We will perform an upgrade to the Blaq System this weekend that will include some new features and bug fixes. You and your colleagues may experience some minor downtime at some stage between 9 AM Saturday, September 14 and 9 PM Sunday, September 15.

These upgrades do not affect the operation of any existing users of Blaq. Read below for the exciting new features that you can take advantage of.

The new features include:

• Colour coding Departments. Each department can have a colour set for them ( go To Administration, Branches, select a branch, Departments, select a department and choose a colour for the Department - note, you can enter your own RGB colour or select from the available palate). This will allow you to quickly see which jobs are assigned to which department on the Job Schedule by colour.   
• A warning symbol will be displayed on the left side of the job list in the Job Schedule screen if the Job is Created and is Required within the same day. To turn on this feature, go to Administration, Options and select Transactions Tab. Scroll down to the Transaction Settings section and set Display job schedule warning to Yes.
• On the Job Schedule screen, the + and - buttons have been made larger to allow better accuracy when using Blaq on your iPad
• For Deliveries, Jobs, Purchase Orders and Quotes - when creating a new, the Attn, Phone and Company on the Address tab is now defaulting to the selected Contact. 

 What’s coming up in October

• Payroll
• Bank Reconciliation
• Integration with another Job Management System called Coredination –  www.coredination.net. This is very exciting as you will be able to manage aspects of your job remotely on your mobile device. You initiate the Quote and the Job in Blaq and continue managing the Job on your mobile device; Report Times Sheets and products, do complex routing, attach photos and take customer signatures.

We will perform an upgrade to the Blaq System this weekend that will include some new features and bug fixes. You and your colleagues may experience some minor downtime between 9 AM Saturday, August 3 and 9 PM Sunday, August 4.

These upgrades do not affect the operation of any existing users of Blaq. Read below for the exciting new features that you can take advantage of. Please contact me if you would like to start using any of these new features as some of them will require initial setup.

The new features include:

• integration with XERO, the accounting package - www.xero.com.   Right now we integrate Sales, Accounts, Contacts and Purchases. We will do more work on this during the year and become a XERO Developer Partner
• integration with a simple time tracking system called Toggl - www.toggl.com.  This allows for Blaq users to track time on a job from your mobile device. The time entries will then flow into the costing side of the job.
• adding Paid as a new status on the Job. This will include all Jobs that have been customer paid. Invoiced status are now Jobs that are invoiced but not yet paid.
• starting to add Basic Accounting to Blaq. This will aim at companies not needing a whole accounting system to run their business. This version includes Bank Transactions, and Journal Entries. Over the next few months we will add Reconciliation and Payroll to finish this off.
• Budgets on GL Accounts have been added  as part of the accounting. This will allow you to measure the performance per Category or GL Account.
• Profit Loss
• Balance Sheet
• Budget Analysis
• entering the Nett amount in production details, making the system calculate the Unit Price and the Total.
• a rework of the GL Accounts so they can be used in the accounting.
• You can create Header Accounts  to enable hierarchies of accounts.
• Initial balance for a GL Account can be entered
• Bank details has been moved to the GL accounts section

You will see a new menu called Banking, this is where the new accounting features will be found. There will also be a new menu under Administration called Banking where we have moved the following functions:

• GL Accounts
• Tax Rates
• Payment Terms
• Payment Methods

What’s coming up:

• Payroll
• Bank Reconciliation
• Integration with another Job Management System called Coredination www.coredination.net. This is very exciting as you will be able to manage aspects of your job remotely on your mobile device. You initiate the Quote and the Job in Blaq and continue managing the Job on your mobile device; Report Times Sheets and products, do complex routing, attach photos and take customer signatures.