Requires database changes. You will be forced to log all terminals out during upgrade

• Added warranty registration export for Honda and Stihl
• Added tracking for consignment units
• Fix for regression bug introduced with deals.  Ability to print paperwork via view invoiced units was broken and would crash c9
• Bug fix with clipboard.  On windows under very rare circumstances clipboard operations will fail and crash c9.  Fixed so graceful handling is that the clipboard operation fails but does not crash c9

Updated: Jan 2024 to reflect significant changes to consignment payout made several years ago

C9 now contains explicit handling of consignment units.

Consignment units are modelled by a variation on floorplan tracking.  A consignment is simply a type of floorplan without interest payments/renewal etc. Specific changes:

• On purchase unit, view and modify unit, floorplan now tracking following two new pieces of information:
  • Type: floorplan or consignment
  • Provider: a reference to a customer in c9. Can be finance company (for floorplans) or any other user (consignment)

There are two ways is one way to bring a consignment unit into the system

• Purchase the unit from the specific customer and flag the unit as being on consignment
• Do a factory purchase, and flag the unit as being on consignment. Use the unit owner option to indicate who owns the unit
• Set the 'purchase price' of the unit to indicate the price you intend to pay the own upon sale of the unit.

In  view units, consignment units are color coded blue.

Selling a consignment unit is same as selling any other unit.

Paying out a consignment unit is same as paying out a floor plan. Select the unit via floorplan units and select the payout option.

Once a consigned unit is sold, the agreed consigned value is posted to the original owner as a deposit. To pay this out goto contacts -> contacts. Find the original owner, select view transactions and add a new withdrawal transaction to payout the consigned purchase. Alternatively can just leave deposit there to be used for other sales txns in future if that is what your customer prefers.

As of version 4.318, c9 supports online warranty registration for Stihl and Honda initially. As other suppliers make registration processes available we will integrate into them.

How it broadly works:

• As you sell (or quote) a new unit to be sold.  You will be presented with a new screen that captures two things:
1. Whether or not you want the unit to be registered online (default yes)
2. Supplier specific fields and questions relating to registration (e.g. intended usage, private/commerical)

• Periodically, say once a week, you will then use a function in c9 to generate an export file for warranty registration
• That file is uploaded to the supplier as per supplier instructions

Secondary notes/concerns:

• Units sold prior to upgrade of c9 to version 4.318 will not be automatically available for online registration. Only new sales
• You can manually modify the above behaviour via modify unit
• You can re-generate export files
• You can individually flag a previously exported unit as not exported (via modify unit); that unit will be re-exported on the next export run.

Read more...

Fixes for regressions introduced in prior version 4.316

• Analytics based reports, including profit summary no longer working.
• Quick Books synchronization contains a feature when you map a new supplier it would default payable/expense selection to the most commonly used one so far.  This was no longer working.

• Miner : added new advanced reporting sub system. See post below for more details
• Website : permit configuration of multiple separate website structures.  This is intended to be used to allow creation of multiple websites and/or different menus on a single website.
• Cash Till Report :  Control+T opens till
• Spares Profit Report : option to filter out web sales etc over counter sales
• Under some circumstances ability to remotely access database for maintenance/support purposes does not work; in situations involving change of IP addresses etc. Now fixed.

A source of pride in the c9 product for us has been the level of depth, sophistication and responsiveness of reporting available from C9.  Having professional experience in a broad range of IT operations, reporting is typically a difficult thing for a software company to get right.  C9 in comparison to other unrelated IT suppliers excels in this area.

C9 contains 90 built-in reports, which can be printed, emailed or exported into other systems such as an excel spread sheet.  In addition to this the miner system allows you to construct and build your own sophisticated queries, export the data or use it to facilitate a  SMS/Email/Letter campaign.

