Newsletter Autumn 2023

Important Information

Delivery Exceptions

The ability to add exceptions days into the system has been extended by improving this functionality at Customer level (Delivery Day Exceptions from the Order Changes screen) and Product Group (Delivery Exceptions from the Product Group tab in Product Maintenance).

This functionality works in two ways:

Positive Exceptions: when you will be making a delivery to a customer on a day on which you normally would not.
Negative Exceptions: when you will not be making a delivery to a customer on a day on which you normally would.

It is important to understand a few things when setting up these exceptions:

  1. Creating a negative exception does not automatically move or remove orders from these days; it simply prevents YourMOO customers from amending their orders. It is always possible to amend an order for a day within the Paragon Order Changes screen if one exists, so you can change or remove an order there, but you cannot add new orders into a negative exception day.
    

Within YourMOO, a customer can see their orders even on exception days, but cannot amend them as you do not want them to increase their order.
    

It is your responsibility to check for orders on negative exception days and move or remove them. There is a report to help you with this: Company/Site – Reports – Listings – Customer Level Delivery Exceptions.
  2. If you set a Positive Delivery Exception for a date, the round must be marked for delivery on that day otherwise the day will not be available to add orders. Make sure you turn the day off again once the delivery exception date has passed.
  3. If you are a client that has your system set up to ignore Sunday, it is not possible to set Sunday as a positive exception day. If you have your system set up like this, we recommend you change to a 7 day week set up to remove that restriction.

YourMOO and Monthly Invoices

There has been a long running issue where customers that are invoiced monthly receive a single monthly invoice by email or print but get multiple weekly invoices posted to their Statements page. This meant that it was not possible for the customer to generate a like-for-like invoice from YourMOO.

We received multiple requests for this to standardised so the customer experience within YourMOO matched the invoices their received from Paragon; we have made that change, so the Statements screen now shows a single, monthly invoice.

Unfortunately, this has resulted in some reports of the opposite to the original issue whereby customer who receive a monthly invoice from Paragon wish to see their weekly bill within YourMOO so they can pay more regularly than monthly.

Whilst we are looking at long-term solutions for this issue, probably by providing a ‘deliveries since last invoice’ value on the Statements screen, the recommendation is that the invoice frequency set on a customer best reflects their payment frequency; so, if they pay once a month, provide an invoice once a month, but if they pay every week, provide an invoice every week. Customers that use YourMOO must provide an email address, so there should be little overhead for the users.

System Backups

For those clients that remain on-premise rather than being in the Cloud (see below for the benefits) it is important that you check your backups are happening regularly and securely. We would hate to have a client coming to us with a dead computer only to find that they have no useable backup for us to use to restart them.

If you are concerned about your backup regime, please contact the Delivery Software Helpdesk who can check how your backups are configured so you can ensure they are being taken.

If you want Delivery Software to be responsible for taking your backups, please contact George and he will be happy to discuss moving you to our Cloud SaaS solution.

Support Hours

Just a reminder that our official Support Hours, and the basis upon which we levy monthly/annual support fees are Monday to Friday 8.00am to 5.00pm and Saturday 9:00am to 3.00pm. This excludes Public Holidays.

Please try to ensure that all business-critical operations are completed within these hours.
While we appreciate that the nature of the work our clients undertake, can mean that the need for assistance arises outside these times. Our Team may occasionally check the online chat system for notified issues out of these hours, but this is purely on an ad hoc and very much voluntary basis.

Christmas Opening Hours

Friday 8th December – Office will close at 3pm so we can enjoy our Christmas Party.

Saturday 9th December – Support hours 10am – 4pm

Sunday 24th December – Closed

Monday 25th December – Closed

Tuesday 26th December – Closed

Wednesday 27th – Saturday 30th – Support hours 9am – 3pm

Sunday 31st December – Closed

Monday 1st January – Closed

Tuesday 2nd January – Business as usual

Benefits of moving to the cloud

All new clients, and more and more existing clients are using their Paragon software hosted in the cloud (Software as a Service or more commonly referred to as SaaS). But what has led to this shift away from having the software installed on local PCs or local network systems?

There are a whole host of good business reasons.

