Monza

Monza price files now distributed by c9 directly. Note that c9 distributed price files for Monza will have all items set with GST, including knee braces. If you wish to sell knee braces tax exempt, you will need to import price files from Monza directly.  On advise from our own accountants, we will not distribute such items as tax exempt.

To import c9 distributed monza price file, goto Spares -> Utilities -> Import price file. Select your Monza franchise. Select option 'C9 Central Repository price files' and select Monza.

Yamaha

Yamaha have a major price change that comes into effect from 29th of August (this coming Saturday). C9 will nag you on Saturday morning to fetch latest price file.  Over 95% of parts have been repriced as far as I can tell. If you are not receiving Yamaha price files from c9 repo yet, here is a page that explains all.

http://c8software.com.au/wp/2015/02/for-yamaha-dealers-c9-provided-price-files/

• Bugs with recording activity and journal postings for paid out floorplans. Under some fairly common circumstances, the payout would not be recorded.  This fix fixes the problem and correctly adds/posts necessary journals/activity record
• Email individual account statement via print preview, would use customer default email address, not their account email address (if configured)
• View unit : rename encumbrances to 'other line items'
• Manual offline backup: reports error with leaseaccount_primarykey_seq. Now fixed. Was not a critical issue, offline backups still good inspite of this error message.
• GST tweaks : add nag screens to point of sale and workshop to warn punter if invoice contains parts with either 0 GST (i.e. medical devices) or GST which looks invalid (i.e. something other than 0 or 10% due to improperly installed price file).
• Browse fiche : select franchise should now perform faster on systems where there is a slight delay (caused by inefficient database access)

Bugfix : recent changes to improve terminal locking on web orders stuffed up processing of web orders that had more than one part on them.  System would not allow you to complete such orders. Now fixed.

Includes database changes, you'll need to log all c9 terminals out during upgrade

• Spares invoice notes
  • Print notes on a4 invoice
  • Show icon in reprint and select invoice visually indicating that a note (or private note) is attached to the invoice
• Accessory suppliers : ability to add an account number that prints on order sheet
• Import mercury outboard fiche diagrams
• Weborder processing : under some rare circumstances locking of web orders would stuff up and it becomes possible to process a web order twice on different terminals.  Tightened up lock testing to prevent this from happening
• Units reports
  • Open floorplan, allow generation of report for open floorplans as of a given date
  • Improved performance of a few of the reports : stock/stocklist/retail reports.
• Lease management tweaks to improve SMS billing for dealers that have changed the name of their shop. (currently issues two invoices. Tweaked to consolidate into one)

• Order export
  • Include new export method generic. Outputs a CSV file. Possibly may be used by A1 accessories and can feasibly be used by any supplier really.
  • Include experimental support for sending orders directly to KTM/Husqvarana.  Still under integration testing, not ready for prime time yet (don't go looking for this feature)
• Customer tweaks
  • Cash customer with non zero depositor balance be converted into account customer
  • Add transaction : permit debtor transactions on cash customer if customers debtor balance is non zero
• Spares
  • New config option  in setup to define whether or not you want to print part numbers on spares quotes. Options: Always, Never, Rarely (Ask), Usually (Ask). Default is (Rarely) Ask.
  • Receive order: show location when modifying part in receive screen
  • F12 pickup. If you delete all parts waiting to be picked up but there are other parts on point of sale screen, flip point of sale to a normal sale, instead of keeping it as a customer receive. Opening more options for user (like quote, etc)
• Bug fixes
  • Modify customer.  Rename phone types was busted. Should now be fixed. i.e. ability to change 'Mobile Phone:' to 'Barney's Mobile:'
  • Workshop modify job : disallow modification of a job which is picked up. Can happen when one terminal picks up a job and another goes to modify it.  Second terminal doesn't recheck the database and assumes job status is good to go.
  • System was recording deposit on parts sold to units,  was is incorrect and messes up deposits held report. Now fixed.
  • Modify customer : recently added option to print address/shipping label from this screen was not setup correctly and would not work. Now fixed.

