admin, Author at aACEsoft Business Management Software

Growing Together: Duggal Celebrates 10 Years on aACE

By admin May 8, 2020Success Stories

Duggal Visual Solutions is a global supplier of printed visuals, custom displays, and multimedia solutions for a wide-ranging clientele of image-conscious brands. Since becoming the first company to implement aACE 4 in the spring of 2010, they’ve seen exponential growth — and so has aACE.

At aACE Software, we’re proud to say that our product has been developed through years of working hand-in-hand with our customers, evolving feature sets in line with their real-world workflows. Nowhere is this more evident than in our decade-long relationship with Duggal, an aACE Enterprise customer that has helped us enhance our offerings over the years while easily customizing their own aACE solution to fit their one-of-a-kind workflows.

Challenges & aACE Solutions

Robust Support That Grows with Your Company

When the team at Duggal began looking for an ERP solution back in 2009, they were a much smaller company of about 100 employees. Over the past ten years they’ve grown to over 4 times that number — and aACE has been with them every step of the way. “It’s been a steady climb up,” says Matthew Pelfrey, Duggal’s Director of Process and Compliance. “We’ve bought other companies and brought in entire divisions. And without very much onboarding attention, we put [those new employees] in front of computers and they work with aACE. It’s intuitive.”

“I would say that new users pretty much get it within a week,” adds Rick Jacobs, Director of IT. “I think they find it to be very easy to learn and to use.”

As Duggal has expanded, they’ve also added new locations across the country. From Oregon and California to Manhattan and Long Island, the entire business runs on one single aACE solution located in Brooklyn. This growth hasn’t been without challenges. “Our expansion into California has made tax accountability much more important,” Matthew says. To that end, he’s working with the aACE team on a customized aACE+ Avalara AvaTax integration. “I think that’s a big win.”

Another challenge that comes with the expansion to multiple locations has been ensuring that everyone who needs to can access the many large image files that Duggal deals with every day. Enter aACE’s File Server Folder Launcher feature, which gives users access to the files they need right from within their aACE solution. “Everything goes through aACE,” Rick explains. “We come in, we start up aACE, and we’re in aACE all day.”

Evolving Feature Sets Based on Real-World Workflows

Unlike many other solutions, aACE wasn’t developed by sticking some software engineers in a conference room and asking them to dream up features that might appeal to hypothetical businesses. Instead, aACE has evolved naturally over time by working directly with customers like Duggal to identify, automate, and enhance the workflows they use every day.

The Commissions module is a shining example of this kind of collaboration. As the aACE team built version 5 of the software solution, they made improvements based on requests and feedback from aACE 4 clients like Duggal. The result has been especially valuable as Duggal’s sales team has grown. “It’s been a real game-changer,” says Rick. “There’s been a six-fold or seven-fold increase in terms of how many sales reps we have,” and aACE has easily kept pace with that expansion.

Upgrading from aACE 4 to aACE 5 gave the team “the ability to calculate commissions on the fly, to calculate them at any point in time, to make changes, refresh, redo… There’s a lot more flexibility and accuracy in that report now than there ever was before,” he adds.

Inventory management was another area of the system that Duggal helped improve. “It was a huge jump forward in giving us a way to audit our inventory process,” Matthew says of the switch from aACE 4 to aACE 5. “We can actually push all that inventory costing and audit it down to the penny, down to each and every transaction. We can track who generated it, whether they put the right costing in at the beginning, and whether it changed later on. The logging is really robust.”

He adds that these tools were developed over time; the aACE team made improvements throughout the life of aACE 4 before pulling out all the stops in aACE 5. “We’ve done a lot of work together,” he says of his relationship with the developers at aACE Software. “The Inventory Counter app using FileMaker Go was something that we sort of built hand-in-hand, but we also don’t lock ourselves into a specific workflow. We use the Inventory Counter app for some inventory, but not all of it. It’s just simpler to count certain things in different ways.”

Cross-Platform Flexibility for Any Workflow

Due to the nature of their work, each project at Duggal is unique — and most go through a series of changes before they’re finalized and sent out to the customer. They needed a software solution that could support multiple workflows, giving their staff the freedom to structure each individual project in a way that makes sense rather than forcing them to conform to a template mandated by their ERP. With some customization, aACE fit the bill so well that even its own architect was astounded at what it could do! “Michael [Bethuy, President of aACE Software] was always fascinated — stunned, actually — at the amount of transactions we have in our system. It’s literally thousands every day,” says Rick. “As our own processes have changed, aACE has changed with us. That’s been very vital.”

And because aACE is built in FileMaker, it was easy for the Duggal team to seamlessly integrate other solutions with aACE, including a custom-built production solution. “The communication back and forth between aACE and that production system has been flawless,” Matthew says. “And that’s a big plus not just for aACE, but for FileMaker. Being on that platform has been key for our success.”

In fact, the FileMaker platform played a role in making aACE more attractive than the other packages they were looking at back when they began their ERP search more than 10 years ago — and that remains true today. “The vast majority of machines at our locations are Macs, but we also have printing equipment and financial people who prefer or are required to be on PCs. Having a solution that everybody could access was an important determining factor in our decision-making process,” Matthew explains. “We looked at NetSuite, we looked at Global Shop, and a couple of smaller FileMaker-based solutions, but nothing impressed us as much as aACE did.”

Results

A Customized Solution on a Trusted Platform

Because Duggal’s order management processes are so one-of-a-kind, it took some trial and error to find a solution that fit. For a time, they even tried developing a custom order-writing solution that would integrate with aACE’s accounting functionality. “We spent about a year and a half preparing that and trying to get it right,” Matthew says. “It lasted about a month and a half.”

