I have been using Excel to track my orders and such - is there anyone using a more sophisticated piece of software to track orders and etc ... ? Thanks.
What about book keeping type software like “QuickBooks”? I don’t know if it will work, I only use a pencil and paper.
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I have been using Excel to track my orders and such - is there anyone using a more sophisticated piece of software to track orders and etc … ? Thanks.
If your not doing major orders a good old set of books and handwritten invoices works fine. Nebs sells a great check book system for small business with all the stuff you need. It’s about $100.00. K.I.S.
at my business (not surf related) we use ACT…you can customize fields and its pretty easy to use
Quickbooks is great for costs of goods sold, invoicing, and a customer database, but what about actual tracking? Some of my orders go out for glassing, some of my boards are machined, etc … I would like to track the progress of my boards as well as where they are and how much each one is costing me … Thanks.
If you wanted to include the progress of outside glassing and stuff I think the other people would have to be onboard and using the same software or something and maybe a shared database? (If you’re wanting live updates of their work and tasks finished - if I’m understanding you right.) I don’t know man. I only use order/shaping/glassing sheets (sometimes all in one) and a generic multi-copy receipt book for the customers deposit/payments and my files. If you find something that works well for what you are talking about, please post up. I’m sure many people could benefit from it.
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Quickbooks is great for costs of goods sold, invoicing, and a customer database, but what about actual tracking? Some of my orders go out for glassing, some of my boards are machined, etc … I would like to track the progress of my boards as well as where they are and how much each one is costing me … Thanks
Holy cow! This may be a Swaylock’s first…somebody in The Biz asking about order and cost tracking!!! STEP ONE FOR THE SMALLER OR CORE MANUFACTURING BUSINESSES TO IMPROVE QUALITY AND COSTS! There is hope for the universe.
I’ll tell you what a lot of non-surf businesses do…they issue what are called “manufacturing orders”, “job packets”, or “work travelers”. These are individual detailed outlines of the manufacturing being done on specific orders…roughly what you would have from your surfboard order sheet…for a surfboard you would have the specific blank details, the dimensions relating to the final product, the shaping machine insutructions/order number…everything including the glass shop and operations, the colors, decals, boxes and setups and fins…it would all be laid out in order of operation…you would ideally have made space to record your purchase order number to outside processors like shaping machine and glass shops…
So in the end once you’ve delivered it you can go back and key off invoices or cancelled checks and actually cost the production of the board from start to finish.
As to tracking when in process, assuming you are halfway disciplined, you could have racks in the key work stations and one in like a shipping area for ones that are out of the facility. Key would be not having to go chase papers all over the place…you could do a run either at the end or the start of a day and see where your work in process is at.
Microsoft Project Manager is something I have heard fair things about…worth investigating to see if it would be helpful. It might even tie in with other Micosoft products. This is sort of Material Requirements Planning in a cut down version. This kind of thing is different from inventory control though…it isn’t a matter of just keeping track of stock and ordering more in a timely manner, although that may be part of your operation.
If there is a catch to all this it is using the computer to do it. If you do much volume sometimes it just bogs you down, which is why I kind of like haivng hard copies around…computerized “systems” go unstable if you are less than about 94% real time accurate…that can be a hassle to maintain if you are wearing many hats. If you want order status for customer calls you would have to be at a computer.
Okay- just reread what I wrote and don’t know if that is the track you are thinking of…phone ringing and can’t think…I can take that into much more orderly detail if you want…but in case not heh heh I’d also like to say that providing the customer with a fairly detailed outline of what makes up his or her board including the craftspeople involved (without the prices) would go a long way to making them understand just what is involved with making the product…the badly needed education of the consumer we occasionally talk about…and it is another form of attention the customer can actually see and feel. Let me know if you want more.
Nels
create your own database system using Microsoft Access.
there may already be some sort of template that you can tweak to your specific needs.
Ditto. I used to run a vacuum pump shop (among a million other things) in a semiconductor manufacturing facility, and Access was good (not optimal, but functional). The setup was hell, and I had to talk to a few of our IT folks to get it running well, but once the system was up, it worked well.
The hardest part about setting up a database is the PLANNING, knowing what you want IN DETAIL. After that, it’s just fields, and telling Access what you want to show you when.
I don’t have experience with anything else, so I can’t make comparisons… I can tell you that I used to use an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of all the pumps, where they were, their running status and cost to repair, consumables prices… etc. and it was time consuming compared to the Access system, once the bugs were worked out…
One piece of advice, while the new system is coming online, KEEP THE OLD SYSTEM RUNNING. Don’t rely on the new until it has been working for a while without surprises…
JSS
What about Microsoft Project? Building a surfboard is a step-by-step project that can be displayed in a Gantt Chart. Each step has a cost and a set time to complete. You have a limited number of resources (i.e., workers and contractors) in order to complete each step. The more orders you have, the further out to the right your schedule goes. When a new customer comes to order a board you can say with confidence the exact date it is projected to be completed. If some event, like a big swell, interrupts your schedule then you make one adjustment, and the whole project schedule updates automatically. At that point you could then call you customers, and update them on the new project completion date.
