Catalogue items can now be listed on DEAR B2B Portal via a Product’s Channels tab

Impact areas: DEAR B2B, Inventory

Introduction: Items in a customer’s product catalogue can now be listed on their DEAR B2B Portal from the product’s Channels tab. 

Functionality: Posting inventory items is more convenient with this enhancement since the product’s Channels page shows the available stock quantity that can be posted on the B2B Portal. The available stock shown in inventory is taken from the portal location setting on the DEAR B2B Portal Integration page, which is accessible from Integrations > B2B Portal. If a portal location is not specified, the available stock will reflect the number of items in all locations.

Predefined package types can be set on the StarShipIT Integration page

Impact areas: StarShipIT Integration, Sale, DEAR Warehouse Management System

Introduction: Multiple predefined package types can be added on the StarShipIT Integration page. 

Functionality: Multiple package types can be added through a new ‘+Predefined package types’ section on the StarShipIT Integration page, which is accessible from Integrations > StarShipIT. The dimensions of the package types are set at the time of their creation. The package types are selectable when printing shipping labels. They are also available for selection in DEAR Warehouse Management System (WMS).

Audit Log covers more modules

Impact areas: Audit Log, System Security

Introduction: The Audit Log now covers more modules, in line with our initiative to streamline system auditing features into a single module, aside from the available Activity Logs in all DEAR Inventory modules.

Functionality: The Audit Report is available in Reports > Audit Reports. The report now reflects all actions in the following modules: Assembly, Disassembly, Stock Transfer, Stocktake, Stock Adjustment, Money Received, Money Spent, Bank Transfer, Manual Journal, Inventory Write-off, and Expense Claims. The features of the old System Activity Report had earlier been incorporated into the Audit Report.

Configuration of recipients in email templates

Impact areas: Email templates, Sale, Purchase

Introduction: Default email addresses can be set for each email template. If default email addresses are set for a template used in the Sale and Purchase modules, there is no longer any need to enter email addresses when sending emails from these modules. This makes for a faster and more convenient emailing process. Moreover, emails can now be sent in bulk from the Sale and Purchase modules.

Functionality: Email templates are managed under Settings > Document & Email Templates. To add email recipients to a template, click the template, then set either or both the All active users and All company contacts settings to Yes.

Sending of emails for stock transfer actions 

Impact areas: Stock transfers, Inventory

Introduction: An Email feature is now available on the Stock Transfers page. This means that users can now email stock transfer documents, e.g. Product Labels (Inventory Adjustment and Transfer), Stock Transfer documents, and Stock Transfer Orders.

Pre-condition: Only users with the capability to print documents during stock transfers are allowed access to the Email feature.

Functionality: Stock transfers are initiated from Inventory > Transfer. After adding an item for stock transfer, to email, the document(s) related to the stock transfer, click the Email button on the top left of the Stock Transfer page.

New permissions for users tasked with approving, rejecting, and reviewing sales quotes and purchase orders

Impact areas: Sale, Purchase

Introduction: There are two new permissions that can be assigned to personnel tasked to approve, reject and review sales quotes and purchase orders. 

Functionality: User permissions are set in Settings > Users & Roles. If users tasked with approving/rejecting/reviewing sales quotes and/or purchase orders are assigned to a role, make sure to assign the role Full Access to either the Sale Task – Quote Approve/Reject/Review or   Purchase Task – Order Approve/Reject/Review permissions or both. If no role has been assigned, assign the permissions to the designated users instead.

New Fulfilment Details Report shows fulfilment details of authorised sales orders

Impact areas: Reports, Advanced Sales

Introduction: The new Fulfilment Details Report shows fulfilment details of authorised sale orders filtered by sale order date. This enhancement also includes the addition of a Shipping Note field when entering an Advanced Sale transaction. 

Pre-condition: Users must have the Sales Reporting access permissions to access this sales report.

Functionality: The new Fulfilment Details Report is generated under Reports > Sales Reports. 

It can also be automatically generated and sent out to authorised users using the Report Scheduling feature available to DEAR customers with Automation module subscriptions. Non-inventory products are excluded from the report. The related Shipping Note field is displayed to users during the Ship process for Advanced Sales.

