What's New

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From PlantX.net

This page shows recent features and enhancements to PlantX.net. Refer to this page after upgrades to learn about new features. For historical release information, visit Release History

Release 4/19/16

• No merging partner loads. When partner loads were added to a truck, PlantX automatically detected and merged stops with like names. Since it didn't always create the desired effect and lead to confusion, the auto-merge has been disabled. Now if you add a partner load, it is left to you to decide which stops are combined (merged).

• Added feature to search website by catalog type. Some websites have the ability to search by categories, but not all members use categories, some use catalog item types. If you only use catalog item types to organize your inventory, you can now add a search page to your website using types. You can maintain your catalog types by going to Action | Maintain | Catalog Item Types. Also visit Categories vs Catalog Item Types to learn more about organizing your materials and inventory.

• Put Quick Pics and News Items anywhere on your website. Like the Featured Plant option, this resource will free you from having to show your Quick Pics or News Items only on the designated pages. You can even have them show on your cart page!

Release 4/15/16

• Featured Material We have added the ability to highlight your featured material on your website! To add this feature to your website, toggle the "Feature on Website" button in the Settings tab of the Materials screen then give us a call!
• Web User Bug Fix Previously, the ability to create an account from a web user would not transfer all information if the Billing and Shipping addresses were the same. This is a timing issue in our system, we were able to synchronize the timing so now, whether they Billing and Shipping addresses are the same or different it will always transfer all of the information.
• Thumbnail Bug Fix Before, the thumbnail wouldn't fit correctly if the image had been rotated. Now, this has been fixed so no matter how you rotate, it will always fit.
• Improved Label Selection When choosing a custom layout the "Other" radio button wouldn't be properly highlighted indicating that a custom report was chosen. Now, when choosing a custom layout from the label selection window the "Other" radio button will highlight. This correctly indicates which layout was chosen.

Release 3/23/16

• Dug vs Not Dug We have added another criteria on our shipping reports, the choice to filter by Dug material or Not Dug material. Before, you could only select dug material with a date range. Now you can select the opposite and make reports where the material isn't dug.
• Copyright Year on Web While you were going about your day, we extended the copyright notices on your website to show 2016! Keeping the copyright date 'fresh' confirms for customers that you take your website seriously.
• Copy Catalog Items We have re-enabled the ability to copy catalog items with attributes. Now when making a copy the word "Copy" will show at the end to differentiate between the original and the duplicate. As soon as you change the attributes, the "Copy" disappears! Previously, copying without attributes was very similar to adding a new Catalog Item.

Release 3/18/16

• Suggestion Box We care about your two cents, that's why we added a new Suggestion box under the Help menu. Drop us a line!
• Easier Account Setup' When creating an account from a Web User, the phone number and email will port over with your contact! Shazam!

Release 3/02/16

• Negative On-Hand Numbers When running a Supply Listing report, you will now have the option to select "On-hand Quantity < 0", perfect for catching any inventory management problems.
• Label Design Sections Now when you are printing a material or catalog item, label designs are sectioned into the different types: Catalog item, Material, Label and Order item.
• Sales Rep Edition We have updated our Sales Rep edition of PlantX so it looks similar to the Grower edition. Now when looking at an order screen you can find information like Load Factor and Truck Footage!
• New Chart of Accounts We have added a Debit and Credit Memo Chart of Accounts to aid in Credit/Debit Memo entry.
• Better Email Selection Contacts that prefer to have statements emailed to them will now populate automatically when choosing to email straight from PlantX.
• Bug Fix: We fixed the billing account drop-down inside of the Contact tab of an Order! Previously it was not showing anything and it will now show the correct addresses for that account.

Release 2/19/16

• Hide Global Reports. The ability to hide Global Reports is now available! In the Add Reports section just uncheck Edit | Show Stock Reports and only your Custom Reports remain!
• Multi-Select. When exporting to Quickbooks you now have the ability to select multiple accounts at once. You can hold Shift and select which groups of accounts you would like to to export.
• More Column Choices There's more choices for columns now in the Order Items tab. When moving a material to another item if you click the box in the corner of the table and choose "Select Columns..." you will find the Requested Ship date, Shipping account, Billing account, Ship state, and Bill state all as new column choices!
• Debit Memo Number Before when creating a Debit Memo the DM number and notes wouldn't port over like they would for the credit memo, now that's a thing of the past! Both Credit Memos and Debit Memos, when highlighting an invoice, will generate the invoice number and all the notes on your selected order.
• Web User Address Carryover No more editing Customer's accounts when adding a Web User, now if you add a Web User under Action | Web | Web Users, the account they are paired with will automatically fill in the Shipping and Billing address unless they are the same.

Release 2/16/16

• Ability to batch change Sales Reps. Under your Customer tab you will now have the ability to batch change your sales reps rather than edit them customer by customer. Just click the Edit menu item, then Batch Change. You will find a new Sales Rep tab on the right side of the window. Click the check box of the customer you would like to change and under the new Sales Rep tab, use the drop down menu to select the sales rep you would like to substitute.

