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Motive Power® Versions

The current shipping version of Motive Power is version 1.2.54.
Motive Power 2 is currently in beta test

V1.0.0

  • This was the first production version of Motive Power.

V1.0.1

  • Improvement - the Help system by eliminating spaces between links, adding links to some of the earlier topics, and removing some visible tables.
  • Bug fixed - On Work Orders printout, fixed the missing upper line on the second comments box.
  • Improvement - On the Add Job form, program changed so that pressing ENTER in the grid goes to the next column like the other grids. This leaves either the current line or the next line selected, so that if you press ALT + A the job is added to the ticket instead of generating an run time error message.
  • New feature - Add the table Tag History to the empty data files.

V1.0.2

  • Bug fix - If you modified the Hours on a job on a ticket and then pressed the Directory button, your changes were not being saved in all cases.
  • Bug fix - When you finalize and print a ticket you get separate pages for the warranty providers. This was not working on the Print Preview.
  • Improvement - warranty providers invoice format.

V1.0.3

  • New feature - Added a Total Sales button to the Customer screens. Default is last 12 months of sales. Users can select different dates and it will recalculate the totals.
  • New Feature - Added more selectors to the Find Customer form:
    Pricing type
    Warranty Provider (Either, No, Yes)
    Charge Allowed (Either, No, Yes)
  • Bug Fix - When starting a New Customer, Motive Power was copying the DoNotRemind status of the default customer to the new customer. New customers should get reminders by default. You need to turn off reminders for a new customer explicitly.

V1.0.4

  • New Feature - Added new Report form/button called "Pivot" for now. It exports all jobs on finalized invoices to Excel and makes a pivot table.

V1.05

  • Improvement - Made the form load faster when you hit the large Reports button for the first time.
  • Improvement - Added selectors and a list preview to the Excel pivot form. Enhanced the pivot table too. In this version, almost all combo boxes are populated from current tables when form loads. Exception is Customer Cities, which fills itself from first time user drops down the combo (if ever).

V1.06

  • Improvement - Changed all dropdowns on the Excel pivot form to fill themselves from invoice history the first time each is dropped down. Combos that have not yet been filled say "All"; those that have been filled say something more specific, like "All types".
  • Improvement - Changed the grid on the Excel pivot form to contain more fields, similar to the Excel data sheet except without the last two columns of JobTotal, and JobProfit because Excel calculates those.

V1.0.7

  • New Feature - Finished the new Reports | Export form, including the ability to write a tab-delimited ASCII file.

V1.0.8

  • Improvement - Customize the Help system for the new forms.
  • Improvement - Changed the new Export Invoiced Sales form to look up the latest finalized invoice and initialize the To date selector to that date. The From date selector is 3 months earlier.
  • Bug fix - If you didn't get any hits (when you pressed the export to Excel button), you could change the selectors after that but still get the no hits message even though there should be some hits after your changes.

V1.0.9

  • Improvement - Removed internal references to Office 10 type library. It might cause trouble for folks who don't have Office XP.
  • Improvement - On Settings | Dropdowns, have Makes/Models tab up initially instead of Parts Pricing.

V1.0.9se (was shipping version until 2004)

  • Improvement - Upgraded the SQL server components for all bugs and security enhancements provided by Microsoft in the SQL Server Service Pack 3.

V1.1.0

  • New Feature - First version with real-time connection to QuickBooksPro 2002 or later
  • New Feature - On the Settings | QuickBooks screen, changed the logic to reload the drop-down portions of the combos. This will be helpful when user bounces over to QB to add accounts during setup.
  • Bug fix - If you pushed the [E-mail the Reminders Now] button and no e-mails came out because none were due, Motive Power didn't change the Last E-mail Reminders date shown on the Daily screen and disappear the cloud on Daily button. Changed the table for E-mail reminders to fix this for both e-mailed and printed reminders.
  • Bug fix - Advancing the reminder sent date didn't make cloud disappear if it was the last warning. User had to refresh form to make cloud disappear.
  • Improvement - Changed the find customer form to put focus in grid after Search. Once you'd clicked in the grid, pressing [Enter] used to take you to next column; now it displays the vehicle or customer detail and arrow keys work.

V1.1.1

  • Improvement - Some customers were correctly rejected when exporting Motive Power customers to QuickBooks but it was hard to tell why. Documented more details to help in these cases
  • Bug fix - After exporting Motive Power customers to QuickBooks some error messages were received. Changed the export/import for better handling of embedded single and double quotes
  • Improvement - You see a count for the number of customers who match your criteria in the customer finder. If you run through them you may find the true number of customers is lower. This is because we're counting the join between Customers and Customer Phones. We are improving the documentation on this point.

V1.1.2

  • Improvement - Cities were not in alpha order in dropdown on Customer Finder. Now they are, but it is a little slower if you have thousands of cities in your files.
  • New Feature - Added a State dropdown to the Customer Finder, on first and second tabs. It lists only State values actually used.
  • Bug fix - On the first tab of the customer finder, if you specified a Customer Keyword along with any of the other Customer criteria, you found no customers.

