In the following pages you may now optionally record a person's pronouns. You may select from sets of common male, female or neutral pronouns, or enter custom pronouns.

• Personal Details (for the Client and Partner)
• Children And Other Dependants
• Other Advisers
• Business Details (for the Main Contact)
• Business Personnel
• Professional Contacts
• Provider Contacts

New bookmarks have been added, so pronouns for the Client and Partner may be inserted into Standard Documents. Please refer to the help before using this feature.

A new window has been added to assist in choosing an amount for Emergency Funds. This page can be accessed via the following pages:

• Family Protection Needs Analysis
• Serious Illness or Disability Needs Analysis
• Long Term Care Needs Analysis

There has also been a correction to the "Emergency funds recommended" and "Recommended minimum emergency fund" figures quoted in the Financial Position section of the Profile Report. They were previously calculated from 3 months of gross total current expenditure, but have now been corrected to be 3 months of net total current expenditure.

When adding a new Personal or Business Client you can now select an Adviser Name for them. This option is available even if the user does not have the Change Clients' Adviser permission.

Bookmarks for tax rates and allowance (for the current and previous tax years) have been added for use in Standard Documents. Please refer to the help on Standard Document Bookmarks for a full list of all the new bookmarks.

Excel exports of the "JCS Standard" version of the Chronological New Business Register now includes the following client/case details split into separate fields:

• Client Name
• Business or Personal Client
• Client Code
• Providers Name
• Product Name
• Product Type
• Policy Number
• Policy Holder Name

The Switch Business filter has been improved, so records with any combination of Switched Business selections can be included in the report.

The "Client(s) With Portfolio Records" report has been renamed "Client Portfolio Records" and various enhancements have been made so this report can be used for data analysis. Improvements include:

• A new option to include/exclude "Extra Policy Details" has been added. Excluding the details (the new default) makes the report generation considerably faster.
• Various new grouping and sorting options have been added, as well as a new Summarised version of the report. The total number of portfolio records found and the total value of records in each group is now shown.
• The report can show records for both Personal and Business Clients simultaneously.
• It is now possible to filter the report by any number of selected Client Codes.
• Exporting the detailed version of the report to Excel will now show extra details, such as the Client Code and Adviser Name.
• The report now supports Saved Report Options

There have been various enhancements to the Funds Under Management report, including:

• The report may now be grouped by Fund Name, or without any grouping applied
• The fund details may now be sorted in various ways
• The Fund Provider Name and Fund Name details will now always appear as separate columns in the Excel output
• New options to filter the records based on text contained in the Fund Provider Name and Fund Names and have been added
• The report will now show how many of each group using the funds in question is found
• The Last Valued Date will now be formatted in a consistent way, with any time parts stripped out

Three new bookmarks, for use in Standard Documents, have been added, which can be used to insert a list of a client's portfolio records, sub totals and total values into a document. The new bookmarks are:

• DocPolicies_Admin
• DocPolicies_AdminExclGeneral
• DocPolicies_NonAdminProperty
• DocPolicies_SubTotal
• DocPolicies_SubTotal_Hidden
• DocPolicies_Total
• DocPolicies_Total_Hidden

Please refer to the help on Standard Document Bookmarks for a full explanation on how to use these bookmarks. If you would like more bookmarks like these, please contact Tech Support.

Is is now possible bulk add multiple records to the Documents Register, all linking to an external file. This is done via Database Search > Mailshot Clients. This "mailshot" has a similar effect to individually creating Document Register entires linking to an external file. No new Word documents or other files are created in this procedure.

Tax and National Insurance rates, bands and allowances have been updated for Tax Year 2024/25.
The new Scottish "Advanced" tax rate band has been added and the "Additional Rate" has been renamed "Top Rate".

The Client Accounts reports now allows you to save frequently used report options.
When the "Include Balances Brought Forward" option is un-ticked, Opening Balance transactions will no longer be excluded. This is consistent to how this option works when filtering the transactions in the Client Accounts page.
When using the grouping options, if multiple client records are included, each group and the grand totals will now appear on separate pages.

In the Initial Details / Data Protection report, if the Services Agreement Ceased Date is included, the Services Agreement Ceased Reason will now also be shown.

A number of improvements have been made to make it easier to bulk update the Salary History and scheme member records of business personnel, recalculating benefits and contributions where necessary.

• The Business Personnel window has a new button to open the Update Scheme Member Records page, from where it is now possible to update the member records of all the current personnel, recalculating benefits and contributions using their most recent Salary History.
• When using the Personnel Import Template (Excel sheet) to update personnel records, there is now a new option to "Update Scheme Member Records", to insert the Qualifying Salary into the scheme member records of the listed personnel.
• The Scheme Members window now has extra columns to show the Qualifying Salary and Benefit details. When viewing members of a group pension scheme, the Valuation, Value Date and Member/Employer Contribution % of Salary figures will also be shown. Note - this page is resizable and may be stretched wide enough so all these columns can be viewed simultaneously.

The help documentation for Salary History and Update Scheme Member Records pages, and the Personnel/Group Scheme Import Templates has been updated. If you use these features, it is recommended you re-read this help to make sure you are making the most of them. As always, please call Tech Support if you have any queries.

The Commission/Fees Receipts Ledger report now allows you to save frequently used report options.
This report will now also show details of the Client Name, Client Number and Case Number without having to export to Excel. When opening the report option page, if a client is open you will be asked if you’d like to set the client filter to this client.

Transact have added personally identifiable information (PII) about the policy holder, including client name and date of birth, to their Contract Enquiry data feeds for 31 days after a Wrapper is created. This allows JCS to create the client, or makes it much easier to map the policy to an existing client, as applicable.
We have added support for this new data feed.

The latest AJ Bell Investcentre valuation file format is now supported.

In the Children And Other Dependants page, the following have been added to the dropdown list of Relationship options:

• Son-In-Law
• Daughter-In-Law
• Brother
• Sister
• Partner

After selecting one of the options in this list, the Surname, Sex and other fields may be automatically completed if a reasonable assumption can be made.
Note - If you want to enter a Relationship that does not appear in the list, you may type anything you like in this field.

The Autumn statement 2023 reduced the Class 1 NIC contribution rate from 12% to 10% with effect from 01 January 2024. The effective rate for the Tax Year 2023/24 for annual income spread over the year is therefore 12% * 9/12 + 3/12 * 10% = 11.5%.

Support has been added for the a new style of electronic commission file from M&G Wealth (previously Ascentric Sonata), which first appeared in November 2023.

Support has been added for the Fee Types: "Ongoing Adviser Charge Fixed" and "Ongoing Adviser Charge Percentage", with both these types of payments now being treated as Ongoing Adviser Charges, rather than being sent to Suspended Commission.
Unrecognised payment types from M&G Wealth (formally Ascentric Sonata) and Nucleus, which are sent to Suspended Commission, will now have the original payment type shown in the Notes field, to help decide what should be done with the payment.

The Fact Find Print Report (for both personal and business clients) now allows you to save frequently used report options.
This update also fixes a potential "no current record" error when including the Occupation, Income and Outgoings report.

The Portfolio Report now allows you to save frequently used report options, which can be quickly loaded from the report options page. Please refer to the help topic on "Saved Report Options" to learn more about this feature.
We intend to add Saved Report Options to other reports, such as the Print Fact Find. If there is a particular report you would like to enable this feature for, please let us know by contacting Tech Support.

The following Expenditure categories have been added to "Medical Expenses":

• Case Management
• Care and Support Assessments
• Doctors and Consultants
• Therapies

"Dentist, Optician and Other Practitioners" has also been renamed to "Dentist, Optician and Routine Medicals".

In "Leisure, Holidays and Entertainment" the following category has been added:

• Pets (Food, Insurance, Vet Fees etc)

The JCS "Standard" and "Ocean" Profile Report templates have been updated to include the new categories. Note - if you wish to include the new categories in your custom templates, you will have to manually update them, inserting bookmarks for the new categories.

When performing a Real Time Valuation, if a valuation for a given policy was not found in a bulk valuation file you would not be notified. Now a list of Policy Numbers not found in a Bulk Valuation file will be shown.

In the Contribution History and Withdrawal History pages, it is now possible to enter regular transfers, with frequencies of Monthly, Quarterly, Half Yearly and Annually. It is also possible to set up transfers between policies within a client's portfolio. Please refer to the help topic "Transfer Between Policies" for more information.

When using Contribution History for a policy, the contribution figures on the main policy page will now automatically update to show a representation of the current state of contributions as specified in the Contribution History records. For example, if all regular contributions are ceased, the contributions on the main policy page will be automatically cleared, ensuring the policy's contributions display correctly in the Portfolio Report.
This update also includes other improvements to ensure Contribution History records are used in a consistent way in calculations for:

• Expenditure
• Annualised Growth Estimates
• What If? > Planning For Retirement
• Contributions and Withdrawals Report

When updating to this version of JCS, all policies in your dataset will be checked to see if the contribution details on the main policy pages match the current state of contributions as specified in their Contribution History records. If there is a discrepancy the policy will be flagged as requiring review. In order to resolve you must opt to either use or ignore the Contribution History records.
Your data will not be changed in this update, and while the Contribution History records for a policy is under review, Expenditure, Annualised Growth Estimates and other calculations using these records will continue to work as in previous versions of JCS. Until these policies are reviewed, however, you will not be able to edit their contribution details. After updating, please refer to the help text for details on how to review your policy contributions.

Some minor errors in JCS will now allow you to resume working without having to shutdown JCS.

The Repair & Compact facility has been improved, so repairing a damaged JCSAdmin.mdb is now more likely to be successful on the first attempt.

Tax Rates, Bands and Allowances have been updated for Tax Year 2023/24.

The Pension Lifetime Allowance has been suspended in legislation. The expectation is that it will become permanent in 2024 but this is to be confirmed. In the Tax Allowances page, the options for the Lifetime Allowance have been retained but the Effective Lifetime Allowance for 2023/24 will always be "n/a". Planning For Retirement calculations performed in Tax Year 2023/24 and onwards will not report any Lifetime Allowance charges.

Support has been added to calculate the P11d benefits for Diesel RDE2 compliant cars.

National Insurance rates for Tax Year 2022/23 were changed in November 2022, and these have also been updated in JCS for 2022/23 Tax Year. Please refer to the help for "National Insurance Contributions" for more details.

The latest Standard Life Wrap valuation file format is now supported.

The latest Transact Electronic Commission file format is now supported.

The Uncrystallised / Crystallised Value fields have been added to drawdown pensions.
For all pension types, a new option: "This Pension Is Fully Crystallised" has also been added. When this is ticked, the Crystallised Value will be automatically set to equal the Total Current Value of the policy.
If you would like assistance updating a large number of pensions to use the "This Pension Is Fully Crystallised" option, please contact Tech Support.

A new field has been added to pension schemes to enter their Crystallised Value. This may be used to specify how much of the pension’s Total Current Value has been crystallised. When a figure is input here, the pension’s Uncrystallised Value will be automatically calculated by subtracting the Crystallised Value from the Total Current Value.
Some product provider’s valuation files contain details of Crystallised Values, which will be used to automatically insert the figures when updating pension values via Contract Enquiry.

JCS Help documentation has been updated to a new format, with a more readable theme. It is still opened in the same way (by clicking the help buttons in JCS windows, or by pressing "F1") but will now open in your web browser, instead of the "JCS Help" application. In order to use the help you will now require access to the internet.
The new help format will allow us to update it more easily, and in the coming months we intend to update and improve many out-dated help articles.
To learn about using the new help, please refer to the "Using JCS Help" topic in "Getting Started".

The Portfolio Report has a new option to include policy Valuation Dates. By default, this option is ticked. Un-ticking it will hide the valuation dates of all policy types.
If you would like this option to be un-ticked by default, then please contact Tech Support.

After performing a Database Search and opting to "View Portfolio Records", the Client Name of each record will now be shown in the first column. This column may be used to sort the search results by Client Surname, Forenames.

The Contributions and Withdrawals report has been enhanced, so any combination of the following record types may be included or excluded:

• Contributions and Transfers In
• Cash Withdrawals, UFPLS, PCLS and Transfers Out
• Interest, Dividends/Yield and Rental Income
• Adviser Charges

In the Additional Details window, it is now possible to add links to files, folders or webpages. It is also possible to add Rich Text fields, which may contain fully formatted text, including links.
The new field types are added in the usual way via the Global Data > User Fields (Additional Details) window. So new fields may be more easily inserted anywhere on the page, they are now added under the currently selected Field Name, rather than at the foot of the page.

The Client Portfolio Report now has options to include any Non-Administered (Financial Planning only) policy type. (Previously, the only Non-Administered policies which could be included were Interest Bearing Accounts and Property and Other Assets.). When the report options window is opened, by default, the same policies will be included as in previous versions of JCS.

There have been various other minor fixes and improvements to this report, including:

Report Options

• There is a new option to include or exclude the Policy Details (the description of each policy)
• The options when using the report after a Database Search have been improved and clarified
• The "Include Cases With Regular Contributions" option (which was ticked by default and had no effect when ticked) has been removed

Summary Totals

• When restricting the report to limited policy types, the Summary Totals will now only include policies listed in the report details
• The Investments, Savings and Cash section may now include Annuity values
• The Protection section will now include Family Income Benefits for Life policies, where the Life Assured is a child
• When calculating Death Benefits, if the Sum Assured is higher than the Minimum Death Benefit and Fund Value, then the Sum Assured will be used
• The Description text will no longer be cut off
• Critical Illness and Life policy benefits for business clients are now split into two separate rows

Policy Details

• Annuity descriptions, which incorrectly said "monthly in" instead of "monthly", have been fixed
• Various other issues with incorrect punctuation used for policy descriptions have been fixed
• To be consistent with other policy types, Pension descriptions will no longer include the phrase "no waiver of premium" if the pension's Waiver of Premium field is set to "No". Descriptions for pensions will still include the phrase "waiver of premium" if this field has been set to "Yes".

The Product Providers page now shows details of which cases providers are used in. Providers may now also be archived, which prevents them from being used when adding new cases, but keeps their address, contact and fund name details intact. A new button has been added, to quickly find all unused providers and to bulk delete or archive them.
The Product Providers reports Category and Provider Name filters were not working but these have now been fixed.

