News Visit the new Anthology CustomerZone for news, tips, and help for Anthology users. Anthology.com now has a FAQ. Find answers to your questions. Click Here Visual Anthology v5 now available for download. Visual Anthology fully supports the upcoming release of the 13-digit ISBNs.

Highlights Construct precise queries to get the search results you want. SuperFetch allows you to pick and choose from likely matches. Check out the Visual Anthology Discussion Board on Yahoo.com. Visual Anthology now supports In House Gift Cards.

Visual Anthology Version 5 Summary

Version 5 of Visual Anthology contains a host of new features and enhancements. To help you make sense of the changes, the following list is divided into three sections:

Interface changes These modifications change the way that Visual Anthology behaves or appears in important ways. While you can explore the new features and productivity enhancements listed below at your leisure, you should be sure to review the list of interface changes before using Version 5.

New features These are completely new modules or relatively major new additions to the program functionality.

Productivity enhancements These are tweaks and improvements to the program’s existing functionality.

Please note that the upgrade from Version 4 to Version 5 will take longer than a typical upgrade—as much as an hour. Please budget time accordingly. And of course, always do a backup of your data before beginning an upgrade!

Interface changes

• The behavior of numeric fields and currency fields has been modified to make them easier to use. In particular, when you click into a numeric field, the whole field is highlighted. Anything you type at this point will overwrite the field’s previous contents.
• We now indicate required fields by preceding them with an asterisk (*).
• The Enter Line buttons used on many Anthology screens have been made larger and easier to spot.
• We have changed the display of the current line in our grids. We no longer show the current line with a solid blue bar and reversed type; rather it shows in blue type for improved readability.
• Selecting multiple lines in a grid is different. If you want to select multiple lines, you must explicitly select each one with Control or Shift clicking with the mouse (in Version 4, the current line was always already selected by default). If you are performing an action on a single line (e.g., deleting), no special selection is required.
• When you enter a value to search for on one of our List pages, you now only have to press <Enter> once to begin the search.
• There is a new, improved interface to the Import External Data screen (formerly CD Import).
• There is new, easier-to-use list of Tenders on the Take Tenders screen. The checkboxes on the left of the Tender list show which tender, if any, is currently selected. Clicking once in the checkbox or twice on the Tender name selects a tender, as does moving onto a Tender with the arrow keys and pressing either <Enter> or the spacebar.
• When an entered ISBN/SKU is not found, we now give options to Add, Search, or Cancel
• We no longer show filter conditions in the title bar of our screens, as this is non-standard and confusing. Filter conditions can still be seen from the selected controls on the form.
• The Total Due number is more prominent on the Cash Register Take Tenders screen.
• We now suggest a Amount Tendered amount only for Tenders which are of the types Credit Card or Other (typically checks).
• We have made the Change Due field more prominent and readable on the Take Tenders screen.
• In order to make it harder to make a mistake, we have moved the Void function from the F9 key to the Actions menu on many of our screens.
• We have changed the title of Customers, CBOs/Sales Detail to Inv Detail. We have also added checkboxes for Loans, Rentals, and Due In for Rentals and Lending customers.
• On the Customer Relationship Marketing Tool, if no dates are entered on the Sales page, then all customers (even those with no sales history) will be selected.
• When Save Settings is selected on Reports, Hourly Sales Graph, we now do not save the date range.

New features

General

• Version 5 has full support for both 978 and 979-type ISBN-13 numbers, as well as GTIN and UPC codes. In the case of books that will have both a “traditional” 10-digit ISBN and an ISBN-13 during the transitional period, we show both forms on the Inventory screen. You can specify at the level of the PO or the Vendor file record whether to use the 10 or 13 digit forms when ordering from vendors.
• We now show Sold This Wk, Sold This Mo, and Sold This Yr on the InfoPanel, General tab. “This Yr” values are for the last 12 calendar months, not just the months of this calendar year.
• You can now toggle between weekly and monthly displays on InfoPanel and other pages showing sales info graphs.