As it turned out, the new solution was cumbersome and didn’t quite fit the bill. But, Matthew stresses, there was an upside to the failed experiment: “We learned what we needed through the process of building it from scratch. And we realized that aACE [out-of-the-box] already gave us 85% of that.”

In the end, they incorporated the elements of the new solution that did serve them well back into aACE as custom features. “That was a major turning point,” says Rick, which caused them “to embrace aACE even more and tap into its abilities. We had great people struggling to get through the day [with the custom solution], whereas they were not doing that before when we were on aACE.” Shortly afterwards, Duggal upgraded to aACE 5, which brought even bigger possibilities. “Every one of us was stoked about aACE 5,” Rick says. “That was a very interesting moment for the company. We realized how good we had it.”

A Developer’s Dream

aACE is a comprehensive business management solution powerful enough to support most businesses out of the box – but sometimes unique processes require unique solutions. One of the key benefits to building aACE in FileMaker is that any of the thousands of FileMaker developers world-wide can get under the hood and, with very little training, begin making the product their own. This has proven true for Duggal. “We’ve been able to use FileMaker itself as a platform to hire our own developers, which has allowed us to expand the software as the business expands,” says Rick. “We’ve been growing with it as the central launching point for all sorts of new initiatives in the company.”

The team at aACE Software has welcomed this growth with open arms. “The great thing about aACE and the people that work there is that they’ve always been there for our developers with any questions. They’re great partners, and they’ve never been closed-off. They’ve always welcomed us hiring new developers to work with the system; they want that to be a thing.”

Even Duggal’s in-house developers have been pleasantly surprised by aACE’s elegant design, both in front of and behind the curtain. “One of our programmers, Yelena [Teplitskaya], learned how to become a FileMaker developer while working in aACE,” Rick says, “And today she’s our go-to person for customizing aACE. She works extremely closely with aACE’s developers and she loves it. She thinks the structure of aACE behind the scenes is fantastic; it’s extremely professionally done. She loves the guidelines that have been given and the way that all of the scripting has been done.”

“aACE 5 was built so programmers could customize it,“ Matthew adds. It was built in a way so that programmers, with just a little bit of help, can do some really phenomenal stuff.”

He adds that Yelena has taken the lessons she’s learned from aACE and applied them to other endeavors because aACE has set the bar so high. “The experience behind the way aACE does things has taught her more efficient coding, which is a great thing,” Matthew says. “The more efficient every action is, the more efficient the system is. And Yelena is one of the smartest people we have, so for her to praise aACE really means something.”

“Crazy Awesome” Reporting

The ease with which data can be imported to or extracted from aACE makes reporting a snap. One particular custom report is so robust that Duggal’s CFO dubbed it the Crazy Awesome Report. “It breaks out our entire income statement by department, by time period,” Matthew explains. “It gives the CFO a lot of information, and he regularly gives that report to the CEO, Mike Duggal, as his monthly report. It’s been tremendously helpful for Mike in making steering-the-ship decisions. And creating that report with essentially the touch of a couple buttons vs. how we were doing it, which was hours and hours of Excel work, has made a huge difference.”

Before implementing aACE, Duggal had been using Sage — and a lot of manual work. “When we picked up aACE, our inventory was being ordered using handwritten forms in triplicate,” Matthew explains. “Our accounting software was Sage, but our Controller did everything in Excel. Everything. And our order-writing software was as basic a thing as you can possibly imagine, so almost nothing was being captured. So what aACE has allowed us to do is become the company we are.”

A Decade-Long Relationship Built on Respect

After 10 years, the partnership between aACE and Duggal is still going strong. “We realize more and more every day how rare it is to have a partner that lasts,” Rick says. “Truly the longevity of aACE itself, to be around for 17 years in the software business is pretty amazing. Each company has been growing together, and I think that’s fantastic. There were some growing pains in the beginning, but I think the flexibility, the tolerance, and the understanding on both sides has only grown. We have a great partnership.”

“The flexibility of the system, the eagerness to improve on the part of the team at aACE Software, and the fundamental stability of the solution have all contributed to the longevity of the relationship,” adds Matthew.

Like every long-term relationship, there have been some challenges along the way. “I believe we’ve been a demanding client,” Matthew admits. “And the aACE Software team, over the course of many years, have been able to deliver on some pretty ambitious requests. We’ve been happy with the relationship for the duration.”

“The support has been phenomenal as well,” Rick adds. “Any type of urgent matter gets taken care of extremely fast.”

“Any relationship that lasts this long has to have a good foundation,” says Matthew.

In Their Own Words

Here’s what Matthew Pelfrey, Director of Process and Compliance at Duggal, has to say about their aACE implementation:

“aACE is a digestible midsized company solution that can grow with you. Or shrink with you, if you need to downsize. If that should happen, you’re not on the hook for some crazy-expensive system, and there’s a sense of comfort with that.

“I would be hard-pressed to find a company that aACE wouldn’t fit. The production elements of the system can be as rich and complex as you want them. So companies that are more in the true manufacturing world can operate within the system. It’s a true ERP with inventory management, serialization and lot tracking. It is robust.

“Obviously we don’t have too much of a problem saying good things about the situation we’re in. We’re happy to be partners with aACE, happy to share in our growth and share in their growth, and we can’t wait for aACE 6 and 7. Every update is welcome. The aACE Software team works really hard to give us features that are helpful. They are true solution-finders.”

Do you or someone you know need a change from one-size-fits-all ERP tools? Check out our feature highlights to learn more about whether aACE business management software for Mac and PC can help accelerate your company.

