March 2016 Release Notes

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This month's software update includes a new option for charging member accounts and processing member payments, several new reports, updates to SmartCMS and additions to current features, tweaks to the interface and maintenance items.
 

View the Release Overview webinar recording

View the bonus webinar - A better way to process payments: Integrated Payment Processing overview: 

 


New! Integrated Payment Processing*
An easier way to accept and process payments
 

Process automatic credit and debit card payments and recurring bank charges (ACH).  No setup fee, no gateway fee, no gateway batch fee, no monthly fee.  

Members can securely store their account information to conveniently pay for events or futures invoices. In addition, recurring charges may be setup to make sure membership dues are automatically collected.

Due to the tight integration with your database, there is no need to log into a separate portal to view successes or failures, perform refunds or view statements from your processor. It’s all included within your Integrated Billing screens – even providing a virtual terminal for running single direct charges.

Features include:

  • Automatic recurring credit/debit card charges so you are sure to get your payments
  • Safe storage of payment card info for convenient event registration and member payments
  • Automatic matching of credit card payments with invoices, saving hours of labor
  • Automatic bank draft (ACH) option available and included with setup (US customers only)
  • Online, real-time statements and bank deposit/transfer reports
  • Virtual terminal included for running single direct charges
  • Convenience – one management location, integrated with billing, simple
  • Inclusive pricing – all features, integrated, single point of support – one simple rate!

Sign up for a webinar to understand the benefits Wed 3/23 at 12:00 pm CDT or view these detailed FAQs to find out more information. 

Don't have a credit card processing solution connected to your database now?  This would be the perfect solution.  Contact Customer Support and we can get you started - no cost, no extra charges, no setup fee.  Just call or email to get started.  If you already have a credit card processing solution setup in your database and you do not have any existing automatic payments occurring already, you can switch to this option at any time.  For those already setup with automatic payments watch this video or read these FAQs for considerations for best practice suggestion on when you would want to switch.

*Available with Plus, Premier or Pro edition; Integrated Billing required; latest Event Registration enabled 


View all Scheduled ePayments

New! ePayment Fee Assignment report - Run this report to see which members have manual or automatic epayments assigned, for how much, how often, and the start or end dates assigned. You can also report on a specific month and year to view a scheduled total of epayment fees that would be billed that month.

  • This report replaces the ACH Membership Summary report on the Billing->Reports tab but is still available by searching under the left-hand Reports menu.  The older ACH membership summary only reports on monthly assignments (not on quarterly, annually or semi-annually) and doesn't take into account any start and end dates. We expect that this new version will fully replace the older version but keeping it available for a time.

View Changes to your Members' Account

Easy access to view changes made to a members' record.  View the Member Record Update report from the Members' Stats tab.  


















 


Integrated Billing

  • The ACH Membership Summary report has been replaced with the ePayment Fee Assignment report which provides more information. See screenshot above for sample output.      
  • Statements will now exclude invoices with only voluntary fees amount remaining even if the "Show voluntary fees on statements" is selected.  When selected, voluntary amounts will be included in the statement only if there is an outstanding balance on that same invoice.  This matches what members already see in the Member Information Center for balance due. 
  • Statements where invoice details are included will no longer display the Fee Item Name as part of the details since that information is considered an internal designation.  It will continue to show the Fee Item Description as it always has.  It will now match what displays on the Invoice.  

Integrated Payment Processing users and/or Authorize.Net customers using Customer Information Manager (CIM)

  • ePayment Profile report was updated to include and sort by a column titled "Auto-Pay Selected" that reports whether the representative has the "..use this profile for recurring charges.." check box selected in their Payment Profile.     
  • Two new email templates are available to assist you in asking your members to enter their Payment Profile into the Member Information Center and confirming their recurring payment setup.  Check out the "Automatic Monthly Payment Invitation" and "Automatic Payment Confirmation" templates in your Pre-Defined Communication Templates when in your email editor. 

Miscellaneous date & international formatting tweaks 

  • International date format settings will now be honored in the event dates fields when creating a new event.  and when specifying date criteria in a Custom Member Report or Custom Rep Report.
  • Updated a warning message so that time zones that are ahead of CST will now be able to schedule an email at a time that the Central time zone server erroneously believed had already passed, when in reality for those times zones it was still in the future.
  • Date filter on the Members->Account tab Transaction History was adjusted to properly include transactions matching the specified end date.
  • The column titles on Invoices, Sales Receipts and Payments and the line item on event registration that display the phrase for "Sales Tax" will now update appropriately to the custom setting.