• Options for finer grained control of prniting per line discount information on a spares/workshop invoices.  Globally or on a per customer basis configure following 1 of 3 options
  • Never show per line discount figures
  • Only show per line discount figures for line items which have either a line item discount or affected by margin based discount
  • Show discount figures on every line item that is discounted.
• Workshop estimates : option to copy/clone an estimate to form a new estimate
• Modify customer: access print address/shipping label from here.
• Miner : ability to access view/modify customer via miner
• Price file import changes to deal with latest silliness from KTM, where part number "451 30 007 000 A" supercedes to "451 30 007 000  A", where there are two spaces before the last A on the second part meaning that if you ignore spaces, you essentially have a looping supercession chain but if you pay close attention to spaces they are strictly 'different' part numbers. C9 will now skip over parts that loop on themselves after stripping spaces and slashes, which should give the desired outcome for KTM price files.
• Bugfix with remote fiche diagrams, if linked to supplier with invalid/deleted/removed diagrams : diagram refresh would fail. Now fixed.

Article here about recent surge in cryptolocker infections on computers in Australia.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-08-09/australians-paying-thousands-after-ransomware-virus-infection/6683618

It is an exceedingly nasty piece of work that randomly encrypts files on your computers. C9 has seen two dealerships infected by this in recent weeks which completely destroyed c9's database in both instances.  Although with online backup we are able to get you back up and running on c9 in 15 minutes or so (which we did in the two instances that occurred),  this thing is indiscriminate and will happily encrypt all sorts of things on your computer that you need to run your business, excel files, other non c9 programs, email, etc.  It will ruin your day, your week and several weeks after that.

Two things urge you to do to help avoid this nasty.

• Get decent antivirus and keep it up-to-date

• Don't open email from unsolicited sources, especially attachments that look serious with headings like 'ATO tax audit', or 'FedEx shipping details', but where there is little or no description in the email itself.  Basically never open attachments unless you are expecting and attachment before hand, i.e. you've asked a supplier to send you something.

Finally, for those few dealers that still are not using c9's online backup tool, highly recommend you get on it.  It will save your bacon one day.  We've restored over two dozen systems over the past couple of years now.

Changes to import price file from c9 repo to allow importing multiple repo's into a single c9 franchise.  i.e. For a Honda dealer that has M/C, Marine and P/E,  but only one franchise called Honda, you can map all 3 from c9 repo to your franchise.

C9 also now distributes Honda price files to Honda dealerships 🙂 via c9 repo mechanism. Following page, for Yamaha dealers, now also applies for Honda dealers.

http://c8software.com.au/wp/2015/02/for-yamaha-dealers-c9-provided-price-files/

Bugfix : spares point of sale bug, when F12 pickup, go out of point of sale then come back in, if another terminal does F12, system should try to lock to pickup. If user cancels invoice was not being cleared and put in a state where it might invocie out without adjusting parts on hold.  Now fixed.

Requires database changes. You'll need to log all terminals out during upgrade

• Print Customer country on key reports.  Spares invoices, statements and address labels.
• Tweak email notification so that email 'from' used depends on department utilised. So  of using default email address for spares received notification for example, instead use the spares department email.  Applies to most places where email is sent, including emailing invoices.
• Print accessory order : include complete name of the accessory supplier.
• Workshop checklists : option to suppress some checklists from progress/tax invoice.  For internal checks
• Receive Spares: option to receive exempt items.  i.e. for imports
• Workshop : option to set default discount scheme to parts only or entire job (in Main Setup Screen)
• Line discounts on workshop/spares : interpret a discount of 0.01 as being no discount instead of applying global discount on these items.  So you can set a default discount on an invoice but indicate some items are not to be discounted
• Franchise: include new options to support automated supplier integration. Will shortly support automated service record integration with Honda.

About a week or two ago Vic roads modified their Online Registration lookup to include mechanisms to ensure that the user of the website is a person, not computer software.

This has broken c9's integration into Vic Roads indefinitely. Unfortunately for c9,  the system Vic Roads implemented is quite thorough and not even worth attempting to try to workaround it.  Way such systems are normally implemented we could of modified c9 to show you a capture box, like this:

And ask you to key in the words into c9 to get the rego details, but not even this is possible.

I have called Vic Roads to explain the issue and see if an alternative is available. Turns out a few other people have been hamstrung by this recent change in what was originally a very useful service from Vic Roads.  They don't have a solution but say they are overhauling the IT systems, implying that they may or may not add focus to web service/ B2B solutions, but there is no definite project, no timeline and at this stage we cannot provide a path forward until Vic Roads provides something.

Online reigstration lookup was immensely useful tool.  Kinda sucks to receive some toys only to have them taken away from you a few months later, but there is little c9 can do further at this time other than wait.  NSW and QLD integration still working at least.