Tax Rates, Bands and Allowances have been updated for Tax Year 2022/23.

The Contributions and Withdrawals report has a new filter for Sold By This Agency. By default the report will only include policies where the Sold By This Agency is set to "Yes", "Transferred" or is unspecified. Contribution History records where the Advice Given is "Not Sold By This Agency" will also be excluded.
Please refer to the help text for more details and other filter options.

Annualised growth estimates will now use the Case Value Date of the policy, instead of assuming that the last valuation is correct at the current date.
For Section 32 Pensions, if Contribution History records are not used and the Transfer Date is different to the policy Commenced/Joined Date, then the Transfer Date will be used when calculating the Annualised Growth.
The Case Value Date will now be used in the Portfolio Report, to show when the policy was last valued for all relevant policies (not just Interest Bearing Accounts).
Annualised growth estimates for Interest Bearing Accounts, Peer to Peer Loans and Structured Deposit Plans will no longer be excluded from the Portfolio Report.
Note - the Portfolio Report "Report Date" has no bearing on growth estimates.

New options for "Step Grandson" and "Step Granddaughter" have been added to the Relationship dropdown in the Children And Other Dependants page.
In the Family Protection Needs Analysis page, when calculating if a client is eligible for the higher rate of Income Bereavement Support Payments, JCS may now also accept dependant Grandchildren and Step Grandchildren. Please refer to the help text for "Include Bereavement Support Payments".

This new report calculates total contributions to and withdrawals from administered policies and investments.
The Contributions and Withdrawals between any date range (up until the current date) may be calculated and grouped in various ways.
There are options to include or exclude Interest, Dividends/Yield and Rental Income from the Withdrawal figures and you may also include or exclude Adviser Charges.

When adding a new Client you can now also enter the Partner's Forenames and Surname. By entering a Partner Surname while adding the Client, all Partner fields (e.g. those on the Data Protection page) are immediately available to fill in.

The following fields have been added to the Financial Planning versions of these policies:

• Unit Trusts - Maturity Date and Paid Up Date
• Life - Employer Contributions
• Critical Illness - Employer Contributions and Paid Up Date
• Health Care - Left Date
• Income Protection - Left Date

Various new Grouping and Sorting options have been added to the Commission/Fee Receipts Ledger report. There are now both Main and Sub Grouping options, with new options to group by Client's Adviser, Product Name and Contribution Frequency.
The Excel output of the Detailed report now contains extra details of the Client Name, Client Type, Client Code, Adviser and Contributions. It is now also possible to filter the report by more than one Client Code at a time

We have made some internal changes to Database Maintenance, which will make it easier for us to make improvements to Database Maintenance going forward.
Please note, if you have the following setup, you will need to make some changes as described:

• Scheduled Repair and Compact
The way scheduled periodic Repair and Compacts are configured has changed. If you had a schedule set up prior to JCS Version 31.103.05, then in order for it to continue to run, you will need to update the schedule. Please refer to JCS Help > Database Maintenance > Scheduled Repair and Compact > Scheduled Repair and Compact Update.
• Database Maintenance User Shortcuts
Any shortcuts to Database Maintenance you have made (e.g. on your desktop or pinned to the taskbar) will no longer work. The "Database Maintenance" application in the start menu has been updated and you can pin it back to the taskbar, or re-create new shortcuts from it.

Transact are removing personally identifiable information (PII) about the policy holder, including Client name and date of birth, from their Contract Enquiry data feeds.
We have added support for this new data feed, as Transact requires us (and all other back office software suppliers) to move over to it.

Due to their decision to withdraw from the UK Wealth Management market, MetLife are ending support for Real Time Valuations, with effect from 9 October 2021. From that point it will no longer be possible to perform the valuations automatically. This decision impacts all back office software suppliers, not just JCS.
To reduce the impact on our users as much as possible, we have added support for the MetLife "BULK VALUATIONS" file. This file can be manually downloaded from the MetLife Extranet, and imported into JCS via the Data Import page.
As this file was not designed to be used to perform electronic valuations, it is missing some information, which causes the following shortcomings:

• Fund Level Valuations are not available
The file does not contain enough information to provide fund level valuations. This affects companies with their "EDI > Contract Enquiry will update" preference set to "Policy Values AND Funds". For firms with this setting, the first time you value policies using the bulk file, JCS will remove all fund records, and automatically generate a transaction within the fund transaction history to show a Decrease of all fund units.

• No Product Names are provided
As the file does not contain Product/Plan names, the Product Type is used in its place. This leads to JCS products named "ISA"; "Bond"; "Pension" etc.

There is a new option in the Repair & Compact or Rebuild databases window to Fix Indexes. This can be used if any missing indexes are found and is considerably quicker than performing a full database Repair & Compact or Rebuild.

JCS is licensed on a concurrent user basis i.e. your licence specifies the maximum number of users who are allowed to be logged in at the same time, irrespective of how many users are set up to be able to log in to the system.
If you want to make sure that a subset of your staff will always be able to log in, you can now set them as Guaranteed Log In users. Granting a user Guaranteed Log In pre-allocates one of your concurrent user licences to them. No one else can use this Concurrent User licence, meaning it is always available to the user with Guaranteed Log In set.

When exporting a report to Excel, the report will now be saved as an Excel 2007/2010 Workbook (.xlsx) as opposed to the previous Excel 97/2003 Workbook (.xls).
If for some reason you prefer to use the old Excel file format, please contact Tech Support.

Several new features have been added to the Expenditure window:

• It is now possible to record the Priority (Essential, Discretionary, Luxury) for each expense category.
• Expense figures may be added for the year following retirement of the Client and Partner. These figures are available for use when selecting expenses to use for the What If? calculators.
• There is a new option to count policy contributions in the Calendar Year (as oppose to the Tax Year) when calculating various expense figures.
• Within each summary expenditure category, there are now three expense categories where a custom description may be specified.
• A new standard category, "Residential/Nursing Home Fees", has been added to Medical Expenses.
• It is possible to make reports, grouped by Category or Priority, directly from the Expenditure window.
• A new set of totals figures, Income Remaining After all Expenditure, (calculated from Total Income minus Total Expenditure) has been added to the Expenditure and Income windows.
• The Expenditure window now has a Notes field. This supports formatted text, including links to documents or webpages.

There have been some changes to how contributions to mortgage/loans are counted for expenditure:

• Mortgage/Loans that have a type of "Credit Card" or "Store Card" will now appear in the "Credit and Store Cards" expenses category.
• Mortgage/Loans that have a type of "Student Loan" will now appear in "HP and Personal Loans" expenses.
• Mortgage/Loans that have a type of "Unknown" will now be excluded from expenses.

In the Liabilities window, if there are no figures entered in the "Mortgage or Loans" details section, it is now possible to enter a summary value in that category.
There have also been some changes to how balances outstanding in mortgage/loans are counted in liabilities:

• Mortgage/Loans that have a type of "Credit Card" or "Store Card" will now appear in the "Credit or Store Cards" liabilities category. A list of these policies can be seen by clicking the new Details button.
• Mortgage/Loans that have a Type of "Student Loan" will now appear in "Personal Loans Balance or Remaining Payments".
• Mortgage/Loans that have a Type of "Unknown" will now be excluded from liabilities.

The Client History window has been updated to included the client's Service Agreement Start and Ceased dates.

In the Enter Commission/Fees Received window, policies can now be filtered by Client Number and Case Number.

When a Phone or Letter Task is linked to a policy, when you select a Provider to write to or telephone, the Provider Contact page will now automatically default to the policy's Provider.

In the Task List report, Tasks and Workflows linked to a policy will now show the Policy Holder Name, as it appears in the linked policy details page.

Tax Rates, Bands and Allowances have been updated for Tax Year 2021/22.

In the Disbursements window, it is now possible to disburse renewal commission at a different percentage rate to initial commission.

When creating pensions, from Contract Enquiry or Real Time Valuations, they will now have their Sub-Type set if the policies name contains the following:

• Uncrystallised > Personal Pension
• Crystallised > Drawdown

This is especially useful when processing Old Mutual Wealth/Quilter valuations.

In the Adviser Names window you may now record the FCA Individual Reference Number (IRN) for each adviser.

When the Clients Report is exported to Excel, it will now include the Client and Partner's National Insurance Numbers.

Following ReAssure's acquisition of Legal & General, support has been added for ReAssure Electronic Commission files.

The Pay Advisers/Introducers Report will now show policy details for disbursements created against Fees or Regular Fees, whenever the "Fee Relates To" field has has been completed.

The Profile Report Definition Notes have been moved to the Report Definition Management window, where they can be edited. These notes will be shown (read-only) in the Create Profile Report window when a Report Definition to Use is selected.
The Summarised version of the JCS Joint Report (Ocean) had an incorrect bookmark in the Financial Position -Expenditure table totals. This has also been fixed.

The Old Mutual Wealth (new platform) connection can now be used for Real Time Valuations of single policies, rather than having to perform a Bulk Valuation of all policies.

A new tool has been added to Database Maintenance to convert Microsoft Snapshot files in the Documents Register to the more widely supported PDF format.

Improvements have been made to the way Electronic Commission statement processing chooses which Adviser Charge Collection Schedule or Commission record payments are posted to.
Records which are definitely active will be used in preference to those which have recently ceased. When there is no better option, receipts may still be posted to Adviser Charge Collection Schedule or Commission records which have ceased up to 6 weeks prior to the payment receipt.

Users with a Read-Only licence may now make changes in the User/Group Management and User Preferences windows (if their normal user permissions allow).

When tabbing into any Notes field (or when clicking to the right of the field, where the vertical scroll bar appears) the text will no longer be automatically selected. This change is intended to reduce the chances of accidentally overwriting all the text in the field.
It is still possible to quickly select all the text in any text field by typing Ctrl + A.

In the Portfolio Summary window, the "Product Name" column has been renamed "Product/Share Name". For Equities (BES, EIS, EZT, Gilt, Investment Trust, Share, VCT) this column will now show Share Details instead of repeating the Product Type.

In Tasks, which are part of a Workflow, the Workflow Summary Notes are now visible in the Task Editor window. These notes are shared between all Tasks which belong to the same Workflow.
In the Task List, the Workflow Summary notes field is hidden by default but can be shown by ticking the "Also show Workflow Summary Notes" checkbox, which appears whenever a Workflow Task is selected.

If a business client is open in JCS, the Ctlr + W hotkey can now be used to pass the Company Name and Head Office address details into Watermark Volume.

In JCS and Database Maintenance, it is now possible to see a list of all users currently logged into JCS.
In JCS this is accessed via Utilities > User/Groups > Current Users.
In Database Maintenance it is accessed via the main Database Maintenance menu window. From here there is also an option to prevent users logging into JCS whilst Database Maintenance is in use.

Previously, when separating a client and partner, Client Notes would always be kept with the existing client. Now, there are options to keep the notes with the existing client, move to the new client or duplicate to both clients. This option only affects notes which are not linked to a policy.

Any Standalone Task may now be used to create a Project, with the Task becoming the first Task in the Project.

The Task List window now shows Linked Policy details in the main list. To allow more room for these details, the Task List window may be stretched horizontally.
It is also now possible to sort records in the Task List by Linked Policy.

A button has been added to the Workflow Editor that will renumber the Order of all Tasks of a Workflow to 10, 20, 30 etc. The "Proceed to Task Order" options will be automatically updated to the new Task Order numbers.

In the Workflow Editor, there is a new option for the Task Owner: "Workflow Initiator". When this option is used, the Task Owner will be set to the user who started the Workflow.

The Task List can now be filtered to show only tasks belonging to clients of a specific adviser.

It is now possible to update the Client, Policy or Contribution History records a Workflow is linked to after it has been started. This may be useful, for example, when the Workflow cannot be linked to a policy when it is started because the policy is not added to JCS until a later stage in the Workflow.

Workflows in the Workflow Editor Page can now be sorted in various ways.

When starting a Workflow, it is now possible to enter notes, which will appear (and can be edited) in the Workflow Summary window.

This release of JCS includes an important upgrade to your JCS databases, to help improve reliability and performance. The upgrade will be performed automatically when a user starts JCS and should take no more than a few minutes to complete.

It is now possible to group the Funds Under Management report by Client's Adviser.

A new window, Reference Lookup, which can be accessed via Reports/Searches > Reference Lookup (or by typing Ctrl+J) has been added. This window can be used to search for Task Reference Codes (which you may quote in correspondence to Clients, Providers etc.). If a Reference Code is recognised, the corresponding Task, linked Client, Policy or Contribution History record can be opened directly from the Reference Lookup window.
Support for other Reference Code types, to track correspondence related to other types of records in JCS, will be added in future releases.

In the Workflow Editor window, if the selected Workflow contains a Sub Workflow, and you double-click on the Workflow Name field, you will jump to this record, and the Workflow will be selected in the top list.

In the Task List and the Documents Register, if a record is linked to a Client, the Client's current adviser will now be shown.

In the Task List and Documents Register, when using the Policy filter, all non-archived policies will be listed first. A similar change has been made in the Task Editor and Start a Workflow windows, when selecting which policy to link records to.

The Workflow Editor window can now be resized.

Tax Rates, Bands and Allowances have been updated for Tax Year 2020/21.

The Repair & Compact or Rebuild Databases window now displays extra information about each database, such as its file size, location and details of any problems, such as missing indexes.

There is a new option on the personal Fact Find report to include non-Administered Property and Other Assets.

In the Long Term Care Provision window, there is a new button which links to the Power of Attorney window. The number of Power of Attorney records, where the Donor is the Client and Partner, is also now shown.

It is now possible to export a policy's fund details into a format compatible with O&M Systems' "Smart Paste" feature. This is accessed via Data Import/Export > Fund Export > O&M Systems. After selecting a policy, Excel will open with a list of the policy's funds and with the ISIN codes and number of units automatically selected, ready to paste into the O&M Systems web page.

It is now possible to include details of General Business policies to the Portfolio Summary report. Note, by default, General Business policies will not be included in this report.

The Scheduled Start and Completion Due Dates of Tasks and Workflows are now highlighted in green/amber/red to indicate if they are Ahead, On or Behind schedule.
Task Priorities are also highlighted in magenta for "Very Urgent", purple for "Urgent" and pale blue for "Not Urgent" and "When Possible".

