AnyBook Latest Updates & General News
The latest version (described immediately below) can be download here.
Spring/Summer, 2019. Version 14.52. Additional tweaking of the program for Windows 10. New credit card processing settings were added. Some time ago, a feature that allows one to enter a customer number directly had been disabled since it was conflicting with the customer drop down list, the usual way of selecting customers. Those conflicts were resolved in this version, and the feature has been reinstated.
Late Winer, 2018. Version 14.51 was released. Updated credit card processing to new industry standards.
Late Summer, 2017. Version 14.47 was released. Added ability to remove blanks between address lines when pasting a billing address or shipping address to invoices. This is particularly helpful when pasting names and addresses from Internet orders. PayPal, in particular, adds extra lines between addresses, but there are others. Did some tweaking of the program for use on Windows 10.
Version 14.45 - A new feature was added to the Product Information Screen which allows you to select whether you want categories sorted by their abbreviation or by their name. This feature also keeps categories sorted alphabetically in the Product Pop-up List when you want to limit the display of products to a certain category.
Version 14.44 - A new feature was added to the import portion of the program which provides greater flexibility when importing products with a zero quantity to an invoice. Previous versions of the program interpreted any product with a zero quantity as unsuitable for inclusion on the invoice. The new feature allows you to override that behavior and accept zero quantity products. Corrected a small bug in Rover. Rover was triggering an error when restoring files from a previous version of the program - which was fixed in this version. Several enhancements were made to the help documentation.
Version 14.42 - Two new features were added to the PDF printing routine. Several additions were made to the help system. New error trapping was added to the purchase order part of the program. Several improvements were made to the code in the main invoice module to run more efficiently under the newer Windows operating systems. The same changes were made to the Rover module.
Version 14.41 - Added improvements for PDF printing.
Version 14.40 - More additions, including several supplementary illustrations and diagrams, were made to the program's help documentation. A fix was made to the Advanced Search button. Advanced Search can accessed through the menu system, or by a keyboard combination, or by a button the Main Invoice Screen. The button on the Main Invoice Screen had been triggering an error message, and in this update that was corrected. The Import button associated with the Replacement Table function was improved and provides more flexibility when importing from shopping carts, spreadsheets, or databases. Additionally, a pre-made Replacement Table was added. The table converts from the internationally recognized ISO two-letter code to the full country name. AnyBook uses the full country name since it is required by the US, Canadian, and other international postal services.
Version 14.39 - In this update, we made some refinements to routines built in the program to help assure your data's integrity. In particular, we added additional file checking at program start-up. If any potential problems are detected, the program will alert you and suggest the best way to clear it up. In the file maintenance part of the program (FILE >> FILE MAINTENANCE), we also added a way of re-building your primary data files. Our purpose is to provide you with a full range of tools to maintain the integrity of your files and keep your data safe.
Additionally, we added a new menu item to the HELP menu. The new menu item allows you to check to see if you have the latest version of the program. If not, you'll be able to click on a download link to update your program.
Version 14.38 - Added a new file maintainance function to rebuild the primary data files. Also: calculation of shipment fees yielded weird results for any invoice with zero (0) amounts (created by the old problem which has vexed mathematicians for ages: division by zero). Fixed. Added some new error trapping to the storage functions.
Version 14.37 - This release is for Level 6 and 7 users who may be using the import feature found in the Primary Contact Manager. A small bug was reported in the import feature and it was quickly fixed. Other than fine tuning the Contact Manager's help documentation, there were no other changes to the program.
Version 14.36 - In this version, we made a couple of changes so that AnyBook is fully compatible with Citrix XenApp (which is sort of a super remote desktop.) AnyBook, of course, works fine with other remote computing applications such as the popular LogMeIn and others. We made several enhancements to the Customer Number and Past Customer pop-up lists, made a few additions to the help documentation and fixed several bugs. New PDF Manuals were posted. Details on version 14.36 are found below.
Version 14.35 - We released a series of enhancements and upgrades which culminated with version 14.35. A monumental effort was undertaken in the late winter and spring to upgrade the help system. Hundreds of pages of text and illustrative materials were added.
AnyBook has always been known for help information that exceeds normal software standards, but we want to make it better. Much better. Since we are no longer providing support, our goal is make AnyBook's system the best help system out there. We wanted to provide a help system which is comprehensive, highly illustrative, and easiest enough to use so that you can help yourself.
In the latest version 14.35, which was released May 14th, we re-worked the information on billings and inventory and added nearly a dozen diagrams which provide a visual view of these vital and important functions in the program. The help documentation is built right into program, but it's also available in PDF manuals (the PDF manuals were also updated on May 14th). Additionally, the newest version includes a number of program enhancements. Information on what's in the newest version is found below.
Version 14.34 - Two of our users reported that Norton virus software was tagging AnyBook files. It turned out to be what is called a "false-positive." In other words, Norton was incorrectly tagging the files. In order to sort things out, we immediately contacted Norton. They ran tests and found that the files are perfectly fine. Norton has corrected the problem with their program and it will appear in their next update.
We might add that, in addition to Norton's tests, we've had over a dozen independent tests that confirm that our programs and files are free from viruses and adware. More information on that is found here: Your Safety is Our Number One Concern
A false-positive tag has happened once before with AVG Anti-virus, and it will probably occur again in the future with some other virus software program. If it happens to you, your virus software should allow you a way to indicate that the tagged file is safe and you'll be able continue to use AnyBook. Be sure to send an email to your virus software vendor so they can fix the problem.