Release 1/05/16

• Add new Dug Date to allocations. Allocations currently have a Shipped Date field which tracks when the allocated supply has been shipped. Several members have asked if PlantX could also track when allocations have been dug. This upgrade adds a Dug Date to the allocations. So now you can post a load as dug, just like you post a load shipped. The new field is best viewed in the Order Window | Load Manager Tab. If you have a custom view, you will need to add the column manually and save your view settings. The new Dug Date can be used as selection criteria in the Shipping Reports.
• Bug Fix: Order window beeping on updates. Some of the new contact fields were too short to show all of the information from the customer's contact information, causing the field to be cut short. When it cut the field short, it signaled with a beep, as though you were trying to type too much in a short field. The fields are now the same size, which will prevent any contact fields from being truncated and no more beeps.

Release 12/15/15

Thanks for your patience during the outage created by the upgrade.

• Internet speed upgrade. The connection speed is now 75 Megabits per second! Three times faster than we had before. This now makes our Internet connection faster than most office networks. This means that whatever connection you have to the Internet, ours is guaranteed to be faster.

This is a unique time in history, where the internet connection is faster than the equipment in your office. This means that whatever connection speed you have to PlantX, we can support it. Members have been upgrading to faster and faster connections, be it 5 Mbps on their LTE phones, or 35 Mbps on basic fiber, and some with 50 Mbps on some cable connections. Most modern offices can only move data around their networks at 50 Mbps. This means that the limiting factor in accessing your data on PlantX is your internet connection speed.

Release 10/29/15

• Changed the order of the tabs on the Order Window. So as to better see the billing and shipping customer on the order, the Contacts Tab is the first tab to appear when an order is opened.
• Added a Patent Expires date to material. Use the new Patent Expires date field on the Materials | Settings Tab to record the date of expiry for the patent. This is useful for tracking when patents expire on various plant materials.
• Added more fields to the label designer. Added the material grouping values (Group1, Group3, etc.) and the abbreviated material name to the label designer.
• Web: forms and registration edits. When web users enter forms on your website, the values are checked to ensure legitimate information is entered.

Release 10/21/15

• Bug Fix: PlantX closing properly. The synchronization of reports uses a little popup window. Although is closed when the sync was complete, it didn't completely go away, and with it still lurking, PlantX did not close completely when you exited. This patch allows PlantX to close cleanly.

Release 10/15/15

• Added new order related fields for reports. Added three surcharge fields and one container deposit field.
  • [order.surchargedesc] Description of the order surcharge
  • [order.surchargeamount] Fixed amount adjustment
  • [order.surchargerate] Relative (percentage) adjustment
  • [orderitem.contdep] The container deposit for an order item

Release 10/07/15

• New Order and Invoice contact fields. The Order Window | Info Tab has been split into a Contact Tab. This was done to make room for more contact information. Previously, the order forms would only show contact details (person name, phone, fax) from the billing account's main contact. Now you can choose a billing contact and a shipping contact for that order. You can also modify the contact values for that order. NOTE: The new fields will not show up on your order forms until the forms are updated. For now, they will continue to show the Main contact. We will be converting the forms over the next two weeks.
• Websites: improve data management for larger pages. This change improves the way web pages are managed when the website is under heavy load due to lots of traffic. There have been numerous requests to keep users connected longer. The side effect of keeping them connected longer means more resources, mainly server memory, locked up and in use. Under heavy traffic, we've had a few instance of running out of memory. This upgrade includes changes to reduce the amount of memory tied up for extended periods.

Release 09/10/15

• Added optional Auto-Allocate status column to the supplies view on the Inventory Window. You can now customize the supplies table view in the Inventory Window by adding the Auto-Allocate column.
• Member setting to control duplicate UPC codes. A number of members have requested the ability to assign the same UPC product code to multiple cataloged items. The intent of the UPC code system was that each product (catalog item) should have its own unique code, but in reality (running out of numbers, or simply convenience), some have requested the ability to assign the same number to more than one catalog item. We caution against it, but by changing the Allow duplicate UPC codes setting in the member settings, you can allow duplicates.
• QuickBooks export option for sales tax as line items. Use Action | Maintain | Member Settings | Accouting Tab to change the method of exporting sales tax to QB. This is a feature for using the older method of exporting sales taxes as an invoice line item, rather than the built in sales tax feature.

Release 08/19/15

• New batch price edit feature. From the inventory window, use the menu option Inventory | Batch Price Edit... to open the new feature. It presents you with a list of all catalog items and their current prices in columns. By clicking on the cells, you can enter new values. There are numerous features to change prices quickly. When you are done making the modifications, use the apply button to make the changes permanent. There are numerous right-mouse popup menu options to expedite changes:
  • Increase or decrease 1%, 2%, 5%, etc.
  • Enter custom increases or decreases
  • Round prices to tidy amounts like .00, .99, .95, .25, etc.
  • Reset the price to the current amount
  • Right-click a column header and you can apply a change to the entire pricing column

Any changed amounts are highlighted in either green for increases, or red for decreases. The percentage calculations always compute using the original (current) price. This is so you can try different percentages without having to reset each time.

• Bug Fix: web users can download all report types. There was an issue publishing XLS reports marked show on web, where they would download as PDFs. This issue has been corrected, and the correct specification is given to their browser during the download.