Seamlessly, Securely Process Customer Payments with aACE+ Payments

By admin May 5, 2020aACE Feature Highlights, Accounting, Integrations, Order Management

You’ve nurtured a lead through the buyer’s journey, matched them with a product that’s sure to fit their needs, and now it’s time to take their payment. If you’re still using outdated manual methods and terminals that don’t communicate with your ERP, this may be time-consuming, error-prone, and unsecured. Wouldn’t it be great if you could process payments quickly and securely all from within your order management solution?

With aACE+ Payments, you can.

A growing list of leading payment processing services integrate seamlessly with your aACE solution, ensuring that you’re able to quickly and securely process credit card, debit card, and ACH check payments. Eliminate the hassle of manually entering payment information into multiple solutions; with aACE+ Payments, you can enter payment information directly into a payment processor’s secure servers from aACE. Securely applying payment is a breeze, saving you time and minimizing the potential for errors. To learn more, let’s take a look at how our sample company, aACME Education Solutions, uses this feature in their day-to-day operations.

Mara Harvey receives a call from Luisa Ramos at the Brightside Charter School. Luisa would like to place an order for 5 student tablets and put it on her company card. Mara creates the order in aACE, specifying Credit Card as the billing terms.

When Mara selects Credit Card as the billing terms, a Credit Card field appears underneath the order’s total. Because Luisa doesn’t have a credit card on file yet, Mara will need to enter one so that it’s available when the product ships.

To add Luisa’s credit card, Mara clicks on the button to the left of the Credit Card field. A form pops up where Mara can enter Luisa’s credit card details without leaving the order. The form automatically pulls in address information from Brightside Charter School’s company record, and Mara fills in the card number, expiration date, security code, and cardholder name.

Although this form was launched by a button in aACE, the form itself isn’t part of aACE — instead it’s a portal into the payment processor’s server that has been integrated seamlessly into aACME’s aACE solution. This ensures that when Mara enters Luisa’s sensitive credit card information, that data is never stored locally where it may be at risk, but rather is stored only on the payment processor’s secure servers.

Once the Mara submits the form, the payment processor generates a token for Luisa’s credit card that is stored in aACE. This makes it easier for the aACME sales team to process future orders, while still maintaining PCI compliance. In seconds, Mara receives a message that the transaction went through successfully. The card is now ready to be used.

Mara closes the form, and aACE automatically pulls the card’s alias into the Credit Card field. Only the card brand, last four digits, and expiration date are displayed. A hidden field contains the token; remember, at no point does aACE itself or Mara’s workstation have access to the full credit card number.

Mara saves and processes Luisa’s order, which prompts aACE to automatically generate a shipment for the tablets. In aACME’s warehouse, Ned Walker picks the tablets using the aACE Pick App. When he’s finished, aACE automatically transmits the shipment to aACME’s shipping solution.

Over in the Shipping Department, Kristie Hernandez logs into the shipping solution and schedules Luisa’s package for delivery. The shipment information is automatically pulled back into aACE, where the shipment record’s status is updated to Shipped.

At this point, aACE automatically generates an invoice for the order. Because the order is configured to charge the card on file, Luisa’s card is automatically charged for the balance, resulting in a posted receipt and closed invoice.

In the receipt’s log, we can see that the credit card was successfully charged.

But what happens when there’s a problem with the credit card and the payment fails to go through? aACE notifies the relevant parties immediately, enabling you to prevent products from going out the door without having been paid for. Let’s take a look at how that works.

Mara receives another order, this time for 3 electronic whiteboards from the Montboro School District. Sam Patel, the Assistant Superintendent placing the order, would like to pay with a credit card he has used previously with aACME. As before, Mara selects Credit Card as the billing terms and the Credit Card field appears under the order’s total. This time, instead of entering new credit card details, Mara can simply choose the card Sam wants to use from the drop-down list.

The order proceeds to the warehouse, where it’s picked, packed, and prepared to be shipped. When Kristie schedules the shipment, aACE again automatically generates an invoice and charges the credit card on file – but this time, the card is declined.

Immediately, aACE sends a text message to Kristie’s mobile phone. She cancels the shipment and stops the package from leaving before payment is received. Mara also receives a notification, allowing her to quickly follow up with Sam to get a new credit card for the order.

Now we’ve seen how aACE+ Payments makes it easy to take credit card payments, but what happens if a customer requests a refund or exchange?

The Full STEAM Academy Charter School ordered 25 French textbooks, but when they arrive, two of the books are damaged. Tina Rivera, the school principal, contacts aACME to initiate the refund process and send the damaged books back.

When the package from Full STEAM arrives in aACME’s warehouse, Alexis Kohn in the Billing department receives a notice alerting her that an adjustment invoice has been generated. She determines that everything looks correct and processes it, which reverses the amount of the two textbooks from the original invoice.

Next, Alexis needs to issue a partial refund for the two damaged books. To do that, she pulls up the original receipt and selects Credit/Adjust Receipt from the Actions menu.

aACE automatically pulls in the customer, method of payment, invoice, order, and a suggested amount for the refund. After double-checking that the information is correct, Alexis posts the receipt. Tina’s credit card is then refunded when the credit card batch settles overnight.

What if a sales rep makes a mistake and accidentally overcharges the customer? Fortunately, aACE+ Payments makes it easy to correct those errors — and as long as the mistake is fixed on the same day, the erroneous charge won’t even make it to the customer’s credit card statement.

Jamie Gianelli, a sales rep at aACME, receives an order from Southglen High School for new textbooks to replace the outdated ones the school has been using. Nikki Huang, the Vice Principal at Southglen, gives Jamie a long list of books and their quantities, including 45 natural science textbooks. Jamie accidentally mistypes this number as 54, and due to the many items in the order, neither she nor Nikki realize that the total is higher than it should be. It’s only after Jamie has opened the order and taken the payment that she realizes the mistake.

