Jiwa New Release is Here ! : 10 December 2006
This release is a significant release for JIWA Financials. Significant positive
steps have been made in terms of stability, security, speed and functionality.
We have been working on the functionality for almost 9 months, so this is the
culmination of many hours of coding and testing. The key to the changes has been
to implement completely new sections of code in many places. We re-discover the
functionality of the form and then replace it whilst adding the new functionality,
essentially creating new more purpose built software in the process.
While this may take more time in coding, it consumes less time in testing, allowing
the functionality to be signed off in the code in about the same time.
The result ..New refreshed cleaner, faster, maintainable code. The outcome for you,
our customer. a more functional, faster and robust system.
Reminders/Notifications/Note Types - JIWA To-Do's
This new area of JIWA has added CRM like functionality to JIWA Financials.
A To-Do may be set up for a future time to recall a task, can be set to recur,
may be dependent on other tasks, collaborate with others and track the progress of
the task by the administrator.
This is a great tool for your sales and operations
staff to log and track all the tasks that they need to follow up or have others
follow up through out the working week.
Cash Book/Receipts/Payments/Bank Reconciliation
A new Cash Receipts Book, Cash Payments Book and Bank Reconciliation have been
implemented in order to cater for the future introduction of Foreign Exchange
Banking. The Bank Reconciliation is designed in a new format that allows presented
transactions to be ticked facilitating easier use and training.
Sales Orders
We have added To-Do's to Sales Orders, allowed the user to Manage Tabs and added
the ability to add Custom fields to the Sales Order Lines. We have changed the
Printing from Sales Orders to allow the choice of printing a document or a document
type. We have added a Search Option that allows for the selection of quantity during
the search. Sales Order Processing now allows for breakout customisation and automated
running enabling the Sales Order system to be configured to better cope with varied
sales order workflows and thereby deliver improved customer service.
Inventory
We have added new Debtor Group & Inventory Group Pricing that is able to be maintained
from either Inventory or Debtors. There is also a new Manual Backorder Fulfillment
function that is useful for companies who wish to ship "nearly" complete, and we have
sped up the summary display of Multi Warehouse information in the system.
These two functions will increase the diversity of inventory pricing and shipping functionality
that you can provide to your customers.
Creditors
This module has been completely re-developed to which we have transformed our methodology
of managing Unrealised Fx Gains and Losses so that it simplifies the management of this
theoretical concept. We have also changed the way we calculate Realised Fx Gains and
Losses by calculating and posting to the ledger during the allocation of the Creditor Payment,
thus keeping the General Ledger and Creditors Ledger continuously synchronised rather
than waiting for a month end rollover to do this process. Anything simpler for you to
manage is good on a "less is more" basis.
Purchasing
We have added workflow options to the purchasing process such that purchase orders can be
controlled by multiple steps. For example, combined with the To-Do notification system, a
workflow could include approval from a manager, update from an EDI system or acknowledgment
from supplier of receipt of order. Multiple steps in the process are possible. This allows
for faster and more managed Purchase Order placement.
Service Manager
We have added the ability to receive a Return Authorisation into the Service Management system
allowing the creation of an "RA" for the customer and managing the return of the product,
with workflow choices, through to the return of the goods, checking back into a "Returned Goods"
warehouse and the issue of a credit note and / or the reshipping of replacement goods.
You get to have more control over what is happening in your returns department.
System Management
- Logical Printers
- Security
- Speed of operation
Printers are now controlled by an administrator and referenced by name from a central location to add security to printing and easier management in a Terminal Services environment.
We have beefed up the security to include new password encryption and lockout for report changes so that users can't replace an authorised report with an unauthorised report.
We now allow users to change their own passwords so that they are actually private and therefore place responsibility with the use of the password. We also use different credentials for client login, client operation and client printing to more tightly secure the database.
More security without being intrusive in the operation of the software is a step forward.
We have replaced the former "ini" files with "xml" files which allows for faster client loading and reduced Server Load at login.
We have also changed the connection to the database to optionally use OLE-DB (ADO) vs. ODBC.
To speed up printing, the printing connections are now all using ADO.
The upshot is that ADO is a more efficient connection for larger systems.
Faster is better than slower!