Tools, Import, and Export

• We now support printing to a pdf or html file for most printable documents.
• For Used Book module users, we have created a new Used Books Rules screen on the Master Files menu to allow for more sophisticated pricing rules for buying used books.
• We have added a new Scheduler function to the Tools menu to allow you to schedule Database Reindexes and other time-consuming activities for the off hours.
• We now support reporting to the Above the Treeline service.
• On Tools, CD Import we now support the import of IPage orders, including associated order quantities.
• We have added a new Log Sender function (Tools menu), which makes it easy for users to send Quick Backups and error and other logs directly to Anthology, Inc.
• For Used Book module users, we now have added a tab-delimited text file output as an alternative to UIEE for uploads.

Cash Register

• We now support a pole display at the Cash Register. Please talk to Sales for specific models supported.
• On Tools, Options, Cash Register we have added new checkboxes 'Log clerk each sale' and 'Require password'. If the first is selected, a clerk must be specified at the beginning of each sale; if the second is selected a password will be required as well.
• The Cash Register can now be customized with a new 'Simple Cash Register' option on Tools, Options, Cash Register that hides the Author, Retail, On Order, On Hand, Customer BO fields. You can also select which fields to show in the header.
• You can now view and reprint voided and cancelled sales via Cash Register Reprint Receipt

Credit cards

• Saving of customer credit card information is now optional. If you unselect 'Save Customer Credit Card Info' on Tools, Options, Cash Register we will not save customer credit card information; moreover we will get rid of any previously saved information. Choosing not to select customer credit card information does not impact PC Charge functionality in any way.
• We now encrypt all saved customer credit card information using the powerful AES key method.
• We no longer save and will eliminate from your database any saved Track2 information from customer credit cards.

Gift cards

• We will soon have gift card support with either the GIVEX cards from Booksense or an in-house gift card as optional modules.

X/Ztape

• We now offer the option to print the Xtape, a Ztape, or Historical Ztape to text or Excel files.

Special Orders

• We now offer better options to track or not track customer sales history.
• We have created a new PrePay option for Special Orders. When this option is selected from the Cash Register Actions menu, we fill the Deposit field with he full Retail price of the current item, plus applicable taxes. This allows customers to pre-pay for items without having to pay anything (e.g., tax) at pickup.

Book Fairs

• There is a new Clone function on the Actions menu in Book Fairs. The quantities for the new, cloned book fair can be based on either the Sent or the Returned quantities of the original.

Purchase Orders

• You can now reassign the Status of one or more items from within the PO screen.
• On Purchase Orders, we have added a new Action menu option: "Copy to Another PO", which allows you to move a partial quantity for an item to another PO .
• We now support electronic ordering via ftp for Random House and Bookstream, as well as Baker & Taylor and Ingram.

Receiving

• We now can print "SPO wrappers" (printed with customer name), which can be wrapped around SPO'd books waiting for pickup.

Inventory

• You can now edit the Status of Inventory items at the time of creation.
• You can now Reassign UDF values on the Inventory screen.
• When users are working on screens like Receiving or POs, they sometimes need to manually add new Inventory items, as for instance when the SKU entered cannot be Fetched. Bringing up the full Inventory form from F4 New can be quite slow. We have created a new, abbreviated Inventory QuickAdd screen that makes it easier to add new items on the fly.
• There is also a new Edit Inventory screen available on the shortcut (“right-click”) menu on most screens. This allows you to quickly make changes to Inventory when working in Receiving, etc.
• You can now go directly to Internet Stock Check from a Fetch or SuperFetch result screen.
• New SuperFetch functionality allows you to search either Baker and Taylor 's TitleSource or Ingram's Companion by keyword from within Anthology.

 

Reports

• We have added Labels as an output option on the CRM Tool.
• We now support a Condensed option on many reports. When this option is selected, the report prints on a single line only.
• We have added a graphing output option to Inventory Status report.
• There is a new Sales and Returns Report.
• We have added a condensed option to the Monthly format on the Sales History report.
• Queries and their associated reports offer a useful alternative to the Report Writer for ad hoc reporting. Choosing Construct a Query from the List page of the Inventory, Customer, or Vendor screen, you can set a range of conditions for your Query. When the Query is executed, the List page will show only those items that match the Query condition. This list can be sorted, deleted, sent to a PO , etc. You can also select F11 Print, which allows you to design a report layout for the records in the Query. Both Queries and their associated Reports can be named and saved.

