ChannelOnline 7.7.0 Release Notes

ChannelOnline 7.7 focuses on a StoreSite refresh with new look option, plus the ability to create Master (Sales) Orders, supplier enhancements and other upgrades. Areas of focus include:

• Storesite
• Documents
• Quotes & Orders
• Recurring Invoices
• Accounts
• Reports
• Supplier Updates
• Integrations
• Import/Export Updates
• Additional Improvements
• Bug Fixes

Watch the Release Training  7.7 Pre-Release Training.

STORESITE

Layout

A new store layout has been added to StoreSite Admin for optional design options. Now when creating a new store, or editing an existing one, users may choose between Classic and Contemporary. The newer Contemporary option has a cleaner more modern feel within a single fixed width design. Try it out in your preview store before you apply it to your existing site.

These layout options and new features can be found by editing the desired StoreSite in Admin, going to the Layout sub-tab, and selecting the Edit Button at the bottom of the page.

• Home Page Display Order – Want to mix it up on your home page a little? Try moving things around by reordering the sections on the home page. Maybe start with having the spotlight items carousel at the very top.
• Tabs & Pages – If you need additional tabs for your website for additional information about your business or services, try using Pages. Plus, along with the custom HTML editor, users can now iframe an external page or video player into the hosted ChannelOnline page. To insert a video link you must go into the “Source” view on the HTML editor (not the text editor view, see image). Tabs and Pages are now editable from their own Sub-tab in StoreSite Admin.
• StoreSite support messages created in Admin > StoreSite Admin > Support Messages can be made with rich text formatting, set date range, and be assigned to selected stores.
• Button & Text Coloring – More control is available for customizing buttons and text in the advanced mode in the Appearance section.

Add an iFrame or embed Video on a Page:

User Link control changes to enable or disable:

• Account Activity access (display)
• Disable Login user name and password fields from the login page (to be used with punch-outs and single sign-on).
• Show serial and tracking information on the cart.

Classic options only:

• Responsive Design and/or Full Width – Break out of the fixed width store format and allow it to be expanded across the browser window or responsive to fit onto the window of a mobile device.
• Reorder Left Menu – To provide more flexibility and a way to bring to the top sections customers need to see, it is now possible to reorder the sections in the left menu of the storesite. If Company Favorites are important, place that section on top. If My Account sections are rarely needed, then put it on the bottom. Also, check out the new addition to the left menu, Recent Products. There, users can see a list of the last five items they looked at.

Search Results and Product Pages

Some nice to have functionality has been introduced to enhance the end user shopping experience.

• Users on the store will new see the selected items at the top of the search results (classic) or bottom of the window (Contemporary). From there, users may compare up to 10 results, add to the cart or favorites. In Classic these changes will be found in the Line Action dropdown selections.
• New for stores search results is the ability for users to select the number of results they want to see per search results page from either 20, 35, or 50.
• Company Favorites are integrated as pages into the store instead of individual popup windows.
• Services and Labor items (when activated) are available to be browsed on the store by selecting the Services sub-tab under Products.
• Cleaner look to product pages. Added an “Add to Cart” a button and moved MSRP under the customer price on the right side of the page. Plus, you can now set the quantity of a related product on the Related Products tab prior to selecting Add to Quote (like on Favorites Lists).

Cart

Visual and backend improvements to the shopping cart.

• The store cart/document header has adopted the styling of the inside documents with a cleaner design, collapsible sections, and separate row for custom fields.

• Product table actions are using a dropdown style.

• Footer buttons are used instead of links. Notice that the “action” buttons are in the bottom right portion of the page (Checkout, Refresh Prices, and Continue Shopping).

Classic:

Contemporary:

• Two new email notifications have been added to the system to inform SalesReps about cart activity:
  • Saved Cart Notification – Sends an email notification to the assigned sales rep when a customer has Saved a Cart for later on the StoreSite.
  • Abandoned Cart Notification – Sends an email to the assigned sales rep when a customer has placed items in a cart that was not converted to a sales order, cart was abandoned, or the session expired prior to checkout.

Cart setting changes have been put in place for greater display and updated flexibility. These Cart features can be found by editing the desired StoreSite in Admin, going to the Settings sub-tab, and selecting the Edit Button at the bottom of the Cart Section.

• Refresh Pricing on “Copy to Cart as New” and “Edit (Move to Cart)”. Disabling this on the store allows orders on the store to bypass the global Price Profile refresh setting. This helps end users process quotes made for them with special pricing when they check out.
• Added “Show (hide) serial and tracking information on the cart.” Hides tracking information from stores with dedicated users that do not need to see this information, thus simplifying the order page.
• Added “Show (hide) SalesRep information on the cart.” Hides assigned sales representative information from the cart for a basic commerce experience.
• Show only existing billing and shipping addresses on quote, cart, and checkout. Contacts will not be able to edit or add addresses. This option will disable the Add button from the storesite. This makes it so users on the store cannot add shipping addresses to the company or contact’s address list (based on permissions).

