Phreesoft Support Forum

I have included branch and multi-currency support in the latest release. Here is the revised Big Four:

1. I need to re-design the order screen to a 2-line per item format to allow space for spelled out gl accounts and sales tax descriptions. This is part of the multiple tax per order requirement.
2. Payroll Module
3. Work Order (manufacturing) module.
4. Project Scheduling module.

I'm also looking for ideas to enhance the control panel. You can now have an unique control panel look for each menu heading/user. this will allow specilaized cp functions particular to the menu being viewed, customers, vendors, banking, etc. There are a lot of possibilities here.

I'm also looking for translators...

Dave

Nice work dave, congrats on your new release. i have seen many other similar dashboards i couple of things that really catch my attentention is:
[1] an RSS feed - usually has important events on it like vat/gst due dates , company holidays, software updates
[2] graphical A/R and A/P
[3] mini profit and loss
[4] KPI's with year to date

and of coarse quick links to you most used featues

How should I put this... PhreeBooks is an excellent package... I wish worldwide success for it... but... and this is a big "but": at the moment translating PhreeBooks is energy wasted. - I want to translate it but I will not.

I have tried to print the German letters ä, ö, Ä, Ö and Spanish ñ, Ñ (with version 1.3, 1.3.1, 1.4). They will print as garbage on all .pdf produced. Does PhreeBooks have this issue with all other languages than English? If so, then it cannot be put into production use in a language which has non-English characters in its alphabet.

This is easy to demonstrate: Copy/paste this text " German ä,ö,Ä,Ö - Spanish ñ,Ñ " to any PhreeBooks field and make a report.

In a multilingual commercial world this is a problem: Purchase orders and invoices written in English may have to contain product- or customer names with non-English characters. And shipping labels may have to have the address written with odd characters.

To make a translation that will be useful has this prerequisite: All characters of the alphabet must print out correctly. One has to be able to print a "technically correct" invoice and a balance sheet. So, I would add a "Small task" with a number zero:

0. Report engine must print at least all Western characters (Latin-1, ISO 8859-1, Windows-1252) correctly. If it prints all utf-8 - wonderful!

And the good news:
On screen (except .pdf) PhreePooks does an excellent job with utf-8 characters. And the database is utf-8. So, all the basics are there for great internationalization. I hope version 1.5 will address this issue, and maybe nothing else - call it the "international or utf-8 ripe version". This is just my personal opinion: The deficiencies of the .pdf engine or report engine is blocking many translation efforts.

I'm playing with tcpdf to make the reports UTF-8 compliant but I'm hanging genterating reports longer than 30 lines. Smaller test reports print fine. When it hangs, it's not on any particular iteration of the loop, just near the 32-35th iteration. Single page forms work well but multipage forms hang was well. I don't receive any errors in any logs I can find and the script just hangs (for several munutes until I lose patience) . I have traced it down to the MultiCell command in TCPDF but I haven't had the time to pursue it further. Hoepfully in the next week or two I can find what the problem is. If anyone wnats to help, I can post the changes to reportwriter to use tcpdf. It's only a few lines in two function files and the language file.

Dave

What a nasty bug! - I am willing to do what little I can. This is an important issue. Please post the changes needed to experiment with TCPDF and I will test it on my server. If I can provide you with clues that might help you solve this MultiCell command bug. - I did look at Report engine and TCPDF code a month ago and had to give up. The code was too difficult for me to hack.

I have posted an update to print UTF-8 reports at the following:

http://www.phreebooks.com/pb_phpBB/viewtopic.php?p=550#550

Dave

We have a partial translation to UK english, but it is a real pain as there are language files all over the place. If the language files were simplified then it would be much easier - or if there was a translation document that detailed all the files.

I hope to have R1.4 fully updated to UK English and will get the files over to you Dave in the next week or so. (Depends how much I whip the techie I have doing it )

see this thread. It lists the files that need to be translated. there are a lot but it's worth it.

http://www.phreebooks.com/pb_phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=134

How are things coming along for project scheduling? Will this be some sort of "dispatch" system? (hopeful thinking...)

_________________
Eriks Goodwin-Pfister

"A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others." --Ayn Rand

It's still on the list but I haven't had much tome to work on it. I'm still looking for a good requirements document to get started since I don't use project scheduling in my company.
Dave

If you can give me some general ideas, I'm sure that me or one of my tech/construction/trades contractor clients can help come up with a wish list.

