At Exact, we are always hard at work to assure you of our continued optimal support. We are proud to present our Autumn'21 Release, which is packed with innovations to help you achieve your goals.
Find out about the new, innovative features for your product.
Benefit from the many innovations we've included in this Autumn'21 Release. These will allow you to work more efficiently, gain more insight and get a grip on your numbers. Click on your Exact solution in the menu and discover which improvements and innovations we have implemented.
We implemented this improvement based on several ideas in the Support Portal. Do you have an idea that you want to submit?
Go to Ideas for Exact OnlineIf you currently use Exact Online for Wholesale Distribution, Manufacturing, Project Management or Time & Billing, you’ll now be able to benefit from automated processing of invoices and save up to 73% in time spent on administrative tasks. No hands Accounting ensures that your invoices are matched to your banking transactions and the corresponding purchase orders, making it even easier to keep your procurement process in check.
We now offer a PSD2 bank connection for Triodos Bank and bunq account holders. This next-generation bank connection enables you to maintain up-to-date insights into your cash flow and have full control over who can access your bank details at all times. More banks will follow later this year. Use is currently free of charge, but this may change in the future.
We’ve implemented a number of improvements in the current invoice approval process. From now on, you’ll only see invoices that require your approval or ones that you’ve already approved. We’ve also made it possible to include your accountant in the approval process. And to top things off, we’ve also made it easier for you to assign invoice approval rights to other users.
Although you’re only able to receive emails from email addresses that are linked to an account, you may well have received important emails from unlinked email addresses. To make sure you never miss an important message again, you’re now able to view these emails and decide for yourself whether you want the emails to come through to your digital mailbox or not.
No hands Accounting processes purchase invoices into entry proposals automatically, but it’s always been hard to tell which criteria were used. Now, this information is listed for each entry proposal, giving you a better insight into the recognition method used, whether the entry proposal is based on general ledger accounts, VAT codes, account data or more.
The German government has introduced new VAT rules to process invoices that cannot be collected. This situation arises when your client goes bankrupt before they’ve paid your sales invoice. If the invoiced amount has already been included in your VAT declaration, you must correct this in your accounts by using the additional VAT boxes (37 and 50) now available in Exact Online. This functionality will be available soon.
We’ve streamlined the payroll administration process for construction companies by creating a link between Exact Online Payroll and Exact bouw7.
From now on, we’ll group the data in Exact bouw7 per employee and per hour type, based on their salary frequency and the hours worked per period. These hours will then be forwarded to EOL remuneration, where salary payments for employees are made.
Having a good overview of everything you need to do with payroll administration in the current period is crucial. This allows you to see at a glance which periods or administrations require attention, as well as any messages received from the tax authorities. Now, you’ll also be able to see the messages received from pension provider APG to complete your payroll administration overview!
We’ve often been asked whether it would be possible to include the invoice period in the invoice description so your customers know exactly what their invoice is for. We’ve now added a number of variables to make this a reality. These variables are an easy way to determine which information is included in the description, and clients know exactly what their invoice is for.
Subscriptions are typically invoiced in advance over a longer period. Changes may occur. For example, your customer subscribed to a service and paid one year in advance. Halfway the year the customer requests an upgrade. This customer also requests that the change should go into effect immediately. The start date of the change is before the next invoice date. Previously it was not possible to quickly make this change. You had to manually end the active subscription line and manually add a new line with the upgrade. Based on your feedback, we made it possible to easily change the price and/or quantity of an active subscription line in one go. After he change, Exact Online creates a pro-rato correction invoice proposal for the change.
A field with an incorrect entry, a missing email address, an incorrect setting – errors can go unnoticed right up to the point of invoicing. If you’re generating subscription invoices automatically, these errors will cause invoice failures. To manage these failures, we’ve improved the flagging of errors in Subscription Management. Errors are flagged in the invoicing process on a daily basis, allowing you to take immediate action to resolve them.
Subscriptions are typically invoiced in advance over a longer period (such as annually or quarterly). Customers may want to upgrade or downgrade their subscription during this period. Such a change always leads to a correction invoice if the change is made before the next invoice date & within the last invoiced period. The amount is prorated based on the number of days until the next invoice period. Companies may decide whether these mid-term up- and downgrades are invoiced or not. Furthermore, prorated calculations may differ per industry. For example, let’s suppose you have a subscription to a magazine, with 9 yearly editions. If you cancel the yearly subscription, the company wants first to determine a credit for the remaining magazines – this may differ from the remaining days calculation we use in Exact Online.