Productivity Enhancements

General

• We have added a new checkbox on Tools, Options, Customer Orders: 'Include drafts in CBO quantities'. When this option is selected, then CBOs on Draft COs will be included when evaluating customer back orders (CBOs) on our displays and when generating purchase orders
• In v4, the On Order checkbox had to be selected on the Inventory Assistant screen to see OO quantities. We now always show On Order quantities.
• We now show the Status and Section2 information in both the header and the columns of Inventory Assistant
• We have added an 'OnHand only' checkbox on the Inventory Assistant. When selected, the Inventory Assistant will show only those items where OnHand > 0.
• When you open a screen with a List page, we now put you on the Search field right away.
• You can quickly and easily toggle between the Search field and the grid on List pages and Assistants by using Ctl-Tab.
• Formerly, sorting a column in a grid could cause the width of the column to resize. This has been fixed.
• If you choose Set as Default (Tools, Maintain Views) on a form, we now save the current column widths.
• We now support hotkeys to enable fast switching between InfoPanel tabs.
• We have added a 'Go to Parent' option to the shortcut menu on the CBOs tab of our InfoPanels. When selected, this will take you to the CBO Manager form, with the highlight on appropriate row.
• We have added two new columns to the POs page on the InfoPanel: TotRecd and Open
• Sometimes a user will enter a value to search for, and then realize that they have the wrong search type selected. When the search type was changed, we used to clear the Search field; now we retain the value to search on.
• On a number of our screens, we allow users to search by document number: e.g., Inventory Control, Receiving, List. Often these document numbers have 2, 3, or even 4 zeroes at the beginning, which makes typing the exact match required by the search difficult. We now allow you to search by only the last, "significant" digits (e.g., '345' will find a document whose number is '000345').
• We now show our standard print dialog on our QuickPrint reports
• We now warn users if they are about to open a second copy of Anthology.
• We now calculate Rec'd totals more accurately on the POs pages of our Master Files displays.
• When we generate transaction numbers for most types of transactions, we now zero-fill them to make 6-character numbers (e.g., '000133') rather than 7-character numbers (e.g., '0000133'). These are easier to read and remember.

Tools

 

• Customer organization information can now be captured on the AWS ordering screen and downloaded to Anthology Customer Orders.

Cash Register

• There is a new option on Tools, Options, Cash Register: 'Require terms for acct sale'. If this option is selected, then an Account Sale cannot be made to a customer who does not have a value assigned in Master Files, Customers, General, Terms.
• For used book stores, we now show the amount of trade credit available to the customer at the time of taking tenders.
• We now prevent users from accidentally entering a 0.00 value for either Gift Certificate or Shipping.
• If a discount schedule has been specified in the header of the Cash Register sale, we now3 respect that discount on Returns as well as Sales.
• We now show the Sale Note on the Pick SPO screen.
• You can now apply a line item discount to the sale of a Gift Certificate.
• We have added a Clerk column to pick list on the Reprint Receipt screen.
• For those with the Used Books module, BuyBooks mode is now "sticky"--the Cash Register will stay in BuyBooks mode until you explicitly leave it. Also, we now use a red highlight in the tape area as a visual cue that you are in BuyBooks.

Customer Orders

 

• (Used books) Trade credits can now be used in Customer Orders as well as Cash Register; when a trade credit is used, the customer's Trade Credit Balance is adjusted.
• Credit card information can now be saved in Customer Orders even when entered manually or downloaded from AWS.
• Line item discounts can now be unlocked as well as locked in Customer Orders.

X/Ztape

 

• We now show markdowns on the Ztape.
• We now show Trade Credit-type Tenders on the Ztape for customers with the Used Book module.

PayIn / PayOut

 

• We now print a credit card receipt with signature line when a credit card tender is used on a PayIn.

CBO Manager

• We now show SPO Notes in the header of CBO Manager; these Notes are editable.
• We now support a "Draft" Item Status in CBO Manager, Review Special Orders, and the CBOs page of the InfoPanels. An item will have the Draft status when it is assigned to a Draft Purchase Order.