  • Reduced IT management costs – We look after the computer environment that runs our software. You simply need devices which can connect to the internet. As a result, we can significantly reduce or in some cases completely take away the headache of managing your core IT infrastructure and associated costs
  • Flexibility of where you work and how you access your systems – Having your software installed in our AWS cloud, means it is accessible 24/7 from any location with suitable internet access and a portable device (Windows/Mac)
  • Business continuity – If you can’t get to the office, or your in-office IT is compromised (fire, theft, flood, power outage etc) you can still access your system from any internet connected alternate location.
  • Scalability -Traditional computing often means that your business growth requires expensive ‘step changes’ in infrastructure, storage, processing capability etc. With a SaaS solution, you can increase your IT capability as easily as turning a dial. You just pay for what computing capability you need, when you need it.
  • Backup – we automatically take a daily backup of your data providing peace of mind that in the event of an issue arising which needs data reinstating, we can go back 30 days.
  • Access to new features – Some of the exciting new features being released are only able to work in the cloud. These include being able to pre-authorise credit cards facilitating weekly payment collection and instant sign up for new clients.

Speak to us about how we can help you make that journey to the cloud.

What’s New!

Paragon

  • Instant Emailing – It is now possible to send emails for invoice, statements, delivery notes, etc. directly from a customer’s Order Changes or Transaction History screen, even for customers that do not usually receive their documents via email. This removes the need to print the document to a PDF, save it then attach it to an email on your PC.
  • Improved Delivery Moves – It is now possible to move deliveries automatically from one day to the next for customer subsets and all members of a group account.
  • Delivery Exceptions – The Delivery Day Exceptions functionality within the Customer Order screen has been improved to block customers placing orders on days you do not want them or place orders on days where they would not normally receive a delivery. Along with the Product Group delivery exceptions, this provides a flexible method of adjusting deliveries when your operations change temporarily.
  • Variable Credit Limits – It is now possible to have your customer’s credit limits calculated from their normal order values in terms of a number of weeks rather than a set amount. This allows customers to increase or decrease their regular orders and have the credit limit change accordingly. It also allows the credit limit to change as product prices fluctuate. Try this on the ‘Invoice’ tab of the Modify Customer screen.

Paragon Web Dashboard

  • Day Debrief –

The initial screen provides a real-time status for the round. The screen may be filtered by site should the client have multiple.

Map

Clicking the ‘Map’ button on a round provides a representation of the events that are logged through the handheld. Currently, this shows deliveries made, when the driver checks the Individual Delivery Indicator within the Roundsbook or the driver confirms a delivery when using the ESOP Deliveries mode. Driver message acknowledgement as logs using different icons.

Each icon includes a number representing the sequence of the events during the day and they are joined by a line showing progress.

Summary

Future development.

YourMOO

Monthly Invoices – The Statements page now shows the invoice that the customer has received rather than four separate invoices.

Delivery Exceptions – The Delivery Exceptions set up at customer or product group level within Paragon will reflect on the customer’s screen meaning they may be able to place orders on days they normally cannot or are restricted on normal days.

Customer Satisfaction

Increasing numbers of clients take the time when they receive their call closure email to let us know what they thought of the service from the team. To all those who take the time to respond, thank you so much. You told us that for over 91% of your tickets, you felt you received Great Service

Increasing numbers of clients take the time when they receive their call closure email to let us know what they thought of the service from the team. To all those who take the time to respond, thank you so much. You told us that for over 93% of your tickets, you felt you received Great Service. 

Great job by the support team!

Your feedback is invaluable in helping to shape our service and remember that every completed survey is entered into a quarterly draw for an Amazon voucher.

Coming Soon!

  • Product Subsets
    The ability to restrict rounds and customers to a subset of your full product range
  • ParagonWeb Maintain Customers
    Enter and maintain your customer details through ParagonWeb rather than the Paragon Windows application.
  • YourMOO App
    Allow your customers to manage their accounts through an iOS or Android app rather than the full YourMOO website
  • Background Reporting
    
There are many reports within Paragon that can take a while to produce which means your PC is tied up. We are introducing a background ‘Reporting Service’ which means requests for reports are processed behind the scenes and you are notified once they complete – no more waiting around.