One thing I have noticed when I switch any client from a paper system to a computer system, is the reluctance to change their workflow processes. They try to keep the same system in place that they had when using their old methodologies, and have a hard time letting go of unnecessary steps that usually hinder them with a new setup.
One example is the number of copies that the sales clerk gives to the customer. With their old method, a customer would place an order at the sales counter. The sales person used a 5 part form to write down the order which had a white, pink, green, and two yellow parts. The sales person would keep the pink copy at the counter and give the other copies to the customer. The customer would take the remaining paper to the cash register. The cashier would take payment, stamp the paper copies as paid and keep the green copy. The customer would then take the white copy and two yellow copies to the delivery area. The delivery drivers/loaders would keep the yellow copies (there may be two different loading docks that the customer goes to). The white copy was left for the customer’s records.
When setting up POS and running through some test transactions, I suggested that the sales counter does not need to keep a printed copy on hand, as they have the information in the system. I also suggested that the cashier does not need a copy unless they are paying by credit card. They would still need to have three copies, one for the customer’s records, and two for shipping. While suggesting this, many of the employees looked at me in horror and started proclaiming that without their paper copies they wouldn’t have any record of the sales. Even after explaining that the system contains all the information and they can easily look up the information based on the customer, order number and a host of other options, they still were skeptical. Only until I actually had them walk through the process pretending that I am a customer did I get (most of) them to see that there wasn’t a need.
I still had some people mumbling under their breath that they didn’t think it would work and that there was going to be a lot of problems later, but luckily, the managers were all on board with the change. So far, everything has worked out, and after a couple of weeks of using the new system, even the naysayers were comfortable with the change.
From Paper to Progressive – Workflows
Posted in Current Projects, From Paper to Progressive
Tagged Paperless, QuickBooks, Workflow
The Toy Store – Installation Day
The day after I did the creation of the POS data file and the importing of all the lists, I went onsite to install the POS software & hardware, QB software and the POS data file.
The first thing I had to do was download the POS software onto all the machines. After that, I ran the installation. I had brought a backup of the data file with me and saved it to the desktop of the server. Once the installation of the software was complete, I restored the backup and got the server up and running. Once the installations of the client workstations were complete – they automatically connected to the data file on the server. Everything was working great.
Then it was time to install the hardware peripherals. Because the client was switching off of Retail Pro, he already had a few pieces of hardware that he wanted to use on the new system. One of these pieces included a Receipt printer. The receipt printer was a model that works with QuickBooks Point of Sale but the problem was that it connects to the computer via Parallel and since they are new computers, they didn’t come with parallel ports. Thankfully, the owner had me order an extra printer so everything worked out fine. I installed printers on all of the machines as well as the Pin Pad with Signature capture. For those of you who don’t know what this is- it’s a piece of hardware where the customer can swipe their own Credit or Debit card and sign the screen on the hardware piece instead of signing a paper receipt. This signature is stored in the background of POS, so if the customer was to dispute the charge, the store owner can reprint the receipt with the signature on it.
Once all the hardware was installed, I installed QB Pro Financial on the server machine. I had the owner give me a backup of his current QuickBooks data file so I can restore it on the POS server. Because there is a direct integration between the 2 products (POS & QB) both data files need to be on the server for them to “talk”.
Now that all the software and hardware is installed, tomorrow is training day!
Posted in Current Projects, The Toy Store
Tagged Accounting, Intuit, Inventory Center, Point of Sale, QuickBooks 2012
The Toy Store – Creation of Data File
I have been working a lead for about 3 years that I had met at the NYC Toy show. Every year the owner would reach out to me and tell me to not write him off his list – that he was going to move eventually.  Well, needless to say, we FINALLY closed the deal! Just to give you some background, this is a big toy store located out in Southampton. The client was using Retail Pro for a number of years and was never really satisfied with it. The holdup of moving to QuickBooks Point of Sale was always the concern of the changeover process. Since the owner actually decided to move his physical store to a bigger space across the street, he thought that now was a perfect time to switch softwares as well as buildings. He was right.
The steps to do the change over are as follows:
Day 1 – Create the new data file & import all the clients customers, vendors and items.
Day 2 – Onsite installation of software and hardware.