Release 07/31/15

• Copy price list. You can now copy the pricing from one price list to another. From the Inventory Window select the menu option Inventory | Copy Price List. You might be offering the Wholesale price to all customers, but want to change a few prices for select premium customers. This feature would allow you to copy the Wholesale price list to another list and then you can adjust the few outliers.
• Option to use current catalog prices when copying an order. When you copy an order, and it copies the ordered items including their price. The upgrade adds an option to copy the order, but rather than use the price for the copied order, it will use the latest price listed in the catalog. This is useful when you want to copy the order from last year, yet apply all of your new prices for this year.
• Added Requested Ship date range filter to the customer's order listings. Currently, you can filter the list of orders shown for a customer by the ordered date. This upgrade adds the ability to also filter by the Requested Ship Date on the order.

Release 07/29/15

• Bug Fix: Catalog item's type is included when copying. The catalog item's type was not one of the elements copied when a catalog item was copied. The type is now preserved when a catalog item is copied.
• Web: made performance and caching related changes to websites.

Release 07/10/15

• New member setting for email templates. You can edit the member settings, on the Email Tab, and create a template used for new emails sent from PlantX. Like the reporting templates, several fields are available to build a uniform template for all users.
• New member setting to only add warning if it applies. As a member option, on the Orders Tab, you can set whether or not warning messages are copied to new order items. With this upgrade, you can now determine if those warning messages are only copied if the respective shipping state is included in the warning message.
• All trucks are selected by default on truck and lading reports. Previously, you had to pick and choose individual trucks, but now they are all selected by default.
• Locations can now be hidden. Like other objects in PlantX, the locations can now be hidden. This is the first of several upgrades, that provides the option to hide locations that are no longer in use. We will be adding more filters that will control when hidden locations should no longer appear.
• Label designs are now listed in sane order. The label designs now appear in an alphabetic order, rather than the order in which they were created.

Release 06/26/15

• Fix invoice balance on manually modified invoices. If an invoice is modified manually, and the last transaction removed (leaving the invoice blank), the total was not being updated correctly. This was a very rare condition, because invoices are rarely modified by manually removing every line item.
• Added Sales Rep filters to the document list report. You can now filter accounting documents by their respective sales rep. Use this report selection to narrow a list of invoices down to their assigned sales rep.
• Consign Edition: Changed field requirements for web checkout process. When a customer submits their cart, it now requires at least one phone number.
• Bug Fix: Catalog page not always showing all attributes. There were certain conditions where the website wasn't loading all of the attributes for the catalog entries.

Release 06/23/15

• Fix tax exempt on order items. Not all catalog items marked as tax exempt were excluded from the sales tax totals. These settings are now carried through to the order item correctly. They can be altered on the order item as "T/E".
• Added more diagnostics for monitoring websites. For internal monitoring of page delivery performance, we are always looking to expedite page delivery.

Release 06/19/15

• Performance tune website responses. The changes involve fine tuning the way in which pages are served to web browsers.
• Remove N/A field property from reporting. When a field contains an empty field value, previously the reporting would list "N/A". This had the effect of cluttering a report with unnecessary values. It now just leaves the field blank.

Release 06/08/15

• Another web server! We've built another stand alone web server, called PXWEB3. Why spend $2,000 on another web server? Glad you asked! We built one earlier this year, called PXWEB2, and this is a twin that will work in tandem.
  • Reduce the load on our main server. Our first web server, PXWEB1, lives on our "big iron" (a catchy name nerds like to call their expensive high end servers). Websites like to use a lot of memory in order to serve up web visitors quickly (and more importantly search engines). As such, the big iron was getting crowded. The plan this year was to build two more separate web servers, retire PXWEB1, and free up space on the main servers.
  • Improve performance. Freeing up space on the big iron will give the other services more needed resources. This means the PlantX application, database, mail, etc. all run faster.
  • Load balancing. Half the websites will run on PXWEB2 and the other half on PXWEB3, which allows us to balance the load between two machines.
  • Fault tolerance (redundancy). Although the websites are split between PXWEB2 and PXWEB3, each one is big enough to run all websites. This means that should either one experience any hardware failure, the other can take over immediately, reducing any downtime.
  • Modern equipment! Both PXWEB2 and PXWEB3 are built from the latest hardware. For those who like numbers, the servers have 8-core processors (two more than the main servers) and 32GB of memory (twice the main servers).
• Canadian warnings for catalog item. If you needed to put a warning on product being shipped to Canada, you had to include all of the provinces. Now you can just include the word Canada anywhere in the warning, and should the order ship to Canada, it will show a warning if you attempt to add it to the order. The Ship To address must include the word Canada, usually the last line in the address.
• Copy warnings to new order item's message. Use Action | Maintain | Member Settings | Order Tab to set whether or not catalog item warnings should be appended to new order item messages. So when a new order item is created, and there is a warning message, activating this new feature will cause the warning to be added to the order item.

Release 06/04/15

• Added member setting to control listed default. Continued from the last release, we've added a member setting that lets each member determine if supplies should be listed or not by default. Use Action | Maintain | Member Settings | Prefs Tab to set the default listed and default auto-allocate. You might also consider changing this option seasonally. For example, this time of year, when you enter a large number of supplies you may find it more useful if the default is not listed and at other times of the year, when you're doing more maintenance, you might prefer listed.
• Updated and added stock load report template. Load reports not only list the inventory you allocated for the customers, but they can also list the other available supplies. This upgrade improves the load report templates to create two types:
  • Load Report with Allocated Supplies. This report template shows only the supplies that were allocated. It includes crop, location and quantity on-hand for each supply.
  • Load Report with All Supplies. This report shows all possible supplies for each allocation. I not only shows the supplies you allocated from, but all other options.
  • Both templates include the quantity ordered. As a cross check, both templates now include the Ordered quantity.
• Web site patch to control caching. Web pages and pictures are cached by web browsers to improve performance as visitors browse your website. As programmers, we must control the browser and inform the browser when it's safe to use the cached (stored) page/picture, or when it's out of date and must be downloaded again. This patch tunes those settings.

