As with previous releases of Online Advantage, the 9.5 Release includes a number of minor enhancements to the application designed to add to the functionality, speed, and ease of use of the system across many of the suites and modules. A summary of these changes is included below:
General Ledger
- Changed the date of Accrual & Standing Journals to be the new posting month
- The following new reports are now available:
- Trial Balance – MTD & YTD
- Balance Sheet – current to previous month
- Trial Balance – consolidated by Branch
- Trial Balance – consolidated by Division
- Trial Balance – detailed by Division by Branch
- The Category ‘sign’ setting is now used in all standard GL reports
Cash Management
- Added new bank export file formats available in the Banks details for creating payment files for New Zealand banks
- A new option to ‘tag’ a bank account as closed to prevent further transactions from occurring
- A new Recalculate Foreign Currencies function is now available
Accounts Payable
Payment Functions
- Payment Runs have had the filter selections improved to make them consistent with the rest of the system filtering
- The ‘Payment Reference’ that was already available in the ‘Manual Payments’ function has been added to ‘Payment Runs’
- We have replaced the word ‘cheque’ with ‘payment’ since a payments can be either by cheque or bank transfer (and is mostly a bank transfer these days)
- Completed improvements to the database committing of ‘Payment Runs’ details to include transaction boundaries for more robust updating
- Bank Transfers now have new formats for New Zealand banks including ASB and BNZ
- In Supplier Manual Payments, you can now select the outstanding ledger items you want to pay, making input quicker and easier
- In Sundry Manual Payments, the ‘Posting Details’ entry is now shown first, for quicker input
- Standing Payments now has an option to create a new standing payment by copying an existing one
- User Activity logging has also been added to Standing Payment details
- Customer Refunds now have a formatted address input in line with the rest of the system
Other Improvements
- New prompts on the ‘Suppliers Details’ so you can record their web site address and for tagging a Supplier as a ‘closed’ account to prevent further Purchasing
- Great new function that allows the adjustment of previously entered transactions details, such as; Reference, Due Date, Discount, Status and Transaction Month
- There is a new display option available for AP transactions that shows the breakdown of the General Ledger postings
- We have de-cluttered the ‘Transaction Item’ display to make it easier to read
- Enhancements to the retention of transaction ‘Offset Details’ i.e. what was paid, have been implemented
- In AP Reporting, there is a new menu added for Aged Trial Balance reports by 7 day periods
- We’ve also added a new report to ‘List Suppliers by Supplier Type’ and a new report that lists ‘Supplier Transactions’
Accounts Receivable
- As with the AP system, there are some new prompts in the ‘Customer Details’ so you can record their ABN and web site address.
- There is also a new credit flag to tag customers as ‘closed’ to prevent continued use of customers
- There is a new option in ‘Rep Details’ to let you tag a Rep as inactive
- A new function has been added that lets you change the ‘Ageing Date’ of an Invoice to move it to a different aging period. This means you can re-age without having to journal/credit and re-invoice
- There is a new ‘System Option’ used in the ‘Cash Receipts’ function to make the unallocated ‘Credit Reference’ mandatory or optional according to your needs
- In Statement Reprints, you now have an option to select statements that would normally be ‘printed’ i.e. exclude statements that are emailed or faxed. This option makes it easier to select the statements to reprint and post e.g. in the case of a paper jam on your printer
- User Activity logging has also been added to Debtors Statements
- Tender Types…nothing changed actually, we’ve just moved it from the ‘Accounts Receivable’ menu to ‘Cash Management’ in case you were looking for it :-)
- In the displays, we’ve added the Sales Rep to the main Customer Display, added ‘Customer Order Number’ to the Transaction Summary and included Head Office/Branch details in a number of displays
- For AR reporting, there is a new Ledger report – Aged by Account, and a new Aged Trial Balance report with Ledger Details by Account
- There is a new report for Inactive Customers with Closed Accounts (remember there is a new ‘Credit Flag’ for closed accounts)
