To compliment SQLWorks manufacturing and kitting, Stock Ledger allows users to create and manage manufacturing works orders to different degrees of detail.

(For an introduction to SQLWorks manufacturing and kitting, click here.)

Works Orders are accessible from the Stock Ledger screen, under the ‘Products’ module, in the main NavBar (1), by clicking the ‘Works Orders’ tab for a chosen stock item.

The two tables on the left-hand side show ‘Active Word Orders’ still being worked upon, and ‘Completed Works Orders’ which have been finished (2.)

To the right the ‘Build Quantity’ (3) Panel shows the parts needed for that stock item, how many are available in the default warehouse to use for this works order, and the maximum finished items that can be built from these parts.

The lower right panels (4) show a summary of the scheduled builds on a selected works order, and the parts required for each of these scheduled builds (in case the Works Orders vary between builds.)

 

Quick Build

Users can complete a simple works order by right clicking in the ‘Active Works Orders’ and choosing ‘Quick Build.’ This simplified option checks the correct parts out of stock from their default warehouses, completes a Works Order immediately, and checks in the finished item into stock in its default warehouse.

This is useful for simple builds where no extra works order detail is required and the works order doesn’t need to be drafted in advance.

 

Full Works Order

Users can create a full new works order by right clicking in the ‘Active Works Orders’ and selecting ‘New Works Order’.

This opens a new works order window for the chosen stock item– these can be given header information including a Total Build Quantity. Parts for kitting will be taken from the ‘Take Stock From’ Warehouse code, and (via the designated build bin) the finished item will be checked into the ‘Build Product Where?’ Warehouse code and Bin number.

Each line on the Works Order represents one ‘schedule’ for building a given quantity of the kit – with the quantity of that schedule enterable on the left hand side. A component list is also shown here, to help inform production numbers.

The middle column (‘Cost Groups’) displays advanced Construction Time / Cost Centre additions for this kit if this feature is turned on in SQLWorks.*

The ‘Build Group Column’ is used for the actual building of the works order: typing a quantity into the ‘Take’ field and clicking ‘Take’ removes the required parts from the ‘Take Stock From’ warehouse, and doing the same in the ‘Build’ field and clicking ‘Build’ assembles the new kitted item and moves it to your designated ‘Build Product Where?’ Warehouse and Bin.

You can also cancel quantity’s from the Works Order by typing a quantity into the ‘Cancel Qty’ field.

On the right hand side of each line the ‘Inspection Group’ allows you to enter up to four custom quality testing/inspection checkpoints for each works order schedule, date-stamped for approval.

Works Orders can be saved without being built (to schedule future work), but when the ‘built’ quantity within the works order and any cancelled quantity added together equal the ‘Total Quantity’ required, the works order will automatically be moved to the ‘Completed Works Order’ list.

 

*Construction Time / Cost Centres

Advanced users can turn on ‘Default Construction Costs (per Hour)’ and ‘Default Construction Times (per Hour)’ which will appear at the top of the Works Order Tab if used.

This allows the user to save details for time taken, and costs expended, as the finished kit is processed through up to a maximum of six stages to complete the Works Order, and can be factored into sales costs accordingly.

 

SQLWorks calculates a number of different stock quantities for measuring how much stock you have.

These allow you to measure how much of each stock item are at different stages of your stock control process, and can be found displayed in the Stock Ledger for each stock item as follows. Scroll down for more information about each.

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Actual

‘What I own now’

• Actual Stock is the quantity of an item you currently own within your warehouse(s.)

 

 

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Pending

‘What I own which is temporarily unavailable’

• Pending Stock is the quantity of an item you currently own which is not to hand – for example Stock you own which is in ‘Transit’ internally, or stock currently waiting in ‘Make’ Bins for manufacturing.*

*The exact nature of Pending stock may vary between individual SQLWorks companies, and may represent stock dispatched but not processed, if this setting is applied – please contact your account manager to clarify.

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Allocated

‘What’s been sold to a specific customer’

• Allocated Stock is the quantity of an item you currently own which has been reserved to fulfil a specific customer’s order.