Day 3 – Training
So over this past weekend, the owner closed his existing store for business with the thought in mind that it would be kind of hard to move inventory across the street as people were trying to buy it. Since the store is closed for business, this is a good time to do the conversion. I had the owner send me his customer, vendor and item list in excel format. Since Retail Pro and QB POS are similar products, most of the fields lined up. There were a few fields of course that didn’t. One of the issues that we ran into with the Customer list is that there was a field for the customer’s outstanding Store Credit in the excel sheet. This information is not importable to QBPOS. The first thing that people think
of is to create a custom field. The problem with this is that although the field will hold the imported information, it is not a calculated field and the amounts will not change as people begin to use their credits. The process that we need to take to get this information into QBPOS is to create an opening balance item and have one of the employees return this item to every customer that has an outstanding credit and put it “on account” as the payment type. This process will give each customer a store credit balance. Although it’s a bit of a manual process, at least now they are able to track the credits in the new system.
On the item list, we ran into an issue of the owner needing to see the last received date on each item. Again, this is something that you would normally be able to see in QBPOS once you start using the system, but it’s not an importable field. What we decided to do is to use a custom field, and called it “Last Received in Retail Pro.” We imported the date and that information will stay in POS. Once that date becomes old and unusable, we will export out the item list, remove the data from that field and reimport so it’s no longer there.
Basically, the conversion of data went very well. Everything that the client wanted to see is now available in the new software and the installation and training should hopefully go just as well. Check back to see
Posted in Current Projects, The Toy Store
Tagged consulting, conversion, current projects, importing, Point of Sale, QuickBooks 2012, retail pro
Double sided items in QuickBooks
Many people don’t know that QuickBooks has what we call “double-sided items”. Because they do not know that double sided items exist, their process goes something like this:
You are an HVAC company and you service and sell boilers. You create an item for the service of the boiler as well as the boiler itself in the QuickBooks item list. You create the boiler item as a non-inventory item and set the sell price to $1000.00. You tell QuickBooks that the income account to hit is “Sales Income”. Now you get a customer that needs a boiler. You buy the boiler and put a bill into QuickBooks and hit “Cost of Goods Sold” in the expense tab of the bill. You create an invoice for your customer and put the boiler item on it. Although this is not wrong, there is a bit of an easier way to do it and a way for better reporting.
Now, here is the easier/more accurate way to do it. When you create the boiler non inventory item in QuickBooks, you check the box that says “This item is used in assemblies or is purchase for a specific cutomer:job”. (Who knew that meant double-sided?” Now, you will see that a purchase side of the item appears. Now you can fill out the cost side as well as the income side. So you put in your purchasing cost as $250.00 and your Expense Account as “Cost of Goods Sold.” You put in your sales price and Income account just like you did in the earlier example. Now, when you buy the boiler, you can enter a bill and choose “boiler” on the items tab of the bill. Now the first cool thing, is your bookkeeper or data entry person, doesn’t have to know enough about accounting to know to hit “Cost of Goods sold” on the bill. Because the item is already setup to hit that account on the cost side, it does it for you. Also, because we had setup a cost, QB will automatically enter in the cost for you.
Also, now you can run reports that show you the profitability by item. You can now see that you bought the boiler for $250.00 and sold it for $1000.00 therefor profiting $750.00 on the boiler alone.
Pretty cool right?
Posted in QuickBooks 2012, Tips & Tricks
Tagged double sided items, Inventory Center, items
Resolved Question: Where on quickbooks can you look up the history of owners draws?
Posted in Q and A
Current Projects – The Nursery
Right now I am working on a fairly large QuickBooks Point of Sale implementation. There have been a few hurdles so far that we were able to work out and I would like to bring you along for the ride.
In the sales stage, we ran into a couple of hiccups. First, the client is already using a dot matrix printer and 3 part invoices for his customers. Although the customer is ok with change, he wasn’t ok with getting rid of the printer or invoices. After doing some testing, we were actually able to get the Dot Matrix printer to work with POS.  It turns out that if you can get the printer to work with windows, then it will work with POS. The trick is trying to get POS to layout the receipt to match their existing invoice template. The bad news is that I wasn’t able to get it to match up. Thankfully, the client worked with me and agreed to order blank 3 part invoices so POS could print whatever it wanted.
Another issue that we had is the client is a Nursery and has a need for waterproof labels. No problem, as I can actually buy waterproof labels to work in the Zebra printer. WRONG – client needs different size labels than what are actually available. After doing some research and not coming up with much of anything, the client decided that he is going to continue to buy and use his existing labels and just stick the normal size waterproof POS labels onto his much bigger label. Hey, whatever works, right?
Since the client was on an old antiquated system, we partnered up with John at 2000 Computer Solutions (again) and he got in there for me to setup all the wiring, networking and install all the computers. I went in there yesterday to install all the POS software and hardware as well as the regular QuickBooks software. Thanks to John and his crew, it went perfectly. Not one issue (yay!). All workstations are networked and working together as they should.
