Business software Archives - SQLWorks

How to set pricing & discounting rules


Setting up pricing and discounting rules enables the end user to better manage customer accounts, and stock items.  Rules are restrictions or qualifiers that qualify the rule, and they are only applied if that condition is met.  You can create and set, specific rules for stock item costs and descriptions which are linked to individual customers.  As well as set parameters for when these price and discount rules will be automatically applied.

Managing pricing and discounting rules across multiple customer accounts and stock items can sometimes get quite complicated and tricky to keep on top of.  SQLWorks has made this process easier to set up, control and manage giving you greater flexibility and accuracy ensuring rules are adhered to across the whole of your customer portfolio.

The pricing and discount summary page gives managers and admin personnel the ability to view all rules that have been created, as well as the control to amend and save at a top level, which will automatically apply these rules across the platform.

The module can be found on the main nav bar under the Products Extras section.  The rules can be viewed on multiple tabs, and pricing rules can be imported and exported in bulk quickly and efficiently using an xls or csv file.  Discounting rules can be applied as line discount or an order discount, giving you the flexibility and control to apply rules at various stages of the ordering process.

Price & discount tab

Alternatively, rules can be viewed and managed from the Sales Ledger or Stock Ledger.  In both ledgers the Price & Discounts tab can be found in the top section of the window.  The rules listed apply specifically to the sales account or stock item selected and can be added, deleted and edited from this tab.  Once added the rules are linked to the corresponding ledger automatically and any order created that meets the criteria of one of these set rules, will adjust automatically..

Examples of the different types of rules that can be applied:

  1. Qty or value price breaks to reduce cost for higher value orders
  2. Limited time promotions
  3. Discounts by brand or other custom fields
  4. Specific prices or discounts by delivery site or currency
  5. Order level discounts based on value
  6. Customer specific part names & descriptions
  7. Priority based rules for complex ordering systems
  8. Rules targeting categories of SL account or product
  9. Separate rules for trade or retail customers
  10. Combinations of all of the above

To use customer specific part names & description to search for the item when creating a new customer order it is slightly different, using the customer lookup icon – as shown below.  Part names and descriptions automatically adjust on the item line once the criteria of a rule is met.

customer lookup

For more information, please see our full guide on Pricing and discounting features, or contact our team today.

Managing Assets & Machinery

Asset Register


If a business harnesses important physical assets, keeping track of these over time quickly becomes essential.

Whether it’s your own machinery, or a piece of equipment you maintain for a client, attributing costs to these accurately is an key part of your business financial planning – and helps you make smarter decisions about future investment.

SQLWorks supports this process with a dedicated asset register – allowing the user to save a range of information (including make, model, warranty and more) for both in-house and client assets to aid day-to-day business operations. Asset Register can be found in the Stock Ledger, and helps the user build a centralised and definitive list that can be controlled with permissions groups, like any other SQLWorks Ledger.

For in-house assets, SQLWorks users can also link these assets to Purchase Orders – ensuring that asset’s data contains a detailed maintenance history that includes financials.

Helpfully, this also works across multiple Purchase Ledger suppliers, so that maintenance costs (such as repairs or replacement parts) remain accurate even if an asset’s service contract changes hands. This helps a company stay flexible, since accounting and contract periods may be much shorter than machinery lifecycles.

Assets may also be optionally enabled as a special tab in a customer’s Sales Ledger account – ensuring a service engineer can easily access known information about a client’s asset as a part of routine account maintenance. This might include location, serial numbering for identification, or notes on past repair work.

SQLWorks ensures business managers can properly document and maintain a full asset register – itself an asset to a well-informed team.

 

For expertise and software assistance, please contact our SQLWorks Team today

Did you know? SQLWorks Cloud Link

SQLWorks includes a useful ‘drag and drop’ facility for saving documents against projects, sales leads, accounting records and more.

