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 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.

Released 12/30/09

• Added new Supply-Demand Report. Lists by catalog item the total quantities for both supply and demand. Specifically, the stock available and on-hand for the supplies and ordered, allocated and shipped for the ordered items (demand). The report can be found under Report Add.. in the Order Items section. This is just the preliminary version of the report. If you need help customizing the report, we can help.
• There were also other changes not yet released for the new load reports.

Released 12/27/09

• Load factor supports four decimal places of precision. Because the calculation of loads involves thousands of square feet, and many factors are based on some portion of a load = 1.0, most load factors are decimal numbers. Until now, the load factors were limited to two decimal places which made it difficult to scale smaller material accurately. PlantX now supports four decimal places.
• Better reporting of report error messages. When creating new report templates, you can often encounter errors in the format. PlantX will now clearly display the error messages associated with the reporting problem. This should help diagnose any formatting problems.

Released 12/22/09

• Minor bug fixes.
  • Corrected confirmation printing issue. Old report compiler required a reset to correctly run reports.
  • Catalog Availability was not saving all settings.
• Upgrades to Consignment Edition.
  • Quotes optionally show and print sale price.
  • Add quick search to quote search.
  • Shopping cart calculates a total sale. The total shows on the website shopping cart, cart submission page and submitted email.

Released 12/21/09

• Order acknowledgment and confirmation reports print order sales rep. Some of the custom formats were printing the sales rep listed on the customer account instead of the specific sales rep specified on the order.
• Fixed street address for new customer report listing. Report did not correctly separate the street name from the address. It was including the customer name. It now pulls only the line above the city, state and zip (which is the technique the US Post Office uses too.)
• Added account number to the new customer report listing.

• Internal Work
  • First step in a larger effort to split the account used on orders. Currently, the system only supports the use one account for sales orders. The account must act as a source of both billing and shipping information. Although the ability to add any number of addresses to an account has made it possible to bill one address and ship to any number of addresses, it does not make it convenient when organizing orders. By splitting the account into separate roles, billing and shipping, PlantX will give better control over the billing and shipping information. This change makes it much easier to handle broker accounts that can have a large number of customers, each with different needs, yet all invoices go to the broker account.
  • Cleaned up older unused programming code and tables to prepare for the next round of changes.

Released 12/15/09

• Patched invoice printing from Invoice Window. Printing invoices was not using the correct custom invoice format after the last upgrade. This has been corrected.
• Redesigned the inventory transfer feature. When you drag-n-drop supplies in the Inventory Window to a catalog item (on the right), PlantX will open the transfer dialog. This dialog has been redesigned to make it quicker and easier to use. Previously, it asked if you would like to create a new supply or transfer to an existing supply, at which point you had to search the list of applicable supplies. Now when you start a transfer, it assumes you are simply moving the supplies from one catalog item to another (typically a size change). If you need to change the location, you can check the Change Location box and select a different location. Likewise, you can change the crop. If you happen to choose a combination of location and crop that already has a supply, the transfer dialog will prompt if you want to create a new supply or add to the existing one. If there are no existing supplies, the transfer will only allow you to create a new. Therefore, rather than trying to guess at whether you might need to create a new supply or use an existing, you can now just indicate where you would like to transfer the supply and PlantX will prompt you with options.

Released 12/14/09

• Overhauled the internal settings system within PlantX! This upgrade completes the transition in the way we store settings for use within PlantX. So your thinking, what does that mean? All of the member settings that describe how PlantX should work for you, your personal settings that control the way PlantX appears, and the report formats all use this underlying storage feature to save these important settings. Since we are adding more reports, user defined views, and custom features the original method of storage was overloaded (we had hit nearly 200 settings).
  • Seamlessly store the settings for new reports.
  • Less programming required for new window features (TTV).
  • MUCH easier for us to add new Member Settings for better control over how PlantX works for you.
• New Customer Report. This is our first customer report using the new reporting engine. It can create both PDF forms or spreadsheets. It includes A/R aging columns which can be used as an export for credit agency reporting.
• New aging option. There are typically two different ways to age the balance of a customer's account; from the date of the invoice (balance age) or the due date (past due age). Previously, PlantX calculated the age of documents from their document date and created date ranges Current, 30-59, 60-89, etc. PlantX now supports the ability to age accounts using the due date of the invoices. In effect, the aged balances are in terms of the amounts past due. You should review which balance method will work best for you, your accountant or credit reporting bureau. You will find the option in Action | Maintain | Member Settings | Statements Tab.
  • Aging ranges reflect your selected method aging method.
  • All statement and aging reports show respective ranges.
  • The statement window and customer ledger views show respective ranges.

