Tweaks and Fixes

• Tax invoice for Insurance job with excess. Bottom of invoice tallies are a bit muddled. Caused by recent changes in 5.2.50 to cope with using deposit to pay on account invoices in that it shows net accounts receivable now.  Tweaked workshop invoice so printed payment lines show excess as adding to this.
• WA paperwork - fixes to MTA form.
  • print dealer address under dealer section (not customer address)
  • Tweak monospaced alignment on following fields : plate number, license expiry, engine number, chassis number
• import parts from job, allow importing from invoiced jobs.
• complete job, do not nag about zero line items for parts on order

• Payroll super tweaks
  • New config switch to distinguish between compulsory guarantee and employer additional. Previously any manually added super record was assumed to be a employer additional. There was no way to add in compulsory guarantee records manually which meant it was not possible to fix super stuffups. Now sorted. STP export / Super Report to capture this tweak
  • Redesign add/edit payroll line item so additional settings are not so visually cluttered. e.g. if you pick super, you'll only see additional settings relevant for super
• F7 Import in spares: option to import from workshop jobs
• Deposit history screen, show status of lines to indicate deposit movement lines which have been deleted
• Stihl & Husky Bulk Warranty report : option to set a default email addr for customers who did not provide an email.

UX changes for bulk transaction/ABN and Bulk Warranty

These two screens in c9 have historically been difficult to drive. Their original design intent is to ensure that what is captured in this screen is exactly what could of ever been exported so that the screen serves as an audit of the export. But this design constraint is very non-intuitive and contradicts C9's general UX design approach of being loose / flexible  and un-opinionated and creates pressure to perform these two bulk operations flawlessly with little/no ability to tidy up mistakes.  So changes coming here:

Bulk Txn / ABA:

• Ability to preset txn date so you can forward date payments for example
• Export is accessible within create screen where it more intuitively belongs.
• A modify button which opens up the same screen as create so you can manipulate txns that are part of a bulk after initial creation
• Bulk Txn didn't respect selected bills to pay and would just apply default auto allocation rules. So if you bulk txn a bill who isn't the next to pay, the payment would follow auto alloc rules and attach to the next to pay.  Now tidied.
• Bulk Txn didn't aggregate multiple payments for a single contact.  Now tidied.
• Improved performance of View / Export bulk txn : with some database search optimization

Warranty Export

• Modify button which drops you straight into  view warranty
• Export button is in view warranty screen where it more intuitively belongs
• Within modify screen:
  • Modify button to quickly modify warranty details attached to a unit
  • Modify customer button to modify customer details
  • Delete button to quickly remove a unit from bulk warranty
  • Add button to add units (such as units removed using delete)

Other Tweaks and fixes

• Stihl warranty export
  • couple of header column names are backwards. I don't think it matters as stihls system ignores header and is sensitive to positioning only, but it is confusing to eyeball manually. Fixed
  • Tidy up options so they size nicely with resized view/modify window
  • allow exported options to be edited
  • tweak defaults a bit so easier to glide through warranty config,
    • advertising setting of no set will send no's to all questions
    • Indiciate which questions correspond to which ZN field so on errors you'll have a better idea what their website is whinging about
• Stihl  / Honda warranty export. Would misbehave with screen sizing. Now fixed.
• Invoice payment list, where operator has opted to use customer deposit to offset invoice, more clearly indicate resulting balance. (show balance after deposit not balance of txn overall)
• Spares invoices : print green 'PAID' vs red 'OWING' so it is visually obvious which invoices are paid and which are on account
• Lodge BAS.  Under some exotic circumstances BAS lodgement would fail to post a GL representing payment. (create a bas flagged as paid but with a date that overlaps a prior bas period). Now fixed.
• Disable manipulation of part number for price file backed stocked items. The price file is the authority on what a part number looks like
• BRP Magician query : working again
• Deals screen bugfix. $ figures display would max out at 100k. Internal representation of deal was fine and could still be finalised as expected, just the screen wouldn't show result. Now fixed.
• Edit sold dealer unit stock price from 0 to non zero, would throw a journal error COGS propagation recently added not working correctly in this precise scenario. Now fixed
• Internal changes for payroll / STP billing  to capture new pricing ( $3.50 per run. $0.05 per employee)

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

Lots of bug fixes in this one

This version also includes some low level changes to general ledger as part of ongoing preparation for v5.3 : nothing that is functionally accessible in c9 yet but needed to be in play now.  (a more efficient asset revaluation framework, for spare parts mainly to model dead stock write downs )

• Tweaks and fixes
  • Modify unit : propagate cost changes to cogs on sale posting if any. To prevent autoadjust popping up and posting an adjustment to realign general ledger with actual inventory in this scenario
  • Profit summary - include on road costs paid by dealership in unit costs. Previously was excluded
  • Spares / Profit.  Discount computation on parts incorrect. Now fixed. (Was not factoring in supplied qty)
  • Reconciliation discordant triggers : consider periods A -> B -> C.  B is reconciled. If you forward date a txn in A to C the reconciliation for B would not correctly capture & reflect discordant impact of this.  Now fixed.
  • Warranty report : 1st and 6th report options inappropriately excluding supplier warranty work on dealer floorstock. Now fixed.