Fortunately, because Jamie caught the error on the same day that the payment was processed, she can fix it before the incorrect charge hits Nikki’s credit card. She pulls up the order and changes the quantity of the science books from 54 to 45, then voids the receipt that was originally created, which voids the pending charge and removes it from Nikki’s credit card statement. With the updated order Jamie can charge the correct amount without Nikki ever seeing the mistake.

And if a customer wants to pay by ACH? aACE+ Payments supports that too.

Jamie receives an order from the Shea Township School District for a new mounted electronic whiteboard. Tim Collins, the Administrative Assistant at Shea Township, would like to place a 50% deposit on the order using ACH.

To process the deposit right away, Jamie clicks on the icon next to the Payment Due field, which opens up a payment dialog. Jamie enters “50%” in the Payment field and marks the “Payment is a Deposit” flag at the bottom of the screen. She selects “ACH” as the payment method.

Jamie clicks on the icon next to the Bank Account field, and a form for entering the bank account details pops up. Like we saw in the first example, this form is not part of aACE — rather, it’s an integrated portal to aACME’s payment processor.

Jamie enters Tim’s bank information in the form to authorize the payment processor to take the deposit directly from Tim’s checking account — all without his sensitive banking information ever entering aACE.

Jamie closes the form and returns to the payment dialog in aACE. As above, the bank account has been “tokenized” so it can be used for future payments. The only thing left for Jamie to do is click on the Apply Payment button to record the deposit in aACE.

Days later, Jamie receives a notification that the order has been shipped and it’s time to process the final payment. She returns to the order record and again clicks on the icon next to the Payment Due field.

As before, she selects “ACH” as the payment method. She has already entered Tim’s banking information in aACME’s payment processor, so a token representing the account appears in a drop-down menu when Jamie clicks into the Bank Account field. Jamie selects the account and clicks the Apply Payment button to process the payment.

As these examples show, aACE+ Payments enables your business to take credit card and ACH payments swiftly and securely, removing the opportunity for errors introduced by duplicate data entry. To learn more about what aACE can do for you, register for a webinar today.

"We wouldn’t be able to do what we do without what aACE does for us. We used to spend hours entering each piece of data by hand — aACE automates ALL of it, freeing up our employees to handle our increasing volume of orders. We can do a lot more now thanks to aACE’s near-limitless functionality." - Cory Elliot, Founder and President, Troy Filters Ltd.

Spring Into Our May Webinars

By admin April 30, 2020Articles, Articles and White Papers

Learn how our comprehensive business management solution for Mac or PC can help increase your business's efficiency while improving your bottom line. Last month, we covered topics ranging from the very basics of aACE and the fundamentals of accounting and transactions to the sleek aACE Pick App and aACE CRM App. Here's what we have in store for May:

May 5th – Cost of Goods Sold

Demystify your cost of goods sold with aACE's advanced tools for COGS reconciliation. Learn about estimated vs. actual cost, how aACE handles products with multiple vendors, when and how to run the COGS process, and more.

May 7th – Campaigns, Templates, and Rate Cards

Learn how to save time and prevent errors related to duplicate data entry with standardized orders, purchase orders, pricing, and more.

May 12th – Expenses and Credit Card Purchasing

For many companies, tracking expenses can be a nightmare – whether you're reimbursing employees or reconciling charges on the company card. Learn how aACE makes it easy to accurately record business expenses and use credit cards for purchasing and see our Expenses App in action.

May 14th – Production and the aACE Job Shop App

Your production process has a lot of moving parts, and your business depends on keeping them all running smoothly. Learn how aACE can help save time and reduce data entry errors with our robust production tools, including the aACE Job Shop app. Before the webinar, check out our feature highlight and demo video to get an advance look at the app.

May 19th – System Administration and Document Management

Take an advanced look at aACE system administration and document management. Learn how aACE makes it easy to manage system preferences, user access privileges, and system notices. Our powerful segregation-of-duties tools gives you full control over what your users can see and do, while aACE's document management system allows you to attach files directly to records in aACE, ensuring that you always have the information you need right at your fingertips. Check out our feature highlight and demo video for a sneak peek.

May 21st – Commissions

Discover how aACE's comprehensive commissions tools can help you incentivize your sales team and reward your affiliates for referring new business.

We look forward to seeing you in our May webinars! Reserve your seat now for a chance to see aACE in action and ask questions of our senior developers in real time.

Eliminate Repetition, Increase Velocity By Automating These 7 Finance Tasks

By admin April 15, 2020Articles, Articles and White Papers

When it comes to finance and accounting, many companies still rely on manual tasks for routine processes — for example, calculating an amount due in a spreadsheet or manually generating purchase orders in a word processing program.

Manual inputs — or doing things the way they’ve always been done — can create a false sense of security that team members follow procedures as expected and that what they're doing is accurate.

But the reality is, one accidental number flip or a single cell deletion can send your employees down a rabbit hole sleuthing into what went wrong. That leads to lost time and productivity, and sometimes lost revenue.

And unfortunately, many industry accounting teams have experienced budget and staff cuts, meaning they have fewer people to do required tasks.

So how can you standardize workflows and improve efficiencies with fewer resources while still decreasing chances for human error and completing repetitive (and often time-consuming) manual tasks?

Look no further than robotic processes automation (RBA) within your business management software (BMS) solution.

Did you know? 55% of respondents in a survey conducted by the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) expect automated accounting systems to have a significant impact on businesses in the next three to 10 years.

