What's New

From PlantX.net

This page shows recent features and enhancements to PlantX.net. Refer to this page after upgrades to learn about new features.

Release Pending

• Improved date entry field shortcut keys. Previously, if you were changing any date field, pressing the up and down arrows, increased or decreased by one day, respectfully. The date field now supports a few more shortcut keys. Here is the complete list:
  • Ctrl+Home: today's date
  • Cursor Up: +1 day
  • Cursor Down: -1 day
  • Shift+Cursor Up: +1 week
  • Shift+Cursor Down: -1 week
  • Page Up: +1 month
  • Page Down: -1 month
• Balance Forward replaced by archive feature. To create a Balance Forward you had to select all documents from the top of the ledger down. This meant that you had to roll any (or all) cleared documents plus any prior balance forward into a new balance forward. Over time this made it difficult to review or correct an account's history. Making changes required that successive balances be deleted, effectively unraveling history. To greatly simplify the ledger, any entries that balance to zero, can be archived. Simply highlight one or more entries with a zero balance and press the archive button. The entries are moved over to the new Ledger Archive tab. The Ledger Archive lists all documents and balances that have been archived. Should you need to restore one or more of them, highlight them in the archive and select the Restore Entry button. This makes it is quick and simple to move documents to and from the current ledger and archive. The ability to archive entries keeps the list shorter which makes the account load more quickly.
• New Effective aging date for the ledger's aging periods. The aging totals at the bottom of the ledger view now has a date field where you can adjust the effective date for the totals. Enter a new date or use the shortcut keys described above to quickly adjust the date and you can see the immediate impact on the totals.
  • A note on the aging balances: only documents shown in the ledger are included in the aging period totals. This means that if you enter an older effective date, before the documents listed in the ledger, the balances will show zero. If you need to see these total reflect historical balances, you will need to restore older entries from the Ledger Archive.
• New Age/Past column on ledger view. A new column has been added to the ledger view that shows either the age of the document or number of days past due, depending on whether you age from the document's date or from the document's due date. This makes it easier to determine which aging period is affected by the documents amount. (The aging method can be reviewed/changed in Action | Maintain | Member Settings | Statement Tab.)
• Added date range to Accounts Window | History Tab. To improve performance, we have reduced the amount of information loaded when browsing through accounts. The History Tab on the Accounts Window has been limited to the last 90 days. The date range can be changed to show more history. (You can use the new keys above to quickly change the date and press the enter key.)
• Patch issue with adding new catalog items without UPC. After tightening quality control of the UPC codes in the last upgrade, if you weren't setup to use UPC codes, the system was still preventing you from adding duplicate codes. This has been corrected in this release.

Released 1/30/12

• NOTE: Removed the Balance Forward feature from accounting. This feature has been disabled because it is incompatible with the next PlantX release. It is being replaced by the more traditional archival feature used throughout PlantX. Rather than rolling a balance forward, combined "cleared" documents will have an option to be archived. There will be a new History Ledger Tab that you can use to browse archived entries with the ability to restore them should you need to. This will avoid the need to dig back through numerous generations of forwarded balances. You can still clear balances, though in a future release you will be able to apply partial payments.
• Ability to search for UPC from Inventory Window. From the Inventory Window's Edit menu select the new option to search for a UPC code. It will search both the catalog UPCs and the customer's saved UPCs. If more than one exists, PlantX prompts with a list of possible entries.
• Reset UPC counter. PlantX has an option to assign any added catalog items the next UPC product code in sequence. If you should need to reset the UPC counter to the next available code (one greater than the last UPC used), there is a new button to automatically determine the next usable number. The button is found at Action | Maintain | Member Setting | UPC Tab.
• Tighten restrictions on duplicate UPC codes. When adding or changing a UPC code, the system will prevent from adding a duplicates. (If you do need to add duplicate codes, let us know and we will relax this feature and make it optional.)
• Added new date field to Availability Listing report. You can add a new parms.reportdate field to an Availability Listing which prints the current date on the report. The report already prints the date at the bottom of every page, but should you want to put the date in a more prominent location, use this field name.
• Fixed bug where orders submitted from the website were made "New" and not "Submitted".