That is why we’ve made it possible to generate a zero cost invoice when making a mid-term change in a subscription. If you use this option, you will generate a zero cost (i.e. the unit price is set to 0) correction invoice in case a change is made.
New apps have been added to the Exact Online App Centre. These apps can be linked directly to Exact Online or Exact bouw7. Visit the Exact Online App Centre for more information.
An API allows data to be exchanged as well as communication between different applications. With an extensive library of available APIs, Exact Online processes millions of API calls on a daily basis. In practice, we see that the exchange of data between Exact Online and other apps isn’t always very efficient, resulting in an inefficient, time-consuming exchange of information, reduced app performance and a poor end-user experience. To ensure API calls are processed quickly, we now make filtering mandatory for selected endpoints and only allow filters on specific properties of these endpoints. We’ve specified the available filters per endpoint and have added the ‘Filter’ column to this end. See the endpoint for accounts as an example. We’ll gradually start to roll out this change over the next few months and make using the correct filters mandatory. See REST API reference documentation for more information.
From idea to solution in Exact Online for Wholesale Distribution and Exact Online for Manufacturing. Exact Online clients can now submit new ideas and vote on existing ones. Your feedback helps us to continuously improve our sales and purchase order processes, and much more besides. Over 400 clients voted on product suggestions that eventually led to the enhancements you see in this release. These are just some of the improvements we’ve made: the option to deliver the order immediately after picking, improved insights into your margin, and the introduction of a general price list. Together, we can make Exact Online even better!
A common challenge when converting engineering bills-of-materials into manufacturing bills-of-materials is to prevent them resulting in work orders with (too) many suborders. Whereas engineers and draftsmen tend to break down complex assemblies into many layers, manufacturing planners generally prefer flatter structures that list the work on a particular workstation in a single work order or suborder. The phantom bill-of-materials is an excellent tool for achieving this. Now available in Exact Online for Manufacturing Premium.
The Inventory Management app already allowed users to carry out stock counts and pick orders. Now, users of the Premium editions of Exact Online for Wholesale Distribution and Exact Online for Manufacturing can also use the app to receive goods. You can process them with the put-away feature and move them around the warehouse via the Inventory Management app. You can also minimise risks and save valuable time by using the handy barcode scanner.
Up to now, you could generate price lists for each individual client to implement price agreements, for example. This improvement allows you to generate price lists that are not linked to a particular client, meaning the price lists are available for general use. Handy if you want to run a volume discount or promotional sale!
When drawing up quotes and sales orders, you want to have a good insight into your margins without losing too much time. After all, you want to offer a competitive price and apply a healthy margin. By adding the ‘Margin’ column next to the ‘Cost Price’ and ‘Margin%’ columns, you can now check your total margin quickly and efficiently when drawing up your quote. This means you can offer your clients a competitive price while maintaining a decent margin. And, of course, it won’t be stated on your quote or sales order.
Avoid mistakes by limiting the processing of orders by designating a new role. Sometimes, back-orders no longer need to be delivered, while some orders never need to be delivered at all. This improvement helps you avoid processing orders that still need to delivered or invoiced (either in full on in part) by mistake. By implementing this new role, you can set who is authorised to complete sales or purchase orders.
It was already possible in Exact Online to display a pop-up on sales order entry enabling you to show a comment for a specific customer. This was also a much requested functionality for purchase orders. By entering remarks you can show a popup on purchase order entry for selected suppliers. A nice feature to help point out specific agreements or instructions avoiding costly and time-consuming corrections afterwards.
Thanks to the new button on the ‘To pick’ page, you can instantly process the delivery of goods for your sales order. Our survey about user friendliness has shown that many users follow this procedure: enter a sales order, pick the items, and deliver them. This improvement means the process will run more smoothly, as you’ll never have to leave the ‘To pick’ page to generate your delivery.
From time to time, it may be necessary to reorganise the warehouse locations or add new or replacement items to your stock. This may require you to unlink or move items; something that hasn’t been possible in Exact Online until now. Thanks to this new feature, unlinking unused locations from items is easier than ever before!
