Introduction to eSignature

 

eSignature functionality is here! We’re delighted to announce this much requested feature as an integrated part of our SQLWorks platform:

eSignature allows a SQLWorks user to generate a single-use URL for a PDF report format (such as a contract, letter or order template) to send to an external signatory. The signatory can access the PDF through their web browser – signing a (touchscreen compatible) signature field that is then merged onto their paperwork in the correct place.

Each signed document is then automatically saved back into your main SQLWorks database, allowing you to integrate this critical step into workflows, projects, and your other business operations.

 

esignature process

 

Signatures can be an essential CRM checkpoint, and can be used as evidence that a customer has approved a purchase, agreed to the next stage of a bigger project, or consented to important terms & conditions.

To confirm identity, signatories can be verified with pre-saved security questions, can be given time-limits to sign, and can be required to sign multiple times within the same document before submission is allowed.

Most importantly, SQLWorks eSignature functionality does not require expensive ‘per-signature’ costs as is the case for many well-known competitors – or any special prerequisite software for the signatory – and can be integrated with a wide range of SQLWorks other functions.

 

esignature

 

We expect this tool will evolve as SQLWorks companies find new and exciting uses for online signature technology – using the power of integrated software to make the approval process easier and more efficient.

For business software advice and expertise, please contact our team today.

Using Shipping Controls

According to recent ONS figures, over 30% of businesses in the UK experienced difficulties getting the stock they needed during 2021, as supply chain issues continue to bite. Ensuring goods and materials arrive on time, in the right place, has become an important part of maintaining productivity.

SQLWorks offers a range of optional shipping controls that can help businesses better manage challenging supply chains, including:

 

Consolidations

Consolidations allow a purchasing manager to group individual purchase orders together into a consolidated group (for example representing the contents of a single shipping container) and assign meta-data to that consolidation, such as freight vessel numbers, suppliers, delivery details, docking dates and more.

Each new consolidation can be managed from the Purchase Ledger – simply select the purchase orders that need to be grouped and move them across the screen from left to right to assign them to the container.

consolidations

Here you can also manage other important information about that container, including actual delivery circumstances, additional on-costs or customs duty, and complete the shipping process.

On-costs can even be automatically split among the contents of that container, allowing a business to factor in the cost of shipping goods into those stock items’ cost-prices, sale-prices, and their eventual profitability.

 

Barcoding

SQLWorks permits stock-handlers to assign a barcode to any stock item, for use elsewhere in the platform. Intelligent Stock Ledger search fields allow the user to also search based on these bar codes, identifying a stock item even if only its bar code is known.

barcoding

Besides each stock item’s ‘Bar Code’ field you can also generate a preview – this same technology can optionally be used on a company’s templates for orders, pick sheets, delivery notes and many others, to help speed-up stock identification wherever that paperwork needs to be used.

SQLWorks uses EAN13 barcode generation that is accurate, internationalised, and works with a wide range of 3rd-party barcode scanning devices.

 

Dangerous Goods & Tariff Codes

With the need to declare tariff codes for internationally shipped goods, and dangerous goods codes for anything hazardous, these can be assigned to any stock item in SQLWorks under the ‘Advanced’ Tab.

tariff codes

We use formats from the UK Department for International Trade’s published 2021 dataset as our starting point.

Much like pricing or descriptions, shipping codes can be merged wherever stock items appear on documentation – please discuss with the SQLWorks team if your business has any special requirements.

 

Please speak to the SQLWorks Team to learn how our software can transform business operations. Contact us.

Managing Assets & Machinery

Asset Register


If a business harnesses important physical assets, keeping track of these over time quickly becomes essential.

Whether it’s your own machinery, or a piece of equipment you maintain for a client, attributing costs to these accurately is an key part of your business financial planning – and helps you make smarter decisions about future investment.

SQLWorks supports this process with a dedicated asset register – allowing the user to save a range of information (including make, model, warranty and more) for both in-house and client assets to aid day-to-day business operations. Asset Register can be found in the Stock Ledger, and helps the user build a centralised and definitive list that can be controlled with permissions groups, like any other SQLWorks Ledger.

For in-house assets, SQLWorks users can also link these assets to Purchase Orders – ensuring that asset’s data contains a detailed maintenance history that includes financials.

Helpfully, this also works across multiple Purchase Ledger suppliers, so that maintenance costs (such as repairs or replacement parts) remain accurate even if an asset’s service contract changes hands. This helps a company stay flexible, since accounting and contract periods may be much shorter than machinery lifecycles.

