Ongoing reliability issues with our SMS provider for past few months.  Been working with them to try and improve things but nothing is happening.

Trialing a new provider as of today.  Actively monitoring. If it starts raining frogs let us know.

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

Payroll - This version includes early non-functional work on a payroll system.  Most of foundation is there. Pay runs, PAYG calculations, managing wages, overtime, annual/sick leave public holidays etc are largely implemented.  A functionally complete alpha version is still approx 4 to 6 weeks away.

Pricefiles - Link International is now in C9 Price file Repository

Accounts - For 2 decades c9 has used brought forward accounting. Brought forward doesn't track which invoices are paid and which invoices are not paid instead it tracks overall balance as of current,30,60,90+. Over a year ago, In Oct 2015 we added an optional layer over the top of this to help track which invoices are open and which are closed providing open invoice tracking.  But this tracking is independent of original brought forward behaviour. Effectively c9 now has both mechanisms, it currently substantially favours brought forward for historical reasons.  Because of this the aged balances as reported by brought forward vs aged balances computed/implied by open invoice can be and are often different (Account balances are perfectly in sync, it is only the aging that varies). The open invoice implementation has proven to be as reliable as the brought forward implementation so we will be in the near future providing a facility that allows switching from brought forward to open invoice where optionally aged balances that are paid off are no longer settable but are computed based on which transactions are still open.  This version includes a couple of interum measures to help facilitate better syncing of aging data without providing actual computed aging across all relevant facets of c9.

Other changes - Mostly tweaks and bugfixes. Specifically

• Account Balances
  • Setup - >System and database. Include a new database task that syncs aged balance according to open invoice list to aged balance in c9
  • Add transaction: when selecting invoices to pay factor in those invoices when computing default aging periods.
•  Spares
  • Import spares quote involving a customer and customised discount settings.  On import customised discount setttings would be overloaded with customer default discount settings. Now fixed to use the discount settings as set on the quote
  • Receive order. Provide part search box to search parts on receive list
  • Dead stock report. Include filter option to show the opposite: live stock
  • Orderbook : show qoh/min/max qty for items in the book that are stocked
  • Discount % holding.  A design problem with this is not updating discount % on importing price file for suppliers that provide accurate pricing data.  For majoritry of  suppliers price file should be more or less accurate. Discount held was created for accoessry suppliers where things are a bit messier where dealers might get special pricing regimes that are not encapsulated on price file.  Added a new setting on each franch which disables, by default, discount holding.  You need to goto add/edit franchise -> advanced to explicitly enable holding.  By default all franchises will have this option disabled
•  Workshop
  • Show tally of effort for all uncompleted jobs in main workshop screen
  • Workshop profit report : would misidentify supplier warranty work on floorstock as internal work. Now fixed.
• Units
  • View invoices units. Show sales rep. Provide option to modify sales rep (only accessible to logins with admin permission)
  • Track an expected pickup date on deals
• Miner
  • Allow query by country code
• Other
  • Docket printing : added support for margin indenting. Accessed via setup
  • Profit summary : missing internal preassembly costs on units for labour+other+ws spares (spare parts were there). Now reported

Bugfix. Version 4.658 broke setup screen.  Now fixed.

• Spares
  • Import Polaris EPC. Drop requirement to provide login credentials
  • Import Spide Parts images.  (Pending changes from spidi website owners)
  • Bug: Retain Supercession data feature added in last version worked on global level even though setting appears in edit franchise it actually incorrectly applies to all franchises in prior version. Fixed so it is franchise level setting. After updating you'll need to reapply setting to appropriate franchises.
  • NLA supercession filtering, increase field size to accomodate Yamaha's version of NLA (9999999999).
  • Cash refund : provide option to refund to customer as a deposit (i.e. store credit), saves time having to wrangle separate operations for this fairly common usage pattern
    
• Workshop
  • Clocking : allow operator to modify labour line item description while clocking off existing job
  • New report: show jobs on hand and parts bolted to job as at a specific date (defaults to July 1 prior to date report is run). Something some accountants want if one considers parts bolted to a workshop job in progress as part of shop inventory
•  Units
  • Show profit margin on following screens: View Unit, Modify unit and add sell unit
• Other / Misc
  • Simple add image + description for website parts. Filter out non ascii characters to improve JSON API access and webpage rendering
  • Sync website orders.  Cope with non latin character set characters such as "Gjøvik".  Encoding of c9 database at this time cannot cope with extended character sets under all circumstasnces so such things can mess with c9's online backup processes.
  • Manage webcontent : implement more rigourous transliteration instead of just diacritic trimming, so either Gjøvik or Köln will asciify fine.
  • Manual backup: ignore temporary tables tmp_accntfilter and tmp_partsearch (temporary tables used to optimise filtered search results)

Yamaha price files put a special supercession value of '9999999999' to mean the item is no longer available.

Problem is that this is treated as a supercession resulting in all NLA parts redirecting to this ficticious part number.  Supercession and NLA are completely different things.

C9 lets you work around this. You need to tell C9 that 99999-99999 is actually a NLA marker, not a supercession.

Setup -> Utilities -> Main Setup Screne. Goto spares 2 and key in following into NLA field.

(NLA|NA|NLS|9999999999)

Reimport price file and it should come good. (Requires update to c9 to accept this value)

Will update central repo file for Yamaha at c9 shortly to do this as well.

 

 

 

Includes database changes. You need to log out of all terminals as part of upgrade.

KTM Dealers : KTM pricefile can now be found in c9's central price file repository.  Other important changes for managing KTM price files documented here below.