When working with assembly orders, you can assemble new products that each have their own serial numbers. To make it easier to assign the serial numbers upon completion, you can now generate a range of serial numbers during the allocation process. This feature is only available for users of Exact Online for Wholesale Distribution and Exact Online for Manufacturing Advanced and Premium. See Upgrade my Exact Online subscription for further information.
You can now show the total amounts for item charges on templates, except at row level. This makes it easy for your clients to see the deposit amount included on an invoice. The total fields are available on the invoice, order and quote templates in the Advanced and Premium editions of Exact Online for Wholesale Distribution and Manufacturing.
It’s now possible to exclude item charges, such as removal contributions or environmental taxes, from international sales. This prevents you from charging country-specific charges to foreign customers in error.
Item charges are part of Exact Online for Wholesale Distribution Advanced and Premium and Exact Online for Manufacturing Advanced and Premium.
We’ve improved the purchase invoice entry pages, allowing you to see a preview of the PDF documents before you attach them. This sought-after improvement means it’ll be much easier for you to register a purchase invoice when the information is based on a PDF file. Switching between different tabs is a thing of the past!
From idea to solution in Exact Online for Time & Billing. As an Exact Online client, you can share your ideas and vote on product suggestions. Your feedback is valuable for the continuous improvement of time registration, billing, project management, and more. Over 400 customers cast their votes on over 20 product suggestions that have been implemented in this release. By way of example, it’s now possible to link the turnover achieved on subscriptions to a project, and it’s much easier to correct time entered in the system in one go. Together, we make Exact Online even better!
All your employees have reported their hours for the past week or month, so now you can get started with invoicing. However, before you’re able to turn these billable hours into an invoice, you find that one of your colleagues made a mistake by reporting their hours in the wrong project or using the incorrect hour type, or a client calls asking you to transfer work delivered to another project. In the past, making such corrections to timesheets was a time-consuming job, as you had to correct everything one by one. Now, you can quickly adjust time entries in one go to save you lots of time!
You prefer to have the timesheet as complete as possible. You can complete the timesheet by adding a meeting report or photo, for example. Previously, this option was not available for time entry users. However, it’s now also possible for employees authorised to enter the hours worked to link a file attachment to the timesheet.
The report ‘Entered time & costs’ provides a detailed overview of all time entries in a given period. Based on customer feedback, we now added two new columns with details on who and when approved a specific time entry. You can also export these details to Excel to inform external stakeholders.
During a project, your customers may ask for a quote for additional work to be carried out. When such a quote is accepted, you can now increase the existing project budget and add the additional work to the scope (WBS) of the current project to keep all the information you need together in one project! Now available in Exact Online for Project Management.
When you provide services at a fixed, recurring price through subscriptions, it makes sense for you to know what costs you incur to deliver those services. You can now gain this insight with ease by linking a subscription to a project. When invoicing the subscription, the project will automatically be included in the invoice line. The project overview will then show the recurring revenue, as well as the margin based on the revenue and the costs related to time entries and project-related purchases. This is now available if you use Subscription Management in combination with Exact Online for Time & Billing or Project Management.
You want to avoid loose ends when completing and closing a project in Exact Online for Time & Billing, such as submitted time entries that still need to be approved or hours that still need to be invoiced. When closing a project, you’re now alerted to any outstanding issues so you can tidy up any loose ends immediately. You even prevent future issues from arising, as the project is closed to any future purchase or time entries straight away.
As a project manager, you are responsible for delivering your project within budget. One way to control costs and prevent going over budget on a project is to block purchase invoices and orders for a specific project. This feature has been added following large numbers of requests from clients and prevents new expenses being entered on a specific project.
Digital timesheets help you to give your client an overview of the hours worked. You can now also have your invoiceable hours approved by the client online. What’s more, you can also include useful information such as the name of the approver and date of approval on the invoice specification, so you know exactly who from the department approved the invoice for the hours worked. This avoids questions at a later date, while a more transparent invoice speeds up the payment process. With regard to privacy, it’s now also possible to include only their first name and staff number on the specification instead of their full name.
Timesheets provide an insight into the hours worked and those to be invoiced before you send your invoice to your client. It’s now possible to include work done by multiple employees for one project on a single timesheet, whereas previously you had to send several timesheets to your client. Now, you can present your client with a clear overview of all work performed, regardless of whether it was carried out by one or more employees.
