Tax Rates, Bands and Allowances updated for Tax Year 2010/11. This update includes changes from the Emergency Budget in June 2010.

JCS now detects and integrates with Office 2010 (the 64 bit version is not recommended for use with JCS).

From the Expenditure page, select the 'Details' button for the Tax/NIC. The screen now allows Details of the Tax amount to be shown as a detailed tax computation with associated notes. This computation lists all sources of income and is designed to allow advisers to verify exactly how the tax figure has been calculated. The tax computation within the Profile Report is a summary of this detailed computation.

The JCS product suite is now supported under Windows Server 2008 R2 - Remote Desktop Services.

From the Utilities Menu the current Tax Allowances and Rates can be printed off in a convenient table format. This shows the values that are used by the software in Tax and NI computations.

When presented with a dialog box with a Yes or No response, it is now possible to press the keyboard letter that is underlined to select the button. For example pressing 'Y' will simulate pressing the "Yes" button.

When downloading the latest updates from JCS, the installer components now get stored on the network, so that other users do not need to download the components as well. This operation is seemless to users in most circumstances.

The Additional Details (user defined fields) can now be accessed by user defined reports. This enables users to create reports which include data stored on the Additional Details page.

Previously, JCS was required to run with administrator privileges with some installations on Vista and Windows 7 with UAC activated. This is no longer required with new installations of JCS. Existing users can contact Technical Support to assist in any modifications that may be required to eliminate the need to run with administrative privileges.

Previously, when upgrading to the next release, the installer would not remember which components had been selected on the previous install. Starting from this release, the selected components will be retained during upgrades.

Adviser Essential will now install on Windows 2000 Professional. However, ongoing support for this operating system will be limited as Microsoft will be retiring extended support for Windows 2000 Professional in July 2010.

The JCS product suite is now supported under Windows 2003 Server - Terminal Services.

The cashflow solution that seamlessly integrates with Adviser Essential for a confident future.

All JCS products now have built in error reporting to allow detailed analysis of errors to be sent to JCS securely over the Internet to allow for better analysis and quicker resolution of issues.

All JCS products are now installed and updated using the next generation of installer technology. The update manager can be configured to check for and even download the latest updates available on a regular basis.

IFA Professional has been replaced by Adviser Essential providing a fresh new appearance with a faster processing engine and enhanced functionality.

All JCS products have had the database runtimes upgraded to allow for better stability and future support.

Several pages in JCS have been redesigned to be more intuitive and have a cleaner look. These include the diary pages and some of the Fact Find Pages, specifically Attitude to Risk.

All JCS products now have themes applied to the user interface. Only a single theme is distributed at the moment, but it is envisaged that we will be shipping more themes to choose from in the future and even allow users to create their own through a definition file.

A new option has been added to the Client Portfolio Report to allow for the inclusion/exclusion of valuation caveats from providers.

A new profile report template has been included as well as the ability to set the default profile report template to be used. Especially useful for users with custom profile report templates.

If the provider supports Protected Rights valuation splits, JCS will now read them and update the policy. Zurich and Merchant Investors are known to work with this.

All the charts in the Profile Report have been refreshed.

Nucleus Bulk Import

Parmenion Bulk Import

This functionality can only be use in conjunction with help from Tech Support. It allows existing mappings for Skandia cases and funds to be automatically migrated on to the Skandia Investment Solutions (ex Selestia) platform.

The report options for Discontinued Plans now allows the report to be created based on a range of clients.

Canada Life Pension, Bonds and Endowments

All date formatting is now based on the regional settings of the local computer. This brings date formatting within JCS in line with other Windows programs.

If any clients are selected for upload/download but are not viewable by the current user's login details, this will be highlighted in the select clients window.

Previously, if a user tried to value a case including it's fund records, but some of the funds had not been mapped, a warning message would appear and the valuation would fail completely. Now the warning still appears but the total valuation is recorded and completed without updating fund records as long as the case in question has no fund records yet.

For policies, short holdings (negative unit holdings) and overdrawn Cash Balances are now permitted.

The 'Important Notes' page on the Portfolio Report can now be customised for individual firms. To change the wording please contact Technical Support

Change User Name now offers an online instant authorisation of the change request.

Tax Rates, Bands and Allowances updated for Tax Year 2009/10.

An additional page has been added to the Family Protection Needs Analysis Window to allow earned/continued income to be input separately. Previously the only way to separately identify continuing income was to show it as a negative expense, or alternatively the section could be viewed as 'additional income required'. For all clients where this planning has been performed, the income is left blank so that existing figures are not compromised. No attempt has been made to transfer income entered as negative expense to this new section.