Here are 7 finance-related tasks you can easily automate with a BMS:

Credit checks and payment approvals

Business management software integrates directly with your core operational applications and processes including sales, accounting, and inventory.

With an accounting component included in your BMS, you can track all of your sales from initial lead to order to payment and even shipping and receiving.

In manufacturing, for example, you can use your BMS to see current accounts receivable balances. If your customer has credit issues, you can automate tasks to prevent a new order from processing and even communicate directly with your sales team for instant follow-up and resolution.

Once resolved, a BMS can automatically complete the purchase order and facilitate the next steps in your order management processes.

You can also use your BMS to automate payment processing directly related to system events, including point-of-sale (POS) transactions.

Accurate contact information

Email addresses change. Phone numbers change. Customers move. It’s challenging to keep up with current, accurate contact information, especially if your customer relationship management (CRM) tool is separate from the rest of your business processes.

Bad contact data makes it increasingly difficult to process payments and deliveries, ultimately making your customers unhappy and potentially costing you money.

You can use a BMS to automate contact information tasks. For example, if your customer updates an email address in your sales portal, your BMS can be configured to update that same information across all of your core operational systems.

Event reminders

Task management is one of the most time-consuming components of day-to-day operations. Do you have orders to process? Sales leads to follow up on? Shipments to send? Invoices to process?

A quality BMS should include calendar and event scheduling. This enables you to see all of your upcoming transactional-related events. Your BMS should also include email and text reminder notifications for unusual or urgent matters requiring your attention.

Business management software should also come preconfigured with filtering options that enable you to see everything from the big picture of all your upcoming events to specific events directly related to a particular business contact or customer.

Pending payment inquiries

How many times in business have you experienced this scenario?

The phone rings. The vendor on the other end says the company delivered your last order, but has not received payment. When will payment arrive?

Next, you check your email. There’s a message from a customer saying payment was made weeks ago, but they haven’t received your product.

How do you know if that customer sent the payment or if your team facilitated payment to your vendor?

A BMS solution will give you accurate, immediate insight into when payments process, when to expect delivery, and any issues along the way.

The great thing about automating this process is your team can check statuses at any time, note where there are issues, and facilitate communication with your vendors and customers before they get frustrated with you.

Timely, automated payments with visibility means happier customers and suppliers, and ultimately reduced stress and headaches for your team.

Ensuring compliance

Ensuring your company meets all compliance and regulatory standards can be a daunting task — whether that’s responding to an external audit or an internal one.

How do you know if everyone on your team follows required standardized processes? Without task automating, that’s difficult, but with a BMS you can automate many compliance and regulatory tasks to ensure they’re following appropriate procedures and reduce the potential for human error.

You can also use your BMS to automate reports and analytics to more quickly prepare for your next audit.

Automated, accurate quoting and sales processes

Even in a mobile, digital-friendly company, many processes and work functions remain siloed across teams and in disparate software. That means if your company makes an important change, for example, updates product pricing, someone (or multiple team members) must take on the task of updating the new pricing model across all of your applications.

When that data is stored in a spreadsheet that lives on multiple hard drives or there are multiple copies of that file stored in the cloud, how can you do this efficiently and ensure everyone is working off the same numbers?

A BMS can simplify your pricing processes by using automated rate cards. One change on the rate card in one connected system means that information is automatically updated in another. This helps your team provide timely, accurate quotes. It eliminates pricing confusion and also the chance for mistakes.

And your sales team members will love that they can use those pricing modules to determine real-time commissions based on your company’s policies.

BMS for bookkeeping

Are you drowning in spreadsheets? Do you still have a calculator with ticker tape rolling off your desk and onto the floor?

Bookkeeping is critical to ensuring operational success, but manual data entry means you’re likely working harder rather than smarter.

A BMS can automate your bookkeeping tasks by pulling appropriate financial information from multiple sources across your business into a single, easy-to-understand dashboard. The dashboard gives you near real-time insight into your big financial picture and you can explore it down to a granular level.

Automating your bookkeeping tasks reduces not just the chance for error, but also reduces fraud risk, helping to keep your business safe and your employees accountable.

Are you ready to help your team focus on high priority financial tasks while automation takes care of the routine, repetitive ones? Join our upcoming webinar on March 17, 2020, to learn more about using BMS to automate recurring transactions. Register for the webinar or check out our schedule of upcoming webinars.

5 Ways Inventory Management Software Can Save You Money

By admin April 8, 2020Articles, Articles and White Papers

Inventory is a critical part of your business success and growth, but if not managed correctly, it can cost you time and money — especially if you’re using spreadsheets, paper manifests, or disparate software solutions across your company.

Did you know that 43% of small and mid-size businesses (SMBs) either don’t track inventory or use a manual method? Manual tracking is prone to human error and no tracking at all means you’re likely wasting time, money, and storage space that you can better manage and improve your overall inventory efficiencies.

Inventory management software (IMS) can help you take control of your inventory, eliminate repetitive manual tasks, automate routine processes, and integrate with other critical functions across your business for instant insight and more information to make better business decisions.

Here are 5 ways inventory management software can save you time and money:

Know Your PAR Levels

Do you know the minimum amount of stock your company should always have on hand to meet current and future customer needs?

Some companies refer to this as a Minimum Stock Level (MSL) or Replenishment Balance, while others know it better as PAR levels, which is short for Periodic Automatic Replacement level.

Whichever term you prefer, an inventory management system can help you always know the minimum product amount you should have on hand.

If your product is out of stock, you’re essentially holding the door open for your customer to walk out and into the arms of your competitors.

Instead of risking the chance of losing a sale because a product is out of stock, you can use inventory management software to track your current inventory and send you alerts when your product levels get near your MSL or PAR levels. You can even automate routine reorders so you never have to worry that you’ll be out of a product when your customers want it.

Real-Time Forecasting

Not only can inventory management software help you set and maintain PAR levels, it can also help you with more accurate product forecasting.

By integrating with customer relationship management software, accounting, and sales systems, inventory management software helps you get a more accurate picture into your past sales year-over-year, a historical picture of sales over time, as well as current sales and pending orders.

Couple this insight with current marketing trends and the current economic climate, and you can get a good picture of what your future product needs may look like.

Within your inventory management system you can also evaluate your current marketing initiatives with insight into your leads to conversion ratios to better forecast product sales models.

If your projections mean you need more product, you can quickly and instantly facilitate more orders right through your IMS platform.

Centralized Inventory Management

With your PAR levels set and your forecasting as fine-tuned as you can get it, an IMS can also help you centralize key functions for centralized inventory management.

Your IMS can give you instant insight not just into which products you have on hand, but also what supplies you have in stock, how much is needed in short-term and long-term, what’s been reordered, what needs to be ordered, and where everything is in the order, shipping, and receiving processes.

Centralized inventory management can also help you ensure you’re never stockpiling old products.

Products change over time, so you always want to make sure your oldest products in stock are the first products you ship out. Many companies refer to this as FIFO, meaning that the first products or supplies to come in are the first products or supplies you use or ship out.

Centralized inventory management also helps you when it comes time to do audits — not just that one big annual audit you may be required to do each year, but any time you want insight into your inventory levels.

An IMS with inventory tracking also means you always know which inventory you have where, no matter how large or small your operation is.

Save on Storage

Inventory management software can also help you save space (and ultimately money) on product and supply storage. Having the right amount of inventory on hand means you never have more than you need taking up valuable space in your warehouse.

Also, an IMS can help you better manage those supplies you don’t always want to keep in stock but want to ensure you have available for your customers. A good IMS should facilitate drop shipping so when you need it, you can send a product directly to your customer without having to store it onsite in your own facility.

Better Relationships With Suppliers and Customers

All of the insight you get with your IMS means you can better manage your time, resources, and bottom line, and can also improve your relationships with your suppliers, vendors, and customers.

An IMS can help you with supply chain management. You can always know what supplies you have on hand, the supply quality, and even any price changes those orders have over time.

If for example, you have a pending reorder that’s taking longer than expected to get to you, your IMS can help you make adjustments so, if needed, you can place orders with other vendors or make manufacturing adjustments based on the anticipated delays.

This insight means you can always be aware of what’s happening with your supply chain so you can keep the door open for effective communication with your vendors. The next time you’re in a pinch and need a rush reorder or if you have a product quality issue, you can quickly address it with your vendor.

And better relationships with your vendors means you’re more likely to have the products your customers want in stock when they want them — which leads to happier customers! You can even use your IMS to automate orders, invoicing, payments and shipping, all the while having complete insight into your business every step of the way.

Inefficient inventory processes cost you time, money, space and a lot of hassle, but an inventory management system can help you get a handle on all of your product needs — now and in the future.

Are you ready to see how inventory management software can help you be more efficient and save your money? Join us for an upcoming webinar to see aACE’s IMS in action.

Optimize Your Business with aACE in Our April Webinars

By admin March 31, 2020Articles, Articles and White Papers

Discover how aACE can help you streamline your company's operations in our April webinars. Last month, we covered topics ranging from production to shipping and accounting to system administration. This month, we're starting back at the beginning of our webinar cycle and taking you from the very basics of aACE to accounting fundamentals and CRM pro-tips. Here's what we have in store:

April 2nd – aACE Basics

If you’re brand-new to aACE, this is the webinar for you! Learn how aACE’s system-wide conventions make it easy for new users to interact with the solution. Check out our video before the presentation to get a sneak peek at aACE’s user-friendly design.

April 7th – Accounting Basics

Explore aACE’s GL Accounts module and learn how aACE makes it easy to print financial statements, navigate the general ledger, reconcile bank statements, and more. This webinar is very audience-driven, so come early and bring questions!

April 9th – Managing Transactions

aACE makes it easy to track each step of a transaction, giving you the peace of mind that comes from having one solution manage every aspect of a sale or purchase. We’ll explore how users manage transactions in aACE using the Purchase Orders module as our example.

April 14th – A/R and A/P

Take a deeper dive into aACE’s accounts receivable and accounts payable features. We’ll review the tracking, delivery, and follow-up tools in the Invoices and Purchases modules. We’ll also explore customer and vendor payments, deposits, and scheduling recurring transactions.

April 16th – Sales Leads and the aACE CRM App

Your sales team is moving fast to keep your customers and prospects engaged, and they need a solution that can keep up – even when they're on the go. See our CRM App in action and learn more about how sales leads move through aACE. Check out our sales leads and CRM App feature highlights for a sneak peek before the presentation.

April 21st – Tax Profiles and aACE+ Avalara AvaTax

Tax season isn’t anyone’s favorite time of year. Fortunately, aACE has you covered through our out-of-the-box tax management infrastructure as well as the aACE+ Avalara AvaTax integration. Learn how aACE takes the guesswork out of tax time.

April 23rd – Sales Orders

See aACE's sales order, drop shipping, and special order workflows in action and learn how aACE makes each of those workflows a breeze. Before the webinar, check out our feature highlight for a preview of some of these topics.

April 28th – aACE+ The BPR

Learn how The BPR can help you quickly, easily, and accurately document your company's unique workflows and customized features in this guest presentation from our friends at Optimum Output.