Release 06/03/15

• When a new supply is added, it now defaults to not listed. If you want the new supply to be listed, you will need to check the Listed Available check box while adding the supply or highlight the supply and toggle it listed.

Previously, when supplies were created, PlantX set the Listed field if the specified crop had any supplies currently listed. Although it was convenient a large part of the time, should one supply on a crop happen to be listed, all subsequently added supplies were then listed by default. Our original thought was to error on the side of caution and list a supply. But this time of year, when a large number of supplies are being added or adjusted for the next sales season, it's more important to avoid accidentally listing supplies too early.

Attempting to automatically set the supply's Listed field was subtle and could go unnoticed. At one point, we had put in a popup message to warn if there were differences in the crop's setting, but this only served to slow down data entry. This change seeks to make one simple rule of thumb, new supplies are not listed by default.

• Added Listed and Auto-Allocate check box options to inventory transfers. While using the Inventory Window's drag-n-drop supply transfers (adjustments), PlantX now allows you to change the Listed and Auto-Allocated settings on the new supply. This way, if you're moving to a different crop or location, you can review and adjust whether or not the new supply should be listed.

Release 06/02/15

• Added nodiscount field to catalog reports. Added the field [catalogitem.nodiscount] for displaying the discount status of a catalog item on reports.
• Corrected issue with picture rotation. This one was pretty wild, and took nearly 3 hours to find and only 5 minutes to fix! We couldn't figure out why pictures on one website were showing sideways. Well, it turns out that modern cameras on smartphones, insert portrait or landscape orientation right in the pictures. It just depends on which way you were holding the phone when you took the pictures. Now the obscure part here is that modern browsers have taken it upon themselves to magically rotate pictures based upon this orientation information. Since we already rotate the pictures, the web browsers (Firefox and Chrome) were also spinning the pictures, creating the problem. You got to love computers!
• Wider field for catalog item's root ball size. Macs were making the field too small to see the values, so we widened the field.

Release 05/28/15

• Added a new Source field to supplies. This new field added to the supply should be used to track the original source. This could be the vendor and/or purchase order number where the material was sourced. The field could also be used to track the clipping source. The field has been added to most tree-table views, and the field name for reports is [supply.source].
• The Cost and Source fields have been added to the crop's quick supply entry. To speed data entry, two more fields have been added to the Crop Window's quick entry feature. These are optional fields.
• Added a new Inspected date and note fields to supplies. Use the inspected date and note fields on the supply to record the most recent observations. The fields have been added to most tree-table views, and the field names for reports are [supply.inspectdate] and [supply.inspectnote].
• Added the PO and order messages to the website's order list page and order page. These are now optional fields that can be added your website's order list page and order pages. We will be adding the PO field to all sites, but you will need to let us know if you want the messages added to your site.
• Bug Fix: Invoice reports no longer show on website if deleted. The website was still showing a placeholder for reports even after they were deleted. This release ensures the report is properly removed from the website when the report is deleted.
• Shipping reports support the ability to choose multiple sales reps. Having the ability to select multiple sales reps allows for the combined reporting for larger agencies with multiple reps.
• Reports on the Documents Window print all entries by default. A change in one of the prior releases caused the Document Window's print features to only print selected documents. As before, the reporting options now print all of the listed documents, not just the one selected.
• Added a fact count field for the material lists. Material list reports support a new field that counts the number of facts for each material. Sorting a material list on the fact count, shows the materials with the fewest facts first, revealing which materials need work. The report field name is [material.factcount].
• Changing the crop on a supply records an audit. Whenever the crop is changed on a supply, an audit is added to the history list. This makes it easier to recall the shifts in inventory over time by looking at the supply's history tab.
• Field Manager: Added ability to change the crop on a supply.

