bulk invoicing

Bigger businesses can find it useful to send out invoices in batches (‘bulk invoicing’) – here’s how to do that in SQLWorks.

Click the ‘Reports’ button in the top right hand corner of your Sales Ledger and select the ‘Unprinted Invoices’ option. This loads a new window displaying any invoices which haven’t yet been submitted to a customer for payment.

You can select individual or multiple invoices (or choose a range of invoices by invoice number) and send these automatically by clicking the ‘Print/Email’ button.

Whether your invoices are printed, emailed or both can be set for each company in the Sales Ledger under the ‘Print & Orders’ Tab –  under Default Print Settings you can choose how to send invoices to that client, and set an invoicing contact email for that company.

This same tool can also be used for automatically sending statements to customers in your Sales Ledger, by entering a contact email address for statements and choosing a format for sending.

In addition, you can set SQLWorks to send Sales Ledger Statements based on amount – choose ‘No’ to never send this customer  a statement, ‘Yes’ to send if the customer has an outstanding balance, and ‘Always’ to always send a statement regardless of outstanding credit.

Both the automatic sending of invoices and statements in SQLWorks, in bulk, allows you to easily get through larger volumes of customer billing.

 

For support and advice, please contact our SQLWorks team today – 01271 375999.

manufacture

SQLWorks includes a manufacture and kitting tool able to budget for and build manufactured products using a selection of saved kits.

Manufacturing is accessible to users of the SQLWorks Advanced Stock, and can be found within the Stock Ledger screen under the ‘Products’ module in the main Navbar (1).

Clicking the ‘Kit Details’ Tab opens the kitting information for the selected stock item (2), and users should click the ‘Setup’ button if using these tools for a given stock item for the first time. By default, SQLWorks saves up to 3 alternate builds for each manufactured item (although more are available) with saved descriptions for each build (3).

Each stock item in your SQLWorks stock ledger can be both a ‘parent’ (made from its stock item ‘children’ – its components) or a ‘child’ of another stock item ‘parent’. Right-clicking opens options to ‘add child’ (component part) including values for both the components and associated labour costs.

Saved builds can include many components, sub components, and more levels as needed.

On the right hand side of the panel (4) are fields displaying the ‘Base Component Cost’ (the total value of the component parts as worked out by your saved SQLWorks stock valuation model) the ‘Marked Up Component Cost’ (the total markup value once percentage markups such as labour or assembly costs have been applied to each component for this build) and the ‘Current Kit Cost’ with your assigned sale cost for the finished product.

The kit price will be re-calculated automatically as component parts change, or if you have disabled this feature, by pressing the ‘Re-calculate’ button. Users can update the cost details for a build, allowing for any recent changes to stock ledger components, their value or assembly markup costs. You can also use saved shortcuts in the quick select menu of the Stock Ledger to view ‘Parent Items’ and ‘Child Items’ for easy searching.

SQLWorks manufacturing gives you a toolkit to organize the manufacture of kits from countless components, and to keep track of costs at every stage of the production line.

 

For specialist manufacture and kitting tools – speak to us about SQLWorks Stock Control today.

Removing Companies

Keeping on top of your data means cleaning old entries and removing companies you don’t need every now and then – but what’s the best way to do this?

Your SQLWorks includes an ‘inactive’ status for removing companies, which allows you to effectively tidy your database whilst avoiding deleting data you might need later. – SQLW

We recommend using this feature because outright ‘deletion’ of a company is normally not the best option. Most companies have linked information connected to other parts of SQLWorks: including phone logs, tasks and more, which makes deletion impractical.

To make a company inactive, right click its name in the main Companies List and click the ‘Toggle Active’ button to move a company to inactive status.

Inactive companies can be recovered later if users need to access older data, whilst keeping their main working list up to date for other time-sensitive tasks, e.g.: when generating mailshots, and ensuring your company files always remain accurate.

For the most professional warehousing operations, SQLWorks includes a powerful automated order allocation system.

‘Order Allocation’ can be accessed by users who have the SQLWorks Advanced Stock module under ‘Products’ in the main Navbar .

The top of this window gives you a series of filters for every stock order recorded in SQLWorks , with a series of configurable order allocation stages that your warehouse stock must move through to be dispatched in the panel below.

Typically stock will be progressing through one of six stages:

• ‘Unallocated’ – Stock that has not yet been processed.

