ChannelOnline 7.6.0 Release Notes

ChannelOnline 7.6 focuses on backend improvements that will affect site-wide product search, storesite administration and frontend cleanup, contact address management, recurring billing invoices, automated updates for manual supplier purchase orders, and other minor enhancements. Areas of focus include:

• Documents
• Accounts
• Admin
• Integrations
• Supplier Updates
• Import/Export Updates
• Additional Improvements
• Bug Fixes

Watch the Release Training 7.6 Release Training.

Documents

Recurring Invoices and Billing
With the expansion of Invoices to include recurring billing, you can now create invoices to support your As-a-Service offerings and monthly subscriptions. Recurring invoice creation is compatible with both line level invoice generation and convert to sales order to invoice methods. Combine the use of services and labor items from your sales orders onto recurring invoices and add renewal reminders. There are three types of recurring invoice setups that are available for use each time you generate a new recurring invoice:

• Divide total amount (including: tax, shipping and handling) across all recurring billing invoices. Use for large installations or system upgrades.
• Repeat total amount (including: tax, shipping and handling) for all recurring billing invoices. Good for basic monthly subscriptions where the service item is set up as a single month and the invoice subscription is used to determine the term length.
• Charge all tax, shipping and handling on the first invoice and divide remaining item amount across all recurring billing invoices. For large projects with multiple phases.

NOTE: Service timelines on the quote are for converting to a sales order, but are not used in the setup of the recurring invoice. This allows for the subscription to be set up and for additional items to be added into it for future bills within the subscription term. The ability to add items to an Unpaid or Partial Paid invoice is available for both regular and recurring invoices.

Invoice Workflow
For regular invoices: Quote> Sales Order> Invoice
For recurring billing is simple: Quote> Sales Order> Recurring Invoice> Billing Invoices

Scheduling Billing Invoices

Upon creation of a recurring invoice, you determine the start date and the number of terms that the schedule is going to be carried out. For example, if you have a monthly services agreement that runs for a year, you can generate a recurring invoice by selecting those items from the initial sales order, selecting Create Recurring Invoice, then by checking the quantities on the ‘Create Invoice: Recurring’ window and clicking the Create Invoice button (like regular line level invoice create). Then on the Payment Options window in the Subscription section, make subscription selections for auto generating billing invoices.

Start Date:

End Date:

Service Term: (# of months)

Billing Frequency: (Monthly, Quarterly, Semiannually, and Annually)

Billing Date: (day of the month; days 1 -28)

Renewal Term: (Monthly, Quarterly, Semiannually, and Annually)

Auto-renewal: (yes/no)

Once the first billing invoice is generated, the terms for the subscription will become non-editable.

Invoice Print Templates

Three new document template components have been added to support Recurring and Billing Invoices:

• Subscription Details
• Payments
• Payment Schedule

The account’s assigned storesite invoice document template and print settings will be used for all system-generated Billing Invoices being emailed automatically to the customer. This can be set by going to Admin > Storesite Admin > Settings > Document Print Settings.

Recurring Invoice Header

Edit Payment option for Recurring Invoices is available under the subscription section for current billing invoice. This is unlike the regular invoice header where it is located in the top portion of the header. For recurring invoices, use the Schedule page (see sub-tab next to Activity) to edit payments for past or current billing invoices.

Editing Product Line Items

Improved edibility of all invoices. Now you can change quantity, modify price, add and delete items. But be careful; what you add will not automatically sync back to the original Sales Order. It is still preferable to add them there. Users with permissions to unlock and edit invoices can just click on ‘Unlock’ first, and then ‘Edit’ in the footer of the page to make changes. Remember to Finalize and Lock the document once you are done.

Payment Options

‘Pay Invoices by Credit Card’ is now available in the Payments window internally and on an invoice for end customers on the StoreSite.

• In Admin: On the invoice in the Payment window, select “Credit Card Electronic”, the amount to be paid, and then the Save and Pay button to call your hosted processor page for accepting the credit card. Once processed, the card details will be added to the document and recorded in the document Activity Log.

NOTE: Credit Card payment information captured at the time of order (when the sales order is generated) is now transferring to the invoice payment window when the invoice gets created.

There is now a split on the Check or Money Order Check option from the ACH / EFT Payment option on the settings page and on the payment options page of the document.

There is a second Manual Credit Card processing option for accounts when you don’t want to send them to the hosted processing page or don’t have an enabled hosted processor.

Document Tab / Invoices

Combined standard and billing invoices together on the All Quotes and Orders sub-tab for quick reference. For filtered listings of standard, billing, and recurring invoice documents, go to the Invoices sub-tab where the new ‘type’ dropdown has been added.

Invoice Email Templates

With the expanded invoice options, we have added three new email templates which can be found and activated by going to Admin > System E-mails > System Generated > Invoice Processing.

• Recurring Billing Invoice Notification – Sends an email when a recurring billing invoice has been generated.
• Past Due Notification – Sends an email when an invoice payment is past due by a set number of days. To tell the system how many days past due to send the notification it is set in the Company Settings > Documents > Invoice section under “Set the number of days after an invoice is Past Due…”.
• Invoice Paid – Sends an email when an invoice payment has been made in the payments window.

Print Options

Header and Footer print options for both Quote and Proposal templates. When using both Header Text and Footer Text, both must be of the same type – i.e. both must contain html or both must not contain html. This setting is found under Admin > Document Templates > Quotes (or Proposals) > select a template to Edit > PDF Options.

View as PDF or HTML in Delivery Window – allows you to see the document as you plan to send it.

