Opera 3 latest releases

Opera 3 (1.70) is here!
New Credit Management Centre

The Credit Management Centre is a one-stop shop for all credit control functions and is fully integrated with the Sales Ledger. With a series of easy to use dashboard views, customers have instant access to the financial status of the company, their customers, and a diary view. 

Customers can be grouped according to their debt history with user definable Credit Management Groups such as High, Medium or Low Risk. Accounts can be marked as on or off stop, have their credit limit amended, dispute invoices, change the due date of invoices and move customers to a different Credit Management Group, either individually or in bulk.

The credit controller can filter and view Customers in order of bad debt, easily create Diary Actions for follow up, and record any promised payments. With drilldown to the Account View, users have instant access to historical account information, eliminating the need to navigate away from the Credit Management Centre to locate this crucial information.

All relevant reports have been added to the Credit Management Centre, for ease of use and access. There are two new reports; a Diary Actions report and Promised Payments report, both of which can be sent directly to Microsoft Excel.

Improved Reporting: Historical Stock Valuation

A new Historical Stock Valuation Report has been added to Stock Control. If this functionality is activated, the system records the valuation of each stock record from that date. It is then possible to report on the historic stock valuation for any day back to that start date.

Report output to Excel: Sales Reports

The report output to Excel functionality has been extended to include the following Sales Reports:

• Disputed Invoices
• Credit Control
• Revenue Forecast
• Realised Gains/Losses
• Turnover Report
• Currency Revaluation 

SOP/Invoicing Enhancements

Repeat Invoicing and SOP/Invoicing Processing will now allow the use of predefined e-mail profiles when generating documents like invoices, so customers can have their invoices instantly and make significant savings in postage costs.

CRM Enhancements 

Print Call Sheets Report - a new option called ‘Report by Equipment’ has been added to the criteria form.  This allows a call sheet to be produced for an Engineer that only displays previous History relating to the item of equipment due to service on site.

Helpdesk Calls – view the service contract details linked to a call on the Helpdesk tab on various forms in CRM

Warranty Expiry and Next Service Due Dates

• Now a message will warn you if a worksheet entry includes an equipment item that is under warranty but the entry is not marked as 'Free of Charge'. You can choose to mark the item as free of charge or accept the charge as entered.
• It is now possible to filter items using their Warranty Expiry dates on the Equipment tab in addition to their Next Service Due dates.
• Both the Warranty Expiry date and Next Service Due date for each equipment item are now displayed on the Choose Equipment form.
• The Find Results form on the Equipment Register now also includes both the Warranty Expiry date and Next Service Due date

Opera 3 (1.60) incorporates Auto enrolment and CMEC changes

Opera 3 (1.60) incorporates the payroll statutory changes from October 2012 resulting from the introduction of Auto Enrolment of Pensions and changes made by the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission with the introduction of the new type of Deduction from Earnings Order (DEO). Find out more.

Work smarter, not harder with Opera 3 (1.50)

Work smarter, not harder with Opera 3. Your business can improve productivity with  lots of new features in Opera 3 (1.50) across a range of applications. Look out for more error correction in the Sales and Purchase Ledger, additional output to Excel reporting with many Nominal Ledger reports, a new Chain task in the Scheduler, improvements to Stocktake and CRM and much more.

Now you can simply and easily correction allocations that have been incorrectly posted in the Sales and the Purchase Ledger. A new Wizard is available from the Sales and Purchase processing forms, which allows you to select the new Rectify Allocation command.

This can be useful when you make mistakes in both allocating receipts to invoices, or posting a receipt to the wrong account, for example.

You can deallocate an allocation and therefore break the link between an Invoice and a Receipt, so allowing the Receipt to be allocated to another Invoice. It is also possible to deallocate the allocation and remove associated transactions such as receipts, payments, refunds, discounts or exchange rate discrepancies.

Keep a history for audit trail purposes and a new Rectified Allocations report is available to show these transactions. This information will be removed as part of the Period End routines based on the number of periods defined in the Keep Transactions field.

Report output to Excel - Nominal Ledger reports

Need to manipulate your data further? Many Nominal Ledger reports can be output to Excel increasing the flexibility of reporting in Opera 3:

• Audit Trail
• Ledger Summary
• Income
• Expenses
• Assets
• Liabilities
• Capital/Reserves
• Budgets List
• Nominal Analysis
• Retrospective Debtors/Creditors Reports

What's more, the Debtors/Creditors Reports and Retrospective Debtors/Creditors reports can now be exported to Microsoft Excel in a selected foreign currency. Previously these reports could only be exported in the home currency.

