New on Shopfront: August 2022

Welcome to what’s new on Shopfront for August 2022. We’ve got a large number of bug fixes and a couple of small features this month.

Note: Some of these changes are gradually rolling out to stores, all stores are expected to have received them in the next couple of weeks.

Minor Features

  • New sale key to increase the quantity of a product by the scanned barcode quantity,
  • Added ability to analyse all outlets when generating an order by reorder points,
  • Search indexing can now be customised to improve the memory usage and performance of the search, especially on lower-end devices or stores that contain 30,000+ customers or products

Bug Fixes

  • Generating an order by sales & reorder points while analysing all outlets no longer fails,
  • Adding a tag to products from the classifications page now correctly adds into the revision history,
  • Fixed some cost revisions not being used in inventory at date report,
  • Adding a gift card and a normal product to a sale which has a customer with a custom price list no longer creates a price calculation error,
  • Pressing next during the product creation wizard Which Product is it? step no longer skips the rest of the wizard because of a syntax error,
  • Times displayed in the product revision history miscellaneous report is now displayed in the local timezone instead of UTC,
  • Fixed formatting of PDF supplier orders,
  • Reports correctly calculate the sale total when running an unconsolidated product report when there were multiple lines of the same product on the sale (such as when performing sales with consolidate products turned off),
  • Prevented an error when receiving a Vendor Connection order when you don’t have a matching product,
  • Fixed a rounding issue when multiple loyalty point payment methods were added to a sale,
  • Prevented internally incrementing the gift card quantity through the use of the increment sale key,
  • Transfers received from a Vendor Connection can now create or associate temporary products,
  • Prevented a duplicate parked sale from appearing when unparking and parking the same sale while offline and the sync running before the sale could be uploaded,
  • Prevented negative values from being able to be entered into put cash in / take cash out dialogs through Manage Cash,
  • Shopfront no longer crashes when receiving a receipt event with no receipt text from an integrated EFTPOS provider,
  • [Linkly] MOTO with signature transactions no longer crash Shopfront when printing

New on Shopfront: 2022

Welcome to what’s new on Shopfront for the year of 2022 all the way from January until August! It has been quite a while since one of these has been written, but we’ve been hard at work improving Shopfront.

Minor Features

  • Surcharging for Public Holidays,
  • Added additional information when an order is unable to be saved,
  • Pressing enter on the order reference dialog box closes the dialog,
  • Significantly improved everyday shelf ticket loading speed,
  • Added open transfers to the outstanding orders list,
  • Added ability to merge multiple suppliers together into a new supplier,
  • Images now upload into the media centre individually with a new UI to show upload progress,
  • Redesigned the location selector to be clearer to the user,
  • Added new product revision history miscellaneous report,
  • Added case price override discount option in the sell screen,
  • Added ability to search for customers on the customer balances page,
  • Sale keys and transaction panel can now be flipped on the sell screen,
  • Improved speed of finding sales through the sales history through a gift card number search,
  • Improved speed of closing the register,
  • [Shop MyLocal] Added confirmation dialog to barcode quantity field when an unusually high quantity is detected,
  • [Developer] Added webhook signatures to verify a webhook is from Shopfront