Special Note: I cannot emphasize how important it was to upgrade the underlying settings feature in PlantX. As we move forward, adding new features, we want to minimize the impact on how you currently use PlantX, and streamline current activities. To do this, we must make the new features optional, and to make them optional required adding more Member Settings, which was no small feat. Just to add a simple check box option to Member Settings required modifying six different parts of PlantX and the server's database. This amounted to about two hours of programming. With the redesign it requires we modify only a single program file and that is it. It only takes a minute! We can now move forward with great ease. Thank you for your patience.

Released 12/04/09

• Minor bug fixes.
  • Canceled orders no longer show in Inventory Window demand view.
  • Order Window's Apply button was not activating when you changed the order date.
• Added more columns to new Tree Table Views (TTV).
  • Added Credit Limit column to Customer Window's customer list.
  • Added Order Status column to the Inventory Window demand view (order items list).
• Added excel spreadsheet export option to new reporting engine. The last milestone in the upgrading of the overall reporting system, the new reporting library supports the export of excel spreadsheets. This means that the new reports can now export XLS files in addition to the PDF format. The reports affected by this upgrade are:
  • Order Item | Demand Report
  • Allocation | Shipped Report
  • Allocation | Outstanding Shipments Report

Moving forward, all new reports will be built using the new reporting library and over time we will upgrade all of the legacy reports. Short term priorities on upgrading reports are:

• A/R aging report - needed for credit bureau reporting, better performance
• Load Reports - better control over format and presentation, fix outstanding issues with longer text fields
• Lading Report - better control over format

Released 11/19/09

• Upgraded Shipped Report and Outstanding Shipments Report. The two reports were updated to use the new reporting programs. Their design can be completely customized by using a spreadsheet program like Excel or OpenOffice. These two reports are complements of each other, the Shipped Report shows allocations that have shipped, whereas the Outstanding Shipments Report shows allocations that have not yet shipped. They are both found in the Allocations section of the Report Add... option.

Released 11/17/09

• More customer settings. We have added three more customer settings to improve data entry. See the Customer | Settings Tab.
  • Require PO Number. If this setting is set for the customer, PlantX will prompt for the PO number when you add a new order as a reminder to enter purchase order number. If you edit the order, it too will insist that you supply a PO number.
  • Preferred Shipping Method. You can select the preferred shipping method in the Customer Settings Tab so that it is automatically filled on new orders.
  • Tagging Instructions. Use this new customer setting to describe the type of retail tagging the customer requires. This field will be listed on various reports, but none as of yet.
• New All option for filtering orders by their status. Simplifies the selection of Order Status filter options when searching for orders. Look for the new check box on the Orders Window.
• Added customer section to more reports. You can now narrow the Shipped Report and the Outstanding Shipments Report to selected customers. Both are found under Report | Add Report in the Allocation section.
• New Demand Report. Report | Add report... now supports demand reports. Demand reports show a listing of what customers have ordered. This report uses the new reporting package that we developed over the past two months. It is capable of producing an unlimited amount of output formats that you can modify with any spreadsheet program. For those that have expressed an interest in more reports that detail what customer's have ordered, we will help you create a format, or formats, that will work best for you.

Special Note: The new Demand Report is an extremely import achievement in reporting and the next step in PlantX's evolution. This new report sets the precedence for all future reports, giving you much greater control over the appearance of your reporting.

Released 11/15/09

• Server maintenance. From Saturday midnight to Sunday 8am, we made several upgrades to the servers. We have to perform these operations in the late night hours to minimize the impact on our members, and their customers.
  • Replaced the main hard disk drives in the database/image server. The drives had been in use 24x7 for a little over three years, and although they are rated at five years, we don't like to push them too far.
  • Completely overhauled the main PlantX application server. We installed a new drive here too and upgraded the operating system.

Two servers remain to be upgraded, which is scheduled for next Friday/Saturday at midnight. To avoid compounding any issues that may come from this hardware upgrade, the next software release was delayed until 11/16/09 (Monday night).