Then it was time for some item entry training. Because their old software went belly up, the owners have to do all the item entry manually. I went over how to create their items (reminding them to not put in quantities yet) and how to enter their customers. Unfortunately, they were under the impression that they were going to be able to start making sales right away even though all their items weren’t in the system. They were disappointed when I told them that is a really bad practice. Why, you ask, is it a bad practice? Let me explain…
-You would have to have A HUGE AMOUNT of miscellaneous sales. If every sale you make over the next couple of weeks/months all say MISC, then what’s the point of a POS system?
-You could easily go into negative inventory. BAD IDEA
-Your customers are not going to tolerate sitting around waiting for you to create the item on the fly and then put in the correct quantity in order to sell it.
Thankfully, I was able to convince them to get all their inventory items into the system, do a physical inventory and then go live the next day. I have an appointment to go back in 2 weeks where they say that most, if not all, their items will be entered. We Shall See….
Posted in Current Projects, The Nursery
Tagged Point of Sale, QuickBooks 2012, QuickBooks Mistakes
Customizing Templates – Borders
In my previous article, Customizing Templates – Adding and Removing Fields, we looked at how to add and remove columns and fields from a template. This article is going to discuss how to change borders to help your template stand out from the mass of QuickBooks users. Having a visually distinct style to your invoices can keep your company in mind with your clients, and make them more likely to utilize your services in the future.
Every field on a template can have a border around it, and there are some neat visual options you can select for those borders. You can even choose to hide them if you want. Be careful with hiding borders if you have a lot of information on your document. Borders can help organize each section to make it clear to the customer what they are seeing. To customize the borders, you will need select the Layout Designer button at the bottom of the customize template window. This will give you a sample view of what the invoice will look like. From here, simple double click on the field that you want to change borders on. You can also right click on the field and choose properties.
On the field property window, click the border tab. This is where you select which sides of the field has a border, along with the size, corner style and pattern. You can choose to only have a border at the bottom, left, right and top, or any combination of the four. Keep in mind this only applies to the field you are working with, so you may need to change an adjacent field’s borders as well to achieve the look. The rounded corners will make ovals instead of squares. If you choose Medium or Large corners, your field has to be big enough to support them, or they will revert back to square corners.
The pattern option will give let you have dashes or dots instead of a solid line, while the thickness will make the border larger or smaller. These options effect all the borders that you have checked for this field. Using these options you can not, for example, have a top thin dashed and a solid thick bottom. There is a way to get around this, though. You will need to set the settings for your top border and uncheck the bottom border option. Then, click the OK button to leave the properties of the field. Click the Add button at the top and choose to add a new Text Box. This text box is not going to have any text in it. We are simply going to use the border feature to make a bottom thick border. You then position it so it overlaps the actual field that you want the thick bottom border on. This trick is very useful when you are trying to match an existing template to QuickBooks.
Every field on a template can have a border around it, and there are some neat visual options you can select for those borders. You can even choose to hide them if you want. Be careful with hiding borders if you have a lot of information on your document. Borders can help organize each section to make it clear to the customer what they are seeing. To customize the borders, you will need select the Layout Designer button at the bottom of the customize template window. This will give you a sample view of what the invoice will look like. From here, simple double click on the field that you want to change borders on. You can also right click on the field and choose properties.
On the field property window, click the border tab. This is where you select which sides of the field has a border, along with the size, corner style and pattern. You can choose to only have a border at the bottom, left, right and top, or any combination of the four. Keep in mind this only applies to the field you are working with, so you may need to change an adjacent field’s borders as well to achieve the look. The rounded corners will make ovals instead of squares. If you choose Medium or Large corners, your field has to be big enough to support them, or they will revert back to square corners.
The pattern option will give let you have dashes or dots instead of a solid line, while the thickness will make the border larger or smaller. These options effect all the borders that you have checked for this field. Using these options you can not, for example, have a top thin dashed and a solid thick bottom. There is a way to get around this, though. You will need to set the settings for your top border and uncheck the bottom border option. Then, click the OK button to leave the properties of the field. Click the Add button at the top and choose to add a new Text Box. This text box is not going to have any text in it. We are simply going to use the border feature to make a bottom thick border. You then position it so it overlaps the actual field that you want the thick bottom border on. This trick is very useful when you are trying to match an existing template to QuickBooks.
Posted in Tips & Tricks
Tagged Borders, Customize, QuickBooks, Templates