Bug Fixes

  • Prevented parked sale from deleting itself when recovered with a loyalty payment applied to it,
  • When the singular settings for “case” and “single” are set to a plural, saved reports no longer crash,
  • Loading a price list that has an override price item correctly displays the profit percentage when within an outlet and global cost is disabled,
  • Associating a product to itself on an order (when the product was created in a separate tab) no longer deletes the product,
  • Parking a refunded sale no longer results in a failed upload due to a missing refund reason,
  • “0” is no longer treated as “blank” when entered into the finalise sale calculator,
  • Dragging the scroll bar on a select list no longer closes the select panel after releasing the left mouse button,
  • Prevented payment methods from becoming disabled after exiting the refund reason prompt due to ESC key being pressed,
  • Adding a product to the sale when show product details is enabled no longer shows the toast “A product is currently adding to sale”,
  • Product sales summary now correctly shows all data even when there is a gap in times sold,
  • Modified product additional information now appears correctly in the revision history,
  • Prevented invoice number reuse after reloading a cancelled sale,
  • Adding a product to the sell screen from a sales key category while show product details setting is enabled now correctly shows the product details,
  • Inventory at Date export now shows the correct dates in the header,
  • Viewing a favourite report with a customer group now correctly shows that customer group’s name,
  • Reprinting a receipt that contains a deleted tax rate no longer prints a blank page,
  • Prevented the synchronisation from crashing when a sales key page contains no keys,
  • Saved large reports grouped by category (with products hidden) now correctly load all data,
  • Deleting a price set which is the default on a register now sets the register’s price set to be the default price set,
  • Prevented park sale error when a register has been deleted which had an outstanding parked sale,
  • Prevented an invoice number length of over 1 quintillion from crashing the sell screen,
  • Fixed missing toggles on the create order page,
  • Fixed single criteria spend $x get discount off the total worth $y promotion calculation,
  • Prevented products, suppliers, customers and customer groups from being modified while offline,
  • Prevented multiple open tabs from potentially running two separate unsynchronised sales,
  • [Shop MyLocal] The same sale can no longer be marked as sent multiple times before being removed from active orders,
  • [ILG] Prevented only the first 20 suppliers appearing in the settings,
  • [ILG] Prevented a saving error one one Outlet has the integration enabled and the other Outlet has it disabled,
  • [Linkly] Prevented a terminal error when the user’s name contains an ampersand

New on Shopfront: August 2021

Welcome to what’s new on Shopfront for August 2021! It’s a light-on month for features and fixes with a large amount of development going towards large features coming out shortly.

Some of these features are still rolling out to stores and should become available within the next couple of weeks.

Minor Features

  • Added integration to Thirsty Camel’s Hump Club,
  • Added copy criteria button to the promotion edit page,
  • Rearranged a few tables in the security centre to look nicer on mobile devices

Bug Fixes

  • Prevented a gift card from being redeemed multiple times within the same sale,
  • When using the select all checkbox on the promotions page, we now validate that the promotions selected are for the current search, not a previous search (previously searching for “aug” would generate a search for “a”, “au” and then “aug” and could result in “aug” finishing before “a”),
  • Saving the register closure tags for a register will no longer remove the tags from other registers,
  • Importing customers via CSV now works as expected when specifying the customer_group_id column,
  • Reordered the promotional category dropdown on the promotion edit page to be alphabetical,
  • Revision history for price lists no longer show the fallback rule as an “unknown item”,
  • Prevented a race condition resulting in the customer display occasionally showing the previous sale when the cash drawer had to open to to a payment method requiring it,
  • Inventory for a previous date report can no longer be run for today’s date

Coming to Shopfront: 2021 (2nd Half)

Shopfront version 2 has had all stores on it for 18 months now and since then we’ve added a huge number of features, brand new and reimagined integrations, consistently improved the speed and improved reliability and now we’re ready to show you the next plans for Shopfront until the end of the year.

This should be used as a guide only, some features may end up with different functionality, be developed at a different time or completely dropped.

More information on each feature will be released closer to the individual feature’s release date.

eCommerce Store

Looking for another channel of sales? Shopfront’s currently building an eCommerce platform due for beta release shortly.

Fulfilment Interface

Alongside the eCommerce store, Shopfront is developing a new fulfilment interface which will allow any eCommerce store to easily send sales to Shopfront with the intention of them being fulfilled through the POS system (without having to develop their own user interface).

New Data Merges

Shopfront currently supports merging customers but will shortly be adding the highly requested functionality of merging suppliers and products.

Shopview & Enterprise Management

Managing stores on different domains? Want to run reports across multiple unconnected stores? Need a centralised source of truth for all of your stores?

That’s where Shopview comes in, Shopview is an external application that allows you to connect and manage multiple stores through a simple user interface.

Create advanced promotions to run across all of your stores, manage each stores product file in a centralised location, enforce policies across all stores and run reports on raw data fed from Shopfront.

