are selling parts etc, the supers resolution is extremely efficient/fast. Where previously c9 would resolve / walk supers chains every time a part is keyed in. Now supers are pre-walked during price file installs. This ver tweaks this a bit to cope with pathalogical price files where we have 10k+ parts superceding to a single part number.

 

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

Tweaks and fixes

• Some bank rec tweaks
  • Get prior / reference rec buttons would pull wrong recs. Now fixed
  • Subtle bank rec tweak.  Some entries within the rec period would exert influence on opening balance when intuitively you wouldn't expect them to. Now fixed ( A txn that was in prior period and reconciled, moved into new period damaging that reconcile. Prior period is re-reconciled, but when you goto the new period, bankrec behaved as though the re-reconcile didn't happen WRT the moved transaction and it would pull at opening balance as though the txn was still discordant)
• Cash till : make it harder / very naggy to change float balances, because often this is misused to quickly paper over deeper problems (usually backdated txn manipulations) and it harms compliance reconciliation (reconciling balance sheet to P&L).
• More TxScript tweaks (tx v1.2).

Tweaks and fixes

• WS Profit report : Word New/Used on report output back to front. Now fixed
• TxScript : updated with a few tweaks and improvements. This is needed to help out one dealer in particular with a problem with original migration of data when we installed c9 for them.  TxScript is a support/diagnostic tool added as part of v5 to help with low level support stuff so changes here will also be useful for future support and data conversion work.

Tweaks and fixes

• Husky Magician now working
• Bugfix with predelivery work on a deal where PD has current parts on order. GST and cost computation would go haywire. Now fixed.

Tweaks and fixes

• Select GL code screen. Displayed balance was wrong, it was sort of shifted vertically. Now fixed
• Warranty report. Numerous issues here, some caused by transition to v5 but some even older. Now sorted
• KTM magician : now working with Dealernet platform

Tweaks and fixes

• Point of sale margin alert would falsly pop for ordered parts when cost base discount scheme was in play. System would incorrectly compute margin for ordered parts. (Specifically, would use supply from stock price instead order price, which can actually vary when using cost base discounting so the cost price may differ from a stocked items vs a daily ordered item).
• Drop shipping : the use drop ship option is supposed to default to true if correct customer + supplier settings lined up but instead was defaulting to disable drop shipping. Now fixed.
• WPS integration: this version includes new experimental WPS integration endpoints for importing price files (heaps faster price files!), exporting orders and magician queries. Not yet enabled just yet... waiting for WPS to give us the go-a-head to make it happen.
• KTM SAP inspired changes
  • KTM Export : align export format with new SAP format.
  • full stock and full stock summary reports modified to include a new column to show stock buy variation.
  • new option in orderbook to allow bulk moving of parts based on criteria such as all power parts.

Invoice PDF importing

Updated 18-Jan

Seen first sample of a tax invoice. C9 should be able to read them in but the invoice design is very complex so I am expecting it will take a few goes to get it right. As always flick invoices that do not work to us to get working.

Price file and price change impacts on inventory holding

Updated 16-Jan & 17-Jan.

Update 28-Jan : Pricefiles in repo baked with attributes needed to support new stock ordering rules. Also includes supersession refresh

New price files are in c9 repo. The supplied price files at this this time contain some significant omissions and issues. Hoping to receive revised files from factory in a few days. Specifics:

• No supercession data was provided. Pre-existing supers as previously supplied last (in September) have been reapplied for now
• Part categorization, which is critical for stock ordering and stock buy pricing analysis is absent.
• Lack of part categorization means discounting regime for stock orders cannot be determined. In meantime stock disc % is set to daily disc %

Part pricing is expected to drop significantly with switch to SAP. For dealers with large stock holdings this can be quite impactful on costs and parts margins on already purchased goods.

Next version of c9 will modify two key reports : full stock and full summary. A new column is being introduced called 'stock buy variation'. It will show variation on costings from last in cost vs stock buy price. Ideally it should be zero. But +ve values will indicate loss of stock valuation when stock buy is lower than your last in. These reports will provide an estimate on impacts of any pricing changes on current holdings.