April 30th – Shipping and the aACE Pick App

Your customers depend on you to get them the right products at the right time. Learn how aACE streamlines the pick, pack, and ship process with our Pick App and shipping integrations, and take a sneak peek by checking out our feature highlight.

We look forward to seeing you in our webinars! Sign up now to reserve your spot.

From Development to Delivery: 5 Benefits of an ERP for Manufacturing

By admin March 18, 2020Articles, Articles and White Papers

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) software radically transforms the way companies of all sizes do business for improved efficiencies.

ERPs integrate once-siloed operational systems into a single, easy-to-use software platform.

From accounting to orders, from inventory to human resources, an ERP will give you insight into your business to help you reduce costs, make better business decisions, and keep your customers happy.

If you're in manufacturing, an ERP can help you handle all your day-to-day tasks, from development to product delivery. Here are five benefits of an ERP for manufacturing:

Process automation

Manual, repetitive tasks are bad for business. They tie up your staff and resources and create countless opportunities for errors.

An ERP can help you automate all of your core business processes — from inventory and supplies to product development to product delivery, and all the processes in between such as sales and marketing, accounting, finance and even human resources.

Having all of your financial information available and accessible in one portal — whether that’s incoming payments for orders or outgoing expenses for supplies or personnel — helps save time by eliminating manual entries of related data across multiple systems and gives you immediate insight into your financial picture in near real time.

Manual tasks also make it difficult to provide consistent service and processes across your organization.

Here’s an example: your sales team just closed a big sale. Now, they need to process an invoice for the purchase. With an ERP, your sales team can access the most accurate cost information with real-time estimates — the same information your accounting teams can access. And, an ERP can automatically generate needed items such as a purchase order number.

With the ability to append notes and comments to your orders, your team can also track communications related to the invoice, including any payment or finance issues, as well as track shipping and delivery.

Cost reductions

Automating processes and tasks with an ERP not only makes it easier to manage your day-to-day manufacturing operations, it can also help you save money and reduce costs.

Instead of having extra “just-in-case” supplies or inventory in your warehouse, you can have accurate information not just about what you’re storing, but also your current and future needs based on actual product orders and current sales.

Also, by moving all of your key applications such as accounting, sales, and operations to a single platform, you can save money by not having to purchase multiple, separate software and applications.

Further savings are realized when you eliminate IT management of all of those software components, and, extra bonus, it’s easier to maintain system and data security with a single, secure ERP — especially one that’s compliant with industry standards and regulations.

Supply chain management

Supply chains are among the most important components of your operations, but they're also one of the most difficult to manage.

An ERP can help you get a handle on your supply chain in a number of ways. First, there’s the benefit of inventory and product forecasting.

For example, if you’re tracking inventory in your ERP and you’re analyzing pending product orders, you can easily see if you have enough supply to meet your demands. If not, you can quickly and instantly facilitate a reorder to ensure you have the supplies you need, when you need them.

If you run into issues with a vendor, for instance if the vendor can’t deliver what you need on time, then you can use your ERP to facilitate an order with a different vendor.

In addition to inventory and product control, your ERP can help make sure you stay on budget.

Without an ERP, it can be easy to lose track of incremental product cost increases, especially if your team facilitates reorders without number crunching or review. Doing things the way you’ve always done them — without insight — can find you with far less budget than you intended.

An ERP, however, will give you accurate and timely cost estimates based on your most current purchase history so you don’t end up wondering how your budget estimates got so far off.

Another ERP supply chain benefit?

You can also monitor product quality control. Have repeated issues with a particular vendor? You can track that information in your ERP so you can make better decisions moving forward for future purchases and reorders.

Happy customers

Yes, your ERP can even help make your customers happier. This is an added benefit for manufacturers because it means happy customers are more likely to be returning customers, and that can be instantly reflected onto your bottom line.

With integration into your customer relationship management (CRM) software, your ERP can help you see the big picture of your customer’s journey with your company — from lead, to sale, to product delivery.

You can also manage customer communication, customer support, order management, billing, and delivery tracking all in one platform.

Better insight into how your company interacts with your customer means better quality control and better customer service.

So long business silos

You know how important accurate, up-to-date data is for your business. Without an ERP, your data is likely siloed between departments, people, and disparate software systems and applications.

For many manufacturing businesses, inventory and supplies are managed in one program. Orders and shipping in another. CRM in another. Billing and accounting in yet another.

To get insight, it often requires time-consuming audits and reports — processes that take your team members away from their day-to-day tasks and bog them down with number-crunching and data dissemination.

An ERP can pull the data you need, when you want it, quickly and automatically, without having to tie up your employees who can focus on other tasks.

This visibility means you can get accurate ROI information about your core operations and ultimately make more informed, better business decisions — whether that’s improvements or facilitate change for growth and new direction.

Are you considering an ERP for your manufacturing business? Check out our free white paper for more insight, including additional benefits an ERP will bring to your company.

Download “Choosing the Right ERP for your SMB,” to get started. Have questions? Contact an aACE advisor and we’ll be glad to answer or join us for a webinar and see our software in action for yourself.

Claris Connect and the Power of Automated Workflows

By admin March 4, 2020Articles, Articles and White Papers, FileMaker Platform

Whether you’re relatively new to your job or you’ve been honing your skills for years, you likely have preferred (and hopefully efficient) processes to get everything done. Often, that means relying on your favorite apps and programs to handle many of the things you’re required to do.

Have you ever really gotten into your groove and someone comes along with a suggestion about a “better” or “improved” way of doing things?

If you have, you know that sometimes means you have to let go of what you know to learn something new, which may or may not be a better solution for the tasks you’re already doing.

But what if you didn’t have to give up what you know?

