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.

Released 8/24/10

• Added additional report criteria to new Availability Listing. The new Availability Listing supports the common availability settings that adjust which items show and the quantities shown.
• More website changes to prepare for future web features.

Released 8/17/10

• Renamed the accounting document's "Recorded" setting to "Lock". Instead of using the word "Recorded" to describe the recording of transaction (making it permanent, mostly), the new word is "Lock". This should be a better word to use as it ultimately means the invoice is locked, which means that it cannot be deleted. As usually, users with administrative privileges can unlock a document.
• Auto-Lock member default. There is a new Member Setting that will now automatically lock invoices to avoid accidental deletion. The new setting can be found on the Accounting tab in the member settings.

Released 8/04/10

• New Availability Listing report. Just like the other availability reports, the Availability Listing lists the available supplies, but unlike it's predecessors, it uses the new spreadsheet templates. This means that you can now completely customize the way your availability reports look, group and total. An because it uses the spreadsheet template, any reports exported to the spreadsheet are clean and well formatted.

Released 8/02/10

• Added more fields to the website registration form. Phone numbers, business type and customer comments were added to the registration page. Most of the fields are also now required in order to register, which should make it easier to validate the applicants. (This does not apply to the custom websites, only the stock websites.)
• Consignment Only: Change in plant cost auditing. If a cost is changed and the prior cost was entered as $0, then no audit is created. This assumes that zero dollar amounts were entered as a temporary measure, and that changing the cost to the actual cost does not require an audit entry.

Released 7/14/10

• Consignment Edition Upgrade Only
  • Changed POS invoicing of discounts. The discounts applied at point of sale are handled differently. If the plant is on sale, the discount is the difference between full retail price and the sale price. If there is a gross discount, greater than individual line item discount, the greater discount in taken and calculated using a percentage. This should resolve any rounding issues when dealing with sale items that could result in fractional discounts (eg. 49.8%).

Released 6/30/10

• Added two new view options to the Order Window. When you have an order open, you can now use View Billing Account or View Shipping Account to quickly open the Customer Window to the respective account.
• New Retail Listing report. Found under the Report Add option, you can now print a new report that lists the retail information, including price, SKU and UPC code. It is located under both the Customer reports and Catalog reports and prints by customer. It is a new Banff Report, so you can download the template and customize the report.
• Removed archived customers from the Order Add process. Although customer accounts were marked as archived, they were still listed in the account selection when adding a new order.

Released 6/08/10

• Fixed the Customer | Retail Prices view. There was a problem sorting the retail prices when a duplicate price was added. A future release will replace the older altogether with a TTV, but for now the view should function correctly.
• Minor adjustments to website parameters. Some minor changes have been made in the website settings in an attempt to fix some periodic delays thought to be created by high traffic surges.

Released 5/27/10

• Added sales rep sorting to reports that include order information. You can now sort reports like the Outstanding Shipments, Shipped Inventory, etc.

Released 5/26/10

• New customer aging by sales rep report. The Customer Listing report has a new format for printing customers with their aging balances, sorted by sales rep.

Released 5/18/10

• Fixed beginning balances printing on statements. There was a condition where beginning balances created an error when they went to print. This has been fixed.
• Fixed the View Supplies for Archived Crops option in the Inventory Window. Toggling the view option did not immediately update the supplies view, ou had to select another catalog item to see the effect. The view archive option now refreshes the immediate supply view.

Released 5/12/10

• Consignment Edition Only
  • Updated audit for plant cost changes. The audit now lists the prior cost as part of the audit message, which will make for better reporting.
  • Consignment due report marks costs that have changed. The consignment due report will now show an asterisk next to any plants where the cost was changed since it was originally ordered.

Released 4/22/10

• Made order messages and notes longer. The order messages and notes fields now allow up to 1000 characters.
• Minor internal updates and database maintenance.

Released 4/19/10

• Fixed text color of selections. The new Tree Table View (TTV) did not show the correct text color for selected rows. It was difficult to view selected table entries because often times the Windows default color was dark text. It should now show the correct color. If you already had a lighter highlight color with dark text, this did not affect you.
• Consignment Edition: payment dates recorded for sold plants. Consignment paid date now shows on the Plant Window. It will also show on the inventory reports in the next release.

Released 4/5/10

• New Supply Snapshot report. The report shows the stock and shipped quantities and the respective on-hand amount for inventory supplies with respect to a given date. It takes into account any stock adjustments on or before the given date, along with shipped quantities on or before the given date. This means that you can run current and historical reports.
• Internal improvements. The new Supply Snapshot report required upgrading numerous internal features for selecting data by dates and enhancements to the new report engine. These new features will be applied to the next round of reports over the next two weeks.

