Requires database changes, you need to log all terminals out.

Apologies for disruptions this morning.  This version hopefully will straighten everything out.

Fixes:

• Total account balance displayed is wrong.  Individual debtor/depositor balances are okay. Should now be fixed.
• System would crash at multiple points in c9.  For example when adding a new customer when you key in phone numbers as part of add. Would crash searching for customers with same phone number. Now also fixed
• For dealers that have not updated past 4.579, also includes changes to actual database upgrade to make it more reliable.  Prior updates could cause c9 to fail to upgrade due to issues with conflicts between supplier and customer codes.  Also fixed

Some items may be supplied in packs and you will want to sell them individually.

To do this with a stocked item you F6 modify the part and modify details highlighted below.

Firstly, all numbers in c9 are for the unit price, not the pack price. Your quantity on hand, retail price, list price etc all need to reflect the unit price.  C9 converts to packs at only a couple of points, at the point where you interface with the supplier. Remember:  numbers in c9 are always individual unit.

• Pack Quantity. Here you set how many are in a pack
• Ec Re-Ord.   Here you set how many you want to reorder. This must be a multiple of the pack.  i.e. for a pack of 4, ec- re-ord needs to be 4, 8, 12, 16. For example if you set it to 12, c9 will want to reorder multiples of 12, or 3 packs.
• Received Price files:  Is the price on the price file from the supplier the pack price or individual price?
• Send order qtys.  When you send a qty to order to the supplier, does that qty need to be # of packs, or # of individual items

Similar configuration exists on price file for non stocked items. (Spares -> Utilities -> Edit Price File)

Finally, you can configure default pricing/order settings on  a per franchise. Setting to save having to key it in all the time.

One very last thing, when you import price files via Generic you have option to select pack if price file provides this (few suppliers provide this)

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

• Accessory suppliers now merged in with customers.  More preparatory work for creditors.  Customers are now contacts, a contact can be either a customer or supplier (or both). To be added soon (in future versions of c9)
  • A 3rd balance : supplier balance.
  • Ability to add supplier transactions : bills, credit notes, bill payments and payment refunds.
  • Bill tracking and payment notifications
  • Tracking of capital purchases/assets.
• Bugfixes
  • Resize workshop spares window, didn't relocated buttons correctly
  • Convert workshop estimate into job, was not handling units of measure correctly within new job (import estimate in point of sale works okay)
  • Order query broken (with recent changes to supplier. Functionality now restored)
  • Point of Sale F12 pickup.  F6 non stocked item and edit price file, c9 forgets that part is being received and part remains in orderbook as uninvoiced.  Now fixed
  • Miner queries on suppliers would fail (not mapping to correct SQL column name)
  • VicRoads authority form: print SOLO instead of type. Print compliance date not year model.
• Tweaks
  • Print customer code as well on transaction receipts.
  • Workshop : show customer icon
  • View workshop job : show qty on order, show discounted price.
• New merge on pickup feature, coalesce interesting details from merged invoices into a note. Display note. Specifically:
  • Order number if not blank and different from workshop job.
  • Any notes left by customers on adjunct weborders and/or invoices.

 4.581: Patched add supplier. Was not setting customer/supplier flag correctly.

 4.582: Patched view/modify contact. Removed ability to delete (can only archive now). Tweaking naming from customer to contact in some spots

4.583: Bug could stop upgrade from working due to mismatched lengths of phone numbers on older supplier record and customer record

To send a bulk email/sms to everyone.

Important notes and caveats

Australia has strong anti-SPAM legislation in place.  C9 includes facilities to ensure you are on the right side of the law. SMS and email messages provide an automatic opt-out option in them. When users click this is on email or reply STOP on SMS this modifies the 'marketing' flag on their c9 customer record so they will not receive any further messages sent via miner

Miner email requires that you configure your c9 to use your own mail server.  C9 mail server will not send miner emails, again for anti-SPAM reasons.

Click here for info on how to configure

Some background information on why C9 will not send miner emails

SMS messages can be expensive if you use them to message everyone. C9 allows you to send messages to just a subset of customers, i.e. all customers that own a GSXR-750.  Look at 'Load standard query' option in miner for some prepared miner recipes for this sort of thing.

For SMS make sure you include the name of the business in the message body so people know who the SMS is from. Unlike normal notification SMS messages, bulk SMS is sent from an internal 04 number to allow people to reply to opt out so it will not be obvious to recipients of the SMS who the message is from.  Make sure you make it clear in the message text who is sending the message.

Basic steps:

1) Miner at the top

2) select Customers and click add

3) Select option Enabled under Bulk Email/SMS from this account record. Click done

4) Click f4 process query

5) Click F6 bulk mailer, select mail merge to email

6) Key in your message. Don't forget message. Recommend leave unsubscribe feature at bottom of email.

7) Click on Send Preview

8) Click on Send all

Personalising messages

There are some powerful options for personalising your messaage.

