CCH Central 2025.1: Release Notes
Prerequisites
Installing CCH Central 2025.1
This release is installed using the Central Suite Installer. This ensures that all prerequisites are in place and that all the products for which you are licenced are installed in the correct sequence.
Click here to find out more about the Central Suite Installer.
Software Enhancements
Audit trail change
Contact and Client Audit Trail
The Audit Trail Id has been added to the Audit Trail grid when viewing via contacts or clients.
When in a record, click the Advanced menu option and View button from the ribbon.
Global Audit Trail
A few changes have been made to this screen to enhance the search facility, such as 'Search by Date', 'Search by Audit Trail id', and 'All Entities'.
Search by Date
This new option is the same as before this release. The employee enters a date range to show a list of audit trail entries within the specific range.
Search by Audit Trail id
This new option allows the employee to enter an Audit trail id range to show a list of audit trail entries within the specific range.
Entity = All Entities
With this release, a new option called All Entities has been added to enable employees to perform a bulk search across all products and all areas (entities). For a more targeted search, employees can select a specific product with an associated entity to view.
CCH iFirm integration
CCH Central has added the following items to support the CCH iFirm suite of cloud products.
CCH iFirm Console
The new CCH iFirm console allows firms to authenticate and monitor the syncing of edited contact and client records from CCH Central to CCH iFirm, and saving transferred documents from CCH iFirm to CCH Document Management (where CCH Document Management is licenced).
Task Permission
A new task permission has been created to allow firms to select which employees can access the CCH iFirm Console.
CCH iFirm Console Window
Navigate to File > Maintenance > Service Settings > CCH iFirm Console
CCH iFirm Authentication
This sign-in option allows for the synchronisation of contacts/client records, edited records, and the saving of documents from CCH iFirm cloud products into CCH Document Management (where licenced).
Click the Sign In button, a pop-up is displayed:
The pop-up below only appears if the configuration 'iFirm_EnableUpdateContact' has a key value = 0.
Yes - This automatically updates the above-mentioned configuration key, setting its value to 1 and redirecting it to the CCH iFirm login page.
No - This cancels the sign-in and returns you to the console window.
Warning: Only one employee's credentials are required to log in, BUT that employee must be set as an Admin within CCH iFirm. (They need full rights to all contacts/clients to take action on the change requests).
Once the CCH iFirm login has been authenticated, CCH Central flashes and when re-accessed, the following message is shown:
A CCH Central Service restart is required on the server.
Validations
The following message is shown where an employee is already signed in and the button is re-selected.
A Change to Log in - CCH iFirm Authentication (Sync Activation)
In the last release, we advised that to enable the syncing of edited data to CCH iFirm, a single user was required to log in via a button on their employees' main tab. This temporary measure has now been moved to be held within the CCH iFirm Console.
Note: Whenever a CCH upgrade is performed, re-authentication is required.
CCH Central Service
This box shows the status of the CCH Central Service. It will show either a Status of Running or Stopped:
Where the status is reflected as stopped, please inform your IT administrator.
CCH iFirm Polling Settings
This option allows firms to set the interval for checking for any changes made within CCH Central and pushing the relevant changes up to CCH iFirm.
Note: A restart of the CCH Central Service is required if the Polling interval value is changed.
CCH iFirm Identification
This displays the CCH iFirm name and Id after using the Sign in button to authenticate. The right-click option allows firms to copy both Name and Id if required to be provided to the CCH Customer Support.
Sync Messages
The sync errors incurred while syncing edited records into CCH iFirm are displayed within the Sync Messages tab.
A more detailed description is displayed when the user hovers over the reason.
Use the search option to narrow down the filter process.
Click the Refresh icon on the ribbon to refresh the results.
The 'Days to keep sync messages' is definable. Change the value to alter the days the messages are kept for.
Audit Trail
This shows the audit trail for Contacts/clients and their associations for clients who have been pushed or are about to be pushed up into CCH iFirm.
Use the search option to narrow down the filter process.
Click the Refresh icon on the ribbon to refresh the results.
Last Audit Trail Id, this displays the latest audit trailId.
The Audit trail entries are cleared after XX days. The value displayed is determined by what has been entered as the KeyValue for the 'DaysToKeepAuditTrailData' Configuration Key. Navigate to File > Maintenance > User Defined > Configuration to change the specified days.
Syncing of new associations to CCH iFirm
This release includes automatically syncing associations from CCH Central to CCH iFirm where possible.
Please check and manually update where the associations have not been automatically matched. A new System Type column has been added to show the CCH Central system association name. This will identify if an association name has been changed from the internal system name.
Navigate to File > Maintenance > Internal > Association Types. Click the drop-down for CCH iFirm Association and select the matching association.
There are two ways for associations to be synced to CCH iFirm.
- Associations that are already present on a contact/client when that record is pushed into CCH iFirm
- New associations being added onto an existing contact/client with a MASId (contact/client already present in CCH iFirm)
The one exception to this rule is where an association is not mapped to the list provided by CCH iFirm. To review the matches, navigate to File > Maintenance > Internal > Association Types. Any unmapped associations are not synced to CCH iFirm.
Note: Currently CCH iFirm does not support the same client code character length as CCH Central. Any client code with more than 20 characters will not be created within CCH iFirm.
Bulk Upload to CCH iFirm
Firms can now perform a bulk upload of contacts/clients from the respective Find window to CCH iFirm.
