What's New in MainBoss 3.1

The following lists changes between MainBoss Advanced 3.1 and the previous update.

1. Purchasing/Receiving facilities are now available for those who have the associated license keys. These facilities have numerous effects throughout the software. Note that you will only see purchasing features if you have a license key for the module.
2. Requestor records now have a Comments field where you can record miscellaneous information about the requestor. When you print a Requestor report, these comments are displayed. The report also displays any comments in the associated Contacts table record. Finally, the report now indicates whether the Receive Acknowledgements option is on or off for each requestor.
3. A new Select for Printing option makes it easier to print off any work orders you've created but haven't printed yet.
4. Work orders now let you record miscellaneous costs that aren't covered by labor or direct use of materials. This might include equipment rentals, or parking costs that a worker has to pay out of pocket during the course of a job.
5. You may now print a report on chargebacks, using the Print button on Work Orders | Chargebacks.
6. Meters are now supported in the basic MainBoss module. Previously, they were only supported if you had licensed the Planned Maintenance module.
7. The @Requests module now supports POP3S and IMAP4S, in addition to the mail protocols previously supported.
8. When importing templates from MainBoss Basic into MainBoss Advanced, previous versions of MainBoss Advanced sometimes mishandled situations where a line ended with a field label. This has been corrected.
9. In some MainBoss Basic databases, it was possible for price quotes to have negative values. The new importing procedure automatically converts these to positive values (so that -$1 will now be treated as +$1).
10. The Administration entry in the control panel now lists who is currently using the database. It also lists which modules you do and don't have licensed.
11. There is now a setting for "Administrator" privileges in each user record. Users with Administrator privileges can add new users and perform other administration operations; users without these privileges cannot.
12. In planned maintenance records, "periodicity" has been changed to "periods".
13. You can now associate an employee or trade with a per job inside record.
14. MainBoss Basic used "general inventory" to refer to items that weren't in any specific storeroom. However, MainBoss Advanced does not use the "general inventory" concept. This means that when MainBoss Basic information is imported into MainBoss Advanced, the importing procedure arbitrarily puts "general inventory" materials into the first storeroom of the first building in the MainBoss Basic Buildings table. Almost certainly, this is not where the materials are actually stored. Therefore, after you've imported the data, you should go to that first storeroom and change item storage entries to record where the items actually are.
15. The Attachments section of a unit record no longer has an Open Attachment button. Instead, you can open the attachment by clicking a link displayed when the attachment is selected in the unit's attachment list.
16. The Exceptions section of a maintenance timing record has been reorganized to clarify the meaning of the available options.
17. A new Clear Service Association option has been added for managing the @Requests service. This is used to deal with a specific situation that might arise when the computer running the @Requests service goes out of operation (e.g. because of hardware failure).
18. A preliminary Accounting module has been introduced. This creates comprehensive accounting records of a form that is intended to be compatible with accounting software packages. As yet, however, there is no software available for integrating MainBoss with any other accounting system.