New bookmarks added for Mortgages and Advisers: DocClientAdviserFax DocClientAdviserMobile DocClientAdviserPosition DocClientAdviserTelephone DocMortgageInterestRate DocMortgageOutstandingBalance DocMortgagePurpose DocMortgageSecuredOn DocPolicyContributionAdviserBranchName DocPolicyContributionAdviserEmailAddress DocPolicyContributionAdviserFax DocPolicyContributionAdviserMobile DocPolicyContributionAdviserName DocPolicyContributionAdviserNameWithPosn DocPolicyContributionAdviserPosition DocPolicyContributionAdviserTelephone

Salary History associated with Group Pensions is now fully editable.

The vetted list of clients and email addresses from any mailshot can now be exported to Excel for use by an external party or function. Email Addresses have also been added to the the Client(s) Report

The following new features have been added to the Data Import window:
When adding a new client based on imported data, the Address and Sex are also populated when available from the Import file.
Where the name is only available as a single string eg. 'Mr A B Smith', JCS splits out the Title, Initials and Surname which are then populated in JCS
The 'Tree View' can be expanded to show all Nodes, or All Nodes needing attention with a single click
A new button has been added which populates all unmapped clients with '* Add New'. This is useful where Imports are being used to populate the JCS Database
JCS attempts to prepopulate the 'Type' field based on the Product name in the Import New Providers and/or Products can be created directly from the Import window, and suggestions for this are made based on information in the Imported Data
JCS uses existing mapped items within JCS to intelligently suggest appropriate settings for entries which are yet to be mapped Where there is only one option available in a drop JCS automatically preselects it

From the Help menu, it is now possible to link to the bug report page on the JCS website to submit a new bug.

The Data Import window can now accept zipped folders which contain Data files. This feature can be accessed by either dragging a zipped folder onto the window or by opening a zip file through the file open dialog window.

The Data Import window now shows Provider specific icons (where available) when receiving Origo messages

XML Validation assists JCS Technical Support in diagnosing XML valuation errors in responses from Providers.

Added additional Bulk CSV Formats for Standard Life for Bonds and Pension contracts

Added support for Royal Skandia Bulk XML import

Added support for AEGON Scottish Equitable Bulk CSV file Import

Added support for Bulk Origo XML messages (version 1.1) which can be received from any provider and imported. This is in addition to the existing support for Origo Bulk XML Versions 1.0, 1.2 and 2.0

Added support for Clerical Medical Bulk CSV file Import

Added RTV valuations for Prudential Bonds and Pensions

Added Bulk import facilities for AXA Sunlife

Added Bulk import facilities for Standard Life

Added Bulk Import capability from Merchant Investors

An Additional page is now available in the Fact Find, which contains user definable fields. Various different field types are available including drop downs, check boxes, text, date, etc. The 'Additional Details' page is set up from the Global Database maintenance window

In the Dependants Page in the Fact Find a new option has been added. This can positively indicate when a Client has no-one who is dependent on them, as well as indicating that a Client does have Dependants, but has chosen not to disclose them.

Added: The Hartford to contract enquiry services.

Added: Aegon-Scottish Equitable and Skandia Collectives (RTV and Bulk) to contract enquiry services.

Real Time Valuations and Bulk Imports modified to support the Cash Manager Account (CMA)

JCS bookmarks could only be used a maximum of ten times in a document, this has now been enhanced to allow up to 36 instances of the same bookmark,

The office 2007 suite from Microsoft introduced new Ribbon functionality. Full support for this new feature is now included within the JCS Word integration (requires Word 2007).

When an individual RTV is done on a Case which has not already been mapped, the default mapping has been improved to reduce user workload

Added: Scottish Widows Bulk XLS to contract enquiry services.

This new report has been added to allow Advisers to list Mortgages which are clear of their Redemption Penalty dates.

Added: Aegon / Scottish Equitable and Skandia Collectives (RTV and Bulk) to contract enquiry services.

Within Utilities Selection, new functionality has been added to assist with the migration of PEPs, TESSAs and Mini/Maxi ISAs to the new 'Cash' or 'Stocks and Shares' ISAs. Functionality for the old style contracts will remain in JCS for at least 12 months to allow users to migrate over a reasonable time frame.

JCS is now fully supported for use with Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (32 and 64 bit versions).

Tax Rates, Bands and Allowances updated for Tax Year 2008/9.
NB. Due to the revised rules to the lower 10% band, changes have had to be made to the bookmarks on the Income Tax & NI page of the Profile Report. Updated standard pages are included with this release, but any User defined pages using the old Bookmarks will need to be updated to follow the new method. Any old style templates will no longer pick up any values so there is no possibility of producing reports with incorrect values. Please contact Tech Support if you need any help with this.
NB2. JCS will release conversion code to assist with the conversion of existing PEPs and ISA to new style ISAs within the next few days.

The following Document Bookmarks have been added:
   DocAddresseeEmail
   DocClientAdviserInitials
   DocEmailClient
   DocEmailPartner
   DocSignatoryInitials
   DocTelephoneClientsMobile
   DocTelephonePartnersMobile
   DocUserFullName
   DocUserInitials

Added Zurich Financial Services and AXA-Sunlife contract enquiry services.