View the updates for your department:



Aftersales

Workshop Loading calendar - Warning message displayed when entering Workshop Launch Control if the next years calendar has not been setup and bookings are now open for the following year.

Print Clockings - Clocking records can now be printed from the summary and detail tabs of the clock history from when looking at a labour line on a WIP.  Useful for warranty audits. Format needs to be defined in the parameters. This will print the detail for the labour clocking tab you are currently displaying. Printing will go to the printer defined via the SU terminal printer setup. This will be the same printer as any Autoline report printing.

Service History Codes - When invoicing out a service job you can now record multiple (maximum of 3) service history codes if required on larger jobs.

The service codes will display within the summary section of the CRM vehicle history by right clicking and selecting Job Detail 

Technician audit - If required the system can prompt for the technician to be recorded when parts are being requisitioned.  The technician can be viewed in the movement history of the part. This is activated by activating the POS Parameter - Technician audit.

Continue to completion  - Currently, when loading work that rolls over to the next day, the End of Shift form is displayed, which allows the user to continue to book the work. This has become easier to do with a new option (radio button) added to the form, called Continue to completion. This enables the user to book in each job that rolls over in one go, rather than manually booking the work in the workshop over several days.

Quick stock adjustment - From the Display stock card a link will be provided to allow parts quantities to be updated. This will be priority controlled from the stock adjustment account used in the parameters. This revised process will have the benefit of negating the need to create a WIP each time a Stock adjustment is required. The adjustment function may be accessed from the stock card display "Adjustment" button provided the user has the priority and the stock adjustment account has been set in the SM parameters.

Exclude Zero Quantities in Stock Check - Some dealers may wish to exclude zero quantity parts from their stock check list. In order to facilitate this, a new check box, Zero quantity, has been added to the Includes section of the Generate Stock Check form. By default this filter is on (ticked) to include zero quantity parts in the check list. In order to exclude zero quantity parts from the check list, untick this filter. No zero-quantity parts are then included on the resulting checklist produced. If stock is found for these parts during the course of the physical check, they may be added via the rough sheet facility.

Generate stock check – There is a new selection criteria of reorder category now available when generating a stock check.

Allocation of VSB requests to existing WIP - It is now possible to add VSB lines pushed to POS to an existing WIP, allocated to either internal or external customers. The standard Other jobs exist form is displayed and you can select an existing WIP from there.

Parts Campaigns – There is now functionality to increase or decrease parts discount based on Parts or Customer criteria. You may wish to run a campaign to have the price of all your slow moving stock reduced.

Parts Web Portal – There is now a parts web portal available for parts departments to offer to their customers, especially larger trade customers. This will allow them to enquire on availability (quantity) and price of parts, and to place parts orders all via a web portal. There is some setup required for this feature so please enquire with [email protected] for more information.

Email notifications – For parts distribution warehouses you can now have an email sent automatically to your dealers whenever a part supersession is performed.  This notification can allow them to update their own system with the same supersession.

Campaign Notice Management – This will allow the service department to create their own service campaigns, with numerous vehicle selection criteria, which will be offered when the vehicle is first loaded onto a WIP.

Parts Stock Profiling - A new stock profiling utility has been developed that enables an Autoline customers’ stock file, movements and reordering setup to be analysed to establish potential improvement in obsolesce, stock holding and reorder categories.

This utility is initially seen as a management reporting tool enabling “What If” calculation queries of the dealership stock, once happy that the reported information accurately reflects the required stocking levels the utility can be processed in “Update” mode, whereby the stocking categories of parts will be maintained.

Tyre Database - If you stock and sell large numbers of tyres there is now a new database lookup for when you are deciding on what tyres to sell.

Vehicle damage – You can now record any damage (existing or otherwise) to a customer vehicle and this is saved with the WIP. From the Tools menu select the Vehicle damage option and you can then record existing vehicle damage.

Wip Attachments – Documents can now be attached to the WIP

Multiple service invoicing print process - Creating several different invoices from a single WIP especially when dealing with warranty items, is time consuming. Lines have to be set on-hold, the invoice-account has to be changed, invoices have to be printed, the WIP must be reloaded again etc. and therefore mistakes can be made easily.

