Newsletter October 2014

It's hard to believe we are nearing the end of another year.  It seems I just published about some of the great things done in 2013 and now we're nearing the end of 2014!!

 

Another year of experience has really allowed our development staff to flourish.  Dave Smith and Roger Davis are now nearing the end of their 2nd year with SedonaOffice.  Dave and Roger have been producing some great things that many of you are able to take advantage of.  Dave has been able to get involved with all aspects of SedonaOffice and continues to advance his skillset each day.  Roger has shown a great ability to put together creative additions to SedonaOffice. 

 

Within the next few weeks we will be announcing the release of the new SedonaOffice Job Planner.  Roger has been hard at work on this great new feature since Spring.  It will change the way you schedule commercial jobs and manage your manpower needs.  The Job Planner uses a Gantt chart system to view the production needs of your entire backlog.  It really fills in the missing piece of scheduling any job in SedonaOffice, but it especially helps manage the large jobs that may span weeks and months.

 

In a few weeks, we'll also begin testing the new integration that we've been working on with ADI.  Directly inside of SedonaOffice will be the ability to:

  • View real time pricing of your ADI product lists. 
  • View any current sales for parts required for jobs. 
  • Electronically submit purchase orders directly to ADI via web service.
  • Download your invoices from ADI and have them automatically created inside of SedonaOffice.
  • Download files for Purchases made directly on the ADI e-commerce web site and have those orders automatically added to SedonaOffice.
Many of you responded to a "call out" to be part of our initial release and testing.  ADI or SedonaOffice will be notifying you when you may begin setup for this great new integration. 

 

We are also working closely with the guys from OPT on some direct integration to their reporting and new dashboard tools.   Expect those features to be available in the coming weeks.

 

This is only scratching the surface of all the great stuff we have going on.  We'll be talking more in depth at the 2015 Users Conference in January.  Be sure to attend to learn more of what we have going on here at SedonaOffice.

 


Faybrick Signature
Don Faybrick
Co-Founder, Perennial Software
Customer Highlight
At a Glance
Vancouver Fire and Radius Security
Founded: 1948
Location: Richmond British Columbia

Area served: Metro Vancouver and Calgary , Edmonton Alberta (for Remote Guarding only)

Employees: 135

Overview
Vancouver Fire and Radius Security is a $14,000,000  company. 
  • Vanfire provides mandatory inspections of fire systems and monitoring of these systems.   
  • Radius provides security solutions and monitoring.  We specialize in Remote Video Monitoring for outdoor assets, car dealerships and construction sites.
  • NFSP provides Fire Safety Plans for buildings as well as Evacuation and Extinguisher Training Programs.

Significant Accomplishment

Our goal is to diminish crime in our community and help protect the assets of our customers.  We are doing that by helping law enforcement apprehend criminals.  Over the last year with video we have decreased our false alarm rate from the known stat of 98% to 28%.  Plus when we do send the police, we have a 50% apprehension rate.  The group of companies has seen a growth of 13% over the last 12 months. 

Management Angle

Getting to the Root of the Problem

By Jim Lee, Astute Financial


When running a business, it's your manager's job to define and eliminate any problem areas in your company's processes. But, what you think may be a personnel problem could just be a symptom of a deeper, underlying issue. So how do you get to the root of the problem? Often, the first step is getting objective data.


For example, you think you may have identified a "problem" regarding the efficiency of your service department. A low number of service calls are being completed each day, your service coordinators are scheduling several go backs each week, and you've noticed that more customers seem to be calling to say your techs didn't know what they were doing.


On the surface, it may seem that your techs are slow, untrained or possibly even lazy. But, could the data reveal a different reason?


SedonaOffice can track travel times, technician expertise levels, inventory usage, and much more. With consistent data entry policies and the proper reporting systems, further analysis may find that technicians are regularly dispatched to one area of the city, then dispatched immediately afterward to the opposite side. Or, inventory minimums are not being maintained and your techs are running out of basic stock they need to complete work in a timely manner. And finally, your service coordinators may be dispatching some techs on problem types that are above their expertise level.


Objective analysis of the data may show that your problems are more systemic than a few untrained workers. Mining the wealth of data in SedonaOffice can help you get to the bottom of what's really going on.

 

Reach Jim at jim@astutefinancial.biz or (970) 223-2382 x1.

October Tip

Job Billing to Contractors and Builders

 

Users often face a situation where the bills for a job need to go to a contractor or builder, but the job itself needs to remain with the customer.  When this happens, we recommend setting up the contractor or builder as a master account with a checkmark in the box in the customer information section of the master account entitled "All Sub Account Invoices Billed To Primary Master".  The job is created under the customer and all work is performed within the job until billing to the contractor or builder is needed.  When billing for the job needs to occur, the customer is made a subaccount of the master account (the contractor or builder) only for the period of time that billing needs to take place.  After the bill has been created, the customer is detached as a subaccount of the master.  This enables the bill to remain with the contractor or builder while the job remains at the customer level.   If billing takes place at various intervals within the job, the same procedure would be done each time that billing was required.   It is very important that the customer be detached as a subaccount prior to cycle billing since the contractor or builder most likely is not financially responsible for the customer's recurring charges. 
Table of Contents
Meet April Misseri
Corporate Administrative Assistant
Since December 2005
What do you like best about your job?

The clients.  Over the years I have come to know their kids (and grandkids) and love hearing about their adventures.

 

Word to our customers:

The SedonaOffice On-Line help is a great reference for any questions that you have.  It is broken down by Module for ease of finding specific topics of review.


 Did you know?

Tigers not only have stripes on their fur, they also have them on their skin.

Register Today
2015 SedonaOffice
Users Conference

January 12-14, 2015
Loews Coronado Bay Hotel
Coronado, CA

Space is Limited!
Our room block is nearly full. To ensure that you will be at the conference hotel make your reservation today!

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Perennial Software | 440-247-5602 | www.sedonaoffice.com
549 East Washington St.  Chagrin Falls, OH 44022

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