Minimise disruption to your business - new Chain Task in the Scheduler

The Scheduler allows you to schedule big tasks at a time that suits the business, as you may want to run tasks out of office hours. A new Task Type called 'Chain' can be created making it possible to link different tasks together so that they can be processed automatically and in sequence. For example, you can create a Chain task to run after the working day that links:

1. Data Backup task

2. Update Data Structures task

3. Nominal Ledger Period End task

All three tasks will be performed, one after the other. If a task is disrupted, the following task will not be run.

The Scheduler has also been extended to allow Messaging and Shutdown functions to be performed as part of the process when creating a new Task. For example, if scheduling a task to run a Backup, it will now be possible to force a Shutdown and send a message you about this task.

Did you know the Scheduler comes as standard with Opera 3?

For a true picture of stock - improvements to Stocktake

Do you want to move stock that is currently in a Stocktake? Stock adjustments can now be posted to Opera 3 even if an item's in-stock quantity changes whilst it is being counted. This means that items can be received from suppliers or issued to customers or production in Opera 3 whilst they are being counted in a stock take.

Stock adjustments can be posted from Stocktake even if the in-stock quantity in Stock Control changes. Before Opera 3 is updated you will be warned that transactions have been posted in Opera 3 and offers an audit report for the affected stock items. On the Update Opera 3 form, the counted quantity is displayed alongside the adjusted quantity in Opera 3. This adjusted quantity is the difference between stock level at the beginning of the stock take and what is currently in stock now. You can then choose the correct quantity to be posted back to Opera 3.

This allows you to continue to use the Stock application while a stocktake is being performed, adding greater flexibility and accurate stock counts.

Do you want to restrict stock takes to specified Bin Locations?  When creating a Stocktake it is now possible to choose items based on their Bin Locations, as well as by their Warehouses, Categories, Stock References and Status.



In addition to using the standard/average cost price to calculate the cost of Stocktake adjustments, it is now possible to use the stock item's last cost. This is controlled from a new option on the Stocktake Profile linked to the stock records.

New features in CRM

Easier scheduling with the Summary Scheduler -  define work patterns and assign them to resources. For example, an Engineer may have a 4 days on, 3 days off work pattern so the Summary Scheduler will therefore be able to highlight those 3 days off as being unavailable for scheduling for that engineer.

It is also possible to assign a resource to work on the same job on a specific day over multiple weeks. This allows an Engineer to be booked on to a specific Job on designated days without Activities needing to be cleared.

Improved reporting - the User Defined Fields created and applied throughout the CRM applications are now available for reporting. This allows them to be used within both the Reporter application and within the Pegasus Dashboards Manager.

Define Quotation Status to be 'inactive' - when you create a Quotation it is now possible to default the Quotation Status to be 'Inactive'. This provides a level of authorisation because only users that have the relevant security access can change the status from 'Inactive'.

Group Membership - define Contact Groups within CRM and assign Contacts to those groups. It is now possible to see those Contact Groups from within the Contacts Processing Action menu from a new option called Group Membership. This displays a tick list of all Contact Groups identifying those Groups the current contact belongs to. You can tick / un-tick groups as required.

Remember Form Positions - Column widths in CRM and Service & Helpdesk Management list views will obey the Remember form position and sizes setting within Preferences.

New features in Open Period Accounting

If you are using Open Period Accounting, then the Sales Invoices/Credit Notes and Receipts/Adjustments reports can now be viewed based on the transactions' Nominal Ledger posting dates as well as the transaction date. Similarly the Purchase Invoices/Credit Notes and Payments/Adjustments reports can also be viewed based on the transactions' Nominal Ledger posting dates and transaction date.

This makes it easier with the reconciliation between Purchase Ledger postings and the associated Creditors control account within the Nominal Ledger.

In the Purchase Invoice Register, when invoices and credit notes are posted to the Purchase Ledger, if their transaction dates fall before the current Nominal Ledger period they can now be posted to the respective open Nominal Ledger period. If the Nominal Ledger period is closed the transaction will be posted to the current Nominal Ledger period.

Payroll: Global Payment & Deductions

A new option has been added that allows you to both update employees who already have the payment or deduction profile selected on their employee record, and to also create new payments or deductions for employees where they currently do not exist. For example, add a one off Payment Profile of 'bonus' to some employees that have previously not received a 'bonus'.

Create BACS files and submit to Santander bank

If you are using the Payroll, Purchase Ledger or Cashbook applications, now you have the ability to create and submit BACS files to Santander bank.

> Download the Opera 3 (1.50) Guide to Enhancements