On the Following Pages, You Will Find Listed Enhancements That Have Been Suggested For
On the following pages, you will find listed enhancements that have been suggested for ANSWERS by various users for the next release, scheduled for fall of 2018. The enhancements are grouped by application. We are asking that you take time to review these and then decide on which ones would be most beneficial to your organization. Please keep in mind that this is simply a compiled list of all suggestions received by Data Resources Corporation and does not necessarily indicate our endorsement of any particular feature.
Once you have decided on which enhancements you would like to see, place your vote for those enhancements. Users may log onto our web-site and follow the link for “Software Enhancements” to enter your votes. Users may also email us a list of the enhancement numbers they wish to vote for. Before voting, insure that everyone involved in the voting process understands that you are limited to the number of votes you may cast based on the difficulty level of the enhancements. The different levels of difficulty are listed below along with the number of permitted votes. Then each enhancement is coded as to its difficulty level. Please do not vote for more than the maximum number permitted in each category, as votes exceeding the maximum are automatically discarded. However, you can move votes from a higher difficulty level to a lower level, but you are not allowed to move a vote from a lower level to a higher level. For example, you can use your difficult or moderate votes on basic changes, but you cannot use a basic or moderate vote for a difficult change.
The enhancement suggestions are numbered. In the column to the right of the enhancement number, you will find the difficulty level. Remember the difficulty level indicates the amount of time required by Data Resources Corporation to perform the change relevant to other changes. While each update to ANSWERS is a major effort in time and resources and a lengthy process, we must still budget the time carefully. It is therefore important to take this into consideration when voting.
Basic (maximum votes = 12)
Moderate (maximum votes = 6)
Difficult/Extremely Difficult (maximum votes = 3)
Please submit your votes to Data Resources Corporation by Friday,January12th, 2018.
No. / Application / Difficulty / Enhancement Suggestion1 / General / Basic / In all programs that prompt for a password, if a wrong password is entered, keep the password box on the screen so the password can be reentered.
2 / General / Basic / When sending a notification of a record busy, can it also play a sound such as a buzz, beep or fog horn! (DRC Note: This would only work if the receiving computer of the message has sound and speaker capabilities as some business computers do not.)
3 / General / Basic / Having a variable in the forms at the boxes at the bottom on forms that is information that shows up on all Purchase Orders or Quotes, etc., and the variable would be like the email address for the person preparing the form. Also, the ability to have variables in messages that go out on email or fax forms.
4 / General / Basic / Currently when adding new customer or new vendor contacts, the phone #'s, fax #'s, email addresses, etc. all default from the main payables/purchases contact or the billing/sales contact. Lots of people use direct numbers or are located at a different location that than that of the main contacts. We end up adding the wrong information to the contact from the very beginning. I would like an option/switch to be able to turn off these fields from automatically defaulting from the main contact info when adding a new contact.
5 / General / Basic / Send a Message: We want a box that shows EVERYONE you have selected to send the message to in a separate box, so we can glance at it without having to scroll, similar to the box that was provided a few releases bac. OR like when you are sending a message out of Outlook. You click on the "To..." button, it lists your contacts, you click on 3 contacts and say OK they end up in your TO entry box. And when you use the search function once you have the person you wanted high-lighted, you can push <Enter> and that will select them and put the check-mark next to their name and then you can start this process over again. This would make the whole process of sending a message to many recipients more fluid.
6 / General / Moderate / I would like to have options for variables in the default company-wide and user-specific email/fax messages that would allow you to pull in information from the sales order, purchase order, quote, etc. that you would like referenced in the message. For example: YYYYYYYY, Please find attached our purchase order # ZZZZZZ. Please confirm pricing and let us know the estimated ship date of any items that are on backorder. Thank you! Where "Y" is the variable for the vendor contact name and "Z" is the variable for the purchase order #. (DRC Note: This change is ranked as a Moderate due to the number of programs that allow emailing although the change to each individual program is more Basic in nature.)
7 / Inventory / Basic / Provide customizable searches by user. This would allow the user room to "save" searches they use frequently in inventory. For example, when searching by a particular vendor, they could "save" their search and then have all their saved searches as options from the Search Methods pull-down menu bar so they do not have to continually reselect product codes, vendors, or enter descriptions they use a lot. Allow them to remove saved searches as necessary. They should be allowed to store a reasonable number, such as 15 or 20 per user.
