SwanFRS Release notes for version 1209

Created by Migration Bot, Modified on Fri, 23 Oct at 2:29 PM by Migration Bot

Originally written by John Hardwick, last updated Oct 28, 2024, on the Swan Retail knowledge base (FRS).

Release Date: 19th July 2024

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FRS-SwanFRS Release notes for version 1209-190724-133542.pdf

Key New Features

Embedded Payments

SwanFRS in partnership with ClearCourse now offer an integrated payment solution referred to as SwanPay. When configured, taking a card payment (or refund) either in back office or via the mobile tablet version will automatically send the payment value to a linked payment device (PED) whereby the device will control the payment and update SwanFRS upon completion.

This feature is fully PCI compliant removing the need to manually key in payments to a stand-a-lone device.

All payments are tracked and traced within SwanFRS allowing full auditability

Electronic payments through the SwanPay system cannot be manipulated within the software

SwanPay increases accuracy of payment processing and when used with the ClearCourse payment tracking portal provides greater control and consistency of data.

PEDs can be moved between trading locations as required providing location specific end of day reconciliations.

This feature requires a PED licence (one per PED) to operate.

Anyone interested in the SwanPay service should initially raise a ticket via the support portal whereby it will be forwarded to the appropriate team.

Please note SwanPay is only available in UK and Ireland

See SwanPay - Integrated Payments for more details

Quick Sales

The quick sale process offers the ability to take an anonymous sale in the back office or on the mobile device.

It requires the operator to sell locally held free to sell stock (plus services) and requires full payment to complete the sale.

It is possible to convert the anonymous sale to a known customer sale at any stage which will release the block on selling goods from other locations and buying goods to order.

Quick Sales require at least one SwanPay licence to operate however a single licence releases the process for all trading locations. It is not essential to have a connected PED to operate Quick Sales, an operating licence is sufficient.

See Quick Sales for more details

Outside Carrier Processing

SwanFRS has had an outside carrier feature for several years however it was restrictive in operation and seldom used.

The aspect of SwanFRS has been modified to offer the ability to indicate an entire order, or order line is to be delivered to the customer via a third party.

The system can be configured to work in two modes,

Mandatory - Any customer with a delivery address linked to a pre-specified postcode / Eirecode or Zipcode will be forced down the outside carrier route.
Optional - The operator can choose whether a line or the entire order is to be delivered via an outside carrier.

Goods can be ordered to be shipped from retailer directly to the outside carrier or to be delivered to the retailer’s location where they will be picked up by the carrier.

This feature greatly extends the delivery options of SwanFRS allowing for any number of outside carries to be configured and tracked through to successful customer delivery.

See Outside Carriers for more details

New Features and Enhancements

FRS-1126 Deliveries Scheduled - Sales value

The Deliveries Scheduled report has been modified to include the selling value of the goods delivered and to generate group totals

See Delivery Scheduled Report for more details.

FRS-1142 Changes to Feefo

The export data issued from SwanFRS for use with Feefo has been modified to include the phone number of the customer.

The landline number will be used if the customer doesn’t have a mobile / cell phone number. The format of the number will be modified to include the + prefix, if not set.

FRS-1368 New Privilege Control for Allocate / Deallocate Payments

The CAN_ALLOCATE_PAYMENTS role is now required to be able to take monies from a sales order (Deallocate) or add unallocated funds to a sales order.

The allocate / deallocation process remains restricted to orders for the same customer and does not affect the controls relating to issuing refunds or credits.

FRS-1381 Payment Allocations Audit Report

A new report has been written to produce an audit of monies allocated or deallocated from / to sales orders.

This is a new report, which will require adding to your report map before use.

See Payment Allocations for details.

FRS-811 Set Up Product Relationships

This routine has been overhauled allowing multiple creation / deletion of product relationships. Whilst the look and feel of this routine has changed all data held is unaffected.

The redesign makes it easier to set relationships for a selected range of SKUs in a single action.

See Set Up Product Relationships for more details.

FRS-1097 Sales Order Header Changes

When changing the sales order header details, modifications are saved immediately or when leaving the page, however in some circumstances details from one sales order are transposed to another if the client moves directly from editing one sales order to another. To improve control and negate the transposing of data between orders, a new control parameter have been introduced.