If your organisation stores files in a cloud storage app, SQLWorks can be integrated directly to view these folders in your ‘Documents’ tab, and files can be dragged and dropped into SQLWorks directly from the cloud.

This option can be set up from the main Navigation bar via Preferences > User Preferences > (User) > and by clicking the Setup Tab. By saving the file-path of your cloud app’s desktop folder into the ‘Remote/ Cloud Folder Path’ field, and clicking ‘Save & Close’, a SQLWorks user’s document tree will automatically default to view the chosen file location.

sqlworks cloud link filepath

As long as your cloud app on your PC/Mac is able to sync to the cloud, SQLWorks will be able to make most up-to-date version of your synced files available for drag and drop.

document management

This can be a useful way to make documents collected during fieldwork (eg: photographs) available to a main office – syncing direct from a smartphone, via your cloud app of choice, to be dragged and dropped against projects in SQLWorks.

Options include Microsoft OneDrive, Google Drive, Apple iCloud and Dropbox, as well as many other cloud file storage applications with a read/write access ‘desktop folder’ style client. (If you’re using a lesser-known cloud storage service with SQLWorks cloud link – we’d like to hear about it!)

This tool can also be used with a valid filepath to a location on a traditional on-premise server, and may be useful for businesses with very complex file structures, to help users automatically find the file location they would normally use for managing documents.

SQLWorks cloud link helps leverage all the flexibility of your favourite cloud app, to gather important files into your CRM, accounting and stock control system.

For additional support and assistance, please contact our SQLWorks team today.

Fact Sheet: Phone Logs

Phone logs

If your business fields a lot of phone calls, accurate record keeping is an important part of your interactions with customers. SQLWorks includes a Phone Logs tool to keep track of calls, to manage workloads, and to produce valuable insights from this data.

The Phone Log itself can be found in the Navbar under CRM (1), and opens a table showing all recent phone logs to your business, who called, and other information. SQLWorks does not record audio from phone calls (unless uploaded), but creates a convenient admin trail for tracing calls and the work that was associated to them.

Pressing ‘F6’ at any time in SQLWorks opens the window to create a new phone log (2), and this can be launched quickly during/after a call. Choosing a company from your company’s list opens its lists of contacts, and the user can either select a known contact (automatically entering all their details) or right click on the contact list to add a new caller’s details.

Below this are fields for giving the detail from the call to a SQLWorks user within your company (e.g.: for assigning a new task) and you can choose a user/group to email with the call detail.

On the right hand side of the new call log window are tabs to simultaneously create new tasks, project links or sales leads using the data from the new phone log (3.) Each tab automatically copies across the data from the phone log, and provides the extra fields needed to also create these new entries, for example: task priority or lead conversion chance.

When new phone logs are saved, they are logged to the phone log table itself, and under each specific company’s Phone Logs tab in the company’s list. If used, the task, project and lead tables also receive the new entries.

SQLWorks phone log is an immensely versatile tool, which forms the backbone of a structured help desk or office environment – helping to keep track of call volumes, agent workloads and customer interaction. The phone log itself can be exported with timestamped entries for further analysis of busy periods or repeat customers, and by clicking ‘Reports’ users can produce reports on number of calls received from a list of companies.

The new phone log screen (remember: press F6!) can be customised extensively by the SQLWorks team to record information commonly taken over the phone from enquiries to your business, and to help you populate the task list, advance projects or manage sales leads elsewhere in SQLWorks more carefully.

For CRM support and advice, contact the SQLWorks team today.

Fact Sheet: Sales Leads

sales leads

Need to manage a sales leads pipeline for your business? SQLWorks CRM includes a comprehensive sales leads module which can help you manage your customer outreach.

Leads can be accessed within the CRM section of the main navbar (1.) and will load a table of leads with multiple coloured panels representing your sales stages (2.)

You can double click on a lead to open it, reorder your leads by clicking the column headers or click the ‘Q1’ ‘Q2’ ‘Q3 ‘Q4’ buttons along the top toolbar to filter by financial quarter.

