Enhancements for Senior Service Manager

RELEASE NOTES

As of 5/3/99 SPECIFICATIONS SUBJECT TO CHANGE WITHOUT NOTICE

Overall

Access to hotkey combinations and to the Rapid Access Menu during an open transaction has been restored. System wide “You Can’t Get There From Here” message has been removed. You can now use hotkey combinations and the Rapid Access Menu without the restrictions imposed by Senior Service Manager 4.2.1.

Removed startup screen that displayed prior to login.

Windows only: SHIFT-F12 brings up ENTER THE PROGRAM NAME TO RUN.

Windows only: When in printer setup browser (ASP), SHIFT-F12 runs the laser forms initialization procedure.

NT only: Senior Service Manager now derives its time from the server rather than the client PC’s.

Various menu changes (see next section).

Menu Changes

Reorganized and re-worded Admin Reports (AR) menu. Substantive changes, listed in menu order, are

Renamed “Parts” to “Parts/Inventory”.

Added “Sales Advisors” menu item (see reports for description of new Sales Advisors report).

Discontinued Misc menu & relocated all of its menu items.

Added “Unpaid/Uninvoiced” menu item, which contains submenu with all relevant reports.

Manual Changes to Inventory report relocated to (ARPD).

Reworded (ARPG) from “Inventory Value” to “Value by Group”.

“Parts Profit by Group” renamed to “Sales & Profitably By Group” (see Reports section for complete description – this report is now dramatically enhanced).

Added Books Receivables Report (BRR) sub-menu which contains new report (see A/R Section)

Admin Setup

For additional functionality clarification, in Admin Setup Company (ASC) at counter parts sales types setup screen, added frame label which reads COUNTER PARTS SALE TYPES.

Changed help message for Print Part# in (ASD) for greater clarification of what this setting controls. Help message now reads:
“Y = print PART# on invoices, estimates, credits.   N = print ITEM#”.
(All these types of invoices are affected by this setting.

Customer

Added “Vehicle Notes” warning in customer browser. You are now warned of the existence of Vehicle Notes in the same manner as, but separately from the existence of Customer Notes.

Suppressed display of non-populated address fields. This prevents the unsightly display of single commas, spaces, and/or periods when address fields were left blank.

Added Field labels for HOME & WORK phone numbers in customer browser.

Credits

Credits no longer offer the user a chance to update a credit unless that credit is available for updating. Prior to 5.0 the system would offer the chance for the user to edit a credit, even if the credit was locked.

Credits no longer change inventory quantities until the credit has been marked paid. This was to allow for creation of credits without affecting inventory levels prior to the part actually being returned.

Service

Rearranged and reorganized information displayed at bottom of the Service Order & Invoice screens.

Added display for DIVISION of this invoice to information displayed at bottom of Service Order screen.

Service invoice screen: added CUST button, which provides access to customer information for lookup or editing (same as current CUST button in service orders). Activated by selecting menu choice or pressing the letter Z. This feature was added by popular request.

Service invoice screen: Added 2 line display of invoice statistics similar to service order screen in earlier versions. This display contains:  # Of Lines, Customer Name, Division, Actual Hours, Year, Make, Model

Service Parts printout: enhanced and cleaned up entire printout with new header info to conform with V4 report design. Also added missing column label: BIN (for bin location) (also listed under Parts).

You may now change the Division or Advisor on a Service Order  (AMME).

The following mechanism has been in SSM for years: if a part on a service or parts invoice is re-priced higher than list, the list price is bumped up to exactly match the selling price, such that selling price does not appear higher than list price. In SSM 5, a problem was corrected whereby the list price would not be bumped after re-pricing higher than list if the part or parts had been imported from an estimate. (The imported part now uses either the item list or estimate price, which ever is greater.)

Corrected extremely rare problem whereby when importing from an estimate to a service order, if your estimate is calling for a higher quantity than you currently have on hand, but you do have at least some (as opposed to none), the system will sell into the negative. However, this can only happen if the part exists on the estimate more than once, and if there were not enough in stock to satisfy the all requirements of all occurrences of that part. Code changed such that the system stops and warns of this condition and does not import this particular part.

Corrected problem whereby service orders and service invoices always printed the most recent mileage (actual mileage at the time was only viewable on screen).

Jobs

Selected Choices Display now shows what selections have been made so far… first, in the top of the MAKE browser (the title appears in the frame label), then, when choosing YEAR & MODEL, the previous browser remains in view.

Unix only: Job title editing was confusing because the browser highlighting did not follow the editing focus (i.e. the title remains highlighted when you are editing in the job lines, and vice versa). Fixed by explicitly forcing the selected file color in the inactive browser to be the same as the background color.