Version 14.33 - 14.35 - In this version, we again worked on refining the help system. Another 75 pages of text, illustrations and diagrams were added. The total page count is now nearly 1,600 pages. For these efforts, we particularly concentrated on the billing and inventory segments of the program, taking several weeks to design and create a series of diagrams. The diagrams provide a visual view of how these important processes work and their relationship with balance and inventory files. The new illustrative material makes it much easier for you to identify potential issues and fix them before they become problems.
This version includes a new warning message. The message appears if a user is executing an "Automatic Update" and tries to create a balance file newer than that used by a "Normal" billing process. Newer balance files may not have the lastest billing information and can throw off future billing statements. This little feature is a simple but effective way of keeping billing statements free from errors.
Another feature added in this version are for those users that utilize the Internal Email Program. The email program program now has the ability to pick up additional addresses from the Notes area. You can also click a button to select certain email addresses.
A number of enhancements were made to AnyPO (the purchase order system built into the program). The same email features, described above were added. It is now possible to change the title of "Packing Slip" to "Order Acknowledgment" or designate a title of your choosing. At the same time, if you use graphics on your invoices and purchase orders, you can also instruct the program to use a different "top re-design" for packing slips or order acknowledgments. Another new feature is a pop-up list of ship-to names. The pop-up list makes it easier to create drop shipments.
Version 14.32 - New features were added to the following reports: Customer Revenues Broken Down by Product, Product Revenues Broken Down by Customer, Raw Data (which is used for the basis of numerous reports), and Consignment Activity. The new features allow you control the contents of the "Amount" or "Price" column in the report. (By running sums on the "Amount" or "Price" column in the report, you can obtain total sales vis-a-vis customer or product.) You can zero-out promotionals, consignment and other items normally appearing as zero (0) on the invoice. This allows you to remove such items from sales calculations. Or you can include their cost on the report if you need to calculate the value of promotional items given away - or the value of consignment items placed at different locations. You can also control how returns and damages are treated. On some types of reports, you may wish to show them as negative values (to be removed from the total sales), and on some reports, you may wish to show them as positive. That's all possible with the new additions in this version.
Version 14.31 - A small bug in the Rover Back-up feature was reported and fixed. Also we have found that some operating systems won't work with the Freebyte zip program. Freebyte creates zip files in AnyBook and Rover. It's not particularly important in AnyBook which uses a file copy routine to do its back-up, but Rover primarily utilizes a zip file back-up. To provide users with an alternative, a new option was added which allows regular file copy in Rover. The user can select this option and the program will remember the choice for future back-ups.
Versions 14.27 to 14.30 - A small bug was fixed in the File >> Print Invoice routine which dealt with converting invoices to a text format. The same fix was incorporated in File >> Print Purchase Order in AnyPO.
New feature added: When, in the rare case an email address is abnormally long and won't fit in the Email address field, a feature was added whereby the address can be entered in Notes area.
A bug was reported with User Defined Fields. Data in User Defined Fields was not always being saved when using the TAB key. (This was just a problem when using TAB. It worked fine when using the mouse). We added an "onChange" event so that User Defined database is refreshed each time any addition or editing occurs. That assures that all data is saved, no matter whether the mouse or TAB key is used.
New system implemented: A brand new automated back order system was added. The entire back-order process is now totally automated.
The help system was updated with illustrations and information on the new back order system. More enhancements to help system overall were made. The total page count of help documentation has now reached 1,500 pages.
Version 14.26 - Several new filters were added to the AnyPO filter dialog box. In our continuing efforts to provide the best help system available, we added more text and illustrations in both the main program and AnyPO. In main program, the Advanced Export section of the documentation was greatly expanded, including a new section on how to create your own reports. The total number of pages of help documentation is now at 1,400 pages.
Version 14.25 - Based on user feedback of the new approval system, several small additions and fixes were made to AnyPO. More text and illustrations were added to help system in both AnyPO and the main program.
Version 14.24 - Once the multi-level approval system was implemented, AnyPO users reported two small bugs. Both were fixed in this version. The email client used in AnyBook and AnyPO was updated to the latest version.
Version 14.23 - Version 14.23 includes a major update to AnyPO. (AnyPO is the full-featured Purchase Order Program built into AnyBook). A series of new features were added, the most important of which was the implementation of a new multi-level approval system in AnyPO. Corresponding additions were made to the help system to reflect these new additions.
Version 14.22 - The emphasis in this version was on updating the help documentation that comes with the Royalty part of the program: both text and illustrations were added. With the royalty additions, the total number of pages of help documentation is now at 1,300 pages.
Version 14.22 - The emphasis in this version was on updating the help documentation that comes with the Royalty part of the program: both text and illustrations were added. With the royalty additions, the total number of pages of help documentation is now at 1,300 pages.
Version 14.21 - In this version, a new command line switch was added: "/TRB." This is useful when the program is reporting data files problem and the normal file maintenance features (File >> File Maintenance) don't seem to correct the problem. (Note that this is quite unusual and we've only run across a persistent data file problem once over the past 15 years. We believe the root cause was a poorly designed server- client system. Nonetheless, we wanted to provide our users with a way of fixing things on their own should they encounter a persistent data file problem).
What this feature does is to move data from the databases files into the new, fresh file templates that come with a new program installation. The procedure involves installing a new program over the old program. Then the newly installed program is started from the command line using the "/TRB" switch. When started in this way, the program is directed to re-build all data files using the new templates. (See "Troubleshooting" in the Help documentation for complete details.)
(Previous version history available on request.)
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