Except where noted, all changes first appeared in the May, 2023 version 4.3.024.

General

[Enhanced] When using the print Previewer, the "Save to PDF" option now also uses the default PDF target folder (set using Setup> Report Options) and fills in a default file name for saving. (In version 4.3.020, only the [>PDF] button did this.)

[Enhanced] The print Previewer has been updated, including an  advanced "Printing Preferences" dialog and a "Share" button that allows you to drag a report file directly into a folder or (if compatible) into another program.

[Enhanced] On Help system pages for editing screens that have special display or screen options, a link has been added near the top to new sections that describe all the options for those screens.

[Known Issue] Some high-level characters in the token text used for updating the software may be getting improperly translated (i.e., corrupted) by some email system fonts. The emails for newest updates have moved the token into an a plain text file attachment to minimize this problem. Please let us know if you have any issues since verifying  a solution for this is ongoing.

Fixed: A change to the core code for editing screens left the editing buttons on the smaller Users screen in non-visible locations.

Fixed: Due to an incorrect text length limit, the option to enter a web link to download a software update only worked with the purchasing system.

Fixed: The Design version did not recognize the expandable "1-user" configuration that replaced the limited "single-user" one. Version 4.3.025

FF&E Workseet

[Enhanced] All "Quote/Contract" formats now allow you to enter the exact label to use for the tax total in the summary section. The "Est." ("estimated") prefix is no longer automatically "hard coded" into the quote report formats. This prefix does appear as the default "manual" entry, but you can remove it in the "Report Options" section. Similar to the other options, you can save your preferred text value using custom report name (remember that space is somewhat limited for this text). This enhancement also applies to the existing text option for freight: Prior to printing, you can change the default "Est. Freight" to just "Freight" if desired.

Don't forget: If you have saved previous "Quote/Contract" formats with your desired options, the changes will not appear unless you use the base report to create a new custom one that includes the new options. You can replace the old custom version by saving with the same report name you used before.

Object List

[Fixed] A "Utilities" button was left in the wrong position during a modification to the screen layout.

Specifications List

[New] The "Shipping" section's address option now includes a Reset button that will clear the shipping address information and set the product's shipping destination to unselected.

This allows you to correct situations where a shipping address was selected prematurely or when a vendor change makes the current entries invalid but you have not confirmed a new address. Unselected addresses appear in the main list's "Ship to" column as "???".

[New] If you need to specify an alternate address, the "Shipping" section also includes a New and Edit command to that allows you to create a new vendor for shipping purposes or edit an existing vendor that has an incorrect or incomplete address. When you save your changes, you will be returned to the Specification screen.

[Enhanced] The fields available for queries now include "Shipping destination not selected" to filter for specs where the shipping address has not been specified.

[Fixed] Eliminated occasional instances where the shipping address was labeled a "required field" instead of giving you the option to decide whether to select one at that time. The system will continue to prompt you to make a choice if you save a specification without a shipping selection.

Help System

[Enhanced] Added information about using a dummy "call before shipping" vendor for a shipping destination when an order contains items that require communicating specific instructions to the vendor instead of supplying a shipping address on the order. Note: New FF&EZ systems include a "TBD CBS" vendor that can be adapted with your own "address" text for this purpose.

Project List

[Enhanced] If you mark a project as "closed," you will be prompted to tell the system if you want to close all of its orders, too. Closing orders is a good idea, especially for older FF&EZ system that have accumulated a lot of old project orders, since this will speed up the response time on both the Orders and Expediting screens.

As before, you can also close the orders separately using Process> Close Orders on either the Orders or Expediting screens. You can retrieve an order by de-selecting the "Hide closed orders?" option at the bottom of the Orders screen and de-selecting the order's "Closed" checkbox using Edit.

[Fixed] The purchase order prefix was not being cleared when a project was cloned. If the user did not change or clear it manually, they could accidentally create prefixed order numbers that duplicated those for an existing project.

Specification List

New] If you are a user subject to a VAT on both order costs and sell prices, you can now set an order item's cost to be non-taxable when an otherwise VAT-eligible order or vendor provides a product for which a VAT does not apply. This is controlled by the "No PO VAT" checkbox on this form. The value set here will transfer to the order item created from the specification.

When printing an "Ordering Worksheet" report with the option to display estimated taxes enabled, the total cost of this item will not be included in the VAT calculation. However, the sell price of the item will be included when calculating a VAT paid by your client.

Orders List

[New] Order Financial Summary box. In addition to the blocks that display the Vendor Deposit and the Client Deposit information, you can now switch to a display of the financial status totals for the whole order.

The label on the button below the summary area cycles to the next available summary block each time you use it. The available summaries depend on the billing type.

This is controlled with a new button option at the bottom of the Orders List screen, which toggles among all three blocks (or two, if client deposits aren't applicable to the order).

There are two shortcuts for this feature on this screen: If you use the [Alt-W] hot-key or if you right-click on the title of the currently displayed block, it will cycle to the next available block of data. Note that the "Client Deposits" block will not appear on purchasing management orders since vendors are paid directly and only vendor deposits are tracked.

[New] If you specify an alternate shipping destination for an order, using an associated vendor (either a regular vendor or a warehouse or consolidator), an Edit Source button in the address display block will allow you to edit the shipping address on that vendor. As is normal, your edits will affect all specifications and orders that reference that vendor's shipping address, so this is primarily used to correct wrong or incomplete addresses.

[Enhanced] When cloning an entire order that includes special line items like "extra freight" or a lump sum discount, the system will ask whether you wish to include these items with the original list of items. If you answer "No," only standard product items will be copied from the source order. We recommend that you answer "No" unless unusual circumstance apply.

