Christian @ 2CT Media
Active Member
Finding is always easier! That's why I originally stated that I'm interested in your solutions.
-
I want to thank all the members that have upgraded your accounts. I truly appreciate your support of the site monetarily. Supporting the site keeps this site up and running as a lot of work daily goes on behind the scenes. Click to Support Signs101 ...
Best Shop Management Software for Working with Multiple Product Catogories
- Thread starter Bikeson22
- Start date
This is very exciting...you have finally crawled out of your underground vault to see the sunlight! You really need to start a new thread to announce this, give us some background and tell us all how and what you will offer as a Merchant Member. If anybody can make this work, I have faith that you will be able to do it. I also currently am running version FM12 and I know what can be done with it to create the finest Sign Business Management program out there but I just have not had the time to re-learn all the latest features to attempt to do it myself. I am very anxious to follow along on this journey of yours however. Good Luck!
ColorCrest
All around shop helper.
Care to say what you have been using so far?
Are you going to offer an off the shelf solution, or a custom, or a mix?
any idea on costing?
I'm guessing built in FileMaker... I haven't played with FileMaker much, but is whatever you provide going to be "open source" in the sense we can edit it / customize it to our liking, if we have a bit of coding experience?
I don't want to build something from the ground up, I wouldn't know where to start. But I also feel like if there was an off the shelf that I could edit via FileMaker, I could make something that'd work for our shop.
ColorCrest
All around shop helper.
All good questions.
I'm considering offering multiple options; a rather ready-made lite, an unlocked "starter lite," stand-alone tools, and coaching certainly.
The only thing I might say about costs right now is "Whatever the market will bear if I can agree with the market." There is a good, better, and best value to various solutions.
I know "time," more than say, a learning curve, is the tallest order. So, yes, I hear you about wanting to customize a boiler plate so that's goin to be first-up, very likely.
ColorCrest
All around shop helper.
Thanks for the kind words and wishes.
My first inclination and motivation was to provide a possible stop-gap for those who seem to be in a pickle over the potential loss of the EstiMate solution as mentioned in other concurrent threads. Whatever has or has not occurred with EstiMate, I feel both sides of those pains but I also know shops do have options that may not show up on the typical radar.
Still gauging an appetite.
More later.
CanuckSigns
Active Member
A quoting solution similar to EstiMate built in filemaker would be amazing! We hired someone to build our filemaker solution but it does not handle estimating. It's been on my list of things to add, but the prospect seems daunting to me. A premade solution I can customize would be amazingly helpful!
An estimating engine that could be added into an existing solution would be amazing. Gets converted into, and tracked through a job, then through to an invoice. Bonus point$ for help exporting this to Sage, Xero, etc!
We are using a combo of QB and a custom-built software called PacketPal.
ADVANCED DISPLAY
ADVANCED DISPLAY
Looking at sign-tracker as well, how many employees do you have? How was the learning curve for you and them when you started using it? I know their pricing feature is useful if you take the time to input your materials properly. Just curious
We have 13 employees using it. Learning curve was pretty quick and there are lots of training videos and weekly free webinars you can jump on. They are continuing to improve the software. The in-software chat feature connects directly to their technicians. The main items I've requested is an export of job locations (map) so we can better schedule our resources and overall expanded scheduling.
ColorCrest
All around shop helper.
FYI,
SignTracker users may be interested to learn that Inktavo, the parent company of InkSoft, Printavo and GraphicsFlow has very recently acquired SignTracker. Inktavo itself is but one of well over 100 software ventures in the portfolio of the investment group, PSG.
SignTracker users may be interested to learn that Inktavo, the parent company of InkSoft, Printavo and GraphicsFlow has very recently acquired SignTracker. Inktavo itself is but one of well over 100 software ventures in the portfolio of the investment group, PSG.
Interesting. I will be curious to see how it all comes together. A combo of those softwares would be pretty sweet.
ColorCrest
All around shop helper.
I'm wondering at what subscription price?
ColorCrest
All around shop helper.
Alas...
InkSoft "One Connected Workspace to Manage Everything."
Printavo "Our all-in-one platform takes care of it all."
SignTracker "Everything you need to manage a growing sign shop in one place."
Stacey K
I like making signs
It's pretty much just me. I have one part-time girl but she doesn't go into the program.
