66 replies to this topic

[tnewman]

Very interested in the software used by distributors that have volume under say $400M and a 1 person office. What I have found is most of the industry software is oversized for this size operation or takes great deal of time to handle. Have been told some take the Quick Books and change it to fit.

Anyone found the right one that does not break the bank.
The Newman Group

[Chris Miller]

We currently use QuickBooks 2004 Manufacturing along with QuickBooks customer manager 2.0. It isnt the best solution, but we have tweaked it so that it does the job.

We are looking for a solution that can do a little better job of order management instead of just accounting. Customer Manager helps a little with that but still not a 100% fix.

Hopefully others will reply. This is a great topic.

[tnewman]

I am currently using OrderMaster. The program is great except it does not give you financial statements & etc, but gives you current A/R, & A/P and has been very useful in research for previous invoice and history of client. However, have regular problems such as lock up, rebooting, and etc. Doesn't cost me to get corrected, but always happens after 5 pm and have been told my electrical service is bad, conflict with other programs, need to update computer and so on. Some of this might be true, but get the impression standard answer as they have no idea of what is wrong. Also costing $500 year just to service. They said it is to give me updates & new info when all I want is just what I have. Still least expensive industry software and easiest to use, but has limitations requiring additiional software such as QuickBooks Pro to finish financial package.

[falcons1919]

Depending on the size of your business you may want to look at other software.

When you buy the cheapest you get what you pay for. Also, the accounting software is only as good as the data you input.

$500.00/year to service is not a big number if you get timely support and regular updates.

[Jlaw]

The ASI system is very expensive for a small company unless you have sales over $1 mil that consist of lots of small sales. I chose Quick Books and hired a QB expert to set it up. It is great once you learn it's in's and outs. Goldmine is my contact manager, and they say that it will intigrate with QB. I haven't tried that and frankly won't as I have 15 years of info in GM that I would have to intigrate into QB. Starting out fresh might be different. In any case QB is a great product.

[Chris Miller]

Jlaw said:

I chose Quick Books and hired a QB expert to set it up. It is great once you learn it's in's and outs.

I totally agree with that. It takes a little tweaking, but can definately handle promotional products well.

[Jlaw]

Oh, one other thing, it will handle the wearables that you buy from one place and embroider or print in another.

[PAW Marketing]

We started our business with Quick books and loved it. But as we grew we realized we need something more and went to ASI. Yse it does cost a boat load of money, but you should check with your accountant to see if this kind of purchase can fall under the "Job Creations Act". In the past year we have use this to purchase new equipment and computer programs. It has save us a great deal of money and allows us to have the latest technology.

[Jlaw]

Dear PAW:
What, pray tell, has the Job Creations Act got to do with this? I looked up the name and it is designed to get companies that are overseas to be good boys and girls and bring their overseas cash hoards back. It is a write off, but so is a lot of stuff. I would still suggest that unless you are going to grow into a multi sales company and want to outsource your system to ASI, I still think Quick Books, set up properly will save you both time and money and actually do the job better. ASI is also good if you want to keep all the details of your contacts from wandering off when the sales person you have invested in decides to test the grass in another field.

[PAW Marketing]

Dear Jlaw, The Job Creation Act has many areas which you as a small business can take advantage of. We were able to "write-off" a new SUV which is over 6300 lbs. 100% in the first year. But congress change this to only 25K for the next year since it was used by many. I still recommend you visit with your accountant to get both tax and legal advise correctly. On the ASI system, it's not for everyone, but it works great for us. We also use ACT for our contact mang. which we love.