[Enhanced] If the final shipped quantity isn't the same as the original ordered quantity, the "Final" quantity in the items list is displayed in bold. This is normally due to a vendor shipping and/or invoicing a final quantity that includes an under- or over-shipment variance (not split shipments that still total to the original quantity).

[Enhanced] Order addresses that are missing or less than three lines are flagged in red in case a correction is needed.

[Enhanced] To aid in reviewing status, the "Vendor Invoice Summary by Order #" report can now include orders that have had no vendor invoicing activity. This is a new option under "Report Options" for that report.

[Fixed] Some of the older "Recap" reports did not include the full logic needed to allow for non-taxable items. All reports on the Order List screen now respond to the new "No PO VAT" option described below.

[Fixed] The software crashed if a non-financial user opened the Orders List screen.

[Fixed] In browsing mode, the shipping address box sometimes displayed an erroneous warning for orders that were being shipped to another vendor or a warehouse.

[Fixed] If the user edited an order with a "user-defined" address, it  correctly set the associated address fields to "required" but this was not reset to "not required" once editing was saved. On other orders, this subsequently caused an incorrect message when saved: "A required data entry field or option choice, Shipping or Project Address, has not been completed."

[Fixed] When adding an order manually, the address options were not reset to the default for a new order, causing some options to be disabled until the order was saved.

[Fixed] Visual update bug: Deleting an item from an unissued order could leave the item list empty until the user moved to a different order and then moved back.

[Known Issue] The "Find" tool fails to find orders that use an all numeric prefix if only the prefix is entered in the tool. For instance, if you try to find project orders with the pattern 2001-nnnn by entering only the "2001" prefix, the tool may return "not found," whereas if you enter "2001-" it will work correctly.

This is due to having to deal with purely numeric PO numbers (which are sorted with leading spaces for proper numeric sorting) and prefixed PO IDs that normally use a left-justified alphabetic prefix. In the example, FF&EZ will look for order number 2001, not the order ID beginning with "2001"). Adding the separator character ensures that the "Find" command knows what type of ID is being used. Prefixes that have at least one non-numeric character will not have this issue.

We do not recommend using order number prefixes that include only numbers. If you use a numeric prefix, you should always use some kind of separator. The recommended separators are a dash, a dot or a space.

Processing

[Enhanced] Both the Issue Vendor Balance Requests and the Print Client Balance Invoices functions now set the default status scope to "Issued" instead of "Shipped" to match the preferences of most users.

If you have been using these commands with the old default status of only processing "Shipped" items, be sure to address this in your procedures. Contact technical support if this becomes an issue.

Order Item

[New] If you are a user subject to a VAT (taxing both order costs and sell prices), you can now set an order item's cost to be non-taxable when an otherwise VAT-applicable order or vendor provides a product for which a VAT does not apply. This option only applies to resale projects (billing type 1) that have the VAT option enabled for the tax rate.

This is controlled on the Specification screen first, since that setting transfers to the resulting order item, where it can also be set or cleared. However, on the order, you have an additional option to remove an associated freight VAT from the order's total freight quote amount if 1) freight is taxed in the current project and 2) freight for that item should also not be taxed on the order side:

In the image above, the item is on an order for which a VAT normally applies, but is not subject to the VAT. The checkbox removes its cost from the tax calculation. For calculating the tax on the freight quote, the total quote is reduced by the "Nontaxable Freight" amount shown.

The sell price of the item and its freight (if applicable) will be included in any VAT charged to your client, using the rate shown on the item. Further, this does not affect the actual tax entered from vendor invoices.

[Enhanced] On resale orders (billing type 1), a [=] button appears next to the "Markup" line. It will update the markup percentage with the project's default markup. Its tool tip text will show the project markup that will be applied. Note that for items with very low unit costs, the exact markup percent value may be adjusted slightly to match the price that results from rounding to two decimals.

[Fixed] The "Save" button was disabled if an item had a cost but no sell price. This button now pops various warning messages if some expected value entries are zero, but allows you to save the item.

Expediting

[New] Order Financial Summary block. Instead of seeing only the financials for a single line, you can now switch to a display of the financial status totals for the whole order.

This is controlled with an option at the bottom of the Expediting screen. The [Alt-W] shortcut key will toggle between the item and order summary blocks, as will right-clicking the block's title text.

[Enhanced] You can now enter a split shipment on an item that has been processed on a vendor final invoice, a balance request or your own invoice. All charges on the original and new split will reflect pro rata amounts based on the two quantities.  However, deposit and payment amounts will still be applied on a "first come, first paid" instead of pro rata basis.

Since an issued document is dependent on the stated quantity, you can only enter a lower quantity than the quantity on the document and the only option is to create a split that preserves the total documented quantity. If the difference is a final quantity variance, you must create an adjusting line item instead of a split as you normally might.

You currently still cannot "unsplit" an item that has had further invoicing or balance request activity. If this is an issue, please contact technical support to request this feature.

[Fixed] If a user updated an order item and then clicked or double-clicked on the item list without using either Save or its shortcut [Ctrl-Enter], an incorrect quantity could be entered on the item that was clicked instead of the one being edited.

As of version 4.3.023, a plug-in utility is included that will allow you to identify order items that may have this issue. To check, access the Utilities command on the main FF&EZ screen and use Run a Special Form to run the "CheckItemQty" utility. If you find any issues, please contact technical support to have this fixed.

[Known Issue] See this entry about the "Find" tool under "Orders List" above.

Invoices List

[Enhanced] Added a "Total Deposit" value below the list of invoice items. In the main list, changed the "Paid" column to show "Balance" for each invoice (that is, a zero in this column means the invoice is paid in full, unless it was voided).

[Enhanced] The "Invoice List" reports have been redesigned to show the "Deposit Applied" and the "Net Balance" instead of "Total Paid." Please contact technical support if this change causes an issue.