Pay by Credit Card

Broadened the use of Credit Card functionality on orders and invoices.

• Customers can log in to the storesite, review an invoice, and pay that Invoice with a credit card (when this is enabled for the customer). All they need to do is press the Pay by Credit Card button in the footer of the invoice, confirm the amount, and then complete the information needed on the payment processor’s hosted page.
• For those of you that use Electronic Signature, you can now set up those documents to be accepted and process with a credit card when approved by the customer.
• Do you have your own backend processor for credit cards? You can now use the new non-electronic setting to indicate that a credit card will be used later on the invoice.

DOCUMENTS

Master (Sales) Orders

Introducing the ability to generate a master (sales) order, called Master Order in ChannelOnline, from which individual Sub-orders can be placed. This feature allows for the ability to create a Master Order for fulfilling product orders based on a single end customer purchase order throughout months or years. Once a regular sales order is converted into a Master Order, it will only be able to generate Sub-orders only. No purchase orders, invoices, or RMAs will be generated from a Master Order. Sub-orders behave more like regular orders but with some reduced capability.

Key points regarding Master Order functionality:

• Sub-orders will contain the Master Order number as the main part of the order number, and all Sub-orders will include a numeric suffix (-01, -02, -03, etc.).
• All purchase order, invoice, and RMA documents will come from the Sub-order.
• Quantity changes and revisions can only be done on the Master Order (not on the Sub-order) for tracking changes.
• Master Orders will track the quantity of each line item (similar to invoicing) to inform users as to the number remaining from the original amount that can be added to a Sub-order.
  • Example: Line 1 on Master Order 201903 contains 120 units of an item. In Q1 you ship 30 of them on Sub-order 201903-001, the remaining balance of 90 will available to be placed on separate Sub-order(s).
• If a line on the Sub-order is deleted, the quantity of that line will be returned to the Master Order.
  • Example: You added all 40 of a line item from a Master Order onto Sub-order 201903-001, but realized it should only be 10. You need to delete the line with 40 from the Sub-order, making all 40 available again on the Master Order, and then re-create the line on the Sub-order with only 10.

Document Path w/ Master SO
Master SO > Sub SO > Purchase Order
> Invoice
> Recurring Invoice > Billing Invoices
> RMA

Enable Master Orders
To enable this feature go to Admin > Company Settings > Documents and expand the Sales section. Select “Enable Convert to Master Order functionality on Sales orders…” and click Save at the bottom of the page.

Convert to Master Order

After the Enable setting has been saved in Company Settings, sales order documents will have a new button labeled “Convert to Master Order” in the center of the footer bar. Selecting that option will convert the entire order document into a Master Order. Once converted, it cannot be reverted back into a regular order (to do that, it would need to be copied into a new quote and converted to a sales order, and then deleted).

This document is the master record for all subsequent documents to come from it. On a Master Order you can add lines, update quantity, change pricing, select suppliers, and modify payment options. Document revisions are able to be performed on the Master Order but are disabled on Sub-orders. Make and track all changes on the Master Order.

Create Sub-order(s)
Master Orders contain only the ability to create Sub-orders. On a Master Order, the Create Doc button on the top of the product table contains only two selections: “Create Sub-order” and “Create Sub-order (All)”. Select one of the two options when you need to create a Sub-order. Keep in mind that you will select line item quantities on the Create Page for all selected lines.

• Use Create Sub-order when you want to select individual lines from the Master Order to generate a Sub-order
• Use Create Sub-order (All) when all the lines on the Master Order are going to be needed on the Sub-order

Numbering
All Sub-order numbers are to be generated from the original Master Order number (originating from the Quote). Sub-orders in the system will have an extension (suffix) added to the Master Order number that counts up from “-01”. The first Sub-order generated will start with “-01” and increase incrementally as Sub-orders get created (this will designate them as Sub-orders linked to the original).

Sub-order Functions
Sub-orders behave primarily like regular orders for creating other documents with a few editing limitations. These limitations include: no edits for quantity or price, no revisions, and no additions through “Line Actions” or “Add/Import/Update”.

Reports
A section to the Sales reports has been added for running reports specific to Master Orders. Sub-orders have been added to the regular sales order report stats.

QUOTES & ORDERS

Some improvements have been made to help organize your quotes and orders when selling service and labor items. To remove all subtotals from a document, simply use the new Line Action called “Delete All Subtotals”.

• Group by Type – Product, Service, Labor are grouped together on a document without any section separations
• Group by Type with Subtotals – Product, Service, Labor grouping on a document with subtotal headers and subtotal line

• Recurring Amount & Reminder Dates – These fields were added at the line level for subscription and recurring service items. The new recurring amount field will be calculated automatically based on an item’s billing frequency, and display the amount to be billed on that selected frequency (weekly, monthly, quarterly, or annually). Additionally, when you add a service item to a quote, users can set a reminder date for when the service needs to be renewed.