This release includes a major upgrade to Diary Reminders (which have been converted to "Tasks") and includes support for Workflows.
Workflows are a powerful new feature, which can be used to help standardise your work processes, to make sure staff do not forget to complete essential tasks and that these tasks are performed in the correct order.
Please refer to the help text under the "Workflow and Compliance" section to learn more.

The “User Management” window has been renamed “User/Group Management”. From here it is possible to create a new type of record: Groups.
JCS Users can be assigned to any number of Groups. Both Users and Groups can be used as the “Task Owner” of Tasks.
In the Task List it is possible to quickly find Tasks for any User or Group, Tasks for all the Groups a specific User belongs to, or Tasks for all Users who belong to a specific Group.

Ctrl+A's functionality has been changed to align with other Windows applications. It now selects all text in an active text field.
The Task List (which replaces the Action Diary Reminders page) can now be opened with F7.

Diary Reminder Schedules have been converted to 'Projects' - a pre-defined sequence of Tasks, which must be completed in sequence.
Projects work the same way as Diary Reminder Schedules, but, unlike Diary Reminder Schedules, when a Task in a Project is completed, it is not removed from the Project.

Workflow Templates Details and Workflow Task Details/Instructions can be formatted as rich text. This means the Font, Size, Colour and more can be set by the user. In addition these fields can contain links to websites or files outside of JCS. Please refer to the help text for more details of this feature.

The JCS Database Maintenance Backup and Restore utility has been redesigned and includes the following enhancements:

• Backups can now be saved in any location.
• You can now optionally backup externally linked documents.
• Backups larger than 2 GB are now supported.

The Repair and Compact utility in JCS Database Maintenance now creates automated backups of the dataset before Repair and Compact, Rebuild, or Fix Permissions operations. If, for any reason, the operation fails, the backup will be automatically restored.

Please Note
To ensure JCS has sufficient space for the JCS Automated Backups folder, it is recommended the drive used for the JCS database files (JCSWI.mdb, JCSADMIN.mdb, JCSPROF.mdb, JCSComm.mdb and JCSPASS.mdb) has at least 3 times the total size of these files available. For most JCS users, 15GB disk space will provide ample room for JCS Automated Backups.

Please refer to the help text for more details of the automated backups feature.

In the Children And Other Dependants window, new fields have been added to record the dependant's Title and Preferred Name. These fields will be used to populate the following bookmarks when creating letters addressed to dependants:

• DocAddressee
• DocAddresseePreferredName
• DocFormalNameDefault

A new button has been added to the Global Data - Products window which will delete any unused Products in the list.

A Policy's Paid Up or Left Scheme date will now be displayed in the following reports:

• Portfolio Report
• Clients With Portfolio
• Diary Portfolio Records with Anniversaries
• Diary Portfolio Records Maturing

The Client List Report will now display if a Client or Partner is deceased in a note under their names.

You can now export the selected user documents from the Documents Register. Please refer to the help text for more details.

A new payment type "Adviser Compensation", which Parmenion started using in October 2019, will now be accepted by JCS and posted to Suspended Commission. From here the payment can be manully allocated as the correct type.

When grouping by Client Name and exporting this report to Excel, the Client Number, Client Code and Adviser Name are now included.

The following bookmarks are now available:

• DocStatePensionAgeClient - The age a client can receive a state pension
• DocStatePensionDateClient - The date a client can receive a state pension
• DocStatePensionAgePartner - The age a partner can receive a state pension
• DocStatePensionDatePartner - The date a partner can receive a state pension
• DocClientCode - The Client Code, as shown in the Initial Details Page

Support has been added for the new Fidelity valuation file format expected to go live on 11 November 2019. The new valuation will include suspended buy and sell units. This will mean valuations will match the value displayed on Fidelity's website while a buy or sell is ongoing.

When creating a Profile Report you can now Override Client Priorities. If this option is selected, all sections of the Profile Report will be included regardless of the Client or Partner’s priorities.

When opening/searching for a client or case, JCS now indicates if a client is downloaded. This helps avoid making changes to Fact Find pages and Cases which cannot be saved.

You can now filter the Documents Register to documents sent to Children and Dependants.

You can now record information about E-Cigarettes/Vaping in the Fact Find - Health and Habits page.

When creating a Profile Report you can now Override Client Priorities. If this option is selected all sections of the Profile Report will be included regardless of the Client or Partner’s priorities.

The Client Production Summary report can now filter records to clients with any combination of Client Codes.
When the report is exported to Excel, it now also includes a more detailed breakdown of Fee types and Adviser/Service Charge Receipt types.

The Documents Register Filter page now shows the current Client, Policy, Contribution History, Product Provider and Professional Contact filters. These filters can all be modified without the need to close and reopen the Documents Register.
The Documents Register now also shows if the selected document is linked to a Contribution History record and allows this link to be amended, if necessary.

Both the Planning for Retirement and the Retirement section of the Profile Report previously took a simple approach to calculating additional funds required at retirement when a deferred pension income was available.
The calculations have been enhanced to calculate the funds required to fill the shortfall during a temporary period following retirement, as opposed to the previous calculation which assumed any shortfall would be provided only by a life annuity.

The "Strictly Confidential" notice in Fact Find reports is now customisable via User Preferences > Client's Accounts, Reports > Report Notes. The default text for the other fields has also been changed to be GDPR compliant.

The Fees & Expenses report may now be filtered using any combination of Client Codes.

The File Copy prints of administered policies now include a summary of Advisor Charge Collection Schedules.

There is a new way of handling Standard Life Wrap files within JCS. Instead of performing a bulk valuation with the Standard Life Wrap file, you can now store a file to be used to value individual cases. If you have a lot of policies with Standard Life Wrap this will be much quicker.
Processing Standard Life Wrap files will now also be quicker in all cases.

The Detailed version of the Business Production report now has an option to Group By the client's adviser or the adviser who wrote/issued the business.

This report has new filter options, including Client Type and the ability to exclude clients where all the subtotals are £0.00.
The export to Excel has also been enhanced to include extra client details and a split of Commission Receipts into Initial, Renewal and Fund Based commission.

Standard Document Templates can now be set as Compliance Related. Any document created from a Compliance Related template will, by default, also be Compliance Related.

The Personal Details page now shows the Client/Partner State Pension Age/Date. This is for information only. Whatever Retirement Age/Date is entered will still be used for Planning For Retirement Calculations.

The Business Production Report now shows the Client's Adviser and the Business Written By Adviser.

Database Maintenance can now be used to schedule a Repair and Compact to be run automatically outside of office hours. To read more about this see Database Maintenance help.

JCS now implements changes to Tax Rates and Bands for 2019/20. This Includes Scottish and Welsh rates as well as England/Northern Ireland.

This new report, found under JCS Reports > Commission/Production, gives a summary of the financial value of clients to your practice. It shows a summary of Sales Ledger and Time/WIP Ledger transactions alongside Commission Receipts and Disbursement Payments, relating to any client, within a specified date range.
It can show figures for individual clients, or summary total figures for all clients of an adviser or all clients with a particular client code.
New filter options have also been added to the Disbursement Ledger Report, which can be used to show all payments arising from a particular client or group of clients within the specified date range.

Over the past few months the Development team have been working on a major upgrade to JCS, required to integrate with the latest Microsoft Office features and security updates. JCS also has a new look and feel, consistent with current Microsoft Office theming, a new interface for navigating around the software, and some other useful new features.

The dropdown toolbars at the top of the main JCS window have been replaced with a modern ribbon interface, which will be familiar to users of Microsoft Office applications. Links to the various JCS features are no longer hidden away in drop down menus and can now all be easily accessed within a couple of clicks of the ribbon.
The ribbon has been sub divided into several tabs, with the Home tab providing shortcuts to the most frequently used areas of JCS including:

• Client Fact Find & Portfolio
• What If? Calculators
• Client Accounts
• Diary Reminders
• Documents and Mailshots

Other tabs on the ribbon have links to less frequently used pages, such as the Global Data and Commission pages. The File tab provides links to User Preferences, as well as information about your JCS licence and which version of the software you have installed.

Another important change is that there is no longer any need to switch between “Administration” and “Financial Planning” modes. The What If? Calculators are always available on the Home tab of the ribbon and in the Choose Fact Find Page window you can now flip between “Administration View” and “Financial Planning View”. From here you can pick from the Fact Find pages which were available in the old modes. You will find it is no longer necessary to close Administered policy pages in order to view the Financial Planning policy pages, and vice versa.

In the Data Import page, Policy Mapping section, clients would only be suggested based on NI number and DOB where supplied by Providers.
Now client suggestions will also be made based on matching policies found in JCS, based on Policy Number and existing mappings. This allows Client suggestions to be made across all Providers.

In the Fund Based Renewal Disbursements page, there is a new option to automatically generate an invoice entry upon receipt of client rebates. If this option is selected, then an 'Ongoing Charge' transaction will be automatically created to match each commission rebate entered into Client Accounts.

This new option in the User Preferences page can be used to help safeguard against accidentally overwriting data.
When this option is turned on, if JCS detects changes have been made to a page, you will be asked to confirm before the changes are saved to the database. This option applies to all client Fact Find, Financial Planning and Administered Portfolio pages, as well as the Global Data pages.

From the Print Preview tab on the ribbon, it is now possible to export any report to Excel, Text File, Word or PDF. You may also send reports as Email attachments in any of these formats.
When you export a report, it will by default be saved as "RptTemp…." in the new "ExportedReports" folder. To save the report in a different location, you may still use the Save As option in the application which opens the report.

The Fact Find report may now be exported to PDF.
When choosing a filename for the export, you may choose from various filename text templates, such as "[yyyy-mm-dd]" or "[Client Surname]". The parts of text in square brackets will be automatically replaced with the appropriate data when the report is exported. Please refer to the Print Fact Find Report help text for more information on this feature.

In order to improve the stability and usability of the Personal Fact Find report, it has been split into 3 sections. Each section may be previewed separately. When printing the report, JCS will automatically print the sections required, one after the other. If emailing the report, the necessary sections will be added as separate attachments to a single email.

The button in some reports options, to save a Snapshot to the Documents Register, has been replaced by an option to save a PDF to the Documents Register. This provides the same functionality as saving a snapshot but uses the more widely supported PDF format. JCS will still be able to open old snapshot files in the Documents Register, as long as the Microsoft Snapshot Viewer is installed.

JCS can now identify and work with Office 365 when installed from the Microsoft App Store

JCS Licences have been upgraded to make them easier to manage, update, renew and change. Users will automatically receive a new copy of their licence at the end of each month whilst they are still a licensed user of JCS. This is done silently behind the scenes, and means that users no longer have a need for access codes to be provided to them and/or enter them each month.
If you request any changes to your licence, there is no longer a need to install a fresh licence file manually. This can be done through a simple button click in JCS, by going to Utilities->Update Your Licence.
If you wish to see detals of your current licence, you can now do that from Help->Licence Details, which will show you details such as how many users you are licensed for, and which modules are enabled.
A feature which we have been asked for in the past is now available, whereby users can be licensed for a number of different company names/brands/trading as names, and this can be selected on login to JCS, to ensure that client facing reports have the relevant company name shown. Feel free to contact us if this is a feature you would like.

In the Search Database page, there is a new Comparison option for "Blank Or Has No Record". This will find results where the specified field is Blank but also when the specified Table Name has no records for the client/case.
Please refer to the help text for Database Search Window > Comparison for more details.

Max drawdown calculations, for Capped Drawdown products taken before April 2015, have been updated to take into account the extended yield tables introduced in July 2017.

In the Address Details page it is now possible to set the Client's Attorney or the Partner's Attorney as the Default Addressee/Address For Letters. The Attorney's name and address details can then be used when creating a letter to the "Client (Default Mailing)" or for mailshots to Personal clients.
Please refer to the updated text for the Default Addressee and Default Address section in the Address Details page.

There are new grouping options for this report, which allow each client to be shown on a separate page.
There is also a new option so that the total Commission and Adviser Charges received for each case (between any date range) can be shown.

When using the Personnel Import template to update the details of existing business personnel, it is no longer necessary to specify the business Branch Name. If the Branch Name in the template is left blank then the personnel will remain in the same branch.

JCS now makes use of the Origo Hub for valuation of all Prudential policies, which ensures a more reliable, secure and consistent service for valuations.

All the date fields on the Data Protection page, which previously applied to both Client and Partner, have now been split out into separate fields for Client and Partner.
The values of the new Client date fields will be inherited from the previous combined Client/Partner fields.
The new Partner date fields will initially be left blank. If you would like to set all the Partner dates to be the same as the Client dates, then please contact Tech Support.

A summary of all disbursement records, the amounts expected to be paid and the amounts which have been paid, and to whom the payments are due, can be viewed by clicking the Disbursements Summary button in a client's Portfolio Summary page. Disbursement records linked to all clients can be viewed via Administration > Commission & Accounting > Disbursements > Commission Disbursements Summary.
Individual disbursement records can now also be deactivated, so all future payments (or clawbacks) due from them are stopped. Disbursement records can be stopped / resumed en masse via the Disbursements Summary page.
Please refer to the help text for the Disbursements Summary page for more information.

The Funds Under Management report has a new Product Name filter option. This can be used to restrict the report to funds used in cases which have the specified text in their Product Name.

When printing labels, support has been added for Avery L7162, L7562, J8562 and J8162 label sizes.

Support has been added for the following types of Power of Attorney records:

• Continuing Financial Power of Attorney (Scotland only)
• Welfare Power of Attorney (Scotland only)
• Combined Power of Attorney (Scotland only)

The software libraries used by JCS have now been updated to remove the dependency on the built in Windows libraries. This allows us to create more stable integrations with providers without needing to configure various areas of Windows Internet Settings. You may find that for some connections, you will need to set your Unipass in the External Connections window. This is limited to Standard Life, Aegon, LV= and Metlife.

The "Mailings Ok" option for personal clients has been replaced by various fields to specify whether the Client or Partner has consented to "General" Communication and various forms of "Marketing" Communication. The Mailshot option pages have also been updated to allow filtering on these fields.