A solution has been found to simplify this process, now you can assign certain payment codes to invoice to a defined sales ledger account. Print your customer and warranty invoice both at the same time

Estimate No – If an estimate is printed you will now see the estimate number displayed on the Order tab of the WIP details.

Customer Dates and Planned Dates -  When you load a job on the workshop, as soon as you exit the Load screen, the Customer Dates and Planned Date in the Workshop tab of Service POS are automatically populated. Previously these got populated only after the WIP is saved.

Point-of-sale labour rates - Labour rate can now be set in a foreign currency where required

SMS Writer - Template messages can be saved that merge in information from the customer, vehicle and company record.  This saves time entering things like the customer name and vehicle model and registration number when sending a txt mesage to advise the service is complete on their vehicle.

CRM

Vehicle battery capacity – For electric vehicles you can now store the battery capacity on the CRM vehicle record (displayed next to the existing vehicle fuel tank capacity field).

Mobile phone number – You can now specify separately if the customer does not want to be contacted by voice or SMS on their mobile phone. Previously there was only one setting that applied to both methods.

CRM Dashboard – New CRM dashboard for sales department activity. See separate notes for more details.

Opt In/Out – New more detailed customer contact method opt in/out table for use with the call centre module.

CRM user access control – On the Other details tab there are now some additional permissions that can be set.

Creating new vehicles in CRM – You can now filter to see only current models and variants when creating a new vehicle record.

VSB icon – This allows you to drill directly into Vehicle Stockbooks provided there is a stock number in the VSB reference field.  Save time not needing to open the VSB module.

SMS Writer - Template messages can be saved that merge in information from the customer, vehicle and company record.  This saves time entering things like the customer name and vehicle model and registration number when sending a txt mesage to advise they still haven't made a booking for their WOF.

Vehicle

Vehicle battery details – For electric vehicle you can now store details about the battery on the VSB stock record.

Contact codes – You can now specify different contact chains to be used in Showroom and VSB based on the vehicle sales type. This can be useful for Wholesaling vehicles where you don’t want the same contact chain to be followed as a sale to a customer.

Accept customer orders – The accept customer orders option can now be run as a daemon process so that the orders are automatically accepted into VSB as soon as the showroom order is confirmed.

Vehicle Handover Diary - Handover bookings provide an integrated diary allowing the allocation of time slots for the vehicle delivery. This process is part of the order creation in Showroom and includes the ability to record the vehicle preparation progress for delivery to the customer.

Vehicle location transfer - A new menu option in VSB allows easy transfer of one vehicle from one physical location to another physical location.  It also provide the option to print a movement advice note and to allow specific fields to be search for in the vehicle log file.

VSB mandatory fields - In addition to the existing validations, this enhancement enables dealers to control the level of mandatory fields required before a Vehicle Stockbook record can be saved or invoiced. This function affects both new and used vehicle record maintenance and invoicing, and also the contents of a trade-in vehicle purchase invoicing that is linked to a vehicle sale.  A new table controls the required fields to be completed before a record can be saved, or before invoicing is allowed (which could result in a record being saved). In addition to the field name it will denote whether the conditions apply to new, used or both types of vehicle, and whether it applies to sales, purchasing or both types of invoicing or not.

Revised enquiry builder – There is a new enquiry builder screen in Showroom when in Back Office mode that provides a better breakdown of the costs and profits on a deal.

VSB deletion of spec lines - Once a spec line is invoiced and the associated WIP has closed, the user is unable to delete the line on the vehicle specification tab. This is frustrating when demonstrator transfers or vehicle intercompany transfers are required, and unwanted specification lines need to be removed.  Therefore, when a specification line is pushed from VSB and WIP created in POS, the scenario whereby the WIP is invoiced and not available for crediting usually leads to a support call.  An enhanced process has been provided:

  • Push to POS now allows a request for credit notes in POS to be made through VSB.
  • Deletion of spec lines on the vehicle record is allowed once credited through POS.
  • Vehicle Reconciliation and Audit recording is provided.