• ‘Allocated’ – Stock from a specific warehouse reserved for a specific order.

• ‘Released’ – Stock in a specific bin location or locations, approved for picking.

• ‘In Pick’ –  Stock that has been picked and due to be dispatched to the customer.

• ‘In Transit’ – Stock that is part of internal stock movements between warehouses

By default all lines that meet your search criteria are displayed on the relevant tabs on the bottom of the window. These display is automatically ‘locked’ to editing, however using the radio buttons users can make the list ‘Selectable’ to turn on or off individual (or groups of) order lines, or ‘Editable’ to change individual allocation qty within a line. Right clicking a selectable or editable line opens helpful options for highlighting mass, order group or inverse line selections.

In the unallocated tab clicking the ‘Auto Set Values’ button on the right will allocate anything SQLWorks can, when you save it will move order lines to the ‘Allocated’ Tab. Since not every allocated stock item within an order is always available for dispatch, SQLWorks releases the order allocation based on the dispatch rules set in the order:

• ‘Allow Back Orders’ – When picked, any outstanding stock is cancelled unless SQLWorks is told to hold as outstanding items for back ordering.

• ‘Allow Part Order’ – SQLWorks will allocate order lines as they become available, unless told to wait until the full order can be fulfilled.

• ‘Allow Split Line’ – Send partial quantities from lines whenever they are available.

You can specify saved defaults for your company’s SQLWorks order allocation, which can be overridden with a rule for specific customer’s sales account, and are then applied to each specific order for the account.

Once released, SQLWorks can auto-generate intelligent picking notes – itemising stock to be picked using optimal warehouse walking route based on the known locations of your warehouse bins. When a pick is complete, warehouse operatives can re-enter stock ‘Fail Quantity’ figures into your order allocation history, along with reporting reasons for why the stock in question could not be picked. The remaining quantity is then automatically moved to invoice, allowing you to dispatch large numbers of orders with ease and efficiency.

An inventory Audit Log also allows you to look back through a complete history of every order line, or you can refer to the ‘Order Processing’ Tab within the Stock Ledger for a graphical summary and past failed order data.

For a more professional stock control solution – contact us about SQLWorks today: 01271 375999

Although SQLWorks is designed to avoid the need for multiple windows, sometimes this trick to open additional windows can be very useful.

To open an extra SQLWorks window, simply ‘Shift-click’ by holding shift at the same time as clicking on a chosen SQLWorks menu item.

This works with every Navbar section, tab and subsection of SQLWorks – and is useful for when you need to be able to refer to two (or more) unconnected sections of SQLWorks at once. 

For example, whilst you’re busy working on a customer’s quote, the phone rings with a call from a different customer who wishes to book a meeting. Simply ‘shift-click’ the SQLWorks Calendar to open a separate diary window for you to work with.

Each of the windows behaves independently, and can be used, moved, resized or closed as normal. The only exception to this rule is that multiple copies of the same window will not synchronise any edits you make between copies.

This handy trick guarantees that you can work in different parts of SQLWorks simultaneously however you need.

Need some helpful advice? Contact our SQLWorks team today: 01271 375999

Stock by account

It’s often useful to be able to see what a company has been quoted for, ordered, or has been invoiced for, over a longer period of time.

SQLWorks provides a useful summary of this information under each company’s ‘Stock by Account’ table.

Opening a company’s Sales Ledger Account in SQLWorks and clicking the ‘Stock’ Tab in the main window will display a table that breaks down a company’s stock data by month. Users can choose the financial year to observe, filter by Product, Stock Group or more, and choose to count the number of quotes, orders or invoices.

This is a useful feature for repeat customers, providing a quick and easy summary of activity on a customer’s sales account over the course of 12 months. For a more detailed list of stock or custom items quoted, ordered or invoiced, click the ‘Detail’ tab and specify the date range with which to search that company’s sales account.

Either table can also be exported to Microsoft Excel if needed, so that SQLWorks can always report your sales account activity in the way that is most convenient for you.

 

Contact our SQLWorks team for more information: 01271 375999 

Working in a larger team means that a post-it note can easily get lost – so SQLWorks lets you leave prompted reminder messages for other members of your team, called Prompt Notes.

Your prompt note will pop up when another SQLWorks user opens a specific company entry from the company’s list, a specific company’s account, project or all of these, and can be used to set reminders for all members of your team when accessing that company record.