A tech note: for reliability, the database is simultaneously kept on two drives, which is called a RAID (redundant array of inexpensive disks). A backup is performed at the top of each hour to two more hard drives (also a RAID). Finally, at the bottom of each hour, a complete backup is made off-site to the backup network on yet two more drives. This means every hour your data is recorded on six different hard drives and kept in two different locations. We also make monthly off-line backups too. You never can be too careful!

Released 10/28/09

• Added column to a legacy report. The Harvest Report now shows the catalog item price. This is an older report that has been phased out, but still used by some of the charter members.

Released 10/22/09

• Added PO number to the website order submit. Now when a customer goes to submit an order on-line, they can enter a PO number.

Released 10/15/09

• Patched new load report. The new Load Report w/Supplies continues to undergo testing and revision. The default report now shows On Hand quantities rather than Available quantities.
• General changes to saved settings as we prepare to offer more settings that can be stored per user and/or member.

Released 10/12/09

• Patch: not all settings were being loaded for availability settings. This patch recovers all settings stored for the availability.

Released 10/11/09

• New load report that prints with supplies. This new load report not only prints the allocations that belong in the load (or loads), it will also print all of the potential supplies from which to pull the order. This is for members that leave the pulling of plants to the field managers. The form prints all of the supplies (by location) and the allocated quantity from each, plus blanks where the field staff can write in the amount pulled. The greater aspect of this report is that it is uses an entirely new "reporting engine" that will allow complete customization of the layout, sorting and detail (see next bullet point.)
• Release of our new Reporting Engine! Over the past four years, we have had ever increasing difficulties with the current program libraries. As we have added more features allowing members to customize their reports through various selections, the current reporting software has become more fragile and too complex to meet our needs. Therefore, over the past couple of months we have spent over 300 hours designing and programming our own reporting engine. What this means to our members is that should you need to customize a report in the future, it will require little to no programming on our part. With this new Reporting Engine, every report starts from a template designed in a spreadsheet, which when uploaded to PlantX, it is filled with data. That means you will have complete control over reporting formats, with as little or as much detail as you require, the fields that you want shown and the order you want it shown. Ultimately, all reports will be replaced with a version that uses this new engine.
• New Supply Import feature. For those members that broker supplies from other growers, this new feature will help you import their availabilities. PlantX.net can now import availabilities in the form of XLS type spreadsheets. The availability can be imported into a specified crop and/or location. All import settings and "mappings" between the inbound spreadsheet and your catalog are recorded to make future imports with just a few button clicks. The new feature is Action | Import Supplies. Documentation to follow shortly.

Released 9/13/09

• Order item entry now automatically calculates customer discount with quantity pricing. The new sales price quantity threshold feature now supports customer discounts. First, the order entry determines the sale price with any applicable quantity discount (from ordered or allocated amounts) and then it applies any customer discount. Previously, it only considered the quantity discounts.
• Base price pop-up pricing selection. Whereas before the older order item entry had the ability to select a different price from the available price lists, the recent update removed this little used feature. By popular demand, this upgrade restores this feature by making it a right click pop-up menu option. If you right click on the base price, it will give you a pop-up menu of the various price list for the catalog item.

Released 9/9/09

• New Catalog Availability spreadsheet report. Although PlantX has had a spreadsheet (XLS) export feature for the Catalog Item | Availability, it lost a bit in the translation converting between PDF-type forms and XLS-type spreadsheets. It had the tendency to create extra phantom columns and rows in order to create the most WYSIWYG translation. It also meant we couldn't take advantage of spreadsheet specific features, like calculations, headers, footers, or frozen rows and columns. As we continue to replace the older reports, we are literally rewriting them from scratch using a new spreadsheet exporter. This report exercises many of these new features, while still retaining the vast options used by the PDF report. As we move forward, we will be able to expose even more features that are exclusive to spreadsheets. The resulting spreadsheets are much smaller and created much faster.
• Show Retail Price option on order acknowledgement and confirmation reports. Along with the SKU and UPC, the ack. and confirmation reports will now print the retail value for the customer's validation.
• New member setting for outbound email. This is a port setting for outbound email so that those of you who have cable or Verizon DSL that are blocking the stock port (25) can now route around the problem. (All in the name of spam!)
• Add the load value to the Truck Report. The Truck Report (TRK) now shows the value of each load.

