New Updates in Mothernode
Date: July 31, 2009
Critical Change: Multi-Location Companies
This update includes several changes to various functions and capabilities throughout Mothernode There has been a significant modification to the architecture of the program that will benefit multi-location offices. Now, multi-site locations have been consolidated under a single company umbrella, enabling users to collaborate more effectively within their group of companies. Administrators can now determine which companies their users can access by assigning them privileges within their user accounts. Users with access to multiple locations can quickly toggle views to display and create activity and records for their company of choice and print reports that pertain to one or all of their companies.
In addition to this major change to the program’s structure, all users should take note of the following enhancements, fixes and new features.
Administration
– Multiple offices within an Affiliate group now appear in a list under the Affiliate tab.
– Affiliate Tax Exempt Number has been added.
– Tax Exempt Number has been added to the Affiliate Profile.
Companies
– You can now add a unique company name for billing and shipping addresses in the company profile. Previously, shipping and billing addresses could not assume a third-party company name.
– Companies now have advanced search capabilities.
– You can now export your companies to Microsoft Excel, based on your search criteria.
Contacts
– When adding a new contact from the contact module, you can choose to add from scratch or add to an existing company. Contacts that are independent and not assigned to a company can be assigned to a company once the contact record is saved.
– A contact can now be assigned to multiple market segments for marketing campaign purposes.
– You can now tag contacts as “Marketing Campaign Participants” to help create your marketing campaign lists.
– You can now tag contacts as “Customer Satisfaction Survey Participants” to help create your Customer Satisfaction lists.
– You can now assign associated contacts with other companies and locations from within the contact. Previously this could only be accomplished from the Location Profile.
– You can now export your contacts to Microsoft Excel, based on your search criteria. Watch the tutorial by clicking the Resources tab/Tutorials/Exporting Contacts.
Quotes
– New printing options have been added to Quotes. Users can now print:
– Quotes (print w or w/o signature)
– Quote requests (print w or w/o signature)
– Estimates (print w or w/o signature)
– Quote Terms and Conditions (independently)
Note: If you do not have a signature in your user account, you will not be given the option to include your signature.
– In the Quote Header the label “weeks to complete” has been changed to “lead time” to reflect the terminology used in the company profile.
– When duplicating quotes, quantities will now be duplicated to address quotes issued to GCs. Users should take note that quantities should be checked in the event that quotes are being reused for different purposes.
– When changing the location in a quote the address now updates. Previously, this had to be manually assigned by the user, selecting from the Company or Location addresses. Mothernode will now simply apply the defaults.
– Additional address selection tools for quotes and orders have been added (this function will be replaced by a value list in the next update).
– Quote reports are now available in the Quote list.
Orders
– New printing options now enable users to print the Terms and Conditions related to the order.
– Users are now required to enter either a Ship Date or Install Date (and can have both). Reminder: Either one of these dates defines the order due date.
– Advanced Search: you can now search by Due Date range. (For more information on how due dates are calculated click the Support link in the footer and search using the phrase “due dates”)
– Advanced Search: You can now search for a deposit invoice in the Orders.
– Additional export fields have been added to the Orders Export file.
– Order reports are now available in the Orders list.
Invoices
– You can now print a copy of the terms and conditions for the order, directly from the invoice.
– Additional fields have been added to the Invoice Exports.
– Invoice reports are now available in the invoice list.
Purchase Orders
– The Project Manager’s name has been added to the PO record and printout.
– The advanced Search now includes the Project Manager’s name as an option to searching Pos.
– You can now print the Terms and Conditions of the order from the PO.
– You can now print the user signature on the PO.
– Purchase Orders now use the Affiliate’s Tax Exempt number with the option to include or exclude.
– Purchase Order reports are now available in the Purchase Order list.
Fixes
– Adding a contact in a lead will default to the lead company, but will be replaced with the official company name if the lead/opportunity is converted to a company.
– Yahoo Rich Text Editor was updated to the current version. Misc. bug fixes were posted by Yahoo. This improves functionality in Message Center and T&Cs and eventually budget letters and documents.
– Quote terms and conditions now duplicate when a quote is duplicated. Previously this wasn’t happening.
– Lead time value list was not correctly displaying affiliate values. This has been fixed.
– When adding companies and vendors, tabbing past the last field on screen caused the sliding screen to stall. This has been corrected. Tabbing will no longer advance the screen.
– In the Affiliate Profile, the billing and shipping address wouldn’t copy over when “use primary address” was selected. This has been fixed.
Resources
– A new tutorial section has been added to host video tutorials. Two videos have been posted in this latest release.
File Maker Pro Databases
– A new RAW FileMaker Pro database has been provided, replacing the previous reporting function. Constant modification to the Mothernode database (additional fields and modified calculations) has made it too cumbersome to keep the FileMaker companion current. Users can use this data dump to process additional information.
– FileMaker Royalty reports now include a date range to select for royalties.
Miscellaneous
– Interface Changes (Various)
– Pagination at the bottoms of lists has been updated. The previous version often made clicking difficult.
– The 3 month forecast in the production landing page now allows you to filter by company if you have access to more than one company.
– Ship and Install logs now include filters for the companies you have access to.
The Mothernode Development Team