New Integrations

We’re also constantly adding a number of new integrations into Shopfront (developed by both us and development partners). Recently we’ve added integrations to Thirsty Camel’s Hump Club and Milie ordering system, Myfoodlink has developed an integration to connect your Shopfront store through to their eCommerce platform and we’ve got a couple more new integrations coming this year including integrating with Zen Global’s loyalty system and upcoming integration with some delivery services.

New on Shopfront: July 2021

Welcome to what’s new on Shopfront for July 2021! We’ve got a number of new features coming up in the next six months and a lot of our current development is going towards implementing those (thus why the last couple of months have been a bit lean for features). Check out what’s coming soon to Shopfront in our new blog post!

Minor Features

  • Xero can now have a different company file per Outlet,
  • Adjusted total sale discount price distribution to be simpler to include discounting based off the current sell price (previously we distributed using a percentage of the everyday price),
  • Added a filter in advanced stocktakes for Outlet,
  • Added integration to Thirsty Camel’s Milie ordering system

Bug Fixes

  • Prevented an error when updating a user dashboard with a report that contains more than 26 lines then viewing that report,
  • Stopped deleted favourite reports crashing the user dashboard page,
  • Cashout and refund dialog no longer shows only payments which have been approved,
  • Stocktake variance reports now use the most recently edited cost if running on mixed mode and the product’s inventory is negative,
  • Prevented a rounding issue for products which require more than two decimal places to calculate the correct price and using match price points family price distribution,
  • Fixed banner group promotions sending in AEST timezone for stores located in other timezones if the store was created after the 26th of February 2021,
  • Stopped receipts automatically printing when auto print receipt is turned off for a customer group but auto print payment receipts is turned on,
  • Prevented price calculation calculating prices as a positive for returned products when quantity is a decimal and family price distribution is set to match price points,
  • Removing the primary image (the first image) on the product edit page no longer hides the additional images,
  • Fixed numerous colour issues when in dark mode

Upcoming Changes to the Xero Integration

Update 17th of August 2021: These changes have been rolled out to all Vendors, if you’re experiencing any issues, please get in touch with us.

We’re making some adjustments to the way Shopfront interacts with Xero, for most people using the integration you should not notice any changes.

What Changes are Being Made

Currently, the Shopfront to Xero integration works by connecting one Shopfront Vendor (which could have multiple Outlets) to a single Xero account (and through that account to a single Xero tenant).

This change will allow you to connect each Shopfront Outlet to a different Xero tenant (which can be across different Xero accounts).

Through this change, you won’t be required to have the same settings for each Outlet (although, we do recommend it if they are connected to the same Xero tenant).

Alongside this, we’re also bringing a new coat of paint to the settings page, with built in help and a cleaner interface to make configuring and mapping the integration easier.

Why We’re Making the Change

Throughout the years, we’ve had a number of store owners request the ability to connect a different Xero tenant to each Outlet, however we’ve always had the same principle as Xero where one business should be one Shopfront Vendor. However, more and more stores are coming onto Shopfront that wish to share product files, see inventory across locations and more but also have multiple owners and account for each location separately.

When the Changes Will Happen

This change is currently being rolled out to all stores and should be completed by early next week.

What you Need to do

If you’re a Vendor with only a single Outlet, no changes will be required and your integration will continue to work as per-normal.

If you’re a Vendor with multiple Outlets, you might want to change to using our new multi-tenant support. If you do, all that you need to do is go to your Xero integration settings once the changes have been rolled out and change the configuration of each Outlet like you would currently do with all Outlets.

What About the MYOB Integration

Currently this change is exclusive to the Xero integration as there are significantly more uses of the Xero integration and the multi-tenant model of Xero makes it simple to connect multiple Outlets whereas MYOB’s company-file model is a bit more complex.

Whilst there are no current plans to make a similar change, we will consider doing so in the future.

New on Shopfront: June 2021

Welcome to what’s new on Shopfront for June 2021! The end of the financial year brings a number of fixes and minor features.