Accounts

Address Manager

Improved a user’s ability to manage account addresses for billing and shipping across the company and contacts. The account edit Billing & Shipping Addresses section has two new sub-tabs. The first is for the account’s company addresses, and the second tab is for the individual contact’s addresses. This allows management of addresses that a user might have entered on the store, or gives an internal representative the ability to assign a specific address to only a single contact. From either tab, you can create new addresses, assign them an address type, and determine if it is a default address.

Customer Purchase Order (PO) Capture
PO capture options have been updated to allow control at the account level for how end customer PO numbers get collected.

• Required with purchase order payment option ONLY (default)
• Required for ALL payment options
• Optional for all orders regardless which payment option is selected

Admin

Global Custom Fields

To simplify the way document global custom fields operate, and provide more flexibility with usage, the implementation rules have been modified

• After you create a custom field, you first enabled it, and then chose to make it required.
• The required designation is internal and independent of displaying the field on the store.
• If you chose to display the field on the store, the ability to allow users to Edit the field on the store is independent of the ability to View (see) it.
• If that field has been marked required, it will be required internally and on the store when it has been marked as editable (Store Edit is checked in the settings).

Checkbox Field

In 7.6 we expanded the types of supported custom fields with the addition of a checkbox. Checkboxes can be made required, and therefore be used for things like agreeing to terms and conditions or prompting internal reps to take action prior to sending a quote. You can have a description for the checkbox and an associated link.

Integrations

ConnectWise

• Custom mapping of COL statuses to Opportunity status in CW
• Custom mapping of COL Account Types to Account types in CW

Supplier Updates

Petra Industries
New to ChannelOnline with basic catalog support.
Petra is a leading wholesale electronics distributor offering thousands of products from hundreds of leading brands. Their product assortment includes cell phone accessories, portable & personal electronics, automotive, marine, GPS, home theater, pro audio & home entertainment, surveillance & security, outdoor, computer peripherals, appliance accessories & more. Our expertise in tech isn’t limited to the products we sell. It’s a philosophy that comes from within—a commitment to flexibility and adaptability that runs through the heart of the company. Petra’s best-in-class product information, superior Third Party Logistics (3PL) solutions, dedicated account reps and in-house customer service team provide you all the tools your business needs for effective distribution solutions. Learn more at www.petra.com.

Automated Manual PO Updates

ChannelOnline will now automatically check for updates on manual POs from these four major suppliers; D & H, Ingram Micro, SYNNEX, and Tech Data. If you create the PO from a Sales Order and submit it to the supplier, just add the confirmation number to the PO when you convert it to Submitted. With the confirmation number in place, the system will look for updates just as it does for electronically submitted autofulfill orders.

• ‘Get Confirmation Number’ button is next to the confirmation number field to help you retrieve those numbers from Ingram Micro and Tech Data. If you are missing the confirmation number, and the PO you gave them matches what is in ChannelOnline, the system will look for the confirmation number at the distributor for you.
• PO Retrieval Tool
• PO Linking Tool – mark as dropship for ship / track transfer to SO

NOTE: D&H and SYNNEX updates with the correct PO number will work if they have split the PO into multiple sales orders within their system.

Ingram Micro

• Improved backend updating of line level purchase order tracking statuses for when a document has, or does not have, duplicate item lines.

Tech Data

• Support for the handling of special characters for Tech Data Supplier Website Login passwords.
• Better status and data handling of electronic software/warranties when containers come into the system with 0000000s as tracking numbers.

Synergy

• Added support for importing and displaying promotional pricing and effective dates.

Import/Export/XML Updates

• There are no xml schema updates for 7.6. The link is https://ccs.usm.channelonline.com/schema/7.6/schema.zip
• Ability to create custom suppliers/vendors with the import supplier XML transaction.
• Update SO serial and asset tags via update_entity_request
• deleteCustomer
• deleteContact
• addTracking
• deleteBillingAddress
• deleteShippingAddress

Additional Improvements

• Customer activity log tracking for delete and restore.
• Activity history when importing/exporting accounts.
• Activity history when running reports viewable through the Profile View in the Personnel section in Admin. Captures:
  • Action = [TYPE] Report (TYPE is the left nav section: Account, Sales, Proposal, RMAs, Purchasing, Supplier RMAs, StoreSite Stats)
  • Description = Filters selected but not columns (Example: Report Date, Date, From, Status, Company?)
  • User = Logged in user
  • Timestamp = timestamp

• Added new report status filter to Report > SalesReps called “Orders with Unshipped Item”, which has a combined list of documents with Submitted, Partial Ship and Backordered statuses.
• Add hourly and monthly Service and Labor items to Configs and Bundles.
• Display Product, Service, and Labor subtotals under the product table on quote and order documents. To enable, go to Company Settings > Documents; then open the Misc section and select “Display service and labor subtotals on quotes, carts, sales orders and invoices”.

Bug Fixes

• Save/Add Shipping & Tracking was added to the Standard Plus view.
• Country suffix on manufacturer part numbers not matching supplier provided part numbers causing no structure product content to appear. Affected manufacturers included: LG Electronics, Brother, and Samsung.
• Service item creation errors which randomly occurred when using a custom created item number has been resolved.
• The dropdown list in the upper right for “Open Documents” will now get updated to reflect the newly assigned contact instead of the old contact.
• Restricted access rights around notes and tasks to be related to a user’s ability to view and edit accounts and documents. If the document or account is view-only for the user, so will be its associated notes and tasks.
• Ability to add multiple catalogs on account import files.
• Now accounts are view only when the user has no rights to edit them.
• Display of asset tag information with serial numbers when printing documents.
• Attachment being renamed with the system ID when you download them from the document.
• Resolved an issue where some autofulfill suppliers would have double the number of actual containers for tracking information.