V1.1.3

  • Bug fix - When finalizing an invoice with 0 in taxable and non-taxable parts, labor, sublet, supplies, QB was rejecting the invoice. This was because we didn't make a line item on the invoice (because all would have been zero). Changed to make a special line item in this case, with the Description of No charge from Motive Power and 0 amount.
  • Bug fix - Invalid QuickBooks transactions could be generated when a ticket had no actual sales tax, and QuickBooks was set to use sales tax. Motive Power can handle the invalid zero-tax item. Fixed the interface.
  • Bug fix - If you had turned off the scoring warning at Finalize, then the scores weren't being calculated unless you happened to look at the Score first. Then you would get "Error trying to save invoice scores. Object variable with block variable not set."
  • Bug fix - Clicking on the heading in the Job Titles grid didn't resort the list.
  • Bug fix - The ending date on the Parts Finder was not inclusive, like "to." Fixed to be like "through." Fixed same flaw on Sublet Finder.
  • Bug fix - If you deleted the last Job Title in the list, you'd get an error 3021 and the page would be useless thereafter until you restarted Motive Power.
  • Bug fix - In the Reports section, under QuickBooks log, you couldn't always use the arrow keys after selecting the grid. I fixed that, plus now grid get focus auto when you press List button.
  • Improvement - Rephrased the message that tells user invoice wasn't finalized because of QB problems.
  • Improvement - Added the customer name to the colored bar near the top of the vehicle invoice history form.
  • New Feature - Made changes to the files and reports to enable tracking and printing of up to 25 taxing authorities. The first use of this feature is to provide a version of Motive Power for Canadian GST/PST reporting.

V1.1.4

  • Improvement - Added a Custom button to the Reports area. This is to inform users about the availability of custom reports.
  • New Feature - Added review of all warranted work from the warranty provider's customer screen. Before this feature you needed to find the vehicle that had the warranty done to it before you could review the warranty invoice.
  • Improvement - changed the meaning of the Sales button on the customer form. Now the total includes everything that customer paid for directly. Warranty sales are listed with the warranty provider. Previously the sales total showed all money spent on vehicles owned by the customer, including invoices paid for by warranty.
  • Bug fix - Discovered that QuickBooks in not able to handle a negative invoice such as a return or refund. Changed invoices with negative totals to Credit Memos instead. If a customer's invoice has a negative total, the How Paid form will offer Charge as the only payment method, provided he's a charge customer and his QuickBooks Name is valid. This will generate a Credit Memo. If the customer is not a charge customer the How Paid form will pop up a message box telling user about this limitation of QB. He can either Cancel and give the guy a charge account, or proceed with a non-charge payment type. If he goes ahead with finalize, Motive Power generates a printout for the bookkeeper and an entry in our QB log when the QB posting fails.
  • Improvement - Added a pre-finalize check to make sure QB has a Subtotal item if Sales Tax is on, because invoice posting would fail without one.
  • Improvement - QuickBooks needs different sales tax items for line items than for the invoice as a whole. Added this to the pre-invoice check in Work Orders. On the QuickBooks Settings form, added a comment to the description beside the individual line items and added a check for this to the [Validate Accounts] button. Made the message for missing sales tax items more explicit and added tool tips to both Validate buttons.
  • Improvement - If you have only one Sales Tax Authority defined, then it was hard to automatically perform an update on QuickBooks Settings in the Sales Tax grid because you couldn't move to another row in the grid. Now it to updates when grid loses focus.

V1.1.5

  • Bug Fix - Changed Reports | Sales so that initial surface really was the Detail Profit Report to match the button.
  • Improvement - Changed the tab order on the Customers screen so that it goes like this: Total Sales, Warranties, QuickBooks name.
  • Improvement - Added the Warranties button to the Customer page of the Work Orders screen, the same as in the basic Customer form.
  • Improvement - added context-sensitive help for new features since version 1.1.0

V1.2.0: Motive Power Manager

  • New Feature - Added the internals needed to support multiple workstations running the tech module.
  • New Feature - updated the personnel security screens to provide fine-grained read/add/edit of the work order fields for the technician's module.
  • Bug Fix - Changed so we always update the WorkOrderTime EnteredBy field to record who was logged in on a straight punch out. We were doing it on an indirect punch out caused by punching in elsewhere. Now we always do it.
  • Bug Fix - Changed the Payments Log Report to refuse improper character in the invoice order and work order ID selector fields instead of giving an error.

V 1.2.1

  • Bug Fix - Changed to accept QuickBooks Customers with punctuation in the name field.
  • Bug Fix - Changed to work correctly when changing a Tech's initials to be the same as another Tech's initials. It worked right in the grid but gave an error if you updated in the grid, but if you did the update in the textbox (right side of screen), you got an error when you tried to move to a different Tech.
  • Bug Fix - a few misspelled words were corrected
  • Bug Fix - In QuickBooks Associations, if you picked an MP customer from the drop-down list in the second column, MPower could crash with an "index out of range" error.
  • Improvement - Made the handling of customer name and keyword the same from the customer maintenance area and work orders.
  • Improvement - Importing GarageKeeper customer data can now handle a non-numeric Model Year.
  • Bug Fix - Bug introduced in v1.2.0 of Manager made problems adding new jobs to an empty ticket.
  • Bug Fix - Changed the parts and sublet searches to work right in cases where the vehicle model has not been entered.
  • Bug Fix - Changed parts handling on SmartJobs to assign the default parts type to parts being added with a part type that is no longer in use.
  • Bug Fix - Changed the start procedure so that it does not matter whether you start a Manager or a Tech module first.
  • Bug Fix - Changed the Tech security setting to turn on parts type permission when you give add parts permission.
  • Improvement - Write back the record every time a permissions checkbox loses focus to increase data integrity.
  • Bug Fix - Changed the exit procedure. After informing you that techs were punched in, MPower would sometimes give the message "No jobs found" when there really were some.
  • Improvement - Changed the forms to enable better editing of phone numbers and handling of blank phone numbers.
  • New feature - Provided a [Count] button on the Customer Finder form returns just the count of how many customers meet your selection criteria, and is not limited to 500 customers in the initial display.
  • New feature - Reports | Parts on Ticket has a new selector, Include part type. You can report on the special order parts added to work orders in a specific time period.

