Christmas 2023 – Support Availability

Infoplex Ltd’s Christmas availability for the Festive Period of 2023 and into 2024.

Christmas 2022 – Support Availability

Infoplex Ltd’s Christmas availability for the Festive Period of 2022 and into 2023.

Multi-Currency Purchase Orders now available – MultiTAS 6.2 released

Multi-Currency Purchase Orders are not on everyone’s Christmas list. But for those select few whose list it is on, Christmas has come early. MultiTAS v6.2 has been released this week after 7 months of work and the odd sweary word. This blog post has a wee rundown of features and improvements that it contains. Inevitably there is probably also a bug or 2, if you find any please report to Support.

Multi-Currency Purchase Orders (Entry/Receiving/Invoicing)

 You can now create a multi-currency purchase order (P/O) in any of the currencies that TASBooks supports (which is most of them). You can then receive the goods from this P/O and invoice the P/O – all in the currency of the Suppliers Invoice, and these amounts together with the base currency values are what are posted to the Suppliers Account.

This ‘closes’ the multi-currency (multi-currency sales orders and multi-currency purchase orders) adventure Infoplex has been on for a number of years. Initially we added these features to Sales Orders and now they have been added to Purchase Orders.  As a reminder, we added support for Supplier Pricelists and Multiple Stock Locations to Purchase Orders in v6 and v6.1 so those adventures have green ticks against them too.

Other Improvements

  • 95% of customers use Outlook for emailing documents from MultiTAS. But there are the hardcore 5% who for whatever reason do not. We’ve made improvements for these customers by changing the component used to MailKit which appears to handle the security requirements of modern email systems better than the component built into Windows that we were using.
    • For this same subset of customers, when emailing the cc and bcc fields now handle multiple addresses separated by a semi-colon.
  • When entering Sales Orders, if you remove a product from Back Order MultiTAS will check to see if the Cost Price of the product has changed. If so you’ll be asked what you want to do (keep existing/update).
  • When producing Sales Order documents, if there are no lines to be shipped then MultiTAS will not produce a document.
  • The Location Stock Report now has a ‘Negative Stock Only’ option.
  • When receiving a P/O and GMVs are not used, the database transactions involved are wrapped into a single one. This means if one part of the process (e.g. invoicing) fails then the receiving part will not be committed to the system.
  • A new system has been introduced that allows MTADIF.dat Journal Import files to contain foreign currency values that MultiTAS converts to base currency values when importing. For this to work your journal import file must be called MTADIF-E.dat. MultiTAS will look for that file first, if not found and a MTADIF.dat file is found that will be imported instead. If neither is found then Error Town here we come.

 

Notable Bug Fixes (not all!)

  • Fixed issue when emailing multiple P/O’s to the same supplier.
  • Fixed various issues with VAT when entering Purchase Orders and producing P/O documents.
  • Fixed issues with discounts on Purchase Order lines (who even gets a discount from suppliers?)
  • When entering a Purchase Order, the Suppliers outstanding orders value was not updated – it is now
  • Fixed an issue when posting Credit Notes where the ‘Update Stock’ flag was ignored

 

So, there you have it. MultiTAS 6.2 is available for download now.

If updating from v5 (or – gulp – earlier) you will need to remove the existing version of MultiTAS you have before updating to v6. If you already have v6 then you can skip this step and install over the top of your version. Please remember you will need to have a valid support contract to update to this version that adds Multi-Currency Purchase Orders. If you do not currently have one please get in touch as we may have a Christmas offer available to help you out.

 

via GIPHY

MultiTAS 6 released with new features

After 15 months of hard work, MultiTAS 6 has been released.

This is a major update to MultiTAS, building upon a lot of the work that has gone on previously, and includes key new features that have long been on our roadmap. It finally ‘closes the loop’ in terms of Purchase Order functionality.

Here is what’s new:

  • Purchase Order Receiving. This has been on our to-do list since version 1 and we’ve finally finished it. With this first release, there are no bells and whistles (for example: multiple locations, foreign currency).  Yet. These will follow in subsequent updates.
  • Purchase Order Invoicing. Goes hand in hand with Purchase Order Receiving. As with receiving goods, we want to allow this basic version to settle before adding multiple locations and foreign currency support.
  • Document Names. This has some customers’ wish list since, well, forever. With MultiTAS 6 you can now use our new drag and drop feature to set what you want exported Order document filenames to be. Choose from type, date, document number and others.
  • Improvements to Installers. For customers with multiple solutions (e.g. MultiTAS, Infoplex SDK, Tax Manager) whereby when an update was applied to one solution it broke the other(s). We’re pleased to say that MultiTAS 6 resolves this issue from hereon.
  • Sales Order Entry. A new Stock Level check when you convert a quotation to any other type, previously no check was carried out. If there isn’t enough stock then you have the standard options (go negative or on back order)
  • Bug Fixes. There are minor bugs and glitches that appear from nowhere and never disappear.  Well, we’ve fixed the ones we know about. If you find any others, please don’t be shy in letting us know…!

So, there you have it. MultiTAS 6 is available for download now.

As this is a major update (and due to the improvements to installers) you will need to remove the existing version of MultiTAS you have before updating to v6.

