A new update has been delivered to your system.  You can look on the menu, at Help – About to confirm you are on version 9.42.30.

We do receive emails with suggestions for clean ups, and we do those right away.  In this release, there are several new capabilities in this update that may be helpful. 

• When printing a technician’s worksheet, there will now be two prompts.  One asks if you wish to print the client notes, and the second asks if you wish to print the vehicle notes.  If you say Yes, then they will be added to the worksheet.
• The parts pick list showed only the title you assigned, and did searches on that field.  Now we have added the code view to the field, and you can search by title, or code.  Just click on the top of the column displayed that you wish to search, and start typing the first few characters.
• On workorders, for parts cost and charge, plus on labor total, you will see a new mini-calculator button.  If you click on it, a calculator will pop up.  Enter your values you want to use with the buttons.  Then, when you select Use it will enter the calculated total into the field.  Of course, you can Cancel and the original value remains.
• On the workorders, we had a Special field for unique taxes ( ie. FET ), or other fees.  You can now give this field any title you want.  Enter the value you wish to have in the Tools – Setup – Special Label.  Originally this value is blank, so if you wish to continue using Special you will need to enter it. 

Of course we have also included work on our core engine, and numerous other features.

Thanks for your continuing input and support.

Last week we posted an update to Datamanager.  We told you to run it before today so it would update the file structure for this release.  We hope you did.  If you didn’t, exit ASW on all computers and go to the server and run Datamanager.  Be sure to reindex all files when you get inside of Datamanager ( Files, Index, Select All ).

If you previously ran Datamanager, we would suggest you do it again.  One of the fields we created needed to be longer.  You will be asked if you wish to rebuild a data file.  Answer Yes.  Again, be sure to reindex.

Here are some of the new features:

• Attachments to workorders:  You can now attach any document to a workorder.  You will see the new tab on a workorder screen.  You can Add an entry.  Then, when it asks for the file name, give it any title that makes sense to you ( not the actual file name ).  Then a browse window appears and you can find, and highlight, the file you wish to attach ( document, spreadsheet, PDF, etc ).  When you save it, you can now access that file anytime.  Simply highlight it, press the Expand button, and it will open.  Of course, for document and spreadsheet files you need the proper programs installed on the computer.  The displayed list will always be specific to the workorder that is open.
• Auto Follow up system editor:  Under the Clients menu you will see a new option to edit the auto follow up file.  This will give you access to all records for followups not yet complete.  You can correct an email address, or change the completion flag to .t. if you don’t want to send any more reminders.  Of course you can also enter dates if you wish to bypass some notices.
• Cost for Service Writer:  Maybe your service writer is getting some volume in sales, but the profits are way too lean.  Now your Service Writer report includes the cost for the job in addition to the income.
• Odometer flag:  We’ve heard of a lot of false odometer entries.  To help prevent this, we no warn you if the odometer entry you are putting in currently is over 5500 miles since the past visit.  Seriously, a lot of people have problems with these entries.

There are also a lot of internal “fine tuning” modifications.

If you have any questions on the update, please email or call.