New Release – 21 July 2019

New Features

Feature 1: Tooltips to show related and important information

Impact areas: Sale, Purchase, Production, Financials 

Introduction: Tooltips to the existing information about customers, customer contacts, suppliers, stock, products and product deals are now available.

Pre-condition: Tooltip settings are defined in General Settings and enabled by default. To disable them, go to General Settings > Tooltip Settings.

Functionality: Hovering over an underlined tooltip displays a popup with more information about the record in question. For example, when creating a Sale Order, the Customer name is highlighted. From the tooltip, the customer’s credit limit, last transaction and available payment terms are displayed. The customer’s name is also underlined – if you click it, the customer record opens in another browser window or tab.

Feature 2: New quote status filter in Outstanding Quotes report

Impact area: Outstanding Quotes Report

Introduction: A filter for All quotes, Draft only, and Authorised Only quotes has been added to the Outstanding Quotes Report. This allows the report to be broken down by status.

Functionality: The filter displays All Quotes by default (Authorised, Voided, and Draft). The other filter options are Drafts Only and Authorised Only. Draft (quotes) returns all rows, except Voided or Authorised quotes. Authorised Only returns quotes with Authorised status, including Archived authorised quotes.

Feature 3: Shipment date is now available as an additional column in five (5) sales reports

Impact areas: Customer Payment Details Report, Sale Order Details Report, Customer Orders by Product Report, Sales by Product Summary Report, Sale Overview Report

Introduction: The five (5) abovementioned reports now include the Shipment date column. With the additional column, there is no longer any need to go down into the record to get its shipment date. 

Functionality: When generated from the Reports module, these reports will show a new Shipment Date column.

Feature 4: Shipping contact and memo fields are now available in the sale header

Impact areas: Simple Sale, Advanced Sale, Service Sale

Introduction: Fields for adding shipping contacts and shipping notes have been added. This allows relevant shipping information to be added to the record. The content will be available in all shipping-related templates as a mail merge field.

Functionality: There are new Ship to Company, Ship to Contact, and Ship to Other fields when creating simple, advanced, and service sales. There is also a new Shipping Notes field where shipping-related information can be entered. For more information, click here.

Feature 5: New full backup feature included in the Report Scheduling module

Impact area: Report scheduling

Introduction: There is a new full backup feature available as part of the Scheduled Reports module. This allows data to be backed up on a regular basis. 

Pre-condition: Only Master Users (account owners) can access this feature.

Functionality: The new Full Backup feature can be set up to back up all or selected data. The number of days to back up, start date, frequency, and mailing list (users to which an email notification will be sent) are also configurable.

Feature 6: Option to put a customer on Credit Hold

Impact areas: Customer, Sale, DEAR POS, Audit Report, Activity Log

Introduction: Customers can be placed on Credit Hold/Stop Credit automatically and manually. 

Pre-conditions:

1. Only users with Customer – Enable/Disable Credit Hold permission can put customers on credit hold.
2. Users with the Sale Task – Ignore Mandatory Credit Limit permission can complete the sale even if the customer has been put on credit hold or has a negative credit limit.
3. A Credit Hold Grace Period should be set in General Settings. This setting specifies a grace period value from when the customer reaches an overdue date and an overdue limit to when DEAR will automatically put customers on Credit Hold.

Functionality: The On Credit Hold setting in the Customer Record is disabled by default. Users with the correct permissions can manually set customers on Credit Hold by checking this box. DEAR will automatically put a customer on Credit Hold once the Credit Hold Grace Period lapses and the customer exceeds their allocated credit limit. The customer will remain on Credit Hold until payment has been made.

Feature 7: Lot Recall Report now includes an improved capability to search for products, SKU, name, or batch number

Impact area: Lot Recall Report

Introduction: Previously, users were required to enter the product and the batch/lot/serial number separately when generating the Lot Recall Report. This required knowing both the product name and the batch/lot/serial number. With this improvement, users only have to enter any of this information to generate the report and print recall letters, if needed.

Functionality:  From the Batch/Lot Recall Report, you can enter the product, batch, lot, or serial number to retrieve the relevant record.