Minor Features

  • Emailed customer statements now show as “from” as the Outlet name that you’re currently in,
  • First barcode is exported to the shelf tickets,
  • Updating a products case quantity on the edit page now edits the inventory once you leave the case quantity box rather than instantly

Bug Fixes

  • Reporting dashboard hover information is correctly coloured when in dark mode,
  • Removing the main (first) product image no longer removes all alternate images,
  • Pressing back after adding a customer when “Display All Products in Classification” sale key is open now correctly returns you to the sell screen,
  • Prevented promotions from activating / deactivating incorrectly due to the incorrect timezone being used when saved locally,
  • Removing the grouping from everyday tickets now correctly reverts to the no grouping order,
  • Price list revisions show percentage pricing rules as percentages rather than currency,
  • Exporting all products via the stock list when a large number of products exist in the store no longer hits the rate limiter

New on Shopfront: May 2021

Welcome to what’s new on Shopfront for May 2021! We’ve got a few bug fixes for you, some minor features and a new product importer.

Note, some of these features are currently rolling out and may not be available for your store until the end of next week.

Major Features

Advanced CSV Product Importer

We’ve just released a brand-new CSV product importer for creating a large amount of products from a CSV file, whilst we’ve support a basic CSV import for quite some time now, the advanced importer comes with a number of features, such as:

  • Multiple price points,
  • Multiple barcodes,
  • Reorder points and amounts,
  • Importing data for multiple outlets

To get started, check out our support article.

Minor Features

  • Cleaned up a number of revision history fields,
  • Added notification when a PDF fails to generate throughout the POS system (e.g. exported report, customer statement),
  • The customer index page can now be filtered to show customers without a customer group

Bug Fixes

  • Fixed monetary formatting of user dashboard graphs,
  • Merging the current sale with a parked sale which contains a modified component on both no longer results in the original product being discounted differently,
  • Multi-select lists no longer suffer from a disappearing check box,
  • Prevented focus from being stolen by the username field when logging in after a sale and attempting to change the receipt template,
  • Refreshing the external stocktake page no longer results in styling going missing,
  • Total transactions in a register closure correctly take into account on-account sales,
  • Fixed false positive cash mishandling trigger for the security centre,
  • Prevented a rare occurrence where two payment methods could be added at the same time on slow hardware,
  • Opening the second line in the classification page in a new tab now works as expected,
  • Historical receipts now correctly print when the user who performed the sale has been deleted,
  • Printing a previous date inventory report correctly shows all values instead of just “0”

New on Shopfront: April 2021

Welcome to what’s new on Shopfront for April 2021! Our Security Centre is live, new reordering features and a few bug fixes made it into the changes for this month.

Major Features

Security Centre

The Security Centre is now here!

Whilst still in beta, the security centre is a useful tool to assist with tracking and identifying user behaviour. Currently we’re only tracking a couple of patterns but we’re planning on adding a lot more. We’re also tracking a number of raw events including all logins, the cash drawer opening, user modifications and more. Eventually the security centre will replace the action reports.

While the Security Centre is in beta, it’s available for all customers, but once it has finished the beta period, it’ll only be available to users with a premium subscription.

Reorder Rounding

If you reorder stock using either our sales or reorder point generation we’ve added the ability to round the calculation to individual products.

This is designed to assist with prevent Shopfront from recommending you order items if the supplier only accepts cases. There are four different rounding options which can be applied:

  • No Rounding (default, how Shopfront was previously working),
  • Round Up to Case,
  • Round Down to Case,
  • Round Naturally to Case (if it’s closer to zero it’ll round down, if it’s closer to the case quantity it’ll round up)

So if you’ve got the setting set as Round Down to Case and Shopfront was previously going to suggest 2 cases and 3 items, it’ll now only suggest 2 cases.