Special Orders

• The CBO Report in Receiving has been improved so that it more accurately shows which customer a given book is for when there is more than one customer with a back order for that title.
• We now support Notified dates on SPOs.
• Formerly we required users to select a customer as soon as F5 Take SPO was selected. You can now wait until taking tenders to specify a customer.
• We now show a special line type in the Tape area of the Cash Register when special orders are picked up: 'P/U'.
• We now zero-fill the transaction numbers that are assigned to special orders to our standard 6 characters.
• When multiple SPO items are being picked up on a single Cash Register transaction, all deposits (if any) are included.

Book Fairs

• You can now Clone new Book Fairs from Updates as well as from master Book Fairs

Inventory Control

• Problems can arise when two users are making edits to the same document at the same time. We now prevent users from overwriting one another's changes with a warning message.
• It is now possible to send one or more items from a PO or receiving memo to Book Fairs.
• The transaction numbers that are created for Transfers Out and Transfers In are now zero-filled to our standard 6-character format.

Generate POs

 

• We have added a new option, 'Stock items only', to the Generate POs screen.
• With the Multi-store module, POs which have been exported but not deleted will be ignored when calculating quantities under Auto-Generate POs.
• There is a new 'Stock items only' on the Generate POs screen. When this option is selected only those books with 'Stock Item' selected on the Inventory screen will be selected when auto-generating using the 'If at MIN order up to MAX' or 'Restock based on sales' options.

Purchase Orders

 

• When a PO has become Complete by being Voided or Merged, we now indicate so in the header Note.
• We have strengthened the guards against one user overwriting another user's changes when both are editing the same PO . When such a danger exists, you may get the message: "This line has already been changed by another user editing this document. Please refresh the data and then re-apply your change." In this case, choose the new "Refresh Data" option on the Actions menu and then reapply your change(s).
• We have added a new 'Jump to PO' checkbox on the PO Actions menu 'Move to Another PO' function, so that jumping to the PO after moving is optional.
• On Master Files | Inventory | POs, PO Date now shows the date the PO posted, as does PO Date on Inventory Control | Receiving | List. A new column shows Date Recd.
• If you Move a line item on a PO to another PO, we now retain your position in the PO detail grid.

Electronic ordering

• The number of files in the EO directory can get very large. At the end of our Database Reindex process, we now clean out all files from the Data\EO directory that are more than one month old.
• We now show CBO info on confirmations of stock checks .
• With the Multi-store module, we have added a new PO Actions menu item: 'Break Out for EO' on Drop Ship POs. If selected, we will create a separate PO for each store from the multi-store PO ; these then can be sent as electronic orders.
• Vendors often send notification of changes to ISBN numbers in their electronic ordering confirmations. Usually, we use that information to change the old ISBN number of the book to its new ISBN. However, this causes a problem in those cases where the user has already created an Inv record with the new ISBN. In v5, we notify the user when this is the case at confirmation time so they can correct the situation.
• We have improved the display of information about electronic ordering status and dates.

Receiving

• We now allow more printing options for the CBO Info report available within Receiving.
• It was the case that when in Scan mode, a click inside the grid would cause an exit from Scan mode. This is no longer the case.
• We now print the SPO Note on the CBO report .
• Formerly, in Scan mode it was possible to increment the Qty Recd for an item even though that item had been received in full. This is no longer possible.
• You can now turn scan mode on and off using a new button on the Receiving screen: F3 Scan.
• We now print the Sale Note on the CBO report available in Receiving.
• We have added a new column, 'NewPrice,' to the grid on the Receiving screen. It will show a checkmark for all lines whose Retail price was different from the Inventory Retail price at time of posting.
• On our Receiving Memo, we now print a star (*) to the left on any line that has an associated CBO.
• We have added a new checkbox to the label printing dialog that appears in Receiving, just below 'As Required': 'Add for OnHand'. This makes it easy to re-sticker books whose price has changed.

Overstock Returns

• We have added a sortable Publisher column to the Overstock Returns grid
• We now print the Return qty on Overstock Return picklist.
• A discount can now be specified in the header of an Overstock Return, which is automatically applied to the document's line items.