Released 8/25/09

• Invoices print order item SKU and UPC. The invoice will now use the new order item SKU and UPC when printing. Before, the values came from the catalog. This completes the flow of the SKU/UPC values from the catalog and customer settings, to the orders, and finally to the invoices.
• Invoice addresses can be updated on recorded documents. Previously, when a document was set to Recorded it could only be changed by a user with administrative privileges, but now address changes can be made by non-admin users.
• Consignment Edition: Lead source report is now and Excel format.

Released 8/19/09

• Fixed the default value for new order item UPC codes. When you add a new order item, it will fill the SKU and UPC codes from any that you have saved for that customer. If there are no specific customer SKU or UPC, it will pull the values from the catalog. The order window Entry Tab add feature was not pulling the values from the catalog. It should work now.
• The new Report Designer retail tags supports order item UPC barcodes. Previously the new Report Designer was limited to catalog item UPC barcodes, but it now has an option to use the new order item UPC barcodes.

* Improved UPC entry for order items. Order item UPC codes are now checked for validity. It will make sure they are the correct length, contain only numbers, and confirm that the code is valid. (The last digit of a UPC code is the product of the first 11 digits, which we now cross check during data entry.) Removed from upgrade - Windows/Java was not handling the field length/overflow correctly.

Released 8/13/09

• Patched the order item maintenance dialog. When changing an order item, and depending on the percentage rounding, the order item dialog would appear with a sale price that was different from the current sale price when you went to change it. This patch prevents order item changes from making the extra computation, and just show the current sale price.

Released 8/12/09

• Order item entry revised. Some fields and options have been removed and others added. It functions exactly as it did before, only the ability to select a different price list and the tax exempt fields have been removed. The changes are mostly cosmetic in an attempt to simplify the display and provide more feedback in the information to the right of each field. As follows:
  • Available quantity is now to the right of the quantity entry.
  • Base price information shows expected catalog price including quantity threshold used.
  • Base price shows in blue if it differs from the expected catalog price and quantity.
  • Discount field now shows the % symbol.
  • Discount information now computes and shows the amount saved.
  • Sale price information shows expected price and quantity threshold used.
  • Sales price shows in blue if it differs from the expected catalog price and quantity.
  • Note field was added to the bottom.

• New order item note. You can now enter a note for a specific order item. The note prints on the order ack. and confirmation. It will be added to more reports, like load reports in following upgrades.
• Order acknowledgement and confirmation reports now print the order item's SKU and UPC. Previously, the reports only printed the catalog's SKU and/or UPC. To standardize the source for these values, they now come from the order item. Keeping with the previous use of catalog SKU and UPC, the new order item entry will automatically fill the values from the catalog unless the customer has a specific SKU or UPC.
• Quantity threshold pricing will determine the sale price. (optional) Until now, entry of the ordered quantity would change the base price depending on what quantity threshold they met. Now there is a member setting that will update the sale price instead of the base price. This way, when a customer orders enough product that they meet the threshold for quantity discount pricing, the sale price is updated and the base price remains unchanged. This way the customer can see the difference between the base catalog price and the sale price, revealing their savings from ordering more.
• Changing allocated amounts can automatically update the sale price. (optional) In combination with threshold sale pricing, a new member feature can be activated, so that when changes are made to the allocated quantity, the system will automatically adjust the sale price. During allocation, the system will update the sale price to make sure the customer gets the lower price for ordering more. This also corrects a problem where the sale price was not set correctly for substituted items, since the ordered quantity was used to set the price.
• Order loads drop address now provides a drop-down selection. The order load change window now lets you choose from the addresses associated with the account so you don't have to enter them manually.
• Copied orders will now have their order status automatically set to 'New'. Previously when an order was copied, all values were copied, including the ordered status. Therefore, when taking an order from last year that was Archived and copying it for this year, it too was archived, whereas now it will automatically be a New order.
• Fixed order ack. and confirmation to mark non-discountable items. While working on the new order item notes, it was discovered during testing that order items were not being marked as "non-discountable" when the reports printed. Non-discountable order items are ordered items that are declared in the catalog as No Discount which means the item is special and does not qualify for typical customer discounts.
• Fixed retail price for new label designer. The new label print feature was printing the retail price in cents and not dollars and cents.
• Added a Net Volume field to retail tag design and printing. This feature was available on the stock formats, but not yet added to the new Report Designer (Label Designer).