Release 05/22/15

• Added Root Ball Size to catalog items. Added to the Misc. Tab in the Inventory Window, this field is used to track B&B root ball sizes. Like the load factor and weight, it is there to help you determine the shape and size of developing loads.
• Supplies Window now lists all non-hidden crops. The Action | Supplies Window was only listing "active" crops, those that had at least one listed supply. The crop selections has been broadened to include all crops, except those that are hidden.
• Better method of handling material categories. This is an improvement to internal operations, which leads to better performance. Previously, the categories were stored as tiny, completely separate objects, which meant every time a material was load (which is often), there would be extra operations to retrieve the categories. With this restructured approach, the system can load the related categories in a single request. This will have lasting improvements, for example, the average website catalog page now loads more quickly with a hundreds of fewer steps.
• Toggle multiple loads Show/Hide on Calendar. Select multiple loads and hide or show them with a single click.
• Added more shipping details to the Load View on the Calendar App. More load details, like shipping address and footage, have been added the Calendar App's load view (when you tap on a listed load).
• View invoice reports on the website. Marking invoices as Show on Web will now allow customers, viewing their account on-line, to see the invoices related to an order.
• Bug Fix: Field Manager app no longer shows hidden crops. When making crop selections, the app was listing all crops, even those that have been hidden. It now shows all but the hidden crops.
• Performance Fix: Changing the status of multiple orders is done as a job. It is more efficient to run as a job and it will show the progress for larger sets of orders.
• Added more audits to the web users.
• Bug Fix: streamlined updates from server. An excess number of updates were being created and processed on the main server. This created a bottleneck and was delaying some updates. This release fixes the problem by eliminating the unnecessary processing and speeding up the processing that must be done. This is a significant performance improvement throughout the program!
• Bug Fix: Web category searches are broader again. The recent change in categories created a more narrow/specific set of results. This patch makes the search broader, where searching for "Tree" will show results from categories like "Wide Trees", "Basic Tree", etc.
• Added [material.factcount] field for reporting. The Material Fact reports now include all of the catalog items, not just those with facts. It also supports a new field that counts the number of facts, which is used for sorting. There is a new stock report template Material Facts by Fact Count that will list the materials with the fewest number of facts first. The template can be used to quickly identify materials with few or missing facts.

Technical Release 05/11/15

This release concludes nearly 500 hours of work (or a $45,000 investment) on the very core that makes PlantX operate. As we've added more features and more connected users, we're seeing a wider variety of network conditions. PlantX was originally designed to run on modems (remember those days?), but now the Internet has changed immensely. Now we have DSL, cable, WiFi, and smartphones, which creates new conditions and challenges.

We had been working on this project in background for close to a year, but it came to head about a month ago. We were getting a lot of feedback about slow program responses with random disconnects. We also noticed since last fall that all Internet functions have been getting slower and more sporadic. Even standards like email and web traffic, to all networks not just to ours, are lagging more. Much of this has been documented in the news lately as streaming of video on demand (Netflix, Amazon, etc.) is putting a strain on the Internet.

Since this is the Internet we have to deal with, we needed to adapt to these changing conditions. Therefore, we've rewritten the code that makes the connection between you and server. We studied various approaches others are using and tried several different designs. The result is a custom solution that gets us much greater control over the connection and flow of information.

• Connection Quality - We isolated the part of the program that makes the connections, which now gives us more control. The first benefit is the ability to judge the quality of the connection. Look for a new icon, to the right on the toolbar, which shows the now universal signal bars, which show the quality of your connection.

• Performance - We pulled out all of the stops, literally. PlantX now employs the latest lock-free design techniques to avoid any hesitations throughout. The first priority is to move your information to and from the server! This has given us some amazing performance figures! In testing, we've seen nearly a 10x increase in throughput.

• Better Feedback and Logging - With more control over the connection we also get more feedback about the connection conditions. This info provides more details on why your connections experience problems and will help us, help you correct those issues.

Release 04/14/15

• Bug Fix: Truck window no longer combines trucks with same name. If a truck had a duplicate name, the list of trucks only showed one entry. All truck entries are now shown correctly.

Release 04/13/15

• Create retailer entry for website from customer address. Your website has the ability to list retailers that carry your product. It is simply a list of contact information and website details that your customer can search by state in order to find your products. This new feature allows you to easily add your customers to the retail list. Locate the retail customer in the Customers Window, go to the Addresses Tab, highlight an address and press the Create Retailer button. If this feature isn't active for your website, and it's something you would like to offer visitors to your website, then contact us and we will help you activate it.
• Added catalog item specifications. This new catalog Specifications field is nearly identical to the Message field. You can annotate catalog items and show the messages and specifications on the web or availability. By using the Member Settings | Orders Tab, you can determine if one, the other, or both should be appended to new order items.
• Option to invoice net revenue only. A new option has been added that controls how discounts are treated when an invoice is created. Normally, any discounted pricing entered on an order is translated into the appropriate invoice entries for both revenues and discounts. This new option creates net revenue entries only, without the discount account entries. Most members can ignore this feature, as it's not a common practice. Ask your accountant before using it.
• Bug Fix: fixed saving of Truck Window view settings. If you alter the Truck Window settings, they are now saved correctly.

Release 04/08/15

• Add Tax Exempt Code to customer accounts. The Tax Exempt Code can be found in the Taxes Tab of the Customer Accounts Window. Typically used in states with sales taxes, some customers are considered exempt from sales tax, record their exemption code in this field.
• Bug Fix: user name is recorded properly on supply rollovers.

Release 04/06/15

• Select orders using Requested Ship date range. When selecting orders, you now have the option of filtering on the requested ship date using a date range.
• Bug Fix: Invoice dates are no longer sensitive to timezones. The invoice date will remain the same regardless of timezone. We will continue to identify other dates the don't reflect all timezones.
• Bug Fix: Corrected reports with individual prices. The last upgrade introduced a duplicate field name, which caused only the newer pricing to show. Now the pricing names are unique.

Release 04/03/15

• New Load Manager columns. Start Date, Ready Date and Message columns have been added to the Order Window's Load Manager tab. This makes it easier to see the specific supply allocated for those members using the start and ready dates on supplies.
• New Load Manager button. For convenience, a new Change Order Item button has been added to the load manager buttons. It gives you the ability to change the allocated order item without having to switch to the order items tab or entry tab.
• Consignment Edition: fixed bug with consignment order editing. You can no longer edit the description of the consignment item. This had unintended consequences, where the consignment item might show a different description from the actual catalog item selected.
• Select pricing for availability. The availability report now prompts for the specific pricing to use for the report. NOTE: if you have a custom template for the availability, this feature won't be applicable until your template is modified. We will be updating all templates accordingly over the next few days. This feature also allows the website to show the customer specified pricing on the downloadable PDF and XLS reports.