Inventory

• We now create OnHand Edit records when new records are created.
• The Keyword search is no longer confused by leading characters like /, \, or # .
• We now zero-fill SKU numbers generated by the Create a SKU function to 6 digits
• We have added new columns to the Inventory List page for PubDate and Status.
• We now warn you if you try to add or edit an item with an Item/UPC value that already exists on another record.
• If, when adding an item via F4 on the Inventory screen, the item already exists, you can now go directly to and edit that item.
• The Master File functionality that lets you jump to the Inventory file when editing an item on PO , Receiving, etc is now available from the grid as well as the ISBN/SKU field.
• You can now specify a Web Price Discount on the Options screen. New items created in Inventory will have their web price automatically assigned based on this value.
• We have added an F9 Cancel button to the Inventory screen when adding a new record. In the past, if the user tried to cancel adding a new record by pressing the F9 Delete key, then a new record was created with an Inactive status. Now no record is created on F9.
• The Inventory, Customers, or Vendors screens now open with the cursor in the Search field.
• We now show Shipment numbers for Customer Orders and Book Fairs on the InvHist page of the Inventory screen.
• You can now assign Conditions to Inventory items.
• We have added Rent, Lend, and Used book columns to the Inventory List page and Inventory Assistant.
• For users with the optional Rent or Lending modules, we now show the item’s Status on Copies page.
• We have enhanced the display on Master Files, Inventory, POs by adding columns for TotRecd and Open, Ord and Recd.
• We now show Customer and Vendor codes on the InvHist page.
• When the used book module is present, we now show Buys on the Inv Hist page.
• We now show SPOs taken on the Inv Hist screen
• When Edit OnHand is selected on the Inventory screen, users have the option to enter a Reason for the edit. These memos are now shown on the InvHist page of the Inventory screen.
• We now provide a more consistent set of options when using Quick Inventory Add or Buy Books to add used books.
• We have added a number of fields, including Keywords, to those editable on Quick Inventory Add or a Fetch result.
• A new 'Skip initial screen' option on the Fetch screen allows you to bypass the "ISBN found in external inventory, add to your Inventory?" message.
• We have added new 'Send to SPO' and 'Send PO' options to the Fetch screen.
• Formerly, when a new SKU was being added manually (i.e., not fetched) through Quick Inventory Add, we would populate the Title/Description with the ISBN/SKU value. This is no longer done.
• The relative positions of the the Min and Max fields on the Quick Inventory Add and Fetch screens has been changed to match the layout on the Inventory screen.
• When serialized records are created through Quick Inventory Add, we now show the serialized SKU and assign an OH of 1 for the new record
• We have added a number of new fields to Fetch and Quick Inventory Add: Item/UPC, Section2, Sale Disc, & Pub Date.
• We have added Print Label functionality to Quick Inventory Add.
• For Used Book module users, we have made the confirmation messages when tagging books for upload clearer.
• For Used Book module users, we now block flagging the same item for both upload and removal.
• For Used Book module users, we now allow a Preview of an upload.

Customers

• For Used Book module users, we now show Cash Register and other transaction numbers on Master Files, Customers, Trade Credit.

Vendors

• We have improved the behavior of the Vendor Assistant to make it easier to use.

Customer Discount Schedules

• You can now block certain Departments from receiving discounts

Users

• We have added a number of reports, including Daily Sales and OnHand Edits, to those which can have their access controlled through Security.

Reports

• We have added a 'Mailing List only' option to the CRM tool.
• We now show Total values on the Hourly Sales Graph
• We have added graphing as an output option on the Inventory Status report.
• We have added a Last Received date control on the Inventory Status report .
• The Inventory Status report formerly had as a single option 'On hand or on order only'. This has now been broken out into two options, 'On hand only' and 'On order only'.
• We no longer count negative onhand qtys when calculating totals on the Inventory Status Report.
• We now create OhEdit records when new Inv records are created. A new checkbox on the OnHand Edits report allows for the exclusion or inclusion of these records.
• We have added a Section sort on the Publisher Listing report.
• When you choose QuickPrint on one of our forms, we now show our standard Print dialog.
• We have now added the ability to sort by Qty on the Sales History Bestsellers report.
• You can now select a Page Break option on the Primary sort of the Sales History report.
• The Qtys Only option (formerly labelled 'Restock format') is now available on the Sales History Bestsellers report.