Official 1.28 change log from Luke
1.28 is coming soon. I am currently dogfooding it myself, everything seems to be working smooth.
Here are the release notes:
Make sure to read this announcement complete announement before rushing off to upgrade.
It is recommended to backup your database and files before doing an upgrade.
While in previous releases, it would not hurt anything if you skipped a step in the upgrade process and
you completed it later, this release is different. The payments backend was completely re-written. In order to
support multiple payments per receipt, payments had to be moved to their own database table.
When you run the database upgrade script, it will perform this conversion. My own database of 20,000 receipts
converted in less that 2 seconds. Make sure you only click the upgrade link once. (still surprizes me how many
computer savvy people double click things that should be single clicked). It is important that no sales are processed
through the system between the time that the database upgrade is performed and the time at which you upload the new code.
If you do, your daily reports will be off.
Here is the condensed feature list:
*Bug Fix: Fix potential javascript problem with warning message when printing customer repair sheet.
*Change: Use Business name as from: name for the smsglobal SMS function.
*Feature: Re-Written Payment backend that now supports Split Transactions
*Feature: New AuthorizeNet Card Present Payment Plugin
*Feature: New Custom Payment Plugin - You can now define your own custom payment types
*Feature: New PayPal Web Payments Pro Plugin
*Feature: Better passing of customer information to checkout cart from invoices and work orders.
*Enhancement: More fixes to reduce spamassasin scores.
*Feature: Ability to take Deposits
*Enhancement: Allow Repair Report to stretch to the width of the screen.
*Enhancement: User setting to turn off auto firing print dialogs.
*Enhancement: Allow On Service Call and Remote Support session statuses to show on touchscreen view.
*Feature: Ability to Email Claim Tickets
*Enhancement: Added Sticky Note view for This Week and Past Due
*Enhancement: Added restock link from Order Planning for items added to the list from the Sold Items report.
*Enhancement: Work Order ID search box on repair side.
Split Transactions - I am already loving this myself. In order to do split transactions, I needed to change the process a little. Previously
you would add things to the cart, select a payment method, and enter details and check it out. Now there is a "Current Customer" area that
stores the customer details that will be recorded on the receipt. You can fill this out manually and save it, or if you checkout a system,
or invoice from the repair side it will populate this info for you. You then add payments. Each payment added will ask you the amount of the
payment made with each method. Once payments are added and the total of the payments equals the receipt total, a checkout button will appear
to finalize the sale, the payment methods will also disappear. Each payment collected will also offer and area to collect customer details,
this is intentional, so that if the name on a credit card or check does not match the customers name, you will still have the information.
For instance I have parents who write checks to pay for a kids bill, I have a law firm writes checks for a chiropractor.
The invoice checkout process is also different, before when you checked out an invoice, it was pumped into the current cart and
you were sent straight to pick a payment method and you never really saw the items in the cart. Now invoice items are copied to the
cart and you check things out using the same process as any other sale.
The AuthorizeNet plugin has been rewritten as well. When you add an AuthNet payment to the cart, the card is charged at that moment,
not at the moment you click the checkout button. If you void a payment from the cart, it will reconnect to AuthNet and void it.
This action would be visable in your AuthNet control panel on the AuthorizeNet Website.
The new AuthrorizeNetCP (Card Present) plugin allows you to use AuthNet Card Present API, which has the advantage of lower rates
because in addition to the CC number being sent, raw card track data is also sent which means you get charged lower rates. You can still
manually key a card in, you rate will just be downgraded to the "Card Not Present Rate". I personally am in the process of switching to
this, and have not been able to test this plugin yet, but I expect it to be ready to go.
Many of you probably popped a capacitor when you saw that there was a PayPal plugin. This plugin actually implements the
PayPal Website Payments Pro API. It is a high level system with PayPal that lets you take lightning fast payments without having to
go to the PayPal website or leaving the PCRT system. This plugin is complete but untested. I too was excited to possibly use this
along with AuthNet after coding it, then I looked deeper into the fees. They are almost double that of what AuthorizeNetCP charges.
Roughly $30 per month plus .30 cents per transaction and 3%-2.2% of the sale, but there are processors that charge more than that.
Fee Schedule here:
https://cms.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/?&cmd=_render-content&content_ID=ua/ProVT_full&locale.x=en_US
You can also now setup your own custom payment options. There is a "CustomPayment.php" script. You can rename and make multiple copies
of this file. For instance, you could rename it to Bank.php, open it up and edit the two variables at the top of the file.
Edit the scriptname variable to match what you named the PHP file minus the php extension. Then enter the extra fields
you wish to collect info for. Then in your store/deps.php file enter the your name for the payment plugin into the payment methods array.
IPAD users will be happy that they can now email claim tickets and disable the javascript print dialogs.
Also there is now a new deposits feature. Take payments or partial payments, and print/email a receipt for the deposit. Then add items to
the cart and go to "Deposits" and add the deposit to the cart as a payment. If you add a deposit to a work order, and then procede to
check it out, the deposit will be linked to the work order, and beneath your list of payment methods, you will see any deposits
and be able to quickly add them to the cart.
Couple final notes, be sure to play with the demo to experiment with these new features. Also if you make code modifications, be sure
to document your changes and backup your modified files so that it will be easier to merge them back in after an update. Make sure you
overwrite your deps.php files.