Note 1: I have never run a surfboard manufacturing business. I’m just suggesting that it might be a good tool to take a look at using.
Note 2: I hate Microsoft, and can’t believe that I am suggesting that you use their products – as I write this post on my Macintosh using Firefox. There are other similar project management tools out there. I just don’t have experience using them.
MS project is good because it gets one to catagorize everything as time dependant. Several freinds of mine even run their daily lives by MS project on their little PDAs but they are professional project managers who run multi million dollar projects daily too.
Excel will work as does access and so will project but in the end they are all terribly inefficient because they don’t handle the complete package most importantly the financials. I spend most of my time assisting companies of all sizes manage their financial operations to maximise their cash flow and I’ve seen large universities manage the funds of 10s of thousands of student with just excel and an army of student interns for data entry because they were cheap. I’ve also seen 30 year old mainframe cobol green screen programs run the financials of the biggest companies in our state because they were afraid of PCs. Most of it in the end is more dysfunctional than what you are trying to do.
So what I would suggest is look for something a little more specialized than Quicken or Quickbooks related to the construction industry from either Intuit or Microsoft that automatically integrates data back and forth to your home and small business banking services because that’s were you’ll get the biggest bank for your buck. It may even do your taxes for you in the end as well. Intuit has a product called “Masterbuilder” that some of our clients use and I’m sure there a host of others. Unfortunately it’ll will cost you something.
If you want to stay cheap then go to download.com and look for something similar but it won’t help you with your financial planning like Intuit and Microsoft stuff will. And in the end the true viability of any company is it’s financial well being.
Mind Your Own Business MYOB, even calculates quantities used for each order…
Their website says compare to QuickBooks Pro. Do you know how it stacks up against QB Pro?
I have an older version of QuickBooks basic that I bought a few years ago. After installing it and checking it out it I removed it and have never touched it since. Maybe I should give it another look.
I’m with Hicksy- been using MYOB for many years with the publishing company and it works fine, efficient and easy to use for a bone head like me, If you have a lot of different products it can get a bit memory heavy, but it’s all round a gem of a program
this is good question… i currently just print out several copies of my daily ordersheet… then sign everything off as i shape it. we sign everything in at the factory and out again when its done… it would be great to have tracking software to follow a boards progress. NEV had a great DOS program written 15 years ago that just involved daily updating. however he never changed it to operate on windows. im sure nowadays he doesnt need it. i tried to get him to let it out to public use but to this date no luck…
All of the concepts in this thread are valid, particularly those in Nels’ post, however, I’d pay the most heed to Solosurfer - keep it simple. Every single one of those ideas can be implemented in Excel (or, even better, Open Office Calc, a component of the free Open Office Suite that is Excel-compatible: http://download.openoffice.org/2.2.0/index.html) with little difficulty. Why take time to learn how to use a completely unfamiliar tool if you can do what you want with a familiar one or its work-a-like? Why spend money if it isn’t necessary? Do you want to make boards, or be a geek (speaking as a professional geek:-) Sometimes it’s true - “better is the enemy of good enough”…
-Samiam
sam, we do from 30-50 boards a week, i shape 90% of them. it would of great help to me and my staff to find out where ones order is without a phone call to disturb someone from thier work in the factory, and then a phone call back to the customer…
maybe one of the IT Sways here can nock something together on Access. I will have a go at it when I get a chance but it will only be in about 2-3 months though. It would be nice to give something back to you guys.
Let me know what you guys would like to see in the app… Nothing too fancy please Im just a man and a dog and the dog does the dev work. Some of you other IT boffs can contribute. My input would be that it would be nice to update to the web on the progress of orders that way you can dedicate your time to shaping and not answering the phone.
Dave you going to be at the ocean fest again this year??
So you think it’s that much better than QB? Ok. It was Nels comments that made me rethink my previous decision. I had it already and it wouldn’t cost me anything to revisit it. I did re-install QuickBooks and the only big thing the basic version doesn’t do is the inventory tracking. It’s hard to remember because I went through so many setup steps.
For me, it might be useful to track a few typical boards for final cost analysis. One of each type and construction. I doubt I would want to use that program full time because it might turn into a second part time job keeping up with it. I kind of like the pencil and paper. I do like it’s invoicing, tax forms, online banking, and other stuff.
What a generous thought Swifty. Good on ya.
In most cases for general, I’d recommend an off the self, like Quicken. You can get support from the manufacturer for it, which is a big thing. They are straight forward and designed for the average person to use and pick up. Plus sometimes you could get support to help customize it for your needs.
Or go for something simple with excel.
or design yourself one like Project.
At my previous job, they used dreamweaver to make a makeshift database LOL.
Don’t use access . . . its slow, it organizes it tables funky . . . depends on how complicated (and expandable). Personally I’d go with database based off of oracle or you can even use .net frameworks to create your database running off SQL scripts for reports / table creation etc.
At the job I’m working at, we’re getting rid of our access based databases. They are unwieldy, the table gunk up after a while. I remember in school, they had access 2000, and everyone kept drilling (unofficially of course) that MS access wasn’t the way to. Maybe they’ve fixed it for 64 bit, but 2003 seems to be the same.