I really like it. One thing...as far as I know, once you put products in, you have to manually remove them or change them. I entered my vinyl like this...Oracal 751 Black. That's a lot of typing to get to the black so I wanted to delete them all and enter just "751 Black" - well, you have to remove them all manually (unless someone else knows how to do remove them?) so make sure when you add products you keep them as short and to the point as possible. I could have probably entered all my vinyl as "Black 751" and Black 3M", then all black vinyl would pop up and I could just select the brand - learn from me LOL
I thought I could just have a spreadsheet, make the changes on it and upload it "over" the old info. I don't believe that is possible, once it's in, it's in until you delete or change it.
Other than that - it's excellent! Love the quoting feature and you can add pics of your hand written notes then finished products photos when job is completed.
The absence of being able to upload a csv or similar file of products sucks (thanks spare squace).
It might be worth looking at builiding a heirachy or nomenclature of your product types, basicallyu SKU's of your products. This Link isn't a bad place to start.
I imagine that ColorCrest or FireSprint may be able to offer more on building a taxonomy of products.
When I was a young kid, getting interested in photography, there was a camera retailer chain, who had a price list - a fold down A2 (A1?) price list you could pick up in store (6pt lettering). They had all the SKU's by manufaturer (KO - Kodak, IL - Ilford etc, followed by product MG (multigrade) paper surface (1M - gloss), size 4 (10x8"), 100 (pack quantity). A few years later, I worked there through high school; WISE terminals, all products found by using the (momorised) SKU. Now, As a supplier, I'd want to start my inventory by product class.
It might be worth looking at builiding a heirachy or nomenclature of your product types, basicallyu SKU's of your products. This Link isn't a bad place to start.
I imagine that ColorCrest or FireSprint may be able to offer more on building a taxonomy of products.
When I was a young kid, getting interested in photography, there was a camera retailer chain, who had a price list - a fold down A2 (A1?) price list you could pick up in store (6pt lettering). They had all the SKU's by manufaturer (KO - Kodak, IL - Ilford etc, followed by product MG (multigrade) paper surface (1M - gloss), size 4 (10x8"), 100 (pack quantity). A few years later, I worked there through high school; WISE terminals, all products found by using the (momorised) SKU. Now, As a supplier, I'd want to start my inventory by product class.
ColorCrest
All around shop helper.
Those interested might take a look at these linked posts from a previous thread...
A fundamental process of any database is a routine along the lines of "find, list, sort."
certain parts of the name might play rolls in calculations and formulas.
my one and only list of sign components of materials and services
ColorCrest
All around shop helper.
From a previous thread "Paper Work Orders" as the post might relate to earlier posts in this thread about the merging of tech stacks, companies, and shop solutions ...
"Fillable" PDF forms
...it's important to consider how earlier generations, and sometimes many earlier generations, of companies and organizations were able to be very efficient and successful before the current state of the latest so-called "must have" technology.
A case in point is Acrobat fillable forms have been in heavy use for over 25 years. Before the current and commonly recognized sign shop solutions were available, a shop could, and still may, use an Acrobat form to capture data from users to produce inquiries, orders, site surveys, etc. Data from the form can be simple to export and simple to import into almost any database platform. No reason to necessarily re-key the data.
Apparently, at least one current and popular offering propose users to utilize a third party service such as Jot Form posted at a website to capture quote and order data. From the form, yet another third party service is used to post only certain data to their "central shop management" solution. From that point, a shop person is expected to re-key actual order specifics for a t-shirt order. IMO, that's not yet a step forward at this point.
So it goes, the devil's in the details. It takes time to learn and understand the impact of those details.
More later.
"Fillable" PDF forms
...it's important to consider how earlier generations, and sometimes many earlier generations, of companies and organizations were able to be very efficient and successful before the current state of the latest so-called "must have" technology.
A case in point is Acrobat fillable forms have been in heavy use for over 25 years. Before the current and commonly recognized sign shop solutions were available, a shop could, and still may, use an Acrobat form to capture data from users to produce inquiries, orders, site surveys, etc. Data from the form can be simple to export and simple to import into almost any database platform. No reason to necessarily re-key the data.
Apparently, at least one current and popular offering propose users to utilize a third party service such as Jot Form posted at a website to capture quote and order data. From the form, yet another third party service is used to post only certain data to their "central shop management" solution. From that point, a shop person is expected to re-key actual order specifics for a t-shirt order. IMO, that's not yet a step forward at this point.
So it goes, the devil's in the details. It takes time to learn and understand the impact of those details.
More later.
Last edited: