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.

MYOB just made a press release regarding integration and their latest generation product AccountRight 2011 & 2012.

Hundreds of software vendors just like c9 use an integration method called ODBC, which is provided by older MYOB products such as AccountRight v19.  But later generation product does not support this or any other alternative method; causing programmer community that MYOB have built up around it alot of frustration.

MYOB have just announced that they are giving up trying to get the existing method of integration to work and intend to develop a wholly new system of integration.   The impression I get is that this is still in ideation and design stage and they are soliciting input from people such as myself to help steer this technology direction.  So probably looking at least 6 months away before first beta version rolls and probably 12 months before having anything I would feel reasonably confident about using and integrating into c9.

In meantime, need to stick with v19 of AccountRight until MYOB fix their train wreck, which will probably not be fixed until AccountRight 2013 at the earliest.

Online backup process sends a nightly email telling you status of backup.

The email will sometimes misreport an error with backup synchronization, especially over the weekend.  I've made some changes to the system to reduce likelihood of these annoying 'false positives'.

• Email now reports when last data copy occurred and when last verification occurred.
• Data copy is actual copying of data and it normally happens within 5 seconds of a change in c9, i.e. creating a new invoice
• Verification is a periodic check to make sure copy in c9 is exactly the same as copy in backup.  It typically happens after c9 has been idle for 20 minutes.  For a typical shop which isn't too busy, verification can happen 3 or 4 times a day.  Usually it happens at least once a day, but c9 can go an entire day without a verification.  This typically happens on very busy days where computers are turned off at the end of the day (e.g. Saturday)
• Email now only reports an error under following conditions
• If a verification error occurs (almost never)
• If verification has not been performed for over 7 days
• If there has been neither data copy or verification in past 2 days