- Credit Limit filter items have been improved to provide better selection in report filtering
- Customer Order Number has been added to all the Ledger Details reports
Asset Ledger
- User Activity logging has been added to the Asset Details
- A new display to show activity against an Asset has been added
- The Asset Register reports that were previously only available via End of Month are now available on the menus
- There is a new report to List Asset Details which is specifically designed to make the export of asset data to a spread sheet easier
Inventory Control
- A new ‘Generate Transfer Orders’ function using the Replenishment details is now available
- Changed ‘serial/batch’ wording to ‘tracking’ to make it more ‘generic’ and inclusive of Dual Tracking
- The ‘Tracking method has been added to the ‘All for a Product’ Tracking display
- When entering ‘Add-On’ Product Groups you are no longer asked for unnecessary posting accounts
- In the Future Price Upload, if the Price is blank the future price uses the current system price
- Renamed the ‘Pricing’ menu to ‘Future Prices’ so users know they’re not adjusting current prices
- Size and Colour both now have a new option to tag if a size or colour has been discontinued
- User Activity logging has been added to Stock Take system
- There is a new display to show the User Activity held for a Stock Take Run
- Two other new displays have been added as follows:
- a Packing Details display – shows the packing info for an order/invoice
- a Product Web Page Preview…so you can see how the details will look in the E-Commerce and check how fancy your HTML edits on product description will look :-)
- Four new Inventory reports have been added as follows:
- List Packaging Materials
- Stock Ledger Controls Total End of Day report
- Product Master Add-Ons and Service Items report (as opposed to Inventory items)
- Where Used Size/Colour (to help you see where they are used in Manufacturing Specifications)
Purchasing
- Added contact details to Buyers for showing on Purchase Orders
- Changed the replenishment purchase history updating to be ‘real-time’ (was via EOD/overnight)
- Shipment Entry now shows the history of previously entered invoices on the Shipment when adding Invoices
- Purchase Order Entry has been changed to default the order quantity to the minimum re-order quantity or to ‘1’ if there is no minimum set for the item
Order Management
- A few improvements to Sales Order Entry:
- Added ‘Deleted Order Reason’ tracking and prompting for a reason when an order is deleted
- Improved the entry and management of multiple delivery addresses
- Changes to the word ‘Notes’ instead of ‘Text’ to describe notes entry prompts
- Added phone number to Picking Dockets
- Adjusted the position of the ‘Delete’ button
- A new function has been added that lets users change the ‘Customer Order Number’ for a docket after it has been invoiced
- A new option has been added to Carriers to allow you to tag a carrier as closed
- Order Forms maintenance has been enhanced so you can drag & drop products within the order form to resequence them
- The Quotes Display now has a new section that shows you any sales order(s) that the quote has been converted to
- In Order Management reporting:
- There is a new Back Orders Deleted report
- We moved the Back Order Items report to the Back Order Management menu
- Added a new Back Orders and Purchase Orders report
Point of Sale
- Added a credit card ‘surcharge’ option to Point of Sale Tendering function
- Moved the Gift Certificates reports to their own menu
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E-Commerce
- There is now a ‘use last price’ option for e-commerce in the product catalogue
- We’ve added a facility that dynamically builds a product catalogue level based on a customers products with Contract Prices
- The ability to automatically email a customer account rep an ‘Order Confirmation’ when an order is entered has been added
- Provided a downloadable price list option so customers can get a copy of a formatted price catalogue
- Added HTML edit tools to the Product Index web description so you can make your catalogue look a little bit fancy
- You can now specify an override starting product catalogue index for each B2B user. For example, if you were in the business of selling bottled beverages, one user from the customer account may be in charge of wines and start in the wine section, while a second user for the same customer account may be in charge of spirits and start at distilled beverages.