Released 3/29/10

New Report Formats

• Outstanding Shipments
  • by Sales Rep, Customer, Order then Load
• Shipped Inventory
  • by Customer and Order
  • Material Summary
• Demand Reports
  • by Customer
  • by Customer, Order
  • by Material
  • by State, City, Customer (for XLS)
  • by State, City, Customer (for PDF)
• Truck Load Detail
  • by Catalog Item, Location
  • by Load, Catalog Item
  • by Location, Catalog Item
  • Summary by Catalog Item, Location
  • Summary by Location, Catalog Item

Released 3/28/10

• Multiple global settings for each report. As we come up with new report formats and settings, we wanted to be able to share them with all members simultaneously. Now when we upload a new report format, we can save it so that it is globally accessible to all members. These settings will appear as a bracketed name, like <Standard Settings> or <by Customer>, <by Order and Load>, etc.
• Longer name for settings. The given to report settings has been extended from 25 to 50 characters, which should make it easier to create meaningful names.

Released 3/22/10

• Minor upgrade and system maintenance. Just a few minor fixes and some preparation for the next upgrade, which will change the way report settings are stored. This will allow us to store more common report layouts rather than the current one "default" format per report.

Released 3/09/10

• Catalog price printing on invoice is now optional. Previously, if the customer received a discount on their invoice, the invoice printed both the catalog price ("Price") and the discounted price ("Sale Price") in order to highlight the savings. Because of the lack of horizontal room, the catalog pricing column has now been made optional. Although it is optional, it is selected by default in all of the saved formats so there shouldn't any difference in the current invoices.

Released 3/04/10

• Statement date is now used as a cutoff date. Extracting and printing statements requires an effective date. The effective date is used to print the statements as of any particular date. Previously, PlantX would include charges and payments beyond the cutoff date in the Current balance column. This made it difficult to reprint older statements using an older effective date. In this upgrade, the effective date is also a cutoff date, where documents (invoices, payments and memos) dated after the statement date are not included in the statements or aging.
• Finance charges are created using the statement date. When statements were run on a future date, any finance charges applied to the customer's account were created with the current date and not the given future date. Now when you create a finance charge it will use the statement date.
• Statement window has statement date in title. For clarity, the statement window now includes the statement date in the title. The statement date is the one provided during the extract of statements. It can also be changed manually through the Action | Maintain | Member Settings | Statement Tab.
• Lading Form now prints the correct shipping contact details. The Lading Form, found on the Truck Window, now correctly pulls the main contact, phone and fax from the shipping account. After upgrading orders to allow for separate billing and shipping accounts, this report was still pulling contact information from the billing account.

Released 3/03/10

• Added new Unfulfilled Order Items report. This report lists all order items that are not completely allocated. Also known as a backorder report. It is a good way to verify allocations are complete. If you select a lot of orders in your criteria, it can take some time run because it must inspect every order's items and check their allocated totals.
• Corrected sort order of retail tags. The retail tags will now sort and group together in the batch print.
• Added location selection to Supply Listing report. Locations are now included in the filtering of supplies for the Supply Listing report.

Released 2/26/10

• Change to the Order Allocation Tab's auto-allocate feature. The auto-allocate feature will now only allocate supplies from crops marked as available. Previously, it was pulling from all supplies not archived.
• Consignment Edition: point of sale observes the "no discount" option. If a catalog item has been marked as "no discount", the POS operation will not tally discounts for the sale, nor will it add discounts to the invoice (register receipt).

Released 2/24/10

• New Stock Adjustment Listing report. In the Report Add feature, you will find the new report under the Supply section. Given a date range, the report will list any stock adjustments found in that period. This report is limited to 5,000 entries, as it must load a significant amount of data to form the report. The report uses the reporting features, which means the format can be easily altered by editing the spreadsheet template.

Released 2/22/10

• Load reports now use a load's drop address as their default ship-to address. Previously, the load reports used the order's shipping address as the default. It has always allowed you to change the ship-to address shown on the forms, but now the address will use the load's address if you have a load selected. Additionally, if you select the entire order, it will print the shipping information from the Info tab, or if you choose a different load, it will automatically fill the address with the load's drop address. You can still use the drop down list to choose an alternate, or edit it before printing.
• Invoices use the load's drop address for the ship to address. Invoices no longer use the Info tab shipping address if you are invoicing a load. Invoices now use the load's drop address. This certainly makes it easier, especially when dealing with multiple loads. You now only need to change the drop address (ship to) on the load.

Released 2/18/10

• New Truck Load Detail report. This report is a basic start to a new Pull Sheet/Dig Report. You can select one or more trucks and print the details. It uses the new reporting package which means the allocated inventory can be sorted and totaled in limitless ways and printed as a PDF or exported to XLS spreadsheet. This report will be added to the Truck Window menu and replace the Pull Sheet/Dig Report.
• Lengthened the Pickup Address for loads. The pickup address field now allows for up to 250 characters.

Released 2/17/10

• Use footnote font on order acknowledgment and confirmation for trailing text. The trailing text is often used for the legalese, which in turn is often a smaller font. The two order reports now use the footnote font size. Please check your order acknowledgment and confirmation to confirm the desired font size. Should you need some help making adjusts, give us a call.
• Added optional Show Customer Discount option to order acknowledgment and confirmation reports. You can now optionally show the customer's discount in the header block of these reports. Edit your report format(s) if you want to expose this detail to your customers.
• Added new Sale Extension column to the Order Frame's Load Manager. Use this feature with the new tree table view to see the value of the amount allocated to a load in the load manager view.
• Added an on-hand quantity column to the default Supply Listing report.