On the Find Contact or Find Clients windows, select either a single record or multiple records of contacts and clients and click the Upload to CCH iFirm 
button on the ribbon to push the selected records to CCH iFirm.
A pop-up box is displayed, showing how many records have been selected. The number displayed automatically excludes the following:
- Any records already uploaded (has a MASId associated, this can be found in the field chooser on the Find Contacts/Clients window)
- All employee records
- Any Supplier records
Yes - Continues to upload the records to CCH iFirm
Cancel - Does not perform the upload and returns the user to the Find window
During the upload, at the bottom right of the window, a progress bar displays the progress of the upload.
Once completed, the progress displays either as:
All the records have been uploaded successfully.
Some records have failed to upload. Navigate to File > Maintenance > Service Settings > CCH iFirm Console for more details on the reason for upload failure.
Task Permission
Two new task permissions have been added to enable firms to select which employee groups can perform this function.
Note: If permission is only granted to upload contacts and only clients are selected from the Find Contact window, the yes button is disabled. If there is a mixture of contacts and clients, then only the contacts are uploaded.
Ongoing Monitoring - Individuals only
The AML Tab on individual contacts/clients has been updated to include if the record has been marked as active for Ongoing Monitoring within CCH iFirm AML (if that module is licenced). 24 hours after the record has been made active within CCH iFirm AML, the Ongoing Monitoring tick box is ticked and a date is supplied as to when that record subscribed. Any reports associated with that record are downloaded and displayed here and in CCH Document Management (if that module is licenced)
Activate monitoring of files
The following configuration keys relate to the activation for CCH Central to monitor documents available from CCH iFirm AML (Ongoing Monitoring) for filing into CCH Document Management.
To active, navigate to File > Maintenance > User Defined > Configuration
Keyname = iFirm_EnableOMPolling, change the KeyValue from 0 to 1.
This will inform the CCH Central Service to monitor all files pushed from CCH iFirm AML relating to Ongoing Monitoring.
Keyname = iFirm_OMPolling, this value is set to 1440 mins (24hrs). Change the value to decrease or increase the interval times for the service monitoring.
Note: A restart of the CCH Central Services is required whenever the KeyValue is changed for the iFirm_EnableOMPolling key.
Note: The saving of the Ongoing Monitoring documents into CCH Document Management is covered with the CCH Document Management Release Notes.
AML - KYB Checks
In preparation for CCH iFirm AML KYB, CCH Central has extended the AML functionality to include KYB checks for the following contact/client types.
- Limited
- Other Organisation
- LLP
The above three contact types have been included in the following two existing Task Permissions:
#Client#LaunchiFirmAML
#Contact#LaunchiFirmAML
Note: The above two Task Permissions determine access to the AML Tab for the contact or client and the AML Button on the Ribbon Bar.
As with the individual AML check (KYC), the journey starts within CCH Central. Against a contact/client (whose Contact Type equals one of the three listed above), click the CCH iFirm AML button. Log in to CCH iFirm if that module is licenced and it will proceed with the "Start a new KYB check" wizard to perform the KYB check for the selected organisation.
AML Tab
The AML Tab has been extended to show contacts/clients whose contact type = Limited, Other Organisation, or LLP to show the AML History for the contact/client from an AML check performed within CCH iFirm.
The AML History is intended to show the following
- Submitted Date - This is the date the AML was submitted.
- Status - Completed.
- Employee - who performed the check.
- Document Name - a link to the document from the client's document centre. (If CCH Document Management is installed)
Activate monitoring of files
The following configuration keys relate to the activation for CCH Central to monitor documents available from CCH iFirm AML (Ongoing Monitoring) for filing into CCH Document Management.
To active, navigate to File > Maintenance > User Defined > Configuration
Keyname = iFirm_EnableKYBPolling, change the KeyValue from 0 to 1.
This will inform the CCH Central Service to monitor all files pushed from CCH iFirm AML relating to Ongoing Monitoring.
Keyname = iFirm_KYBPolling, this value is set to 1440 mins (24hrs). Change the value to decrease or increase the interval times for the service monitoring.
Note: A restart of the CCH Central Services is required whenever the KeyValue is changed for the iFirm_EnableKYBPolling key.
Note: The saving of the KYB document into CCH Document Management is covered with the CCH Document Management Release Notes.
Updating of Company Registration Number
Firms can allow CCH iFirm to update the Company Registration Number for clients within CCH Central (where the company registration number is blank) at the same time as the CCH Central is updated to record that the status of the check is completed.
To enable this functionality, the following configuration key needs to be set. Navigate to File > Maintenance > User Defined > Configuration
Keyname = iFirm_UpdateCRN, change the KeyValue from 0 to 1.
Note: A restart of the CCH Central Services is required whenever the KeyValue is changed for the iFirm_UpdateCRN key.
Quality Improvements
ITS 68192 - Extra field not retaining values
Previously, the new value was not retained when deleting or editing an extra field value (where the value was either deleted and changed or just changed) before refreshing.
CCH Central crashing on client opening
It has been reported that on occasion when opening a client record, the client showed a Red X and crashed CCH Central, showing an HTTP Error 404 (where the following two conditions have been applied):
- Opening a client from the File > Recent list AND
- Where the Tab order has been changed
SA Password length
Previously, when entering the SA password within the Help > About > Run Script window, the password length was set to 30 characters. This has now been increased to 128 to match the SQL password policy.