Representative Personal Bio

  • When creating a Personal biography, if the 1000 character limit has been reached, a message will appear indicating the total you've reached (which includes HTML markup) so you can reduce your amount by that many.  This occurs for either staff in the back office or members in the Member Information Center.   

eCommerce

  • Transactions that were created when shoppers used the "Register" selection are now appearing on the member record selected under Setup->Billing Options and Settings that is assigned to store the eCommerce purchases for non-members. Previously this selection only applied to Guest Checkouts.
  • Credit card purchases made in the eCommerce store will now be included in the Payment Processing Report (Integrated Payment Processing customers) or the Credit Listing report (Authorize.Net customers) with an Item Type called Ecommerce Transaction and with a Ref ID prefix of ec. Customers with other credit card solutions will need to view these transactions in their processors' reports.
  • Miscellaneous security updates were applied to the checkout cart.

eMail Notifications

  • Email notifications that used to be from "notifications@" is now "notification@" across the board including notifications that staff are signed up for under Setup-->Employees/Reps->Additional Settings.

Groups Roster

  • A Print PDF button has been added to the Groups->Roster tab that will display and then print a PDF version of the Group Roster.  Firefox users will find this as a good work around if they ever struggle to get the Print List to output successfully which contains code for a known bug with Firefox.

Report Builder (beta)

  • The Filter by Criteria/Conditions section will expand to a larger size automatically if needed when fields are dropped into this area eliminating the need to scroll back down to the bottom each time after adding a new condition.
  • A new field is available under the Representatives section called Permission Set which will report on the permission set that is currently assigned to a specific rep.

Info Request

  • The Lead List report in the Member Information Center will no longer include entries from the /contact public site since often these requests are purely for your internal staff.  It will, however, continue to display leads that are entered from the /info public page or by your staff from the back office from the Info Request module.  Note: All requests are visible to your staff under Info Request->Lead Management.


Integrated Payment Processing (beta)

  • Transfer Enabled value under Setup->Billing Control Panel will properly report whether Transfers are actually Enabled. 
  • Transactions run through eCommerce will also be included in the Payment Processing report.  With other 3rd party processors, the eCommerce credit card transactions must be viewed in their processors' virtual terminal. The billing transaction (invoice/payment/receipt) does appear on the member account as appropriate regardless of the processor.
  • Charge backs or charge back fees will now display in the Monthly Statement on the month that the charge back occurred instead of the month that the original charge occurred.  
  • The Created Date has been removed from the Payment Processing Transaction report since it will always be the same as the Charged Date.  With immediate capture happening, there is not a separate date for these two tasks.
  • A minor reminder is available at the top of the Payment Processing Transaction report indicating that "All times are in CST". 
  • The Transfers/Deposit report will now include the original Transaction ID in the breakout for each deposit.
  • The "Micronet,Inc." payment confirmation email to the purchaser will no longer be sent, but the Online Payment Confirmation will continue to be sent from your database.

QuickBooks with legacy CQI connection

  • Events (beta version) A new option of Create Receipt Later is available when staff register an attendee from the back office and select to pay with cash and have a receipt created.  


SmartCMS Updates
Note:
SmartCMS is MicroNet's Content Management System (CMS) that allows you to edit and manage your own website. If you use a different product to edit your website, then these SmartCMS updates will not apply to you. Look for the 'Edit Website' button   appearing in the upper right hand-corner of your database to know if these updates apply to you. 

New Feature! Rep Permissions: Assign Specific Pages to Edit

Do you share your software with a CVB or Chamber? Do you have multiple Chapters that share your software? Now you can assign Reps editing privileges for only specific pages on your website! This can be done through your software, in the Rep Permissions area. The Rep will have editing privileges to the non-module pages you assign to them.










On your website, the ‘Edit Content’ link will appear on those pages that the Rep has been assigned. If the Rep browses to a page they have not been given editing privileges to, the ‘Edit Content’ link will not appear. 


Slider Enhancement: Enable/Disable Arrows and Pagination Buttons

An enhancement to the Slider feature has been added for more flexibility to your SmartCMS website. You are now able to turn off or turn on the pagination buttons or navigation arrows for sliders that appear on your website.

Note: Home page feature sliders on some themes do not have one or both of these slider options available based on the original theme design.






 


Content Option Movable Boxes 

  • The Content Option boxes now have movable bars for ease of viewing the web page underneath the box. Just click and drag on the grey bar of any of the boxes.   Thank you for this feature request!

Text Editor 'Source View' pane: 

  • Available as a late addition to the February software release was the vertical resizing of the Text Editor 'Source' View pane.  To see more code at a time, simply click the bottom border and drag it downward to resize the pane. 

Module Pages: Edit Bar Messaging and Template Changes: 

  • Module pages now have an Edit Bar with Messaging to help guide you on how to edit module pages and module page templates. A link to the page template is included in the message. Clicking on ‘editable here’ takes you to the module template page. There is a handy ‘read more’ link that tells about Module templates and how to make your own custom template if so desired. 

Providing new features and more benefits is something that MicroNet, Inc. is committed to. Software release features are often generated from your feature requests. Those requests may be combined or adapted to fit with other requests or in response to industry related changes. We listen, evaluate, and implement based on greatest impact, most-requested, ability to integrate, and time-saving implication. In evaluating the benefit of one software release over another, realize that sometimes the updates have required much programming time but are not always visible in tangible terms. Thank you for the opportunity to serve you and your members.