Highlights in Version 8.3

Brief Summary of New Major Features in Version 8.3

• New Main Menu, Report Menu and Setup Menu
• Greatly enhanced and simplified employee rights
• Customize the email that gets sent when you email Invoices and Workorders.
• You can now track quantities in your bins.
• The Michelin Electronic Sellout Data Upload is now available as an optional add-on. Contact AutoFluent Support for information.
• The Comprehensive Group Report will let you save multiple custom reports.
• The Daily Report now includes a new Sales Rep Recommendation report to help you track how often your reps are making Recommended Services.

Point of Sale

• The Pick-up time for your vehicle can now be seen in the Workorder list in Sales Entry. While viewing your Workorders, click the Settings button to select which columns to view. There are two new columns that can be selected: Pick-up Time and Pick-up Date.
• You can customize two more headings on the Invoice & Workorder: the FET heading and the Make & Model heading. In the Invoice Copies tab of System Settings, you can enter new names for these headings.
• In Sales Entry, when viewing Workorders, you can now see and search by the fleet number of the vehicle. To enable this:
  • Click Sales from Main Menu.
  • Click the Settings button in the center.
  • Check the box for Fleet # at the bottom.
• After printing or previewing an Invoice or Workorder for a customer with an email address, you can click the Email button at the top. A window will pop up where you can do the following:
  • Modify the email before sending it.
  • Change the email address.
  • Add another email address.
  • To add multiple addresses on the same line, separate them with a ‘;’.
  • Click the Factory Default Message button to return to the default email message.
  • Click Use Default Message to use the last saved default message.
  • If you are logged in with System Rights, you will be able to click the Save Message as Default button.
• If you have multiple stores, each customer is assigned a store. In the Sales Entry window, you can click the yellow box in the top right corner to select a store, and then you will only see customers pertaining to that store. You can also choose to see customers from all stores. While choosing a store, there is a checkbox which allows you to view all the customers who have ever purchased at the selected store, no matter what store they have been assigned to.
• In Sales Entry, clicking the Show Invoices & Quotes button will let you view quotes from all your locations, though Workorders are only accessible from the store at which they are created. This is in the Defaults – W/O tab of System Settings.
• There is a new setting to hide the time printed on Workorders and Invoices.
• If you seldom use license plates in your business, there is a setting to make it so you can safely ignore them. The setting is in the lower left section of the Defaults – W/O tab of System Settings: Fill in license plate when saving if blank. With this set, whenever you save a Workorder with a vehicle model and a blank license plate, it will be as if the No Plates button from the vehicle window were clicked.
• When a Workorder is closed improperly (due to a power failure, etc.), the Workorder will now only remain locked for approximately 90 seconds.
  When using the Authorize button in a Workorder, you have to option of authorizing a free job with no price.

Employee Rights

• The employee rights section has been completely redone, giving you much more granular control over what each employee has access to. When you click Setup Entry, and then the Employee button, the window looks very different. The top half is still your list of employees, but the bottom half is a tree view of your various employee rights, broken into categories.
  • New permissions include:
    • Inventory Reports
    • Customer Reports
    • Vendor Reports
    • Allow saving or invoicing Workorders with negative quantities
    • Allow invoicing even when a stocked item does not have enough
    • Allow clicking the Update button to get the latest full release
    • Allow clicking the Update button to get the latest Alpha or Beta
  • New permissions based on previous system settings:
    • Sell to Past Due Customers
    • Charge on account to past due customers
    • Export items from Vendor Catalog
    • Add lines after invoicing
    • Edit prices in Purchase Orders
    • Can Disable Shop Supplies
    • Edit Customer in Workorder
    • Change Customer in Workorder
    • Finalize invoices with negative quantities
  • Additionally, if you have multiple locations, each of these rights can be changed at each location.
  • There are several new buttons on this window:
    • Copy Permissions – copies the checkbox settings below so they can be pasted to either another employee, or to all the other stores for this employee. Note that the first three checkboxes (Login, Mechanic and Sales Rep) are not copied or pasted.
    • Paste Permission – pastes the permissions copied with the Copy Permissions button to the selected employee and store. Note that you do not need to click the Save Changes button; the changes are saved immediately.
    • Paste to All Stores – pastes the permissions copied with the Copy Permissions button to all stores for the selected employee, and saves the changes.
    • Sales Rep Defaults – Checks all the boxes typical for a Sales Rep, and saves the changes.
    • Mechanic Defaults – Checks all the boxes typical for a Mechanic, and saves the changes.
    • Sales Mgr Defaults – Checks all the boxes typical for a Sales Manager, and saves the changes.
    • Back Office Defaults – Checks all the boxes typical for a Bookkeeper, and saves the changes.
    • Check All – Checks all the boxes (except for Mechanic and Sales Rep.) and saves the changes.
    • Uncheck All – UnChecks all the boxes and saves the changes.

