New version of the Granite Fleet Manager available for download
I just uploaded the latest version of the Granite Fleet Manager to the website.
- Added customer invoicing including labour rates, markup percentages on parts , parts types and external invoices and sales taxes. Added internal invoice number and customer purchase order number to service order so the administration staff can ensure that the service order was invoiced. Extensively reworked the service order forms.
- Selecting reports by individual customers now shows your price to them rather than your cost
- Added mechanics comments to service order.
- Added logo to printed service order.
- Added Service Order Quick Find so you can do extensive searching
- Updating the hourly rates for Service Techs will ask if you want to update the service orders as well to get a more accurate cost.
- Temporary locations will now appear on the overdue items screen and report
- Added an overdue items report
- Export reports to Excel
- Random equipment photos on main menu
- Many minor UI improvements
The customer invoicing was a very interesting feature is that touched many forms and reports through out the system. I wanted the screens and reports to work equally well if you were working on your own fleet of equipment or on someone else's equipment. One difference of course is that the customer name should appear where appropriate. And of course you don't want your customer knowing your cost so they should only be seeing their price.
The exports to Excel was quite interesting in many respects. I'll probably create a page on my main website with all my Excel code. But some things I'm doing is after the reports recordset gets exported to Excel is I delete all fields that are long integer and autonumber keys. Or long integer and end in ID. All primary and foreign keys I use are autonumber and end in ID. One particular column, if it's present in that Excel spreadsheet, is bolded and highlighted in red. Other columns were deleted if they were required for reporting sequencing purposes but not required in the Excel spreadsheet.
A friend who is a heavy duty mechanic and instructor sat down in front of the system for an hour. It was an eye opener as I watched how he moved around the system. I made lots of little enhancements due to his questions and comments as he went along.
I'm going to sit another friend down in front of the system in a few weeks. She seldom uses a computer and doesn't even have an email address. <gasp> She does text a lot to her daughter via cell phone though she has joined a part of the 21st century.
Finally the glitter feature I added was viewing unit photos on the main menu. To be blunt this is a relatively useless feature as far as regular users are concerned. However I'm hoping that folks who are looking at the demo will be slightly impressed. Or as a friend put it "eye candy". Who knows if this will help or hinder. <smile>