Additional controls have been created relating to the amendment of the sales order which will improve security and data validation.

it is strongly recommended that this new feature be trialled in your test system.

This modification will allow improved control ensuring important details held against the sales order are not inadvertently changed thus improving overall auditability and validity of the order ‘header’.

See Amending Sales Order 'Headers' for details

FRS-1170 Thumbnail Images for Option Choices

Following on from the introduction of thumbnail ‘swatch’ images for SKU option choices within the application, a change has been applied to the sales order acknowledgement print to include these ‘swatch’ images on the print-out.

This new feature is controlled via the SOA_SHOW_THUMBNAILS_OPTIONS application parameter will be installed in the ‘off’ status and therefore needs manually turning on if you wish to show ‘swatch’ images on the Order Acknowledgement.

See Set Up Application Parameters for a full list of control parameters.

Banner SO 16 (or later) is required.

FRS-1190 Purchase Order Processing

Create Purchase Orders

At the point of raising he purchase order (having clicked the Order button), SwanFRS presents a pick list of Ordering Location and Delivery Location. The Delivery Location will now default to Sales Order Controlled. Where desired, it is possible to change this to a ‘named’ location, however leaving the option at sales order controlled instructs the system to use the destination location set when adding the demand item to the sales order (internal Order) and therefore provides greater control at time of raising the PO.

This feature is of particular use for retailers operating in multiple locations for both sales and warehousing who have a central ordering team. Previously Sales Orders would need to be processed separately. With this change it is possible to generate multiple purchase orders for different receiving locations in a single action.

Find Purchase Orders

The search results grid has been enhanced to offer the ability to toggle between the order and receiving locations of a purchase order by clicking on the ‘Factory’ icon. This toggles the description between Order Loc and receiving Loc with the data within this column changing accordingly.

Clicking on the column narrative sorts the data alphabetically again toggling between A-Z and Z-A.

FRS-1191 Internal Order

The title of the stock status notification badge has been changed for items written off when viewing the contents of an internal order.

Previously the message ‘Not On Order’ was shown, this was confusing and has been retitled ‘Written Off’.

FRS-1192 Set Up Product Sets

This program has been modified to prohibit the marking of a SKU as a set if the SKU is a component within another set.

Component items cannot themselves now be marked as Sets.

See Set Up Product Sets for more details of this program

FRS-1332 Sales Order Acknowledgement - Discounts

Where configured, the sales order acknowledgement will now display the discount percentage applied at order line and order total level.

This feature is controlled vja the SOA_SHOW_DISC_PERCS application parameter.

At time of upgrade this feature will be installed in the ‘off’ state. i.e. discount percentages will not show unless the parameter is changed.

See Set Up Application Parameters for a full list of control parameters.

Banner SO 16 (or later) is required

The examples below show the percentage discount applied at order line and order total.

FRS-1407 Sales Invoice Detail Report

The Sales Order number has been added to the report.

See Sales Invoice Detail for a full list of control parameters.

FRS-1414 DispatchTrack not showing full information from SKU

The DispatchTrack export has been enhanced to send the information entered in SO Comments, at stock/inventory level, in the "line_item_notes" field.

Changes / Support

FRS-967 Issue Credit

The COMPLETE order status badge was being displayed when a sales order had no ‘active’ order lines but had a negative order total - i.e. a credit was due.

The system will now show the ACCEPTED order status until there are no order lines where a delivery or collection is required AND the order balance is zero.

FRS-980 Containers - PO Required

A new application parameter OVERRIDE_CONTAINER_PO_DATE has been created which allows operators with this privilege to bypass the ‘required before’ message produced if a PO (or order line) with a required before date which is earlier than the ‘to stock’ date of the container is added to the container.

See Container Processing Guide for details.

See Set Up Application Parameters for parameter controls.

FRS-1078 Set Up Roles

Restrictions have been introduced to prohibit the changing of a role selected whilst changing the privileges within the role. It is now only possible to change privileges when in EDIT mode.

FRS-1177 Purchase Order Optimisation

A Change has been applied to the Purchase Order Optimisation for re-orderable products to ensure the suggested quantity cannot be negative.

FRS-1203 Setup Terms & Conditions

Changes has been applied to allow the operator to view second and subsequent pages.