Feature 8: Payment Details Report

Impact area: Reports

Introduction: This financial report shows payment details for each Payment Account in DEAR. All data about payments, money tasks and bank transfer operations is included in the report.

Pre-conditions:

1. The report is accessible to users with the Sales Reporting, Purchase Reporting or Financial Reporting access levels.
2. This report can be automatically generated and sent out to authorised users using the Report Scheduling feature available to DEAR customers with Automation module subscriptions. 

Functionality: Go to Reports > Financial Reports to access the report. From here, click the Payment Details Report to generate it.

Improved email sending in DEAR Inventory B2B Portal

The DEAR B2B eCommerce portal enables your customers to browse and order from your catalogue 24/7. It provides a scalable and flexible platform uniquely focused on companies doing business with each other – for example, manufacturers selling to distributors and wholesalers selling to retailers.

Email sending in DEAR B2B has been improved in this release. Previously, your customers’ emails in DEAR B2B Portal were sent to DEAR first, then we forwarded them to you. We’ve now removed ourselves from this process, making it much faster than before. From now on, emails will be sent directly to your designated portal contact on the DEAR B2B integration page. This means that your contact will now receive customer emails directly without going through DEAR.

For more information on DEAR B2B, click here.

New improvements to DEAR

DEAR POS-related Improvements

There are two DEAR POS improvements in this new release.

On the DEAR POS Integration page, there is now additional permission for DEAR POS users to view the Dashboard. Although enabled by default, organisations can now disable access if needed, allowing for finer-grained user access control. Previously, all DEAR POS users could view the Dashboard. 

On DEAR POS itself, every time users with Can Change Discount permissions modify a discount on a product in a sale, a warning message appears. Users can now prevent this message from appearing again.

DEAR B2B-related Improvements

There are also several DEAR B2B improvements in this release.

It is now possible for multiple gallery images to be displayed on the B2B Product page. There is a limit of 10 images on this new capability.

In addition, an RRP price tier can now be set within DEAR Inventory and displayed on the B2B Products page.

Additional order details such as estimated delivery date, delivery address, and carrier name and tracking number are also now viewable from the B2B Orders page.

On the Shopping Cart, deal information, if there is any, can now be seen as well.

New User Permission for Automation – Workflow

There is now a separate user permission for creating workflow processes under Automation. Previously, this was covered in a single Automation user permission. With the new user permission, only authorised users will be able to configure workflows.

Completion of Audit Report Phase 3 Changes

The migration of the activities covered under the old System Activity Report is now complete. With this, the Audit Report now displays the details of all actions performed by each user in DEAR, including integration- and security-related changes made by authorised users to DEAR configuration settings.

Stronger security in DEAR-Stripe Integration makes it fully compliant with GDPR Standards

The integration between DEAR and Stripe has been further strengthened security-wise as DEAR implemented a stronger security framework that allows it to meet the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) standards implemented in May 2018.

New improvements to DEAR

Inventory-Related Improvements

There are three new inventory-related improvements in DEAR in this new release:

• DEAR now allows changing your product SKUs in bulk through the Import/Export facility on the Products page. This makes the update process faster since customers don’t have to look for individual products and update their SKUs one by one when required. 
• Regardless of availability, DEAR now displays the next available date for products on the Product Availability page. With this feature, customers can decide whether to backorder the product or opt for an alternative if a product is not available soon enough. 
• DEAR now sends notifications to responsible users when a stocktake is started and completed, and when the corresponding stock adjustment process is completed. This means that users will be kept informed of the progress of stocktakes and stock adjustments. Note that you must have an active subscription to the Automation module to use notifications in DEAR.

Integration-Related Improvements

The other new features are related to integrations with third-party systems, specifically Shopify and QuickBooks.

• For customers that have enabled Shopify integration, DEAR now automatically synchronises credit notes and refunds once shipping and invoices have been authorised. This is true for customers utilising either No Consolidation or Daily Consolidation mode. 
• For customers that have enabled QuickBooks integration, there is now a Load Historical Data function which allows loading of historical changes/documents/transactions from QuickBooks to DEAR, starting from a specified custom date which must not be more than 30 days before the current date. This is useful if there’s a need to overwrite data from QuickBooks that have been previously synchronised with DEAR.

