Thursday 22 March 2012

Bank Recon 4.2.446.1978 is available

The next release of Bank Recon is ready and can be downloaded from the Twenty57 website. It has been a while in the making but the wait is worth it. There are a number of exciting new features that will enrich the daily user experience.

Webhelp will be updated to reflect these changes and they are all listed in the release notes as well as on the Bank Recon download page on the Twenty57 website. I will also post specific How To posts and videos for some of the bigger changes.

So what are these features?

1. A new look for the Landing Page. For each account we show you the number of outstanding tags you have, how many Unreconciled Bank and Cashbook Transactions there are as well what Suggestions are available for you to look at. Each count is a link which will take you to the relevant page.


2. Search Account on the Landing Page. Useful if you work on many accounts. Start typing any part of the account name into this box and Bank Recon will show a list of accounts which match the criteria. Use your mouse or the arrows and enter to select the required account and it will be loaded on the home screen so you can then navigate to your required screen.


3. Email a Tag. You can now send an email to anyone from the Edit and Add Tag screens. Check the 'Send Email' box, type in the recipients and message and chose whether to send it now or later. The tagged transactions, description and any comments will be included in the sent mail. The subject is defaulted to the Tag Name and Type but can edited. The email will be sent from the logged in user's email address so any replies will go to that user's inbox. This will only work if you use AD (windows) authentication. It doesn't support forms authentication.

Please add the following to the <appSettings> section your web.config file and replace the values in <> with your smtp settings.
    <add key="Host" value="<SMTP Host settings>"/>
        <add key="Port" value="<Port number>"/>
        <add key="EnableSSL" value="false"/>
 Add following settings if the email sending does not work.
        <add key="UserName" value=""/>
        <add key="Password" value=""/>
4. Search Transactions from the Manual Recon Screen. There is a new Search box at the bottom right of the Manual Recon screen that allows you to search across all transactions, reconciled and unreconciled, for transactions which may relate to the ones in the matched section. You can search on amount range, date range and a reference. Amount and Date are defaulted based on the match difference and newest date of the selected transactions. Reference is free text and will search all the reference fields to find a match. You can configure default date and amount tolerances per account.


5. Load transaction into the Matched section of the manual recon screen from the View Transaction Screens. Once you have clicked search from the Manual Recon Screen, the results will be loaded on the relevant View Transaction Screen with the criteria you searched for shown. If you find your transaction, break the existing match if needed and then select the transaction(s) and click on 'Match Selected'. They will be loaded into the Matched Section of the Manual Recon screen automatically. 


6. Recon rule changes. To improve the rule execution performance even further we have changed the rules to run on Unreconciled Transaction tables instead. These tables are BankTransactionUnreconciled and CashbookTransactionUnreconciled and they have been denormalised and should contain all the columns you need to design and run your rules. Existing rules will need to be updated to query these tables to take advantage of the change and all new rules should be designed on these tables. Existing rules will still run on the old structure but we will be phasing it out in future builds so it is advisable to update your existing rules. If you need help changing your rules please let me know. 

7. Minor enhancements:
  • Test button on Cashbook Import Definition Screen will also ensure that the required columns are included in the query and all the columns can be mapped. 
  • Back button on Recon Details screen will retain the search criteria and loaded transactions on the View Transaction Screens.
  • Spaces are now allowed in the Account column alias's.
  • If any of the Bank Statement files in the multiple file list is selected, the 'Multiple File' radio button will automatically be selected.
  • Recon Id and totals and difference of each side is shown on the Tag Details screen.
  • The following web services have been removed: GetDetail, GetExceptions, GetHistory, UpdateException, DeleteDetail, AddDetail
  • Standard Current Reconciliation Report has been updated to show the correct percentages. Please reload the report from the UI to see the changes.
8. Bug fixes
  • A domain group administrator can now view the Process Log and Audit Log screens correctly. 
  • Recon rule run user is specified as batch create user for any balancing entries instead of defaulting to User ID 1.
  • Remove Suggestions if a Bank or Cashbook Batch is removed.
  • Cleanup Tags and Tag delete timeout resolved.
  • Edit the current Profile bug resolved.
  • Configure the number of times Bank Recon should attempt to connect to the Database server when the service is restarted to ensure Suggest and Process Schedules load correctly. Add the following to the processservice.exe.config file in the <appSettings> section
                   <add key="ServiceStartMaxAttempts" value="3"/>
                  <add key="DelaySecondsBetweenAttempts" value="60"/>

A very big thank you to Anand and the team for the fantastic development work done and their patience as features, layouts and colours were tweaked and tweaked again. And also to Carien and Franz with the help on the usability and graphics side.