This month:
A warm welcome to the September edition of our monthly letter from the dev team. If we could sum up this month's dev work in one word it would be 'Useful' (we admit, that does sound slightly underwhelming but bear with us).
We've felt for some time that our software suite is in a really great place. Much of the showstopper features that you might expect have been built, refined and adapted to fit the sector's ever-changing demands - but we know that you can never stop improving the small things.
It's these 'useful' features that can really make a difference to people's workflow. They may not have been the reason for a customer to sign up but these 'nice to haves' are vitally important (and incidentally great fun to develop too!).
Read on to hear more about these new useful features, where we have speed improvements for commission exports, new payment terms, standing charge commission on bespoke tenders, SSE PDF parsing and much more. All in our September dev update.
Improved Quote Export For Excel
We've improved the Excel file that's generated when exporting quotes (Procurement > Input Prices > Input Prices > Export Quotes button). The resulting file will be formatted as an .XLSX, should generate no warnings within Excel and contain helpful coloured headers for each column.
SSE PDF PARSING
PDF bills supplied by SSE can now be uploaded through BILL VAL without the need to transfer to a CSV template.
As well as SSE, PDFs from EDF, British Gas, BG Lite, Crown Gas & Power, Shell Energy, Pozitive Energy, and TotalEnergies are all supported. We'll continue to update BILL VAL to accept many more supplier PDFs. Watch this space!
Built for: BILL VAL (UK Only)
Other bits and bobs...
We've also added the following other bits and bobs...
Speed Boosts For Commission List Exports
We noticed some Commision List exports (Analytics > Commissions) were taking a while to complete. We've made some code improvements, ensuring that exports are now completed much quicker.
Built for: PRO CRM
Auto Marking of Employee Payments as Paid
Now when a user marks an Employee Payment as 'Paid' (Analytics > Employee Payments) it will automatically show a tick in the 'EP' column within the Invoicing section of 'Commissions (Analytics > Commissions).
Built for: PRO CRM
New Payment Term: Split Reconciled at 12 Months
The system previously allowed payment terms of 'Split Reconciled at 18 Months' (where a percentage was paid on sign and/or live, with the rest paid at 18 months). This new payment term is identical but the rest is paid at 12 months.
Built for: PRO CRM
Registration Status Added For Electric Meter Lookups
A new field, labelled 'Registration Status' has been added when performing a meter lookup. Upon a successful lookup, one of the following statuses will be returned: Cancelled, Active, Pending, Secured Inactive, Secured Active.
Built for: PRO CRM (UK Only)
Standing Charge Commission On Bespoke Tender Submissions
A new entry has been added when generating a bespoke tender submission. It has been noted that it would be useful for suppliers to include a dedicated field for any 'Standing Charge Commission'. You can now find this option under at the 'Tender Details' stage when generating a bespoke tender request.
Built for: PRO CRM
Set Meter Type At Tender Level
We've added a non-mandatory field within Contracts import labelled Meter Type, that allows the user to enter what meter type (e.g. Standard, Evening/Weekend, Economy 7, etc.) should be stored at the tender/meter level.
If the meter type matches the one already set against the meter, then no action is taken. However, if it is different, the meter type specified within the contract import will be set at the tender meter level. Note that this will change the meter type at the tender/meter level only.
Built for: PRO CRM (UK Only)
Set a Delay On Expected Payments
If a contract requires a payment term of 'Split Annual Value' but the payment will occur on a subsequent month to the one the contract is signed, you can now specify how many months later you forecast the payment to arrive.
For instance, if a contract is signed on 01/01/2024, previously, the forecast will show the payment due in January. With this new feature, you can edit the commissions (Pipeline > Go > Edit Commissions) and 'Change Payment Terms' to specify a different calendar month.
Built for: PRO CRM
That’s it for this month.
Our software evolves at such an exciting rate so please feel free to get in touch to discuss any of the functionality we’ve added since you last saw it. We’ll be more than happy to arrange a demo to show you around!