What’s New Since Elliott V7.0

System Wide Features

eContact Manager

After V7.1, an eContact can be set up even if you don’t have a contact’s email address.  The eContact database has been expanded to include Company Name, Birthday, Created By and Create Date Time.  The system can optionally assign a random password when an eContact is first created on a real-time or batch basis.  This will help ease website integration with eContacts.

The most significant change in eContact is that the entire eContact list is viewable in the eContact Manager.  You can search and sort the eContact list to locate a specific contact.  The eContact list is accessible in all printing functions.  Notes, links, attributes, orders and invoice history of an eContact are accessible in the detail screen.  eContact Manager is so powerful now, it will take on the CRM rivals.

GUI Attribute Maintenance

Attributes are used to expand the Elliott V7 database without any custom modifications.  The Attribute Maintenance screen is GUI with a 32-bit Windows interface.  The attribute list window is implemented as a list view, which means it can be sorted_, by any column by clicking on the heading.  You can designate two primary fields to display in the Attribute List View to make it easy to read.

Improved DDF

Report writers like IQ have pre-joined tables called “Categories” to make it easy for users to access the Elliott Database.  Modern report writers, like Crystal, utilizes DDF’s to access the Elliott Database.  The DDF’s in V7.0 and earlier were implemented with individual table definitions.  This made it difficult for users to connect an Elliott database using ODBC compatible tools such as Crystal.  It was difficult to join tables without knowing the primary and foreign key relationships of the database.  Elliott V7.1 & later release comes with a new set of DDF with VIEWS, which are pre-joined tables.  This greatly reduces the user’s difficulty of joining tables manually.  As a result, the user can use tools like Crystal Report Writer to replace the aging IQ report writer.

Shipping

Improved Shipment Tracking & Acknowledgement

Elliott provides wonderful support for integrating with Starship Manifest.  However, many users are not using Starship and do not intend to switch their existing manifest system.  Since Elliott V7.1, users can update manifest-tracking numbers (Notes) in Elliott manually.  This will allow users to track the order’s shipment through Elliott or Web Order Inquiry.  Users can also send email shipping acknowledgements with the tracking number with a hyper link to the UPS, FedEx, USPS and Airborne Express (newly supported since Elliott V7.1) website.

For packages that are not processed through shipping manifest (i.e. Truck), you can optionally send shipping acknowledgements after billing selection, invoice printing or posting.

Shipping Verification Improvement

Shipping Verification has been improved for better support of UCC-128 Labels.  The Shipping Data Export function has been significantly improved to support EDI ASN (Advanced Shipping Notice).  If your trading partner needs you to resend the ASN, in Elliott V7.1, they can be sent from Invoice History Data.

Sales Functions

Customer Wish List

This is an extension to the Elliott V7.0 Stock Watch feature.  Now, not only can salesmen and customers receive email notification when out of stock items are received, a salesman can also track the customer inquiries and discuss stock availability and pricing about the items in the customer’s wish list.

Add-On Sales

This allows accessory items to be defined for a main item.  In Sales Desk, when a line item is confirmed the accessories window will display automatically or can be displayed by a function key, depending on your setup.  The accessories window will show available quantity and pricing for the items defined as add-on sale items for the main item.  For example, you can define batteries, videotapes, tripods and bags as add-on sale items for a camcorder.  The add-on sale item may also be defined in a spreadsheet and use the add-on sales maintenance utility to import a comma-delimited file (CSV).

Time Release

In the retail store business, a store manager may call to place an order and request that it not be released until the end of day.  In doing this the store manager can call back later to place additional items to the existing order.  This prevents the goods from being shipped separately and saves freight costs.

The Time Release provides an easy solution for this scenario.  The salesman can specify the release time for an order and the shipping document (picking ticket or invoice) won’t print until the release time.

Sales Desk Improvement

Various different functions have been added to Sales Desk:

·         Review Customer’s Outstanding Orders (Open Orders by Items / Open Orders by Orders)

·         Check Customer’s Sales History

·         Print Customer Labels

·         Kit and feature options support

·         Enter Ship-To in first Sales Desk screen

·         Skip Location field in line item to speed up entry

·         Search and Return Items from Newly Received Screen

·         Search and Return Items from Wish List Screen

·         Search and Return Customers from Newly Received Screen

Sales Order Import Improvement

Sales Order Import has been improved for better support of taking remote sales orders.  When a customer or ship-to record is added remotely and then transferred to the central office for import, the system can be set up to add the new customer or ship-to record based on the data in the order file.  This is a useful function for taking remote sales orders (off-line solution).  For example, sales orders may be taken at trade show or outside sales reps visiting customers may take orders on their notebook computers.

Other Functions

Inventory Transfer

Inventory Transfers may be processed through I/M Inventory Transaction Processing.  However, this was not designed specifically for transfer purposes and tends to be a tedious process.  The newly designed Inventory Transfer process was designed for fast data entry and supports barcode scanning.  It also supports picking ticket printing for document control.

Future Price Code Update

Elliott V7.0 provides Future Price updates for the item’s price, standard cost and user defined amount.  This feature supports the future price update for the price code file.  An export function is provided so the price code data can be exported to a spreadsheet for modifying.  The spreadsheet data can then be imported into Elliott V7.0 to update the future price code file for posting on the effective date.

Update Vendor Performance Data W/O Purge PO

In the past, vendor performance data was not updated until a PO was closed and purged.  However, in many situations, the PO can not be purged but the updated Vendor Performance information was required.  This new function will allow the Vendor Performance Data to be updated without purging the PO.

Improved Charge Back Tracking

Charge Back Tracking is handled as a debit memo in A/R Cash Receipt with a negative application amount.  In this update, the system prompts for reason code and original invoice number when a negative application amount is entered in cash receipt.  The reason code and original invoice number will be saved in the AR Open Item file and can be further tracked by using a Report Writer.

Work Order Inquiry

This function provides work order inquiry capabilities with the ability to view the components and the available quantity.  Production can use this function to determine if there are available components before releasing a work order.

File Repairing Utility

You can locate REBUILD.BAT in the \ELLIOTT7 directory.  Copy this file to your search path.  It provides good performance and a very reliable method (BUTIL from Pervasive) to recover a file.  Certain system files in Elliott V7.2 are open as soon as you start up Elliott, therefore it is impossible to fix these files inside Elliott.  This utility provides an easy method to fix these files.