• Swedish: Finished!!
• Danish: almost Finished!!
• Spanish: almost Finished
• Catalan: almost Finished!!
• Russian: almost Finished
• Ukrainian: almost Finished
• Bulgarian: started
• German: started
• Portuguese: almost Finished
• French: Finished!!
• Polish: started

I know that templates management was working in some cases, but the code is not mature enough to leave it in its current state. We will refine it for the 0.3.

However, if you want to keep it working as before, you can re-activate it by removing the first two lines of the function executeTemplates (function is in line 159, approximately) in the /apps/siwapp/modules/configuration/actions/actions.class.php file. I would not recommend it.

I have uploaded a .zip file with the “default” printing template packed as an external template. Only for the curious.

We are working on 0.3 internals. The main changes:

• The entire data management layer is replaced with Doctrine in order to simplify the application.
• A more flexible template management system.
• More bugs .
• More bug fixes.

One caveat: the data model can vary, and indeed it does. Therefore, I remember that we are in an alpha stage and that in future versions we may regret anything developed, throw it away and start again. No one throw rocks, please .

We’ve focused mainly on the install process. We are aware the former install-through-wiki-and-you’re-on-you-own-buddy method was not what you would call “simple”.

This time we’ve developed an web interface for the install process. We have tried hard to make it as simple as possible, making savings on time and confusion, and we also have taken into account that there are quite a few of you -our brave alpha testers- who does not have more than a cheap shared hosting provider which won’t let you much of an access to the server machine, so we’ve  assumed you’ve got only ftp access to the server and nothing more.

In this version we’ve made a zip file available for download for those of you that use windows.

We’ve also made two new wiki pages: one of them, with instructions on how to switch the page to a debugger-friendly status for those of you who are courageous enough to not only test it, but debug it! The other one is a simple installation guide.

We plan to create several release candidates, as long as bug reports keep coming and we keep (I hope) fixing it. This brings me to the last topic to mention in this post; the community:

Ok, now that’s me talking. My name is Jose Zarate. I’m a developer at MARKHAUS and I’ve been working for quite a while in SIWAPP.

I’ve always heard about the “community”, and how it helps improve software, and all that stuff, but I hadn’t experienced it untill now. I’m completely astonished on the response. It’s not being like playing world of warcraft, ok, but still it’s been a lot of fun to receive tips, bug reports, help, translations from people all around the world! I’m loving this thing, guys! Seriously, the project is being driven by your suggestions and tips, so please, please keep it coming.

Last but not least, we’re still alpha!

Last but not least, please do join us!

The main features that can be seen in this version are:

• Dashboard: the place where you start when you log into the application; it shows you the most recent invoices and their status.
• Payments management: You can add payments to any opened invoice to keep track of its payment status. When you have received payments for the total amount of an invoice its status will be set to closed (fully paid) automatically.
• Invoice creation: of course. You can set an invoice as draft until finished editing it, so that it is not part of the overall calculations of the system until it is specified so. Also, you can set a discount for an invoice item (a product/service), or different taxes (VAT, spanish IVA, …) for different kind of items.
• Invoicing series: Different series can be configured to separate different kind of invoices. If you want a series for your Internet products and another for your Graphic Design services, you can configure two different prefixes (virtually unlimited, really). You could configure, for example, one invoicing series for your Internet Services for one year, and add another one for the next year in the global settings page.
• Search: There are many ways in which we can improve the search with respect to invoices. We are working on it. Currently allows text search in the major fields of invoices, as well as in the invoice item descriptions. You can also filter results by date range, a basic tag system, the invoice status… You search parameters will be remembered until the next search.
• Printable invoices: although it is not fully operational, siwapp has a templating system to allow you to install your own HTML invoice templates. This will provide both the ability of printing invoices directly from the browser, such as generating a PDF file to send by email. It is also possible to send invoices by email.
• Recurring invoices: several invoices need to be created on a periodic basis. With the recurring invoices you can edit an “invoice template” just like you edit & create a regular invoice. Then the system will automatically generate invoices according to the pattern defined by the recurring invoice. And it will do that following the schedule you set for it; every two monhts, once a year, every monday …

In conclusion I have to point out two things. The first is that I have to warn you that testing the application (in its current state) in Internet Explorer can be highly damaging to your mental health (as much as for us to develop for that browser). The second is that any suggestion is welcome, either to improve existing features, or to warn of the existence of errors (I’m sure there are many).

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