Introduction

OVERVIEW

Following the live deployment of our September Enable update, our in-house development team have been hard at work adding the final touches to our November release. This release contains a mix of new features, solution improvements and performance enhancements.

Working within a six-week development cycle, Enable take a proactive approach to Enable updates ensuring our software is constantly being improved and enhanced. Our methodology ensures our clients are free to concentrate on their core business, whilst we focus on keeping the key software platforms maintained to the highest standard. This newsletter provides an overview of our latest Enable update.

As well as research-led development based on current market demands, many of our updates result from feedback received from our clients. Any feedback, positive or negative, that you have on Enable can be submitted via email to projects@enable.com. Our dedicated Client Services team will be on hand to answer any queries you may have

WHEN IS THE UPDATE DEPLOYED?

Our latest update was deployed to our clients’ user acceptance testing (UAT) environments on 3rd November 2017 and is now available for testing. (This UAT environment is separate to your live environment and provides a suitable testing platform without any risk to the integrity of your live data.)

The UAT process will last for approximately 5 weeks. During this time you will be able to try out the new features and give us your feedback. The update will be deployed to your live Enable environment on 12th December 2017.

NEW FEATURES BY REQUEST

This update contains a combination of new features, feature enhancements, and performance improvements. The majority of these changes will be deployed as standard to your Enable system. There are however, certain new features described in this document which are only available by request as they require additional configuration in order to be applied to your Enable system.

Please contact a member of our Client Services team for more information.

What’s new?

NEW FEATURES AND ENHANCEMENTS

Scaled accrual earnings for lump sums

The Apportioned External Earnings or Apportioned Fixed Amount Deal plugins now support new configuration options which control the apportionment of accrual earnings. The 'Apportion scaled total' option use this existing apportionment method. In this method the full Deal earnings values is apportioned across Turnover Lines at the time the Deal is calculated. The new 'Apportion scaled total' option scales current earnings before apportionment based on the time remaining before the Deal ends.

Cash App

Various new features and enhancements have been added to Enable's Cash App. The Cash App is designed to enable Enable users to record and track payments received from Suppliers against Enable calculated Deal earnings.

• 'Include <0 earnings in total due' setting - A new setting 'Include <0 earnings in total due' has been introduced for the Cash App, which determines whether or not the 'total due' column in the debtors' report section of the Cash App includes Deal lines where the end date has passed but the due date has not yet been reached. This is reflected in the 'total due' displayed on the debtors' report, as well as on the Deal and Deal line drill down pages.
• 'Use accrual earnings' setting - A new setting 'Use accrual earnings' has been introduced for the Cash App. If this setting is enabled, computations in the Cash App at the Deal line level will be derived from accrual earnings rather than actual earnings.
• New aged debt period category in debtors report - The 'not yet due' category in the 'Aged debt period' now covers precisely those Deal lines when the end date has not yet passed. A new category '<0 days' now covers Deal lines where the end date has passed but the due date has not yet been reached. The 'total debt' field sums over all categories, including this new category.

• Additional filters on debtors’ report - On the debtors' report, the search box contains an option to filter unallocated receipts by date received.
• Additional information on Deal and Deal line drill downs - The Deal and Deal line drill downs in the debtors report now includes columns for each debt age category, alongside a 'total debt' column containing the sum of these columns for each Deal or Deal line respectively.

ENHANCEMENTS TO SINGLE SIGN-ON FUNCTIONALITY

Single sign-on

Enhancements have been made to SAML2 configuration options. The Identity Provider name can be configured, and this name will be the one displayed to users through the UI.

The system now has a single login page, containing different components depending on specific sign-in settings. If single sign-on is enabled, the page displays a button allowing users to login with the configured Identity Provider. Additionally, if manual login is enabled, the page will also contain the usual sign in elements.

IdP metadata can now be provided to Enable to allow efficient configuration of sign-on options for the client. Metadata can be provided using a file or a secure URL.

Welcome email reflects Single Sign-on and Manual Login settings

The Enable welcome email is an existing feature which provides users with instructions for accessing Enable. The instructions in the welcome email are now generated dynamically based on your configured sign-in options.