Released 1/21/12

• Beta (test) release of new Sales Rep Edition. We have released for testing a Sales Rep Edition of PlantX. It is a very limited version that only gives a sales rep the ability to add new orders to their assigned customers. The sales rep can only see orders they've created (or been assigned) so long as the order carries the SUBMITTED status. Once the order status is changed to any other status, the sales rep is no longer able to access the order. They can only enter orders for accounts where they have been assigned as the sales rep. Contact us if you are interested in trying this new release with your sales rep. We will be adding more features on demand.
• Pay Commission reminder. A new member setting has been added to the Accounting Tab that optionally shows a reminder to pay commissions. If the option is selected and an invoice is cleared (with payment or credit memo), the invoice has a sales rep and that sales rep has a commission rate, then PlantX will prompt with a reminder to pay commission.
• Availability List report now filters individually archived supplies. With the advent of the ability to archive individual supplies, rather than the entire crop, the report now observes the supply archive setting.
• Removed unused "Other" button on order item add. There was an option button called "Other" that was no longer relevant, and consequently removed.
• Submitted website orders now include the appropriate UPC and SKU codes. Orders online were correctly applying the codes if they were specifically assigned to the customer, but they were not assigned from the catalog. PlantX normally pulls the codes from the customer's account if they have specific codes saved, if not, they are pulled from the catalog.

Released 1/10/12

• New orders use the sales rep from the shipping account. Because you can ship to multiple locations, and those locations could each have a different sales rep, when a new order is created PlantX will now pull the sales rep from the shipping account. Previously, the system pulled the sales rep from the billing account.
• Fixed bug when splitting orders. Order items that are highlighted (usually due to special pricing) are now copied correctly to any newly extracted order. The extracted order items will now be correctly highlighted on reports.
• Fixed bug on auto allocate feature. Auto allocate will now correctly ignore any order items that have been marked for substitution.
• Fixed bug with available quantity showing in the Order Entry Tab. The Order Entry Tab shows a list of catalog items to add to an order and includes an option to show the available quantity. The quantity shown was overstated because it included archived supplies. If the crop was archived, the quantity was correct. When we added the ability to archive individual supplies, this computed total was missed. It now correctly filters out any archived supplies.

Released 11/30/11

• Copying or splitting an order will preserve the Purchase Order field. Originally the Purchase Order field on a sales order was for internal purposes. Since we now let the user set the field, it is now duplicated along with all the other fields when the order is copied or split.
• Relaxed the edit of order items. Order line items can now be changed even if some of the allocated material has been shipped. Previously, you could not change order items after they had been shipped or partially shipped. This precaution preserved a strict order of events that we now feel is no longer necessary. You can now freely change the pricing, retail information, messages and notes even after you have shipped the order. If you would like to continue enforcing this restriction, we can make the restriction an optional Member Setting.
• Added Catalog Item selection to the Supply-Demand report. When running a Supply-Demand report it will now ask which catalog items you want to include. By default it will continue to select all catalog items.

Released 10/28/11

• Fixed problem with anonymous supplies. While allocating or changing the amount allocated from the Inventory Window, there was an occasion to create an anonymous supply, using either an anonymous crop or location.
• Inventory batch change discount. The No Discount option on the Inventory Window | Misc. Tab can now be changed using the Batch Change... option.
• Delete multiple allocations. You can now select and delete multiple allocations in the Order Window | Load Manager tab.

Released 10/20/11

• Fixed bug with Split Order function. The SKU and UPC codes were not being copied when an order was split. This also fixes it for the Copy Order function.
• Split Order function returns to the quantity entry window. If you are unhappy with the total order items to be extracted from an order, answering "No" will allow you to adjust the quantities. Previously, if you did not like the total order items to be split into a new order, and answered "No" to the confirmation, it would just abort the split operation. Now the process will let you go back and adjust the entries.
• Added an audit to the "master" order regarding Split Order. When an order was split, audits were created on the new split order and the billing account. This upgrade adds another audit to the original ("master") order.

Released 10/17/11

• Change table view totals to darker color. Previously the totals shown in a table were light gray so as to

more easily distinguish them from other rows. The light gray made them too difficult to read, so we made them a dark grey (which actually just looks black.)

• Two year date range on order list. The list of orders from the Customer Window now starts the list two years back. This makes it easier to see previous orders for customers returning from last year.
• Allow zero quantity supply transfers. The drag-n-drop supply transfer in the Inventory Window now allows you to enter a zero quantity. This token transfer operation is a means of quickly creating a similar supply yet avoid actually transferring any inventory.
• Program's window title now includes your member name. In order to better tell two running instances of PlantX.net apart, the window title now includes the membership name. That way when the program is minimized on the application bar, the titled icon shows the member.
• New Document Listing report. Prints a list of accounting documents (Invoices, Payments, Debit Memos, Credit Memos) in list form. Uses the new spreadsheet templates, so any variety of report forms are supported. Three standard templates have been created.

