Australia’s leading Online Accounting Software for SME Businesses

New features and enhanced interfaces and functionality

The major feature of the update is a Wiki style Help System. The Help system has been totally overhauled and contains far more information and step by step “How To” guides. Click on the Help link located at the top of the screen to go straight to the help page relevant to the section of Shoebooks you are in. We will be adding a lot more step by step guides. The help system can be searched and there is a full text index.

We are currently working on a new version of Shoebooks that will be released in around 6 months. The version will have some new modules such as recurring transactions, timesheets & budgets. There will also be changes to a lot of screens to provide more flexibility and ease of inputting and finding information. We will be implementing it in stages so as not to cause any confusion or setbacks in training.

We also now have a SOAP interface to the software. This is particularly useful for when other systems need to talk to the accounting system over the internet. Also useful for data entry as input can be done in excel and sent to Shoebooks over the internet. You will here more about this in the next update. Please contact Shoebooks if you are interested in talking about the SOAP interface now.

This update includes the following new features:

• New System Administration Section on Main Menu – user access has been overhauled and all users now have the option to manage their own password. When new users are setup or when the password is changed for existing users, there is now the option to force the user to change the password on the next login. This means that you can provide a user with a generic password by email.
• Quotes – Convert to Project – When you convert a Quote to a Project (job), the costs column is now included in a new tab called Quotes. Costs and Quote value are compared to give an estimated profit.
• Calendar - more interaction with projects and time billing. Also addition of Sales Graph below banking summary.
• Reports – Layout – the reports menu has been redesigned so that it will morph for small screens. This means that the report options will be presented in a single column used on hand held devices. This is really preparation for a later version designed for hand held devices. The main difference you will notice is that the financial statements will be on the left side instead of the right.
• Reports – Quote Detail – similar to invoice detail report where the detail lines of the quote are displayed and there is a filter to search the description line.
• Quotes – New Report – Project Profit – provides a snapshot of projects together with the columns for Quote Cost, Quote Sale, Invoiced Amount & Bills Received Amount.
• Reports – Customer Notes – new report that displays the comments recorded against customer records. Particularly useful when the comments section is used to track customer collection activity.
• Reports – Supplier Notes – new report that displays the comments recorded against supplier records.
• Reports – Profit & Loss Division Totals – new report that allows you to run a Profit & Loss by Division and collapse sub divisions into the master division. NB: Only applies to accounts using Company Divisions.
• Reports – Payroll – Leave – additional filters that allow you to select the leave type and run the report as of a particular date.
• Payroll – New Module – Liabilities – payroll system now supports Company Contributions. These are contributions made by a company on behalf of an employee to an industry fund. They operate in a similar way to superannuation. They are generally used by companies that are in the electrical and plumbing fields. Setup – Payroll - Liabilities is where you configure options and there is a new section on the employee record. There is also a new report to be used for calculating contributions.
• Payroll – Payment Summaries and Annual Report – located in Setup – Payroll under Payroll Admin. Payment summaries (Group Certificates) can be run with a variety of filters. There is a format option at the bottom of the setup screen. 1. Summaries produce the payment summaries. 2. Report – produces the annual report. 3. Export – produces an empdupe file for electronic reporting to the ATO of payment summary data.
• Custom Fields – Customer – there is now the ability to add custom fields into the customer record. There are 4 text, 2 date, 2 currency & 2 integer fields available. Contact Shoebooks should you wish to activate a custom field.
• Ship to Feature – there is now the ability to add Ship to fields to the invoice screen. Particularly useful if you ship goods to an address that is separate from where you send the invoice. Contact Shoebooks should you want to enable this feature.