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Free

‘What’s really in hand’

• Free Stock is your Actual Stock minus any stock currently Pending or Allocated. This count typically represents the amount of stock you own that’s on hand, and does not include anything currently in transit, or already allocated to fulfil specific sales orders.

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SOP

‘What’s been ordered’

• SOP stock is the quantity of a stock item which is wanted by your customers (currently outstanding on your sales orders.) This includes any Allocated stock already reserved to fulfil specific sales orders.

SQLWorks can be configured to exclude Forward Orders from this number.

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Available

‘What would I have left’

Available stock is your Actual Stock minus your SOP. This count represents the maximum quantity of a stock item you own which could still be sold if all your sales orders were fulfilled.

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WoP

‘What’s needed for parts / to be made from parts’

• WoP Stock is the quantity of an item currently listed on outstanding works orders – to be made from other stock items, or used to make other stock items.

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POP

‘What’s on order’

• POP stock is the quantity of an item currently listed on outstanding purchase orders. This is stock you are expecting to be delivered by suppliers.

SQLWorks can be configured to exclude Forward Orders from this number.

 

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Potential

‘What I could have’

• Potential Stock is all your potential stock added together. This count represents the maximum amount of stock you would have if you fulfilled all outstanding customer orders, received all outstanding purchase orders and build all outstanding works orders.
• If you are using SQLWorks MRP, the Potential stock is the quantity that will be compared to your re-order level for each stock item (within your chosen time horizon) to inform whether additional stock needs to be purchased or manufactured.

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Stock Quantities Overall:

 

For help and advice on SQLWorks’ Stock Control capabilities, please contact our team today.

 

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.

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.

 

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

 

 

email marketing

If you have SQLWorks linked to your email account, SQLWorks can be used for email marketing and mailshots, bulk sending emails with custom designs.

Accessed within SQLWorks CRM, users can create a new email campaign by making a new mailshot project, and create multiple mass emails within a campaign.

Right clicking in the main list and selecting ‘New Mailshot’ will open a new email creation window, where users can give the mailshot a unique name, choose an email from address, subject line, and ‘drag-and-drop’ in attachments.

The list of intended recipients can be chosen from the ‘Client Lists’ dropdown, selecting from one of your custom client lists, which you can build from your saved SQLWorks CRM contacts.

For the design of an email, you can choose from a wide range of tools from within the formatting pallet on the right of the main email editing window – get creative with different fonts and text sizes, colours, bulletpoints and alignment, insert images, tables and more!

You can format elements by highlighting them and clicking the format buttons, and confine the margins of your email by setting these measurements in the ‘Document’ tab.

For tidy formatting, we recommend creating a borderless table in which to align all the elements of your email marketing email – to ensure any custom designs are displayed consistently in the inboxes of recipients.

SQLWorks database tags can be input into the main email body so that each email contains mail merged custom data from elsewhere in your contact directory. This can be used for targeting with ‘informal’ detail (e.g.: a first name – ‘Dear John’) and a “fall-through” function which pulls in substitute data as a ‘formal’ backup (e.g.: surnames – ‘Dear Mr Smith’) where the main data is unavailable. These functions can be customised by our SQLWorks team, to email your contacts using any piece of data from your SQLWorks CRM, Accounts or Stock Control data.

SQLWorks allows you to preview each version of a mailmerged email to check for errors by clicking the ‘Prev’ / ‘Next’ buttons, and ensure each email is correctly personalised. Using the spellcheck function, and undo/redo buttons, email marketeers can also avoid any errors being broadcast to a wide audience.

If you wish to remove all formatting, and send your email as a ‘plain text’ email to improve chances of deliverability, simply tick the ‘Send as Plain Text’ checkbox at the top of the Mailshot window. Using the ‘Show Plain Text’ checkbox, you can also check how this email is likely to be seen by email inbox previews.

Deploying these tools, you can field imaginative, targeted and ongoing email campaigns, linking all the intelligence of your SQLWorks data together with your marketing.

 

For expert CRM tools, contact us about SQLWorks today:

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.

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.