V 1.2.2

  • Improvement - Changed the caption of the [Open Jobs] button to read [Unassigned Jobs] in the Manager. This should prevent confusion with the Tech's [Open Jobs], which show only unassigned jobs for which the current user is qualified. We also added tool tips to these buttons.

V 1.2.3

  • New Feature - added the ability to attach any file to any open work order. This satisfies requests to attach before and after pictures to the repair order. It can be used to attach diagrams or sections of manuals for use by the tech, etc.
  • Improvement - Replace the system date with the SQL Server date throughout the program.

V 1.2.4

  • Improvement - Changed Search to be the default on the Find Customer screen so that pressing Enter does the search
  • Improvement - Moved buttons up from the bottom of the Settings | Personnel | Labor Rates because users missed seeing them at the bottom
  • Improvement - Restricted all grids in the Dropdown area to a single selection at a time
  • Improvement - Added the current Motive Power version number to the Settings screen because all users have permission to see this screen.
  • Improvement - Cleaned up the security screens to make them easier to read
  • Bug Fix - Changes so that a person with read-only access to a work order someone else has open cannot add or delete attachments

V 1.2.5

  • Improvement - Changed so that you can recover an attachment to an open work order that was accidentally deleted
  • Improvement - Changed to access one work order at a time instead of reading the full recordset to improve performance
  • Improvement - Added the number of attachments to the button on the Info page so you can easily see if there are any attachments for this ticket
  • Bug Fix - Changed so that updates to the Info page are available to other users right away.

V 1.2.6

  • Changed to fix a small problem with warranty providers on a work order. If you added a job, chose a warranty provider and checked parts and then pressed add job again right away, the warranty provider information was not saved

V 1.2.7

  • Bug Fix - Changed to stop an intermittent problem caused by turning the user switches off and on from the Workers screen

V 1.2.8

  • Improvement - Changed to go directly to a job picked from the Active Jobs or Unassigned jobs directories instead of to the top of that work order
    Improvement - Changed the way records are accessed to improve performance

V 1.2.9

  • Improvement - added more details to the context sensitive help topics

V 1.2.10

  • Bug Fix - Changed the procedure for deleting models to be like deleting makes. That means it restores the original value after an attempt to update it to a blank field. Added a message to remind the user to click on the record selector to delete the record.
  • Improvement - Changed several items in Settings | Dropdowns to be smoother when someone tries to blank out a field instead of deleting it.
  • Bug Fix - Changed Personnel so that you cannot turn off the user privileges for the current user
  • Bug Fix - Corrected an error that occurred when you tried to update the code of a worker with records in the time clock. For now, these updates will be blocked. We will change that in a later version
  • Bug Fix - Changed the program so that changes to a user name or code appear immediately on the Security grid and not next time you enter Personnel

V 1.2.11

  • Improvement - Added a button, New Worker, to Personnel | Worker and removed the ability to add and update in the grid. It makes things more reliable and smoother

V 1.2.12

  • Bug Fix - Fixed a problem that occurred in Personnel | Workers that happened adding a new worker right after editing the Default Service Writer

V 1.2.13

  • Bug Fix - Corrected a problem with Canadian invoicing. To get Canadian invoicing to work with the Learn files you need to copy the special report to Motive Power | Learn | BackThisUp | Reports
  • New Feature - Added the ability to go directly from the Add Jobs form to the Settings | Dropdown | Job Titles for users with Settings permission
  • New Feature - Added a Price button to the Settings | Dropdowns | Job titles page. You enter the Price and Motive Power will calculate the hours. The dollar amount appears on the Price button
  • Improvement - Added the hourly rate to the Operation dropdown in Job Titles
  • Improvement - Changed the miles and month fields to be highlighted for update when you come into them when settings up Job Titles.

V 1.2.14

  • New Feature - Starting a new ticket will automatically place the work needed section of the most recently finalized ticket into the work needed section of the current work order
  • Improvement - Changed the Daily | Reminders messages to eliminate confusion about whether the reminders are no longer in the reminder due list
  • Improvement - Changed to advance to the next cell automatically when entering a VIN in Customers | Search | Vehicles by VIN
  • Bug Fix - Fixed a problem with editing the third party authorization area on the Info form of Work Orders

V 1.2.15

  • New Feature - Added a way to get old part information into the Parts section if you have the exact part number. A small button is added to the part number field. After entering the part number either click on the box or enter Alt+Period to have Motive Power look for an exact match in finalized invoices. Messages pop if the pricing information is more than 6 months old or the part had a core charge last time it was sold
  • Improvement - Added a switch so you can get either Operation code or Operation name into the export of sales information to Excel
  • New Feature - Created a report of vehicle history that does not contain any information about who owned the vehicle previously. This report appears on the History screen for each vehicle
  • Improvement - Clarified messages on the Work Orders | Totals | Score to read 'costs or quantities not entered for some items'
  • New Feature - Add scheduling help using a Scheduled Work button in the Manager's Work Orders | Directory form. This shows how many hours have been booked each day for each tech and for the shop as a whole

V 1.2.16

  • New Feature - Added an invoiced parts sales analysis showing sales by vendor, by part type, for a range of dates. This works like the overall Invoiced Sales report which displays as an Excel pivot table
  • Improvement - Added a message "Be sure to add a core charge of this item removed is not rebuildable" to clarify the message when you use the exact part number feature and the part information indicates that there was a core charge last time.

V 1.2.17

  • New Feature - Added a parts look-up called Catalog. When you request an exact match look-up on a parts line and the part is not found in a Finalized Invoice, the request will check the Catalog file for an exact match. Catalogs are built by importing of ASCII files or hand entry. The ASCII file can be created by a GarageKeeper inventory file export or other pricing information available on disk or online.