Release 03/31/15

• Adjust Truck Window's view width. The truck list, in the Truck Window, has been made a little wider and easier to read.
• Fixed Internet Explorer bug with website availability page. Selecting a category link, on the website's availability page, now jumps to the right category under Internet Explorer.
• More diagnostic and testing for Mac. The diagnostic includes more tests and considerations for Mac compatibility.

Release 03/25/15

• Upgraded Truck Window's truck list to tree table view (TTV). This means that you can now customize the trucks list (sort by name or date, etc.) and save your settings.
• Bug Fix: Check boxes selections on older checked tree views. The check boxes should toggle correctly on older selection tree views.
• Bug Fix: add another diagnostic for Mac.

Release 03/23/15

• Maximum discount field. Catalog items carried a field called No Discount, which when selected (checked), the catalog item did not get a discount when entered on an order. With this upgrade, rather than be an all-or-nothing discount, catalog items can carry a maximum discount. The default is 100%, and any that where marked No Discount have been set to 0%.
• Bug Fix: check boxes on Tree Table View (TTV) exports. When exporting PDF/CSV from TTV views, columns that show a check box, now show a value.
• Bug Fix: fix for check boxes for Mac. Another adjustment to fix the appearance of some check boxes on Macs.
• Website plant facts. When referencing plant facts by their index number, all facts are now available, rather than just those marked Show on Web. This way, if the facts is referred to as a general list of facts, the Show on Web controls which facts should appear and which ones shouldn't, but if the page designer refers to a specific fact by its number, it will be shown.
• Android Bug Fix: adding order items. All default retail information is correctly added with new order items.

Release 03/12/15

• Consignment: tracking Last Returned and Final Move dates. Each time an item is scanned to a Returns location, PlantX will record the return time. If an item is moved to Sold, Return to Grower or Disposed, the time is recorded as a Final Move date. Likewise, should it be moved to any location besides those three, the Final Move date will be cleared. This allows PlantX reporting to more quickly compute which plants are listed on reports.
• Miscellaneous web changes to support new web features.

Release 03/06/15

• Consignment: Support for non-inventory items. An item (an individual plant or lot of plants) can be declared a non-inventory item. Previously, only special "Delivery" tags could be sold multiple times, as it was unnecessary to have a unique item number (tag) for each delivery. This means the item is a non-inventoried item. To toggle inventory or non-inventory, open the item and use the menu option "Toggle Non-Inventory".

Release 03/03/15

• Bug Fix: fix Show Available on order entry tab. When the Show Available option was turned off, it left a elided entry (...).
• New web availability page facts feature. Enumerated plant facts can now be added to the availability page design.

Release 02/27/15

• Replaced account's tagging instructions with a complete Message field. Previously, each customer account could have Tagging Instructions. When an order was created for the account, these instructions were filled in the order's Message field. Requests have been made to increase the field size to allow for more "default" messages for the customer, so a new Message field has been added to cover any and all messages for new orders related to that customer. The message field can be found on the Customer Window | Message / Notes Tab.
• New shopping cart report template. You can now customize the report that your customer gets when they download a PDF document for their cart.
• Default sales rep set to current employee. If you assign a sales rep to an account, when an order is created the sales rep on the order comes from the account setting. If you don't assign a sales rep to the account, this new version will check to see if the current user is/has a sales rep and assign that to the order. This way if you have a number of sales reps that can build orders for a customer, the current sales rep will be assigned to the order. This requires each user that is considered a sales rep have the respective sales rep assigned to their User. Use Action | Maintain | Member Settings | Users Tab to open a specific user and then inspect the contents of the Sales Rep Tab.
• Field Manager App: Add a supply. You can now add new supplies through the mobile app.
• Default Reporting Year field. Crops and orders carry a Reporting Year field that can be used to class supplies (by crop) and demand (by order) into specific year. This upgrade introduces a default report year so that it doesn't have to be entered on every order or crop. We couldn't just use the current year because the spring orders are often entered in the fall. Use Action | Maintain | Member Settings | Orders Tab to set the reporting year.
• Expanded note field size on documents. The document's note field has been extended from 30 to 250 characters.
• Added Requested Ship Date as column in Inventory Window | Orders. You can modify the order items table view in the Inventory Window and add a column for requested ship date.

Release 02/20/15

• More fields for accounting documents. A couple of additional reporting fields were added to round out the final account documents.
• Additional web page updates to support new features. New catalog search and ordering feature to highlight ordered plants during order entry.

Release 02/19/15

• Trucks are now hidden just like other objects. Rather than immediately hiding shipped trucks from the truck list, trucks must be hidden to be removed from the list. Just like other features, should you need to recall a hidden truck, you can use the View Menu option to show hidden trucks.
• Added new sales tax fields for reports. Added [order.orderedtax] and [order.allocatedtax] fields to more easily include sales taxes on ordered forms (acknowledgements and quotes) and allocated order forms (confirmations).
• Maintenance: upgraded the web libraries. We upgraded to the latest program libraries that drive the websites.