Released 2/12/10

• Fix bug printing UPC codes from order items on new label designs. A change in the retail label printing in the 1/27/10 upgrade created a problem with printing order item UPC codes. That has been corrected.

Released 2/09/10

• Added notes (for internal use) to order items. The order item's "note" feature was so popular, there was a request to add an internal note. Keeping with the same naming used for other notes and messages, what was the "note" on order items is now called a message, that is because it prints on the customer's documentation making it visible - it is a message to the customer. Therefore, note has been renamed to message, and another note field was added for internal use. It does not yet print on any reports, but we will be adding them over the next few weeks to the reports that are used internally.
• New message/note status column. On the order items view for the order window, there is a new column '*' that indicates if there is a note, message or both. If the order item has a message or note, it will have an M or N respectively, or it will have an '*' if it has both.
• New supply report. We have added another report for supplies that uses our new reporting package. It can be found at Report Add... | Supply | Supply Report. It is a generic report that uses the new templates to produce a list of supplies which can make either a PDF or XLS. The report is similar to the Supply Quantity report, but offers much more flexibility.
• Added XLS version of the Orders | Demand w/Supply report. There was a request that this report have an XLS option. This is a temporary fix, as the report will ultimately be replaced by the Report add... | Order Item | Supply - Demand report.

Released 2/04/10

• Added retail price to invoice printing. Just like the order acknowledgment and confirmation reports, the invoice will print the retail price on the invoice. You must select the option to include the retail in your report settings, as well as each customer that wants to see the retail on their reports.

Released 2/02/10

• Fixed the printing of shipping seals (trailing pictures) on Lading Report. Previous changes in the settings feature prevented the printing of shipping seals. They should now print consistently. The page break and page footer now also work better.
• Changed "Customer" to "Consigned To" title on the Lading Report. This is actually a more accurate title since the plant material may be conveyed to a destination other than the billed customer (eg. ship to customer). If you still prefer to use the word customer, let us know and we will make it a report option.
• Added Truck # and Trailer # to the Lading Report signature block. Per request.

Released 2/01/10

• Better control over new view features. As we constantly make improvements to the controls that you use to work in PlantX, from time to time will need to deprecate (phase out) older features. To make the change from legacy views to the newer Tree Table Views (TTV), we have added a new Member Settings Tab called Version. By selecting the TTV option over the legacy setting, you will be able to access the new features that allow you to build your own custom views. Eventually, we will move everyone over to the new TTV views, but by making them optional we (or you) can better control the pace of the transition. This also prevents us from having to make so many "Old" and "New" views.
• New custom Tree Table Views. Two new TTV view have been installed, which can be activated in the Member Settings | Version Tab.
  • Order's Load Manager view. This new view gives much greater control over how you want to manage an order's loads. By organizing the load manager view by load, you can now summarize (total) the load factor, which helps to gauge the size of each load.
  • Order's Allocation Tab uses a new TTV for supplies. This view now supports more columns and more ways to sort the supplies, making it easier to determine which supplies to allocate.

Note: Please don't hesitate to contact us for a tutorial on using the new TTV or if you need any help getting the most out of this new power feature.

Released 1/27/10

• Fixed bug printing customer name on retail labels. After splitting the order's customer into billing customer and ship-to customer, the label printing didn't know which to print. The retail labels print the ship-to customer.
• Added two new fields to retail tag design. You can now add Sales Order Number and Order Ship Info to retail labels.
• Invoice format now uses footnote font size. There have been requests to use a smaller font size for the legalese printed on invoices. The invoice now uses the Footnote Font for the trailing text font.

Released 1/07/10

• Split billing and shipping account on orders. As described in the 12/21/09 upgrade, orders now support the option of a separate billing account from the shipping account. This feature is primarily for growers that deal with customers that have a large number of shipping destinations - primarily brokers. In effect, you can now manage an order's billing account separate from the shipping account. If you have broker accounts, e.g. bill sent to the broker but material is shipped to their customer, contact us to discuss how to make best use of this change. For most PlantX members, this change should have no impact on order entry, unless you need to change the account on an order. PlantX now offers you the ability to change the billing or shipping account separately, but conveniently offers to change both.
• Larger load factor. The previous upgrade that extended the load factor to four decimal places consequently required that we also increase the internal size of the total calculations. Ordered quantities greater than 20,000 or large load factors, or a combination of both could exceed the expected number size. All uses of load factor and the calculations have been updated to support VERY large values.
• Fixed the printing of headers on aging reports. Due to font size issues with the legacy reporting package, report headers for the aging periods were not showing on the Aging Report and Aging Detail Report. The font size has been adjusted and they should appear correctly.

Release History