Thu's eoStar Notes

Super-screen to the rescue

2009-06-19T12:50:00.000-07:00

One of the MAJOR differences between eoStar 2009 and prior versions is the inability for a SQL savvy user to directly update the transactions tables (orders,purchases, and transfers) via SQL. Of course, nothing is impossible and if you were a SQL expert, I'm sure you can find a way to get around this restriction. Although I would highly recommend that you refrain from doing so, since we had very good reasons for this restriction. One of the reason being a performance boost to the posting logic. I know to some of you this may seem like you just lost your freedom.

Never fear, Superscreen to the rescue! The Superscreen allows you the flexibility to make some of the changes that you were able previously address with a SQL script. As always, you can find the "How-To instructions" on our wiki: http://wiki-eostar.com/index.php?title=SuperScreen

eoStar 2009 LiveMeetings

2009-06-19T12:40:00.000-07:00

We officially released eoStar 2009 on June 1st!
Please visit our wiki to see all the changes to eoStar 2009. (http://wiki-eostar.com/index.php?title=Changes_to_eoStar_2009) and give us a call if you would like to schedule an upgrade.

I encourage you to attend our free LiveMeeting trainings even if you upgraded and currently using the functionality that we will be covering.

The audio conference number is 866-476-8702

The training schedule is as follows:

June 23 (1:30 – 2:00 EST) – Forecasting & MBO
Live Meeting URL: https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/eostar/join?id=Z4N8DR&role=attend&pw=X%24wR32S%21s
Meeting ID: Z4N8DR
Entry Code: X$wR32S!s

June 24 (1:30 – 2:00 EST) – Tap Survey & Daily Delivery Stop Analyzer
Live Meeting URL: https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/eostar/join?id=95JDH7&role=attend&pw=g%5Cp%5Cz%3ASJ7
Meeting ID: 95JDH7
Entry Code: g\p\z:SJ7

June 25 (1:30 – 2:00 EST) – Payment Terms & Warehouse Handheld
Live Meeting URL: https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/eostar/join?id=8BCZWG&role=attend&pw=jS4s%23%24x%22s
Meeting ID: 8BCZWG
Entry Code: jS4s#$x"s

eoStar 2009 is coming...

2009-02-08T14:25:00.000-08:00

When I first started this blog, I was planning to document our changes each week. This was an ambitious plan and it seems that it would be better if I just shoot for once a month. Of course, I will still try to document any big changes that warrant their own article separately.
As planned, eoStar 2009 has been release to our beta testers, Kent Beverage in Grand Rapids Michigan. Kent Beverage is a local Coors Distributor that carries many fine wines as well as energy drinks. So far things are running smoothly. We’ve ran into a couple of issues with the web service and the dot matrix plug-in but we were able to resolve them in a timely manner. Our official release date is March 30th, 2009.

The past few months have been busy months for our developers and there are a lot of new changes that I want to cover, in addition to the new functionalities and GUI changes, I should also mention that the entire communication structure between the web service and the handheld has been re-written. We also worked on the way we save and read the data files. In the past we’ve relied on the OS to move the data correctly which causes issues at times. I will cover the web service changes later on.

Laid-in-cost manager:
We have two types of cost in eoStar, the purchase cost which is the cost that is associated with a purchase order and the cost of goods sold which is the cost that will be sent over to the general ledger. This module affects the cost on a purchase order. Similar to the front line price manager you can enter an effective date for a cost type by supplier. For how to instructions read the following wiki article: http://www.wiki-eostar.com/index.php?title=Laid-In-Cost_Manager

Apply Hold Code:
The apply hold code feature allows the user to mass assign a no sell hold code to a group of customers based on pre-define rules. This is handy for customers that have violated their terms.
For how to instructions read the following wiki article: http://www.wiki-eostar.com/index.php?title=Apply_Hold_Codes

Order Type for driver charge invoices:
DRS driver charge orders can now be tagged with an order type for reporting purposes. This can be done from the database configuration screen.

Non-returnable items :
You can now define which items can be entered as negative quantities on an order by a user on the handheld. This can be done by defining a non returnable item set and assigning a password with the items. Read the following article for how to instructions: http://www.wiki-eostar.com/index.php?title=Overview:_Returnable_and_Non-Returnable_Items

Delivery handheld Check out sheet:
This functionality is only available on eoMobileCF handhelds version 9.1.7.23 and higher. This is essentially a blind count that allows the driver to confirm his inventory with the warehouse supervisor prior to leaving for the day. Read the following wiki article for how to instructions: http://www.wiki-eostar.com/index.php?title=Delivery_Handheld_-_Check_Out

GUI Changes
Along with new functionality they’ve been many GUI changes to the interface. The biggest change has been moving all the configuration screens that have been “sprinkle” in various parts of the application into one menu option. The File>Database Administration>eoStar>Setup menu has been removed. This means that users will notice options “missing” because of this change.