Release 02/14/15

• New web shopping cart feature. A web user can now be granted permission to set the price. You might use this feature for special users, like a sales rep or internal sales person, allowing them to alter the price. The shopping cart exposes another "Bid Price" column were the default normal price can be changed. To control this feature, look up the web user and toggle the setting.

Release 02/13/15

• Dig field on location selection. The is Dig setting for location is now available for the location selections on reports. This allows you to see (and sort) locations by their dig status. You might use this setting to select only the locations that are needed for a dig report.

Release 02/12/15

• Adding captions to web picture viewer. We are implementing a new picture viewer for the website, and this release adds the needed captions from the photos.
• Bug Fix: Duplicate submitted orders. Multiple copies of an order are appearing when a customer submits an order from the website. This release adds some programming to limit the potential of duplicate submissions and increase data collected to help diagnose any further cases of duplication.

Release 02/11/15

• Rollover selected supplies to another crop. Having added the ability last year to rollover a complete crop into another crop, it was requested that we provide an option to do just a set of selected supplies. This feature is now available from the crop window. Open a crop, select one or more supplies to rollover, and press the rollover button on the right.
• Bug Fix: Fixed intermittent error on website catalog page.
• Maintenance: clear out some old, unused code (cobwebs).

Release 02/06/15

• Added Require PO# field to customer batch change. You can now change the customer's Require PO# setting in a batch. Use Edit | Batch Change from the Customers Window.
• Converted changing of listed, auto-allocate, and hidden to job. As larger, longer running processes, these have been changed to a job so that it can show the progress.
• Bug Fix: Broader date range on report windows. When looking at the reports window, viewing the list of run reports, an error with regards to timezone was preventing all reports run that day from showing.

Release 02/04/15

• Important: You can't cancel an order until all allocations are removed. This is a measure to avoid leaving valuable inventory left allocated to an order that has been cancelled. If you change the status to cancelled, and the order still has allocations, PlantX will give you an error message. After deleting all remaining allocations, you can then set the order to cancelled. You don't have to delete the order items, only the allocations, just highlight them in the Load Manager Tab and use the delete button. This will ensure the allocated material returns to inventory.
• Extended the status drop down. It's the simple things. You're all probably tired of scrolling on the status box, and now the drop down box is tall enough to support all status options.
• Added unique field to supply. For some reports, if you want to be sure a new line is created for each supply, you can use the new unique field.
• More programming on web features.

Release 02/03/15

• Continued work on the website features. Getting ready for spring!

Release 02/02/15

• Working on new features for websites. We are currently developing some new features for the websites. The upgrade only includes the programming to make the features work and we will be integrating the features into each member website over the next few months.
  • A new categories page so that visitors can surf your material/catalog by categories.
  • New picture popup viewer. Rather than launch an entire window or just clicking through thumbnails, the browser will overlay a full screen set of slides.
  • A combined catalog and material page, eliminating the material page. There was very little information shown on the catalog page and not much more on the material page, so the information from the material page will moved to the catalog, eliminating the need for the page, reducing extra steps.
• Internal reworking of some membership settings to standardize programming. Just some cleanup work to bring some of the legacy programming into our latest standards.

Release 01/22/15

• Bug Fix: Crop selection for reports. If there were crops with duplicate names, they were being merged as one on the crop selection window for reports. Each crop will now appear separately even if they have the same name.
• QB invoice export uses global sales tax setting. Rather than a line by line sales tax entry, the export will now using the total sales tax type.

Patch 01/19/15 2:15pm

• Bug Fix: Not all sets loading correctly. Some complex sets of information, like all invoices for an order, were not loading correctly. The issue has been corrected.

Release 01/19/15

• Added netvolumes field to catalog item. The new catalogitem.netvolumes field can be added to reports to convert generic "gallons" sizes, like #1, #2, etc. into real gallons and liters. Use the Member Settings | Net Volumes tab to enter the translations.
• Use requested ship date for invoices. When creating invoices, rather the use the Ship Info field for the date, the new Requested Ship Date is used.
• Improved overall performance. PlantX can handle larger sets of data more easily and broadcast changes more quickly. This improvement applies to the server, brokers and desktop programs. The direct effect is 4x faster load times for the larger websites, and loading larger customer accounts (those with lots of documents not yet archived).

Release 01/15/15

• New loads use order's Requested Ship Date as default name. Previously, load names used the ship info field. Since dates work better as load names, which was often the ship info default, the new Requested Ship Date field is used for the default when creating new loads.
• The Requested Ship Date field has been added as a column in order views. For views that list orders, you can add the new Requested Ship Date field ("Req Ship") as a column.
• Requested Ship Date can now be used in report selections. The Demand Reports (for orders and order items), the Shipping Reports, and Unfulfilled Order Items reports all support the ability to select orders, order items or allocations based on a date range for the new Requested Ship Date. For example, assuming the orders have a good requested ship date assigned (or an approximation), a Shipping Report can be run on outstanding allocations to determine which plants (or when plants) should be dug.

