Latest Release: Opera 3 (1.70)

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) 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)

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.

Made a mistake? Error Correction extended 

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

Opera 3 (1.30)

Landed Costs - for a true stock valuation 

Landed Costs are the additional costs incurred in getting goods you have purchased overseas from your supplier to your premises, such as freight, import duty, warehousing etc. It is important to keep track of landed costs in order to know the true profitability when selling your stock.



This will allow you to automatically calculate and record the expected landed costs at the time of performing various stock-related postings, such as when receiving stock via a purchase order.

These landed costs can be posted to the Nominal Ledger to ensure more accurate Profit & Loss and Balance Sheet reporting, and will also be included within various Stock-related processes, such as the Stock Valuation Report, to provide a more accurate picture of the true value of your stock.

> View the video demo

Improved reporting - Retrospective Debtors and Creditors

At present, the Debtors and Creditors reports within Opera 3 allow you to view the outstanding debt “as at today”. New Retrospective Debtors and Creditors reporting is now available in Opera 3 to allow you to show the outstanding debt “as at a specific date in the past”.

> View the video demo

New task for the Scheduler - Repeat Invoices

The Scheduler currently allows a number of tasks in Opera 3 to be scheduled to run automatically. In Opera 3 (1.30), Scheduler functionality will be extended to include running repeat invoices. This will allow a batch of repeat invoices to be scheduled to run unattended at a time that suits you.

> View the Notification Services and Task Scheduler video

Stocktake Discovery

New options available during the creation of a Stocktake will let you include traceable items that don't yet have batch or serial numbers, and choose whether or not to include zero quantity batches. In addition, the new Discovered Items feature will allow you to add to the ongoing Stocktake any unexpected batch or serial numbers found during the count.

To speed up data entry even faster it will be possible to rapidly mark all known serial numbers for a particular item as found or not.

Read the Opera 3 (1.30) Guide to Enhancements

Opera 3 (1.20)

Tighten up your stock management with Stocktake

The new Stocktake application gives your business the tools needed to run effective stock management. It is ideal for counting inventory in warehouses, stock and supply rooms, manufacturing and distribution centres, and retail businesses.

By extracting product information from Opera 3 Stock Control; the division of stock items (including traceable items) can be strategically allocated to Work Sheets for the relevant personnel to perform manual counts. On completion, management can run a cross-check, resolve discrepancies, make corrections and post adjustments back into Opera 3 to automatically update stock levels.

Stocktake for Opera 3 alleviates the need to post adjustments individually, which is time consuming; and helps businesses to accurately maintain stock levels. By identifying any movements not accounted for by normal processing of the system, it helps to pinpoint the rate of loss, the cost implications and any discrepancies which, for example, could be a direct result of damaged goods. If left undiscovered, it can heavily impact the profit of a business.

Notification Services for improved communication

For many customers, it can be frustrating preparing to run key processes that may require exclusive access to Opera 3. Communicating to users that specific events are due to take place; and ensuring all users are logged out is time consuming and causes unnecessary disruptions.

To enable such processes to take place promptly with no hold ups, the Opera 3 Notification Services easily allows messages to be distributed, directly through the Opera 3 interface. If users ignore warning messages, for example asking them to log out, the shutdown service will enable the administrator to enforce an automatic shutdown of all Opera 3 users, as well as restrict user log-in by setting a lockout period. This will allow the scheduled task to take place at the required time.

When constructing messages with Notification Services, information including a title, date, time, communication frequency (once, daily, weekly or monthly) can all be specified. Messages can be defined as only relevant for specific users or specific user groups, and whether it should be displayed in all Opera 3 companies and systems or only selected companies and systems.

Notification Services lays the path for future integration with the Task Scheduler in forthcoming releases..

Manage a better relationship with customers with the improved CRM

We’ve made some real improvements to CRM with over 60 enhancements, significantly expanding the functionality and flexibility of the application.

The new Summary Scheduler in Helpdesk Management gives users another way to schedule or re-schedule calls by presenting a summary view of all resources for a chosen month. It simplifies and improves call scheduling, delivering a better service for clients.

The Summary Scheduler provides users with an overall view of the scheduling calls over any four week period; and provides flexible filtering for accurate planning. For example, users may wish to view only engineers that work out-of-hours, or calls allocated to a specific department.

Users can easily view all calls planned for any resource and date, by simply highlighting the resource and date in question: with added drill down capabilities to individual calendar views, for more precision planning.

A new Batch Generation of Planned Maintenance calls enables users to create in bulk calls that may be due for equipment items. It’s much easier than creating calls individually, and saves time.

Plus a further 60 enhancements which includes the ability to:

• Set up call templates which also allows the automatic creation of Sales Opportunities when logging new Helpdesk Calls. Opportunities are added into the pipeline instantly; all linked back to the Helpdesk Call
• Run Worksheet Billing and SOP Processing, directly from a Helpdesk Call. This optionally enables Chargeable Work/Parts to be posted to SOP Processing instantly; which can then be progressed through to invoice immediately to help improve cashflow
• Update all staff Outlook calendars via Outlook Meeting Request. All activities throughout CRM, and also any meeting requests to engineering/external staff through both the Summary and Resource Scheduler; can be added. What’s more, meeting invitations can be sent to one or more internal or external contacts. The recipients of the e-mail can then either accept the invitation, or reject it

Document Management Desktop – now for everyone in the office

Isn’t it time to replace company-wide paper based processes with electronic processes? Now you can with the new Document Management Desktop application. It brings the benefits of Document Management to everyone in the office. The Desktop version offers simple and easy to use capture and retrieval of documents for non users of Opera 3, at a fraction of the price. Eliminate the risk of losing documents from mislaid or misfiled papers.