New Improvements to DEAR

Purchase and Sales Modules

DEAR users now have the ability to reject unsuccessful quotes and purchase orders. Order Approval and Quote Approval can be enabled in the General Settings.

• Authorised Sale Quotes and Purchase Orders will now display a Reject button.
• Rejected Quotes/Purchase Orders are read-only.
• There is a Review button on rejected quotes/purchase orders which reverts the quote/purchase order to Draft status, where it can be authorised again.
• Sales/Purchase Lists can now be filtered by Rejected and All but Rejected and Voided.
• Payments cannot be applied to Rejected Quotes/Purchase Orders.
• Sale Outstanding Report, Sales Overview Report and Sale Order Details Report have been updated to support ‘rejected’ Sales.
  

Quotes/Purchase Orders older than a certain limit can now be archived and removed from the general sales/purchase lists. The Archive button is also displayed on unauthorised Quotes/Purchase Orders, clicking this will immediately archive the document. They can still be viewed by applying the Archived filter on the task lists page. Quote/Order archiving is enabled from the General settings in Purchase process customisation or Sales process customisation. Quotes/purchase orders with prepayments will not be archived by the system.

By default, the quantity for new quote and order lines is 0. The new setting parameter Default Quantity for new line (General Settings -> Sale process customisation) allows users to set this to any number.

Undo/Void buttons on all DEAR UI forms have been separated to avoid accidental misuse. Please note that the Undo/Void button for all pages is not available in Simple Sale.

Improvements to the Inventory Module

Product families can now be deleted/deprecated in bulk rather than deleting individual variants. Completion Date and Notes field have been added to the Disassembly process.

Reports and Scheduled Reporting

• Many more report types are now available for Scheduled reporting.
• Scheduled Reports now have a Name field to allow more than one configuration of the same report to be scheduled.
• New Report Date filters (YTD, QTD, MTD, This Quarter, Last Quarter) are available for Reports.
• The ‘All’ filter has been added to the Scheduled Reports List page.
• The Date parameter has been added to the header on Report export.

DEAR templates

New mail merge fields have been added to further customise your document templates:

• SKU for Service items/Additional Charges for Sale and Purchase documents
• Dropship items (Yes/No) for Sale Order documents and tables.

Notifications in your notification panel will now show the notification date and a link to the relevant document.

Improvements to Integrations

Avalara

• Bug fix: Sale Invoice Account field can’t be edited after integrated with Avalara.
• Improvement: Tax component added to Avalara Tax Lookup tax rule when generated in DEAR to prevent problems during export.
• Improvement: New Tax Exemption Reason field added for Customers and Sales Tasks. When adding a new Shipping Address for a Customer, you can now include a Tax Exemption Reason code. This automatically populates a Tax Exemption Reason field in the document header of a sale task, which can be manually overridden.
• Update Avalara CustomerCode value to utilise DEAR customer name instead of internal ID (GUID).
• Point of Order Origin Address and Point of Order Acceptance Address fields removed from the Avalara settings page.
• Item Code, Item Description and Avalara Tax Code exported to DEAR during Avalara transaction sync.

Magento

Magento integration now supports Magento 2.3.

QuickBooks

New QBO Integration setting Use actual Shipment Date when available for Invoice sync to QuickBooks allows users to use Shipment date from the Ship tab of a sale as Shipping Date in QBO when available. If a Shipment date is available when the invoice is synced, it will be used. If there is no Shipment Date available or this setting is turned off, the Required By date will be used instead.

Stripe

You can now make partial payments for Stripe and PayPal invoices. Stripe and PayPal invoices will now have buttons for Pay [Order Total] and Pay Less, where you can enter the value to pay.  

DEAR POS

There are several new improvements in DEAR POS due to customer demand. These include the following:

• Click & Collect can now process fulfilled sales to accept payment via POS.
• Allow overriding payment method account mapping at the outlet level.
• Configure Surcharges on Custom Payment Methods.

DEAR WMS

DEAR WMS app is now available on iOS for users of iOS 9 or above.