Disable manual login for individual users

When both manual login and single sign-on are enabled for the client, administrators can now disable manual login for individual users. This is done using a new option 'Disable manual login' on the users configuration page. When manual login is re-enabled for a user who previously had it disabled, the user will be automatically sent a password reset email (the same email used when users request to reset their password).

When manual login is disabled for the client, or for an individual user, the user will no longer be able to change their password using the system's 'change password' facility.

PERFORMANCE UPDATES AND PLATFORM ENHANCEMENTS

Changes to deal save mechanism

Improved support has been added for saving Deals with a large number of directly selected Deal Dimension Items. This should reduce the time taken when saving Deals of this scale.

Deadlock message

Previously a Turnover file upload would fail in certain situations where one or more other Turnover file upload operations are taking place. We now notify the user of this occurrence as in this special case the user can simply try again later for the file upload to be successful.

Suppliers listing pager

The paging mechanism has now been included on the Supplier listing. Suppliers are displayed in groups of 100 and the user can navigate between pages using the pager controls. This is designed to improve system performance when high volumes of Trading Partners are present.

What’s coming up?

OVERVIEW

In line with Enable’s commitment to release a Enable update every six weeks, our next update will be deployed for testing within clients’ UAT environments on 15th December 2017, with deployment to Live environments scheduled to take place on 19th February 2018.

WHAT WE'VE GOT PLANNED

As part of our December update, we will be making further performance optimisations and platform enhancements. Alongside this, we will be introducing a series of new functionality as well as enhancing existing Enable features.

New Features

The following are brand new features that you can expect to see in our next Enable update.

• External Reference feature - It will be possible to supply an “External Reference” filed when importing Turnover Lines. If configured, a Turnover Line will have “External Reference” which is stored against the Turnover Line in the Turnover and Daily Earnings reports. This field allows Turnover Lines to be identified with a business document such as an invoice or goods received note.
• Turnover Line Interface date - We will be introducing an “Interface date” field when importing Turnover Lines. This will allow fro a distinction between the transaction date (used for Deal earnings calculation) and interface date (used to identify context replacement).
• “Automated Turnover import requires interface date” setting – A new setting “Automated Turnover import requires interface date” will be introduced. This will be used to make the newly introduced interface date mandatory for automated Turnover imports.

Enhancements

Alongside the new features being introduced we are also continuing to enhance existing features and the Enable product as a whole. Heres what you can expect in the next cycle:

• Enhancement to Scheme approval workflow - The Supplier divisions of a Scheme that is locked due to workflow will be editable, allowing users to perform a bulk edit of Supplier divisions across both locked and unlocked Schemes of a Supplier. The user acting as Scheme lead will be displayed more prominently in the system for Schemes undergoing workflow, and will also be included in any workflow emails. Additionally, the CSV file downloaded from the workflow page will be expanded to include more information. When running the Scheme workflow report, a new filter "My team's responsibilities" will be added, which will display Schemes where the Scheme lead is one of the user's subordinates.
• Refined inclusion of users in Scheme approval workflow - Various enhancements are scheduled which will allow for finer control of the users invited into the approval workflow for a Scheme. It will be possible for Category Managers to specify the Supplier divisions for which they wish to be invited to approve workflow, and a new role "Category Assistant" will be introduced with edit privileges for Schemes and Deals, but no involvement in their approval. Additionally, rather than users being invited to a Scheme due to the net spend meeting their invite threshold, there will also be the option for the invitation to be sent if the baseline earnings for the Scheme exceed the user’s invite threshold.
• Enhancements to the Cash Collection functionality - The label on the 'Unallocated only' filter on the debtors' report search pane is due to be reworded to be more descriptive. The payment history report will display the date received for a receipt as a new column. Across the Cash App, the 'Actual rate' column will be replaced by the 'Accrual rate' column if the 'Use accrual earnings' setting is turned on. The rate type in use will then be used to populate a new rate column which will be added to the payment allocation screen.
• Harmonisation of Turnover and Daily Earnings reports – The behaviour of the Turnover and Daily Earnings reports will be unified. Both will aggregate results by day when “Frequency” is set to daily, and will aggregate by Turnover Line when “Frequency” is set to a newly introduced “None” option.

If you have any questions regarding our current or upcoming Enable updates, please contact our Client Services team at projects@enable.com.