8 / Inventory / Basic / Provide additional units history display for "Units Purchased" for 24 months. This would work similar to the current Units Sold, but would be based on units received in. It would display for 24 months and provide breakdowns of the detail when viewing monthly totals (just as the current Units Sold) does.
9 / Inventory / Basic / Provide additional units history display for "Units Returned" for 24 months. This would work similar to the current Units Sold, but would be based on units returned only. It would display for 24 months and provide breakdowns of the detail when viewing monthly totals (just as the current Units Sold) does.
10 / Inventory / Basic / Provide additional units history display for "Units Transferred" in and out for 24 months. This would work similar to the current Units Sold, but would be based on units transferred in and out. It would display for 24 months and provide breakdowns of the detail when viewing monthly totals (just as the current Units Sold) does.
11 / Inventory / Basic / Allow entering the longer/full part # (up to 40 characters) in the Stock # Conversion Input program. Right now, it is limited to just 19 characters.
12 / Inventory / Basic / When setting up a Kit item, we should be able to change the cost of the components inside that window.
13 / Inventory / Basic / Put a scanner icon on the Inventory Adjustment screen to enable scanning adjustment requests onto entries and then be able to view attachments/documents in Transaction History on adjustments.
14 / Inventory / Basic / Add an option to sort the Stock Number Conversion Input list box in Descending order as well as Ascending order like it is now.
15 / Inventory / Basic / Provide an option to only display items on the Purchase Order that have NOT been received.
16 / Inventory / Basic / When you make a change to a part like its description have the system go out and update any sales order, purchase order, return, quote that it exists on and change it there as well so that you don't have to go back to the sales order, etc., and remove the part and add it back on again to get the new description defaulted or remember to change it manually.
17 / Inventory / Basic / I would like to see an Inventory Turn calculation that goes over a 12-month period instead of a fiscal year spread. The way it is now, you can change absolutely nothing in what you do and every month your turns get better, because it looks at more data. I don’t even use the turn reports early in the year because they look bad and I know that the ones that I use later in the year aren’t realistic, as they get better month after month no matter what. I’d like to see an inventory turns report that uses 12 months of rolling data. The way it is now simply doesn’t work for us.
18 / Inventory / Basic / Add Vendor Part Number as an optional import field to the Electronic Catalog and for the Price File Import. (We currently use the Catalog Optional Part Number 3 for another purpose)
19 / Inventory / Basic / The Unreceived Credits Report needs more sorting and parameter options similar to the Open Vendor Returns Report such as:
(1) Option for report by date range to get a report on the oldest outstanding vendor returns.
(2) Option for a detailed report (to include information such as Ship Via, and Bill of Lading, and any comment lines that are a part of the vendor return) or a summary report. This report would be helpful when making vendor payments in AP.
20 / Inventory / Basic / Create an option to move the BackOrder quantity total into the "on hand" box. This would give an accurate quick look at the actual quantity available for sale in the warehouse without the operator needing to subtract out the Back Order quantity.
21 / Inventory / Moderate / Allow the Inventory Inquiry screens to be resizable. On the main screen, when larger, allow seeing all warehouse quantities window, cost information, and other pertinent information.
22 / Inventory / Moderate / In Inventory Maintenance we need the ability to have both the Order Point and Maximum Stock Quantity to extend out to 2 decimal places for high dollar inventory items that are cut or fabricated and sold into smaller pieces.
23 / Inventory / Moderate / In the Inventory item search window, we would like the Alpha Key and Alternate Alpha Key searches combined so that we could search on either one and the items that matched in either one would come up without us having to switch between the 2 search methods. This would be similar to how we can now search for customers and vendors under new and old names.
24 / Inventory / Moderate / In fields that request a product code such as Inventory, Order Entry, P/O Entry, etc. allow typing in letters like can be done on customers and vendors and having that take you to a search where we could pick the proper product code as opposed to having to type the number or click the binoculars to start a search. (DRC Note: This is a relatively simple change in each program but is ranked as a Moderate change due to the number of programs that prompt for a product code.)
25 / Inventory / Moderate / I would like to recommend Vendor Return Import. The other feature that currently exists is copying from a PO that you can import to, but then you must manually confirm each SKU quantity to be returned.
26 / Inventory / Difficult / Provide quantity breaks by price level. Instead of having one set of quantity price breaks, allow each price level to have quantity price breaks. If a customer is set up on a particular price level, or has an exception giving them a specific price level, the quantity break pricing for that level would apply.
