General

Added: A new logo option to the general report format, along with more flexibility in the layout.  You can specify a graphics file to use for a logo on the Setup Form option, accessed on FF&EZ's opening screen. The logo will appear on all non-custom reports in the title block at the lower left, and the rest of the title information will move to a centered layout in the middle of the title block area.

The logo area will accept landscape, square or portrait orientations, fitting the image proportionately into the space available without distortion.  Note that landscape logos that exceed a 16:9 proportion may look best if the graphics file includes white space at the top edge. All logos should be designed (or adapted) to read well at a small scale. Since your firm's contact information is already included to the right, we recommend that logos that normally include this information be modified to remove it, which will usually allow a larger logo image to be displayed.

Fixed and enhanced: The Backup utility did not "clean up" its status properly, and restarting FF&EZ after running a backup was producing a "backup in progress" message that did not allow access to the program (note that this problem could be worked around by deleting a flag file in the data set folder).

The Backup utility now includes an option to include the support files such as report definitions and replaceable functions.  These do not normally need to be backed up since they are part of software updates, but if you are making a backup of your system prior to installing an update, we recommend that you include these files to make it easier to restore the previous version if that is ever necessary.

Enhanced: The Help system has been reorganized and consolidated to make it more context-sensitive for users with the Design/Purchasing system. Help pages for the main editing screens now include "quick links" to the sections for "Fields" and "Commands" to make it easier to locate specific entries.  On some screens, there will also be links for major utilities or special command functions.  Here is an example.

Fixed, Setup Form: User-defined currency abbreviations were not being propagated to reports and screens.

Added, Update Software utility: A new utility has been added that greatly simplifies the updating of FF&EZ software. With this utility, all you have to do is download the update file from a link we provide, then run this utility to extract the update files and then run the workstation installer.

Projects

Enhanced: The Project List form layout was modified to better group fields that were related to how FF&E is invoiced by both vendors and your company. 

New field: Tax Code, an optional field used for special taxing district codes needed by 3rd-party purchasing or accounting software.

Fixed: When a new project was added, the "Vendors are to" (billing type) field was being set to the same value as the project that was highlighted when Add was clicked, which could make it appear that either the project markup/margin or the project purchasing fee could not be changed.  This option is now set to "unselected" for new projects and is now a required field.  Also, both the "Markup" (or Gross Margin) and the "Purchasing Mgmt Fee" fields are now disabled until a billing type is selected for a new (not cloned) project.

Rooms

Room count and financial totals:  The Room List screen now includes two totals that track the total room count within the current area and for the whole project.  In addition, each room's total budget, cost and price is now repeated here, along with subtotals for the current area and for the project. 

In order to make the room count feature useful for checking total "keys" in a hotel project, you must mark rooms that you wish to include in the total (such as hotel guest rooms as opposed to public areas).  To do this, a new "Include in room count total?" check box has been added to the room fields. Rooms that are not marked with this option will not be included in the room quantity totals (but will be included in all other totals).

FF&E Worksheet

Alternate sorting orders: Some columns can now be sorted in "alternate" sort orders for special purposes. As (we hope) you know, you can sort most list columns by clicking or shift-clicking the column header.  On some screens (more to come) you can now set an alternate sort order by holding the [Alt] key when you click on the column header. As with normal sorting, you can also hold the [Shift] key at the same time as [Alt] to set a descending order.

On the FF&E Worksheet, the Area ID and Room ID columns now have the following sort options:

Area ID Column:

Normal sort: Area ID + Room ID + Object Class + Finish Location + Tag

Alternate: Area ID + Room ID + Object Code + Tag

Room ID Column:

Normal sort: Room ID + Object Class + Finish Location + Tag

Alternate: Room ID + Room ID + Object Code + Tag

Since the object's "Code" field is a user-defined code, the alternate sort order is then controlled by the alphabetical sorting of your code.  Note that if you choose either of these alternate sorts, the "Code" column will appear in the place of the "Class" column.  Also, if the Object Code is blank, these sorts have the effect of sorting strictly by tag within each room instead of the object's "Class" field, too.

Report Changes

"Materials Reference" report, report option change: Changed the default setting for the "Only include specs with images?" option to "unselected." The default behavior of the report will now be to print specs with images and those that do not have images but which are otherwise eligible for the report (based on the "Quick filter" option above it).

The original default of having this option selected (hiding specs without  images) made it too easy for specs that should have had an image, but did not, to be accidentally left out of the report.  Once the report is reviewed for items that need to have an image added, you can select this option to suppress remaining specs that do not need to be on the report.  However, in the most common scenario of printing only "materials" specs that would typically all need to have images, you probably will not have to change the setting to get the content you expect.

Fixed: The FF&E Summary was not properly displaying the cost if the "Add'l Options" adjustment was used on the Specifications form.

Fixed: Some of the reports on the Worksheet may have produced a "Structural .CDX file is not found" error the first time they were run.  This was caused by a previous report edit that left an unresolved file reference. The error was self-correcting in the one or two reports where it occurred, however it has been eliminated in this version.