business software Archives - SQLWorks

Team SQLWorks at EurOmnis 2017

This year Lineal’s SQLWorks Team traveled to Arnhem, The Netherlands, for the 4-day European Omnis Developers Conference – EurOmnis 2017.

Conference workshops offer the opportunity for developers from more than a dozen countries to exhibit their latest work, seek advice from other programmers and share best practice. A primarily educational event, EurOmnis brings together the brightest and best to further develop software projects and draw on a wider pool of knowledge.

EurOmnis workshop

Members of the Omnis Executive Team also attended to discuss the very latest developments of the platform, explain new features (such as remote debugging technology working live from the developer console) and gather valuable feedback from the wider Omnis developer community.

Managing Director of Lineal Software Solutions, Mike Matthews explained: “Over the many years during which we’ve helped organise EurOmnis, both the software itself and the Omnis Developers Group (ODEV) have gone from strength the strength.”

omnis developers

“This year’s conference studied some exciting breakthroughs in web development, mobile/tablet-friendly user interfaces, internet-of-things (IOT) examples, future API technology, and much, much more.”

“SQLWorks is designed to be a highly flexible business management software, and we greatly value contributions from the extraordinarily diverse range of industry sectors, creative skills and technical knowledge represented each year at EurOmnis.”

In addition to coding, EurOmnis 2017 attendees had the chance to visit and dine at the Kasteel Doorwerth, a medieval chateaux dating from before the 13th Century, and literary home of the Beaulieu restaurant, where Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema wrote Soldier of Orange.

See you next year!

 

Lineal are Omnis and business software development specialists – learn more here.

Euromnis venue

SQLWorks is changing…

 

Lineal will be launching a new major version of SQLWorks in 2017.

Version 8 will bring a host of new features to our flagship business management software, as well as provide existing SQLWorks customers a greatly improved user-experience.

Managing Director of Lineal Mike Matthews explained: “We were determined to release a major new version of SQLWorks this year, and wanted to implement the customer feedback we’ve been gathering in recent months.”

“By changing to the StudioWorks 8 framework, SQLWorks Version 8 will allow us to update the technology behind our business software – modernising the visual ‘look-and-feel’ to be more intuitive, adding greater flexibility, and offering more options for integration.”

Version 8 is expected to be available from Autumn 2017 – check back for more soon!

Fact Sheet: Adding Emails

Adding emails

SQLWorks integrates with your email inbox to let you view, send and use emails to complete other tasks: here’s how.

To add your email account to SQLWorks, click ‘User Prefs’ under Preferences (1) in the main navbar. Select your User ID, and under the ‘Employee Info’ Tab put your email settings into email settings fields, including your account ID and password. This will give SQLWorks permission to see the contents of your email inbox.

In the main Companies List (1) by clicking the ‘Emails’ Tab (2) under a selected company’s record you can view the contents of your inbox on the left hand panel, and emails saved within SQLWorks on the right hand panel.

Dragging an email from the left panel to the right panel saves a copy to the system and makes the email visible to other SQLWorks users, whilst selecting an email makes the message content visible in the yellow viewing box below.

This is most useful for adding emails which are to valuable to just sit in your inbox – emails which your team will need to be able to share or recover details from in your absence.

You can also use this tool to place important emails within the system, linking important correspondence to projects, sales leads, quotations and more.

 

SQLWorks can even be configured to recognise significant emails and automatically add them to projects and other areas – for additional information, ask the SQLWorks team today.

Fact Sheet: Client Lists

Client Lists

SQLWorks CRM allows for easy creation and maintenance of a list of specific companies, which can be used for email mailshots, segmented letters and other targeted communication.

Client Lists can be found under the CRM section in the main SQLWorks Navbar (1), and opens a window with a list management menu (2) and a client list panel (3).

To create a new custom list from the companies in your main Companies List, click the ‘New’ button in the top toolbar, this opens the new client list window (4) which allows you to set options for the list you’re about to create, including assigning it to a user, creating a list from companies or contacts (or both) and choosing from pre-saved options from your ‘Quick Select’ menu.

The ‘Locked List?’ checkbox allows the list creator to toggle control of the new list, locking the list to being changed by anyone but the administrator.