Client Lists

SQLWorks CRM allows for easy creation and maintenance of a list of specific companies, which can be used for email mailshots, segmented letters and other targeted communication.

Client Lists can be found under the CRM section in the main SQLWorks Navbar (1), and opens a window with a list management menu (2) and a client list panel (3).

To create a new custom list from the companies in your main Companies List, click the ‘New’ button in the top toolbar, this opens the new client list window (4) which allows you to set options for the list you’re about to create, including assigning it to a user, creating a list from companies or contacts (or both) and choosing from pre-saved options from your ‘Quick Select’ menu.

The ‘Locked List?’ checkbox allows the list creator to toggle control of the new list, locking the list to being changed by anyone but the administrator.

For generating email lists, three additional email option checkboxes provide a useful shortcuts to automatically exclude any company or contact without an email, exclude duplicated email addresses to avoid double-sending, and hide anyone saved with an email ‘opt-out’ against their name within SQLWorks.

You can build your list using any of three methods, selecting from checkbox categories saved in your Companies List, choosing options from your Quick Select menu such as companies with ‘Recent Phone Logs’, or building a custom query using the standard SQLWorks Custom Search tool. This final option gives you complete control over your new list – adding lines using the (+) and (-) buttons to add or remove qualifying companies that match a series of terms.

SQLWorks can handle both fixed and dynamic lists: by clicking ‘Enable Smartlist’ under the ‘Live Search’ Tab your list will constantly update as new data becomes available, re-fulfilling your saved search terms to remain current. Leaving Smartlist turned off will keep your list as it was when you first created it.

Two further tabs labelled ‘Always Included’ and ‘Never Included’ allow you to set overriding exception rules for who appears on your list. Moving a company or individual from left to right, onto the ‘Always Included’ category ensures this company or category will always remain on the list.

Moving a company or individual from left to right onto the ‘Never Included’ list ensures this company or contact will be never be a part of this list. If a company or contact appears on both lists, so that the two exceptions conflict, the ‘Never Included’ list takes priority.

Clicking ‘Save & Close’ will save under your SQLWorks User ID the results of your list – which can be exported to an excel spreadsheet for use in external applications by clicking the ‘Export’ button at the top of Client Lists window.

Back in your SQLWorks Companies List, your saved client lists can also be used from either Quick Select dropdown or the ‘Client Lists’ tab to filter your overall database.

SQLWorks Client Lists give you the power to create precise and complex lists from your larger company database for highly targeted marketing and other customer management.

 

For more information of SQLWorks CRM tools, click here.

SQLWorks includes four main ledgers for customer transactions: Sales Ledger, Purchase Ledger, Sundry Cash Ledger and Petty Cash Ledger

For accounting, these transaction ledgers are collated into two analysis ledgers, your live Nominal Ledger and your Bank Ledger as described below.

 

Transaction Ledgers (Sales/Purchase/Sundry Cash/Petty Cash)

Your Sales and Purchase Ledgers control account centric transactions for selling and buying to a particular customer/supplier, typically involving an ordering process and a separated invoicing and payment process (i.e. debt and credit).

Sundry Cash Ledger is for payments to and from those whom you have no ‘account’ with, and therefore is best suited to financial transactions that have no delay in payment (for example, a simple cash sale). Because of this, your Sundry Cash Ledger should be used for direct sales & expenditure, or for moving funds into and out of your Petty Cash Ledger.

Each record in any transaction ledger will appear automatically in your nominal audit. SQLWorks follows standard double entry bookkeeping rules, in that each financial transaction has two associated nominal postings. When running a nominal audit SQLWorks uses your nominal profile in preferences and the list below to automatically generate the audit records from the records in the transaction ledgers:

