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Newsletter: 18/06/2010

Office news

Yet again it's been a long time between dispatches. We have some very good news to report, and some sad news. Nathan is a father for the second time, baby Terra was born on 9 June weighing 3.1kg, all are happy and well apart from sleep deprivation. More good news, Priscilla Dapitan has joined Fastbase, starting this week. She is an experienced financial accountant, I'm very pleased to have her with us. You'll get to know her soon as she takes on more responsibilities. I'm sad to say Clint is leaving us, Clint has been with Fastbase nearly three years, working hard to solve your most convoluted accounting support issues. His last day with us is 2 July. Maybe you want to take the opportunity to give him a call before he leaves, and wish him all the best.

We have lots of Fastbase improvements to report this time, if you want more information about any of these please contact us.

Russell Bell

Copy purchase order line items from another order

We have added a new feature, you can now import Purchase Order line items from another Purchase Order. There is now an "Options" button on the Purchase Order entry and maintenance screens. The existing feature "Import items from CSV file" has moved to this options menu.

If you select "Copy items from another Order" from the options menu, you are asked for a Purchase Order Reference. You can also select whether to import the original quantities. Enter a PO reference and click the Copy button; all line items from the selected Purchase Order will be copied to the current Purchase Order. Then you can update quantity and price information as required.

This feature is now enabled for everybody, give it a go or contact us if you want more information.

Customer credit reference

When creating a new credit (Transactions - Customer Credit Note - Open), Fastbase can now check the "Internal Reference" field, and display a warning if the entered credit reference has already been used on a credit for the same customer. This feature is enabled by a setup option, contact us if you would like it.

Customer statements in CSV format

Fastbase can now email customer statements in CSV format, as a customer-specific option. Fastbase has supported emailing statements for a long time of course, and the statement is normally sent as a PDF attachment to the email. But some customers may want a statement in CSV format, for easy importing into a spreadsheet for example.

Fastbase can now show an extra option "Email CSV" on the "Print Statements" selection list on the customer enquiry and maintenance screens. If the option is selected, statements for that customer will be sent as an email attachment in CSV format. This feature is enabled by a setup option, contact us if you are interested in using it. We can provide details of the format of the CSV statement.

Import customers

We have added a feature for importing new customers and updating existing customers from a CSV file. Select Maintenance - Misc - Customers/Invoicing - Import Customers. The dialog allows you to choose an import file, and whether the file has column headings. You can also select the field separator and text delimiters used in the file.

Once you select a file, Fastbase displays a window with fields and columns for you to 'match up'. You can select which fields from the CSV file should be copied into which customer attributes. You can choose to update existing customers and/or import new customers. If you opt to create new customers, you select a template customer used for the newly created customers.

Once you make your selections click Import Customers. The customers will be imported according to your selections. If Report Only is selected the import is a dry-run - only the report is produced. Contact us if you want more detail on exactly how the import matches on existing customers.

Salesperson field on customer transactions

We have added a feature to prevent users changing the Salesperson from the default, both when creating new invoices and when editing existing invoices. This also applies to customer orders, quotes and customer credits. The feature is enabled by a setup option, contact us if you are interested.

Customer Transactions Listing

From Customer Enquiry - Transactions you can print the listing via the Print button. We have added totals (for the Amount and Total columns) to the bottom of the printed listing.

Printing Credit Notes

When you save a Credit Note you are asked if you want to print it, the default is Yes. We have made the default Print Yes/No option configurable. Contact us if you want this changed to No.

Scheduled Price Updates

Fastbase currently has an Automatic Price Update feature for updating product prices in bulk. The price change takes effect immediately. You can change prices by adjusting by a percentage, for all products of a selected Type, Code etc.

We have added a new Scheduled Price Update feature that allows you to schedule a price update to take effect at a specified future date. You can create and maintain price updates - each update contains a selection of products and the requested new price levels. You can select which price levels will be updated, and select a new price for each.

The price updates are maintained from Maintenance - Misc - Parts - Scheduled Price Updates. Existing scheduled updates are displayed in date order. You can search by date for a specific part affected by the update.