• You can now restrict purchases to your past due customers, even if they are not beyond their credit limit. For example, in the Sales Settings tab of System Settings, if you enter 80 days, no customer will be able to charge on account who has a transaction 80 or more days past due, without the approval of another employee with this permission. This permission is one of the new employee checkboxes.
  • In the employee window, you can specify whether each employee has the right to sell to past due customers (even if it’s a cash invoice), or sell to them on account.
• If an employee is set to not have rights to Sales Entry, they will still be able to click the Sales Entry button, but with very limited rights.
  • They will be able to see the list of Workorders, but they will not be able to open or preview them.
  • They will see the list of customers and balances, but they will not be able to see their phone numbers or addresses.
• In Sales Entry, there are three new possible buttons, depending on the rights of the employee:
  • Refund Deposit, so an employee can get the right to do this without needing to have the rights to Customer Entry.
  • P/O, so an employee can create purchase orders if they have the rights to do this, whether or not they have rights to Inventory Entry.
  • Bin, if the Bin Tracking module has been activated.
• If an employee is set to not see costs, but is also set to print the Daily Report, the following will happen when printing Daily Reports:
  • The opening Daily Deposit screen will not display the Profit Total.
  • The sections of the report which show profit will be disabled. This includes the invoice list at the beginning, though the bank summary will print so they can reconcile their deposit. Hidden sections include:
    • Sales Transactions
    • Item Group Summary and Subtotals
    • Sales Rep and Mechanic summaries

Customers / Sales Reports

• The Comprehensive Group Report has been enhanced. You can create and save several custom reports, each with its own set of Item Groups and/or Subtotal Categories. For example, you could create one report comparing sales of various brands of tires, and another report comparing sales of various types of service.
• The Comprehensive Sales Report now automatically adjusts your daily goals if your sales reps are behind for the month.
• The Comprehensive Sales Report and Comprehensive Group Report can now be exported to Excel.
• You can now set it so that new customers are not allowed to pay by check by default. This is set in the Defaults – Misc. window of System Settings.
• There is a new section in the Daily Report called Sales Rep Recommendations. This will compare the sales for the day with the open Recommended Services created by each rep. The month-to-date and year-to-date figures on this report are not as useful, since it reports on open (uncompleted) services.
• If you would like to completely disable the Auto Apply button when receiving payments on account from your charge customers, you can check the box in the Defaults – Misc. window of System Settings. This is useful if most of your larger customers ask you to apply payments to specific invoices, so there is not a temptation to just apply the payments to the oldest transactions.
• When printing statements, you now have the option to only print for those who have no email address, so that these customers can receive their statements by email instead.

Inventory

• You can now track how many of each item you have in each of your bins. To do this, it will require much discipline from your sales people, your warehouse people, and your back office people. To make it work properly, you will need to specify the correct bin whenever items are sold, received, adjusted or transferred. If you would like to implement this, check the box in the Inventory Tab of System Settings, and ask us for the 5-page instructional document.
• When viewing items in the Vendor Catalog, there is a button to convert the selected items to stocked items. Access to this button has now been limited to those with access to Purchase Orders.
• If you have access to Purchase Orders but not Inventory Entry, you will be able to enter the Purchase Order system by clicking a new P/O button in Sales Entry.
• When creating a Purchase order, you can have the cost of the item be dependent on the Vendor you are purchasing from. To set this up:
  • In Inventory Entry, select an item and go to the Vendors tab.
  • Click the New button, click on the vendor name, and select the vendor.
  • Enter the Catalog Cost for that vendor.
  • If desired, you can also enter the Vendor Part #. This would print on Purchase Orders for that vendor.
• You now have the option of having your inventory history reflect the sales price before or after the discount. This is set in the left section of the Inventory / PO’s tab of System Settings.
• You can now copy all your Catalog Costs and/or Spiffs to selected stores. This is done in the Inventory tab of the Utilities window (from Setup Entry).
• You can now specify a General Ledger Account when making an Inventory Adjustment.

Inventory Reports

• The Inventory Transfer report now lets you select a particular store to report on, and the report will show all transfers to or from that store in the selected time period.
• The Inventory Sales Transaction Report can now be printed for a specific sales rep.
• The Inventory Reorder Report now includes an On Order column.
• The Bin Count Sheet lets you select a range of Bins.
• The Bin Report offers 10 options for sorting, and lists all the bins for each item.
• There is a new report, Bin Labels, which will let you print barcode labels for your bin locations. This is mainly for use when using the bin tracking module.
• The Inventory Transfer report now gives subtotals for each store.
• The Inventory Transaction report can now be printed for a selected store, or all stores.

Vendors

• The Vendor Aging Transaction Report now has the option to print only the totals.
• The Purchase Orders by PO Report now shows the total received, backordered or not billed, depending on the selected settings of the report.
  Mechanics
• In the Mechanic Report window (accessible from the Mechanic Tracking window), there is a new report available, the Mechanic Productivity Report. This will print the punches and hours for all jobs done in the date range, even if the job has not yet been completed. This only applies if you have your mechanics clock in and out on their jobs.
• The Mechanic Tracking report now prints the total of the mechanic’s hours.
• In the Mechanic Tracking window, you can now add new lines to the list of jobs done, as well as delete lines in the list. These can either be associated with existing invoices or with chores.

Miscellaneous

• Now when you customers place an order on your website, an email can be sent to them and/or you about the order.
• The Sage 50 interface has a new option which will no longer require that you continue to purchase the latest version of Sage 50 to use our interface.
• The Scheduler will now allow 24-hour schedules to be displayed.
• There is a new Tablet Mode which makes it easier to use the Search, Done and New buttons when you are using a tablet. This setting is in the Defaults – Misc. tab of System Settings, and only applies to the computer or tablet you are currently using.
• The Google Calendar Sync for Appointments and Workorders has been enhanced. There are now options to have separate calendars, separated by Mechanic or Bay. The Mechanic Notes and Appointment notes now appear in the Google Calendar events.
• We can now interface with the Michelin Electronic Sellout Data program. This is a new program Michelin has implemented, which offers bonuses for shops using the program. The quantity of Michelin tires sold is sent electronically to Michelin automatically when the day is posted. This is an optional module. Call for details.