Subsequent updates to v6 (e.g. from v6.0.1 to v6.1.1) should not require this extra step.

ePrivacy, GDPR and Brexit

We’re going to keep this as straightforward as possible…

In case you missed it, the United Kingdom (UK) left the European Union (EU) on 31st January. The UK is now in a transition period. Nothing has changed. When the transition period ends, nothing will change.

Clear? Good. Now we’ll go into a bit more detail…

The TASBooks market is based in the UK and the Republic of Ireland. As such, our market is based in the UK and the Republic of Ireland. If you trade with a country that is a member of the EU, you must conform to EU rules and regulations (such as ePrivacy and GDPR). The Republic of Ireland is a member of the EU. That means that we will conform to EU rules and regulations for our customers in the Republic of Ireland.

But what about customers in the UK? When we left the EU, all existing rules and regulations were rolled into one and transferred to the UK. As such, the rules and regulations that existed in the EU on 31st January continue to exist in the UK on 1st February. It means that in the UK our customers are protected by the EU’s rules and regulations and we must continue to abide by them.

Nothing has changed. To be honest, it’s made life easy. Instead of having two sets of rules and regulations to which to conform, we have only one. It would cost money and time to implement new rules and put into place new procedures.

What happens in the future is still a bit… vague, shall we say? If the UK agrees to stay close to the EU, then it should not prove to be a problem. If the UK diverges from the EU, we will have to abide by both EU rules and regulations (for our Irish customers) and any new UK rules and regulations.

In the meantime, we’ve already taken some actions to facilitate any future changes that may come to pass. First, we’re making sure that all of our data is held on servers within the EU. Our website is hosted on servers in Manchester but will be moved to servers in Germany in March. We use Office 365 and our data is held on servers within the EU. Our CRM of choice is HubSpot. They store data on servers in the United States and in Germany. These servers are regulated by the EU-US Privacy Shield. Our accounting and financial data is held on servers in the US. These too are protected by the EU-US Privacy Shield.

Secondly, we’re making some changes to the way in which we use HubSpot. We’ve used a variety of tools to get in touch with our customers over the years and data has been stored everywhere. We’ve decided to consolidate our customer data and our marketing data into HubSpot. In the future, all of our mail shots will come from HubSpot and will include the ability to amend or delete your communication and marketing preferences. We’re building new mailing lists and subscriptions to achieve this. We’re going to make it easier for you to opt-in to software updates but opt-out of marketing emails.

This work is ongoing. We’re trying do things with minimal interruption and without sending you mail shots by mistake. If we do – we’re sorry. We didn’t mean to do it. Please be kind.

We’ll let you know when everything is finished.

Making Tax Digital and beyond

It’s been twelve months since we launched our Making Tax Digital software for TASBooks and we thought it was time to step back, take stock, and let you know what we have planned for Tax Manager in the twelve months ahead…

Tax Manager has been a phenomenal success. Working alongside HMRC, we’ve been able to develop software that takes the hassle out of submitting a VAT return. The feedback from you – our customers – has been so a real boost; you’ve shared your experiences with us and provided us with some ideas for a little further down the road.

What’s most rewarding, however, is the money that’s been saved by all of you by using our software. We know that out software can save businesses over £200 on licensing and support every year. That’s why Tax Manager continues to attract new users every month.

But what’s ahead? Firstly, most (if not all) of our customers asked for submission receipts and we’ve already delivered on this. We introduced submission receipts to both Tax Manager and Tax Manager for MultiTAS. If you haven’t updated yet, you should visit our support section to download the latest version of our software. We have a few more ideas in the pipeline for how we can use these receipts, but we’re not going to reveal too much about them at the moment.

Second, we’re looking into ways in which we can streamline the entire process for those customers that have more ‘complex arrangements’ – such as exemptions or VAT groups – and make it easier to submit returns. We are looking to allow direct submission without the need to export returns. We want to make our software are easy to use as possible.

Third, there’s a new version of Tax Manager and Tax Manager for MultiTAS due to be released in the coming weeks. It includes new tools to combat fraud and augments the existing security checks between accounting software and HMRC.

Finally, one of the biggest issues has been downtime. We’ll be honest with you – HMRC haven’t exactly been forthcoming on this front but they are getting better. We’ve already added a Service Status page to the website and we’re adding some additional features. The home page on our website will include a ticker that features service updates and product releases. We’re also working on a notification system that will push an alert or message to users as soon as possible about potential issues from HMRC.

That’s it. We’re sure that over the next twelve months somebody out there will suggest a feature. If we can do it and if it would benefit everybody, then we’ll add it to the list.

Christmas 2019 – Support Availability

It’s Christmas. Again. If we hear the letters M, T or D one more time…

We know that some of you will be working over the Festive period and will no doubt uncover a variety of bugs, glitches, hiccups and quandaries that, well, quite frankly, should not be there. With that in mind, you’ll want to know what our plans are for Christmas (aside from turkey, brandy butter and port – not together, obviously).

  • We will close at 5pm on Friday 20th December and re-open at 9am on 6th January 2020
  • To allow human batteries to recharge, during this time we will operate a reduced support service
  • Email support will be available on 27th December, 30th December and 3rd January. We will respond to support requests as quickly as possible but please note data issues, help with software upgrades and software installation on new computers and such like will have to wait until the New Year
  • We will not be undertaking any new development work until the New Year.

All that remains is to wish all of our customers a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year (if we don’t speak to you beforehand) – we really appreciate your business and support.