What's New

Fixed two critical bugs in the database restore feature that caused restore operations to appear successful when they actually failed, and could target files still in use by the live database. The restore dialog now correctly reports SQL Server errors immediately and always names restored files after the new database name.

Fixed an issue where the Westlake Excel export would silently fail when attempting to export more than 50,000 records. The confirmation prompt for large exports was being displayed incorrectly, causing the export to never complete.

Fixed an issue where the automatic strategy backup service could crash during startup or after saving a strategy if the settings database was temporarily unavailable. The service now logs a warning and continues gracefully instead of throwing an error.

Added startup detection and automatic repair when a store's configured identity contradicts the database's own record, preventing data from one store being synced or backed up under another store's name. This addresses cases where license fallback had incorrectly stamped unrelated stores with a different company's store number.

Implements comprehensive safety checks to prevent accidentally publishing real customer databases as demo databases. After an incident where two demo databases were discovered to contain actual customer data with credentials, the system now requires proof that a database contains only synthetic data before it can be uploaded, recorded, or screenshotted.

Fixed an issue where training tours could not open menu fly-outs that are nested inside other menus (such as "Data > Remove Price Decreases"). The screenshot and tour system now correctly locates and opens these inline menu items, and a new test ensures all lesson tours target reachable menu paths.

The application now detects when it's configured for a store number that has been retired in RetailerSoft and offers guided migration to the correct live store number. This addresses a silent issue where stores could run indefinitely with pricing data for closed stores—one installation ran 680 times against a retired store number without any indication something was wrong.

The Rename Database tool has been completely rebuilt to work on any Margin Master database—not just "MarginMaster3"—and now lives in the SQL Server Tools window alongside Migrate and Delete Database. The database housekeeping tools (Optimize/Shrink, Reset Database, Run Maintenance Scripts) have also moved into SQL Server Tools under its Tools menu, consolidating all database utilities in one place.

The "Show Skus NOT included in Strategy" feature is now an active filter that persists and composes with other selections, rather than a one-time query that discarded your selection boxes. When you have a PS Rule or PS Rule History selection box, the filter appears as a ticked BLANK entry; otherwise, a "No Pricing Rule" pill shows beside the selection tabs.

A new menu item under Strategy > Show Strategy Execution Summary allows users to reopen the summary screen from their most recent strategy run without having to execute the strategy again. This makes it easy to review run statistics, step details, and drill into changes after the summary has been closed.

The Strategy Execution Summary dialog has been widened to ensure all action buttons fit on a single line without wrapping or clipping. The dialog now opens at 1300 pixels wide instead of 1100, preventing the "Close" button from wrapping to a second line and other buttons from being clipped off the left edge.

Fixed two issues in the Strategy Execution Summary dialog: buttons were being clipped off the left edge when the dialog was too narrow, and drill-in results (Show Skus Not In Strategy, Show Affected Items) were being replaced by the default post-run view immediately after loading.

Resolved an issue where long-running Compass/MySQL POS data merge operations appeared frozen with no progress updates, causing imports to be incorrectly flagged as stalled and potentially force-quit by watchdog timers.

The startup update check and download now have timeout protection to prevent Margin Master from hanging on the splash screen when an update server or endpoint security software becomes unresponsive. A new support document provides antivirus exclusion guidance for IT staff.

A new blue "Installing update…" badge now appears in the title bar while Margin Master downloads an update in the background, showing the download percentage so you know the app is actively fetching a new version rather than just being slow. This is especially helpful when catching up across multiple releases, which can take several minutes.

The Import Manager now displays a clear message when the selected POS system has no import layout available, instead of showing an empty list with no explanation. This also eliminates redundant error logging that occurred when repeatedly checking for unavailable import layouts.

Resolved a critical issue where MySQL Compass inventory imports could hang indefinitely when encountering database timeouts, and optimized the import process to reduce contention on busy servers.

The Strategy Execution Summary now explains "Items not priced" in plain language and offers buttons to view or export those items. The "Show Skus NOT included in Strategy" menu item now counts correctly (using PSRuleHistory instead of PSRule) and is only available after a strategy has run. A new export writes every not-priced item to Excel with a Reason column explaining why each was left alone.

Zone overrides in the Store Manager now validate that the entered zone number exists and has pricing data before saving. This prevents stores from being priced against invalid zones that would silently skip all zone pricing.

Corrected a bug where the automatic update checker would fail to start when the application was launched normally, causing installations to miss available updates until the next restart. The checker now properly activates on every launch and logs its status for diagnostics.