V1.2.18

  • Improvement - Advance to Data Version 8
  • Improvement - Add the user code of the person logged in to the comment field when a work order or estimate is deleted
  • Improvement - Added the capability to update the code of a user that has live records in work order time tracking
  • New Feature - Provided an automatic crosscheck to other vehicles when adding or editing the VIN. When possible, the vehicle history will be migrated regardless of the previous or current license or owner. When it can't be done automatically, the user will have to resolve it, but the new feature can print you a sheet detailing both vehicles. This feature required changes so that the default vehicle no longer has a VIN to copy to each new vehicle you start.
  • Improvement - Made the work order ID a fixed column in the Reports | Order Log so that you can scroll to the right without moving the work order ID off the form.

V 1.2.19

  • Improvement - Changed the parts finder and the sublet finder to keep the Settings and the filtered data after adding an item to the work order. This makes it easy when you want to pick more than one item from the filtered data. Pick Add to ticket, enter quantity and click Search and the search form for that job is just like you left it

V1.2.20

  • Bug Fix - Fixed a problem in setting new worker permissions that occurred sometimes depending on what order you followed when adding and editing the new worker.
  • Improvement - Changed the Cashbox display so that the Amount column displays properly showing the dollar sign

V1.2.21

  • Improvement - Added Tech and Service Writer as selection fields on the Invoiced Sales Export to Excel. This gives you the ability to analyze sales volume and profitability by trying different combinations of service writer, tech, make, labor type, zip code, age of vehicle, etc.
  • New Feature - Added a new Report to the Parts Report section titled Find Part. This will look at current work orders for all occurrences of any part number that starts with the string you enter. This provides an easy way to find items that were put on the wrong order for example.

V1.2.22

  • Improvement - Added a Details button to the Cashbox to show information about the customer and vehicle for the selected line in the Payments grid.
  • Improvement - Added customer Name to the to the list of items shown in the InvoicedParts file when Exported to Excel. Name was also made one of the page fields at the upper left of the pivot table.

V1.2.23

  • Improvement - Updated the Help system for all changes made to date.

V1.2.24

  • Bug fix - The [Add Job] button on an open ticket worked when the ticket was owned by a tech at a different station.
  • Improvement - On the Vehicle History screens, we moved the customer's name out from behind the buttons.
  • Bug fix - If you blanked out a discount amount on the Totals page and tabbed away, Motive Power crashed. Fixed to interpret this as zero.
  • Bug fix - On the Jobs page of a Work Order, if you changed the in-house comments and then closed Motive Power immediately, your edit was lost. Fixed this type of thing on Work Orders and other forms.

V1.2.25

  • Bug fix - You couldn't add the first job to a new ticket.
  • Bug fix - On the Work Orders Directory screen, several of the tool tips on the newer buttons were wrong.
  • Improvement - On the Timeclock form, the clock for the time in/out view would sometimes hang off the right side of the screen. Changed it to pop up near the top left instead.

V1.2.26

  • New Feature – added radio button to Reports | Parts | Find Parts. This gives the ability to find parts on finalized invoices as well as open tickets. The default is for parts on open tickets.

V1.2.27

  • New Feature – changed the Reports section to add a Custom page. This will enable users to run custom reports from within Motive Power. This means that users will not have to go to the program group or set up shortcuts to run custom reports.
  • Improvement – Make the discount calculators function more obvious. Show more clearly that it is by replacement and not additive.
  • Improvement – Add additional data to the information used to calculate and finalize an invoice. This makes it easier to provide custom invoices at a lower price.
  • Bug fix – Limit the quantity on a parts line to 9999 so that you can enter a negative 9999 to back out part sold in error. The previous limit was 32,000 but would not accept a negative 32,000.

V1.2.28

  • Bug Fix – Corrected problem in Settings | Dropdowns. If you added a new job title or vendor, edited the description and immediately sorted the left hand grid, it would lose the description update.

V1.2.29

  • Improvement – We changed the warning about bad mileage entry from a 100,000 mile interval to a 10,000 mile interval after a survey of end users.
  • Improvement – Change the discount function to not allow discounts that cause the pre-supplies charge total to of the invoice to go below zero. You can make negative invoices by entering a negative amount in the parts, labor or sublet section of a job. The discount function is not intended to be used for credit memos or returns.
  • Improvement – Updated the Help system to explain that drop-down menus are not attached to buttons but appear at the current mouse position.

V1.2.30

  • Bug Fix – corrected error that caused the message “Trouble calculating Supplies Charge” to appear when work order had more than one sublet item on a job.

V1.2.31

  • Improvement – changed the Parts on Tickets report to default to sorting by Vendor instead of by Part Number to make it easier to use the report to order and track special order items added to work orders.
  • Bug Fix – corrected tool tips on the Parts Search and Sublet Search forms.

V1.2.32

  • Bug Fix – corrected posting to QuickBooks when finalizing an invoice with 0 total for a non-charge customer.

V1.2.33

  • Bug Fix – limited text boxes to 2048 characters for job description and In-house comments on Jobs page of Work Order.
  • Bug Fix - you cannot change the name of the Unknown Customer, or delete its name or keyword.

V1.2.34

  • Bug Fix – sometimes Work Orders would display the previous ticket instead of the current one.

V1.2.35

  • Bug Fix – create the Reports folder if it doesn't already exist.
  • Bug Fix - if necessary, recreate the read-only SQL Server login MPReports or MPReportsLearn whenever Reports | Custom is selected.

V1.2.36

  • Bug Fix – don't complain about 0 discounts when parts, labor, or sublet totals are negative.

V1.2.37

  • Improvement - give a better error message when you run out of new tickets in the Learn files.
  • Bug Fix – corrected several tool tips.
  • Improvement - pop up the Add Jobs form automatically when you change to the Jobs page on a ticket that contains no jobs.

V1.2.38

  • Improvement - in Work Orders, make all the fields on the Jobs page look disabled when there's no job selected.

V1.2.39

  • Improvement - added Help buttons to the dialog boxes that warn about login problems.

V1.2.40

  • Bug Fix – fixed spelling errors in the Help file.
  • Improvement - for free downloads, replaced zip files with self-extracting executables.

V1.2.41

  • Improvement - Added a [Comments] button to the Vehicle History screen. Shortened other button captions, moved customer name to the left. Added ToolTips to all buttons.
  • Revised Help file.

V1.2.42

  • Bug Fix – message "cashbox has never been balanced" whenever none of the partial payments on open tickets had been deposited yet.
  • Bug Fix - in Reports | Logs | Payments, the default ending date is today instead of 7 days ago.

V1.2.43

  • Improvement - added Help button to startup screen when you can't connect to SQL Server, and revised the Help file.

V1.2.44

  • Improvement - you can't finalize a work order with no jobs.
  • Bug Fix - fixed Sales Recap report, Sales Recap by Make report, and Daily Summary Detail page to handle correctly any jobless invoices finalized in the past.

V1.2.45

  • Bug Fix – fixed several errors that could happen when starting new tickets.
  • Improvement - when you start a new ticket from within the Customers task, you'll stay in the Customers task instead of going to the new ticket in Work Orders. Each new ticket you start this way is added to the top of your MRU.
  • Improvement - added a new [Return to Work Order] button to the Customer screen, but it only appears when you got there from Work Orders.
  • Improvement - when starting a new ticket, you're warned if there's already an open ticket for the same vehicle.
  • Bug Fix - fixed the tool tips on both Attachment forms (history and current).

V1.2.46

  • Updated the Help file.
  • Improvement - in Settings | Reminders, you can generate the Initial and Manual files without FTPiong them to CustomerLink.
  • Bug Fix - in Settings | Reminders | Customer Link | Manual, the default interval is the last 6 months.
  • Bug Fix - trim any blanks from the beginning and end of the FTP address, username, and password when FTPing to CustomerLink from Daily Tasks | Reminders.

V1.2.47

  • Bug Fix – on the Vehicles screen, you no longer get an error 94 when you try to change a blank license to one that's already in use.

V1.2.48

  • Improvement - added customer name and vehicle license to the messages that pop up after you start a ticket from inside the Customers task.
  • Improvement - added Billed Hours and Efficiency columns to the Techs Summary in the Daily Summary.
  • Bug Fix - the selectors on the Reports | Timeclock screens are always filled in.
  • Improvement - improved the installers with better messages. Added the Canadian invoices.

V1.2.49

  • Improvement - warn if Mileage Out is a single digit during Finalize.
  • Improvement - the Unknown Customer can no longer be a warranty provider or have a charge account.
  • Bug Fix - you don't get an error 5 right after adding a new customer.
  • Bug Fix - QuickBooks settings for customers had problems when you had no charge customers.
  • Improvement - in Customers with the QB interface turned on, you are warned right away when you turn on a customer's charge account switch, rather than when you leave the Customers task.

V1.2.50

  • Bug Fix – a blank Slogan isn't allowed because it would inhibit the totals on printed tickets.
  • Improvement - better explanation of interactions between Charge Allowed and Warranty Provider switches in the Help file.

V1.2.51

  • Improvement - on Reports | Sales | Tax Collected, show both taxed and untaxed parts, labor, and sublet for each Tax Authority involved in selected tickets.
  • Improvement - on Daily Summary, include cores and restocking charges in the Main Summary and Invoice Details.
  • Improvement - on Reports | Sales | Detail Profit, cores and restocking charges are shown separately, and discounts, supplies, and taxes are shown at the bottom. The bottom line on the report now matches the bottom line on the invoice.
  • Bug Fix - on Reports | Sales | Detail Profit, we fixed a bug on jobs totaling $0.00.
  • Bug Fix - it's no longer possible to delete a job that has only non-trivial timeclock entries.
  • Bug Fix - after updating the job info on a ticket, you no longer get a data access error if you try to delete the entire job.
  • Improvement - added cores and restocking columns to Reports | Export | Parts Sales.
  • Improvement - added these new features to the Help file.

V1.2.52

  • Improvement - when Finalizing a ticket with a significant partial payment, a message explains why you can't choose Charge as the payment method.
  • Bug Fix - on the Finalize and QuickBooks Settings forms, alerts are shown in the user's chosen color instead of blue.

V1.2.53

  • Bug Fix – fixed the OrderID/Invoice# selectors to disallow blanks and revert to 1 on invalid entries on the Detail Profit, Tax Collected, Payments Log and Order Log Reports.
  • Bug Fix - on Reports | Sales | Job Analysis, the first model year enforces the 4-digit rule like the last model year.

V1.2.54 (currently shipping)

  • Improvement - upgraded development environment from Windows 2000 to Windows XP Pro.

V1.2.55

  • Improvement - made it more user friendly when Motive Power found that the shared files or registry had been changed or damaged. Now we tell the user what went wrong and exit gracefully. Previously this kind of problem would result in a run time error. If this problem happens after a RunMe has run, we tell the user and go on.

