Release Notes for Version 1.19.1937

Patrick Teas

Updated January 13, 2016 02:57

Important Note: This update includes a new file which must be registered in Windows by the application updater. The Windows User applying the client update (the auto-updater that launches when logging into the system after the server has been updated) must be a member of the local machine’s Administrators group in order for this registration to work properly. The best way to ensure that this is the case is to have UAC (User Account Control) enabled in Windows 7 and above. UAC protects your Windows system from malicious software by preventing sensitive files and operations from modification unless the process has first been elevated to run as an Administrative user. With UAC enabled, the Comsense client updater will first prompt for UAC elevation before proceeding, whereby the update can then register the file successfully. Comsense recommends all users enable UAC in Windows to better protect against malicious attacks, and allow software such as ours to operate properly according to the guidelines set by Microsoft.

Advantage heading builder has a new ‘Sort’ option for ‘Opening’ and may be assigned by division in the Tools\System Administration\Heading Builder Maintenance window and/or specific to a project in the Complete window. This new option will allow the heading builder to better organize sorted openings within headings.
The Pricing window, ‘Section Wizard’, opening selection window now provides a column for ‘Building Area’ and ‘Phase’.
A correction has been made in the Project Address where common County names for different states were intermittently showing the wrong County.
Correct ‘Hardware Sets with Pricing’ report for missing ‘Number or Openings’ where only one opening exists for the specific set.
A new import option has been provided for hardware sets (See Tools\Project Import Utility\Import Hardware Sets’.
1. The Import Window example:
2. Use the ‘Manufacturers’ tab to cross-reference imported manufacturer code to Comsense or User maintained manufacturer code.
3. In the ‘Hardware Products’ tab, to enter a revised product or configure a new product, click the eclipse icon to configure appropriate catalog definition from your catalogs.
4. To enter a note, use the eclipse icon on the far right.
5. The last tab, ‘Hardware Set’ is for display only and does not require any entry. When finished mapping hardware, simply click the ‘Import’ button to complete the import.
6. The import file may be either an Excel file or an ASCII Text file. The file layout is as follows:
  1. There must be 3 record types:
    1. Record Type 1 = Set number
    2. Record Type 2 = Hardware quantity, Short Description, Catalog Number, finish and Mfgr Code.
    3. Record Type 3 = Hardware set note.
  2. Any rows without a ‘RecType’ or 1, 2 or 3 will be ignored.
  3. See example below.
Complete window:
1. Opening List Filter & Replace window – The following columns are now open for editing:
  1. Ext
  2. Open Deg
  3. Location
  4. Building Area
  5. Opening Description
  6. Phase
2. Corrected issue when attempting to use foot & inch mark in the filter row of the ‘Opening List Filter & Replace’ window.
Purchase Order window – Miscellaneous Cost sourced amount can now be reduced (but not less than amount currently received) after PO has been released.
Corrected for problem where the saving of a Purchase Order, where product was not entered, was preventing the ‘Products’ tab from showing on subsequent opening of the PO window.
A filter row has been added to warehouse location selection windows.
Quote and Sales Order extended price field maximum size has been increased to 10’s of millions,
The problem when duplicating an opening and changes to hardware set were not being saved has been corrected.
Added ‘Inside Salesperson’ to Pool Management window.
Packing Slip – added new option to print hardware short codes.
Added Inactive Date to Managed Product Management window.
Quote & Sales Order entry:
1. A blank row has been added to allow for a direct entry of a product code rather than having to right click to search for a product. Simply enter the desired product code and press tab. All existing right click options continue to function as normal.
2. When modifying a product on a line item, the revised product remains on the same line item instead of dropping to the bottom of the sales order line items.
Advantage Pricing Window/ Installation Operations tab, global replace function is now active for the ‘Installation Operation’ column.
Corrected intermittent incorrect opening quantity in the Hardware window, Sets tab, drop down list of opening numbers.
Frame Takeoff entry – Corrected for inaccurate drop down list of Anchors when using search.
Catalog Maintenance – A new menu option ‘Prep & Kit Selection’ has been added to (a)replace the old ‘Tools/System Administration/Prep Selection’ and (b) a tab to maintain a new ‘Kit’ window for users to setup and maintain ‘kits’ that are comprised of parts, labor and preps. The first two tabs ‘Door Preps’ and ‘Frame Preps’ have been reformatted to provide a more intuitive and productive means of maintaining user defined ‘Groups’ of preps and parts.
Advantage ‘User Preference’ option for ‘Prep Selection’ has been expanded include ‘Groups’, ’Description’ and ‘kits’. This setting will dictate which window is presented when entering preps/parts/labor in takeoff windows.
The complete window ‘Save Order’ tool bar icon window now has a ‘Phase’ column.
When an estimate is sold, the bid status is set to ‘Awarded’ for bid recipient matching the customer code assigned to the estimate.
