2024 Wave 1 - Release Summary

Release Date: 24th April 2024

This Article contains the Feature Release information for our EliteParks Solution.

EliteParks

Reservations

Booking Upgrade Campaigns - Powered by EliteAI

With Booking Upgrade Campaigns powered by EliteAI, boosting holiday revenue and seizing new sales opportunities is effortless.

Using your booking data, easily create and send out bespoke emails tailored to each customer, with personalised messaging featuring exclusive upgrade paths and special offers, all aimed at optimising your holiday sales revenue.

Tactical Pricing

We have added the functionality to allow for Tactical Pricing within EliteParks. This allows you utilise yield management within the system, based on the Park or Grade occupancies to drive the revenue on Holiday Bookings. This feature allows the end user to have an unlimited variety of strategy options working in conjunction with each other.

Early Check Out

To assist with the management of bookings we have now added a permission from within EliteParks User setup to allow for bookings to be ‘Checked Out’ early. This toggle is required for the user to complete the action of checking out a booking early, it is also important to note that this will not alter dates on any associated Housekeeping Activities or amend the availability.

Added Ability to link Booking Extras to adults, children and infants

We have extended the functionality with our Bookings Extras so that you can link the extra with the number of Adults, Infants or Children that are on the booking.

Park Management

Assign resource to multiple Maintenance Jobs

We have added the functionality to assign resources across multiple Maintenance Jobs. This action, available from the Maintenance Jobs view, allows users to quickly select a number of jobs, and bulk assign the correct resource.

Removing Zero Movement Meter Readings

When populating meter readings for parks, there are sometimes readings which have not been taken or are showing no movement. We have now added an action button to quickly remove the 'Zero' movement lines from within your Meter Reading Journal batch, preventing these 0 value lines from posting.

Block the editing of No. of Bedroom on Unit Purchases

Users can now effortlessly control the editing access to the "No. of Bedroom" field for unit purchases. Enhance data integrity and streamline processes by restricting unnecessary modifications. Maintain accuracy and consistency in your unit records with this convenient addition. You can restrict this from the Park Management setup, with a toggle under the Sales & Purchase fast tab.

Stock List Report Improvements

To help with the use of the Stock List report, we have added the default filter option of “No.” to the report request page as shown below.

Owners

Date Driven Unit Price for Meter Invoicing

We have expanded the functionality with Meter Readings, allowing the user to specify different unit values per date period. Within the Park Meter Type view you will now be able to add 'Date Periods' with corresponding unit values. When invoicing this will now pick up the relevant unit price based on the reading date. In addition we have also added this to the Administration Charge, the Admin charge will pick up from the posting date of the document and reflect the relevant Admin Charge for that period. Finally, we have also added a field for controlling the line description for the Administration Charge.

Sales & Leads

Bring on Action added to Deal Stacker

Helping to improve the process steps when stacking a deal, we have add the option for 'Bring On' to the ribbon within the Deal Stacker. The option for adding via the unit select is also still available, but this option will mean you can do it from the outset of the Deal creation.

Set Default View for Deals

With the option to open the Deal Stacker in either the Internal or Customer view, we have now added the ability to default the chosen view when opening this page. Per user, within EliteParks User Setup you can now choose the default view that the Deal Stacker will open with. Importantly, the user will still have the option to open the Deal Stacker in the alternative view if they need to.

Housekeeping

Assign resource to multiple Housekeeping Activities

We have added the functionality to assign resources across multiple Housekeeping Activities. This action, available from the Housekeeping Activities view, allows users to quickly select a number of jobs and bulk assign the correct resource.

Partner Integrations

TLJ Integration

TLJ are an innovative British company, serving customers around the globe with smart, contactless door locks. We have expanded our Access Control system to be able to work with TLJ's locks in order to use the system to trigger and send out the digital keys to allow customers to access their unit. This integration works seamlessly with the options and setup granted by the Access Control system within EliteParks.

WorldPay Integration

As we continue to expand our integration options we now have integration with Worldpay. Enjoy secure transactions, diverse payment options, and streamlined processing all within your existing platform.

General

Export, import multi line text with Configuration Packages

Avoid having to manually export and import multi line text by using improved configuration package capabilities that allows you to do that with efficiency and ease. This feature is especially useful for businesses that deal with large amounts of multi line texts and need to transfer them between different companies or environments.

Share error details to get help from another User

By facilitating collaboration and knowledge sharing, we're enabling teams to work together more effectively and efficiently. You can leverage the expertise of colleagues or subject matter experts to overcome obstacles and minimize downtime. The ability to share error details in Business Central enhances collaboration and problem-solving capabilities.

Go to pages that contain a field that's causing a platform error

We're making it easier for you to help yourself when something goes wrong in Business Central. Error messages provide actions that take you to the page, or even a specific field on a page, so you can quickly resolve the issue. The actions provide value to organisations by enhancing productivity and ensuring smoother error workflows.