Release 01/14/15

• New Requested Ship Date field on orders. The Order Window | Order Info Tab has a new field next to the Ship Info field. Up to now, the Ship Info could have a date and other details, which limited the ability to find orders by their approximate ship date. With a separate field for the date, PlantX can create reports using order information before it's allocated or made into loads. Currently, these fields default to the current date when the order is created. If you want to use the new field in a report, it is order.reqship. NOTE: This is a new field and we will be adding more features in the next upgrade, like selection criteria (date range selection) for the Requested Ship Date.
• Relaxed the material's Show on Web setting. After the last upgrade, if you tried to uncheck the Show on Web setting for a material, it required that you hide any related catalog items first. This was too strict, as you might carry a material that you have in production but don't want it shown on your website. In this release, you can uncheck the Show on Web unrestricted, but if you do elect to not show a material on the web, any supplies for that catalog item are automatically unlisted as available.

Release 01/13/15

• Control availability and web listing with the supply's Listed field, Phase 3 of 3. This upgrade completes the standard for listing supplies on the availability and website. Simply, if a supply is marked as Listed on Availability, it will show on the availability, and the website's availability, otherwise it won't. This upgrade removes the last references to the catalog item's Exclude from Availability and Show on Web settings. Again, these were found to quietly create contradictions with the supply settings.
• Material's Show on Web upgraded. Previously, there was a Show on Web setting for the materials. Like this catalog item and supply settings, these have been fine tuned. Rather than have values like YES, NO and FEATURED, the field has been broken into three parts for precise settings using check boxes. Their meaning hasn't changed. If marked Show on Web, the material will show on the website. If marked Featured on Web, the material will be highlighted in a special view on the website. Conversely, removing the check from the Show on Web field, the material won't show on the website.
• Added ability to hide materials. This upgrade includes an option to hide materials. The hide feature functions much like the ability to hide any information in PlantX that is no longer useful.

Release 01/09/15

• Bug Fix: XLS export now preserves margin settings. The exported spreadsheet (XLS) now inherits the correct page dimensions and page margins from the report template. (A reminder, the page settings from the "Detail" sheet are used.)
• Bug Fix: Old availability report shows only Listed supplies. The old Availability by Type report adheres to the new supply Listed setting.
• Bug Fix: Material facts show on reports correctly. Material facts with names that included more than one word, like "Growth Height", did not appear correctly on reports.

Release 01/07/15

• Bug Fix: Load view supports duplicate load names. The Loads Window (Action | Loads) was not showing loads with duplicate names.

Release 01/06/15

• Please make sure you read yesterday's release notes.
• Added Listed column to the Inventory Window's Supplies list. In addition to the Listed Qty field, the Inventory Window | Supplies and Orders Tab | Supplies List now includes a Listed field. The Listed field appears as a check box to show which supplies are listed. The Listed column is included as a default, but if you have a custom Tree-Table View, you many need to add this column manually to your view. If you need help doing so, please give us a call and we will walk you through it.
• Added button to toggle supplies listed. To the right of the supplies list is a new button to toggle whether or not a supply, or multiple selected supplies, are listed. Previously, you had to open each supply and change the Listed as Available check box, whereas now you can select one or more supplies and toggle the setting.
• Added buttons to the Location Window's Supplies list. Like the Crop Window's Supplies Tab, you can toggle the Listed, Auto-Allocate, and Hidden settings from the Location Window.

Release 01/05/15

• Control availability and web listing with the supply's Listed field, Phase 2 of 3. To start the year off, we are moving to finalize the settings that control the supplies listed on the availability and website. Originally, PlantX used various settings to control whether or not inventory (supplies) show on the availability and website. When the final phase is complete, the Supply Listed setting will be the only field that controls whether or not inventory shows to the customer.

• There were four sets of settings, at various levels of control. Although these settings allowed for broader control, they could be contradictory and confusing.
  • Crop Show on Availability check box (yes/no)
  • Catalog Show on Web with YES/NO/IF_AVAILABLE/IF_MIN_AVAIL
  • Catalog Exclude from Availability check box (yes/no)
  • Materials Show on Web with YES/NO/FEATURED

Initially, the crop controlled whether or not supplies were listed on the availability (and website). But this was an all-or-nothing proposition: show an entire crop or not. It required moving supplies to and from listed crops to unlisted crops, making inventory harder to track. Therefore, the first step (Phase 1) was to move the Listed as Available setting down to the individual supply. This gave much greater control over which supplies were listed on the availability, and which were not. Now, simply toggling which supplies are listed can be done from the individual supply, from the Crop Window, or from the Location Window.

This takes us to the current step (Phase 2), removing the catalog item's Show on Web and Exclude from Availability settings. Since the supply's Listed setting now provides precise control over what is listed, the two catalog settings are redundant. In fact, in their current form they are contradictory: you can list a supply, but then exclude from availability. This potential contradiction has made it hard to determine why certain items are showing and others aren't, which gives rises to support phone calls to determine the cause.

In this phase, we will help you eliminate the rare cases where these fields are being used. We have a supply report format that will highlight where the two catalog item fields are still being used. We will work with each member to eliminate the use of these fields. In the final phase, we will remove these fields altogether.

As for the Material's Show on Web field, it will still remain, but we will add extra safeguards. When you change the setting to NO, we will require that you unlist all affected supplies first. This will help avoid any contradiction should you decide to no longer offer a type of material, as PlantX will remind you that you still have supplies listed and to unlist them first. And should you decide to list a supply belonging to a hidden Material, the material will automatically be reset to Show on Web: YES.