Advantage has a new security ‘System Function’ named ‘Save As Default Description’ which will hide the ‘Save As Default’ prompt when change short descriptions in hardware sets.
The ‘tax-on-cost’ feature has been modified extensively as follows;
1. Overview:
  1. A new ‘wizard’ has been developed for the Pricing window to simplify the identification of product and it’s association to tax exempt and tax on cost codes.
  2. There is no need to re-run the wizard in the Advantage pricing window each time a project needs to be re-costed/priced unless a new cost group has been introduced.
  3. To accommodate different tax on cost rules for various states, we have added a field named ‘ Is Labor Tax On Cost’ in the division master.
  4. The calculation of actual tax-on-cost amounts at invoicing time are now based on actual current costs rather than the previous method of using detailed cost.
2. Advantage feature changes:
  1. The Pricing window has a new TaxOnCost/TaxExempt wizard (See new tool bar % icon). This icon is active in all tabs of the pricing window but will typically be utilized in the Pricing tab. This new wizard combines the two tax operations (tax exempt and tax on cost) in one step and also identifies, by product category, the applicable tax codes which in turn automatically assigns any new product being added to the project.
  2. There is also a drop down arrow beside the % sign that will show two other icons. These two icons (one to launch the tax exempt wizard and one to launch the tax on cost wizard), will be used where the project is only partially applicable (IE: customer has contracted distributor to install only specific openings, building areas or phases).
3. Enterprise feature changes:
  1. The Division master has new field ‘Is Labor tax on cost’. Where this field is checked, the cost of ‘component’ labor (IE labor to fabricate the product, such as welding, lite kit cutout, etc.) will be added to the cost of the material when calculating tax on cost.
  2. Quote & Sale Order window – The Tax on Cost icon will set component labor as a cost base, based on the division setting.
  3. Invoicing – Cost base for calculation of tax-on-cost now uses actual current cost and a column has been added to the Products tab for ‘Tax On Cost’ (the button to the right will show tax at opening/line level).
Sales Order & Quote windows :
1. A right click option has been added at the line item level to show ‘Allocated Transactions’ that affect the ‘Available Qty’. (A new ‘Allocated Products’ button has also been added to the Managed Product window – lower right, page 1)
2. The ‘TaxOnCost’ wizard will now only show those tax on cost codes associated with the tax codes at the bottom of the order along with any tax on cost codes entered in the Division master (See Division Master – Tax On Cost codes tab. This is to accommodate Florida, and possibly other states, where the tax jurisdiction is based on the location receiving the pre-installed material.)
AAOS Spec Import now has an option to import hardware only.
We have added a new item to advantage ‘Tools/Project Import Utility’ menu for ‘Import Stanley SpecWriter’.
Cash Drawer window will now only show rows for authorized divisions.
Corrected for the condition in Advantage pricing where an estimated adjusted calculated cost (IE net priced options) for ‘Concession’ discounting was not being reflected properly in the Detailed project when the estimate was sold.
Corrected condition where a manually entered Miscellaneous cost in the Advantage pricing window was getting confused with the ‘Installation Worksheet’ miscellaneous items where the section and cost group were the same.
Product may now be placed or removed from a ‘Hold’ status in the Advantage ‘Complete’ window. The top ‘Master Schedule’ pane ‘Hold’ column check box will show as checked if one or more products are on hold. The ‘Hold’ check box may be checked/unchecked in the door, frame and hardware tabs. This feature provides the same function as the ‘Hold’ check box in the Enterprise ‘Order Scheduling’ window and changes in one window will affect the other. Product on hold cannot be sourced or shipped.
Allow for ‘Deposit’ feature in Payables entry for ‘Miscellaneous’ cost purchases orders.
We have introduced a new feature for duplicating openings. Projects which include typical opening configurations for building with multiple typical floors or other arears are most effectively estimated with an opening number representing the typical opening configuration rather than a specific opening number. However, our best practices direct users to always explode multiple opening quantities into a single quantity representing the specific opening before sourcing product. There are many reasons for this practice, some of the more critical are as follows where associated transactions dictate a specific opening number:
- The need to accommodate partial sourcing and shipment of product and the need to appropriately label that product to its specific opening number.
- Customer returns due to damage or unacceptable quality.
- Change Orders.
- Supplier returns.
- Project management – Specifically tracking product status by opening, building area and/or phases.
To minimize the amount of effort on the part of the Detailer to manually explode these opening, we have added a new Tool Bar icon in the Complete Window labelled ‘Advanced Opening Duplication’. The following are instructions on the use of this new tool. Let’s first define a scenario. We have a project with 2 typical openings, one labelled ‘ENTRY’ and the other labelled ‘CLOSET’, each with a quantity of 10. The building is constructed with 10 floors, each floor will have one ‘ENTRY’ door and one ‘CLOSET’ door on each floor. Floors 1 through 5 are on ‘Phase 1’ and 6 through 10 are on ‘Phase 2’