C9 Price File Repo: This version of c9 'fences' the price file. If you are running older versions of c9 you will not see any price file updates until you install this version of c9.

Tweaks and fixes

• C9 repo price files. There might be a possible bug with c9 repo where a network glitch can stop price file download halfway but c9 thinks it grabbed all the price file changes. Result can be a pricefile only partially updated but c9 things is fully up-to-date. Fix is to force a c9 repo download using download all option. This version of c9 includes a change where c9 checks that all changes were successfully downloaded first, if not the price file update will not go ahead and will need to be retried.
• Setup - allow individual beneficiaries to be setup under distribution to beneficiaries GL code
• View web order
  • A slot to display geoip info so you can cross check the geoip match location against the supplied address.
  • A slot to display weborder security alerts. Currently alerts if the operator who submitted the order might possibly be behind an anonymizing traffic relay like TOR.

Tweaks and fixes

• Recent Unit stock take report changes : got new/used unit sections labelled incorrectly. Now fixed
• A4 Deposit Receipts : would not print deposit amounts of 100k or over. Now fixed
• Modify txn date, would not let you modify txns connected to issued giftcards. Now fixed
• Couple more expense GL codes:  water and utilities

OEM Image encoding

This version of c9 replaces an internal library used to saving OEM fiche diagrams. Previous library in c9 is ancient, pre-2000 and it contains some code that is suddenly problematic for most recent versions of java in that it calls a function deep in java that is nowdays consider unsafe (in terms of reliable operation of java) and latest java version now refuse to allow that function to run.  Looked at patching the library to minimise change risks but too hard to source and recompile the original library. So instead have replaced it with something newer.

One upside is that OEM images encoded from now will be even more space efficient.

Sample image, 1045x1600 resolution

New library: 38k
Prior library: 43k
Std built in java img encode: 54k
Naive grayscale encoding: 53k
Naive RGB: 75k
Naive jpeg encoding (80%): 146k

Alot of work goes into processing images for c9 OEM to balance how images look and how much storage they require. C9 automatically clips, resizes, and auto contrast balances images to try and achieve a maximal result.  Side by side image comparison of an EPC image from and older version of c9 compared to recent version to illustrate:

QL700 / C9 configuration cheat sheet

Read more...

Includes Database Changes you need to log terminals out during upgrade

Tweaks and fixes

• Quick Supper file export. Make reference field more compact to meet QS 20 char limit
• Print Statement, on email from print will default to account email not main email
• Fixed a small annoyance with general ledger chart screen, when you change date range the collapsed GL lines are forgotton and everything resets to open. Memorize what has been collapsed when refreshing the chart.
• Tweak f12 magician to allow longer qty descriptions, to better fit revised output from gas imports which it itemizes the different warehouses.
• Suzuki Magician - MFA
  • Magician check working again (some changes to MFA webpages broke c9. Now fixed)
  • Disabled Suzuki Magician integration into c9 dealer websites for the time being. Current magician MFA integration is currently not stable enough for this.

GL Chart Locking / Cash Rec and Bank Rec

This version of c9 includes the ability to lock activity on specific general ledger codes. In Business -> general ledger you'll see a new column and a new button to manipulate this column.

The new column lock indicates a date where any thing that happens that modifies the effective opening balance on this lock date will not be allowed. So any txns backdated, or modified or deleted before this date will trigger an error.

On same screen is a new button modify lock which allows you to manipulate this

On cash till screen are now lock check-boxes which automatically set this upon saving a cash till count.

The lock flag which you can toggle will add (or remove) lock  upon performing cash till save.

A similar mechanism is in place for bank reconciliation screen near the save button:

This version includes changes to Suzuki Magician to cope with multi factor authentication.

On login you need to provide two sets of logins, the multi factor auth login (email+password) and ordinary suzuki login.

On login c9 will, as needed, prompt to you key in the MFA code that is SMS'd to you.  Doing this once will set things up for all terminals.

At this time unsure how long MFA authentication lasts before it required feeding in a new SMS code. Expect you'll need to relogin every now and then, hopefully not often. That is at Suzuki's discretion.

Tweaks and fixes

• Stock list / Stock summary option to enable / disable last buy/stock buy variance. Disabled by default. Lots of queries on this one and 99% of the time it isn't useful/ interesting information so hide it by default
• Tweaks to mojo EPC importer makes it significantly faster (originally the API had traffic throttle limits in it, these have been removed so I have removed rate limits on c9 side of things)
• Business -> reprint deposits not migrated to 5.2 correctly. Fixed up here.
• Ficeda Integration
  • Part image importer for ficeda added
  • Ficeda magician check reimplemented. (No login required. )
  • Note ficeda repo price file now embeds variant and meta data for sizing and colours.
• New GL expense code for Labour Hire /  Subcontracting
• Dealer unit screen : show unit # and $ cost tally on key tabs (on floor, open floorplans)
• New login setting to restrict access to freeform spares sales.  Enabled by default on all accounts on upgrading to this ver of c9
• Some tweaks to how recently added discount login setting works. On upgrade to this version, the flag will be set for all login users if not set on any user yet : in order to align this settings behaviour with how all other login settings work, including newly added freeform setting.
• Review charts in c9 (Business -> charts). Alot of these were never upgraded to work with v5.1. Now substantially fixed (17 different charts updated)