Financial Transaction Type	Side 1 Posts to:	Side 2 Posts to:
SL Invoice	Invoice Line Nominal Code	Creditor Account
SL Credit Note	Credit Line Nominal Code	Creditor Account
SL VAT	Creditors VAT Control Code	Creditor Account
SL Receipt	Bank Account Nominal Code	Creditor Account
SL Currency Variation	Variance Control Code	Creditor Account
SL Settlement	Settlement Control Code	Creditor Account
PL Invoice	Invoice Line Nominal Code	Debtor Account
PL Credit Note	Credit Line Nominal Code	Debtor Account
PL VAT	Debtors VAT Control Code	Debtor Account
PL Payment	Bank Account Nominal Code	Debtor Account
PL Currency Variation	Variance Control Code	Debtor Account
PL Settlement	Settlement Control Code	Debtor Account
Cash Book	Cash Record Nominal Code	Bank Account Nominal Code
Cash Book Income VAT	Creditors VAT Control Code	Bank Account Nominal Code
Cash Book Expense VAT	Debtors VAT Control Code	Bank Account Nominal Code
Petty Cash	Petty Record Nominal Code	Petty Account Nominal Code
Petty Cash Income VAT	Creditors VAT Control Code	Petty Account Nominal Code
Cash Book Expense VAT	Debtors VAT Control Code	Petty Account Nominal Code

 

Bank Ledger

Your Bank Ledger records the actual record of payments and receipts. A payment can be exist in any of your three main transaction Ledgers (Sales/Purchase/Sundry Cash). Here you can group and organise payments into deposits to exactly match your Bank statement during the bank reconciliation process.

Your Bank Ledger can include multiple bank accounts, against which to record different types of payments. Each account must have a different nominal code that is used when automatically posting the payment records from SL, PL & SCL in the nominal ledger. Note that you cannot enter a payment/receipt record in SL, PL or SCL without selecting the bank account first.
 

Nominal Ledger

Whilst your Bank Ledger records the actual movement of funds, your Nominal Ledger also considers debit and credit transactions from the invoices in your Sales/Purchase Ledgers. The Nominal Ledger gives you a constantly updated window into the profit and loss for each part of your business. By using the ‘audit by year’ you take a snapshot of your business from which you can view P&L, Balance sheet, Trial Balance and drill down into actual live data.

Your Nominal Ledger audit pulls live data from the all of the financial transactions in your Sales and Purchase Ledgers, and from all of the records in Sundry Cash Ledger and Petty Cash Ledger. The value is posted to the nominal code stored on the record and the other side of the nominal posting is decided automatically as explained above, VAT is also posted automatically to the VAT control account.

The nominal ledger also loads nominal journals, non-financial records that serve only to move figures between nominal accounts. Certain processes in SQLWorks create journals automatically, such as end of year appropriation and changes that affect stock valuation.

The Nominal Ledger can have up to three tiers: Nominal codes, Analysis codes (i.e. Sub Nominal codes), and Department codes, each of which can be crosschecked against another to breakdown spending or revenue in different segments of your business for more targeted analysis. The nominal audit creates a record of the value against each individual combination and then pools together the data as per your reporting requirements.

Your Nominal Ledger provides an understanding of your accounts, which includes amounts owed and owing as well as gained or lost, for financial analysis.

 

 

Lineal Software Solutions have launched of our new sqlworks website for our SQLWorks Business Management Software (www.sqlworks.co.uk).

Managing Director of Lineal, Mike Matthews, explained: “This is a big year for SQLWorks, as we’re due to release Version 8 in conjunction with the release of Omnis 8, and we wanted to overhaul our SQLWorks website too.”

“We always aim for our software to work how you work: we’ll now be offering 3 different delivery models to suit different businesses’ needs, with SQLWorks available in on-premise, hosted and cloud versions.”

SQLWorks, Lineal’s leading software for Accounting, CRM & Stock Control was first developed for manufacturing in 1983, and has evolved substantially over 33 years.

Keeping up with the times, the new website has been designed to be fully responsive, for use on mobile and tablet devices. More and more people will use SQLWorks on the move in the future, from a variety of devices, so the SQLWorks website should mirror this.

Existing SQLWorks users will also receive additional support, accessing learning materials via the SQLWorks News page. Extra features, including a live SQLWorks demo and our SQLWorks help guide, will be available soon – watch this space!

 

Discover SQLWorks today: visit www.sqlworks.co.uk or call 01271 375999