Opera 3 (1.00)

Watch the Opera 3 video on YouTube

Improved Reporting - output to Excel and more

Significant enhancements have been added to Opera 3 reporting. You can output many Opera 3 reports directly to MS Excel. When you select the File option on the Publisher, you can select the report to be output in an Excel Report format. This allows for far better data manipulation of the results in that report.

The Reporter application also has the option to output the report to MS Excel, for further data manipulation.

Multiple reports can now be run at the same time. This allows you to minimise the current report and launch a second, which is particularly useful if you want to compare information between reports: simply lay them side by side on screen.


View multiple reports at the same time

It is also possible to invoke the search routine within the report. This creates a “bookmark” list on the left hand side of the report that allows you to quickly navigate to instances of the text string that you were looking for. A quick and simple way to navigate through your reports, particularly ones that are several pages long.

The built in graph generator available for many of the Opera 3 Views makes the display of information much easier for the user to interpret. These graphs can be re-orientated, the colours modified, they can be printed or exported, and can be cut and pasted into MS Word or Excel. It's a much more powerful way to display your data.

Open period accounting

In Opera 3, transactions can easily be posted from other applications such as Sales Ledger, Purchase Ledger, Cashbook and Payroll into any open period of the current or next 3 financial years. Other applications post to the Nominal Ledger by either batch update or real-time transfer. Even mis-posted nominal journal entries can be reversed and rectified quickly and accurately. Nominal Journals can be raised to the previous year as long as the period is open.

This makes the Nominal Ledger a far more powerful and flexible tool in which to analyse the companies financial data.

The starting point to open period accounting is to define the Period. If a Period is open, transactions from the Sales Ledger, Purchase Ledger, Nominal Ledger, Cashbook, Fixed Assets, Stock, BOM and Payroll applications within Opera 3 can be posted.

Brand new user interface

Navigating around the Opera 3 solution couldn't be easier with the new user interface. We've given Opera 3 a new look and feel based on Office 2010, and added new icons to make it easy to identify applications functions.  

New Scheduler application

The Scheduler allows you to run some of the big Opera 3 tasks at a time convenient to your business. Running some tasks during normal working hours can interrupt your daily processing, costing you both time and money.

Routine daily tasks like backing up your data or monthly tasks like running a Nominal Ledger Period End need exclusive access to your data, meaning that all your users must log out of Opera 3 before they can be run. 

You can schedule tasks for these processes:

• Backing up your Opera 3 data
• Running Update Data Structures to update your data to the latest database structures
• Tidying the system files in Opera 3 to remove report layouts, user and company profile records that have been marked for deletion, to clear temporary files, to clear event logs, and to tidy VAT files and exchange rates
• Rebuilding the periods and transaction history in the Nominal Ledger
• Running the Period End in the Sales Ledger, Purchase Ledger and Nominal Ledger

Additionally, you can define tasks to be run for several companies, even over multiple systems, consecutively. This is very useful if you run multi-company Opera 3 installations.

VAT 100 online filing

The Online Filing Manager has now been enhanced to cater for submission of the VAT 100 to HM Revenue & Customs. It is now a requirement for most companies to submit annual P14s and P35s and in-year P45 and P46 online. The Opera 3 Online Filing Manager supports the online submission of the VAT100 Return and is approved by HMRC.

This will help users to submit the VAT100 Return quickly, securely and accurately directly from within Opera 3.

New Help

Opera 3 Help has been improved, and can be accessed from all forms in the application. It is designed to be read on screen but you can also print topics if required. Each form in Opera 3 has a Help button that opens the Help topic relevant for that form. When you click the Help button, only the Help that you are interested in is displayed so you are not overwhelmed with Help topics for the entire application.

To help you find other information you may be interested in, most Help topics include a Related Topics Help button that links to other related topics in the Help system.

Within each application is a set of "How to..." topics which give quick, to-the-point information on how to perform a specific task.

It is also easier to search for information in Opera 3. The search results show you where the information was found, thereby helping you to decide which topic to open. A comprehensive index is available too.

Each application has its own Help system that is structured according to your information requirements: if you need high-level understanding, the 'Introduction to..." Help topic describes the different areas of an application and includes a chart that shows you how it links to other applications in Opera 3. Each application in Opera 3 has an Introduction Help topic.

Opera 3 Info Centre

The Opera 3 Info Centre is a website specifically designed for Opera 3 users. When a user logs in, the Opera 3 Info Centre provides a host of useful information and resources to get the most out of Opera 3. Find out what’s new and coming soon, top tips for your Opera 3 solution, product help, special customer offers, Pegasus stationery, downloads and more.

Special Offer for Opera II customers

Take advantage of special prices when upgrading to Opera 3 on a like-for-like basis.*

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