Released 8/03/09

• Statements view pop-up hint has been made optional. The statement window has a special waive-over pop-up feature that gives further statement details. Since not everyone liked that feature, it was made optional. Use the view menu options to activate it again if you need it.
• Catalog Pricing reports upgraded. They were completely rewritten since the export tool did not work well exporting as a spreadsheet. We are now using a completely different, and more direct means of creating spreadsheets, which gives us precise control over both content and format of spreadsheets. It also produces them faster, smaller and much more compatible!
• Beginning to phase out old Supply Availability reports. They are now labeled "old", as they will no longer be supported. They are being replaced by the catalog item availability, which has many more options to control formatting. If you still run either of the two availabilities, call us and we can help you tailor the catalog item availability report to match either of the two it replaces.
• Removed picture smoothing option, since it is really no longer necessary.

Released 7/27/09

• Bug fix for web settings. It only had an impact if you had not yet set a picture for your branding of photos. PlantX.net would not open the web settings until a brand picture was set. Of course, how can you set the picture if you can't open the web settings. All better now.

Released 7/26/09

• Added more features to the Lading Report. The Lading Report is run from the Trucks Window. Letterhead like text can be added to the report header along with the logo. Trailer text, like terms and other legalese can be added to the footer. Graphics, like shipping seals, can be added to the footer too. Any Notes/Directions added to each stop are printed in the header section.
• Better SKU and UPC code defaults. When entering a new order item, the system will automatically fill the SKU and UPC, first from the customer specific settings and second from the catalog. If the current customer has a saved SKU/UPC, then it is used when entering order items. If not, then the general SKU/UPC is pulled from the Catalog Misc. Tab.
• Load Location Report can now print allocations with zero quantity. Previously, only the Load Report had an option to print allocations without quantities. Now both reports have the option. Eventually, these two reports will be the same report, where you can change the sorting options and column choices.
• Allocation Shipped Report now allows for the selection of archived crops. Previously, only current crops could be selected for reporting shipped quantities.

Released 7/10/09

• Added customer SKU and UPC to order entry. As we work to improve the retail tag printing, we have made it so you can now assign customer specified SKU numbers and UPC codes to each order item. Any values you enter can also be saved, which speeds up future order entry and increases accuracy. We will be releasing an upgrade to our new label designer which will include retail tag printing and include these two values.
• Member defined flag colors. Flag colors can come in a wide variety and be time consuming to type in on each order, like 'pink w/purple dots'. We have added a new member setting (under the Shipping Tab) where you can enter a list of all of the flag colors that you use. The flag colors appear in a drop down list on the Order Info Tab. You still have the option of entering a unique color on the order if it is not in the list.
• Consignment Edition: Retrograded consignment order entry to use the prior margin/markup computations.

Released 7/06/09

• Extended the maximum length of purchase order numbers to 25 characters. The previous maximum was 15 characters. It has been extended for both orders and invoices. Not all order and invoice reports have been updated to support the longer numbers. The remaining reports, including custom reports, will follow in subsequent upgrades.
• Website compatibility updates. Microsoft has been releasing newer versions of Internet Explorer, and we have made some changes to correct some issues with the websites.
• Consignment Edition: Removed old, unused features from the consignment order item entry. Removed unused rounding feature, and replaced the markup feature with a margin feature, which calculates a percentage increase, eg. sale price x 1.15 = retail price.

Released 6/29/09

• Correct long standing issue with trademark (™) symbols shown on website. Special symbols, like the trademark (™) and registered (®) symbols have been an issue with PlantX. They are not considered part of the regular computer "alphabet". As such, Java, the database, web browsers and reporting tools all handle them differently. Web browsers are the most annoying, as the ™ symbol must be expanded into special codes like "™". Even something as simple as a single quotation ' must be translated into "’". QuickBooks still does not export these symbols, but we will continue to research the problem. (Even trying to get the word "™" to show up in this message is a chore!)
• Added a few default values to the catalog attributes other grade field. This may be temporary as we work out the use of perhaps an other field in all portions of the attributes; form, root and grade.
• Continued improvements to the material name. The handling of the specie, variety and cultivar portions of material name made it limited in the way botanical names could be sorted and displayed on tags. This is just an internal change to lay the groundwork for the next version.

