Reporting

New When selecting a report to print, you can now search for a key word or string of letters in the report name. This is useful on longer report lists to display just a subset of the reports.

For instance, if you set up your own versions of standard reports (using the "Save Report Options" feature), you can use a standard prefix or suffix to identify the customized version. If you do, you can use the new search feature quickly display only your saved reports, by entering your prefix or suffix as the search term.

Project List

Enhanced Although FF&EZ automatically creates a "temporary images" folder for a new project when it is created, this was only on the original user's PC. The Project screen's Open command will now check to see if this folder exists when you open an existing project on a different PC, then creates it if needed. This still honors the use of a single shared temporary images folder if that has been set up on a network.

Fixed A bug introduced in version 3.2.115  disabled access to the billing options on the Project List screen.

FF&E Worksheet

New Two new reports are available on the worksheet: The "Object Index" reports are very simple reports that can be used as indexes on the front of a project book and come in a version sorted by Tag and one sorted by Vendor. At their most basic, they simply list the tags and a short description, but you can add a little more vendor-oriented detail if you wish.

Enhanced The Pricing Tool now includes two new pricing options.

The first allows you to "bump" existing prices by a factor as an alternative to specifying a new markup. For instance, if you want to increase all prices in the selected product scope by 10%, you would use 1.1 as the factor. Using .95 would decrease all prices by 5% of the existing price (not 5% of the cost). This approach preserves the existing differences in markups between different product types, and can be useful for adjusting the profit margins at the product level in cloned projects (for inflation or geographic differences). [NOTE: In version 3.2.111, this feature applied the adjustment to the markups instead of the prices, which was less useful.]

The second new feature allows you to set a target price for the entire project. When it is run, FF&EZ will adjust all markups proportionally to generate a total project price that approximates the target. An exact match to the target may not be possible due to rounding in the individual "quantity X price" calculations, but you can still adjust individual prices to eliminate minor differences.

There are two other changes in the tool: 1) The scope of specs that will be affected by the changes must now be selected each time you set up the tool (that is, there is no "default" scope) and you can't start the processing without selecting one. 2) The new prices for the affected specs are shown in the scope display.

Enhanced The Room screen's "Phase" field now appears as a sortable column on the FF&E Worksheet.

Fixed Enhanced The "Revised" flag on the Illustration Sheet reports was "floating" instead of being anchored to the bottom of the report section. It has also been made more prominent with shading.

Object List

Enhanced See notes about the Pricing Tool above.

Enhanced You can add custom "Class" codes to the default list using a text file named "CustomClasses.txt" saved in the Plugins folder in the data set. The list must be a simple text file with all classes (not just the new ones) on separate lines. On each line the Class ID and its description must be separated by either a comma or by pressing the [Tab] key. Note: This is not a recommended standard practice, so please contact us if you want to know more about this.

Specification List

Enhanced See notes about the Pricing Tool above.

Enhanced If you add custom "Class" codes to the Object List screen (see above), they will also appear when you use the "Object" tool to create or modify an object with the current spec.

Fixed The "Modify existing spec" portion of the Object command was not displaying objects and components correctly on the pick lists.

General - Utilities

Fixed If a new plug-in set was activated after a previous one has been activated, the system could not rename the new file with a ".upd" extension. This occurred after the plug-in set was installed, so it did not affect the plug-in itself.

Orders

New "Vendor Payment List by Project" report is similar to the more process-oriented "Vendor Payment Recap by Project" report but is simpler, focusing only on payments made against anticipated invoicing from project vendors. It is divided into two sections. The first shows the order item amounts, calculated tax or quotes, freight quotes and total deposits paid. This will give you a recap of the project financials in the early part of the process (that is prepayments against anticipated total expense).

Note that a calculated tax is shown only for purchasing management projects. Profit-based ("bill to us") projects assume that the vendor will not charge a tax, but this assumption can be overridden by entering a tax quote on the order screen.

The second half shows the reconciled amounts from vendor final invoices (FF&E, tax and freight) and the payments applied (including deposits) that you have entered. This section gives you final cost of each item (what has been paid and what might still be owed to the vendor).