Released 10/7/11

Series of smaller upgrades...

• Split Order feature. You can now split off part of an order into different order. Similar to Copy Order

Released 8/12/11

• Internal changes only. Maintenance upgrade in preparation for other features. Namely more fields for reporting.
• Bug fix for Show on Web option. Using the Show on Web 'Yes' option would show catalog items on the website regardless if a user was a public user or an authorized user.

Released 8/03/11

• New look to changing load information. You will notice a big change in the way you change allocated inventory. The Change Allocation and Change Load features now have a different look. Previously you had to select between an existing Load name or click the button to create a load name. These are now combined into a single field. All you need to do now is enter a load name. If a load with the same name already exists, it will use that load. If you enter a new name, it will assume you want to create a load. There is a list field just below the load name that will show you any loads already created for that order, making it easy to just click the name and go! This makes for many improvements.
  • Select a load during allocation. The load name has also been added to the Change Allocation dialogs. Now when you go to add an allocation, you can quickly add it to a load which saves an extra change load step. (No more forgetting it.)
  • No more duplicate load names. You can clearly see the list of loads currently on the order, so all you need to do is click to select a load name (or press the tab key and use the up and down cursor keys). If you happen to type the load name again, PlantX will automatically match it up to the existing load.
  • Faster data entry. With fewer fields to select and only one place to enter the load name, it should make it much quicker to update or create new allocations.
  • To see this change, open an order, select the Load Manager tab and either change an allocation or change/split the load.
• Bug fix. When selecting multiple items in a list or tree view, some of the option buttons where not activating/deactivating correctly. For example, selecting multiple allocations in the Load Manager still made the Change Allocation button available when it should not have. This was misleading, making it look like some buttons would work on a selected group, but it only affected one item.

Released 7/17/11

• Better date and date range entry. Dates and date ranges now update selections (filters) when the tab key is pressed. Previously it required that you press enter when changing dates in order for your selections to change, but now it changes when either you press enter or tab to another field. This was typically an issue when selecting reports or searching for documents and orders.
• Prompt when closing changed order. The Order Window will now prompt to save order info changes before closing the window.
• Default to printing marks on order items. This streamlines printing the '*' on Order Confirmations and Order Acknowledgments. This change makes it easier to just hit enter and select Yes to print the marks for the highlighted or discounted order items.
• Archived customers excluded from mailing labels. This bug fix prevents archived customers from being added to the batch of billing labels.
• Newly added order items highlighted. On the Order Window, when a new order item is added to either the Order Items Tab or the Entry Tab, it is highlighted to better show the new item.
• New Available Order Form option. A new option has been added that prints quantity discounts on a single line so as to make shorter reports for Catalog Item | Availability Order Form. An extra space was added between the prices for greater clarity. If you don't use quantity discounts, then this option does not apply to you.
• None option for retail tag printing. Printing retail tags for an order now has a new None option that will clear the counts. Previously you could select from Entire Order or a specific load name to quickly select the desired quantities. The new None option will still list the order's allocated order items but it will clear the quantities so that you can manually enter your desired amounts.
• Change Harvest Report. The Harvest Report now prints the crop name and not the report title. This is a report for internal consumption and now uses the internal name.
• Website updates. Various custom changes to websites are rolled out in this release. We will notify each member of their respective changes.

Released 6/7/11

• Fixed QuickBooks export. The export of the special TM symbol was causing issues with newer versions of QB exports.
• Added more fields for supply reports. Added more convenient totals for creating supply reports, namely supply cost related.
• Supply Listing report filters archived. The Supply Listing report filtered archived crops, but it now filters supplies that were individually archived. If you need the report to include the archived supplies (e.g. a history report), then there is a format option.

Released 6/1/11

• Performance optimization for loading statements. The server query that loads transaction details in order to create statements has been optimized to reduce network traffic. Each request to the server has some overhead associated with it, and the loading of statements was making far too many individual request (thousands in some cases!) creating a huge delay. This should be alleviated quite a bit after this upgrade. As a reminder, clearing balances on large customer accounts also improves performance.

• Consignment Edition: fixed website email. The Consignment Edition uses a different means of sending an email from the web server. The email routines were rewritten to more closely resemble the Grower Edition email method. This fixes a problem with messages being rejected due to "graylisting", which is an aggressive anti-spam measure.

Release History