V1.2.56

  • Improvement - changed the program so that you can’t get into a confused state when updating details on the default vehicle. Motive Power doesn’t ask if it’s a different vehicle after you change the make, model, or year of the Default Vehicle. You can no longer change its tag from Default.
  • Bug Fix – you no longer get a run time failure if you try to update the name of one vendor to be the same as another vendor. This is not allowed but in certain conditions you would crash instead of getting the message that you could not duplicate a vendor.
  • Improvement – made the F1 message larger on the Login screen.
  • Improvement – changed the Vehicle History screen and report, to show the newest service first so you don’t have to page or scroll down to see recent work on vehicles that have had a lot of services.
  • Improvement – changed the buttons on the customer search screen so that you can’t pick Start Ticket until you have displayed customers. The [Show Vehicles] button is disabled when we’re showing the Customer/Phones list because we’re listing only Customers, not Vehicles.

V1.2.57

  • Bug Fix – changed the phone number add on the Customer screen so you don’t get a run time error if you add a new phone but leave the number blank. Now you must fill it in to leave the grid.
  • Bug Fix – changed the service interval fields on the Jobs page of Work Orders to accept only digits. Previously you could get a character in there which would prevent the reminder from working properly.
  • Improvement - added tool tips to the Invoice History screen to tell you what order the data will be sorted in if you click on that column.
  • Bug Fix – italicized the column heads on Daily | Cashbox to show that they’re sortable. Fixed the grids Settings | Personnel | Security and Reports | Logs | License to prevent misleading highlights.
  • Improvement – added information to the Help file explaining how to align invoice for window envelope and detailing the sort order for Invoice History.

V1.2.58

  • Improvement – Added details to show what the e-mail reminder looks like in Help.
  • Bug fix – Changed work orders to be able to stop an error that would occur if you entered multiple decimal points in Job Hours or Job Price. Now it notifies the user and reverts to the old value.
  • Bug fix – Changed time clock to notify you when you enter multiple decimal points; previously Motive Power ignored the entry.

V1.2.59

  • Bug fix – Changed the Add Job form to handle problems created if the user entered certain keystrokes that were not numbers or letters when scrolling to a job or using the job filter.

Motive Power 2

  • These are the basic changes made to Motive Power Manager between Motive Power 1 and Motive Power 2
  • Improvement - Updated the data access components to ADO version 2.8
  • Improvement - Changed the SQL Server log in for read only report access. Real data: user is MPReports, password is MotivePower! Learn data: user is MPReportsLearn, password is MotivePower!
  • Improvement – increased the length of the Phone number contains selector on the Customer Search form from 10 to 20 characters. Added a box to let you ignore punctuation in the layout of the phone number when searching.
  • Improvement - Updated the data access components to ADO version 2.8
  • Improvement - Added a check for extra characters or line feeds at the end of Customers street address. Ask user if it was intentional and strip off the extras if not.
  • Improvement – Made changes to the Customer and Work Order screens so they look better when run in full screen mode.
  • Improvement – added an additional decimal point to the tax rate field because some jurisdictions went to tax rates requiring 3 decimal places.
  • New feature – Added a check of the software version number to the login process. If you have to re-install the program this makes sure that you are not installing an obsolete version.
  • New Feature – When starting a job on a work order the program warns the user if the make, model, and year of the vehicle are blank.
  • New Feature – Added switches to Settings | Invoicing | Score/Finalize to let the shop require the capture of license/ VIN and/or Make, Model and Year before a work order can be finalized
  • New Feature – we changed the outgoing e-mail client to use different software because of the number of ISPs requiring separate authorization to send e-mail
  • Improvement – we changed the software that does some of the report formatting because of installation problems on some machines

V 2.0.4

  • Bug fix - Found by MJS in Motive Power 2 in the work order directory. You’d get a Run time error 381 when pressing [Cancel] if there’s nothing in the Most Recently Used list (like when the files are brand new).
  • Improvement - We added an optional limit on the number of e-mail reminders to send at a time for shops with ISPs that label their outgoing email spam if they send too many at once. We put it on the send Reminders screen instead of in Settings to make it obvious.
  • Improvement - We added a [Print A Sample] button to Reminders | We Send | Printed panel. This allows users to test their postcard settings by printing a sample.

V2.0.5

  • Bug fix - In Reminders we put the focus back on the button when you come back after hitting the new Print A Sample button. This puts focus back where it needs to be in case the user presses F1.

V2.0.6

  • Bug fix - We re-evaluate the Most Recently used work order list after adding a new work order. The list is resorted to be sure that the new one will be first. Jay’s found a bug where the newly-added item was the one Deleted from the dataset, because we can’t count on the sequence. This was caused by a difference between SQL Server 2000 and 2005.

V2.0.7

  • Improvement - When you go to Reports | Custom, we now recreate the read only user and password to be sure the new password, MotivePower!, is right. Required by change from SQL 2000 to SQL Server 2005 security.

V2.0.8

  • Bug fix - Daily sometimes had the wrong tab forward when you first went in.

V2.0.9

  • Bug fix - If you don’t use a make in your default vehicle (make is left blank) you’d get an RTE 94 if you tried to drop down the list of makes from the vehicle screen in work orders.

V2.0.10

  • Bug fix - In the customer screen, the first time you selected a Make where it had been blank before, the Models dropdown was not always populated properly.

V2.0.11

  • New feature - added call to MPHelper program if we can’t connect to MPower2 or attach the database. MPHelper looks at your network for a shared MotivePower2 folder and a CAI2 instance of SQL Server.

V2.0.12-.140

  • New feature - worked on integrating MPHelper to handle either the installation of SQL Server 2005 Express (Full install) or assisting the user to select the right registry settings (Client installs).

V2.0.15

  • Improvement - in Work Orders: when you press the […] button in the Parts grid, Motive Power 2 looks in both invoice history and the Catalog, and uses the later price if both exist.
  • Improvement – Handle error 94s coming back from QuickBooks Pro or better. This was happening in Settings | QuickBooks when user pressed [Validate Accounts] before setting up any accounts.