Uploading orders

Updated 5-Feb. Note the change to format below.

Order file format is changed. C9 will release a new version of c9 that will update the generated file  for KTM / Husky. (Done)

Alternatively you can switch to using generic file export method. Click on change export method and select Generic (CSV or XLSX)

In Generic settings

1. goto advanced tab
2. set mask to FQR   (this is a format string. It means formatted part number, then quantity then order reference).
3. Make sure header is empty
4. Make sure separator is a semi colon (;)
5. Make sure never escape option is selected

Warning the screengrab above says PQR, but it must now be FQR. Couldn't be stuffed redoing the image. Make sure it is FQR, otherwise parts with spaces in them, like piston kits will not export correctly.

 

Stock order handling

SAP system will require that stock orders are uploaded on particular weeks in a calendar month and only certain parts can be included in that upload.

To support this some changes have been made to c9. The basic process will be as follows:

1. Generate a active stock order
2. NEW Bulk Move eligible parts on stock order to a new sent order during week stock order is open for those part types
3. export the newly created sent order as per normal
4. cleanup / ignore stock order with non eligible parts as needed

Bulk move function is accessed via a new function in orderbook under modify. There is a new button called bulk move parts.

To bulk move parts. Highlight the order in order book. Click on modify and click on bulk move.

Next screen Select move to stock order with new sent order. Drop the list down to pick new sent order. Make sure you move cust stock order parts too.

Once finished, c9 will drop relevant parts on a new sent order, leaving anything not relevant behind. Export the newly created order. It will show status of 'sent(?') because its send status is unknown. Goto send -> Export to export as a order file and load into dealer.net

Bulk move triggers off a new price file attribute : stkordcat. Values being power or apparel or parts. At this time the attribute is not set in c9 repo.  Waiting for a new price file from KTM that captures the underlying required raw data.

Magician availability checks

Updated 18-Jan : Magician working with dealernet

Miscellaneous minor details

Another important change for pricefiles, for c9 : to date c9 has tried to retain formatting spaces etc in price files under circumstances where suppliers inadvertently strip this information as part of some sort of internal IT system migration. c9 will no longer do this and this new price file will substantially remove spaces and dashes. I get that this is an annoyance as raw part numbers are not nearly as ergonomic to work with, but strictly this is a problem that suppliers need to contend with not DMS systems like c9.  One of the reasons why I feel compelled to abandon this is because I have no idea how relaxed KTM's SAP system is with regards to part number formatting and there is no time to try and figure that out. So c9 will publish price files exactly as we get them, instead of trying to reconstruct how part nos looked during gentler times. Possibly down the track c9 may includes some facilities to overlay your own part number formatting scheme to make part numbers easier to look at, but such a change will need to wait for v5 to be fully completed first.

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

Tweaks and fixes

• Print unit details. Listed parts would have wrong franchise printed next to them now fixed.
• Print job card. Would erroneously print a random unit type in bottom right of footer for jobs without a unit. Now fixed.
• Subtle bug with initial v5.1 migration.  v5.1 does alot of General Ledger manipulation, such as recoding floor units from code 1-5100 to 1-5110.  v5.1 carefully verifies GL from v4 to v5 is the same besides designed in changes but there is one thing it wasn't doing. C9's general ledger contains a performance optimisation in that it caches balance tallies on demand on monthly barriers. So when getting current balance it doesn't have to tally every single txn in history of system, it only needs to tally txns since last cache barrier. V5 migrator erroneously did not invalidate/reset the cache. Updating to this version of c9 will trigger a cache reset. This problem can be especially obvious for code 1-5110, but also impacts GST holding codes as these are rationalized in v4 to v5 into a simpler set of GL codes. Impact of this bug is that 5-1100 would be inflated to a much higher valuation on realigning inventory to GL which in turn can impact balance sheet and trading statement. It would in time correct itself if you did any operations that automatically reset the cache (such as posting a historical txn or manipulating an old txn). This update forces a clean update which combined with a refresh sync inventory to GL would align everything correctly.

This version includes some initial, unfinished and non-functional work on migrating to next major v5 version v5.2.  Expectation is this will wrap up in a few weeks.