In Job Title screen, changed quick menu default from Y (Yes) to N (No) in order to prevent the Quick Menu from becoming too large.

Corrected several minor display problems when selecting Job Lists.

Parts

Add FIRST, LAST, NEXT and PREV buttons to the parts history review program.

Add f3 to choose default vendor to enter initial inventory routine.

Corrected slow display problem in Senior Service Manager 4.2.1’s slow F3 TO CHOOSE parts invoice browser.

As of Senior Service Manager V4.0, after creating a cross-reference you are prompted as follows “Do you also wish to make the other cross-referenced parts non-stocking items?” If you answer “Y” (for “Yes”), Senior Service Manager V5.0 sets all the stocking level fields to 0 so that the automatic stocking report will function correctly.

Service Parts printout: enhanced and cleaned up entire printout with new header info to conform to V4 report design. Also added missing column label: BIN (for bin location)

On all service parts screens and counter parts invoice screens, eliminated errors that occurred when ITEM or VW-DESC button is pressed when no parts are listed. Errors ranged from messages to the system locking up.

Added routine to test for parts with a cost of “?” which runs during monthly maintenance. If any parts are found with cost of “?”, routine stops and prompts user to enter proper cost.

Corrected rare problem whereby tax was not added on parts invoices.

Purchase Orders

Added STOCKING LIST (also could be thought of as a “Put-Away List”). Should be printed immediately before receiving the P.O. Intended for use during stocking of new inventory. Contains the following information:
Bin Location, Part Number, Description, Quantity Ordered, Quantity Received, Quantity Backordered, and Service Order number to which this item may have been automatically routed by the P.O. Intentionally omitted from this printout: all price information.

PRINT button added to P.O. menu. Purchase orders may now be printed without quitting.

PRINT THIS PURCHASE ORDER? Y/N prompt removed from P.O. QUIT sequence. However, it has NOT been REMOVED from P.O. RECEIVED sequence.

Feature added to 4.2.1 but never documented: Added P.O. date display and RECEIVED Y/N status display to PURCHASE ORDER REVIEW F3 browser. (Before this feature was added, the P.O had to be re-printed in order to determine the P.O. date.)

Eliminated error message that occurred when ITEM button is pressed when no parts are listed.
(ITEM button is used to perform single-keystroke lookup of selected part line on all parts screens.)

Clarified text message which appears when attempting to update order quantity on a P.O. line which has a value entered in both the RCV field and the BKQ field. Message used to read:
“QTY CHANGED NOT ALLOWED ON ITEM PARTIALLY OR WHOLLY RECEIVED.”
Message now reads:
“YOU MUST CLEAR BACKORDER QUANTITY BEFORE UPDATING ORDER QUANTITY.”

On P.O.’s with backordered items, the TOTAL AMOUNT gave the impression that the AMOUNT BEING RECEIVED included the backordered amount. Created new laser form, which reverses the top & bottom fields so that the bottom-most field is now, the RECEIVED TOTAL. This means that this change only appears on P.O.’s printed to a laser printer. It does not appear on P.O.’s printed to a dot matrix printer.

Accounts Receivable

Enhanced Pay-By Invoice Functionality: The Pay-By-Invoice feature has been enhanced to track PAID, UNPAID, and PARTIALLY PAID status for each receivables line entry. The MARK button on the Receivables Maintain menu brings up a selection list with three choices for marking invoices paid PAID, UNPAID, OR PARTIAL PAYMENT. Unpaid entries are highlighted in white. Paid entries are un-highlighted. Partially paid invoices are highlighted in color. The running balance for partially paid invoices is tracked. BALANCE DUE, AMOUNT PAID, and DIFFERENCE for the entire account is displayed along the bottom of the screen. A reference field has been added to each receivables line, which allows the user to enter data relevant to the transaction such as check #, MC/Visa Authorization #, A/R line being paid, etc.) On A/R statements, unresolved line items are printed in bold (entries marked UNPAID or PARTIALLY PAID. This is a laser only feature.

Reports submenu added at (BRR) containing all A/R reports including the new A/R aging report
(see below).

All new A/R Aging Report at (BRRD) has been added. This report is ideal for use when calling for A/R collections. The report first prompts for sort by NAME or BALANCE due, and then for each customer, displays company name, contact name, and phone number in bold, and then, under that, displays total due, current, over 30, and over 60 amounts due, and then lists each invoice considered outstanding, and then for each invoice, the number of days outstanding. To use this report, you must be using the Pay-By-Invoice feature of SSM (see below).

Corrected rare miscalculation problem in A/R balances pertaining to sales tax on counter parts invoices.

Changed global finance charges such that you are no longer prompted for the last date finance charges were applied for each customer.