Assets may also be optionally enabled as a special tab in a customer’s Sales Ledger account – ensuring a service engineer can easily access known information about a client’s asset as a part of routine account maintenance. This might include location, serial numbering for identification, or notes on past repair work.

SQLWorks ensures business managers can properly document and maintain a full asset register – itself an asset to a well-informed team.

 

For expertise and software assistance, please contact our SQLWorks Team today

SQLWorks to Make Tax Digital

**NEW Update**

We’re Officially Recognised by HMRC for Making Tax Digital!

SQLWorks Accounting was approved for five key functionalities following demonstration of a sandbox environment to HMRCs review team. Learn more about Making Tax Digital with SQLWorks here.

recognised

 


We’ve updated our SQLWorks software to support Making Tax Digital – with Lineal staff officially demonstrating their work to HMRC’s Review Team during January 2019.

SQLWorks Accounts Prefs can be linked directly with a company’s HMRC VAT Account, granting permission to submit quarterly VAT returns for 18-months before re-authentication is required.

making tax digital authorisation

Making Tax Digital will be available for all SQLWorks Accounts Admin users via the existing VAT Ledger, and allows the accounts administrator to report their VAT return (shown in boxes 1-9) directly to HMRC’s system at the press of a button.

SQLWorks can also report up-to-date VAT account status information (such as obligation, payment and liability entries) from a company’s HMRC account, and access logs recording the full audit trail of communication between HMRC and our software. Once submitted, the company’s VAT return quarter is locked down to ensure security of reporting.

 


Lineal Software Solutions have been officially registered as a provider developing software suitable for HMRC’s new ‘Making Tax Digital’ initiative.

The new tax regulation, which will require UK businesses to undertake tax reporting (initially VAT) via digital links from April 2019, will need approved accounting software to report directly and digitally to a company’s HMRC digital tax account via web API.

Only software which passes a reporting test set by HMRC using example data will be approved for Making Tax Digital (Phase 2 standard.)

Mike Matthews explained: “Currently only around 130 software providers in the UK are registered as developing for direct Making Tax Digital accounts reporting. SQLWorks has had the ability to calculate your VAT return for many years, but very soon, you’ll be able to process your submission direct to HMRC digitally too.”

making tax digital software

HMRC says a quick Hello to SQLWorks during testing…

“HMRC’s main aim is to remove any re-keying or manual re-processing of data – which will make SQLWorks the perfect integrated solution for processing business all the way from quotation to sale, to direct VAT reporting.”

“The government have recently altered some of the software rules being put into place for making tax digital, but we’re hard at work to make sure all SQLWorks customers can begin reporting VAT digitally from next year.”

Recent figures collected by The Institute for Chartered Accountants have suggested awareness of Making Tax Digital is still very limited, with less than half of businesses stating they were unaware of changes that are about to come into force.

This Page will be updated periodically with the latest SQLWorks Making Tax Digital news – please check back for updates! 30.10.18

For an effective, integrated software solution – contact our team today.

Introduction to Audit & Real Time ‘Live’ Reporting

Using SQLWorks Audit, accounting managers can generate key financial reports either ‘Live’ using real-time data, or from an enforced point in time.

This feature is available using the ‘Audit’ tool. When this tool runs, SQLWorks collates the most up-to-date financial data available from the accounts, to use for financial reports. Auditing can be performed immediately before the creation of a new report, by ticking the ‘Audit Matrix’ checkbox in the report options, to ensure the report shows ‘live’ data.

If the checkbox is left unticked, SQLWorks will report using figures from the last time the accounts were audited.

audit matrix

 

Auditing can also be run independently from the ‘Audit By Year’ option in the main SQLWorks Navbar, by right clicking on the financial year in the main list and clicking ‘Audit Year’. The adjacent column displays the date of the last successful audit. This can be used to manually designate an official Audited point in time, from which reports are run, until you are ready to re-audit.

‘Live’ data reporting is normally the preferred option, as it permits accounting managers to get an instant snapshot of the exact state of the business accounts at that moment in time.

audit live reporting

Reporting from the last audited point in time may be more useful in certain situations however. On systems with large numbers of transactions being entered, some businesses prefer to draw a line in the sand, and report consistently from this point in time, until ready to perform the next official reporting audit.

audit reporting

To learn more about SQLWorks financial reporting, contact our team today.

