Readysell Pro Best Practice Training Guide

General ledger budget figures let you measure actual performance against your expectations. The general ledger figures are of not much use on their own. At some point you have to compare your general ledger results against some expected standard. The budget figures allow you to record your expected results, your business plan, in advance. Then to monitor actual performance to see if you are meeting your goals.

All well run business enterprises have a business plan and compare results against the plan. Best practice is to enter general ledger budgets, at least on a few key accounts like revenue and expenses, at the start of the year. Then every month check your results against your expectation. If the business is not performing as expected, you will have time to do something about it before the end of the year.

There are two types of Budgets being either Monthly or Daily.

Plan all warehouse, show room, credit return, back order receipt and retail locations

Allow space for receipting and plan a good flow of stock from receipting through to shipping areas

Set appropriate location sizes for your business, from one shelf min to two meters max

Setup trucks as stock locations if you use the service module

Set min and max levels for product locations to support stock replenishment from bulk to fast pick or tracks

Set retail locations to quarantine

Print bar coded location labels and place them on the appropriate locations. Consider using non-stick shelf talkers as labels

Manage those slow moving products

Show stock on hand, last receipt date, last sale date and date created on your product list. Then filter to show items created more than three months ago that have stock on hand and a last shipment more than three months ago. 

Review and consider putting on sale slow moving lines that are not parts of ranges

Automate price changes

For your first price update only. Use price book runs to ensure automatic updates will not cause wild changes to cost or sell prices due to variances in units

Once you have settled in price book runs, contact Readysell support and have automatic price updates turned on

Avoid catalogue loads. Even automatic catalogue loads can be replaced by automatic price updates

Manual loads of flyers might be justified, as flyers need to be reviewed and they don't permanently change any sell prices

Consider loading spreadsheets to the price book for any ranges that are not covered by your automatic data feeds

Generate price change labels for your retail area based on last primary sell price changed date

Wireless warehousing using the mobile app on apple, android or windows is just best practice. Change is difficult, your team is probably used to picking from orders or picking slips. But the mobile app is just more efficient. The time has come to move to the best practice and mobile app is it.

Start by parrallel running sale shipments and move on from there

Plan on three hours training and implementation assistance. Every hour you spend on training will save you many hours of trial and error

Buy mobile units that support team viewer so Readysell can provide remote support

Review hour mobile device hardware guide before you purchase any devices

Save time with automated warehousing, if your business is not purely POS based

Automated warehousing can benefit every business. Take the time to understand the settings on your site file

The learning curve is justified, if you are not using automatic warehousing have it turned on

Reduce costs, save time and increase customer loyalty with advanced warehousing features

Wireless tables for putting away purchase receipts and picking sale shipments

Scan checking of purchase receipts entering the business. Consider using a large screen so your team can see your receipts display from a distance

Scan checking sale shipments

Automated warehousing as noted above

Drag quantity on sales back order onto the purchase receipt lines view. Then put aside that quantity into a back orders area. This saves a lot of time as pickers don't have to walk to the shelves to collect back orders

Picking slips with a count bigger than one are for back orders. So picking slips "2 of 2" is for backorders. Train your team to take such picking slips to the back order are

Save time and reduce costs by understanding

your warehouse and your team

Readysell can report on bin hits per hour to measure the effectiveness of your warehouse layout. The fast movers should be near the front of your warehouse

Download the List Report: "Shipment lines by location by hour" from the Readysell Store if you do not already have this report to run.

You can add any columns onto the report once you've run it for further information if you require them.

Picker shipment lines per day and credit/error rates can be tracked. Use this information to monitor your team. Perhaps additional training is required.

Save time and reduce costs by preparing for stockakes

Understand and plan the type of stock you will be using. There are a variety of stocktake methods and a separate group of stocktake stock clearing methods. Make sure you understand the difference between the methods of running stocktakes and the methods of clearing stock. 

Ensure you have a manual checklist to plan and track stocktake progress

If you are still in doubt use the ad-hock stocktake method. 

Setup locations and location labels before stocktake

Consider doing a stocktake without counting the stock, just to put the stock in the right locations

Laptops are best for your first stocktake

Tablets are best for second stocktakes, once you know all your barcodes are captured correctly for your product range

Reduce costs by tracking stock adjustments

Retail workstations can make automatic stock adjustments so that customers can buy stock that they have in their hands but which is not yet receipted into the system. Those adjustments should reverse. Review automatic stock adjustments once a week to check they are being automatically reversed

Stock adjustments can be made from sales by right clicking on the product, consider applying security limits to this feature. If not review the number, value and created by for stock adjustments each week

Ensure staff classify stock adjustments to the correct stock adjustment type. "short stock" should only be used where other more defined reasons such as "damaged stock" do not apply

Improve revenue with optimal price options

Fixed sell prices suit prices that are automatically updated from external data feeds. If the sell price is not updated automatically, do not use fixed sell prices

The price method for each price level can be adjusted for individual products

Use markup from cost to ensure you hold your margin as costs change

Price categories on products can override other price rules. For example on large ranges of low cost consumables that you import without recommended sells

Price levels can be discounts from other levels, this can reduce your number of contracts and your price maintenance load

Put customers on price levels to provide incentives without the maintenance involved in contract prices

Remember, contracts can apply to supplier costs

Make use of market competitor price levels if they are updated into your system

Understand the sales structure, Sales orders are demand, back orders are order lines, shipments are supply and sale invoices are charges

Sales orders should be used for B to B sales, where the goods are not going to be supplied right away. Such as where their might be backorders, prepayments or multiple shipments

Sale shipments should be used for POS sales where the whole of the sale is being shipped right now

Sale invoices can be for more than one sale shipment

Sale back order lines list all sale order lines that are currently back ordered. As receipts come in they clear from the list.