Relating to the above item: changed global finance charges such that you are now prompted for the last date finance charges were applied BEFORE global finance charges are applied.

Accounts Payable

Added screen prompt, DISPLAY BANK BALANCE Y/N, when making a PAYMENT from within Accounts Payable.

Customer Sources & Sub Sources

Added customer SUB-SOURCES as a subset of customer SOURCES. Each customer source can now have 99 possible sub-sources. What was essentially a flat source table with 57 possible sources is now a “source tree”, consisting of 57 sources with 99 sub-sources each. This format extends the old limit of 57 sources to 5643 possible sources.
Customer sources can now be categorized for reporting purposes. Examples:

Customer Source: Customer Referral
Associated Sub-sources: the actual names of the customers who gave you the referrals.

Customer Source: Yellow Pages
Associated Sub-sources: Big City Book, Small Local Book

Customer Source: Print Advertising
Associated Sub-sources: Big City Paper, Local Town Paper

Customer Source: Radio Advertising
Associated Sub-sources: WBCN, WCRB, WBUR, WCLB

See separate document entitled Customer Sources and Sub-sources and Sample Source Tree for further details & instructions on how to design your new source tree. Note that this does not have to be done immediately after upgrading to Version 5, but sub-sources should not be used until the new source tree as been implemented

Added program to merge source codes into sub-sources. This provides a mechanism to re-arrange your existing sources to work with the new format. (Many sources will now need to become sub-sources, and so forth.)

Customer source report has been enhanced accordingly.

EZ-Mail

You may now send a letter to a single customer (AZC).
Done by popular request (Your welcome, Doug Knutzen. Told you we’d do it sooner or later).

Restored lost functionality of F9 & F10 to add & delete entire lines in EZ-Mail editor.

Corrected problem which occurred ONLY when printing Recommended Repairs letters AFTER using COUNT FIRST where all Recommended Repairs for all reportable vehicles appeared on the first letter

Bank

Added SEARCH button to Banking Maintain menu. Allows you to perform a CONTAIN SEARCH for words contained in the PAYEE line (actually labeled NOTE on screen). Hugely useful in searching backwards through months or years of checks trying to find out when was the last time you wrote a check to a particular person or entity. When search criteria are met, all critical information about the check found by the search is displayed in an alert box, and you are prompted, “Is this the transaction you want?” The provided choices are YES, NO, and CANCEL. If you choose YES, the screen is refreshed and that transaction is displayed at the top of the screen. If you choose NO, the search is continued in a similar manner.

Corrected problem with incorrect display of balance due in a help message which suggests that payments to active vendors be made from within Payables, not from within Banking Maintain. This help message was capable of suggesting that a balance due existed when in fact there was no balance due.

Corrected screen handling problem after using TRACE, GO TO, and VOID whereby up down cursor does not disappear when hitting F4 to resume control of horizontal choose bar, causing you to unnecessarily hit F4 again, which will unintentionally kick you out of the bank. Same fix applied Cash Register as explained below.

Corrected problem with involuntary check printing after user hits F4 (Payments/Maintain/Write) in response to the payables warning alert box.

Cash

Fixed several minor problems with the USERID check when entering the cash drawer.

Eliminated possibility to accidentally select PAYMENT TYPE 9 when accepting payment in some areas of Senior Service Manager. (PAYMENT TYPE 9 is the internal designation for a SPLIT PAYMENT and should not be manually entered.)

Fixed rare problem whereby when receiving a P.O. and paying for it by CASH, if another user is in the cash register at the time, CASH BALANCE is reset to the amount OF the P.O. being received.

Added multiple cash drawer support to Windows.

Corrected screen handling problem after using TRACE or GO TO whereby up/down line selection cursor does not disappear when hitting F4 to resume control of horizontal choose bar, causing you to unnecessarily hit F4 again, which will unintentionally kick you out of the cash register.

Changed cash drawer ID REQUIRED feature. What follows is an exact explanation of what happens when ID REQUIRED is set to Y and login box appears (in both pre SSM 5, and in SSM 5):
pre-SSM 5:
- Login by current user: current userid appears on cash line (because he made this transaction).
- Login by other user: userid is permanently changed to other user; other user’s userid appears on cash line because of permanent userid change. When Main Menu reappears, other user is still logged in. This functionality was judged incorrect, and was therefore changed in SSM 5. See below.
in SSM5:
- Login by current user: current userid appears on cash line (i.e., functionality unchanged).
- Login by other user: a one-time permission is granted by the other user to the current user to perform a single action. This change brings the ID REQUIRED feature of the cash register into compliance with all other areas of the system in terms of permission overrides. If a different user logs in, a ONE TIME PERMISSION is granted to the current user to perform a single task. Therefore, the current user’s userid appears on the cashline. Bear in mind that the purpose of ID REQUIRED is NOT to prevent any particular user from gaining access to the cash register, but rather for userid verification. (Access prevention should be implemented as a permission setting.)