FRS-1246 Supplier Names in Reports

SwanFRS reports showing supplier names have been reviewed and where appropriate have been changed to show the supplier’s name relative to the ‘audience’ of the report.

A new RPT_SHOW_CAT_SUP application parameter is available which when ticked instructs the show catalogue supplier or catalogue debranded supplier names when producing ‘sales’ and customer related reports. (as set within Set Up Suppliers - Catalogue button.)

Where unticked the reports show the supplier name or debranded supplier name as set within the Set Up Supplier routine when showing sales or customer facing reports.

This change allows reports where there are multiple catalogues assigned to the same supplier to show the variant catalogue name if desired.

See Set Up Application Parameters for parameter controls.

FRS-1258 Catalogue Search - Tablet

Modified the stock selection buttons to say “Pick Stock” on the tablet friendly pages.

FRS-1277 Set Up Users

The routine has been modified to stop the selection of locations marked as ‘Docks’ from being selected as a the operator’s default trading location.

FRS-1289 Negative Stock Settings

A new parameter has been created, SO_ALLOW_NEGATIVE_ACCESSORIES, which when set prevents the system creating negative stock when an item sold has insufficient stock. For example, SwanFRS when receiving sales from external systems allowed stock to go negative

See Set Up Application Parameters for parameter controls.

FRS-1319 Audit Customer Name Changes

SwanFRS has been modified to capture additional information pertaining to the change of a customer on a sales order.

In order to make who changed what and when more available, a new report has been created entitled Customer Name Change Audit. This report details any changes to customer initials and last name within a user specified date range, showing the name of the operator making the change and when the change occurred.

To operate this new report will require adding to the Set Up Report Links routine and allocated to the appropriate reporting group.

See Customer Name Change Audit for details.

FRS-1321 Change Salesperson

The controls relating to the ability to change the primary sales person on a sales order have been adjusted.

Application Parameter CHANGE_SALESPERSON_MODE = SO_BACK_OFFICE

The operator must possess the SO_BACK_OFFICE privilege, to change the sales person on a sales order, pre or post initial acceptance.
Operators, without the SO_BACK_OFFICE privilege, cannot change the salesperson.

Application Parameter CHANGE_SALESPERSON_MODE = CHANGE_SALESPERSON

Operators, with the CHANGE_SALESPERSON but NOT CHANGE_SALESPERSON_ADMIN, are able to set the salesperson on the Sales order but not change once the order has been accepted.
Operators, with both CHANGE_SALESPERSON AND CHANGE_SALESPERSON_ADMIN, are able to change salesperson on the sales order at any time.
Operators, without CHANGE_SALESPERSON AND CHANGE_SALESPERSON_ADMIN, are not able to change salesperson on the sales order at any time.

Application Parameter CHANGE_SALESPERSON_MODE = Both

Operators, with only the SO_BACK_OFFICE privilege, are not able to change the salesperson on the SO, however they cannot change once the sales order has been initially accepted.
Operators, with only the CHANGE_SALESPERSON user privilege, are not able to change the salesperson on the SO, however they cannot change once the sales order has been initially accepted.
Operators with SO_BACK_OFFICE and CHANGE_SALESPERSON, are able to change salesperson on the SO.
Operators without SO_BACK_OFFICE and CHANGE_SALESPERSON, are not able to change salesperson

Application Parameter CHANGE_SALESPERSON_MODE = Either

Operators, with only the SO_BACK_OFFICE user privilege, are able to change salesperson on the SO, irrespective of order status.
Operators, with only the CHANGE_SALESPERSON user privilege, are able to change salesperson on the SO, but not once the sales order has been accepted.
Operators, with SO_BACK_OFFICE and CHANGE_SALESPERSON, are able to change the salesperson on the SO both before and after the order's initial acceptance.
Operators, without SO_BACK_OFFICE AND CHANGE_SALESPERSON, are not able to change salesperson on the SO.

FRS-1325 Sales and Cancellation Report

Sales and Cancellations report now filters by source of business.

See Sales and Cancellations for details

FRS-1351 Arrange Finance Creating an Error

SwanFRS was producing an error when a new finance application was recorded.

FRS-1362 Cancelled Sales Report

The cancelled sales report now offers a choice of including or excluding order line amendments caused by changing options. This is only available when the product group the SKU is linked to has the ‘can assemble’ check box ticked and when used causes the original order line / stock item to be cancelled and new ones created.