You can also email (or print) price change notifications to selected customers. If you do, the price update becomes "locked" and can no longer be maintained.

There are more aspects to this feature than can be detailed here. If you are interested contact us, there is a moderate amount of setting up we would need to do to get you up and running with this feature.

Serial and batch number checking in Fastbase

Fastbase supports Serialised and Batch Tracked parts. Serial numbers must be recorded on all movements of serialised stock (eg. Goods Receipt, AR Invoice, Stock Adjustment). Batch Tracking is similar but also records a quantity per Batch.

We have improved the consistency checks performed when creating or maintaining transactions for stock with serial numbers or batch numbers. Previously it was occasionally possible to enter inconsistent data into transactions.

We have now improved the consistency checks performed when a transaction is saved, specifically for Invoices, Goods Receipts, Customer Credits, Part Assemblies, and Branch Transfers. If you have any questions please give us a call or email.

Stock Audit Report for a branch

The Stock Audit Report (Reports - Financial - Stock Audit) displays stock movements and costs for products across the whole company. You can now run the Stock Audit Report for a selected branch.

If you don't select a branch the report is for the whole company, as normal.

If you select a branch, the "Opening Stock" and "Closing Stock" columns will display the stock value at the selected branch on the selected start and end dates. The "Adjust & Purchases" column will display the total stock value of goods receipts, stock transfers, etc for the selected branch, including branch transfers (not previously included in the stock audit report). The "Cost of Sales" column will display the total stock cost of customer transactions from the selected branch, e.g. invoices and credits. The "Variance" column will still display the difference between (Opening Stock + Adjust & Purchases - Cost of Sales) and Closing Stock.

Website product search

Many of our customer websites are linked to the Fastbase part inventory, so that part information in Fastbase is automatically displayed on the website, and automatically updated when the information changes in Fastbase. These websites typically have a search feature allowing the user to search for products by entering keywords. Products matching the search are displayed to the web user.

We now have the ability to improve the product-search functionality and performance, by associating products with keywords in Fastbase.

On the website tab of the product enquiry and maintenance screens there is now an area for viewing and maintaining keywords. You can enter keywords here for a product, and the website will match on these keywords when doing product searches. The website search feature will also typically match on other fields, for example the product name or number. You can set the relevance/importance for the different search fields, and this affects the order the products appear in the search results.

If you are interested in progressing this let us know. This requires software changes to the website software, to take advantage of the new search keyword information.

Check order number on invoice entry

Previously the order number on a customer invoice was only checked on the final screen, if the order number is invalid a warning message is displayed. A similar check is now done on the initial customer invoice entry screen.

Depending on the customer setting (under the Preferences tab on customer Maintenance and Enquiry) the order number may be a required entry, or may be required to be unique (not used on any previous invoice for the same customer).

Customer Sales Analysis Report

The Customer Sales Analysis Report can now be generated overnight and emailed to selected recipients. If you are interested in this let us know. There is a moderate amount of setup required to set the report options (start and end date, customer sequence, detail required etc) and the overnight processing.

Maintaining customer receipts

We have improved the way you create and maintain customer receipts. Previously the behaviour was different depending on whether you were editing an existing receipt or creating a new one. We have improved the behaviour and made it more consistent.

When a new receipt is saved, a window "Receipt Details" appears that displays all transactions for the customer with an amount owing. The user allocates the receipted amount of money against these transactions. The window also allows you to create zero value invoices.

Previously, when an existing receipt was saved, the Receipt Details window appeared but only displayed the transactions that the receipt has already been applied to. This meant you couldn't modify the receipt to apply to other invoices or credits.

Now, when you maintain an existing receipt, the list of Paid Invoices is displayed under the receipt details. This lists the transactions the receipt is currently applied to. There is now an Edit Apply Details button, click this and the "Receipt Details" window is displayed listing all transactions for the customer with an amount owing, as well as the transactions that the receipt has already been applied to. You can edit the applied amounts in this window, and create new zero-value invoices.

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