27 / Inventory / Difficult / Increase the decimal places available for inventory item costs. The options currently allow for up to 2 or 4 decimal positions, but I would like the option for 5 or 6 decimal places. We have more and more vendors that are increasing the number of decimal places they use. (DRC Note: This request is ranked as Difficult due to the numerous programs, screens and reports that would have to be changed/expanded to allow showing extra decimal positions.)
28 / Order Processing / Basic / Keep a history of the special charge units sold (in the same manner as the inventory units sold is kept). This would allow viewing the total monthly units of a Special Charge item for 24 months, as well as the detail breakdown for each month to see the invoice #'s and customers the item was sold on and to.
29 / Order Processing / Basic / Provide an option that will allow duplicating a special charge item, the same way inventory items are duplicated. This will make it easier to set up similar special charge items.
30 / Order Processing / Basic / Add a checkbox for residential address to help with UPS residential address shipping charges. This would be needed in Customer Maintenance, Alternate Ship-To Maintenance, Order Entry Ship-To window and then would be passed onto into shipping software in the export file created by Answers. (DRC Note: Once included in the export file to UPS or FedEx, the import maps in your shipping software would need to be updated to import and/or map this new field.)
31 / Order Processing / Basic / Provide a way to notify warehouse or shipping personnel that an order has been canceled. For example, a customer orders some material and schedules a pick-up or delivery date. We pick the order and stage it. But then the customer calls back and cancels the order and we need something to tell the warehouse that they need to put the material back in stock and not to deliver it. Maybe like a copy of the Pick Ticket or Order Acknowledgment with CANCELLED on it.
32 / Order Processing / Basic / Allow printing the title CREDIT in the upper-left corner and/or the large CREDIT letters in red instead of black like for invoices.
33 / Order Processing / Basic / Add the date and time the orders were entered and put on hold to the Order Approval window.
34 / Order Processing / Basic / On line items on a Sales Order be able to click an "Alternate Vendor" button to choose the correct pricing and cost to order the item need from the alternate vendor.
35 / Order Processing / Basic / When we are in a new quote, we can switch from customer search to prospect search very quickly by clicking the button below. This is quite helpful. The issue we have is if we are on the phone and you do a standard customer inquiry, we can search for a prospect without opening a new screen for prospect inquiry. I think it would help to have this same button available to toggle between customer inquiry and prospect inquiry from the same spot.
36 / Order Processing / Basic / Although the gross margin for line items appears on the totals tab of Quote/Order Entry, we would like to see it on the details tab with each line item, so you can see it when you are entering an order or quote.
37 / Order Processing / Basic / In Sales Orders, Quotes and Returns, have the ability to put a page break in when you want it to happen when entering a long sales order or quote or return. Then have Quotes, Pick Tickets, Order Acknowledgements, Invoices all pay attention to these requested page breaks and go to a new page when detected.
38 / Order Processing / Basic / If there is an overflow Aisle/Bin location entered for an inventory Stock #, then it should print as a comment line below the Stock # on the Original page (1st page) of the Pick Ticket.
39 / Order Processing / Basic / Ability to enter credit approval code while in order entry on customers with Medium Credit security or when using Medium Credit security as the default. This would allow an option to have Medium-level credit security work similar to Low credit security which allows entry of a password directly from in Order Entry.
40 / Order Processing / Basic / The ability to put a pop up message within an individual sales order (not necessarily the customer master) for individual order based reminder messages. For instance, when an order has extended terms and the backorder does not come until after the original terms date. Just another checklist to look at the terms before order complete.
41 / Order Processing / Basic / We print pick tickets with double line spacing and would like to have Overflow Aisle/Bin locations print on them as well as on other reports such as inventory.
42 / Order Processing / Basic / We need better communication between sales and purchasing agents. For items creating a backorder on a sales order, create a way to send the purchasing agent a note if any special handling is required for that backordered item. When this note for special handling is created, it would highlight the vendor on the Suggested PO Review and as well as the item that contains the note. This would make the purchasing agent aware of the special handling required for this item. An example would be a nonstock item that needs to be shipped next day air.
43 / Order Processing / Basic / Allow for more than 10 different purchase order numbers to be created from the same sales order. Currently there is a limit of 10 different purchase orders that can be created from any one sales order. (DRC Note: Multiple line items to the same P/O only count once, not per line item.)