The same procedure can be repeated for floors 6 to 10 as Phase 2. Once all the openings have been generated and added to list, click OK to add these openings to your project. You will then delete the base openings ‘ENTRY’ and ‘CLOSET.

A variation of this scenario may be as follows. We have a project with 2 typical openings, one labelled ‘ENTRY’ and the other labelled ‘CLOSET’, each with a quantity of 10. The building is 2 floors with 5 ‘CLOSET’ and 5 ‘ENTRY’ openings on each of the 2 floors and I want to define the ‘Building Area’ as the openings are duplicate. I have used a delimiter of ‘-1.’ (where 1 represents the floor#) and have populated ‘Building Area’ with ‘First Floor’. I will repeat this process for the second floor and set the delimiter to ‘-2.’ and populate ‘Building Area’’ with ‘Second Floor (Example below). Note: If openings are added to the list that are not correct, simply highlight the openings and right click to delete and re-generate the correct ones. Packing Slip – Added option to suppress printing of product code.
Pricing Window – Corrections to previous development releases for:
1. Tax exempt line item calculations
2. Incorrect contract amount calculations when using rounding feature.
3. Incorrect negative tax on cost calculations.
4. Corrected problem with viewing images.
5. Do not auto-select first short code when selecting from a list of short codes.
Correction for margin calculations on project customer returns. This error was introduced subsequent to the last public release.
Corrected problem in the ‘Complete’ window with product being removed when using the Heading Builder to remove headings.
Correction for intermittent display problem with images. (This problem was introduced in an earlier development release.)
Pricing Window:
1. Corrected for TaxOnCost not being calculated on change order deducts.
2. Component Cost Tab – For change orders, the ‘Adj Cost Column’ now only affects the ‘Net Cost’ column (for product additions). The ‘Cost Deduct’ column is now open for editing. This will allow users to apply cost to product being added in the change order and also set a different cost for the same product being deducted.
3. Corrected error when utilizing the ‘Gross Margin %’ to establish a ‘Contract Amount’.