V2.0.16

  • Improvement - Now gives error message if [Print] fails on a ticket. There are some fields that the report writer cannot split across pages. Includes suggestion to trim some long text fields.

TECH MODULE

Tech V0.0.3

  • Improvement - Changed version of ADO to 2.7 because one test machine (Toshiba) was getting the timeout error when trying to launch MotivePower Tech.

Tech V0.0.4

  • Improvement - In the Work Orders Directory, My Jobs view: punching in or out of a job makes that job the focus.
  • Improvement - Updated some documentation to current, like the How To page in Work Orders
  • Improvement - Added tool tips to the buttons on Work Orders Finder.
  • Bug Fix - changed the Open list in Dir to include all the jobs for the current Tech.

Tech V0.0.5

  • New Feature - Added a No Jobs button to the directory so you can see tickets that have been started but have not had any jobs added yet
  • New Feature - Added the attachments feature to the Tech module. Everyone can display the attachments but the permissions Add attachments and Delete attachments apply here

Tech V0.0.6

  • Improvement - Made better tool tip for the No Jobs button in the directory
  • Improvement - Added the current Motive Power version number to the Settings screen because all users have permission to see this screen.
  • Bug Fix - Changes so that a person with read only access to a work order someone else has open cannot add or delete attachments

Tech V0.0.7

  • Improvement - Changed so that you can recover an attachment to an open work order that was accidentally deleted
  • Improvement - Changed to access one work order at a time instead of reading the full recordset to improve performance
  • Improvement - Added the number of attachments to the button on the Info page so you can easily see if there are any attachments for this ticket

Tech V0.0.8

  • Bug Fix - Changed to fix a small problem with warranty providers on a work order. If you added a job, chose a warranty provider and checked parts and then pressed add job again right away, the warranty provider information was not saved

Tech V0.0.9

  • Improvement - When you pick a job from the directory you go to the job directly instead of to the top of the work order in question
  • Improvement - Changed how the program accessed records to improve performance.

Tech V0.0.10

  • Improvement - Revised the Quickie tutorial to go along better with the new workflow

Tech V0.0.11

  • Bug Fix - Some tech users would fail if they picked the Setting button on the Tech module depending on exactly how permissions were set in the Manager module

Tech V0.0.12

  • New Feature - Starting a new ticket will automatically place the work needed section of the most recent work order into the work needed section of the current work order
  • Improvement - Changed to advanced to the next cell automatically when entering a VIN in Customers | Search | Vehicles by VIN
  • Bug Fix - Fixed a problem with editing the third party authorization area on the Info form of Work Orders
  • Improvement - Changed handling to be smoother when you try to blank out a numeric in grids.

Tech V0.0.13

  • New Feature - Added a way to get old part information into the Parts section if you have the exact part number. A small button is added to the part number field. After entering the part number either click on the box or enter Alt+Period to have Motive Power look for an exact match in finalized invoices. Messages pop if the pricing information is more than 6 months old or the part had a core charge last time it was sold

Tech V0.0.14

  • Improvement - Changed graphic and messages on exact match feature so that it looks more like an underlined period (the keyboard shortcut is Alt+ Period)
  • Improvement - Clarified messages on the Work Orders | Totals | Score to read 'costs or quantities not entered for some items'

Tech V0.0.15

  • New Feature - Created a report of vehicle history that does not contain any information about who owned the vehicle previously. This report appears on the History screen for each vehicle
  • Improvement - Changed the exact part number match to work only for workers with permission to Add and Edit parts

Tech V0.0.16

  • Improvement - Upgraded exact part number look-up to warn you if the information is over 6 months old
  • Improvement - Added a message "Be sure to add a core charge of this item removed is not rebuildable" to clarify the message when you use the exact part number feature and the part information indicates that there was a core charge last time.

Tech V0.0.17

  • New Feature - Added a parts look-up called Catalog. When you request an exact match look-up on a parts line and the part is not found in a Finalized Invoice, the request will check the Catalog file for an exact match.

Tech V0.0.18

  • New Feature - Provided an automatic crosscheck to other vehicles when adding or editing the VIN. When possible, the vehicle history will be migrated regardless of the previous or current license or owner. When it can't be done automatically, the user will have to resolve it, but the new feature can print you a sheet detailing both vehicles. This feature required changes so that the default vehicle no longer has a VIN to copy to each new vehicle you start.

Tech V0.0.19

  • Improvement - Changed the parts finder and the sublet finder to keep the Settings and the filtered data after adding an item to the work order. This makes it easy when you want to pick more than one item from the filtered data. Pick Add to ticket, enter quantity and click Search and the search form for that job is just like you left it.

Tech V0.0.20

  • New Feature - Added another column to the AllJobs view in the Tech Work Order Directory. This column indicates whether a particular job has been Finished. It can be used as a sort key by clicking the column heading.

Tech V1.0.0

  • Improvement - Updated the Help system for all changes made to date.

Tech V1.0.1

  • Bug fix - The [Add Job] button on an open ticket worked when the ticket was owned by a tech or manager at a different station.
  • Improvement - On the Vehicle History screens, we moved the customer's name out from behind the buttons.
  • Bug fix - On the Jobs page of a Work Order, if you changed the in-house comments and then closed Motive Power immediately, your edit was lost.

Tech V1.0.2

  • Bug fix - You couldn't add the first job to a new ticket.

Tech V1.0.3.

  • Bug fix – Limit the quantity on a parts line to 9999 so that you can enter a negative 9999 to back out part sold in error. The previous limit was 32,000 but would not accept a negative 32,000.