For generating email lists, three additional email option checkboxes provide a useful shortcuts to automatically exclude any company or contact without an email, exclude duplicated email addresses to avoid double-sending, and hide anyone saved with an email ‘opt-out’ against their name within SQLWorks.

You can build your list using any of three methods, selecting from checkbox categories saved in your Companies List, choosing options from your Quick Select menu such as companies with ‘Recent Phone Logs’, or building a custom query using the standard SQLWorks Custom Search tool. This final option gives you complete control over your new list – adding lines using the (+) and (-) buttons to add or remove qualifying companies that match a series of terms.

SQLWorks can handle both fixed and dynamic lists: by clicking ‘Enable Smartlist’ under the ‘Live Search’ Tab your list will constantly update as new data becomes available, re-fulfilling your saved search terms to remain current. Leaving Smartlist turned off will keep your list as it was when you first created it.

Two further tabs labelled ‘Always Included’ and ‘Never Included’ allow you to set overriding exception rules for who appears on your list. Moving a company or individual from left to right, onto the ‘Always Included’ category ensures this company or category will always remain on the list.

Moving a company or individual from left to right onto the ‘Never Included’ list ensures this company or contact will be never be a part of this list. If a company or contact appears on both lists, so that the two exceptions conflict, the ‘Never Included’ list takes priority.

Clicking ‘Save & Close’ will save under your SQLWorks User ID the results of your list – which can be exported to an excel spreadsheet for use in external applications by clicking the ‘Export’ button at the top of Client Lists window.

Back in your SQLWorks Companies List, your saved client lists can also be used from either Quick Select dropdown or the ‘Client Lists’ tab to filter your overall database.

SQLWorks Client Lists give you the power to create precise and complex lists from your larger company database for highly targeted marketing and other customer management.

 

For more information of SQLWorks CRM tools, click here.

Did you know? Removing Companies

Removing Companies

Keeping on top of your data means cleaning old entries and removing companies you don’t need every now and then – but what’s the best way to do this?

Your SQLWorks includes an ‘inactive’ status for removing companies, which allows you to effectively tidy your database whilst avoiding deleting data you might need later. – SQLW

We recommend using this feature because outright ‘deletion’ of a company is normally not the best option. Most companies have linked information connected to other parts of SQLWorks: including phone logs, tasks and more, which makes deletion impractical.

To make a company inactive, right click its name in the main Companies List and click the ‘Toggle Active’ button to move a company to inactive status.

Inactive companies can be recovered later if users need to access older data, whilst keeping their main working list up to date for other time-sensitive tasks, e.g.: when generating mailshots, and ensuring your company files always remain accurate.

Did you know? Multiple Windows

Although SQLWorks is designed to avoid the need for multiple windows, sometimes this trick to open additional windows can be very useful.

To open an extra SQLWorks window, simply ‘Shift-click’ by holding shift at the same time as clicking on a chosen SQLWorks menu item.

This works with every Navbar section, tab and subsection of SQLWorks – and is useful for when you need to be able to refer to two (or more) unconnected sections of SQLWorks at once. 

For example, whilst you’re busy working on a customer’s quote, the phone rings with a call from a different customer who wishes to book a meeting. Simply ‘shift-click’ the SQLWorks Calendar to open a separate diary window for you to work with.

Each of the windows behaves independently, and can be used, moved, resized or closed as normal. The only exception to this rule is that multiple copies of the same window will not synchronise any edits you make between copies.

This handy trick guarantees that you can work in different parts of SQLWorks simultaneously however you need.

Need some helpful advice? Contact our SQLWorks team today: 01271 375999

Did you Know? Prompt Notes

Working in a larger team means that a post-it note can easily get lost – so SQLWorks lets you leave prompted reminder messages for other members of your team, called Prompt Notes.

Your prompt note will pop up when another SQLWorks user opens a specific company entry from the company’s list, a specific company’s account, project or all of these, and can be used to set reminders for all members of your team when accessing that company record.

Prompt Notes can be set from your SQLWorks default preferences for any chosen company by clicking ‘Edit’ from the toolbar, and selecting the ‘Prompt Notes’ Checkbox.