[ajaks]

Hello tnewman,
I am a 1 person company that works out of my house and i bought a package from a company called epromo. They were originally called Vermotion when I first bought the package but now they are epromo. I paid $5,000.00 about 3 years ago but it is now alot less. I think it is almost perfect. You will have a monthly hosting fee of $50.00 but it is a good product. Very much worth the investment. It gives you a front end web site that you can manage the product on and visitors can request quotes from. The back end has all your order entry, A/P, A/R, inventory, e-mail campaign capabilities etc. When you create an account for a customer, you start with a proposal from within their account. You e-mail of to your client, or fax it. If they go with it...1-click of a button and your proposal is turned into an order. from there you create purchase orders that all tie into your order. When product is delivered, the order gets turned in as complete, by clicking a button and it goes to A/R where you print an invoice and so on. The only thing I think it is lacking is it could use the option of a packing slip and the section that shows quantity ordered and quantity received have to be the same. That is not right. i would like to see it where it has for example the quantity ordered as 500 pieces and quantity received as 520 pieces and then calculate the total from there. I do like it though.

[beeeks]

We use quickbooks 2000. does everything we need. wife handles that part of the job. I had the program from another company I owned and just it for this one too.

[PromoScott]

We bought Profitmaker in January and had the training come to our office. We have been very unhappy with what it does and more importantly what it doesn't do!

Scott

C Scott Lester
President
William Kendrick Company
www.PromoSource.com

[Jack Malki]

An excellent order management / invoicing program specially designed for smaller (under $2 million) distributors, and above all designed to be easy and simple to use, will be coming out later this year. It will be priced very aggressively, with no hefty annual fees. If you are interested in more information feel free to email me at: Jack@CustomProductsUSA.com

Jack Malki
Custom Products

[jrtz]

We use Ordermaster and have almost since it's inception. Never have had the lockups etc talked about in another post, so I suspect what they say about why problems are happening is probably true. Very economical compared to other systems on market. They have a interface you can post all financial info to Quickbooks from. Extremely easy to use and you get the best of both worlds of an order management system along with accounting info.

[Jeremy]

After looking at all the software for our industry on the market, I gave up and we wrote all our own software. This way when we want it to do something we just write our own code instead of relying on other software vendors. I wasn't impressed with the solutions that were not open source, such as ASI Profit maker. Quickbooks has come a long way. They now have a on line edition that I use to run my real estate company. The only solution I have seen recently that I have been impressed with is Essex. They use a MS SQL back end.

[Jack Malki]

Jeremy, we did the same thing.
Yes, having the ability to write your own software does empower you greatly.

What program did you write your software in? Our is done in MS VBA.

Jack / Custom Products

[Jeremy]

we started in MS VBA then ported it all over to MS dot.net . Half of our company are ex long time MS employees, so that does help.

I just found all the industry solutions to be to limiting and I didn't like the idea that there was no open source. Plus if you use ASI software, ASI has all your company's product information.

Quickbooks has a really good api.

[Chris Miller]

Jeremy,

I am curious as to what your thoughts are on the Xebra software by xetex (www.xebra.com)

It appears to have a web based component written in ASP that allows integration with the windows app?

We would love to hire someone to do something like this for us. If you have made a good product already, why not bring it to the industry? I have many ideas for a custom solution and like you said the existing solutions aren't exactly solutions.

[Mark246]

I've read this entire thread, and I'm still looking for a good, inexpensive program... I'm a 2-man shop, working from my home,... can't afford $thousands$. Currently using MS Excel templates for POs & Invoices, text files and .jpg images for the product info, Sage books for supplier info, MS Outlook for most of my communications with clients, and None of it is well-coordinated or linked or related. The retyping or copy/pasting is taking Way Too much time.

Order Master... $1785 for a 2-station setup... Plus a $500 annual fee? Allegedly does almost everything we need, but I'd like to see more comments from current users, please.

Order Ontime from www.orderontime.com... about $2000. I found it online, but I know nothing about it. Anybody out there using it? How is it?

Epromo for $5000? Might be nice, but too much $$.

Jack Malki posted about his new program... I've emailed him requesting info.

Essex? Anybody using it? Details?

Xetex from Xebra.com?... $3500 for a single user system. Too much.

Quick Books... $500 for 1-user or $1500 for 5 users. What does it Not do that we distributors want?

We need answers ! !