• Spares
  • Added new switch to add/edit franchise for handling supercessions.  When set, if there is a supercession in c9 but it isn't on a price file being imported, then the supercession in c9 is preserved. This is especially important for KTM and Husky since the new computer system generate price files with supercession data missing.  KTM/Husky dealers. You want to set this option. See screenshot below.
    
• Giftcards
  • Track new field - expiry date
  • In giftcard show/filter based on expiry status
  • Print expiry on giftcard if set
  • On enter in giftcard alert if giftcard is overdue (but still allow sale through. Expired giftcards need to be processed manually as there is potentially a GST implication on them).
• Workshop scheduling
  • Modiify job: allow selection of a new scheduled mechanic
  • Job wrangling on scheduler : automatically create a task when a scheduled mechanic is selected if no task is already in play. Also allow auto switching of mechanic this way.
• Bugs/tweaks and little fiddles
  • Weborder processing. Tweak contact merge screen so it is more visually obvious what differences are between details entered on order vs details on file.  Also throw up a nag if there are differences.
  • Added some non functional database changes in preparation for some near future tweaks to how paypal integration works.  Will open up some new possibilities with paypal such as raising new paypal invoices to add/cover off excess freight charges all within c9.
  • Bugfix : under some circumstances a page on a printed/emailed report can appear on the next completely random report you generate. Should now be completely fixed
  • Bugfix: import GST exempt spares quote would not flip point of sale into tax exempt mode. Now fixed
  • Spares receive SMS notification window. Do not show parts ordered for workshop or deals since these never send out notifications anyway.
  • Modify contact.  3 letter country code is now displayed next to country name.  C9 accepts either full name or country code. (C9 tracks country as code)
    

 

 

 

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

• Multiple Workshop bugfixes with fixed/capped pricing listed below. Now fixed.
  • Price setting broken when invoice contains other items with line discounts on them.
  • Also broken for GST exempt sales
  • Also broken when trying to set a price that doesn't round to default rounding boundary.  Ignore invoice rounding for fixed/capped jobs
• Spare parts description search
  • Generally should run alot faster. Especially for big searches across all price files. i.e. searching for 'kit' or 'screw' across a million or so parts.
  • Allow description to do partial wildcard matches.  i.e. 'sunglass'  will match 'sunglasses' but 'sun*' will match anything that starts with 'sun', including 'sunset',  'sun' and 'sunglass'.
• Contacts search
  • Also optimised to run faster. Especially when there are multiple search terms.
• System level changes
  • Added new switch to disable monitors such as sms reply checking. (For software dev only).

• Spares
  • Import KTM EPC.  Tweaked to cope with changes to factory website
  • Tweak EPC import so can easily switch from remotely linked diagrams to locally installed.
• Workshop
  • Workshop global and jobtype based checklists. Only allow admin users to modify.
•  Units
  • Allow selection of a supplier on rebate. On collection, records as a supplier credit against the supplier.
  • Print unit labels.  On purchase unit and view unit.  Especially useful for P/E bits.
• Miner
  • Customer query. Type filter 'Any' redefined to be cash+account customers only.   Added new filter All, which includes archived contacts.
• Other
  • Tweaks to c9 lease/account reporting.

Additional:  New version of remote client installer is now up.  A few minor tweaks and issues, e.g. company logo not printing on reports when running via remote.

Honda service reporting requirements cover a number of concerns which require running jobs through c9 in a way so that report outputs are accurate and meaningful. Key areas of importance

• Honda vs non honda jobs
• job types.
• Genuine parts and oils (hardest bit to get right)

Honda vs non Honda Jobs

For a job to picked up as a honda job, it needs to have a unit assigned to it and the make associated with the unit is "Honda".  Fairly straightforward.  If job doesn't have a unit, it won't be reported. Further, Honda prefer complete VINS on unit so make sure the full VIN number is in the framenumber field on  the unit

Job types

Honda report requires classification into one of 3 types. Internal, Warranty and Customer. Tagging in c9 is straightforward but be mindful of these requirements.

• A warranty job is any job where 'Warranty Repair' flag is set.
• Otherwise if job has a customer it is a customer.
• Otherwise it is internal (irrespective of pre-delivery status of the job)

Genuine Parts and Oils

Parts on a workshop job need to be spare parts, not workshop parts, and need to be flagged against a franchise with the name 'Honda'. Otherwise they will be ignored for Honda Service reporting purposes.

Oils are any honda part that starts with the following part code:

• L1002-HP4
• L1002-GN4
• L1002-GN4
• L1002-FCW
• L1002-CHB

 

Normally many of these codes represents drum products and you pretty much never sell a drum to a single job,  so many operators of c9 prefer to use workshop parts for oils.  Such approaches will not work for honda service reporting.

C9 allows you to configure parts like a drum of oil to have a unit of measure which allows you to sell the oil to the job on a per litre basis. Details on setting up unit of measure here.

https://c8software.com.au/wp/2015/09/units-of-measure/

For example a 205 litre drum of 10w30 GN4 is setup in c9 like this:

Then it can be sold onto workshop job on a per litre basis and honda service reports will pick it up.

 

 

 

 

 

Just a few minor fixes and tidies

• Boss Web Magician query. Should be working now.
• View fiche via remote client.  Previously would warp and stretch the image. Now fixed
• Unit sale with workshop pre-delivery.  Spares items were not billing for spares currently on order. Now fixed.
• Paypal payment processing.  Make errors more obvious on screen and display actual error message paypal returned