Choosing ‘None’, ‘Projects’, ‘Accounts’ or ‘All’ from your SQLWorks Preferences sets when the message should appear. Selecting ‘None’ restricts your prompt note to the company’s Companies List entry only.

Prompt notes are a useful tool for leaving warning messages, designated contact points or other client-specific information, and ensuring everyone gets a prompt for an important reminder.

Fact Sheet: Sales Ledger

fact sheet sales ledger

SQLWorks Sales Ledger is your main accounting ledger for your quotes, orders, refunds and sales transactions with other companies.

Sales Ledger can be opened under the ‘Accounts’ heading in the main NavBar (1) and includes a full suite of accounting tools. Any company from your Companies List can be given a Sales Ledger account – appearing in the Sales Ledger List (2) for further use.

From here you can prepare quotes, log orders and more, before sending out any invoices and receiving payments from a given company. As you complete sales, your sales move from left to right – starting as disbursements, leads or quotes, becoming orders, and then transactions. The Sales Ledger information for a company is displayed in the Main Window, with ‘Quotes’, ‘Orders’, ‘Transactions’ and more available by clicking the Tabs on the lower right panel (3).

SQLWorks allows you to keep a close track of money owed, customer debts and credit: you can set a Credit Limit for each business along with precise payment terms, deadlines, known company directors, and instruct SQLWorks to email or print invoices as needed. Any custom settings for a given company also allows you to customise SQLWorks reports to reflect this.

Track aged debt with payment terms, turnover, profit, balance history, debt days, stock items bought and other enquiries, all from the account activity section of any given company in your Sales Ledger. If you need to transfer data, electronic data interchange (EDI), allows a user to export orders, or import invoices from other digital sources.

The SQLWorks team can also configure your Sales Ledger to more closely match your sales – adding automatic adjustments for discovered stock, setting up cash account sales or more uncommon types of invoices if needed.

Every financial entry (invoice, receipt or credit note) is linked directly by a nominal code category to your nominal code category, so SQLWorks always gives an accurate, real-time reflection of your current sales finances in your Nominal Ledger.

 

Contact us today about accounting with SQLWorks: 01271 375999 or www.sqlworks.co.uk/contact-us

Fact Sheet: Calendar

SQLWorks Calendar is an essential part of the SQLWorks CRM module, with a collaborative diary so that your whole team can plan ahead, audit trail your every interaction with other companies, and track progress from other areas of SQLWorks.

Calendar can be found in the NavBar under the SQLWorks CRM module, and opens a configurable calendar display in the main window (2). From here you can book a range of appointments into the calendar, share with other users or among groups, and set reminders.

The preview in the top right hand corner (3) allows users to easily cycle through past, present or future months (which display in the main window), or refocus the calendar on today’s date by clicking the central down arrow.

Below the preview are checkbox lists (4) entitled ‘Show Users’, ‘Show Groups’ and ‘Show Layers’. Checking or unchecking items on these checklists filters the calendar in the main window; showing or hiding appointments for specific users, groups of users (for example: ‘accounts team’), or types of appointment (for example: holidays) respectively.

SQLWorks Calendar updates once a minute, and users can simply click and drag events between days in the main window. Along the base of the SQLWorks Calendar is your toolkit (5) where you can add or edit calendar appointments in more detail. Double clicking a day in the main diary window adds a new event, and the ‘Owner’ of the event can set the type of event, some notes, the start and end time/date of the event, and add known users to the event who can be notified automatically be email when the owner of the event clicks ‘Save’.

Existing events can also be edited here, with the toolkit allowing you to ‘Search’ the calendar, view ‘Limbo’ events with user changes pending approval, send email notifications, ‘Cancel’ incorrect entries or set ‘Options’ for the appearance of your calendar. Dragging the sliding scale can be used to change the timespan of the calendar in the main window, ‘View’ toggles your calendar into list view to reorder by a specific field, and clicking ‘Sync’ manually updates your SQLWorks Calendar across smartphones or other linked devices.

Clicking the ‘Notify Me’ checkbox allows users to set automated reminders for events – prompting future you (and other users) via SQLWorks popup notifications, private emails, or both, at a chosen time and date(s).

SQLWorks Calendar also remembers past users and archives deleted events, so that your calendar can always recover historic data, errors or edits from any point in time.