Including such items has no effect to the value of the report but shows as extra cancellations and additions, hence the new option to omit such activity.

See Cancelled Sales for details

FRS-1377 Delivery Note

Delivery Note (banner version) has had the pad number added to the sales order number in the report header.

Note there is a minor change to the order header design of the print to accommodate the pad reference.

FRS-1378 Accounts Posted Report

New report Accounts Posted, similar to Accounts Not Posted but giving the user visibility of data sent to the accounts system in a familiar format.

To operate this new report will require adding to the Set Up Report Links routine and allocated to the appropriate reporting group.

See Accounts Posted Report for details.

FRS-1379 Catalogue Search

Fixed an issue with multiple product selection where location-specific promotional prices were not being used.

FRS-1401 Consolidate Bulk/Measured Stock

Fixed a problem with split pieces not merging back to the parent due to an issue comparing the markdown on the parent and child piece.

FRS-1428 Find Sales Order - Delivered Criteria

New pick-list options have been added to the Goods Status pick list. “Fully Delivered” and “Part Delivered” may now be used to view sales orders with the corresponding stock status.

These additional choices have been added to the ‘search profile’ allowing preset searches to be created.

FRS-1430 Acknowledged Order Total

The find PO routine will now show the Purchase Order Acknowledged Value,

The value element will show in green if the acknowledged value is less than the PO total, or red if the sum of acknowledged items is higher than the expected PO Value.

The value is shown with a green font if the acknowledged value is less than or equal to the expected purchase order cost and red if higher.

Bugs / Fixes

FRS-420 Find Customer (Tablet)

When using the mobile (tablet) method of creating sales orders, if a new customer is created and the ‘capture reason’ is turned on, the system will now force selection of a capture reason (assuming one or more capture reason is active).

When selecting existing customers, the capture reason is optional.

The Source of business is located on the Delivery tab.

FRS-638 Sales Order

Fixed an issue where adding measured stock/inventory from Search Catalogue would create a blank sales order if the user changed their mind after clicking the “buy” button on the stock/inventory list.

FRS-1012 Sales Order

Resolved an error that occurred when creating sales orders from Search Catalogue if the SO_DEFAULT_DELIVERY_METHOD application parameter was set to “Delivery” and the user selected “Pay And Take/Cash And Carry” or “Collection/Pick Up” as the delivery method.

FRS-1068 Restrict User Profile Access via Avatar

When viewing the operator’s profile via clicking the avatar or the users name in the drop-down, the page has now been restricted to allow changing of the operator’s PIN, Password or avatar.

FRS-1138 Scanned data & Snapshot Search - Results

The search results grid within Stock SnapshotSearch now offers the ability re-sequence by reference or date/time created

FRS-1197 Set Up Terms & Conditions

it is now possible to set the dual column indicator on header rows.

FRS-1238 Sales Order

Disabled the “Quick Collect” option if sales order authorisation is turned on and the order is not yet authorised.

FRS-1239 Purchase Order Alternative Supplier

The Find Purchase Order routine will no longer offer the option to select an ‘Alternative Supplier’ once a purchase order has been ‘sent’ to the supplier, irrespective of amend status. Once sent for the first time, it is no longer possible to change the PO to an alternative supplier.

FRS-1248 Set Up Product Groups

When viewing the Account Codes tab within Set Up Product Groups, logic has been introduced to stop the operator selecting the same Account / GL / Expense code for -

Cost of Sales = Stock on hand
Cost of sales = Ancillary cost of sales
Stock on hand = Ancillary stock on hand

If any of these situations exist, a warning will be produced, and it will not be possible to save the changes.

FRS-1250 Styles Engine

Logic has been applied to the Set Up Promotions routine to stop a ticket Style flagged as a mark-down style from being linked to a promotion.

The Set Up Ticket Styles routine has been modified to only allow one mark-down style to be set at any one time. A new World icon has been created for the operator to view which promotions the ticket style has been linked to.

FRS-1333 New Write On

As part of the increased security within SwanFRS a problem had been created which reduced the usability of the ‘multiple SKU’ selection feature. This has now been resolved, allowing multiple SKUs to now be added to the Write On Note.