Due to Easter being followed almost immediately by the series of long forgotten bank holidays that ended in half term, we chose not to push out a release in April, and instead skipped to May. This allowed us lots of time to finish up a number of features we’ve been working on for a while, and progress some features that we hope will be out soon.
The first of set was the conditional surveys – over the last few releases we’ve been working through the back office setup, the comms, and have now finished the mobile side of the process completely. Chris has even recorded one of his spectacular Youtube videos announcing it https://youtu.be/TD3Y4yf0wFY. If this is something that would interest you then get in touch.
We’ve also been busy rewriting major elements of the supplier invoice entry screen. The most notable change is that you can now add as many new lines as you want – so the supplier’s invoice no longer needs to bear an sane relationship to your original ordered lines. This replaces the process of artificially recording a delivery or going back and editing the original order. We think this is smarter because you can now retain the original record of the order, but we all know the invoice is a work of art and so you now have the flexibility to record exactly what it says. We’ve also added a raft of additional information to the invoice entry screen including a list of related jobs, the breakdown of the lines by nominal, and the ability to quickly switch the CIS DRC status of the order. These are all building to the automatic PDF parser to use AI (look how 2023 we are!) to automatically create the invoice – but in the meantime you can still drag and drop PDFs to the invoice entry screen and these will be displayed and automatically saved to the order too.
New Features
- Implemented mobile recording of conditional surveys
- Added a method to reverse supplier invoices (that have not been passed) to allow for easier corrections
- Improved holiday summary report to better show absences that have been edited multiple times after they have been booked
- Changed the holiday summary report to show whole days rather than hours
- Added trade to the timesheet report
- Added stock information relating to the part code when raising a PO
- Added extra checks to help prevent accidental drag-and-drop of system icons on the jobsheet
- Added a nominal summary table to supplier invoice entry that includes % CIS deduction
- Added total CIS Deduction to supplier invoice entry
- Multiple changes to how uploaded PDFs are converted into supplier invoices – applying discount lines to new lines; updating VAT calculations; allowing edit of newly added invoice lines; updating goods values; updating due date; removing unused lines
- Removed the manual “archived” field element from client wizard to force the user to walk through the correct archival process including confirming live jobs etc
- Applied new (Epix) branding to login and menus
- Added a new setup screen to allow superusers to manage the banded engineer cost rates more effectively without needing to pass support requests through Chris or Tim
- Changed the PPM report to shrink to fit where data overflows the standard PDF page size
- Added manual colour picker to notes/attachments to allow users to highlight specific documents
- Prevent “held” jobs from being affected by the bulk status change process so they are forced through the correct business logic when cancelling or changing
- Added a new permission to control which users see the API specific buttons on the jobsheet
- Added invoice charge address to the Sales Invoice Report
- Created a new map report to show engineer location over any period [only available if Google Maps APIs are enabled]
- Added a new payment term to purchase order entry – “As Per Application Schedule” defaulting to 0 days
- Added column for invoiced amount in a period to the job/site report
- Added a report of number and value of outstanding invoices to manual job entry
- Added trade to WIP Cutoff “2 part” report
- Overhaul of the WIP Cutoff “2 part” report so that it generates the numbers in a single pass – there is a small and constant performance penalty for the merge, but this removes the chance of generating only half the report, and merges both the summary and detail into a single object
- Changed the LGSR MOT generation process to default target date for newly imported sites with blank imported dates
- Changed the LGSR no access report to display alternative target date
- Changed the LGSR generation process to add a job note for the original MOT target date so engineers can see it – particularly useful for resetting the time-clock on gas boilers
- Changed the visit PDF to force a consistent order of photos
Changes For A Single Contractor
- Added support for showing just the received date of FSC sub-tasks, and to hide the “important” tasks
- Removed the operative name and date from the photos on the visit print
- Created a second “delivery drivers” mobile build to support alternative business logic and captions for some engineers
- Removed the option to do work on a site for a mobile user – this specific contractor always picks an asset and never does site-wide jobs so the engineers are now forced to follow the correct process
- Added daily standby / call out information to the timesheet PDF
- Implemented different rules for overtime based on depot on the timesheet PDF
- Changed weekend lunch calculation to include travel on the timesheet PDF
- Force the VAT calculation on supplier invoice entry to be automatically used as the VAT value – controlled by a system option that is only turned on for a single contractor
- Changed the visit print out to show total hours instead of travel time
- New mobile build fixing port number problem relating to historical split of a single system
- Added “location” job line notes to standard job print
- Added a number of post-completion job statuses to allow for easy management of “stalled” jobs that can’t be invoiced yet – this makes the standard job process more efficient by removing aged jobs from the ready to charge report
- Changed the visit PDF layout to better handle many photos of differing resolution
- Changed job PDF to include internal codes
- Fixed the visit PDF to better handle “continued…” when there is only a single extra part recorded
- Changed asset setup screen to allow region to be non-mandatory
- Added support for automatic deduction of lunchtime from the mobile timesheet portal so engineers can just record onsite/offsite and we adjust to allow for lunch if the visit spans lunch time (mostly useful for long multi-visit multi-engineer jobs to avoid accruing a large sum of all the lunch hours added together)
Platform Improvements
- Improved GPS date comparison to allow further enhancements to location reports
- Improved variable naming convention for drag-and-drop uploading of attachments to jobs, orders, and assets
- Merged deprecated field handling to python3 version of the mobile sync code
- Change all COUNT(array) usages for PHP8
- Changes to the dashboard for PHP8
- Changes to ADODB for PHP8
- Changed how we link to bootstrap versions in the mobile timesheet portal
- Improved window location code to allow for further layout options
- Improved the variable naming convention in supplier invoice entry javascript to allow for similar line and header elements
- Patched a number of minor diffs between 2 ancient customer databases to bring in line to common release structure
- Added additional logging to system options modifications to support capturing our own internal ticket reference against changes
Bug Fixes
- Removed broken filter from the project jobs report
- Fixed bug preventing issue from call centre – relates to PHP8 migration changes
- Fixed annual leave report to show correct allocation when viewing the cusp of the financial year part way through the first month
- Fixed mobile app “places to go” layout to prevent the appointment text from flowing over the address details
- Fixed status livesearch to correctly search for ORDR/JOB/SUPP status descriptions relating to the current entity
- Fixed preview invoices with no lines showing a blank screen
- Fixed bug calculating expected supplier invoice total incorrectly for newly added line
- Fixed the layout of the mobile app to move the note button from obscuring the last note
- Fixed “costcode” caption on the PO screen to