Our development team can set any bespoke extensions of SQLWorks your team uses to appear automatically if they have date fields (e.g: Purchase Orders) so that your diary always shows exactly what you need.

SQLWorks Calendar coordinates your workflow – allowing your team to plan and track shared projects, log sales or orders, control billing or more – and integrates your CRM with SQLWorks Accounting and Stock modules to make the best use of your time.

For more information, contact our team today: http://www.sqlworks.co.uk/contact/

Fact Sheet: Stock Ledger

SQLWorks Stock Ledger tools have been designed to give you complete control over your warehouse(s) and the constant movement of goods necessary for your business to profit.

Stock Ledger can be entered from the Navigation Bar on the left of SQLWorks, under ‘Products’ (1), in one of two versions: ‘Simple’ or ‘Complex’. These different levels of functionality fit your needs and complexity of your business, with complex stock including advanced features such as internal movements, stock locations and batch control.

Opening the Stock Ledger displays a list of every stock item known to your business (2) and allows you to search or filter the list to find the stock item you need. Selecting an item from the list loads its information in the main window for viewing or editing, with movements, orders and other stock functions all found in the lower half of the Main Window.

Keeping count your stock can depend on workflow, so separate figures for ‘Actual’ (available for sale), ‘Pending’ (not yet for sale), ‘Allocated’ (reserved for order), ‘Free’ (warehoused) and ‘Available’ Stock are all recorded (3), to ensure maximum accuracy.

At the top half of the Stock Ledger are tabs governing the attributes of the selected stock item (4) – including a summary of activity, purchase and sale pricing, ordering defaults, analysis categories and other notes.

In the lower half of the Stock Ledger are tabs governing activity on the selected stock item (5) – including a summary dashboard, full stock movement history, linked transactions, deliveries, stock status, any manufacturing/bills of material data, works orders, stock history & linked CRM entries.

‘Stock Audit’ allows SQLWorks to take a snapshot of your stock, producing printed figures for stock checking, calculating a variance factor based on counts from your warehouse team, and permits you to correct your SQLWorks’ Stock Ledger based on this data.

Storing your stock in each warehouse, and its stock bins, can be mapped in any way that you choose: SQLWorks understands where stock is being kept, and keeps track of crates, packs and individual units to ensure that exact quantities are never confused. Buy in crates of a thousand, store as individual units and sell in packs of five – safe in the knowledge that SQLWorks understands the difference. From the ‘Info’ Tab on the toolbar a set of ‘Allowed’ permissions even blocks items from being sold in the Sales ledger in error, and a monthly ‘lock down’ feature can be used to ensure historic data remains an accurate record.

Materials or component parts can be logged as such to avoid miss-selling, and product ‘bills of material’ from those parts saved for accounting of finished products. Any product in SQLWorks can become a kit, built from an unlimited number of sub components in a known construction time, costed as you see fit.

Valuation can vary widely across companies: that’s why SQLWorks understands different types of stock prices: including setting a ‘Default Cost’ for basic use, ‘Average Cost’ across units or materials or ‘Batch Cost’ for varying costs between batches, or a ‘Standard Cost’ for your own asset valuation as needed, and recording sale prices in up to 3 sales currencies (set by the user) to allow for international stock movements.

Batch management gives you the ability to record the item price differently between batches, track shifting margins and buy, store or re-sell the same item deploying different quantities and valuations depending on the batch. All pricing data links directly to your SQLWorks Accounting tools, to ensure that each area of your business software operates as one.

Adjustments to your stock are easily made from the ‘Movements’ button on the toolbar: for example stock movements can be entered in bulk for rapid updating of stock figures, or imported/exported from an external file. For those that need it, Stock Ledger includes an optional serial number system – using unique item numbers SQLWorks can be set to prompt, or even block, users against moving stock without evidencing its serial number. Speak to our team about how the Stock Ledger can best be configured for your businesses workflow.

SQLWorks logs not just your current stock, but your stock history – allowing you to trace movements or individual items long after the event, or monitor stock levels and finances over time. This information is then relayed using graphs for ease of use, and ensures that you always have accurate stock data at your fingertips.

 

For more information, contact our team today: http://www.sqlworks.co.uk/contact/