It is now possible to use the Group Scheme Import Template to update the Contribution amounts for all member policy types (not just pensions). Please refer to the updated help text for: Group Scheme Policy page > Reports button > Scheme Import Template > Help button

It is now possible to edit some of the text which appears on the Front Page of the Fact Find Report and the Notes Page of the Portfolio Report. This includes the "Important Notes" section of the Portfolio Report and the "Declaration", "Terms of Business" and "Data Protection" sections of the Fact Find report.
The notes can be edited via the User Preferences page, Reports tab.

In the Adviser/Service Charge Collection Schedule page, if the selected schedule has any associated fee invoices, which have either a different "Charge Category" or a different "When to Disburse" option from the current selection, then a warning will be shown. An option will also be given to synchronise the historic invoices to the current selections on the collection schedule.

There has been an adjustment to Benefit in Kind for diesel company cars, where the appropriate percentage is increased by 4% from April 2018. The private fuel benefit charge multiplier has also been increased by RPI for 2018/19 to £23,400.

Following the acquisition of Cofunds by Aegon, from the 5th May 2018, electronic valuation and commission files will be in a new format, which use the new Aegon client and policy reference numbers. JCS is ready to process the new versions of these files, but cases mapped in JCS will require remapping to the new policy reference numbers.
When the new statements are imported into JCS, users will be asked to contact JCS Tech Support, who will be able to assist in the remapping process and will produce a report advising on any further action required to merge or archive policies.

A new Fact Find page: Data Protection has been added. The Data Protection Agreement Date field, which was on the Initial Details page has been moved to this new page. The Data Protection page also has fields to record a Data Protection Agreement Expiry Date, a Data Retention Expiry Date and a Right to be Forgotten Requested Date.
From this page, a new feature has been added to mark a client as Do Not Contact. This hides a client's contact details from all pages and reports, so JCS cannot be used to accidentally contact the client.

Two new types of Client Accounts transactions have been added: Fee, Service Charges and Service Charge Collections. These transactions can be used for the execution of work relating to a policy, where no advice has been given.
Like Adviser Charges, it is also possible to set up collection schedules for Service Charges, to help track receipts and expectations.

Support for real time valuation of Aviva Wrap Platform policies is now supported directly within JCS, without having to download a bulk valuation file from Aviva.
This replaces the previous functionality using the bulk file as this is no longer offered by Aviva.
Includes support for Investment Portfolio, ISA Portfolio, Pension Portfolio Pre Retirement and Pension Portfolio Post Retirement. Policy numbers in JCS should be entered using both the Wrap reference as well as the account sub reference. For example: AV1234567-001

In the Adviser Charge Receipts Details page, it is now possible to move receipts to the Unassigned Adviser Charge Receipts section of the policy. From here the receipt can be assigned to another collection schedule or, in the Commission Receipts Ledger page, modified or deleted.

A new option has been added to the Electronic Commission/Fees Inbox to Archive statements. Unprocessed statements can be marked as Archived if you would like to ignore them without deleting them.

When exporting statements from the Electronic Commission/Fees Inbox, there is now an option to export all the statements in the list, rather than just the selected record.

There is a new option to rollback Client Statements of Accounts, which is available from the Reprint Client Statements report options.
There are also new options to rollback Disbursement payments, for both payment types: "Via Statements" and "Rebates Offset Against Client Fees". The new options are in the Pay Advisers, Introducers and Rebate clients report options page.
It is also now possible to view the payment details of disbursement records, where the client has received rebates against fees. This details page is accessed via the policy Commission Disbursements window by clicking on the Paid to Date Details button.

In the Family Protection Needs Analysis page, the options for "Include Bereavement Payment" and "Include Widowed Parents Allowance/Bereavement Allowance" have been replaced by a single option for "Include Bereavement Support Payments".
When ticked, the Profile Report, Family Protection section will include appropriate figures for Bereavement Support initial and monthly payments, as introduced in April 2017.

Tax Rates, Bands and Allowances have been updated for Tax Year 2018/19. This encompasses the provisional rates and bands for Scottish taxpayers, including the five new tax bands for Non-Savings income.

It is now possible to import Electronic Commission/Fee statements from Amber Financial Investments Ltd.

Support for real time valuation of Aegon ARC platform policies is now supported directly through the existing Aegon connection. This includes the ARC SIPP, ISA and GIA as well as the One Retirement plan. See the latest Registration Guidelines for details.

It is now possible to record an LEI for personal and business clients.

Various issues when performing mailshots and printing labels have been fixed.
When performing a mailshot for Business Clients there is a new option for "Branches to Include". This can be used to choose whether to mailshot just the Main/Head Office or whether to also include any Other Branches/Subsidiaries.
When performing a database search for business clients, the "Print Client Records" report will now show the Main Contact's Email address. If this report is exported to Excel, then the Main Email address will also be shown.

When importing personnel into JCS using the Personnel Import Template, it is now possible to use any of the person's email addresses to identify them. (Previously it was only possible to identify personnel by their NI Number.)

The Personnel Import Template has been updated and now includes fields for Client Code, Personal Email Addresses, Home and Mobile Telephone Numbers.
The Branch Name (of the business client) where the personnel belong is now also specified in the template. This allows a single template to be used to update personnel belonging to different branches of the business client.
In order to update member policies, the Group Scheme Policy No is also now specified on the template.
Please refer to the updated help text for how to best make use of these features.

The Personnel Import Template now includes a new field for the Qualifying Salary. This can be used if the person's Qualifying/Pensionable Salary is different from their Current Earnings (Total Income).

The new Property & Trading Income Allowance of £1,000 can now be used within JCS tax calculations. As this is an electable allowance, due to the complexities of whether or not to make use of the allowance, this must be selected on a per client basis from the Income Tax page.

Structured Deposit Plans and Peer to Peer Loans may now be entered as new product types in JCS.

In the global Fund Names/Shares Maintenance window there are two new buttons, which can be useful to review and remove redundant Fund Name definitions:
Firstly, the "Show which Cases use this Fund Name" button will show a list of policies which use the currently selected fund name. If you need to see more details, there is a further option to view these policies in the Portfolio Summary window.
Secondly, the "Search for Unused Fund Names" button can be used to create reports of those Fund Names which are not used in any policies and those which are only used in Archived policies. On clicking this button there are further options to delete these unused Fund Names.

There is also a new option for the Portfolio Report for Client(s), to "Clean Fund Names".
If Fund or Fund History details are being shown, then this can be used to strip out parts of the fund names which look like fund codes, and which you may prefer not to show to clients.
When this option is ticked, parts of the fund name contained in brackets are automatically removed. For example "American Growth (ISIN12345) " will become "American Growth".
Text in the brackets, which does not look like it is a fund code, will be left intact. For example, fund names "American Growth (Series 3)", "American Growth (15 Yr)" or "American Growth (40-70% Shares)" will not be changed.

Many providers and platforms now offer separate cash facilities within a wrapper, which are mapped to an Interest Bearing Account in JCS for valuation purposes. In the past it was never possible to request an up to date valuation of these accounts. Starting from this release, it is now possible to request a valuation of the cash account for platforms that support this functionality (7IM, AJ Bell, Elevate, Fidelity, Nucleus, Parmenion, Transact, Standard Life amongst others)

Some important changes have been made to deleting clients and cases: Deleting a client or case will now remove ALL associated records from the database. Unlike previous versions of JCS, this includes Commission/Fee Receipt Ledger records and Commission Disbursement Ledger records.
Deleting clients or cases is normally only recommended when they have been entered into JCS by mistake or for testing purposes. To keep underlying records intact, you may wish to consider archiving clients or cases instead. Please consult the help text on these topics for more information.
A future release of JCS will have further options to address a client's right to be forgotten.

Various new grouping and subgrouping options have been added to the Commission Disbursements Ledger report. These can be used to quickly calculate the total disbursements based on various categories. For example, the report can now show total payments to each Recipient, with sub totals for each Statement, Payment Type or Policy Number.

In the past it has never been possible to store any industry standard fund codes against a fund in JCS, other than an update code used for fund price data feeds from Financial Express and Interactive Data. Starting from this release, it is now possible to store SEDOL, ISIN, MEXID and CITICODE funds against any fund in JCS.
During the process of performing any bulk or single electronic policy valuations with a provider, JCS will automatically populate these fund codes if they are included within the valuation from the provider. However, this is not always the case, with many providers supplying only an internal fund identifier code.
By collecting these codes, it will enable users to validate their own data by being able to lookup these codes on provider or third party sites, and verify if the fund or unit type are actually correct.
It will also allow JCS to be developed in the future to allow exports to third parties for portfolio analysis.
It should be noted, that storage of SEDOL codes requires a licence from the London Stock Exchange, or an exemption. If you have either of these, you can enable the storage of SEDOL codes from the User Preferences screen. More details can be found in the JCS help.

In joint calculations, JCS will now show any immediate liability to tax from the first death due to gifts that exceed the Nil Rate Band.

If a case has been incorrectly entered for the wrong client, it is now possible to move it to the correct client using the Move Case to Another Client facility. This is accessed by right-clicking on a case in the Portfolio Summary window.

All policy types which support Regular Withdrawals now support the new frequency options:
"Fortnightly", "4-Weekly" and "Termly" (every four months).
These new options are available on policy front pages, as well as the Withdrawal History page.

New filter options have been added to the Pay Advisers/Introducers and Rebate Clients report.
It is now possible to view payments due to a single client. If your company dataset is split over branches, then it is also possible to filter the report to show only payments which are due from commission/fees received from a particular branch.

It is now possible to restrict the Fact Find report to show only Fact Find details and policies which relate to either the Client or the Partner.
A warning is also shown in the report options if either the Client or the Partner has deceased.

A new option has been added in Utilities > User Preferences (Miscellaneous tab) to Allow Storage and Use of SEDOL data. If turned on, this will allow users of JCS to view, add and edit SEDOL codes for funds and other asset classes. To use SEDOL codes, the London Stock Exchange requires your company to obtain a current license that covers the appropriate number of codes that are stored, or intended to be stored in JCS. Please refer to the help text before turning on this option.
Next to this option there is a button which will open a report, which shows how many SEDOL codes were used in previous months.

If you are constantly changing the option to print client notes in a printed fact find, you can now set the default behaviour of this in User Preferences.

JCS is ready to support the upcoming MetLife update, due on the 20th July, which adds support for TIPs. Read more…

When opening this page, it will now automatically resize to the size it was last set at.

A new "Do You Have a Will" Field has been added to Estate Planning and Wills. This new field allows more fine-grained recording of whether a client has a will or not, and whether that will reflects their current wishes.

Pensions now support the following new frequency types:
"Fortnightly", "4-Weekly" and "Termly" (every four months).
These frequencies can be inputted on the pension policy front page and the Contribution History page. So that member pension contribution frequencies can be updated en masse, the new frequency types are also available on the Group Scheme Categories page and are also supported by the Group Scheme Import Template.
The new frequencies are also available for Regular Fee Schedules and, for any policy type, Adviser Charge Collection Schedules.

RMAR Section J (Calculation of Fees) has been added to the RMAR reporting section of JCS. For more information about how these figures are calculated, please refer to the updated help text in the RMAR report.

The Power of Attorney page has a new option of Single Attorney. This covers the case where you only have one attorney who makes all the decisions.

The Additional Details page can now have fields on up to four separate tabs. This can be useful to segregate different types of data or, if you use a lot of fields, to keep the Additional Details window down to a reasonable size.
To move existing fields to a new tab, go to Global Data > User Fields (Additional Details) and select which tab you would like each field to appear on. The Additional Detail tabs may also be given user-defined names.

Some companies may wish to allow their advisers to view what commission payments are currently due to them, without allowing them full access to disbursement records. To achieve this, a new permission for the Disbursements, Pay Adviser Report has been added to the User Management > User Permissions tab. This "View" permission enables an adviser to use the Pay Advisers/Introducers report to see payments due only to advisers they have been linked to via the User Management > Client Restrictions tab.
For more information on how to use this feature, please refer to the help text for "Disbursements and the Pay Advisers Report", which can be accessed by clicking the help button next to "Administration Records" in the User Permissions tab.

JCS now supports bulk CSV file imports from the Aegon ARC platform. This is seen as a short term measure while Aegon and Cofunds develop a joined up solution to provide real time valuations of all policies.

When importing Electronic Commission, it is now possible to create mappings to Equities. Commission and Adviser Charges for Equities may therefore be imported into JCS using the JCS Format electronic commission statement.

In May 2017 a number of new fields were added to the Group Scheme Import Template. A couple of further enhancements have been made for this release of JCS: It is no longer necessary to specify a Client's Surname or Forenames in order to update their details with the template - all you need to complete is the member's unique NI number and the field(s) you wish to update. Fields you do not wish to update may be left blank, without risk of wiping over the corresponding data in JCS.
In order to assist traceability of member policies, some improvements have also been made to the group scheme Scheme Members reports. These all now include the member policy numbers. The members' DOB, Occupation and NI Numbers have also been added to the Group Pension and Life Scheme Members reports. (As all this data cannot be fitted onto the reports, you have to export to Excel to see these extra fields.)

The Mortgage Date report now allows viewing of Personal, Business or All mortgages. Archived policies are excluded from the report.

In the Open Clients or Cases - Preferences window, there is a new option to "Automatically reopen the last client's Fact Find page." This is ticked by default but, if preferred, may be turned off.

In JCS version 27.000.21, various new fields were added to the Group Scheme Import Template. The new fields, which relate to Personnel data (i.e. Department, Work Email Addresses and Work Telephone Numbers) have now also been added to the Personnel Import Template, which is accessed via the Reports button in the Business Personnel Page.

A column to display the Policy Holder Name has been added to the detailed RMAR reports.

When printing the RMAR page directly using Ctrl-P, only the relevant sections are now printed. The default orientation is now landscape and any extra screen decoration has been removed from the printout.

A number of new mortgage types have been added to JCS to allow for better granularity of reporting in RMAR Section B for Regulated Mortgage Contracts. The most notable additions are Buy to Let mortgages and Second Charge mortgages. The former will be excluded from RMAR if they are a business Buy to Let mortgage as they are not regulated by the FCA. However, we have allowed for Buy to Let consumer mortgages, which are regulated and must be reported. Second charge mortgages are important as they must be reported directly in RMAR Section B as a sub type of Regulated Mortgage Contracts.