In add customer screen, put a * in every field you want to include for personalising

Now in compose screen you can drop down these fields and insert them into your message:

The final result:

 

• Ability to merge multiple spares order/reserve/layby pickups into a single pickup.  When you F12 pickup if there are merge candidates c9 will ask you if you want to merge. Constraints on this functionality:
  • Same customer
  • Global discounting options on original invoice match. (i.e. same discount scheme and %)
  • Invoices have at least one part pending pickup
  • Are not paypal initiated weborders (other web orders will merge okay)
• Visual improvements to layout/alignment of newly added QLD form10 + form12 paperwork.
• Profit summary :print report date range
• Modify Account bugfix : options to set individual early/late payment options not working correctly.  Options actually work but ability to alter them on the modify screen is problematic. Now fixed
• Browse web orders
  • Allow searching by order no
  • Allow filtering on things like name, email address, account code etc
• Browse receive orders
  • Allow filtering by franchise/supplier
• Printing : for print jobs that have a print preview provide a mechanism to memorize and reuse that specific printer instead of default invoice/report printer. Memorized printer works on subsequent prints even if no preview is offered.  Allows for very fine grained control as to where certain jobs go. i.e. ability to print job cards on paper from a different tray that has higher GSM. Does not apply for label printing as label system has it's own fine grained control mechanism
• Fixed an unusual and rare bug that has been in c9 for a very long time.  Some browse lists under very limited circumstances would create situation where data would repeat and loop forever. Happens when scrolling up through dates or times and top of the list contains records with blank dates, noticed it in browse received orders.  [Cause: bounding on key field of date was not coping with iterating before null dates due to wraparound. NULL ould goto -1 which decodes as 1801.  Arguably dates shouldn't be using bounds optimization anyway, bounds is supposed to optimize limited set ordinals in composite keys, dates are not ordinals.).
• Picking up $0 workshop job on account would fail due to debtors now no longer allowing $0 invoices. Now fixed.

Fixed stocking analysis tools. Recently accessory supplier changes broke them.

Bugs fixes and tweaks

• accidently removed contract of sale from QLD paperwork bundle when adding Form 10  + Form 12. Readded
• Receive Order,  change retail price via ratio % does not actually save adjusted retail price. Now fixed
• Bulk import stock take
  • was not working with recent supplier changes
  • if part does not exist, limit master file search to indicated supplier name if in the provided excel file
  • better error reporting
• View dealer units : memorise list/table column size adjustments on each terminal
• Generate order : was not working for accessory suppliers due to last update. Now fixed
• Generate All : was miscalculating what needed to be generated due to incorrect handling of supercessions

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

Victoria contract of sale : print Schedule 4 instead of 3 if sale is a new unit.  Print New/Used on contract particulars page.

QLD paperwork. Included Form 12 (Cooling off) and Form 10 (beneficial interest)

Debtors balances. C9 can now track paying off individual invoices providing an optional open invoice accounting mechanism.  When you add a payment you have the option to select which invoices you want to pay off (c9 will pay off invoices in order they are added to system by default).  View transaction screen visually shows which txns are paid off/fully allocated and how much remains. The implementation is completely transparent from existing brought forward implementation of debtors and does not modify existing functional behavior in any way whatsoever so those who don't want to use it will see no functional changes and can ignore this.  Supports unallocated payments too, so if you record a payment c9 will automatically pay off future created invoices. Handles creation/deletion of debtor adjustment correctly, automatically unallocating and reallocating as needed.

Major overhaul of accessory suppliers correcting 20+ year design issue with how suppliers are internally tracked in c9.  You can now safely modify suppcode of suppliers without loosing link between suppliers and stocked parts. This is the first part of a larger initiative to add creditors into c9 (open invoice accounting above is also part of this project).

Bugfix with selling unit on finance and recording deposit at time of sale.  Invoice printed would show payment method for on road costs. Now fixed so not do this.

Tweaks to support importing of Serco invoices. (Serco PDF files include a scaling affine transform to stretch text across the page.  C9's handling of affine transforms was naive, now improved to only filter things that are rotated by something other than 90/180/270. Scaling and flipping/mirroring such as landscape flipping should now be okay)

Tweaks for ongoing efforts with web based service reception, tweaks that allow for faster updates of unit/job details. (Force online backup to immediately sync triggered via remote command).

 

Unit paperwork : include Vicroads Online Dealer Authority Form

Receive order : Remove 'do you want to add part to stock?' nag screen. Just add it to stock every time

Bug fix with credit note.  Credit note involving unreturned stock not writing invoice total correctly (credit note worked okay for returned stock, just not for unreturned stock)

Floorplan tweaks:

• Show interest free/payout date on browse dealer units
• Open floorplan report : keep report condition window open
• Open floorplan report : allow simple model filtering to quickly print report on all SX250's on floorplan for example

C9 can now receive replies to SMS messages sent from c9.  Those replies will appear in c9 itself.

Enabling this feature

This feature is enabled by default to replies to Miner generated SMS messages. For other messages, such as parts, workshop etc, it does require changing some configuration in c9.

C9 allows you to configure who the SMS is coming from.  This must be disabled. i.e. in c9, in Setup -> Other Settings -> Magician/SMS/Email. Under Email/SMS settings. You will see this:

Corresponding to a message like this:

The problem is that 'boltons' is not a real SMS sender number and cannot be replied to.

By making 'From SMS' blank changes c9 so it sends it from a real 04 number.  This can be replied to.

Using the feature

In c9 in top right you'll see notification of SMS:

Goto Customers at top, then Customers -> SMS replies on left menu to view messages. When you view message it is flagged as unread and c9 will stop nagging you.

Shared SMS Reply Numbers

There are no costs associated with the SMS reply feature, customers can reply as much as they like without any impact to you.

The number c9 uses when you leave the 'From SMS' blank is a single number for all c9 dealerships. If a given customer deals with multiple dealerships then they will see multiple messages from different dealerships interleaved from this one phone number. C9 assumes replies are replying to dealership who last sent a message.

Generally this shouldn't be an issue, but you can get your own dedicated number if you like. Cost is between $25 and $300(!!) per month depending on whether you want a normal number or something easy to remember like 0408 888 888, plus once off $100 setup fee from c9.  You could possibly get creative and setup say 0408bolton (0408265866)

Again there is no charge for using default c9 'From SMS' number.