• Printing Service and Labor Subtotals – In ChannelOnline 7.6, the ability to see the subtotals of all these products was added to the internal view of the quote and order documents. These fields are now associated with the Subtotals print settings and will appear on the printed document when Subtotals are selected.

RECURRING INVOICES

Updates have been made to Recurring Invoices for improved productivity and tracking.

• Voiding a Billing Invoice – Billing invoices generated for a cancelled recurring invoice (subscription) can be done on the Schedule tab of the cancelled subscription. On the invoice schedule page, a new column labeled “Void” appears on the right side of a cancelled subscription’s schedule for all generated billing invoices. From there, the billing invoices can be changed to void status. Example: The end customer has paid 3 of 4 billing invoices but chooses to cancel the service. Being unable to collect on the 4th billing invoice, it can be voided so that the balance remaining is not outstanding for the end customer (because it will never be collected).
• Recurring Invoice Activity Log has been updated to track when changes are made to these document elements:
  • Adding/merging in new lines/items
  • Changes in Qty or price
  • Deleting lines/items
  • Updates to the subscription terms
  • Finalized Date
• Send a system email to your end customer with the recurring billing schedule attached to the message. Just click the Send button at the bottom of the Schedule page and the delivery window email feature will be enacted. The end customer’s email will populate in the To field, and the message body will be pre-populated from the email template stored in Admin > System Emails > Document Delivery.

ACCOUNTS

We have upgraded some of the the editing functionality on accounts to give users quicker access to the information that needs to be edited. Now when an edit link inside a widget is selected, the user will be presented with an editing lightbox that is targeted at the information that needs editing. No more need to scroll down a long page to find what you are looking for. Links inside the Settings widget affected include: Custom Fields, Custom Links, CPAS, and Shipping Rates.

Prospect accounts have been upgraded to allow contacts to be assigned and to access a storesite. Contacts enabled to access the storesite will inherit the Prospect’s catalog, pricing, and payment options.

REPORTS

More elements have been added to reporting.

• Service item expiration reminder dates can be found on the Sales > Mrf# reports sub-tab. This is useful when running reports to see when service items are going to be renewed.
• Introduced a new report under StoreSite Stats > Users, which provides a list of storesite users based on last login information. Through this report, administrative users for a specific store in ChannelOnline can find out which accounts/contacts are assigned, if they are active or inactive, total page views, and when they last logged in to the store.
• Get Invoice and Billing Invoice payment information from payment window for documents with multiple payments and methods. These fields are now available as columns with the ability to subtotal by document (Doc): Payment Date, Payment Amount, Payment Type, and Chk / Ref / Trans #.
• Tax Certificate numbers and dates have been added to Account reports. Select the Tax Exempt ID# and Tax Exempt Exp. column options when running the report.

SUPPLIER UPDATES

The handling of auto-fulfill backorders was improved for all integrations suppliers in this release. Backorders will now update as submitted purchase orders to ensure more timely accurate statuses.

Arlington (Digitek)
Updated Arlington Ind. (formerly Digitek) integration to capture shipping and tracking updates for Autofulfill purchase orders.

D&H
Incorporated the use of payment account numbers when sending purchase order to D&H. For example, it will send the flooring account number in place of the reseller’s account number.

Tech Data
Import quotes from Tech Data into a ChannelOnline quote. First, select “Import Tech Data Quote” from the Add/Import/Update button. Pick from a list of quotes from a date range. And add that quote to your open quote document in ChannelOnline. Activate this feature by selecting the checkbox with “Enable the ability to import Tech Data Quotes through the config import feature” in the Tech Data settings page.

Corrected instances where Tech Data autofulfill purchase orders were not updating backorders accurately.

SYNNEX
Support for retrieving HP Big Deal and Special Pricing through the real-time price and availability check on quotes and orders for SYNNEX. At the line item, add the special deal number into the contract field in ChannelOnline. When present, ChannelOnline will check with SYNNEX to retrieve the special deal pricing (cost) for that contract number. Special deal pricing is then transferred from the SO to the PO for submission to SYNNEX. You can choose to update special deal pricing on the PO or leave the cost as it came from the original sales order by using the “Update Contract $” checkbox on the SYNNEX PO document.

INTEGRATIONS

The existing ConnectWise integration had some minor fixes and adjustments.

• Resolved an issue where tax was not populating in ConnectWise when set at 100% or greater, and updated user message to coincide with the error response.
• Custom mapping of COL Account Types to Account types in CW.

Salesforce integration was updated to support for exporting Master Orders to opportunities and orders in Salesforce.

IMPORT/EXPORT/XML UPDATES