RMAR reporting in JCS has been updated to reflect changes made by the FCA in Section K. The output in JCS should now reflect the version in the FCA handbook.

When using the Documents Register to create a new document, while the Create and Send New Document page is open, it is now possible to open other client pages. This can be useful to cross-check the new document or to cut and paste data from any of the client's pages.

The Group Scheme Import Template (which is accessed via the reports button on any business group scheme) now includes extra fields, which can be used to update the Job Title, Email Addresses, Policy Number and various other group member details. For group pensions, it is now also possible to use the template to update contribution amounts of individual member records, rather than having to use the Group Scheme Category.
Before using the enhanced Group Scheme Import Template, it is recommended to read the updated help text for this feature, which can be accessed via the Scheme Import Template report options.

The Chronological New Business Register report, when exported to Excel, will now show the Client's Adviser, Paraplanner and Administrator.

A new Client Sanctions Date report has been added to the Diary And Compliance section. This report can update the Client Sanctions date for clients of all advisers or clients of a specific adviser to a given date. This allows for bulk vetting of an adviser's clients, saving time on data entry.

In the User Management > User Permissions page, there is a new "Un/lock" permission for Upload/Download and the Branch System.
This permission is provided so an administrator can reduce the chances of users performing actions which could cause reversal of changed records, re-instatement of deleted records or duplication of data. Please refer to the help text, which can be accessed by clicking the help button next to the Miscellaneous section on the User Permissions tab.

Letters can now be written to Children & Other Dependants from the Documents Register page. Diary reminders for letters can also be created for Children & Other Dependants.

JCS is now able to perform Tax calculations using up to date rates and allowances for Tax Year 2017/18. This includes updated rates for Scottish taxpayers, updated Inheritance Tax computations and the addition of Lifetime ISAs.
A list of the updated rates and allowances can be viewed via Utiliites > Tax Tables.

In the Client/Case Notes page you can now specify a custom font and size to be displayed in the notes field and the Fact Find report.

The Current Income page now dynamically shows how much Income Tax/NIC is payable by the Client/Partner.
Also shown, is a new figure for "Total Net Income", that shows the gross income with Tax/NIC deducted to align with a client's income after PAYE tax is deducted at source.

JCS can now import adviser fee and commission statements from Canada Life Offshore.
You should contact Canada Life directly to obtain these files by email.

JCS can now import Electronic Commission/Fee files directly from Parmenion.
These can be automatically downloaded when available by setting up a connection to "Parmenion Commission" in the External Connections page.
You should contact Parmenion to obtain valid user credentials.

New grouping options have been added to the Funds Under Management Report: Product Name and Policy Type. There is also a new option to view a Summarised version of this report so the total value of funds in each group can be more easily determined. This report will now also open more quickly than in previous versions of JCS.
There was also a problem in this report, where there could be discrepencies between the Grand Total Funds Under Management figure, depending on which grouping option was used. This was due to funds with negative cash values being excluded from the subtotals. This problem has now been fixed and negative fund values will be included in the sub totals. The Grand Total Funds Under Management figure will now be the same no matter which grouping option is used.

The Inheritance Tax calculations have been updated to allow use of the new Residential Nil Rate Band (RNRB) which comes into effect April 2017. This allowance starts at £100,000 in 2017/18, increasing to £175,000 by 2020/21. Calculations can be based on an existing qualifying property, or a percentage of it, but also on previous properties, making use of the downsizing allowance.
To allow for the complexities of calculating the RNRB, joint calculations have been overhauled, and it is now possible to generate a single IHT computation for either the client or partner, but also a joint IHT computation which can be based on a client 1st death scenario, or a client 2nd death scenario, with transfer of NRB and RNRB to the surviving spouse after the tax on gifts within the last seven years has made use of the available NRB.

JCS now allows you to classify the type of ISA, one of which is the new Lifetime ISA. The possible types are as follows:

• Cash
• Stocks & Shares
• Cash Junior
• Stocks & Shares Junior
• Help to Buy
• Split
• Innovative Finance
• Lifetime

As Lifetime ISAs are designed primarily to supply income in retirement, or to buy a home, they may be used in the What If? > Planning for Retirement Calculator and in the Retirement section in Profile Reports. When used in this way, the 25% government bonus will automatically be factored into calculations.

An option has been added to the Power of Attorney Fact Find page, which allows you to specify whether there is a Power Of Attorney in place for the client. This allows you to state explicitly that there is, that there is not, or that you have not asked.

The new Property & Trading Income Allowance of £1,000 can now be used within JCS tax calculations. As this is an electable allowance, due to the complexities of whether or not to make use of the allowance, this must be selected on a per client basis from the Income Tax page.

The reduction in the Money Purchase Annual Allowance from £10,000 to £4,000 takes effect from April 2017. This is now reflected in JCS and takes effect from April 7th. (edit: Due to a government u-turn, this will be reversed in the next release of JCS)

Support has been added for the new Scottish Income Tax Rates and Thresholds. A client's Tax Residency can be specified in the Personal Details page and the rates used for Scottish taxpayers can be seen (along with rates for England, Wales and NI) via Utilities > Tax Tables.

This version will require users to perform a significant upgrade to the back end databases of JCS. You should allow 10 to 15 minutes to perform the update.
Benefits to the user will include greater storage capacity, improved stability and reliability.
This upgrade is a major step towards JCS's long term goals to refresh the technology that JCS is built on. Any issues should be reported to tech support as soon as possible.

The Action Diary Reminders page now includes any associated Client Name in the list of reminders. Records can be sorted or filtered by Client Name.
These features should make it much easier to quickly see which client a Diary Reminder is linked to.

When the Client/Case Notes page is opened, it will now appear in the same position as it was when it was last closed, rather than centered on the JCS window. This issue was made more prominent when using JCS across multiple screens.

When opening/searching for a client or case, JCS now shows the assigned Administrator and Paraplanner on the lookup screen. This functionality is only available if the preference to "Record Paraplanner and Administrator" is enabled.
A further enhancement is that the list of Administrators and Paraplanners is now restricted to active users only when selecting the user from the Initial Details page.

Prior to this release, it was possible to have multiple Timers open for different clients at the same time (on the basis that only one timer can be active at a time). However, it was not possible to have multiple Timers open for the same client . This was restricting some users that liked to switch between different charge categories for the same client, such as chargeable and non chargeable time.
As of this release, it is now possible to have more than one Task Timer open for the same client. The Charge Category is now also displayed alongside the Timer State, so it can be seen even when the Task Timer is in its compact form.
As before, only one Task Timer can ever be running at a time.

JCS now supports a direct link contract valuation service with Parmenion. All policy types are supported down to fund holding level. Once registered, users can now perform a bulk valuation of all policies, or just one policy at a time. For more information contact JCS Tech Support or Parmenion Client Services.

The Contract Enquiry direct link integration with Prudential has been upgraded to handle their new Retirement Account product. If you already have Contract Enquiry links with Prudential you do not need to do anything different, but valuations for Retirement Accounts should now work correctly.

Prior to this release, when a case was archived, any mappings for Contract Enquiry and Electronic Commission were removed. This was causing issues for firms that still received commission/fees in the payment period immediately after a policy has been transferred/surrendered etc, as it was not possible to post the commission to the archived case.
As of this release, these mappings are no longer removed when archiving a case, and Electronic Commission/Fees may still be posted to archived cases, although a warning will now appear in the Electronic Commission Posting Summary page to highlight this fact. From here it is possible to review any receipts posted to archived cases, and move them to Suspense, if necessary.
To better support this new functionality, new filter options have been added to the Commission/Fees Receipts Ledger and the Data Import - Mapping pages, to allow a user to view only linked to archived cases.

JCS can now import Adviser Fee statements from Ascentric. In order to process the Excel documents provided by Ascentric they must first be converted into a format that JCS can handle.
See instructions in the "ECR Registration Guidelines", in:
http://talkjcs.com/techsupport/documents.html.

It is now possible to bulk import commission and fee payments from any provider by copying the payment details into a simple comma separated value import template. This will allow firms to enter electronic commission for Providers and Platforms that JCS is not directly integrated with, but supply firms with some form of electronic commission/fees document/file.
For more details, please refer to the help text for "Electronic Commission - JCS Format Statements", which can be accessed via the E-Commission/Fees Inbox.
A sample statement, "JCS ECR Import Template", can be downloaded from:
http://talkjcs.com/techsupport/documents.html.

This release now incudes a number of new themes for JCS reports that are based on the default Microsoft Office 2013/16 styles. The only notable change is that Microsoft dropped the use of the Cambria font for headings to give a much cleaner, contemporary style.
Note - in order for the Office 2013/16 themes to render correctly, you must have the "Calibri Light" font installed. However, this is distributed with Windows 8 and later, or Office 2013 and later.

In Global Data > Adviser Names and Utilities > User Management there are new options to mark if Advisers and Users are "Active". In various drop down lists, where you select from a list of Adviser Names or User Names, now only Active Advisers/Users will be shown. If you want to exclude personnel from these lists, then you can untick the Active option for that Adviser or User.
There is a new option in the Action Diary Reminders page to limit the 'For' list filter to just Active Users and Advisers. (Without this option ticked the names used in all historic Diary records will be shown, which can be unwieldy).
With some large datasets, the list of "Associated Client Names" in the Action Diary Reminders page could be slow and unresponsive. This will now also work more quickly.
Improvements have also been made to the Utilities > Reassign Diary Reminders page, which may be useful to consolidate diary reminders which have been assigned to different versions of the same user's name.

It is now possible to archive clients by assigning them to the special Adviser Name "*ARCHIVED*", in the Initial Details page.
When clients are archived, all their administered policies are also archived and the client can be hidden from searches and reports.
You may control which users have access to archived clients via the User Management > Client Restrictions page.
In the User Management page there is also a new User Permission, which is required to Change Clients' Advisers (and Archive).
When a client's Adviser is changed (or they are archived) you will now be asked if you would like JCS to automatically create a Client Note detailing the change.
Before archiving any clients, it is highly recommended you read the help text on this topic.

In the Children and Other Dependants page, there is a new "Relationship to Whom" field.

Electronic Commission statements may now be exported to a generic CSV format.

A new field, "Expression Of Wishes Completed Date" has been added to pensions for personal clients.

The Mortgage Redemption Penalty Date Report has been renamed to "Mortgage Dates". It can now be used to display and filter on additional dates as required.

There is a new Initial Details report, which can be used to display and filter on dates from the Initial Details Fact Find page.

In User Preferences you may now select from various different colour and font styles to use in JCS reports. The new themes can be used as an alternative to the existing "JCS Classic" theme and are designed to have a cleaner, more modern look.

There is a new option on the Client/Case Notes page to separate Client and Case notes. This emulates the behaviour of the separate pages for Client Notes and Portfolio History Notes, before they were merged in JCS version 26.002. There are also new options for "When Opening This Page".

It is now possible to import cash holdings with Cofunds bulk valuations. The External Connections page will offer a checkbox on Cofunds connections with the option to include Cash Holdings in your valuations.

It is now possible to include non-group Critical Illness policies in the Business Fact Find report.

It is now possible to include Initial Details in the Fact Find reports.
By default this page is not selected, as it contains information from the client’s Initial Details page, which may not be suitable for presenting to a client. If you are printing a Fact Find Report for your own records, however, then you may wish to include the Initial Details page as an alternative to the Front Page.

When printing a Fact Find report, it is now possible to include any page from the Needs Analysis section (e.g. "Estate Planning & Wills" or "Power of Attorney"), even if the report options are opened from the Administration menu.

This report has new options to group by "Product Name" and "Provider and Product Name".

There is a new page in the Needs Analysis Details section for recording Client and Partner Power of Attorneys. (This page, along with Estate Planning & Wills, may be accessed from both Financial Planning and Administration views).

A new Interest Bearing Account category of "Product/Trading Cash Accounts" has been added.

A new Transaction Type, "Receipts via Electronic Payment", has been added for use in Client Accounts.

The Suspended Commission Receipts Report now shows the Policy Holder's Name.

A button has been added to policy pages that opens the Annualised Growth Rate Calculation in Word rather than a web browser.

When performing Ascentric valuations, the Portfolio Summary window could display an incorrect value if there was a cash element present. However, if you checked the funds for this policy it would match what is in the valuation file and JCS would correct itself. This has now been fixed and the Portfolio Summary value will be correct immediately after import.

When manually posting Commission/Fees, it is now possible to enter a Note for all the different commission types. These notes will appear in the Commission/Fees Receipts Ledger.
Notes may also be added to receipts which are moved to Suspended Commission. These notes may be edited whilst they are in suspense, before being posted on to the Commission/Fees Receipts Ledger.
Notes in the Commission/Fees Receipts Ledger may now also be viewed via the policy Commission/Adviser Charge Receipts Details page.

The Funds Under Management report has had a new filter option added for 'Sold By This Agency'.

IHT Mitigation from policies is now included at the bottom of the IHT computation. Any Life Policies or ISAs with a Beneficiary of IHT Mitigation will now be displayed at the end of the computation, along with a breakdown in the notes section.

The calculated Life Expectancy can now be overridden in the Long Term Care Needs Financial Planning Fact Find page. This affects the Long Term Care Profile Report section. Client and Partner Life Expectancies are now also available as Bookmarks.

You can now assign an Email Address and Telephone number to records on the Children & Other Dependants page.

In the Client/Case Notes page, a new option has been added to specify what happens when the page is opened and no records are found.

After updating a Business Client's Head Office or Branch address, you will now be asked if you wish to update the work address of personnel assigned to that Branch.

The Open Different Client and Fees buttons have been moved from the side of the form to the top as they are not related to the currently selected policy. In addition, a new button has been added to the side which opens the Adviser Charge Collection Schedules for the selected policy.

In the Action Diary Reminders page, when a record is selected, details of the reminder's To Do What/About and Notes fields are now shown.

In the Action Diary Reminders page, if the selected reminder is linked to a client, you may now open this client's Fact Find directly from this window, without having to use the Find Clients or Cases page.
Similarly, if a reminder is linked to a case, you may open the policy page directly from the Action Diary Reminders window.
A button has also been added to close the currently opened client Fact Find, and all associated pages, including Sticky Notes.