Digital timesheets help you to give your client an overview of the hours worked and those still to be invoiced. These hours can now be approved by your client online, and you give your client an insight into the hours worked before sending them the invoice. This avoids questions and lots of hassle at a later date. We’ve added three new fields based on your feedback, so you can now include the project number, project description and client PO number in the header of the timesheet, which is great when your timesheet refers to a single project. You therefore no longer need to duplicate this information in each column, making the timesheet even clearer.
Exact Online for Time & Billing allows you to work with projects, cost centres and cost units. These analytical dimensions offer you additional options when it comes to financial reporting. As an example, you can use a cost centre to track the costs incurred and income generated by each individual department. From now on, it’s possible to add a cost centre or cost unit to a project classification. Based on this classification, the cost centre is automatically completed in the invoice line, which allows you to see exactly which revenue from invoiced hours or periods can be allocated to a specific cost centre or cost unit.
If a company is to thrive, consultants should spend 70% to 80% of their work hours, on average, on billable work. By default, Exact Online calculates billability by dividing the number of billable hours by an employee’s work hours, regardless of whether an employee is on holiday or sick leave. To gain a better insight into the actual availability and billability, we’ve added the ‘Net Billability’ column to the billability report. Net billability calculates the percentage of billable hours based on the net available hours, i.e., the scheduled hours less the leave and absence hours during that period, to give you a better insight into your employees’ actual productivity. Now available in Exact Online for Project Management.
Using Exact Online you can invoice incurred costs to your customers. For example, you can specify a billable rate per kilometre and invoice your travel distance. These kilometres, and other incurred costs, can be entered into the hour entry screen as a billable cost entry. Until now we only kept the original sales invoice rate of that cost entry. We did not keep track of any cost price changes. Project progress reports were based on the actual cost price of a cost-type item. Now it is possible to specify a start date when changing a cost-price. This start date is then used to determine the correct cost rate. Making sure the costs in your project progress reports are based on the correct cost prices.
Gain insights into several projects at once with our latest enhancement to the project summary report. Now, when you select a reporting period without selecting a specific project, the report will show all projects with transactions during that period to give you an overview of all projects and entries in that time.
The ability to turn billable hours or project invoice terms into an invoice is one of the key capabilities of Exact Online Time & Billing. Firms may use different invoice layouts for different service offerings. To prevent errors in selecting the incorrect layout you can now link an invoice layout to a project classification. Also available for invoice specifications.
In Exact Online for Time & Billing the invoice proposal aggregates all billable hours and planned invoice terms per project or per customer. For a time & material project, the invoice proposal shows all approved billable hours that have not yet been invoiced for that project. Before invoicing, you can create a preview. As from now you can also include a detailed specification of all billable hours included in the invoice. By adding the invoice specification to the invoice proposal print preview you’ll see exactly how the final invoice including a detailed specification is sent or printed.
Client PO numbers are used for projects or subscriptions to indicate the reference or PO number under which clients have placed an order. If this isn’t stated on the sales invoice, the invoice often remains unpaid. For electronic invoicing, however, it’s not enough to simply print this number on the template. That’s why the client PO number for a project or subscription is now automatically copied into the ‘Your ref.’ field for each invoice, so you can be sure it won’t be rejected and you’ll get paid on time. The client PO number will also be copied from the ‘Your ref.’ field in the quote when creating a project from a quote, so the reference used by the client when placing the order is clear during every phase.
A transparent invoice with a clear time specification reduces the number of questions you receive and results in faster payment. Not every project invoice requires a specification of the billable hours, however. One such example is you only wish to add a specification for subsequent project costs, giving you the flexibility to decide whether an invoice specification is needed for each project.
We’ve updated the Exact Online login page, so it’ll look a little different the next time you sign in. Instead of entering your username and password on one page, you’ll enter your username on one page and your password on another, allowing you to access all Exact products in a single trusted and secure environment. Your username and password will remain the same.
We’ve added new templates and improved existing ones in Exact Online to make them easier to edit and complete. These can be used to design and customise your own sales invoice, order confirmation or quote with ease. You don’t need your own letterheads – just add your own logo and you’re good to go! The templates can all be found in the gallery.
When creating a number of consecutive new items, it can be frustrating to have to remember the last code you used.
That’s why the last created item code is now shown when creating new items, making it easier to number your items or projects consecutively and reduce potential errors.