During Pick, you can now change the selected bin (through scanning the bin or through manually entering the bin name) to override the pick order.

Smart Reordering

The Smart Reordering feature has been improved further by allowing reorder suggestions even if velocity is zero. More specifically, DEAR will suggest reordering a product when the Available quantity + On Order quantity < 0.

Advanced Purchase

Moreover, DEAR now allows receiving multiple orders per day for a given Purchase Order using an Advanced Purchase. Currently, there is no way to receive multiple stocks per day for a given Purchase Order, and DEAR only allows one receiving event for a given date using an Advanced Purchase. This limitation has been eliminated with this modification.

Stock Transfer

In terms of stock transfer, DEAR now allows the transfer of stock that is allocated by sales or other processes, e.g. Assembly and Job, so long as the stock has not been picked yet

DEAR Integrations

Vend

For customers that have integrated DEAR with Vend, the Inventory Discrepancy account from the DEAR account mapping is now used as the expense account when importing stocktake/stock adjustment data from Vend. If the Inventory Discrepancy account is not provided, the COGS account is used as the expense account instead.

Xero

Customers that have integrated Xero with DEAR can now consolidate and group sales by channel. For example, customers that use Amazon will have one consolidated sale for their Amazon sales for the day, with one currency and a tax-inclusive/exclusive option. They can then export this to Xero. However, payments are not imported from consolidated invoices. Customers will still need to manually process payments in DEAR.

DEAR POS

There are several new improvements in DEAR POS due to customer demand. These include the following:

When setting up Quick Keys, brands, categories and tags can now be grouped together using either an AND or OR operator.

For purchases, products with serial numbers are now allowed to be scanned, bringing the number of scanning options to four.

Standalone refunds are now allowed for credit card transactions. Note that even if a card payment provider is configured for a POS register, it will process refunds as if payment setup is set to Card payment not integrated. This is because refunds are not processed through the register’s integrated payment system, for example, Tyro.

Better performance during system startup is anticipated since there is no longer need to reload data if the PIN of the logged-in user ID is equal to the previously saved user ID.

Better usability is anticipated since the logged-on user name, if available, will be displayed on the POS register. If the user name is not available, the email address will be shown instead.

Code 128 barcodes are now supported. For products with barcodes set up in DEAR Inventory, product labels can be printed directly on the POS Register’s Products page.

Referral Credit Program

For new DEAR customers, moving forward, a new Referral Credit program is now available. This new program will give new customers a fixed 10% discount based on the amount of the subscription availed of by the customers they refer to DEAR. This supersedes the old referral credit program, which will be grandfathered for all customers that are already on the program.

DEAR REPORTS

The DEAR Audit Report now logs all activities, including configuration changes. Moreover, old and new values are now reflected in the report as well. The System Activity Report still logs all changes in configuration settings, but with time, all logging in DEAR will be made available via the DEAR Audit Report.

New Improvements

Workflow Automation

• Workflow automation is now available in DEAR, allowing the setup of events and actions that trigger automatically once certain conditions are achieved. This feature is currently available for sales processes only. In line with this recent improvement, the Notifications module has been renamed as the Automation module. The Automation module remains one of the add-on modules in DEAR – customers need to pay an additional fee for using it. See more in Managing Workflow Automation in DEAR and Using the Automation Module (formerly also known as the Notifications module).

Enhanced Additional Units of Measure

• The creation of Additional Units of Measure is one way (the other is the Bill of Materials) to set up products individually or in groups, say cases of 6 or 12. Prior to the current release, the Additional Units of Measure were designed to be created per product. DEAR now allows importing of Additional Units of Measure. The improved feature enables products with Additional Units of Measure to be created, updated, or deleted via CSV.

Sync Multiple Credit notes from Shopify Orders

• Multiple credit note support is now available on most sources, including sales transactions from Shopify. This update is transparent for most users. For more information, click here.

Sales Bulk Actions

• Bulk actions can now be performed on all sales, including advanced sales. Previously, these bulk actions were limited to simple sales only. For the most part, the mechanics for bulk actions are the same for both simple and advanced sales, though there are some differences in how bulk actions are applied in advanced sales. For more information, click here.

