NEW FEATURES ADDED FOR VERSION 2.87 - Released 9/10/03

IMPORTANT!!! There have been changes to the structure of a number of databases in this free upgrade. You can download (save on your hard drive) the required upgrade file. However, you must contact us prior to installing this upgrade so that we can walk you through a 10 minute set of procedures. Please call our technical support number (1-908-670-6839). Also, please have all users logged off of ArchAdministrator and the "Password for Databases" removed prior to calling tech support.

PLEASE NOTE: You must run the upgrade installation on a computer that has Approach Version 9.7 (or better) in order to take advantage of the new upgrade feature introduced in Upgrade 2.86 . You can obtain Lotus SmartSuite 9.7 (w/Approach) via various software sales sites on the internet or you can purchase it directly thru PS Software Solutions. See System Pricing for current Lotus software pricing and availability. 

Please note that some ArchAdministrator users have been working with "Version 2.87 Prelim" for several weeks and that some of the features listed in these upgrade notes may already be in use.

Accounting Transactions
1. A new hidden field and search function has been added to the program to decrease the time it takes to generate a list of "Checks To Be Printed". The user will now be able to view the list of "Checks To Be Printed" in less than half the time it would take prior to this upgrade.

2. The "Payment Due On" and "Total Amount Due" fields will now be automatically set blank for payment transactions that are set to "Void" by the user. Prior to this upgrade, these fields would retain their user defined values and thus incorrectly influence various payable reports.

3. A new "Date Received" field has been added to the Account Receipt transaction view. This field allows the user to record the date a client's payment has been received. The "Date Received" can be independent of the "Post/Deposit" date for the transaction record.

4. A new method of transaction serial numbering has been employed to increase program performance when creating a new transaction record. The user should now find a noticeable improvement in the time it takes to create a new account transaction record. 

Billing Invoices
1. User defined font size for printed invoices will now also effect "Total Balance Due" and "Total Amount" text appearing on the printed invoices. Prior to this upgrade, only changes to font style would be effected for these areas of text. Please Note: Font size for "Descriptive Subtext" will always default to 2 points smaller than the font size specified by the user.

2. Invoice history's Past Due calculations have been revised to be based on the "Date Received" data recorded in the Account Transaction record. Prior to this upgrade the calculations were based on the Post/Deposit date. (See Accounting Transactions note #3 above for additional info)

Clients/Contacts
1. A new 15 character "Client/Contact Code" field has been added to the Clients/Contacts database. This text field can be used to group or sort contacts by a user defined alphanumeric code. This field automatically defaults to the first 15 characters of the contact's company name (or last name if no company name is recorded) when a new contact record is created. The Client/Contact Code for the addressee selected for a newly created Proposal/Contract record is copied into the new proposal/contract record and is also copied into the Project Management database upon project activation.

2. A new 15 character "Client/Contact Code" field has been added to the "Contact Information" and "Search Criteria" views. (See note #1 above for additional info)

Contact Reference List (F4 function key)
1. A new 15 character "Client/Contact Code" field has been added to the "Contact Information" and "Search Criteria" views (See Clients/Contacts note #1 above for additional info).

Correspondence - Internal
1. A bug has been fixed that would occur when the user would attempt to email an employee having a one digit Employee ID number that matches another Employee ID ending in a similar number (i.e. Employ IDs - "7" and "27"). Prior to this upgrade both employees would receive the inter-office message even though only one was sent the message. This bug would only effect those users that have deliberately deviated from the default Employee ID numbering sequence of 1001, 1002, 1003, etc.

Correspondence - Outbound
1. A new method of record serial numbering has been employed to increase program performance when creating a new correspondence record. The user should now find a noticeable improvement in the time it takes to create a new record.

2. A "Save Record" button has been added to the "Correspondence" data entry view. Prior to this upgrade the user could loose all data typed into the Body Text field of the correspondence record if the Escape [Esc] key were pressed prior to exiting the correspondence record view. The user can now save data typed into the Body Text field at any time by pressing the "Save Record" button. Once saved the data recorded to the point of the save will not be erased if the [Esc] key is pressed.

Database Compression
"Compress" buttons have been added to the Database Compression module. The user can now compress Submittals, Submittal Details and Project Phase databases in addition to currently compressible databases.

Employee Information
1. The user now has the ability to set the "Yrly Salary" field, for an employee's promotion record, to any custom value without effecting the "Wage/Hr" field. The main reason for this upgrade is to allow a user to round-off yearly salary figures to the nearest tenth, hundredth, thousandth, etc. Prior to this upgrade the user would have to manipulate "Wage/Hr" and "Hrs/Wk" fields in order to come up with a yearly salary that is rounded to the desired degree.  

Firm Information
1. The user can now store default Contract Wage values for each employee title delineated for the firm in the "Firm Information" area of the program. These default values are used when a new Proposal/Contract record is created. Prior to this upgrade the default values for each employee title would be based on the highest previously entered value for the title. A user with access Level 1 can navigate to the default Title/Wage data entry screen by selecting "Firm Information" from the Main Menu view and then selecting "Employee Titles" from the Firm Information view. 