Released 6/25/09

• Added a new Tag Color property to the material library. It will help track the color of tag to use when printing material tags.
• Extended crop report titles to 20 characters. Since a crop report title can print on two rows for the catalog availability report, it has been extended from a 15 character limit to 20.

Released 6/24/09

• Created member setting that sets the default format to use for printing catalog availabilities. Action | Maintain | Member Settings has a new Report Tab property to indicate which report format should be used by default to print availabilities. This is primarily for websites that can generate catalog availability reports on demand.

Released 6/19/09

• Add a new Supplies Window that uses the new custom tree table views (TTV) for viewing and reporting on supplies. This view, like the Order Items Window and Allocations Window are in beta testing (live trials), as we are still working out the kinks. We figure these views can be used to create the largest number of basic reports and data exports (spreadsheets). They load quite a bit of data, so be patient, it can take some time to get one started. If you would like a demonstration of what the window can do, just give me a call.
• Added load factor and weight as optional columns in the catalog item tree table views. See the Order Items Window or Supplies Window.
• The Available date for the crops is now known as the Sort Date. Some members use the date for a production date and others as a ready date. PlantX.net only really uses the date to sort the crops, so now it is simply called the Sort Date.
• Fixed the selection of crop Report Titles. There were issues with duplicates showing and they were not sorted.

Released 6/18/09

• Upgraded the tree table view (TTV) export of CSV file formats. CSV files can be imported into spreadsheets like Excel. The file that is produced will now export all rows, including those with totals. This means that a spreadsheet can be created as summary, without all of the detail rows.
• Fixed a couple of PDF file format issues caused when exporting PDF files from the new customizable tree table views (TTV). Adobe Reader no longer complains about "illegal operations" when opening the exported PDF.
• Implementing better sorting for order items. This change is making steps to create a consistent sort order across catalog items, order items and inventory items when they appear on reports. This is primarily an interim step to creating better control over all sorting of reports and table views.

Released 6/17/09

• Only users with administrative privileges can remove Material Facts. Since removing a single fact will remove all the data related to all materials, this feature has been elevated to administrator only.
• Orders cannot be deleted without first having the status of Canceled. This was created as an additional precautionary step to deleting orders. You can try to delete the orders, but it will give you a message to remind you to cancel it first.
• Fixed issue with catalog attributes. If a catalog item was change from a container type root, like Plastic Pot #5, to a non-container type like B&B, the pot material and container size where not cleared. Since the values were not actually cleared, they still had an impact on the sort order of the catalog and some reports. Now when you select B&B or other non-container root types, the unused values are reset.

Released 6/12/09

• Added PO Number to the Invoice Window header options. The PO Number comes from the order, can be changed on the invoice if necessary, and is exported to QuickBooks.
• The billing and shipping addresses on the invoice are exported to QuickBooks.
• There is an option to export the PlantX invoice number to QuickBooks. You will find the Export Document Number check box option in the Action | Maintain | Member Setting on the Accounting Tab. Use this feature with care! It can cause duplicate invoice numbers if you create invoices from both PlantX and QuickBooks.
• Various website changes pending were included in this release.

Released 6/10/09 (patch)

• Fixed an issue with the customer window making extra, random prompts to "apply changes" when no changes had been made.
• Corrected issue with displaying the customer retail prices as part of the new UPC and SKU feature.

Released 6/09/09

• New Excel (XLS) spreadsheet exporter. Earlier this year, progress dictated that we update the software package we use to export spreadsheets from PlantX. Since we don't like to fix things that aren't broken, we had been using the same version for two years, which as you know is a lifetime in the world of computers. Unfortunately, the upgrade brought with it some issues with opening and saving the spreadsheets produced by the new version. From what we can tell it was related to the size of the spreadsheet. We tried to upgrade to an even more recent release, but that didn't work either, so now we have switched to a completely different utility to produce XLS spreadsheets. So far it produces smaller spreadsheets and is a bit faster, and most important, it hasn't produced bad spreadsheets. (Please let us know otherwise.)
• The customer retail pricing has been extended to include a customer UPC and SKU. These new values will be included in the tag printing in a following release.
• Messages and warnings for catalog items can now be changed in batch from the Inventory Window Batch Change menu option.
• Batch change is now much faster as it will only update catalog items that actually have a change.
• The reports Supply Value by Crop and Supply Value by Location now have an option to summarize by catalog item. These reports export to XLS spreadsheets and show all the supply detail, either all locations by crop or all crops in each location. This new option will instead skip the details and just show the catalog items by crop, or the catalog items by location.

