Version 5.3.1

The next version of Quantus Financials is now released. The majority of the changes in the system are for fault fixing only, but some are significant. In addition to many cosmetic changes the following important items have been added to the system:

Sales Invoice

The sales invoice template has been improved and now deals with the printable area of the invoice as well as the account coding screen. This means that it is possible to template a complete invoice and call it back as many times as you wish. There can be multiple templates for different purposes. The template can handle invoices with a predetermined value or a variable value (blank).

Purchase Order

The same changes have been made to the purchase order permitting an order template to be set up which can be used over and over again.

Partial VAT System

The complexity of the partial VAT system has lead to certain long term problems resulting in small errors on the VAT report. These have now all been addressed and all aspects of the system are now recorded correctly in the VAT return. The following issues have been addressed:

• Credit note re-allocation is now included in the partial VAT system. Previously this functionality was missing. In addition the credit note re-allocation has been changed to have the same functionality as the re-allocate invoice, ie add and delete lines as well as change the general ledger code.
• Cash book sundry receipt has processing with either partial VAT included (purchase refund) or excluded (sales receipt). This defaults to excluded from partial VAT but the operator can over-ride this setting.
• Purchase invoice re-allocation was incorrectly analysed in the VAT return (purchase credit did not work because it was missing anyway), and showed as an output when it was an input adjustment. In addition the VAT return did not handle the movement between the previous state of the invoice from the point of view of the partial VAT system and the current re-allocation correctly. The VAT report now tracks all the changes that have taken place to a re-allocated invoice and credit note no matter how many times it has been done within the VAT period.
• The rare error associated with a penny rounding on re-allocate invoice being dumped into the purchase ledger control account has been identified and fixed.

Payments

A major inconsistency has been identified in the multi-user locking control on payments (the pending payment flag) which is designed to stop processing of any transaction already in process on a payment run. It has been found that the locking was not correctly applied to credit notes and purchase ledger Dr and Cr Journals, which could be included on the payment run but also taken as a manual payment simultaneously. In addition it was possible to allocate a prepayment to invoices which could be taken on a payment run simultaneously, or to allocate a credit note or journal to an invoice which could also be taken on a payment run simultaneously. This has been corrected. All payment run transactions (invoice, credit note, journal) now have a pending payment flag which is set on entry to the payment run, manual payment, prepayment allocation, credit note allocation or journal allocation.

Bank Reconciliation

A long standing problem where it was possible to save a bank matching which was out of balance has been identified and corrected. This was a rare event caused by a specific sequence of keystrokes.

Cancel Sundry Payment

The cancellation of a sundry payment created an unposted journal if a cheque was printed. The journal was created with a void flag which prevented it from posting. The void flag should have been applied to the cheque not the journal and this has now been corrected.

P11D Report

The P11D report was missing from the menu and in fact did not work correctly. This has now been corrected and added back to the menus.

General Ledger Accounts

General ledger control accounts are defined in the system control file, but were not identified in the general ledger account file as being special. This has now been changed so that inside the general ledger accounts file it is possible to specify that an account is a control account and the type of control account that it is. The types are P (purchase ledger control) S (sales ledger control) B (bank) V (VAT) G (general ledger profit & loss). This has a benefit for users who have multiple control accounts for the purchase and sales ledgers (ie creditors & debtors) because it is possible to flag several accounts as creditors control accounts. These are then only visible in the parts of the system that would not permit postings and are excluded from all normal transaction screens. In the past this would only apply to the control accounts specified in the system control file.

Sales Ledger Account

The sales ledger account included a field which pointed at the sales ledger control account relating to the customer. This field could not be changed during setup although it worked correctly in the change customer function. This has been corrected.

Infrastructure Upgrade

This release of Quantus will include a significant upgrade to the ProIV platform, used to develop Quantus. The requirements to run this version are:

• 32 bit workstation operating system (Windows 95 or Windows NT4)
• TCP/IP stack loaded on the workstation
• ProIV kernel version 504
• ProIV 32 bit client version 119

This is a significant change to the system infrastructure and users should consult their IT departments with regard to the provision of 32 bit operating systems and TCP/IP services. The ProIV software will be provided by Quantus as part of the upgrade.

There are several benefits to the new 32 bit infrastructure as follows:

• It runs faster
 
• The type ahead buffer returns
 
• It looks better
 
• It interfaces better to the Windows infrastructure Eg. it uses Windows colour settings.
 
• It is correctly sizable and scalable meaning that it is possible to move from the 800x600 resolution to any other preferred resolution, Eg. 1024x768.
 

Lastly there is a new version of Btrieve available for Network installations which has a far superior interface and setup routine (Pervasive.SQL7). It also includes Scalable SQL which is integrated into the new product. This upgrade is recommended but is not mandatory to the functioning of the new version of Quantus.

The new environment is a partial implementation of a true thin client architecture, which will be available Q3/98. The latter has significant benefits for anybody wishing to run Quantus over slow telephone lines or WAN links. The thin client architecture requires networked TCP/IP support (this intermediate maintenance release does NOT require TCP/IP over the network but DOES require TCP/IP to be loaded on the workstation) at the workstation and NT4 server and workstation. The accounting engine runs on the NT4 server and not the workstation providing the best possible environment for a multi-user accounting system especially for site wide and geographically separated users.

Costs

These Quantus and ProIV upgrades are free of charge as they are covered by annual maintenance contracts. Inexperienced computer users should allow at least one days consultancy time for Quantus staff to install the upgrade, assuming that the network is configured correctly prior to implementation (TCP/IP). Pervasive.SQL7 (Btrieve) is a chargeable upgrade.

Action Required

Please contact Quantus on 01959 561238 to arrange for your upgrade. This upgrade requires file changes and should not be attempted by any user other than professional IT personnel. Users who are unable or unwilling to implement this upgrade for technical reasons may not be able to take advantage of future upgrades which will be dependent on a 32 bit environment (Windows 95 and Windows NT4) on the workstation.