Minor Features

  • Automatically cleared old already synchronised sales from the local computer to free up disk space,
  • You can now search for all customers not in a group on the customers page,
  • [Linkly / Tyro] Integrated EFTPOS receipts are now stored and are able to be reprinted,
  • [Linkly] Added support for application hub,

Bug Fixes

  • Automatic capped pricing tags now appear in the classification page,
  • Applying a negative discount to a package which contains a discounted component calculates the price on in a more understandable way,
  • Parked nested products (e.g. packages within packages) no longer lose their discount when retrieved,
  • Updating a deleted customer’s email address (through the sales history) no longer results in a failed upload,
  • Price sets no longer reset to default during a full synchronisation,
  • Complex promotions involving family pricing with part of the family being within multiple promotions correctly distribute the remaining family price,
  • Integrated users no longer appear in the general settings page

New on Shopfront: March 2021

Welcome to what’s new on Shopfront for March 2021! A new integration marketplace, a number of visual fixes and a collection of bugs squashed round out this month.

Upcoming Changes

Next month, we’re implementing limits for how long actions and revisions are stored, currently both are stored indefinitely but as of next month actions will be stored for one year and revisions will be stored for two years. After the time period has expired the action or revision will be inaccessible and permanently deleted.

We don’t foresee this causing any issues as that data is rarely accessed. If you do have a use for that information, please get in touch with us.

We’re also looking at launching the beta version of our Security Centre next month, more details will be available soon, but it’ll be available for all customers while it’s in beta, once out of beta it’ll be only available to customers on our premium plan.

Major Features

Integration Marketplace

Our new integration marketplace is live! It’s a redesigned integration page that will feature not only officially made integrations from Shopfront but also integrations made by other companies that have been approved by Shopfront.

We’re currently in the process of reviewing a number of applications, so expect to see more integrations appearing shortly!

Once an integration has been approved, you’ll be able to find more details about it on the login news and our website.

Mobile Ordering

We’re progressively working through the way a number of pages work on mobile devices to ensure they’re easy to use and suit the screen of mobile devices. This month we’ve improved the display of the order edit screen.

All of the functionality of the desktop version is available and we’ll keep tweaking the design to make it easier to use.

Scales

As mentioned late last year in our coming soon post, as of this month, we’ve added beta support for serial weight scales. Not only are the scales easy to setup and use, but they don’t require any third-party or installed dependencies and support all desktop operating systems (Windows, macOS and Linux).

Whilst this feature is in beta, you’ll need to get in touch with us to begin using it.

Minor Features

  • Changed email providers (more details can be found in last month’s New on Shopfront),
  • The subject of the email is now included in the mail log,
  • Deleted items (e.g. products, payment methods) that are on a sale key are now prepended with NOT FOUND when editing the sale keys,
  • Products that don’t track inventory can no longer be stocktaked,
  • Added additional price fields into the shelf ticket export for the fifth, sixth and seventh prices as well as specifying a specific case price field,
  • Sales which are parked with a price list price no longer appear as discounted when the price matches the price list,
  • Added a column to the price lists page to show the number of customers using a price list,
  • When a select list contains an item which is wider than the list, the full label is shown on multiple lines instead of being cut off,
  • Added ability to add a price set to the stock list page which displays only prices within that price set,
  • Added an option to turn off the promotion calculation running in a dedicated thread to reduce the memory and CPU usage on slower devices,
  • [PC-EFTPOS / Linkly] Replaced all references to the name PC-EFTPOS with the name Linkly

Bug Fixes

  • Automatically retried emails will only notify you once when the email bounces,
  • Multiple dark mode display fixes,
  • Adjusting a family price with a default price no longer resets other prices to the default price set,
  • Fixed invalid payment method rounding when some products have more than two decimal places and the sale has been completed,
  • Parking a sale and then adding a note to the parked sale with a different user with different permissions no longer results in the note failing to apply,
  • Returning and reloading a historical sale correctly shows the price lock,
  • Automatically scrolling to a product after adding it to an order is now correctly positioned when using DPI scaling above 100%,
  • Adding an image to a product’s description resizes the page’s fields as expected,
  • Prevented setting a promotion’s end date before the start date,
  • Small mobile devices no longer drop the icons below the header,
  • After sale refund dialog box is no longer shown when refunding a EFTPOS refund item,
  • Tabbing out of a select list correctly closes the select list,
  • Prevented scrolling past the end of the page when editing an order on iOS,
  • [Developer] Authentication scopes now automatically request dependent permissions