_________________
Eriks Goodwin-Pfister

"A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others." --Ayn Rand

Mostly process work flow, i.e.
1. Requirement - Create a process to enter and track individual project costs at the customer level to include estimation, cost tracking, billing, and labor requirements...
2. Pre-requisites - What pre-existing features are needed, i.e. employee database, inventory items with proper details to track costing, tracking work flow. If they are sufficient in the current release of PB, the pre-requisites have been met otherwise they may need to be enhanced.
3. Details
Create job estimates broken down by tbd units (labor per line item, material costs, etc)
Issue work orders for each line item
Create billing statements for customer
Breakout hours worked by employee (for payroll)
more ...

I'm sure there is more but I need a target to shoot at since my business doesn't have this type of cost tracking I don't know what all is involved. Keep it in plain English, no sql statements or code snippets, just describe the process and the tools needed to achieve it.

Dave

Hi Dave,

New user and first post here. I've been reading through the forum and must say you have to be like a one legged man at a butt kicking contest! Writing code, keeping the forum up to date and running your own business must keep you very busy.

First, let me say you've written a great piece of software from what I can see!
Second, remember you can't be all things to all people. I can see a lot of scope creep going on in the wishlist if you let it.

Now let me tell you what brought me here. I was looking for a way to integrate Zen Cart with vTiger because I need a way to track my customers orders, support requests, inventory and vendors. Having used both apps in the past, I like the functionality and configurability of both (not to mention the price is right). I found a post in the ZC forums about Phreebooks and decided to try it, so I installed a copy with the Zen interface and have it up and running. Now I'm no bean counter so I still haven't played around extensively (nor do I have a clue about some of the features) but I did sync some test orders when it struck me... If you can make Phreebooks seamlessly integrate with ZC's order and inventory by automatically parsing the data and passing it to PB and then to vTiger, you have a killer app on your hands!

As a guy who has run several small businesses and done the IT thing for many years, I can say that ZC is a great ecommerce platform but it always left a 'hole' to fill by the likes of QB or some other accounting app. I think PB has filled that hole but it just needs to be polished a bit. Remember that many SOHO business owners are on a tight budget, use open source apps if available, like the KISS (Keep It Short and Simple) principle and don't need a lot of built in functionality. Personally, I have no use right now for dispatching, VAT, project scheduling or a language other than English and passed on OSfinancials because of what I consider bloat. The modular idea is great but IMHO tighter integration with ZC and integrating PB with vtiger should be the top two of the big four.

If there is anything I can do to help speed development let me know. I'm fairly versatile but not a programmer although I do have several close friends who are.

Thanks for the post and welcome the the PhreeBooks forum. I have integrated two primary ZenCart functions, order download and product upload to the ZenCart interface but I'm still looking for a requirements list for the vtiger (CRM) interface. I haven't played around with vtiger much and don't know it's full functionality, but I do have some concerns tracking orders through two different apps. Mainly, the inventory management and accounts receivable functions. For example, I track every order through the payment (even shipping) process. I have Invoice Manager to do this. If invoicing is performed at the CRM level, all pertinent data needs to be passed to PB to post the the correct accounts. Most (I think all) CRM applications don't understand the concept of general ledger accounts. For something as simple as posing a sale, there are general ledger accounts for accounts receivable, inventory, shipping, and sales tax (which in my case include three separate accounts). Just simply creating an invoice is a piece of cake compared to tracking each cost and putting it in the correct accounting bucket. This is why there are so few ERP open source applications out there.

Inventory is a much larger beast. The most complex is the tracking of costs. If you buy pencils at $0.10, $0.11 and $0.12 and sell at $0.20 and $0.22, cost of each pencil needs to be tracked and quantities in stock. Take into account returns and adjustments and the tacking difficulty is multiplied. Assemblies added another level of complexity.

I guess what I've found is the the CRM application doesn't add much to the PB functionality. I believe that it would be easier to add the remaining CRM functionality to PB since all of the data is already in PB anyway. Spending a lot of time moving data back and forth to keep the two systems sync'd up seems like more hassle than the benefit gained.

Since you seem to be a well informed user of vtiger, I welcome your thoughts.
Dave

Hi Dave,

You have many valid points about the integration of a CRM with PB and ZC. I've been really pressed for time this week and will try to give a detailed reply over the weekend. One thing I can say is that yes, the invoicing app on vtiger is horrible. The last company I was with wrote code and ended up moving to Salesforce instead of trying to customize vtiger.