News

Apparel21 Version 2011.2 Released 01 Dec 2011

Version 2011.2 has seen a focus on E-commerce, Product Development and POS, with a number of incremental changes in other areas.

1. Rewrite of “Specifications”: following on from the new Grading Rules module in 2011.1, we have rewritten the Specifications module to provide more comprehensive text editing and formatting functionality.  Some of the notable enhancements include spell checking, integrated bullet and list support and better alignment of tabs for creating grid/table structures.  We have also completely changed the underlying technology which has enabled us to rectify some annoying Java bugs from the previous version.
2. SalesNet: Our wholesale e-commerce platform was been enhanced with a number of screen modifications requested from recent User Group sessions.  Most importantly it is now possible to create “Agent / Sales Rep” logins that are linked to multiple customer accounts.  The order entry screen now includes total quantities ordered by colour and style and displays available stock figures based on the warehouse attached to the customer.  Across the site the customers purchase currency is now visible and the “Discount” field is hidden if there is no discount on the order being entered / viewed.
3. Retail API: Our consumer e-commerce platform has been extended to include data sets for tracking the status of orders and for getting a history of all purchases by a customer, including purchases at retail stores.  Your web developers can pick up these data sets to provide your customers with detailed information about what products and sizes they have purchased in the past or whether the order they placed last week has been despatched yet.
4. XML Data Feeds: we have added a generic toolset to allow for custom XML data feeds to be generated by our Technical Consulting team quickly and cost effectively.  Such feeds (which can be used to pull any data out of the system) could be used to provide Excel documents, web pages or other 3^rdparty applications with live data from Apparel21 upon request.
5. POS Person Summary: as part of the person maintenance screen at POS we have added a new section showing a history for the customer.  This has a summary section where sales staff can see the customers total spend over customisable periods (eg. this month, last month, this year, last year).  There is also a details section listing the individual transactions with the ability to drill right down to product level, and even open up the transaction for creating a return.
6. Credit Card Payments in Sales Orders: we have integrated our Sales Order Entry module with SecurePay, the payment gateway that we use within our Mail Order module.  This means, if you have a SecurePay account, you will be able to enter Credit Card payments directly against an order and these payments will be automatically allocated to the invoice when it is generated.  This should dramatically reduce handling time and errors for any of your COD accounts, staff purchases etc.
7. Electronic Import of AP and AR Transaction:we have built functionality to allow for AP and AR transactions to be created using B2B imports, including the allocation of AR transactions, so that it’s now possible to create import formats for remittance advices or other account transactions.
8. Planning:New “Last Year” actual columns have been added for each period so that it is now much easier to compare this year’s forecast and actuals with last year, all on a single row.  These figures are also available in the “Formula Workshop” so that it is possible to build comparative formula columns (eg. % diff TY v LY)