- A new function to enter and change the e-commerce portal ‘configuration settings’ has been added to make the options a bit more obvious. You can now easily configure:
- Wording to use on the portal pages e.g. do you want to ‘add to cart’ or ‘add to basket’ or “add to order’, do you want ‘check out’ or ‘finish & pay’ or ‘complete order’
- User registration information including the wording of emails sent when a user registers
- how the sizes and colour options will appear in the catalogue
- the URL to re-direct your customers when they log out of B2B portal
Sales Analysis
- Sales Summary display – added a count of items for each period i.e. no of invoices, no of credits
- Sales Summary display – now has a Current Month versus Previous Month comparison option
- Four new Sales Budgets displays covering Sales/Budget Value, Cost and Margin/Markup:
- Rep Budgets
- Branch Budgets
- Market Segment Budgets
- Total Sales Budgets
- Each of the 4 new Budget functions offer the following breakdown:
- By Product Category by Group (1 month)
- By Product Category (month by month)
- By Product Group (month by month)
- In Total (month by month)
Manufacturing
- A new function has been added that allows the user to change the ‘Required Date’ of a Work Order
- There is another new function that provides Work Order ‘Material Issues’ only functionality i.e. No ‘Production Receipt’ allowed
- The ‘Adjust Work Order Batch Size’ function has improvements that allow the change of the Issuing and Receiving Stock Locations of a the work order
- Material Issues now has item notes and any inventory that require tracking details are highlighted (in highly visible bright red)
- In the Manufacturing Options, we removed a redundant Price List setting
- A ‘Material Check’ display has been added to Work Order Entry
- The ‘description’ appearing next to the Work Order number now shows the work order status and product description
- Under Manufacturing Specifications, there is a new option to see any Outstanding Work Orders for a Specification
- User activity logging has also been added to Specifications for historical change review
- A new display has been added for viewing User Activity updates on Specifications
- There have also been enhancements in the Manufacturing Reports:
- There is a new WIP Recovery – Interim Postings report
- The WIP Recovery reports have been improved
- New Work Orders Variances reports for ‘Open and ‘Completed’ work orders
Job Costing/Time Cards
- There is a new System Option to for choosing ‘hours’ or ‘decimal’ entry when entering time cards
- The Job Register reports previously only available with End of Month are now available on the menu
System Options and Tools
- A new general System Option has been added to control if you want Electronic Document Delivery (EDD) to default to ‘on’ or ‘off’ for reprints
- A new general System Option has been added to switch network printing on/off for hosted customers with no VPN (no network printing)
- We have added a upload option for the ‘company logo’ image file in the ‘Company Details’ function
- Added double dot (i.e. “..”) input to lookup the 2nd last item last used. Remember a single dot (“.”) will recall your last used item
- There is a new file manager tool with the (new) ability to upload attachments for reporting
- A new generic tool for the mass updating of certain column elements of the database has been added
- We’ve simplified the input required for sending messages to other OA users
- Also added an ‘Outbox’ view option on sent messages
Other Miscellaneous Bits and Pieces
- For the techies: We have upgraded to .Net runtime v4.5.2 and Universe 11.x – both in 64Bit mode
- We are now supporting OA for use with IE8, IE9, IE10 and IE11 versions. Accuterm is no longer supported on Windows 10 & IE11
- Another one for the techies: btree indexes are now created with a relative path to make moving databases around just that little bit easier
- There is a new function in the System Manager to allow you to edit the login page messages and terms (in case you have something you want to change/announce) at login
- In User Details, there is now improved visibility of the company password change policy next to the user override policy. Activity logging has been added to the Users file and there is a new option to specify the email application to use when clicking on email addresses – either OA desktop or the users’s PC desktop email application.
- The Masterfile Audit report is now available on the menu. This should enable you to track down who set the outrageous purchase order limit on your buyers and stuff like that.
- There is now an alternate OA desktop interface by User Role
- There is a new report to List Users by Role