Technical

Built-in Report Designer

One of the most important functions available in any business software is the reporting function. Businesses use reports in a variety of ways, and reports should be able to produce useful and relevant information in an easy to read format. Jim2 gives you the option of using the report formats we have already designed, customising those formats to better suit your business or creating your own reports - using the Jim2 Report Designer function.

Jim2 Report Designer is an entire application in itself - however it is tied into Jim2 functionally. The reports available within each Jim2 Object or function were created and can be created using Report Designer. The "portal" to access the Report Designer is Report Explorer - a "holding area" in effect, where reports are maintained.

Reports themselves are a combination of information and calculations, made available in specific and useful formats:

• Object and function reports such as Invoices, Quotes, List Reports, delivery dockets etc
• Management Reports such as Export Sessions, Stock Profit Reports, GST (accrual)
• Support Documents

Report Designer allows you to produce these types of reports from within Jim2 by combining (programming):

• RAP (Report Application Pascal)
• Specific objects or components to execute events, using your data
• Scripts used to generate data pipelines for use in your reports

170+ practical, powerful reports

Jim2 uses ‘context sensitive’ report menus – depending on the current Jim2 form in view, the list of available reports for that form appear in the Print Menu drop-down list
Jim2 reports range from:

• Object and function reports such as Invoices, Quotes, List Reports, delivery dockets etc
• Management Reports such as Stock Profit Reports, Top X Reports, GST Summary & Detailed Reports
• Support Documents such as price stickers, address labels for envelopes, courier-friendly box labels for shipments

Built-in Scripting Engine

• Jim2 fully supports XML recordsets, the core technology uses in B2B and B2C applications
• Jim2 makes extensive use of Microsoft's ActiveX scripting technology. This provides Jim2 with unparalleled power to be tailored to specific company and/or industry requirements, and provides the "glue" to easily tie Jim2 into existing legacy applications or new technologies as they become available. Scripts or "complete Jim2 Report datasets" (jrpt files) can easily be imported into Jim2 and instantly become seamlessly integrated into Jim2 generally or at a specific object level.
• Scripts can be written in VBScript (Visual Basic), JScript (Java) or DelphiScript (Pascal).
• Jim2 provides an integrated, fully featured with syntax highlighting for the language used.
• Forms related to scripts can be visually designed in Jim2 using standard RAD methodology and component/control event code automatically hooked in.
• The Stock Profit reports within Jim2 are good examples complex functions that are entirely scripted. These reports include a powerful selection criteria form (script form) and create several SQL queries in order the relevant data and grouping. They even provide cost estimates for stock sold in advance!
• Seamless interaction with products like Microsoft Word, Excel, Access and Outlook.
• Scripts also allow Jim2 to easily interact with other software.

Definable Options & Setups

The Jim2 Business Engine is supplied as a general business and financial management tool for the sales and / or service sector. As such, it is supplied with a set of typical Option Defaults or management-oriented Options pre-set. Jim2 is designed, however, to work behind the scenes - taking care of detail for you. To maximise your software investment, you should "tailor" Jim2 to follow your work rules and management practices. By setting up specific defaults to suit your management needs, Jim2 will automatically implement these defaults and criteria for users to follow. Options are available to tailor your database are:

• Company structure
• Jobs
• Quotes
• Purchases
• Stock
• CardFiles
• Accounting
• Email
• Retail

The Set-up screens allow you to tailor the Jim2 Business Engine to suit your specific workflow needs. Set-ups "personalise" Jim2 to reflect your work practices, and "define" issues as below. Set-ups in the most part, form the drop down lists available within Object forms - although you have set general and Object defaults via Options, the alternate choices available are made via the Set-up Screens:

• Naming Budgets
• Price Levels
• Job Priority
• Job Type
• Labour Type
• Invoice descriptions
• Naming Branch/ Sub Branch & GL Department
• Stock Locations
• Stock Bins
• Payment Types
• Tax Codes
• Stock GL Groups
• Ship Via
• Payment Terms
• Stock Attributes

High level, definable Security

• Security Level or access is identified by Security Groups – each employee (user) belongs to one Security Group and only has the access rights to certain areas and functions within Jim2 that have been set-up for that Security Group.
• Security Groups are identified with a Report Level. When reports are devised, they are identified by ascending Report Levels - the higher the number, the more sensitive company information it contains.
• Security Groups are also identified by their Status Level to limit status (Strict Workflowmovements
• Security Groups are also given a Price Break Movement ranking to limit volume break discounting

True multi-user capability

In developing Jim2 we have focussed heavily on two prime objectives:

• The need to make Jim2 practical to use so that it requires minimal effort to maintain, is easily deployed and will genuinely assist you in the day to day work of running a business.
• The need for the software technology itself to be stable and "bullet proof" in terms of reliability and functionality.

Unique 'object locking' technology

Jim2 is a truly scalable multi-user application. Because records are being accessed and edited across many users, the need to keep data secure in edit is particularly important. From the ground up, Jim2 is designed to be used in real business applications. In business or accounting software where all users are accessing one data source (database), the risk of corrupting files and losing system performance is very real. To counter this, other software places limits on user access that can detract from usability.

Jim2 has been developed with new and unique software technology that gets around these limits.

SQL/MSDE transaction based processing

Technically Jim2 is a proper 32 Bit, multitiered, "thinnish" client application. What this means to you is that if a "client" machine is being used to edit or add data, and the client machine crashed or hangs for any reason, the database remains unaffected.

Internally, Jim2 treats everything as an "object" (a job is an object, and an invoice is an object etc.) When you start to process an invoice, all the relevant objects are locked - a database transaction is started, all the related data is updated or modified, the transaction is completed, and then all the locked objects are freed.

If you are in the middle of an invoice, it either all happened, or it did not happen - there is no halfway, no partial data corruptions. All transactions are handled in SQL server, and controlled at an object level by Jim Server.