In the Add Personnel page, the "Add Selected Client/Partner" buttons now appear at the top of the window. Records may now also be double-clicked to add them to personnel.
To help identify personnel, Client/Partner employer details (as they appear in the Personal Details page) are now also shown.
After selecting a Client or Partner to add to a business client's Personnel, there is now an option to either remain on the Add Personnel page, or to return to the Personnel window.
When returning to the Personnel window, the most recently added record, will now be automatically selected.

A few improvements have been made to the Find Clients or Cases page:
After typing in the search box, typing Return will no longer automatically open the first record found in the search results. Instead, the cursor will firstly be moved to the list of search results (where the up/down arrows may be used to select any record). When the cursor is in the record list, only then will typing Return open the selected record.
In the Find Clients and Cases Preferences page, there is a new option to restrict the searches of Personal Clients to Client Names or Partner Names only.
Typing F11 or F12 will now clear the current search (if any) in the Find Clients or Cases page.

When printing labels, the actual labels to be printed can now be vetted the same way you can vet a mailshot. This applies to all the different ways you can print labels, either from a database search or through the "Print Address Labels" menu item.

When client Fact Find pages or policy pages are opened, to prevent them being hidden, Sticky Notes will now appear in front of the newly opened windows.

A new user preference has been added to allow the positions of Sticky Notes to be the same for all users. This option is found in the User Preferences page, under the General Tab.

The Open Client Fact Find page has been replaced with a new page: Find Clients and Cases.
This page can be used to find personal clients, business clients and administered policies by searching for matching text in names or reference numbers, or by searching for unique JCS Client or Case numbers.
As of JCS version 26.004.04, whenever a user opens a Client's Fact Find or administered policy page, the Client/Case will be added to their Recently Opened List. There is an option on the Find Clients and Cases page to only show these recently opened records.
You may also now use "Wild card" searches, which enable you to find client names or policy reference numbers which contain specified characters in particular positions.
For more information on how to make best use of the new Find Clients and Cases window, please refer to the help text.

Adviser Charge receipts may now be included in Annualised Growth Estimate calculations. On each policy, which supports Annualised Growth Estimates, there are new options for how to treat Adviser Charge receipts when calculating the growth estimate. You may opt to exclude all Adviser Charges, include only Initial/Ad Hoc, include only Ongoing, or include both Initial/Ad Hoc and Ongoing receipts. You may set a default for this option in User Preferences, for all users in your branch, which will be used if you have not specified an alternative in the policy page.

As of April 2016, tax credits are no longer applicable on dividend payments, due to the introduction of the Dividend Allowance. JCS now treats dividend payments from relevant policies as being received Gross rather than Net.

As of April 2016, tax is no longer deducted at source for interest from banks, building societies and other interest bearing accounts. JCS now treats interest income from these policies as being received Gross rather than Net. As there as still scenarios where interest may be received with tax deducted at source (non-TDSI schemes) any records in Withdrawal History that are marked as being paid Net will still be honoured as such. If you wish to batch convert these policies, please contact Tech Support for assistance.

Tax Rates, Bands and Allowances have been updated for Tax Year 2016/17.

A new report has been added, which can be used to review Interest Bearing Accounts which are still paying interest Net of tax in 2016/17. The report has an option to automatically convert Net interest payments to Gross. See Administration > Reports > Client And Portfolio > IBAs - Review Net Interest Payments.

The Business Client Identity Verification page has been updated to include a new set of address and post code fields for the 'Registered Office'. The fields previously named 'Address' have been renamed to 'Location of Business' to better fit the report outputs.

As of 6th April 2016 it is no longer possible to be 'Contracted Out' of the Second State Pension. Occupational Money Purchase and Occupational Defined Benefit pensions in JCS therefore no longer have the option to Contract Out and no longer calculate NI Rebate figures. In the Personal Details page, the 'Contracted In or Out' field has been changed to 'Previously Contracted Out'. If set to 'Yes' it will only be used in tax computations (to calculate NI Rebates) when calculating tax for Tax Year 2015/16 or earlier. IMPORTANT NOTE - as of v26.002, JCS no longer calculates pension NI Rebates, you should not update to this version if you still need to calculate these figures.

The Chronological New Business report has a new option to filter and group records by the adviser who wrote the business. This option has been added because the adviser who wrote the business may not necessarily be the same as the client's adviser.

Client Notes (Ctrl+N) and Portfolio History Notes have now been combined into a single location in JCS, where each note can be linked to a single case if required.
Any of these notes can now be made into a "Sticky Note". Sticky Notes are coloured notes, which pop up when a Client's Fact Find or a specific case policy page is opened, and automatically disappear when the relevant policy page or client Fact Find is closed.
Sticky Notes can use any of the distributed styles and colours to allow highlighting of certain important client information, but more styles can be added by users to customise the look of specific note types throughout JCS. These are managed in the Sticky Note Style Maintenance window in Global Data Maintenance or by right clicking on a sticky note.

The Action To Do report has been modified to use space more efficiently and a new option has been added to exclude the Notes. This can considerably reduce the amount of paper needed to print this report.

Added support for clawback of adviser charges, including Initial, Ongoing, Fixed and Ad-hoc. Any messages that had previously failed validation will be automatically revalidated by JCS after upgrading to this latest release.

As of 6th April 2016, Flexible ISAs allow savers to replace cash they have withdrawn from their account earlier in the tax year, without this replacement subscription counting towards their annual subscription limit. There is a new field in the ISA page, to indicate if it is a Flexible ISA. When using the ISA Contributions In Tax Year report, withdrawals from Flexible ISAs will be factored in when calculating an owner's Unused ISA Subscription Limit.

In the Profile Report, the graph showing Future Assets & Inheritance Tax Liability has been improved to produce a more relevant estimate of future values and liabilities, where the tax liability of gifts will phase out over 7 years, and any known freezing of the nil rate band is taken into account.

When entering/editing a group scheme, it is now possible to manually record the number of members in the scheme without having to create member records for each. This is available as long as no detailed member records exist for the scheme.

Occupational Defined Benefit pensions now allow a Guaranteed Minimum Pension (and GMP Escalation rate) to be entered. These figures will be taken into account when using the What If? > Planning for Retirement calculator and for the Planning for Retirement section in Profile Reports. This could also be used to enter a known income in retirement for a defined benefit pension, when the basis information is not known, such as the accrual rates or pensionable salary.

The Verification Style dropdown field on Identity Verification is now saved against each record. This allows the Fact Find Print and File Copy reports to format each Identity Verification record correctly.

When JCS calculates a client's Income Tax, the Dividend Allowance is now factored in to allow up to £5,000 of dividend income to be taxed at 0%.

The Marriage Allowance (previously known as the transferrable married couple's allowance) has been updated to interact with the Savings Nil Rate and the Dividend Nil Rate introduced in 2016, and is now correctly being applied as a relief to the recipient rather than increasing the Personal Allowance.

When JCS calculates a client's Income Tax, the Personal Savings Allowance is now factored in to allow up to £1,000 of savings to be taxed at 0%. The amount of Personal Allowance available is automatically calculated based on the individuals higher rate tax payer status.

Unit Trusts now allow Withdrawal History records of type "Interest Income". When performing Tax Computations, withdrawals entered as Interest Income will use the appropriate Savings Income tax rate.

Support has been added to record if a client has applied for the new Lifetime Allowance Protection schemes for 2016; Individual Protection 2016 and Fixed Protection 2016.

You can now enter NI numbers in any format on the Personal Details page. NI Numbers which fit the UK layout will be formatted as before, but this now allows a user to enter an NI Number from a different country which does not follow the UK format.

This additional section has been added to the Tax Computation to highlight the effective tax suffered by a client.
Where Personal Pension Contributions are made, Tax Relief is obtained at source by paying the Net amount as a contribution which is then topped up by Tax reclaimed by the Product Provider. This additional tax benefit does not appear in a standard Tax Computation so the benefit received from the Tax Relief is not apparent. An additional section is now present on the Tax Computation showing the 'Effective Tax' suffered by the client.

To match the changes in the Feb 2016 release containing new personal client initial details fields, the business client details has been amended to include the following new fields.

• First Enquiry Date
• Fact Find Last Updated
• Next Contractual Review Date
• Client Agreement Document Date
• Data Protection Agreement Date

A new template bookmark has been added to display your company address 'DocYourCompanyAddress' and 'DocYourFormalCompanyAddress'. The formal variant includes separate lines for the address, while the other just has commas to separate each address part.

JCS has been updated to handle the new state pension that took effect for individuals reaching State Retirement Age after April 6th 2016. Planning for Retirement and relevant parts of the Profile Report now reflect that there is only a single state pension, and no longer provides for calculation of married persons state pension or inclusion of a SERPs estimate. A new option has also been added to automatically calculate an estimate of the state pension if an individual intends to defer taking their state pension after the SRA.

From April 2016 the Pension Annual Allowance is tapered for Income in excess of £150,000. All the rules relating to the criteria and calculation of the tapered limit have been included in the Tax Computations to reflect this.

It is now possible to enter a Pensionable Salary and percentage of salary for Personal/Employer contributions for all relevant pension scheme types. The exceptions to this are Section 32 and Drawdown pensions.

Previously the JCS Income Tax Computation assumed that there were sufficient Relevant Earnings in place to cover all pension contributions being made. The Tax Computation has now been updated to calculate and check against Relevant Earnings and will also show a note at the bottom of the computation if Relevant Earnings are low enough to cause tax relief to be limited. This would affect the automatic calculation of Income Tax in Expenditure, and also the Income Tax section in the Profile Report as long as Pension Contributions exceed Relevant Earnings.

Purchased Life Annuities are only taxed on the Interest element of the payment received. Previously this was shown in the Tax Computation under Earned Income but has now been moved to appear as Interest Income to make it clear that both the Savings Starter rate and the Personal Savings Allowance apply to this income, and can thus move the income into a nil rate tax band. JCS assumes an annuity is a Purchased Life Annuity when the Capital Content of the benefit is entered. The difference between the benefit and the capital content is the inferred interest element.

The contributions page of a policy can now record the decision basis on any new business to highlight if the business was executed on "Adviser Recommendation" or at the "Client's Insistence". This new field can be used in the filter section of the Chronological New Business Register to specifically report on certain business based on the decision basis.

Users can now set a default start-up page, to allow JCS to startup and automatically show the Diary Reminders page, or the Commission entry page amongst others. To set this, open User Preferences to the General tab.

Updated to detect the latest file format from True Potential LLP Investments, which was changed recently.

New personal and work email fields have been added in the Address Details page.

The Identity Verification page has been updated in a number of areas. It will now honour the report style (JMLSG 2006 or Pre 2006) in the fact find print output. The 2006 format has been updated to reflect tax residency self certification for FATCA and CRS purposes. There is now a new field to store any general notes against each record.

There is a new data export available under Data > Client Export > JCS Client Export in the menu bar containing a little more data than the Dynamic Planner export, and in a more readable format.

A number of new fields have been added to the Initial Details page to allow more dates to be recorded against a client.

• First Enquiry Date
• Fact Find Last Updated
• Next Contractual Review Date
• Client Agreement Document Date
• Data Protection Agreement Date
• Financial Sanctions List (client and partner)

It is now possible to assign a specific paraplanner, administrator or both, to a client. This is accessible from the Client Initial Details screen, however the functionality must be turned on in Preferences first, as not all firms wish to record this level of detail for a client. If any user restrictions are in place that would normally prevent access to a client, this would be overridden for users assigned to any of these roles. This could allow administrators to be given access to clients on a per client basis rather than just to clients of a specific adviser.

Relevant pension types now allow input of details for Guaranteed Annuity rates. Any details entered on the policy will carry through to the Planning for Income in Retirement calculator and the Profile Report and used to calculate the relevant income in retirement from that asset. The Planning for Income in Retirement calculator will now also show the Effective Initial Annuity Rate % to indicate that different assets may be using different annuity rates based on certain product features such as GAR or GMP.

It is now possible to produce a Portfolio Report for a single policy.

You can now use the (De)select All check box to quickly select or deselect all the policies to include in a portfolio summary report.

Client Personal Details now allows the recording of multiple tax residencies, along with the relevant tax identification numbers. This is primarily to assist with the extra level of client information being requested by Product Providers for FATCA and CRS purposes.

JCS now supports the latest bulk valuation file format for Friends Life (Friends Provident heritage business).

The Portfolio Summary page will now show the electronic valuation status of the policy, to indicate policies that have been valued, those that were valued more than a month ago, and those that have been modified manually since the last provider valuation and so may not be an accurate reflection of the policy valuation.

A new bookmark has been added, which can be used in Profile Report Definitions. The bookmark name is J028_PreparedByEmail and will show the email address of the client's adviser. If the client does not have an adviser assigned to them, then the current user's email address will be used instead.

There has been an upgrade to JCS User Permissions, which allows for far greater control over which areas of JCS, and which client data, different users may access. The new controls for setting user passwords and permissions are in Utilities > User Management, which has replaced the "Passwords" page. Client Restrictions are now more flexible and users may be restricted access to clients of multiple advisers, or alternatively blocked access to multiple clients of advisers. User Permissions are now broken down into more categories, and allow much finer control over which users have permission to View, Modify, Add or Delete various types of JCS records. It is now also possible to force a user to change their password the next time they log in.

JCS can now support contract valuation for most SIPPs provided by Standard Life, and will handle the plan bank account, uninsured funds and external assets such as commercial property. The AMPP product cannot be valued by RTV. However, it is possible to value AMPP policies using the Standard Life bulk valuation file for pensions.

The Contribution History page now has a summary section showing breakdown of contributions for a selected tax year, current regular contributions and the grand total of contributions.

The Disbursements Ledger Filter options for Payment Against have been updated to use checkboxes instead of the dropdown box, to allow filtering to multiple Payment Against types.

In the Group Scheme Category pages, values of zero entered into the "Member/Employer Contributions % of Salary" or "Death Benefit X Salary" fields will no-longer be treated the same as blank values. Zero values can therefore now be used to recalculate (and zero) contributions or benefits in the member policy pages.

JCS can now handle ad hoc adviser charge payments from the commission/fee feed in ECR.

Three new columns have been added to the Portfolio Summary page: Status, Status Date and Archive Date.