What if you could use what you already love — and that already works — but use it better?

Introducing Claris Connect and the power of automated workflows.

What is Claris Connect?

Claris Connect is a cloud connector that brings all of your favorite apps and programs together in a single platform so you can access them more easily and make them work better for you.

With Claris Connect, you can bring all of your most-trusted apps together to automate workflows and make your day-to-day tasks that much easier to handle.

And with Claris Connect, you can unite the power of those apps to solve your unique business challenges in ways you haven’t even thought of yet.

It’s time to supercharge your innovation and embrace digital transformation without limits on your potential.

Your no code, low-code solution

Who has time for coding or development? Unless that’s your specific job-function, likely not you.

That’s why Claris Connect is going to be your favorite no-code/low-code business efficiency solution.

Claris Connect, an Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS), is all about digital transformation. It enables you to stitch together many of the manual tasks you’ve been doing — whether that’s on premises or in the cloud — to create workflows that make your core business tasks easier to tackle.

And automation means fewer chances for errors and more confidence that standardized steps and processes are followed properly throughout your business.

Claris Connect in action

So how does Claris Connect work? Here’s an example.

Let’s say as part of your existing sales processes, you capture leads through your website and then use those contacts for your new product newsletter distribution.

Because your content management system (CMS) integrates with your customer relationship management (CRM) system, whenever someone fills out a form on your website, you collect and store that contact information for future communication.

Unfortunately, you love the newsletter app you’re using but it’s not integrated with your CMS. As a workaround, you set a calendar reminder every week to log into your CMS, export a list of new contacts, and then you manually import those contacts into your favorite email newsletter app.

You’ve perfected the task, but it’s that one time-consuming, tedious step you dread taking every week when you’d rather work on other tasks, like responding directly to customer inquiries.

With Claris Connect, you can embrace the power of automation and drop the manual imports.

Not only can you let Claris Connect facilitate the data exchange for you, you can do it as often as you’d like. Instead of doing it on your existing weekly schedule — that you’ve only set out of necessity — Claris Connect can move those contacts for you instantly when any event you select happens.

Flow, trigger, action

So with our email newsletter example, here’s how you’d put Claris Connect to work for you.

First, in the Claris Connect workflow editor, you’ll create a new flow. A flow consists of any event (trigger) that leads to an action.

In this example, your trigger is every event when a person completes the “Learn More” form on your website. When that event happens, the system triggers Claris Connect to automatically send that data (the action) to your favorite email newsletter app. When you’re ready to send out your next newsletter, your new contact data will already be there, without that manual import you used to have to do.

Claris Connect uses web hooks to listen for those real time event triggers so the system is always working for you. And your flows are generally up and running in just a few minutes.

If you have workflows that need approval, you can set those up in Claris Connect, too. In our newsletter example, instead of sending the contact data directly to your newsletter app, you can set a step for approval.

Claris will send an email to the person you indicate to alert them that they have new data to review. Once the person reviews and approves the information, the rest of the flow is triggered to complete your intended action.

Claris Connect has an easy-to-use interface that helps you quickly build your flow, select your triggers, and set up your actions. You can drag and drop multiple services in the interface to automate workflows without coding.

Claris Connect is cloud-based, but you can connect to your on-premises services with downloadable agents to connect your on-premises data to your cloud.

Today, Claris Connect has more than 100+ connectors for your favorite apps and services. It’s a list that will continue to grow.

Claris Connect runs independently of Claris FileMaker, but includes a connector so you can use FileMaker with Claris Connect.

The power of flow

Claris Connect breaks ground by helping professionals in all industries streamline work processes and embrace automation for many of the manual, repetitive tasks that slow down operations when your time and resources could be used for other things.

Every business has unique business problems, and with Claris Connect, you can stitch together your favorite and most trusted apps to solve them in ways you never thought you could.

Claris’ event-driven workflow integrations means those repeated tasks are a thing of the past and your potential for innovation and business efficiencies has never been greater.

Claris Connect, built on Claris Core, is secure with end-to-end encryption, HSM key management, OAuth, MFA, AI-based threat protection, and more.

Ready to give Claris Connect a try? Join the more than 50,000+ global companies who trust Claris with a free 15-day trial of Claris Connect. And if you'd like to learn more about how a fully-integrated business management solution can streamline your workflows and help you take your business to the next level, register for one of our free webinars today.

Explore What aACE Can Do for You in Our March Webinars

By admin February 26, 2020Articles, Articles and White Papers

aACE is a comprehensive business management solution that can help you streamline your workflows and take your business to the next level. Our webinars enable you to explore aACE in real-time and ask questions of our skilled engineers to learn more about what aACE can do for your company. Last month, we covered topics ranging from the fundamentals of aACE to advanced accounting and from entering sales orders to restocking inventory and beyond. Here's what we have in store for March:

Tuesday Track

March 3rd – Shipping and the aACE Pick App

March 10th – Production and the aACE Job Shop App

March 17th – Recurring Transactions

Take an in-depth look at how aACE automates recurring transactions, allowing you to set up automated payments for bills you know are coming regularly. Check out our feature highlight on the subject for a sneak peek before the presentation.

March 24th – Expenses and Credit Card Purchasing

March 31st – Inventory Replenishment

Ensure you always have the right number of products at the right time with aACE's smart inventory reorder management tools. And to get a sneak peek at this powerful feature, check out our feature highlight.

Thursday Track

March 12th – Cost of Goods Sold

March 19th – Tax Profiles and aACE+ AvaTax Integration

March 26th – System Administration and Document Management

We look forward to seeing you in our March webinars! Register now to save your spot.

Overview

Feature Highlight