Export to Excel:

SQLWorks allows users to export data from almost any visible table (and most reports) to structured spreadsheet formats including Microsoft Excel (.XLSX) and comma-separated values (.CSV) – useful for manipulating data and analysing trends.

.CSV files are useful, but are basically limited to plain text organised with column breaks. Exporting to Excel provides much more scope for organising the output data for business purposes.

To make this more powerful, we’ve recently updated the options available when users export SQLWorks data to Excel to include:

1. Smarter Headers:

Column headers are delivered in a separate text format, with bold and underline – and now display numbered headers correctly. Where columns are clearly identifiable, Excel exports are also given column data formats (date / integer / text etc.) automatically.

2. Automated Column widths

SQLWorks will scan the data being exported and size each Excel column appropriately for the data being exported.

This helps minimise the amount of spreadsheet formatting the user has to do manually. Automatic column sizing also factors in the column header, and works between 5-80 characters.

3. Intelligent Alignment

In line with accounting display conventions, ‘text’ data is left aligned by default, while ‘date’ and ‘number’ data is now automatically right aligned (as are headers.)

This helps make it easier to label numbers with text in the same row – and to compare various numbers in the same column, even if they share a preceding digit, but have different orders of magnitude.

Each user’s default export type is accessible via their CRM preferences – allowing users who require their data pre-formatted in Excel to choose this as their preferred output.

Data can be exported from reports by choosing ‘File’ as the export destination, or by highlighting some or all rows in any SQLWorks table and selecting ‘Export’. If Microsoft Excel is your default application for .XLSX and .CSV files, the app will open the data on screen automatically.

For more data management expertise and support, please contact our team today.

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

Operating System Update:

SQLWorks Version 10 is officially compatible with Apple macOS 11 (‘Big Sur’) and Windows 10 October 2020 Update (’20H2’).

Our SQLWorks Software Development Team – which uses both Apple macOS and Microsoft Windows 10 for development – works hard to ensure our software maintains the best possible lifespan and interoperability, without the need for companies to spend on paid version upgrades.

Big Sur introduces a number of changes to Apple macOS, including visual enhancements, updated notifications, and performance improvements such as the ability to install updates prior to a restart.

Windows 10’s October 2020 update, coded 20H2, introduces a number of Windows 10 Start menu, taskbar and visual enhancements, and changes to Windows’ Settings controls.

In testing, SQLWorks performs around 5% faster under each operating system.

Although we generally recommend users do not install operating system updates on mission-critical devices during OS beta-testing, or immediately at point of new version release, keeping IT platforms up to date is both an important cybersecurity and business continuity measure – and users should seek to move to the latest operating systems once tested successfully.

Speak to our SQLWorks Team today.

Production Planning

We’ve extended SQLWorks to include more powerful production planning/process routing in Version 10 – allowing Production Managers to masterplan working spaces, types of work, and employee skills to organise manufacturing capacity more effectively.

Workshop Map can be opened via the Products module in the NavBar, and uses three key elements:

Each Process Route has a series of numbered steps (carried out in a specific order) called a Work Flow. To organise the Work Flow, the production manager simply chooses the Work Centre, Process, and Employee that is assigned at each step – by dragging and dropping them into the Workflow builder.

Workflow steps each carry associated costs and manufacturing times, allowing the system to build a comprehensive picture of the process route a finished product must follow to be completed in full.

Production managers can save Template Process Routes and assign these to Bills of Material – with the right default process routes being loaded automatically on new Works Orders to save time. Expected completion times are estimated automatically, and progress can be logged as each step of the Workflow is underway

Any Process Routes that are currently in use will be shown in the ‘Active Process Routes’ table, along with the details of the BOMs being produced which follow that process route.

Production Managers can also use this part of SQLWorks to generate reports (either from the perspective of Work Centres, Processes or Employee) to see outstanding and current Works Orders, and to gauge capacity from each.

This helps inform staffing decisions, shift patterns or identify production bottlenecks. Where there is a clash (for example, if a ‘Welding’ process employee has more welding hours due on Works Orders than is available in the calendar), SQLWorks will display ‘CLASH’ in red next to that Bill of Materials.

Overall SQLWorks’ Production Planning gives Production Managers the power to coordinate working spaces/resources, types of work, and personnel for maximum control. Production Routes help structure and streamline the manufacturing process, and organise manufacturing capacity more intelligently.

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

Announcing Version 10:

Lineal Software Solutions are excited to announced the public release of our next generation of SQLWorks software.

Version 10 of our flagship business management suite harnesses more advanced manufacturing capabilities for the first time – introducing brand new material requirements planning (MRP) capabilities into our existing integrated accounting, CRM & stock control platform.

Automation is critical to productivity. SQLWorks MRP allows businesses to instantly gauge future demand for stock items & materials based on a flexible time horizon and existing stock availability, automatically generate purchase orders for approved suppliers, automatically roll-up part and cost changes through bills of material, and automatically create works orders for production centres on the factory floor.

These hotly-anticipated new features will help drive real business benefits, especially among manufacturing and logistics companies: including more intelligent and cost-effective purchasing, optimised stock holding, and coordinated forward planning of production.

Factory managers can now backflush manufactured items, auto-attach engineering documents, optionally roll-up updated part-costings from purchasing through the relevant kits, and even import new assemblies from popular engineering CAD software via drag-and-drop.

 “… British manufacturing needs a factory reset.”

Mike Matthews, Lineal Software Solutions

MRP is an immensely powerful tool for running a business – and we’ve given users the ability to drill-right down into purchasing and production recommendations – finding the exact source of demand from potentially thousands of orders, to line level, with a simple double-click.

SQLWorks manufacturing abilities integrate seamlessly with other business processes across accounting, CRM and stock control – and we’re planning further extensions to functionality for release later in 2020: including detailed capacity planning, support for ‘Just-In-Time’ (JIT) style manufacturing, and more complex ad-hoc report building.

We’ve also made some updates to the visual identity of SQLWorks with this iteration to help make our software feel smoother and more accessible to new users, and expanded Lineal’s UK Software Development Team of Omnis developers to hasten our development cycle.

Mike Matthews, Lineal’s Managing Director, explained: “This is a terrific new leap forward for our SQLWorks software. The new release is our most advanced ever, and introduces powerful new manufacturing and logistical control to our existing business management tools.”

“We believe the ability for industry to automatically complete important engineering tasks – like importing newly-designed assemblies, production planning, updating part costs and forecasting future operations – will prove a popular choice among manufacturers.”

“Post-lockdown many firms will be doing some serious soul-searching about whether their systems are really up to scratch. British manufacturing needs a factory reset. If you can’t innovate then you’re at a dead end, and modernisation will be an important part of the UK’s economic recovery.”

SQLWorks Version 10 with MRP is available NOW