The Contribution History page is now resizable.

Where applicable, the RMAR report can now be sorted by Policy.

The Client Source has been added to Excel outputs of Client list reports.

JCS now supports the Adviser Charges file that can be downloaded from the AJ Bell website. This includes both initial and renewal adviser charges.

JCS now supports the commission file supplied from True Potential Investments LLP platform for initial and recurring adviser charges.

JCS now supports commission/fees feeds from Novia Financial.

There is now a new flag to specify if ISAs are a Help to Buy ISA.

JCS now works with Office 2016, please see our website for further details about Office 365.

Support has been added for the Amber Financial valuation file to value all policy types on the platform.

Support has been added for the Aviva Wrap Back Office Valuation file to value all platform products, which can be downloaded from the Aviva for Advisers website. Non platform products are not held within this file.

Added support for the latest valuation file format from Transact. All users that value policies with Transact will need to update to this release.

When mapping funds in the data import window, JCS will now show all fund codes that are presented in the message/file. These will include any SEDOL, ISIN, MEXID and CITICODE fund codes as well as any provider specific or non-specific fund codes.

It is now possible to map a cash account in a platform wrap to an existing case in JCS when importing a bulk valuation file.

The Group Scheme reports (Scheme Members, End of Year Salary and Scheme Import Template) have a new option to filter by the member status.

Support has now been added for valuation of Retirement Accounts and other pensions that hold Plan Bank Accounts/Control Accounts or External Assets such as separate investment portfolios or property.

Support has been added for valuation of the International Bond from Standard Life International, which may have caused issues previously due to cash and mutual funds. This is available through your normal Standard Life valuation connection.

Support has been added for the Standard Life Wrap "Total Holdings Report" for valuation purposes. This can be downloaded from the Standard Life Wrap Adviser website.

Added support for the latest fees file format from Nucleus Financial. All users of Electronic Commission from Nucleus will need to update to this release.

The Chronological New Business Register report has a new filter option, to allow filtering on the Commencement Date of the policy. There are also new sorting options to sort by Policy number, showing contributions from the same policy grouped together, along with a count of unique cases in each main group. A new option also allows a Summarised report to be produced, which omits the contribution details.

A new grouping option has been added to the Commission/Fees Receipts Report Options page, to enable grouping receipts by Group Scheme. This can be used to show total receipts for group schemes and all their members. A new filter option has also been added, to allow filtering down to one specific group scheme.

The Commission/Fee Receipts Ledger report now also shows details of Policy Type and Product Name. If exporting the detailed report to Excel, then Client Number and Case Number details are also shown. There are also new grouping options, to enable grouping by "Policy Type", "Provider and Product Name" and "Provider and Policy Type".

The Portfolio Status Report now has an option for a Summarised view.

In the Commission Receipts Report, there is a new option to Group records by Provider's Statement, with most recent statements shown at the top of the report. There has also been a fix so that, if running a Detailed report, the individual records will be sorted correctly, no matter what grouping option is used.

When attempting an RTV All from a list of portfolio records that include valuations from a bulk valuation download, the bulk valuation file is now only downloaded a single time for each provider. This will make valuations much quicker when using this method, and should be much more stable. This currently affects the following providers: Transact, Cofunds, Novia and Ascentric.

The data import mapping page has been updated so that it is now possible to see which user last used that mapping and how long ago. The multi mappings filter now excludes funds that have multiple mappings to them as long as they map to different unit types (Accumulation, Income etc). Double clicking an entry allows you to see the full text of the map in case it overflows the results fields.

The layout of this page has been improved and the "Minimum Years Required" (from start of the illustration) field has been replaced with "Income Required for x years after first receipt". A new Auto Complete feature has been added and it is possible to select an Age at which income should be taken. Income receipts may now be deferred by a period of years and months, rather than just whole years.

Unit Trusts for Business Clients can now have Investment Trust and Cash fund types within the fund holdings.

Support has been added for the AJ Bell Investcentre valuation file to value all policy types on the platform.

It is now possible to separate out external assets within the fund holdings of a pension. External assets of all types are treated simply as a sterling value. Assets can be entered as separate holdings, or they can just be entered as a total value on the front screen of the pension policy.

In the Tax Allowances page there is a new section where an Additional Permitted Subscription Allowance may be entered. A figure entered here may appear in the ISA Contributions in Tax Year report.

In the Tax Allowances page there is a new section where Lifetime Allowance Protection for pensions may be entered.

It's now possible to use the asset picker to set pension fund amount, view 15 year gilt yields, and enter a GAD relevant annuity percentage on the Maximum Pension Drawdown page.

In the Tax Allowances page there is a new section where you may indicate if the Client or Partner has accessed flexible pension benefits and triggered their Money Purchase Annual Allowance.

Added support for UFPLS withdrawals from pension products. These are now handled throughout JCS with the correct tax applied, taking into account the 25% tax free element.

Added support for UFPLS, PCLS. Drawdown amounts in Withdrawal History will appear in the Income page of Fact Find, unless they are set as a "Capital" withdrawal, in which case they are treated as outside of normal income.

There is a new option in the Fund History page to filter out records which were automatically created by Contract Enquiry valuations. Under Utilities > User Preferences > Miscellaneous > EDI there is a new option to not automatically create Fund History records when Contract Enquiry valuations of funds are performed. You may also delete historic Fund History records created by Contract Enquiry valuations.

Tax Rates, Bands and Allowances have been updated for Tax Year 2015/16. This includes the introduction of the transferrable tax allowance for married couples.

In the Contribution History page, new options have been added for Advice Given: Focused, Simplified, Appropriateness Test, Auto Enrolment.

A new report has been added, under JCS Reports > Client And Portfolio > ISA Contributions in Tax Year. This can be used to show each owner's remaining ISA contribution allowance for the tax year.

JCS now supports commission feeds from Scottish Life / Royal London, which also includes Adviser Charges.

JCS now supports the fee files from 7IM which are available from their website. Both the initial and ongoing fee files are supported within this release.

In the Contribution History page, the Switched Business tickbox has been replaced by a drop down menu with the following options: Yes, No, Pension Transfer, Pension Switch. The Chronological New Business report may now also be filtered on Switched Business.

You can now choose between adding an Adviser Charge or a Commission record after adding a new Contribution History record.

In the Documents Register page it is now possible to change the Client and Case the document is linked to. Note - this does not update Client or Case details in the document itself.

In the Documents Register page it is now possible to search for text contained in the Subject or Document Names. In the Standard Documents Maintenance page it is possible to search for text contained in the Standard Document Names.

It is now possible to use the filters in the Documents Register when viewing documents of a particular client or case.

JCS will now detect and handle Cofunds payments where the entirety of any trail commission has been rebated to the client at source. This was previously causing discrepancies between the amount reported in ECR and the amount received in a firms bank account.

The External Documents Types page has been replaced by a new page: the External Document Locations page. The purpose of this new page is to specify optional, default file locations, to be used when creating links to external documents via the Documents Register. It is no longer necessary to specify which applications are used to open linked files.

JCS now offers optional consolidation of FundsNetwork Unit Trusts, which are split on the FundsNetwork platform into two separate schemes for on-platform and off-platform funds. This can be confusing for users and clients, so this feature is now offered as an alternative to FundsNetwork's own consolidated valuation feature which will consolidate both Unit Trusts and ISA plan years.

In the Standard Documents Maintenance page, it is now possible to set Standard Documents as ‘disabled’. These will then be excluded from the drop down lists in the Create And Send New Document page and mailshot pages. It is also possible to set a company-wide default Standard Document, which will be used when the Create and Send New Document page is opened. Each user may also, if they wish, set their own personal default, which they can use in place of the company default.

JCS now supports the Microsoft Word 'dotx' and 'docx' format. There is a new User Preference (under User Preferences > Miscellaneous > Documents) which can be set, so new documents will be created in these formats. A tool in Database Maintenance can be used to convert your existing Standard Documents to the dotx format.

It is now possible to configure JCS to trigger a 3rd party VOIP phone or software phone to dial a phone number from directly within the software by double clicking on any phone number. This requires certain types of phone hardware/software to work, however the configuration is very flexible. Contact Tech Support for more information on this feature.

All new documents created by JCS are now saved in a new file structure within the User Documents folder. For users who have a large number of documents, this will improve the speed of opening them. In Database Maintenance, a new tool is provided to migrate old documents into the new file structure, so that they will also open faster. Users who have had to previously archive documents to different locations in order to improve performance may use the migration tool to re-integrate the documents into the main JCS User Documents folder.

Entering gifts for IHT planning has been overhauled. It is now possible to enter a complete chronological list of dated gifts, which can be allocated to either the client or the partner. This eliminates the historical requirement to "push" gifts backwards every year as part of a review. As part of this overhaul, it is also now possible to enter Chargeable Lifetime Transfers (CLTs) into JCS.

It is now possible to automatically create personnel records, and group scheme member records from a specially formatted excel spreadsheet. Member records can be assigned to a Group Scheme Category automatically, which then allows a user to "push" the latest salary/contribution details into all member records using the Group Scheme Category update functionality.

It is now possible to export a completed excel template for a business client, that can be updated and then imported back into JCS directly to update salary information.

This report now has new options to specify which Advice Given types should be included.

When exported to Excel, the Client Accounts and Fees & Expenses reports will now include the Client Source. These reports may now also be grouped by Client Source.

The Commission Breakdown report can now be filtered to "Personal" or "Business" clients.

There is a new option on the menubar to export Client, Portfolio or Fund Holdings data in CSV format. Data can be exported in formats suitable for Dynamic Planner, Legacy Asset Systems and Cofunds Funds Supermarket imports.

It is now possible to generate a detailed breakdown of the Inheritance Tax calculation for a client.

Personal policies now have a new option to determine how they are treated for Inheritance Tax purposes.

Pensions have a new option to specify how the (pre vesting) amount payable on death can be made up from the Death Benefit and/or Fund Value of the policy. Pensions which have passed their Vesting Date will show their Current Value as the 'lump sum on death' in the Client Portfolio report.

The rules of intestacy have been updated in the Profile Report, to reflect the changes defined in the Inheritance and Trustee's Powers Act 2014

Added ability to search for clients based on the size of their smallest pension pot, or the size of their total pension pot.

Support has been added for installation on Windows 10 as a legacy application in preparation for next year's release.

Extra grouping and report filtering options have been added to the Chronological New Business register report.

The Client Accounts and Fees & Expenses reports may now be restricted or grouped by Client Code.

The Charge Category now appears in the list of transactions in the Client Accounts and the Regular Fees pages. Records in these pages may now also be filtered by Charge Category.

The Documents Register page is now resizable and it is now possible to sort the records by any of the columns.

The Pay Advisers, Introducers and Rebate Clients reports may now be grouped or sorted by Payment Type or Client Name.

The detail reports for Section B, Column C now also show the Charge Category where used. These reports may also be grouped and sorted by Charge Category.

In the Charge Rates page it is now possible to search by Charge Category. With large datasets, selecting records in the list should now also be more responsive.

Added support for version 6 of the Transact valuation message.

The Fees & Expenses reports can now show details of the policy that the fees relate to. Reports may also now be filtered and grouped by the policy they relate to.

Added new grouping and restriction options to the funds under management report.

The Qualifying Salary and Benefit X Salary fields have been added to the personal Life and Critical Illness policy pages. This allows these fields to be used for member policies without having to create a Group Scheme.

Added support for unused Inheritance Tax Threshold to the Estate Planning, Inheritance Tax page. This will carry forward to the Estate Planning section of the Profile Report to increase a client's nil rate band.

The calculation of Inheritance Tax now takes into account the annual exemption on gifts within the last 7 years. Unused exemptions are brought forward for one year.

When entering Commission/Fees a Statement Reference can be used to differentiate statements which have the same Provider Name and Statement Date. When commission/fees are posted, the Statement Reference will appear in the Commission Receipts Ledger and can be used to filter for various reports. An 'Application-defined or object-defined' error could occur when opening the filter page for the Suspended Commission page. This has also been fixed.

Added print preview to file copy reports, which allows them to be printed to any printer instead of only the default.

The Incorrect/Overdue Commission Receipts and the Incorrect Overdue Adviser Charges reports have a new field, 'Position As Of', which can be used to set the date the commission/adviser charge expectation is calculated from.

Advised Case Numbers for fees and regular fees are now automatically changed when merging cases, and there is a new option to merge adviser charges.

It is now possible to perform bulk updates of scheme member policies which use a Group Scheme Category. It is also possible to use a Client or Partner's Salary History record to update all the scheme member policies they have with a Business Client. There is a new filter option in the Personnel reports which can be used to find Personnel who have a missing Qualifying or Pensionable Salary figure in their latest Salary History record.

The Scheme Members page now also shows the Scheme Category that each member belongs to, and it is also possible to sort by this column. When this page is opened it will automatically resize to the size it was last set to and use the last Sort By option used.

JCS now supports the weekly Fee File from Cofunds (IS 3428) to allow import of Adviser Charges.

When the columns in Portfolio Summary are resized, the widths will be remembered when the page is next opened. The Frequency column has also been added and it is possible to group the records on Frequency.

If the Time/WIP is enabled, in the Charge Rates page, there is a new Post Charge As option: 'Invoice Only'. The option of 'Invoice' has been renamed 'Invoiced Time'. Fee transactions using a Charge Category which is set as 'Invoice Only' will only appear in the Sales Ledger and, unlike 'Invoiced Time', will not appear as a credit in the Time/WIP Ledger.

When viewing detailed reports from the RMAR reporting screen, the output can now be sorted by either client number or client name.

Added better support for Adviser Charges being taken from Cash Accounts. These are now reported in Section B as Fees/Adviser Charges for advice on Retail investment products, as Adviser Charges can only ever be taken for advice on a retail investment product, so this classification is implied.

You may now optionally select a 'Fee Relates To' case in the Task Timer.

A new Transaction Type, 'Time/WIP Written Back' can be selected in the Time/WIP Ledger, which can be used to add an amount to Time/WIP.

The Task Timer no longer needs to be hidden whilst other pages are open. It is also possible to have more than one timer window open for different Clients. If the User Preference 'Automatically start Task Timer when opening a new Client Fact Find' option is selected then a new timer window will open and start timing whenever a client Fact Find is opened. Any timer running for the previous client will be automatically paused, allowing the Notes and other details to be amended before stopping the timer and recording the fee.