Once a lead has been opened, you can record common sales qualification data including priority level, log a lead source, assign categorisation and note the contact details of your contact in the top half of the edit Lead window (3.) You can also give each lead speculative value, profit and conversion chance, and set a follow up date for further action which can display in the SQLWorks diary. In the lower panel (4) are your normal SQLWorks CRM tools – you can link phone logs, emails, tasks and drag in documents to be saved against your lead, and save a record of actions performed to progress the lead with a time/date.

By clicking the [+] button above the lead stages you can unlock each new lead stage – moving your lead down the sales pipeline.

As leads move through your pipeline, your brightly coloured lead stages in the main screen (2) display how many leads are active at that stage, what the total value of these are in turnover, and the total likely profit (calculated by multiplying each lead’s percentage by it’s turnover value and adding the sum of that stages leads these together.) You can load the leads active at any single stage by clicking on that stage, and the stages themselves can be set to match your own sales pipeline. ‘Receipted’ and ‘Lost’ sales leads will always default their quantity to 100% of value converted or lost, and will move a lead to ‘Closed.’ By clicking the ‘Load Open’ button in the top toolbar you can filter your list to exclude these closed leads, and just work on those that are active.

If you need a quick way to record new enquiries over the phone, you can create a new lead when making a new phone log by clicking the ‘leads’ tab in the new phone log screen. To save time, the details of your new lead will be automatically populated from those you recorded in the phone log.

Your leads are kept isolated from your main companies list to prevent bigger sales departments with large numbers of cold contacts swamping your SQLWorks Sales Ledger with non-customers.

At any time however, (for example when a Lead becomes a customer) you can click the ‘Conversion Tab’ in the lower half of the edit lead window to automatically save the company details gathered by your Sales agent as a new company in your main SQLWorks companies list.

In this way SQLWorks makes it simple to log new leads, record progress in detail between multiple sales staff, and estimate future conversion rates.

For CRM guidance and help: contact us today.

Team SQLWorks at EurOmnis 2016

EurOmnis

Our SQLWorks team recently exhibited at the 2016 EuroOmnis developers conference in Tuscany, Italy – joining Omnis developers conference from more than a dozen countries around the globe.

EurOmnis is an annual educational event designed to bring Omnis programmers together to share knowledge and to showcase the very latest in software development.

“Lineal have been part of, and latterly helped organise, this international conference of Omnis developers since 1999” explained Managing Director Mike Matthews. “As a member of the Omnis developers group (ODEV), our SQLWorks Business Management Software undergoes an ongoing process of learning and development – and we’re always looking at what features future versions of SQLWorks will need to stay at the forefront.”

“The best businesses are always looking to the latest technology for an extra edge, so both our team and SQLWorks software need to be just as agile.”

EurOmnis

Attendees enjoyed classes, discussions and more surrounding the latest advances in Omnis software development, including javascript web tools, responsive graphs and visualisation aids, and Omnis development for portable devices such as smartphones and tablets.

Representatives from Omnis were also present, to host seminars informing and updating attendees on the platform’s latest news, as well as explore likely developments in the near future and gather feedback.

EurOmnis

The conference also gives developers a chance to showcase what they have been working on to other developers, drawing on software projects undertaken across countless industries and sectors.

To learn more about SQLWorks: contact us today.

Importing your data to SQLWorks

importing –

If you’re new to SQLWorks, importing your existing data to SQLWorks can seem daunting. Fear not! We’ve prepared this handy guide to make this process easier.

Decisions about your data are yours – but at any stage, you can ask the SQLWorks Team for help.

 

About Your Data

Data imported into SQLWorks is categorised in two types: Static and Transactional.