Additional GUI changes:
1. DRS – the transfer now have the time stamp displayed along with the expected date
2. Inventory Reconcile>Transfer screen now display the expected transfer date
3. SRS – You can now select multiple suppliers for exports
4. Auto Bump – replaced the customer entry screen with the customer selector
5. Fintech- There is a new export format since we now support X12 format under the view export screen.
6. Fintech – The hyperlink to change the invoice has been removed since it was redundant to have both the order hyper link and a separate menu to change the PO number.

As always make sure to visit our wiki site for the complete list of changes and enhancement.

More Known Bugs in version 8.10.30

2009-01-13T20:42:00.000-08:00

I want to thank ShawdowInc for inspiring this article. By now, if you haven't upgraded to eoStar 2008, I would recommend that you wait for eoStar 2009 since we will be releasing in it soon. I hope by the end of January. It has some really cool features that I will cover in another article.

In the past couple of weeks we ran into more issues with version 8.10.30. They have all been addressed in the 2009 version. The issues are:

1. Upgrade will fail if you are trying to upgrade from a 2007 with a "versions" column error (hence my recommendation that you wait to upgrade to 2009.

2. When during a return on a pre-sale order for an item that was sold at a discount and the promo has since expired, the program didn't stamp the promo nid on the line item, which will cause the total invoice to be incorrect even though the discount amount will display on the line item. As a work around you can schedule a script to run that will sent the correct bit in the orderlines.

3. The FIFO logic would not consider the inventory available for usage until the next day when a negative write off was used to increase inventory. This caused a discrepancy between FIFO and the online inventory system which resulted in a zero cost for the remaining cases for the day the write off was created.

Permission on Excise Tax

2009-01-08T08:24:00.000-08:00

I’ve been meaning to document this issue for some time but forgot about it until last week:
There is a known issue that occurred ever since we moved the excise tax plug-in into the core program. The permission bit that governs this option is the one under the Access panel and not the plug-in panel:

Inventory Bug in DRS version 8.10.30

2009-01-08T07:54:00.000-08:00

DRS inventory issue:
There is a known issue with DRS and negative inventory batches in earlier builds of version 8.10.30. The issue would arise when reconciling invoices that were not originally assigned to the driver. The settlement summary report will show that the truck was reconciled correctly but the order would have still remained in the old inventory batch which would create a discrepancy. We have corrected this issue in the 12/10/08 build of version 8.10.30.3. If you are currently using version 8.10.30 please call support to get the correct hot fix.

Payment Terms

2008-11-30T10:09:00.001-08:00

In order for a company to be successful in today’s economy it must be diversified. This statement has been true for many companies around Michigan, especially those that are in the automotive sector. This trend holds true to all retail oriented businesses and the Beer industry hasn’t been immune. Along with recent consolidation we’ve also seen distributors adding new lines of products along with expanding into different type of business lines such as Craft, liquor, etc.

In order to address these changing needs eoStar is constantly evolving. We’ve added the ability to enter multiple payment terms to a single account. Previously the user was restricted to only 2 payment terms (alcoholic, and non-alcoholic). This is no longer the case you can now enter unlimited number of payment terms which correspond to a set of products. If a product is included in more than one product set, eoStar will use the payment term that is associated with the first payment term listed from top to bottom. eoStar will automatically partition an order if the customer is flagged to partition based on payment terms. The partition logic is currently only on the mobile device.

In addition to the above changes we’ve also added a new field in the payment terms table. It is called “Processing Method”. The processing method defines how eoStar should process the order. (I.e. via the Fintech interface, Miller UFF EDI, manually, or X12 EDI) This field was previously scattered in various panels of the application such as the EDI Partner> EDI setting screen. We also added a Fintech pre-fix for distributors that work with Chains that require a prefix on each invoice number to seperate product categories. In order to do so you must create a payment term for each product category and assign the proper Fintech prefix to each payment term.

We also removed the IsCharge and IsEFT columns from the customer table since the columns already exist in the payment terms table. This implies that any reports that currently use these columns will fail. Please make sure to test such report prior to installing the version in a live environment.

For “how to instructions” please go to the following wiki entry:
http://www.wiki-eostar.com/index.php?title=Payment_Terms

SRS error: Total # of records does not agree

2008-11-06T07:41:00.000-08:00

“When distributors do not sell a supplier’s products on a certain day, VIP does not receive a file, which triggers a call to the distributor to inquire as to whether they had sales on that day. This can be avoided by creating a Zero Sales record for every day a file is created…A zero sales record can be either added to each day’s sales file segment for each supplier or only created for days when no sales are recorded.“

We’ve made modifications to the sales file to include the zero record in version 8.10.29 and higher. Unfortunately, we did not include the zero record entry in our calculation for the total number of records field which will result in the “Total # of records does not agree” error message from SRS. This has been addressed in version 8.11.5.

Ion depletion displying incorrect numbers

2008-11-04T08:36:00.000-08:00

We were able to duplicate an issue that caused the ION depletion report to display incorrect inventory numbers. I would like to thank our users down south for helping us duplicate this bug. This issue manifested in a multiple warehouses database where the user would select additional warehouses beside the default warehouse (warehouse 1), and then move off the screen by going to the field selector or the date selector. The program would then only display the information for the newly selected warehouses and omitting the default selection which is the main warehouse; this resulted in incorrect inventory numbers. Our developers have addressed the issue in version 8.11.3 but as a workaround make sure you select the warehouse as a last step before running the report. (i.e. select the date range, field to display, etc., and then check the warehouses).