There is a growing trend amongst some C9 customers for even more sophisticated reporting demands to facilitate very specific requirements for inventory management,  staff rewards/commission structures and marketing among other things.   To even better serve this growing need c9 will shortly provide a service were we build for you customized reports.  The reports will be specifically constructed for your business according to your requirements and accessed via the miner sub system.  The reports will generally run alot faster than miner constructed reports with richer range of facilities and options available.   Reports are provided with a once off cost which also covers 12 months of maintenance support for the created reports.  Cost will vary depending on complexity of the report.  Typical  reports will cost ~ $150 per report to construct. They will be loaded into your c9 and you can run them as often as you like.

For a quote on a custom report contact Barney.

Normal work and enhancement on existing miner and built in reports will continue as always.  The advanced reporting service does not supercede this work. It is provided to assist operators with very specific and sophisticated needs that which we assess to not have broader appeal to all c9 customers. Similar to the niche that miner fills, but a solution that is even more rich and powerful, but not DIY.

Includes database changes. Will force you to log all terminals out during upgrade

An ongoing difficulty with building C9 is coping with damaged price files provided by the knuckle draggers residing in the IT departments of some of the industry suppliers.

This release contains fixes/workarounds for a number of related issues

1) excessively large XLSX files that crash c9 due to insufficient memory on the computer.  i.e. Monza Price files should now import into c9 as is without difficulty; for the time being at least....

2) Price files that contain the same part more than once.  Previously c9 had no fixed rule about which part of a list of duplicate parts to actually import.  Sometimes it would import the first instance, sometimes the last instance.  C9 now strictly processes the last part encountered on the price file. Example, Monza again:

3) An optimized supercession checker on import price file to cope with price files with an excessive number of bad supercession chains. i.e. John Deere.  Other price file importers now run a little quicker too.

Unit Deals is a piece of functionality added in version 4.314 of c9 that allows you to build up a unit sale over a period of time, as a purchase order.

The intent of deals is to simplify the process of managing unit sales, purchases and tradeins by making the process more intuitive and more forgiving.  Prior process for selling a unit in c9 required keying in all data in one sitting.  Unit sales can be complicated animals, and expecting a user to key in everything correctly on the spot is something of a task.

Read more...

Includes database changes.  You will be forced to logout during upgrade

This version represents a significant overhaul on how unit sales are managed.  In terms of unit sales a number of key things have been delivered

• The ability to construct a deal over time.  A deal remains open and tracks details of the deal over an extended period of time. Possibly weeks or months.  So instead of having to feed in a sale into c9 all in one go, you can slowly build up a deal over time, from expression of interest to final closure.
• Proper costing of line items on sold units.  So you can more accurately track profit on things such as passed on/discounted/waived  pre-delivery costs, document/inspection fees etc.
• The ability, via deals to track and manage deposits taken on individual units.
• The ability to record encumbrances owing on purchased units at point of sale (or on a deal)

Other changes in this version

• Gift card bug fix.  Certain rare sequence of operations will damage a gift card and render it unusable. Workaround is to cancel card and create a new one.
• New price file importer : John Deere.
• Note : John Deere file contains a huge number of supercession (4oo k) records that mostly fail (mainly dead chains). C9's current supercession resolver on import is not terribly efficient, nor in the past was it necessary for it to be efficient.  But with John Deere file it takes about 30 minutes to trace busted supercessions.  TODO : modify import to use a more optimized supercession check.  I have a tested solution in play, that is at least x10 faster, but will not be part of this release due to time constraints. Next one probably.
• Import price file : remove MCS from list. MCS now publish an Excel price file
• Suggested max/restocking rule. Redesigned window so visually more intuitive.  i.e. do not allow user to tweak rules unless last stock order for franchise in question used historical analysis method of reordering. Also fixed a NPE crash bug.
• Workshop job screen.  A glitched network error while trying to modify job record could cause the job record to be damaged effectively deleting it.  Improved error checking logic associated with workshop screen so network problems are handled more gracefully (and non destructively)

Today, the 256th day of the year is Programmer Day.  In celebration of this day a new version of c9 will be belatedly uploaded on Friday morning.