Save Reporting Layouts

• When laying out reports, you can now save existing report layouts as new layouts. To ensure that existing layouts remain available for you, we recommend that you save customised reports as new layouts. For more information, click here.

DEAR POS

In addition to the new DEAR functionality, there are also a couple of changes on DEAR POS, namely:

• Tyro/Vantiv (TriPOS) Payment Setup Configuration at Outlet Level. The payment system setup was previously available only from the POS level on the DEAR POS integration page. This setup can now be overridden at the outlet level. This means that different outlets can now use different Tyro or Vantiv TriPOS accounts for payment processing. 

• Users can now be given Can Sell on Account permissions. Users with these permissions can now sell on account in DEAR POS. For more information on these changes, click here.

New Improvements to DEAR

Sync Multiple Credit notes from Shopify Orders

• Multiple credit note support is now available on most sources, including sales transactions from Shopify. This update is transparent for most users. For more information, click here.

Sales Bulk Actions

• Bulk actions can now be performed on all sales, including advanced sales. Previously, these bulk actions were limited to simple sales only. For the most part, the mechanics for bulk actions are the same for both simple and advanced sales, though there are some differences in how bulk actions are applied in advanced sales. For more information, click here.

Save Reporting Layouts

• When laying out reports, you can now save existing report layouts as new layouts. To ensure that existing layouts remain available for you, we recommend that you save customised reports as new layouts. For more information, click here.

DEAR POS

In addition to the new DEAR functionality, there are also a couple of changes on DEAR POS, namely:

• Tyro/Vantiv (TriPOS) Payment Setup Configuration at Outlet Level. Payment system setup was previously available only from the POS level on the DEAR POS integration page. This setup can now be overridden at the outlet level. This means that different outlets can now use different Tyro or Vantiv TriPOS accounts for payment processing. 

• Users can now be given Can Sell on Account permissions. Users with these permissions can now sell on account in DEAR POS. For more information on these changes, click here.

New Improvements to DEAR

Validation of Email Addresses and Phone Numbers Provided during Account Registration

To help clients and partners during the onboarding process, DEAR now validates client contact information, e.g. email addresses and phone numbers, provided during the registration process. Users who enter mobile numbers will either be sent SMS messages or get voice calls, while those who enter landline numbers will get voice calls. Clients and partners that sign up for free trial accounts as well as to any paid subscription plan undergo the same validation process. For more information, click here.

New CSV format for Import/Export of Supplier and Customer Contacts

Supplier and customer contacts can now be imported into DEAR and exported from DEAR via CSV. This will help facilitate the management of supplier and customer contact information. Accounts that have this information available somewhere in a third-party system will find this particularly helpful. For more information, click here.

Tyro/Vantiv (TriPOS) Payment Setup Configuration at Outlet Level

Payment system setup was available previously only from the POS level on the DEAR POS integration page. This setup can now be overridden at the outlet level. This means that different outlets can now use different Tyro or Vantiv TriPOS accounts for payment processing. For more information, click here.

Packing Multiple Boxes with Automatic Scanning

When packing multiple boxes using automatic scanning, the box number to which a scanned item will be added can now be manually entered. This improvement facilitates the Pick, Pack, and Ship Process. For more information, click here.

DEAR POS

Surcharges on Custom Payment Methods

Surcharges can now be added to credit notes and custom payment methods. Multiple surcharges can also be set for sales payments in the DEAR POS outlet. If a payment method does not have a surcharge set up, the sale transaction in the DEAR POS outlet will not reflect a surcharge. For more information, click here.

Adjustment of Tax Rules During Checkout

Tax amounts greater than 0 as well as tax rules can now be adjusted during the checkout process in DEAR POS. To allow editing of the tax amount or rule prior to computing the total sale price, the tax amount on the DEAR POS Checkout page is now hyperlinked. When clicked, it opens the Tax Adjustment window, where the tax amount or rule can be viewed and/or edited, as necessary. For more information, click here.

Saving Purchase Orders as Draft

When creating a purchase order, if you need to put off creating the PO, you can save it as a Draft through a toggle of a button. This is applicable to draft POs only. For more information, click here.