Prompt Notes can be set from your SQLWorks default preferences for any chosen company by clicking ‘Edit’ from the toolbar, and selecting the ‘Prompt Notes’ Checkbox.

Choosing ‘None’, ‘Projects’, ‘Accounts’ or ‘All’ from your SQLWorks Preferences sets when the message should appear. Selecting ‘None’ restricts your prompt note to the company’s Companies List entry only.

Prompt notes are a useful tool for leaving warning messages, designated contact points or other client-specific information, and ensuring everyone gets a prompt for an important reminder.

If your company email password has changed, SQLWorks won’t be able to integrate with your email – here’s how to fix that.

You can update your SQLWorks integrated email password via ‘Preferences’ in the main Nav Bar (1). Clicking ‘User Prefs’ will open your company’s SQLWorks users, giving you access to some of your own accounts settings by clicking your own name on the user list.

This opens the Employee Info window shown above. In the bottom right panel your email settings are saved (2) – here you can update your User ID and Password, along with other integrated email settings such as your email signature.

Higher security user settings can only be changed by a designated system administrator, or the SQLWorks team by formal request.

 

Contact us for more information: 01272 375999

Stock comes in many different forms, so SQLWorks stock ledger can be set to value stock, per item, in four different ways – known as stock costs:

1. Default Purchase Cost – specify a purchase cost against any stock item in any currency, and when you buy in that currency, SQLWorks will match the costs using the appropriate exchange rate.

2. Average Cost – this is an average taken across all purchase invoices over the total quantity of stock. Accurate to up to 4 decimal places, this can be recalculated with a right click or set to automatically update via Preferences > Accounts Prefs > Stock. If no stock is available average cost will estimate an average from recent sold stock using your invoices.

3. Standard Cost – Your custom valuation, not derived from any financial transactions in the system, and used to give a stock item an arbitrary value.

4. Batch Cost – Used for advanced warehousing, batch cost records the cost of each item from a specific purchased batch, and can vary between batches, allowing for more accurate manufacturing, re-sale and accounting.

On costs/landed costs, accounting for extra stock costs obtained with freight charges, duties and import taxes, can also be recorded specifically or as averages, and users can specify whether to include or exclude on-costs from their stock valuations.

When generating reports in SQLWorks, users can specify the default valuation for your stock from among the stock cost methods, choosing the one most appropriate for your business. By setting a default cost type, this also affects your Sales Ledger, directly affecting profit and associate reports.

 

Learn more about SQLWorks stock today: http://www.sqlworks.co.uk/stock/

Project management is a powerful function of SQLWorks CRM, which allows users to collaborate on bigger projects and coordinate work from different areas of your business.

With careful planning, you can use SQLWorks’ Projects tool to more easily collate your team’s efforts towards an overarching goal onto a single dashboard, saving time and money.

‘Projects’ can be accessed under the SQLWorks CRM dropdown in the main navbar (1) and displays your live projects within the list panel (2). Key information and editing buttons for the selected project is displayed at the top of the main window (3).

SQLWorks Projects acts as a collection point for entries from across SQLWorks (including financial elements, tasks, documents and much more) relating to a chosen project, in one place under the correct tab (4). You can create new linked items (of any type) direct from projects by right clicking the correct window from within the project screen, which will also added in the relevant section elsewhere in SQLWorks. For example, a new phone log created inside “projects” will also display in SQLWorks phone logs.

This becomes most powerful in reverse however – when creating new entries elsewhere in SQLWorks, users can tag this as part of a specific project. This is the case for almost any SQLWorks item (including individual lines from quotes, orders or invoices for project costings) which can all be linked to an open Project.

SQLWorks can have multiple project types for managing different sorts of projects at once, each with their own data capture or layout – for example, financial projects may require access to financial entries from SQLWorks Accounts. The SQLWorks team can add new project types for your business on request.

For staged projects, a SQLWorks project can be segmented into saved ‘Stages’ which prompt automatic action when reached, for example emailing a contact or completing a task.

Security groups prevent unauthorised users from accessing restricted projects, or sections within a certain project (for example: confidential data) and this can also be configured on request by the SQLWorks team.

SQLWorks Projects can help you easily gather information and organise stages of a more complex set of related jobs, or pool the work of a larger team in a coordinated way.

 

For more information on SQLWorks CRM tools, contact our team today: http://www.sqlworks.co.uk/contact-us/