Project Management
1. New hidden databases and scripts have been added to the program that are designed to enhance the speed of project summary creation. Project Management summaries integrate large amounts of data and calculations that are based on many joined databases in ArchAdministrator. These new "behind-the-scenes" functions should improve project management module performance.

2. A new Project Expense Report summarizing expenses incurred during a user defined reporting period has been added to the Project Management module. This powerful report will allow the user to review projects matching specified search criteria and determine project expenses or client invoicing for a specified period.

3. A new 15 character "Client/Contact Code" field has been added to the "Project Reference List", "Building Info" and "Search Criteria" views (See Clients/Contacts note #1 above for additional info).

4. The user can now view/print the Project Reference List, Profit/Loss Summary, Expense Report, etc. summarized and/or sorted by the new Client/Contact Code.

Project Reference List (F5 function key)
1. A new 15 character "Client/Contact Code" field has been added to the "Project Reference List", "Building Info", and "Search Criteria" views (See Clients/Contacts note #1 above for additional info).

2. The user can now view/print the Project Reference List summarized and/or sorted by the new Client/Contact Code.

Proposals/Contracts
1. A new feature has been added to the "Consultant Fee Breakdown" view. The program will now automatically add an accounting payment category for each new custom consultant category stipulated. Example: The user enters a new custom consultant category called "Acoustical". The program checks to see if there is an accounting payment category already available, and if not, creates an entry called "Consultant-Acoustical".

2. Revisions made by the user to Client and Building Information data fields located on the "Project Information" view will automatically update corresponding data fields in the Project Management database for activated projects. Prior to this upgrade revisions to these areas of the proposal/contract would have no effect on corresponding data in the project management module. Please note that revisions to client and building data fields in the Project Management module will NOT effect the data recorded in the Proposal/Contract module.

3. A new 15 character "Client/Contact Code" field has been added to the "Project Information, "List of Proposals" and "Search Criteria" views (See Clients/Contacts note #1 above for additional info).

4. The user can now view/print the List of Proposals summarized and/or sorted by the new Client/Contact Code.

5. A new method of record serial numbering has been employed to increase program performance when creating a new proposal/contract record. The user should now find a noticeable improvement in the time it takes to create a new record.

Submittals
1. A new "Reminder" feature has been added to the program that alerts the user that there are "Priority" submittal logs that are "open" and Past Due or within two days of being past due. The reminder appears at employee log-on and/or when the Submittal Logs module is opened. The reminder will only appear for the author of the past due logs. The user can view a list of his/her past due open logs by selecting "Yes" when prompted with the Priority warning message.

2. A bug has been fixed that would cause the Submittal Logs module to exhibit strange behavior when the user would work within the module for more than a few minutes (or hours) depending on computer clock speed and installed RAM memory. Prior to this upgrade addressee data would temporarily disappear, access violations would occur, and the program would crash. The problem had been traced back to a calculated field that parsed addressee data into a linear format. This field has been removed and has been replaced by a field that displays the top (1st) line of the Addressee field. The user should no longer experience the strange behavior exhibited prior to this upgrade.

Time Sheet Weekly Logs
1. A bug has been fixed that would occur when a Windows XP/2000 user running Approach 9.7 would enter more that 14 project line items into any one weekly time sheet view. Prior to this upgrade the user's focus would be returned to the first line item "Office" rather than the newly created 15th project line item.  Now the user will be allowed to enter up to 20 project line items in the usual manner and will be directed to the Time Sheet Details view to perform data entry for all time sheet entries beyond the 20th project line item. 

Time Sheet Summaries
1. A powerful new search criteria method has been added to many of the time sheet summary reports. The user will now be asked to enter all search criteria onto one screen. The screen utilizes Variable fields so that the user can enter multiple search requests strings into various on-screen fields prior to selecting the continue button.

2. A new report delineating time sheet data for specified projects and summarized by employee name has been added to the Time Sheet Summaries module. This report can be viewed by selecting "Summary of Project Hours by Employee" from the Time Sheet Summary sub-menu, entering appropriate search criteria and pressing the Continue button.

3. The existing "Contract Wages By Employee Name" summary report will now also be secondarily summarized by the employee's title. Prior to this upgrade, hours logged by an employee under a title other than their default title would be calculated at the default title rate and not the logged title rate. The revised report will now delineate these additional hours and wages under a secondary summarization. 

Transmittals
1. A bug has been fixed in the Transmittal/Repros module. Prior to this upgrade the bug occurred when the user added a new line item to a previously created transmittal and did not use the "Create New Item" button to create the new transmittal line item.

2. A bug has been fixed in the Transmittal/Repros module. Prior to this upgrade the bug occurred when the user created a transmittal containing billable line items. The user would duplicate the transmittal and the duplicated transmittal record line items would not be set to billable.

Various Modules
1. Various revisions to remove minor bugs and improve user interface.