Odometer check on Trade-in in Showroom - When entering odometer for trade-in, i32 now checks the original trade-in of the vehicle. If it's lower than the previous mileage, it will display this message: "The previous known odometer is higher than the odometer entered. Continue with the new odometer or re-enter." And ask if you want to re-enter or continue.

More deposits can be added – You are now allowed up to 20 deposits.  Right-click on the deposits cells and a new pop-up will open where you can enter more deposits.

Accounts

Automatically post GST journal - The amount of GST that is paid over to the authorities at the end of a GST (Tax) period is usually the net amount of (difference between) GST Input (Purchases – debit amount) and GST Output (Sales – credit amount).  Presently the Accounts department, after reconciling the GST will journalise the accumulate GST Input amount to a clearing account (credit GST Input and debit GST Clearing) and likewise journalise the accumulated GST Output to the same clearing account (debit GST Output and credit GST Clearing).  This can now be done automatically with the GST period end once Nominal Ledger system parameters are setup.

Master debtors credit limit control – This functionality will allow a master credit limit totally controlled by the master record on a first come first served basis. A customer will not be able to trade with any of the other sales ledger companies when the global limit in the master is reached. See separate notes for more details.

Asset register retain disposed assets – You can now set an additional amount of time that disposed of assets will remain in the asset register instead of them being deleted at the first year-end run.

Asset register scanned documents – You can now scan and attach documents to assets in the register.

PL Batch input of documents – If entering an invoice with multi transactions (for example multiple different VSB vehicles) you can now copy the first line when creating the second and subsequent lines so that the NL account does not need to be re-entered each time.

SL/PL Cash Posting and Allocations Release - When there is a system crash and/or other abnormal session termination while a user is processing payments, the SL/PL account get locked. It will now silently release the unposted allocation flag if it is deemed "safe" to do so: if there are no failed/withheld items, and no items awaiting printing of daybooks.

SL/PL Cash Posting and Allocations Priority - You can now set a user priority level for accessing the Allocations tab and the Analyse & Transfer buttons in SL & PL cash postings.

SL/PL/NL Authorise journal entries - The journal vouchers for accounting entries are prepared by the Accountants or Senior Accountants of the respective teams i.e. Accounts Receivable (SL), Accounts Payable (PL) and General Ledger (NL). The journal vouchers will then be submitted to the responsible Finance Managers for review and approval.

Document Error Correction (DEC) – It is now possible within the Sales Ledger and Purchase Ledger to edit the transaction details by directly right clicking on the transaction. Users who can use the DEC feature and what kind of corrections they can make can be controlled from the Sales & Purchase ledger parameters. The DEC feature maintains the audit trail of the record which was amended. DEC also performs various checks such as, document should be pertaining to current period only and source should be either PL or SL. If a document was generated through generate and print document feature User now has the ability to amend the new fields:  Price, Quantity and Text along with other fields available. Edit transactions feature (under Misc. Options) will continue to work as it is.

Link original invoice while posting credit note – While posting a credit note thru SL batch input or generate and print documents users are able to link to the original invoice. For low priority users this will be mandatory (priority can be set based on input from finance manager) and high priority users will get the option to override credit note linking to original invoice.

Copy Line button – There is a new button called Copy Line in Purchase Ledger Batch Input > Transactions screen.  It copies a selected line so you don’t need to re-type the same details on a new line.

Sales Ledger Master Debtors credit control – Allows enhanced control of credit limits if you are using master debtors.

Master Debtors Account Balances – If you are using Master Debtors there are some new fields on the Financial tab of the master debtors record that will show you the total outstanding balance and buffered values from all the child accounts.

General

GEDIT screen – There is a new GEDIT screen that now has a tool bar across the top of the form instead of the button down the side.  This form is used in places where you can edit records such as modifying SL/PL accounts, parts stock file maintenance etc.

Grid copy to clipboard – You can now disable the Ctrl + right-click functionality that allows the user to copy the contents of a grid displayed on the screen to their clipboard. This is a per-user setting on the system tab of the user details form.

Improved lock messages – System will have improved record locked messages provide the contact details of the users who has locked a particular WIP, vehicle or customer record.

Installation information

The i32 updates will be installed overnight in customer systems. Your system administrator will be informed one week in advance of your planned update.