It’s now possible to create a progress sheet (settlement sheet) in Exact bouw7. Progress sheets can be sent to clients for approval and, once approved, you can invoice periods based on completion. Progress sheets can also be created based on an import, and lines can be moved easily within the sheet. Progress sheets can be updated and re-sent if required, while it’s also possible to duplicate an existing progress sheet.
Entering and organising materials has been optimised in Exact bouw7. As an example, we’ve added a feature that enables you to organise materials in groups. We’ve also improved its user-friendliness so you can automatically add the right general ledger account to your sales invoice by linking the administration to your materials. Read the release note for an overview of all the features.
We’ve now added bookmarks to Exact bouw7, allowing users to save frequently visited pages. Previously, users had to save bookmarks in their browsers, but this enhancement allows bookmarks to be saved directly in the software. This makes it easier to bookmark any pages you want and open them in your preferred user-defined filters. You only need to click on one button to access all the information you need. Bookmarks are conveniently organised in different chapters for each module, while stored bookmarks can easily be shared with colleagues or departments. This way, everyone always has the same information to hand.
In addition to the extensive options already on offer in Exact bouw7, we’ve now added even more notification options to keep you up to date. As an example, you can now receive notifications when a partial completion is entered in the mobile app, when a journal entry is made, when a scheduled item commences or is amended, or when files are created for a project. You can also set notifications for custom attributes.
This Autumn '21 Release is packed with innovations to help you work more efficiently and gain you even greater insight. You'll be ready for the future in no time. Click on your Exact solution in the menu and discover which improvements and innovations we have implemented.
Almost three years and more than 90 developers later, we’ve created the new and improved Exact Globe+ software solution. Six million lines of code and 3,300 applications have been updated, with impressive results. A number of companies are already using Exact Globe+ in Controlled Release, free of charge. This will be rolled out to another 13,000 companies in the near future. Read more about what this means for your company.
Exact Globe keeps you up to date on the latest legal requirements in a whole host of countries. You receive enhancements and amendments through product updates each month to keep you compliant with the legislation in the countries in which you operate. In recent months, we’ve implemented changes for the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Spain, Italy and more.
As from 1 July, the new EU VAT Directive for e-commerce represents a major change for our B2C clients. The new Directive includes a lower threshold for distance selling and a new, simplified VAT return through the One Stop Shop (OSS) system that means you don’t need to pay VAT separately in each EU country. Exact Globe has supported OSS since the summer.
Integrate and automate your Exact Synergy environment with Exact RPA. Exact RPA allows you to connect your Synergy environment with other business-critical software.
The new version offers greater flexibility for integration thanks to the introduction of new integration providers, including DocuSign for validated digital signatures.
Exact Warehouse Management (Exact WMS) allows you to automate your goods flows and optimise your logistics process using barcode scanning. The process also allows you to print labels with barcodes (such as pallet labels or product labels) automatically upon receipt of goods from a supplier or manufacturer. BarTender is a professional tool for printing such labels and is fully integrated into Exact WMS. This release of Exact WMS supports the most recent version of BarTender (release 2021R2).
Use Exact Service Management to digitalise your service process. In this release, we’re launching an updated app to replace the existing apps. This handy app allows engineers to see which assignments are scheduled as well as the location and a description of the problem. The time and materials are specified in the app, while clients can use the app to sign things off with ease.
The app is available for Android, Apple and Windows. It can easily be installed on a Windows laptop, a device most service engineers carry with them, to give them everything they need on a single device. The app also offers online and offline functionality, eliminating the need to use another app to work offline.
Feedback from users in the field has already led to a number of improvements, including an enhanced search function, enhanced readability, and a rating option to allow clients to indicate how well the work was carried out.
This release of Exact Insights includes various innovations to give you even faster insight into your data. We’ve also improved Insight Advisor Chat and the query-based analysis within the Exact Insights app. And, last but not least, the visualisation has also been enhanced.
We’ve given the user interface in Purchase to Pay a new look and feel. The menu structure, table display and more have been updated in the new interface, while you can now add your own house style and colours to the default Purchase to Pay template and replace the ProQuro/Exact logo with your own client logo.
This release also features innovations in Expense Management. These innovations focus on improving and strengthening the business rules, enhancing security and making the new Expense Management Admin Dashboard available. But that’s not all!
The world is changing fast, and Exact changes with it. In the spring, autumn and winter we inform you about the latest innovations and developments in our products. This is to keep you up to date on what’s new in our software, so you can continue to get the most out of your Exact products.