Internal Changes

• For performance, the member's material list has been completely detached from the general library of PlantX material names. This prevents library entries from loading for every material, effectively cutting the amount of data sent to a connected user by as much as 20%. The impact on performance will relate directly to the number of materials in your Material Library.
• Since the library entries are no longer used by the member's material library, the library list can be pruned of "custom" values, which will reduce the amount of time it takes to download the library suggestions.

Released 5/29/09

• Moved the weight values from being an attribute on the Attributes Tab to the Misc. Tab next to the load factor. These two features go hand-in-hand and having the weight as an attribute never really worked well. The weight values is now strictly the number of pounds and can be better used in overall loading and trucking computations.
• Inventory batch update now includes the ability to change the load factor and the weight.
• Added a Load Factor (L/F) column to the Order Load Manager Tab. There is also a total load factor include in the totals at the bottom. This total covers all allocations. We will be updating the Load Manager to the new full custom Tree Table View (TTV) which will allow you to total the load factors by each load.
• Narrowed the date range for the document list in the customer view. It was set at 180 days (6 months), but it has been reduced to 90 days. This should reduce the amount of documents loaded and speed up customer lookup.

Consignment Edition

• Corrected issue with quote dates changing to current date whenever a change was made. It was using the system date each time a change was made. Also upgraded the quotes to use the new and improved date programming.
• Plants By Use web page sorts the categories in alphabetical order by default.

Released 5/20/09

• Corrected issue with Auto Allocate feature and improved performance. An issue was found where if you ran the Auto Allocate feature on an order in quick succession, it could double some allocations. To avoid this, as well as improve performance, the Auto Allocate function no runs exclusively on the server in a single transaction. The server will ensure that the allocate only happens once and now only one transaction is sent to the server, it should be much faster. Previously, if you had 50 order items, it sent 50 allocation transactions to the server, where now it only sends one.
• Adding a new Finance Charge Grace Period option to the Payment Terms. In the next release, the finance charges will calculate using a average daily balance method, producing daily pro-rated charges and observe the newly added grace period. The Finance Charge Grace Period effectively waits the specified number of days before accumulating any finance charges. The grace period is applied to each invoice separately.

Released 5/12/09

• Added new "To Ship" column to the custom supplies view in the inventory window. The "To Ship" column shows the remaining quantity left to ship. It is the total allocated minus the total shipped.
• Improved the performance when loading the customer list. It was found to be performing extra, unnecessary work.
• Add a new root attribute to the catalog. B&B in Container is new type. It acts much like a container, but implies that the container is a B&B product placed in a container. (No other way to explain that one, really.)

Internal Improvements

• A review of security and permissions revealed a potential issue with user permissions. A user registered as an administrator could alter the name and/or email address of a super user. This option has been disabled.

Released 5/4/09

• Created a unified Ship Date for inventory. To date, the flexibility of PlantX.net allows for the entry of a shipped date at either the order level, the load level, or the truck. But, in order to create more accurate ship reports for state audits or royalties, the ship date is applied directly to each allocation of inventory. Of course, the date can be applied to a batch of allocations, a load, or the entire order.
• New Shipped Inventory report that allows greater control over the report criteria (namely ship date range) and the columns and sort orders used to create the report. The new version of the report runs on the server so it is much quicker and has an XLS export option.

Internal Improvements

• Created a better date range class and handling of dates with regards to timezone and daylight savings time.
• Improved the loading of bulk options by as much as 25%. When loading a large set of order items, allocations, supplies, etc., the server will now load larger blocks of data in a single pass. Tests show that it reduced longer tasks from 20 seconds to 14-15 seconds. This will have a direct impact on loading larger lists, especially for reports.
• Optimized broker server operations by further reducing the number of queries sent to the server.
• Optimized the speed of browsing the inventory. While stepping through the catalog, item by item, the various related information is now loaded simultaneously to avoid numerous round trips to the server. The result; rather than three queries to load a catalog item, it now only takes one.

Released 4/1/09

• Updated the Supply Window by moving the Location from the Cost tab to the Properties tab.
• Fixed the edit for Material Fact defaults
• Expanded the common Notes panels to fill out the available space to make it easier to edit larger note fields.
• Any applicable customer discounts are applied to orders submitted through the website.

Release History