The Action Diary Reminders page now shows how many items are listed under each reminder type.

In the Action Diary Reminders page the Due To Date may now be set to several options from a drop down list (eg '1 Month From Today'). For each user, this option can be chosen to apply as the default To Date when the page is opened.

Tax Rates, Bands and Allowances have been updated for Tax Year 2014/15. This update includes the interim changes to Pensions for 2014/15 (ie 150% of GAD drawdown, etc), but does not include the removal of drawdown limits announced for 2015/16 as these changes are subject to consultation.

Employment status, marital status, and residency are now available to be used as bookmarks in document templates, and date of death can be used in document templates and profile reports.

Time/WIP now has a different background colour to highlight that it is a different ledger.

The Commission Expected to a future date report can now be restricted by the following commission types: Initial, Level, Renewal, Fund Based Estimates.

Added lots of new filters and grouping options, as well as a detailed and summary view that now makes it easier for users to determine the total commission / adviser charges amount on a per client basis within a time period.

The Diary Reminders pages (To Do, Telephone, Letter and Fax) have been redesigned so it is now possible to link Diary Reminders to any Client and Case, without having to log into a new Client's Fact Find. It is also now possible to access a Client's Fact Find and Portfolio pages without having to close the Action Diary Reminders page.

It is now possible to rebuild the passwords database if it becomes corrupt.

The Client Accounts report has a new option to produce separate reports for the Sales Ledger (the default), Time/WIP Ledger and Recoveries Ledger.

There is a new User Preference, found under the Miscellaneous tab, to use the Time/WIP Ledger. This allows keeping records of time spent on a task without it necessarily appearing on the Client's Sales Ledger.

Added support for RTV and bulk valuation of Novia policies. See the latest registration guidelines for more details.

The Client Accounts page is now resizable and for each user will open the same size it was when last closed. It is also now possible to access other pages and the menubar whilst keeping the Client Accounts page open.

This new field has been added to the personal pension pages. If the case has Maximum Drawdown History records then the GAD Review Date will be set to the latest Expiry Date of the drawdown calculations. If there are no Maximum Drawdown History records then a GAD Review Date can be manually entered.

On administered personal and member pension pages, this new field will show the total tax free cash Withdrawal History records to date.

A new administered product type, 'Investment Property', is now available. A client's existing 'Property and Other Assets' Financial Planning records can be converted to Administered records by using the 'Convert To Administered Policies' tool under the Utilities menu. Only Other Property, Jewellery/Furs, Art/Antiques/Investment Item, Car/Caravan/Boat, Holiday Home or Other Asset Types may be converted.

Annuities can now handle Adviser Charge Schedules of all types to reflect the changing flexibility in Investment Linked and Flexible Annuity products.

It is possible to have a Financial Details page (Current Income, Income Tax, Annual Expenditure, Assets and Liabilities) open whilst amending administered policy records. When changes are made to the policies which may affect the Financial Details, a button will appear so that the Financial Details can be recalculated.

Investment funds for a case are no longer automatically revalued when opening the Investment Funds page. Instead it must be performed manually by clicking the value funds button.

In Administration mode, you may now have multiple policy (and Contribution History, Withdrawal History, Investment Funds etc) pages open simultaneously.

Two new personal pension types have been added: 'SIPP (Basic)' and 'Unsecured (Drawdown)' with specific relevant functionality. Note, the SIPP (Basic) does not support external assets or property.

Many pages now include the Client Number and Case Number in their page captions. This is particularly useful when working with multiple pages open simultaneously.

This page can now be resized by clicking and dragging the corners of the window. For each user the page will 'remember' what size it was when last opened.

You may now sort the items in Portfolio Summary by clicking on any of the column headers. The drop down list of 'Sort Order' has been removed as it is no longer required.

In the Contribution History page there are new fields to show the total current regular personal and employer contributions.

Agency payments and interest payments can now be handled, so that they are posted directly to the commission receipts ledger.

Pension projections can now take into account detailed Contribution History records of administered pension policies when calculating a future fund value.

If an Electronic Commission Statement identified an Agency payment, or an Interest payment, this was previously posted to Suspended Commission, with no means to post it to the Commission Receipts Ledger. It is now possible to post both Agency and Interest payments out of Suspended Commission.

We have introduced a new tool in JCS to allow Tech Support to assist in converting fund code mappings from one fund code type to another, such as SEDOL to MEXID, where the data is available. This tool was introduced specifically to address the decision by Skandia Life to stop using SEDOL codes in their Contract Enquiry service.

RMAR Reporting can now be filtered at branch level to allow correct reporting per FCA guidelines.

It is now possible to search for records in Commission Receipts

The use of, and selection of user and company certificates has now been enhanced. Expired certificates can no longer be used in a valuation request and certificates that are stored in the external connections profile but not accessible on the local computer cannot be used in a valuation request. The user will be notified of these conditions when they attempt a valuation request under these circumstances. The list of available certificates in external connections has also been made simpler to only list personal, non-expired certificates.

It is now possible to set a cease date for receiving fund based renewal commission on a case. This is for cases that have converted to Ongoing Adviser Charges, and should no longer be receiving trail commission. This ensures that cases do not appear in the report "Commission Expected to a Future Date" when they are no longer receiving trail commission.

The "Business Type" field in Business Client Fact Find now has an effect on the default charge types used in RMAR reporting fields within Client Accounts. Non-commercial business types, including Trusts, Charities, Clubs and Associations will now default to selecting Adviser Charges for reporting purposes rather than Consultancy Charges, which was previously the default for all business clients.

A new report has been added, located under Global Data Maintenance > Product Providers > Print Button > Report Type = 'With Category and RMAR Classification'. This report can be used to produce a printable list of Product Providers, so their RMAR Classification can be reviewed.

From 1/7/2013 additional RMAR reporting is required in sections K & L. This has been added to JCS.

RMAR Classification can now be set for Product Providers on the global data maintenance page.

Under Utilities > User Preferences there is a new option for 'Advice Provided' for the user's branch. By default this is left blank but one of the options, 'Independent' or 'Restricted' must be selected before a RMAR report can be run.

This new report can be accessed from the Client Accounts/Fees section of the JCS Reports window. It can be used to show outstanding amounts on Client's Accounts with details of how long these amounts have been outstanding.

To facilitate the creating and review of Fees for Adviser Charge Schedules, buttons for the Client Account and Regular Fee Schedule pages have been added to the Adviser Charge Collection Schedules page. A new button, 'Create Fee(s)' has also been added to help quickly create a Regular Fee Schedule or single Fee to match the Adviser Charge Schedule. When this button is used, the new data fields required for RMAR reporting will also be automatically completed for the new fee.

New data fields have been added to the Client Accounts and Regular Fees pages which are required to complete RMAR Section K and L reporting. When upgrading to this version, JCS attempts to set the RMAR section details for each fee by looking for existing Adviser Charge Collection Schedules which match the fee. The values which JCS assigns for the RMAR reporting fields can be overridden at any time.

It is now possible to map commission and Adviser Charges to Annuity policies when using ECR.

Adviser Charge receipts can now be automatically assigned to Adviser Charge Collection Schedules based on new preferences. See the User Preference screen for details. When auto invoicing has been enabled on an Adviser Charge Collection Schedule, this will also generate an invoice from the receipt during the import process.

New report added, 'Receipts, Adviser Charges Incorrect/Overdue', which can be accessed from the Commission/Production section of the JCS Reports window.

Tax Rates, Bands and Allowances have been updated for Tax Year 2013/14.

Regular Fee Schedules can now be added and viewed via a new button on the Fees - Client Accounts page.

A new report is now available to calculate Adviser Charges Expected to a Future Date. Functionality is similar to the Commission Expected to a Future Date, but based purely on Adviser Charges.

Added Support for Standard Life Commission feed which includes Adviser Charges.

When processing commission statements in Origo EDI format, the commission due date is now imported, if provided. This change should be seen with most traditional life product providers.

Users can now enter a value to override the payment date of a statement. This is intended for when Product Providers either do not supply a payment date, or they are supplying a payment date which is incorrect.

Additional notes have been added to the Tax Computation to provide further information when Personal Allowances are limited, whether due to insufficient income, age tapering or high income tapering, and where they are enhanced as a result of pension contributions.

It is now possible to create Disbursement records against Regular Fee Schedules (rather than having to create disbursements against the individual fee records).

It is now possible to create Adviser Charge Collection Schedules - records against a policy detailing charge expectations over a specified period of time. New and historic adviser charge receipts for the policy may be assigned to its Charge Collection Schedules which, if required, can automatically generate corresponding invoice entries in the client's account.

Disbursements may be set up against an Adviser Charge Collection Schedule record, which covers all invoices automatically generated by the Collection Schedule.

In the Enter Commission/Fees Received Page, it is now possible to post Adviser Charge Receipts against Adviser Charge Collection Schedules which have been set up for the policy in question. Invoice entries can also be automatically generated in the client's accounts upon receipt of the fee collection.

As in the Enter Commission/Fees Received page, it is now also possible to assign Suspended Commission to Adviser Charge Collection Schedules.

Modifications have been made to the GAD calculator to make all calculations Gender Neutral.

There is a new setting under Utilities > User Preferences > Miscellaneous > Adviser Charge Collection Schedules to allow auto invoicing for non % Ongoing (Fund Based) Adviser Charge Receipts. By default the option is turned off.

For disbursements created against fees there is a new option for when the disbursements will be paid. By default they are paid after a client's statement has been printed and after vetting via the Pay Advisers, Introducers and Rebate Clients report. Now you may also select to pay the disbursements after the client statements are printed, but without vetting, or immediately - without the need for a client statement.

Support for real time valuation of Seven Investment Management accounts is now supported. See the latest Registration Guidelines for details.

Added Support for Canada Life Commission and Adviser Charges Network Files which include multiple agencies within one file.

The Enter Commission page has been redesigned to allow entry of Fee Collections and easier manual entry of other commission types. It is now also possible to enter commission to a policy which has a different Provider Name from the commission/fee statement.

The Unit Trust policy type can now handle fund holdings of fund type Cash, Shares, Unit Trust and Investment Trust.

JCS now supports installations on Windows Server 2012 with Remote Desktop Services as a legacy application.

Added support for the new Legal & General message format to handle adviser charging.

Added support for the new Skandia SIS message format in readiness for adviser charging. This also includes support for Switch Fees.

Users now have the option to update currency exchange rates in Global Data when this data is available in either a bulk valuation file, or a real time valuation. This is currently supported for Royal Skandia bulk valuations. Others may be added in the future if the data is included within the message. This option must be enabled from User Preferences.

Support for real time valuation and bulk valuation of Ascentric policies is now supported. See the latest Registration Guidelines for details.

Added support for Canada Life Commission and Adviser Charges Files.

It is now possible to merge together cases by right clicking in portfolio summary window. Refer to the help text for more information on this function.

Added support for Skandia Life commission messages. Advisers can now receive electronic statements for initial, renewal and fund based commission.

Added support for Standard Life commission messages.

JCS now supports integration with Office 2013, in readiness for its impending release.

JCS now supports installations on Windows 8 as a legacy application. Windows 8 RT is not supported.

In Admin > Search Database there is now a new search link criteria to allow more complex searches to work correctly when searching the database. Refer to the help text for an explanation on how to use this feature.

It is now possible to convert between individual and group members while on the Group Scheme Page.

The Commission Receipts Ledger is now resizable to make it easier to view many records at once. For any commission receipts that are linked to a policy, the policy holder is now also shown.

It is now possible to filter the Electronic Commission Inbox by intermediary codes, and/or Payment Agency codes.

Client Notes is now resizable to allow better viewing of large notes. Several new options have been added to this page to ease usability.

When creating a report for incorrect/overdue commission, it is now possible to restrict the report to a single client, or even a single case of that client.

Data Import Mapping now allows the selection of multiple items at once to allow for block deletion of many mappings.

Adviser Fee Collection receipts can now be allocated to one of several new sub types to indicate if the fee is based on a premium, fund holdings or an ad hoc amount.

The Nucleus Fees report can now be imported into JCS using the E-Commissions interface.

Disbursements set up against Fund Based commission now support both Start Paying and Cease Paying Date restrictions. This allows greater flexibility when setting up disbursements: for example you may now create multiple disbursements for the same Adviser/Introducer or Client, with different Commission Rates applicable over different time periods.
For all types of commission, the user interface for the Disbursements Page has been reviewed. As new disbursements are added, various warnings may be displayed if it looks as if the disbursements could pay an unexpected amount. (For example, if the Commission Rate of all the disbursements exceeds more than 100%.) These disbursement warnings will remain on the page, even if it is closed and reopened, until the warnings are addressed.

Data imports for Cofunds, including the commission file and the valuation file, will both now show the Cofunds Customer Reference number on the Data Mapping screen to allow for easier and more reliable mapping of clients.

When viewing the details of commission received, the list of receipts now show extra information about the receipt to help diagnose incorrectly posted commission receipts.

Electronically posted commission receipts can now be re-allocated to different policies or commission records by sending them to Suspended Commission Receipts where they can be manually re-allocated.

When suspending commission receipts, it is now possible to store the policy holder name as supplied in the commission statement.

Suspended renewal commission can now be posted as Block Renewal.

The Data Mappings screen has been updated to allow better searching of all the records.

The Suspended Commission Receipts Page has been redesigned, to make posting suspended commission clearer and easier. Instructions appear in the lower part of the page to help you choose a policy and commission record to post the suspended commission to. The Post button remains greyed out until the suspended commission is ready to be moved and is now the only way to post the commission from suspended commission.
Refer to the Updates section to see fixes to several issues in Suspended Commission.

Tax Rates, Bands and Allowances have been updated for Tax Year 2012/13. Includes new Child Benefit charge, phased withdrawal of Age related Personal Allowances, revision of Car Benefit in Kind up to 2016/17. Excludes cap on unlimited income tax reliefs (effective April 2013) and SEISs.

Real Time Valuations for Sanlam ISAs and Unit Trust policies, namely GIA policies have been added.

Scottish Widows recently changed the bulk valuation file format due to the abolition of protected rights. JCS can now detect and import this new format.