Tech V1.0.4

  • Improvement – We changed the warning about bad mileage entry from a 100,000 mile interval to a 10,000 mile interval after a survey of end users.
  • Improvement – Change the discount function to not allow discounts that cause the pre-supplies charge total to of the invoice to go below zero. You can make negative invoices by entering a negative amount in the parts, labor or sublet section of a job. The discount function is not intended to be used for credit memos or returns.

Tech V1.0.5

  • Bug Fix – corrected error that caused the message “Trouble calculating Supplies Charge” to appear when work order had more than one sublet item on a job.

Tech V1.0.6

  • Bug fix – corrected tool tips on the Parts Search and Sublet Search forms.

Tech V1.0.7

  • Bug fix – limited text boxes to 2048 characters for job description and In-house comments on Jobs page of Work Order.
  • Bug fix - you cannot change the name of the Unknown Customer, or delete its name or keyword.

Tech V1.0.8

  • Improvement - in Work Orders, make all the fields on the Jobs page look disabled when there's no job selected.

Tech V1.0.9

  • Improvement - added Help buttons to the dialog boxes that warn about login problems.

Tech V1.0.10

  • Improvement - Added a [Comments] button to the Vehicle History screen. Shortened other button captions, moved customer name to the left. Added ToolTips to all buttons.
  • Revised Help file.

Tech V1.0.11

  • Improvement - added Help button to startup screen when you can't connect to SQL Server, and revised the Help file.

Tech V1.0.12

  • Bug Fix – on the Vehicles screen, you no longer get an error 94 when you try to change a blank license to one that's already in use.

Tech V1.0.13

  • Improvement - in Work Orders, on Customer screen:
    • if you turn on the WP switch, the Charge Allowed switch comes on automatically (without any message). You can’t turn Charge Allowed off as long as WP is on
    • the Unknown Customer can't have a charge account or be a warranty provider.

Tech V1.0.14

  • Bug Fix - you can no longer delete a job with only significant timeclock entries.
  • Bug Fix - you don't get a data access error if you try to delete a job right after changing it.

Tech V1.0.15 (currently shipping)

  • Improvement - upgraded development environment from Windows 2000 to Windows XP Pro.

Tech V1.0.16

  • Bug Fix – changed the phone number add in the Customer screen so you don’t get a run time error if you add a new phone but leave the number blank. Now you must fill it in to leave the grid.

Tech V1.0.17

  • Bug Fix – changed the service interval fields on the Jobs page of Work Orders to accept only digits. Previously you could get a character in there which would prevent the reminder from working properly.

Tech V1.0.18

  • Improvement – made it more user friendly when Motive Power found that the shared files or registry had been changed or damaged. Now we tell the user what went wrong and exit gracefully. Previously this kind of problem would result in a run time error.

Tech V1.0.19

  • Improvement - Changed the Vehicle History screen and report, to show the newest service first so you don’t have to page or scroll down to see recent work on vehicles that have had a lot of services.
  • Improvement - added tool tips to the Invoice History screen to tell you what order the data will be sorted in if you click on that column.
  • Improvement – made the F1 message larger on the Login screen.
  • Improvement – added information to the Help file detailing the sort order for Invoice History.

Tech V1.0.20

  • Bug fix – Changed work orders to be able to stop an error that would occur if you entered multiple decimal points in Job Hours or Job Price. Now it notifies the user and reverts to the old value.
  • Bug fix – Changed time clock to notify you when you enter multiple decimal points; previously Motive Power ignored the entry.

Tech V1.0.21

  • Bug fix – Changed the Add Job form to handle problems created if the user entered certain keystrokes that were not numbers or letters when scrolling to a job or using the job filter.

Motive Power Tech 2 changes

  • Improvement -Added a check for extra spaces or lines feeds at the end of customers mailing address. Ask user if he meant it, and strip off the extras if not.
  • Improvement - Changed Mailing Address and Parts Pricing basis from Frame to Elastic for better full screen presentation in Customers and WorkOrders.
  • Improvement - In Work Orders, when user presses [Add Job], we check for vehicle make, model, and year. If any not filled in, we warn user and offer to go directly to Vehicles page instead of adding a job.
  • Bug fix - Found by MJS in Motive Power 2 in the work order directory. You’d get a Run time error 381 when pressing [Cancel] if there’s nothing in the Most Recently Used list (like when the files are brand new).

Tech V2.0.3

  • Bug fix - R&A found a problem with the Work Order Most Recently Used list, similar to Mgr V2.0.6. Using the Directory, you couldn’t always access WOs that weren’t already on the Most Recently Used list once the Most Recently Used list was full.

Tech V2.0.4

  • Bug fix -From WorkOrders: when Vehicle Make started out blank, you’d get a Run Time Error 94 if you tried to drop down the list of makes.
  • New Feature - Added call to MPHelper.exe if we can’t connect to Motive Power 2. MPHelper looks at your network for a shared MotivePower2 folder and a CAI2 instance of SQL Server.

Tech V2.0.5

  • Improvement - Shortened the 120 second ConnectionTimeout because it makes MPowerTech2 seem broken when it can’t connect initially. Now tries regular connection twice before resorting to MPHelper.

Tech V2.0.6

  • Improvement - in WorkOrders: when you press the […] button in the Parts grid, Motive Power 2 looks in both invoice history and the Catalog, and uses the later price if both exist.
  • Improvement - Now gives error message if [Print] fails on a ticket. There are some fields that the report writer cannot split across pages. Includes suggestion to trim some long text fields.

Tech V2.0.7

  • Improvement - Fixed wrapping toolbar in Vista by widening screen slightly if Vista is detected.
   

Copyright © 2007 Computer Assistance Inc.
Last modified: 05/01/07