Estimates

Fixed “List Price Bump” for imported estimates. See Service Order section for more information.

When copying from one estimate to another, corrected problem whereby, under certain circumstances, not all parts were copied from the original estimate to the target estimate.

Fixed problem whereby estimates were not aware of parts set to be non-taxable.

Fixed problem whereby estimates were not aware of customer-specific tax rate.

Reports

Inventory reports enhanced for consistency and functionality.

Cleaned up header of Inventory Value report.

All new A/R Aging Report at (BRRD) has been added. This report is ideal for use when calling for A/R collections. The report first prompts for sort by NAME or BALANCE due, and then for each customer, displays company name, contact name, and phone number in bold, and then, under that, displays total due, current, over 30, and over 60 amounts due, and then lists each invoice considered outstanding, and then for each invoice, the number of days outstanding. To use this report, you must be using the Pay-By-Invoice feature of SSM.

Parts Profit By Group report dramatically enhanced and renamed with new help message. Is now: Sales & Profitably by Group. This report is completely redone with new header and offers 4 sort parameters (sort by group, descending sales, descending profit, & descending margin). All versions of the report show, for each group, Sales, Cost, Profit, and Margin. Header shows which sort parameter was chosen. Groups with no activity are not shown. Added logical which allows user to specify whether or not to include groups with no activity. All reports can be displayed or printed.

Added new Service Advisors Reporting Menu (ARS), on which you will find:
(A) Sales Totals Only (Screen Or Print) (formerly the Sales By Salesperson report)
(B) Sales Totals & Performance Analysis (Print Only) which is all new and offers extensive presentation options.
(C) Parts Group Profit (Screen or Print)

Relating to the above, renamed Update Division On An S.O to Change Division Or Service Advisor On an S.O. Located at (AMME) and added ability to change the salesman.

Reworked customer source report to include sub-source information (see Customer Source.)

Reworked customer source report to exclude sources with no activity.

Corrected problem whereby Job Title Summary Report would not run in November or December.

In Service Hunt report, added 4-digit year to pre-populated fields for FIRST YEAR and LAST YEAR. Prior to this fix, user had to type in 4-digit year to make report run.

In Main Customer Reporting & Sorting report for Customer Sort/Sorted By Vehicle, added 4 digit year to pre-populated fields for FIRST YEAR and LAST YEAR. Prior to this fix, user had to type in 4 digit year to make report run.

In Main Customer Reporting & Sorting report for Service Due, corrected problem whereby Service Due information was cut off. Printed output has been compressed to allow all information to fit onto the page.

Due to unconfirmed reports that Complex Parts Movement Report seemed to miss some groups, changed the group selection logic to match that in the “Job Title Report” and made sure group list generation handled embedded commas.

As a result of the immediately preceding item, applied the same changes to the Job Title Summary Report, and all other reports with selection lists.

See Also: Accounts Payable

Print Setup

Cleaned up and enhanced the m_lasini.p program

SHIFT-F12 now runs the “m_lasini.p” program from within Admin Setup Printers

Changed “m_lasini.p” to allow for more complex configuration on laser printers. The routine no longer automatically removes the old laser form entries. (Selectable at Delete Old Forms:Y/N in lasini routine.)

Fixed problem where Out For Repair laser forms would fail to print on Windows systems.

Client/Server Printing

Added the program “ResetPrn.p” which globally resets all print routines for PK=Y
(enables user to pick a printer at print time).

Support for UNC names. The only restriction is that the names must have no spaces in the share name or computer name.
Example: “\SERVER\OFFICEPRINTER” will work while ”\\THE SERVER\OFFICE PRINTER” will not).

Other

Removed all references to DOS in Help Files.

Fixed problem where the CALC-BOX menu and A/R Pay-By-Invoice menu would not display a selection bar on monochrome displays.

Removed menu choice for Nu-Way. Nu-Way imports must be handled on a custom basis by working directly with GenesisFour until further notice.

Corrected problem with inoperative inventory upload from portable car code collector caused by code change in previous release.

Known Problem(s)

Only when multi-location feature is enabled, merging parts may cause inaccurate on-hand quantities.

In EZMail, Recommended Repairs, Count First/Yes: each recommendation is counted rather than each customer, resulting in a count which is higher than expected. Letters print correctly regardless.

Old Service Advisor’s Report (ARCA) sometimes reports parts sales totals which are too high. Use new Service Advisor’s Report, which provides significantly more information, and also includes all information contained in the old report.

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