Static data is fixed lists of ‘things’ – including companies, contacts, address, your stock list, warehouses and more. Transactional data includes list of transactions, stock movements and financial ledger entries like orders, invoices, credit notes and more. Static data must be imported first, followed by transactional data.

importing

 

Finding Your Data

Both your static and transactional data comes from whichever system(s) you use currently – this could mean importing from a number of sources, including:

  • An old software program (e.g.: Sage)
  • A patchwork of spreadsheets (e.g.: Microsoft Excel)
  • A legacy database program or file (odbc compatible)
  • Nowhere (because you’re a new or paper-based company)
  • Some combination of the above

It’s up to you what data you place in SQLWorks, however whilst some data is almost always needed SQLWorks (even if entered new), other data is optional. As a rule, names, codes, accounting and VAT entries will need to be imported, but the optional parts of how your business model works (e.g.: records of quotes, or past stock movements) are optional.

 

How To Import:

All data for importing into SQLWorks needs to be given to the SQLWorks team in one of two formats:

  • An agreed file format exported from another software (e.g.: Sage export file)
  • A comma or tab delimited spreadsheet, .CSV or .TXT file. (e.g.: If using Excel, it is helpful to save the files as a .CSV in the ‘save as’ menu)

If you provide data to the SQLWorks team in spreadsheets (or .CSV/.TXT files) these will need column headings grouping certain types of the data together. For example, in a stock list, all your stock codes need to be in the same column, under an identifiable heading such as ‘Stock Code.’ The SQLWorks team can help you with this stage if you get stuck.

Depending on what SQLWorks modules you will be using, you will need to import files for the following data (see table below). Compulsory data within these are marked – for example: every Company imported must have a name.

 

 

SQLWorks Core

CRM

ACCOUNTS

STOCK

Static Companies

  • Name
  • Company Code

 

Contacts

  • Name

 

Addresses

  • Line 1
  Sales Accounts

  • Name
  • Company Code

Purchase Accounts

  • Name
  • Company Code

Nominal Codes

  • Name
  • Nominal Code
 
Transactional    

 

Outstanding Sales Orders

  • Company code

 

Outstanding Purchase Orders

  • Company code

 

Outstanding Sales Invoices

  • Company code
  • Date
  • Amount
  • VAT

 

Outstanding Purchase Invoices

  • Company
  • Date
  • Amount
  • VAT

 

Bank Rec

 

1 Bank Account

  • Name, Acc & Sort Codes

 

1 Petty Cash Account

  • Link to Bank Account
 
Optional Static

 

 

 

 

Sales Leads

 

Projects

  • Project Code

 

 

Nominal Departments

  • Name
  • Department Code

 

Nominal Analysis Codes

  • Name
  • Analysis Code

 

Nominal Subheadings

  • Name

 

Budgets

  • Amount
Warehouses

  • Name
  • Number

 

Stock List

  • Stock Item Name
  • Stock Code
  • Sale Price
  • Purchase Cost
  • Current Stock Quantity

 

Warehouse Bins

  • Number
Optional Transactional

Tasks

 

Phone Logs

 

Actions

 

Emails

 

Historic Sales Quotes

  • Company
  • Date

 

Historic Purchase Quotes

  • Company
  • Date

 

Historic Sales Orders

  • Company
  • Date

 

Historic Purchase Orders

  • Company
  • Date

 

Historic Sales Invoices / Receipts / Credit Notes

  • Company
  • Date
  • Amount
  • VAT

 

Historic Purchase Invoices / Payments / Credit Notes

  • Company
  • Date
  • Amount
  • VAT

 

Purchase Invoices (Historic)

Stock Movements

  • Stock Code
  • Date

 

 

 

Did you know? Consolidated Invoicing

consolidated invoicing –

If you have customers who prefer to have their bills collated onto a single monthly or weekly invoice, SQLWorks can administrate the consolidated invoicing process for you.

Consolidated invoicing can be activated under the ‘defaults’ tab of the chosen company in your SQLWorks Sales Ledger by changing consolidations from ‘None’ to either ‘Monthly’ or ‘Weekly’, depending on how often you would like your invoices to be consolidated together.