Introduction to EC VAT Reporting

SQLWorks allows users to accurately report on EC VAT, as part of their VAT Ledger.

In order to report on EC VAT, every sales and purchase account to be included must first have a country and VAT reporting setting saved against it.

For each customer or supplier, this can be set under the ‘Bank and VAT’ tab in the Sales Ledger/Purchase Ledger.

To set up the customer/supplier for EC VAT reporting, choose the correct European country from the ‘VAT Country’ (SL) or ‘Country Name’ (PL) fields, and select the correct setting under ‘VAT Setup’. ‘INC’ is for accounts which need VAT to be included, ‘Exempt’ for accounts with reportable VAT of zero value, and ‘NRT’ for accounts with non-reportable VAT.

Whether the selected country is part of the EC VAT reporting can be set in the SQLWorks countries list (found under ‘Countries’ in Address Editor.) Double click a country from the list to edit it from ‘UK’ to ‘EU’ or ‘World’ and click save. The EU category may also be used to designate countries not formerly part of the European Union, but part of the European Economic Area (e.g.: Norway.)

System Administrators may wish to force users to include a company VAT number when dealing with EEA customers/suppliers, for tax reporting purposes – this policy can be enforced via Preferences > Accounts Prefs > ‘Finance, Analysis, Dept & Tax’* Tab, by ticking the ‘EEC VAT requires VAT No in:’ option for either Purchase Ledger (PL), Sales Ledger (SL) or both. This will restrict users from saving any new transactions against sales/purchase accounts without a known and saved company VAT number.

Accounting admins may also choose which nominal codes need to include or exclude VAT by choosing a nominal code in the Nominal Ledger, clicking edit, and ticking the ‘Add VAT’ checkbox in the top right, before saving.

SQLWorks will collate EC VAT figures in the VAT Ledger beside UK VAT, in the ‘EC VAT’ columns (1 & 2), and VAT Ledger users can click the ‘EC VAT’ buttons at the top of each EC Vat column to view the transactions included in that section.

The VAT Ledger will also produce EC VAT totals in the ‘Total’s group’ section at the bottom of the window (3). These are then used in the Form 100 totals, allowing SQLWorks accounts users to complete an accurate VAT return.

 

For additional help or SQLWorks accounting expertise – contact our team today.

*This tab may be labelled ‘VAT & Dates’ in older versions of SQLWorks.

Fact Sheet: Accounting Locks

SQLWorks includes a range of accounting locks which allow data entry for business accounting to be restricted to certain time periods.

SQLWorks operates date based-accounting rather than ‘Period-based accounting’ in the commonly understood sense – this gives companies greater granularity over how accounting is controlled.

Because of this, SQLWorks accounting can be locked down* based on a number of different periods and conditions, depending on your preference:

  • Financial Year Level Locking
  • Monthly Locking
  • VAT Period /  Quarterly Locking
  • Appropriation Locking

 

Financial Year Level Lock

Year Level Locking is available from Audit > Audit by Year in the main SQLWorks Navbar, by right-clicking on the financial year and selecting ‘Lock Year’.

year locking

Financial years that have been locked will display a ‘Yes’ in the ‘Lock’ column of the financial years list, and will prevent SQLWorks users from making any changes to financial transactions within that year. However, nominal journals may still be posted to a locked year.

This lock should only be used by your SQLWorks Accounting Admin, and acts independently of all other accounting conditions.

 

Monthly Lock (Current Financial Year Only)

This lock can be made available in your Accounts Prefs, where individual months, or months within specific ledgers, can be locked or unlocked for current financial year.

month locking

By default, users can only post in the designated active financial year – however transitionary options are available here to allow temporary posting into the final period of the previous financial year if this is still Year Level unlocked.

Because this lock can be turned on/off by a user with sufficient privileges and are always reversible, this forms a ’soft’ lock accounting managers can deploy as a highly flexible ‘Month-end’ control or similar.

 

VAT Locking (Quarterly Lock)

The SQLWorks VAT Ledger allows users to calculate the UK tax return due for each VAT Quarter.

vat locking

Once the VAT return has been complete, the date period covered by the specified VAT Quarter will be automatically locked against further accounting entries.

Reporting VAT accurately is a legal obligation, and additional transaction entries will not be permitted into the locked Quarter once VAT has been calculated for reporting to HMRC. Journaling between nominal codes is still permitted.

 

Appropriation Locking

Once you have set retained profit for a financial year (‘appropriated’ profit) the financial year will be locked, even if the financial year has not yet been Month, VAT or Year Level locked yet. No further transactions may be created in this year.

Because of this, Appropriation is usually only completed once year-end processing for that financial year has already been completed. For more information, please read: “1.1.2.4 – How to Set Retained Profit.

 

*Under certain circumstances some accounting locks can be reversed – please speak to your SQLWorks team about this in more detail.

Did you know? Importing Journals

SQLWorks Accounting includes the option to enter Journals both manually, but also offers the chance to save time by importing journals from a spreadsheet of data directly to your Nominal Ledger.

When in the Nominal Ledger click ‘Journal’ in the top toolbar, and the add Journals window opens. To begin importing your journals, click the ‘Import Journal Option, and browse for the file you wish to import.

Imports must be imported using a fixed format from a template file: a copy of which can be found within your SQLWorks installation ‘Misc’ Folder as a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet – or downloaded here. You will need to enter your data and save the file as a tab-delimited text (.txt) file before importing.

SQLWorks will warn you if the data you are seeking to import is old, and may block you from entering nominal journals into locked accounting periods.

Once importing journals has run successfully, your nominal journal data will appear in the list of journals to be added, and users can commit them to the Nominal Ledger by clicking ‘Save and Close’.

 

For accounting advice and support, contact the SQLWorks team today.

Did you Know? Quoting Tips

quoting tips

Quoting a customer can be a delicate process, and sometimes you need to be able to issue a quote with detailed options. We’ve collated a few handy tips to help your sales team build the perfect SQLWorks quote.

If you’re putting together a more complex quote, it can sometimes be useful to give a customer options. You can create these by right-clicking on the line numbers on the left of each quote line, and selecting ‘Choose Option Group’ to place groups of lines under ‘Option 1’ ‘Option 2’ subheadings (1.)

These options are normally alternatives to each other, so you typically won’t want SQLWorks to total them together. You can remove the overall total by switching to the to ‘Extras and Project’ Tab in the top right of the quote header, and unchecking the ‘Print Totals’ checkbox (2.) This will remove the ‘grand total’ from the bottom of the normal quote template (please note that if you exclude VAT you’ll need to include an amendment to this effect, as depending on your settings, the total VAT may no longer be visible.)

If you need to include sub-total lines instead for each option group, the easiest way is to add a sub-total line at the end of each group. By right clicking on the grey background of any given line, you can choose ‘Toggle Line Type’ to change a line to display the sub-total of the group immediately above it, to be hidden or to become a comment line without any costs (3.)

The area around the line number will change to a different colour to reflect the line type (1), and the quote template will change to incorporate the new line type. This is useful to help keep your quote clear and tidy – to add a running sub-total, line gaps or comments.

With these extras it’s easy to build more complex quotes from SQLWorks, and give customers an informative choice.

A Quick Disclaimer: if you have a custom quotations window for your company/organisation, one or more of these quoting tips features may be disabled. If you need them – speak to the SQLWorks team!

Team SQLWorks at EurOmnis 2016

EurOmnis

Our SQLWorks team recently exhibited at the 2016 EuroOmnis developers conference in Tuscany, Italy – joining Omnis developers conference from more than a dozen countries around the globe.

EurOmnis is an annual educational event designed to bring Omnis programmers together to share knowledge and to showcase the very latest in software development.

“Lineal have been part of, and latterly helped organise, this international conference of Omnis developers since 1999” explained Managing Director Mike Matthews. “As a member of the Omnis developers group (ODEV), our SQLWorks Business Management Software undergoes an ongoing process of learning and development – and we’re always looking at what features future versions of SQLWorks will need to stay at the forefront.”

“The best businesses are always looking to the latest technology for an extra edge, so both our team and SQLWorks software need to be just as agile.”

EurOmnis

Attendees enjoyed classes, discussions and more surrounding the latest advances in Omnis software development, including javascript web tools, responsive graphs and visualisation aids, and Omnis development for portable devices such as smartphones and tablets.

Representatives from Omnis were also present, to host seminars informing and updating attendees on the platform’s latest news, as well as explore likely developments in the near future and gather feedback.

EurOmnis

The conference also gives developers a chance to showcase what they have been working on to other developers, drawing on software projects undertaken across countless industries and sectors.

To learn more about SQLWorks: contact us today.