New Release – 16th FEBRUARY 2020 – New Feature: Production Module, Custom Menus as a Horizontal Navigation Bar on DEAR B2B Portals, DEAR Payments (BETA), New UI Improvements

New Features

Feature 1: Production Module

Impact area: DEAR Production Module

Introduction: The Production module is aimed at addressing the needs of the production process. New production features will provide our current customers with powerful, logical manufacturing solutions to add to their inventory solution.

Following on from our most recent release, we are continuing to improve the Production module functionality and add features. This release is focused on capacity planning, production scheduling, and bulk authorise and release actions for production orders.

Pre-conditions: None.

Functionality:

• Capacity Planner – The Capacity Planner is a resource allocation reporting and re-planning tool. It shows the capacity for a selected planning period (available, allocated and consumed resource capacity), which resources are overallocated and allows re-planning of capacity to ensure smooth delivery of produced goods.
• Scheduler – The DEAR Production Scheduler visualises production order information. Order information can be viewed in the form of a Gantt chart. It provides transparency for the production process so that the user always knows what should be produced and when it should be completed. Production orders, production runs and operations can be rescheduled directly from the Scheduler.
  
• Production Orders List – The list of Production Orders shows all Production Orders and Production Runs with their general data in one place. Production Orders List allows the user to search and filter Production Orders and consolidate Orders. Orders can be authorised and released singly and in bulk directly from the list view.
  
• Production Process Customisation Settings – New settings allow the following:
  
  • A Production Order can be created from sale authorisation for a finished good.
  • Production Orders can be created in Draft, Planned or Released status (Orders can be automatically planned and automatically released).
  • Created Production Order quantity can be set to produce just the sales order quantity, produce the sales order quantity and maintain minimum stock levels, or produce the difference between the available quantity and the quantity required in sales to cover a shortage.

For more information, see Getting Started with the Production Module.

Feature 2: Custom Menus as a Horizontal Navigation Bar on DEAR B2B Portals

Impact area: DEAR B2B Integration, DEAR B2B Portal front-end

Introduction: Custom menus can now be used for horizontal navigation bars on DEAR B2B portals. The colour schemes for these custom menus are also configurable. Custom menus are only available for use in horizontal navigation bars – they cannot be used for vertical navigation bars. Previously, only product categories, brands and tags could be used in navigation bars on DEAR B2B portals.

Pre-conditions: DEAR B2B Licence, new or existing DEAR B2B portal

Functionality: Go to the Navigations tab on a DEAR B2B portal, then select Custom Menu from the list of options for use with a Horizontal Navigation Bar. To set the colour scheme for the custom menu, go to the Appearance tab of the DEAR B2B portal. For more information, see Getting Started with DEAR B2B Portal.

Feature 3: DEAR Payments (Beta currently ongoing for Australia-based customers with active DEAR Inventory subscriptions)

Impact area: DEAR B2B, DEAR POS

Introduction: DEAR Payments is DEAR’s own payments platform, designed to let your customers pay for their transactions with ease. DEAR Payments complies with PCI standards, uses TLS 1.2 encryption for both transactions and checkout, and works with all invoices generated in DEAR. The platform is especially handy if you are using DEAR B2B Portal (DEAR POS support is coming in a future version). Customers in Australia with active DEAR subscriptions may already join the beta testing program for the service. DEAR hopes to roll out the service in other locations soon.

Pre-conditions:

• Active DEAR Inventory subscription
• Business registration in Australia

Functionality: DEAR Payments is available on the Integrations page. There are three (3) major steps involved in signing up for DEAR Payments:

• generate and sign the DEAR Payments Service Agreement
• complete the DEAR merchant account application by entering business and related information
• DEAR verifies applicant’s information and approves the application.
  

For more information, see the following KB articles:

• Getting Started with DEAR Payments
• Using the DEAR Payments Dashboard
• Managing Emails in DEAR Payments
• DEAR Payments FAQs

New UI Improvements

DEAR Inventory is gradually implementing new UI improvements to make the system more user-friendly and in line with current standards. For a start, we have updated the following:

• Subscription
• Reference Books
  • Default field values for Customers/Suppliers/Products
  • Warranties
  • Discounts
  • Order Routing
  • Taxation Rules
  • Deals
  • DEAR to DEAR Networking
• Inventory Module
  • Product Availability
  • Inventory Write-Off
  • CSV Import.

We’re currently updating our documentation to reflect these changes.

Customers will immediately notice the UI changes on the above modules. UI improvements for other modules are already scheduled and will be implemented in the coming weeks.