Bug fixes this week (11/3/08)

2008-11-03T07:20:00.000-08:00

Development has been busy this week; we’ve fixed quite a few bugs or “features” depending on how you look at things. I just talked to a user and she was upset we fixed some of the printing bugs since she like the fact that the program would hang on to the printer.

1. Program no longer KABOOMS when viewing a purchase with no line items.

2. Corrected an issue where the printer setting where sticking to the crystal report resulting in all jobs going to the same printer.

3. Optimized the auto bump rules screens.

4. Optimized the performance to load and re-price orders within Recon.

5. Fixed a bug where the order would not highlight on the left deliveries grid upon clicking on a ticket number from the payment grid in reconciliation.

6. Fixed a bug in the reconciliation summary report where the report would print extra line items.

7. Corrected an issue in the price look up logic for returns in reconciliation.

And the biggest bug:
Fix the issue where the program would freeze when the user tried to fully synch but nothing happens. This bug was actually a .NetFrameWorks 3.5 issue, which is why it started once you upgraded to eoMobileCF 2008.

Here is the blog of relevance (scroll down to the threadpool stuff)
http://www.michaelckennedy.net/blog/default,date,2008-03-24.aspx

What's new this week ( 11/3/08)

2008-11-03T07:09:00.000-08:00

You asked for it and we delivered:

1. SRS automation you can just set it and forget it. The program will automatically export your SRS data when you do a business day close out.

2. Added a new permission bit to prevent users from changing finalized purchases orders. ( tickets that have been reconciled via the supplier bill and freight bill queues)

Got enhancements? We do!

2008-10-27T15:56:00.000-07:00

We have 355 enhancement requests outstanding in our database. I would like this post to be a form where you the users can vote on enhancements which will help us prioritize our development stack. Please let me know one enhancement that you would like to see in the next release of eoStar.

What’s new this week? (10/20/08)

2008-10-27T15:51:00.000-07:00

ION
We’ve added the long awaited “view” permission to ION. Now you can let users only view the reports you want them to view without making changes to them.

Backend
The quantity ordered field in the order entry screen is now editable. Previously it was read-only after the order has been moved from the pick ticket queue.

Dot Matrix Plug-in
The printer set up screen is now has its own menu option.

Bug fixes this week (10/20/08)

2008-10-27T15:38:00.000-07:00

We are always working to improved eostar, below is a list of bug fixes that we’ve addressed this week. Please call support if you would like the latest upgrade to address any of these issues.

ION
The ION report footer always printed the letter “F”; it is now replaced by the print time.

Daily Route Settlement
We corrected an issue where the program would save unnecessary data to the registry; this might be the cause of significant slowness reported by users during reconciliation.

We fixed a display bug in the truck reconciliation screen where the program would not factor newly added load-ins toward the truck over and short figure. The workaround was to un-check and then re-check the transfers.

We fixed a constraint violation during reconciliation where the program would complain when reconciling off truck orders.

We corrected an issue where the program would crash when the user tried to create a load-in for a voided order.

Delivery handheld
We now allow the user to enter a payment amount greater than the invoice amount on the delivery handheld. This change was put in to duplicate functionality in eoStar 2007.

We addressed the issue where the pre-order transfer would post the original transfer amount even though the driver zeroed the quantity.

A couple of weeks ago we addressed an issue on the delivery handheld where voided deliveries did not post as such. The fix was put into the web service temporary until we can address the handheld. We had since corrected the issue on the handheld. This week we put the fix for voided deliveries back into the web service to account for user that have not upgraded their handhelds.

Backend
We corrected an issue where the program would crush when trying to view a purchase order with no line items.

Fixes this week

2008-10-21T16:07:00.000-07:00

The program will prompt for a printer when printing within an order instead of sending the job directly to the default printer.
The program will now assign cost to deliveries coming from the handheld.
The customer promotions table will now update properly when using customer sets.

What's new this week?

2008-10-21T15:53:00.000-07:00

On the delivery hand held, we now have the ability to take multiple payments for a single delivery.

We added a hyper link to the orders from within the commit step of orders to load

Printing issues with eoStar 2008

2008-10-14T12:06:00.000-07:00

One of the major struggles we've encountered in our efforts to move forward with the latest technology ( Windows Vista, Server 2008) is printing. The real issue was printing to a dot matrix printer using the windows’ generic text driver. Business Objects (Crystal Reports) didn't have support for printing in this type of a scenario. This is the reason why Crystal 9 is now gone but Crystal 2008 still exists. Because of this issue the dot matrix plug-in was born. If your company prints invoices or load sheets using a generic text printer you will need to install this plug-in in order for printing to work when upgrading to eoStar 2008. Please check out our wiki entry on the use of the dot matrix plug-in. (http://www.wiki-eostar.com/index.php?title=Dot_Matrix_Plugin)