Because this is a change to how invoices will be issued, this option is only open to those with sufficient accounts admin privileges, and will issue a warning message before saving the new invoicing settings for that company.

When a new invoice is now added for that company under the ’transactions’ tab, a delivery note can be printed as normal, but the invoice cannot be printed, emailed or otherwise sent individually whilst consolidated invoicing is still activated for the chosen company.

When you are ready for your invoices to be consolidated, click reports in the top right corner, and choose ‘Report Un-printed Invoices’ as when using SQLWorks bulk invoicing. SQLWorks will prompt asking if you wish to consolidate the invoices of those accounts for which this setting is activated, and once approved will begin consolidating invoices.

All outstanding invoice lines for the required companies will be consolidated onto the last invoice of the month/week in which it is dated, and can now be emailed/printed for invoicing as normal.

Your Quotes and Orders remain unchanged, but individual invoices will now be hidden from view, replaced by the new consolidated invoice ready for sending. In the event that you have outstanding consolidated invoices from previous months/weeks unpaid, these will also be ready for re-sending.

In this way you can easily invoice repeat customers without excessive paperwork, and ensure that you keep the number of transaction entries on a single SQLWorks sales ledger account to a manageable minimum.

SQLWorks can help streamline your customer invoicing: find out how.

Did you know? Task Prioritisation

task prioritisation

SQLWorks’ task list can prioritise your tasks in order of important with a simple colour-coding system: here’s how to use this.

When creating or editing a task, you can choose a priority level from the ‘Priority’ dropdown menu, which by default contains 3 levels. After saving the task with a task prioritisation:

All ‘Normal’ Tasks go in the main (grey) default task window. You can use the main task list as a to-do list for today’s tasks, filtering the list, sending reminders and closing jobs as they are completed. Your SQLWorks admin can also be given control over closing tasks, and recording the time taken to finish each job.

All ‘Low’ priority Tasks go to the green task panel on the left hand side – you can use this to hold tasks that are not important, or have no imminent deadlines.

All ‘High’ priority tasks go to the red task panel on the left hand side – you should reserve this list for only the most urgent tasks. When a new task enters this list, SQLWorks will also email the person who this task is assigned to, letting them know they have a very urgent task to complete.

The yellow task panel is an especially useful area, reserved for ‘Future tasks that are dated ahead of time. You can do this by post-dating the ‘Open Date’ on a task before saving it. Your future tasks will remain in the yellow list until the ‘Open Date’ (and time) passes – at which point your task will be moved by SQLWorks to your main grey list to be worked on.

This is a handy tool for keeping tomorrow’s work clear from today’s to-do list, and populating tomorrow’s to-do list automatically when tomorrow arrives.

For a professional CRM solution on either Windows or Mac, contact us today.

Fact Sheet: Adding Emails

Adding emails

SQLWorks integrates with your email inbox to let you view, send and use emails to complete other tasks: here’s how.

To add your email account to SQLWorks, click ‘User Prefs’ under Preferences (1) in the main navbar. Select your User ID, and under the ‘Employee Info’ Tab put your email settings into email settings fields, including your account ID and password. This will give SQLWorks permission to see the contents of your email inbox.

In the main Companies List (1) by clicking the ‘Emails’ Tab (2) under a selected company’s record you can view the contents of your inbox on the left hand panel, and emails saved within SQLWorks on the right hand panel.

Dragging an email from the left panel to the right panel saves a copy to the system and makes the email visible to other SQLWorks users, whilst selecting an email makes the message content visible in the yellow viewing box below.

This is most useful for adding emails which are to valuable to just sit in your inbox – emails which your team will need to be able to share or recover details from in your absence.

You can also use this tool to place important emails within the system, linking important correspondence to projects, sales leads, quotations and more.

 

SQLWorks can even be configured to recognise significant emails and automatically add them to projects and other areas – for additional information, ask the SQLWorks team today.