View and filter users with additional user details

Additional user details and technical data helps administrators to be more effective when they handle user requests and resolve issues. This view allows you to easily filter on Users with a number of predetermined views, or you can set your own.

Use drag and drop to attach multiple files

Drag and drop functionality to attach multiple files to Business Central records makes it easier to manage files. This feature benefits users who work with multiple files, and adds value to organizations by enhancing data organization and accessibility.

Release: This feature has been delayed to Junes minor release from Microsoft.

EliteFinance

Bank Reconciliations with Copilot

Bookkeepers need to import bank statements and reconcile transactions with their bank ledger entries, making sure all transactions are accounted for. While Business Central already reduces effort through rule-based transaction matching, the residual work to process the unmatched transactions every week remains cumbersome and quickly accrues to lost workdays. Copilot reduces bookkeeping effort by matching more transactions and suggesting G/L accounts to post the remaining transactions.

Use Deferral Codes in Purchase & Sales Documents

Entering sales and purchase journals is sometimes associated with data entry for transactions that require deferrals. The process of entering data is smoother because you can specify a deferral code on sales and purchase journals, without having to create a general journal.

Use new Excel Layouts

Running reports to analyse and present business information is a frequent task in any business. Now you can use the Excel report layouts to interactively generate analyses and present learnings. Excel reports have been added for over 30 selected reports.

See VAT date in posting previews

This feature provides better overviews, compliant accounting and reporting, and increased productivity related to VAT details.

Modern Action Bar

With Business Central 2024 release wave 1, we are making the modern action bar available and turned on for all users. Since its introduction in release wave 2, 2022, the modern action bar has been the default for new customers and is now becoming the default for all customers upgrading to release wave 1, 2024.

Allocation Accounts

To make data entry efficient and reduce errors for recurring types of posting, you can use allocations to pre-define how to distribute revenue for transactions or cost amounts across G/L accounts and dimensions. You can use allocation keys on document and document lines, and in most journals.

Get to Insights quickly with Copilot-created analysis tabs

Copilot is the AI-powered assistant for work that boosts creativity and improves productivity for Business Central users.

Copilot can help reduce the time it takes to identify trends and anomalies in your business data by enabling you to express your analysis as a simple sentence, and without ever leaving Business Central.

By describing how you want to structure your data analysis, such as “show me vendors by location sorted by amount of purchases,” you can quickly get to insights instead of spending time on the clicks and keystrokes needed to construct analysis views. This feature can help you make informed decisions and take action based on the insights you gain from your data. For example, you can use this feature to identify which vendors are supplying each of your warehouses, and then take steps to optimise your supply chain or negotiate better deals with your vendors.

Improve approval processes via Power Automate

Approving documents or data changes in a modern company must be straightforward. We listen to feedback and continue to improve this area, making sure this experience matches business users' expectations. In previous releases, we introduced several new approval templates and a simplified experience based on Power Automate. With this wave, we continue to improve this area by introducing several new changes.

The Approval User Setup page has been updated and exposed to Power Automate. Approvers don't need to be defined manually on the Power Automate side anymore, but the flow execution takes the relevant approver directly from Business Central. There are also more templates are enabled for Power Automate approval integration.

Added Decapitalisation of Units

This feature allows for the user to easily decapitalise units for optimised asset management direct from the Unit itself. The process allows you to generate the necessary journals for deacapitalising a unit - including running the depreciation - all from the Unit Card.

EliteCRM

New Look Forms in EliteCRM

When using main forms in EliteCRM on the web with New Look enabled, users can review field suggestions generated by AI based on their frequently used data. These suggestions are optional, and users can accept them or ignore and reject them.

Copilot in EliteCRM

Copilot is now available within EliteCRM. Copilot can help users get insights on their data as well as navigation around EliteCRM. It can also assist them with the creation of communication direct from CRM. The Copilot side card is available on all pages of EliteCRM, ready to answer any questions about the data in the app, that a user can access according to their permissions and security role.

Related Activity Records in EliteCRM

Users will be able to associate an activity record with additional related records such as EliteLead, & Contact. This means a user can perform actions like associating an email or appointment to additional related records, such as an email or appointment related to additional Deals & Bookings.

EliteDealers

Sales Credits & Purchase Credits

To further enhance the capabilities within EliteDealers we have added the option to be able to credit both Sales and Purchase documents. You can do this from the ribbon on any Purchase/Sale document within EliteDealers, selecting to either part credit, where you can choose the lines and parts of the invoice you want to credit, or you can action a full credit of the whole invoice.

Adding Payments to an Invoice

We have now added the ability to assign payments to invoices within EliteDealers. This functionality allows you to keep on top of the accounts within EliteDealers ensuring you know which invoices are outstanding with your customers as well as being able to know how much has been paid, providing you with a useful view to see all payments made against that record.