You control web order integration

Normally web orders are set to a workflow status of hold. So that you can review them before they are released by automatic warehousing. You can elect to skip this step

Products ordered by the customer that are not in stock are colour coded. You can elect to create the product or create a automatic substitution. It is worth the time to make as many automatic substitutions as you can. Thus allowing you to make use of endless isle without having to expand you warehouse product range

There are a number of tools to help with quotes

Quote view shows gp and margin

The change value button can make working on quotes easier, by setting the total value to a price point, changing the markup, discount or gp on selected lines and many other features

The extract button can help you view customer history as well as extract details

Make use of the customer history button

When quotes are accepted the original quote can't be changed. So you can always go back to it if the customer questions the final invoice

Compare and colour code quote lines using competitor pricing. Match competitor prices automatically

Your retail operation can work better with those options

Use Readysell's new dedicated POS window to process POS transactions

Implement EFT integration to the bank

Consider Tyro bank integration. Money is cleared less often but charges may be lower

Use sale shipments when every possible rather than sales orders

Create machines from sales tenders for larger equipment items if you are using the service module

Automatically print retail price labels using last sell price change

Plan and implement locations for your retail area. Then use location labels in your retail area

Set the retail locations to quarantine if you have a warehouse to stop warehousing allocating retail stock

Use stock location transfers to move stock in and out of retail from the warehouse

Require payment in full from walk in customers that back order stock

Require a scan of the original invoice or sale docket before you allow credits

Use cash counts for groups of registers at end of day

Use consolidated zreads

Use cash counts

Use advanced shipment and invoicing options

From the shipments list view you can drag two shipments for the same customer onto one invoice. This allows you to pick shipments when automatic warehousing releases them, but to still combine an first shipment for an order and a shipment for backorders onto one invoice

Set customers to a maximum number of shipments, usually 2, instead of holding shipments manually until the rest of the stock arrives

Add value for customers by using one invoice per order or one invoice per month for those customers that want to consolidate their invoices

Use parent and charge to accounts on customer cards. Customers with parent accounts can have invoices charged to their separate accounts and invoices printed to head office or invoices printed for each branch and head office with charges going to each branch

Set customers to price levels to reduce the need for contracts. Use custom price levels that are discounted from standard levels

Use the mobile app

Manual service paperwork is not best practice, the time has come to go mobile!

The mobile app can run on phones, tablets and windows 10 laptops. Consider the platform required to run all other apps your technicians use, read PDF manuals and other uses. Phones probably will not cut it on their own

Use a device that can support team viewer so Readysell support can connect to the device and help out

Parallel run your in house service work using both paper and mobile app for a time. Once you have all service orders that are being processed in house being completed through the mobile app, start using the mobile app for on site service work

Structure your products and procedures to support machine and technician reporting

Service and technician reporting only works if you setup your products in the recommended manner. Such as travel having a unit of time. Review your products and procedures to ensure they comply to best practice

Review the key service reports document

Enter some practice transactions in test and ensure you understand all the reports

Organise some training sessions with Readysell to answer your questions once you have trialed the reports

Run internal training sessions

The most effective way to keep up to date with best practice is to have one technician study updates, do training with Readysell and read the manuals/movies. Then have internal training sessions to spread best practices around your business

It is not good enough to be trained when the system first goes in and never repeat the process. Plan on an three monthly training program. You can't keep your teams skills at the highest level without it.

Use toner tracking

Readysell can track toners at customer sites by machine. You have a lot of money tied up in toners, make sure you are tracking it

Implement hire

Readysell supports short term hire through hire products and long term hire through hire meters on machines 

Repair machines before they break using service call automation

Don't wait for customers to suffer disruption due to equipment failure. The modern approach is to prevent machine failures

 Use Readysell automated service order generation to manage your maintenance plan

Implement Managed Print Services MPS

Readysell supports advanced managed print services features, such as splitting charges to customers and finance companies

This is a growing area, try to implement larger deals, Readysell will be there to support your MPS requirements

Use advanced meter charging features

Capture meter counts electronically from emails sent by machines, emails from customers, web pages displayed from emails etc.

Encourage your customers to allow you to use print audit or FM Audit to collect information

Actively discourage manual meter count collection from customers

Use automatic reordering

There is no other option if you want your business running well, you have to use automatic purchasing. This may mean you change procedures, layout your warehouse locations and do a stocktake. What ever is required you need to do it.

Start with average weekly sales as your entry into automatic purchasing, it is easier to get started than min/max

Train your staff to use messages to understand suggested reorder quantities and to use the not reordered filter to show products that can be added to make up the minimum order quantity for suppliers

Use min/max reordering for key lines

It is easy to be a bit lazy and just use average weekly sales to calculate automatic reorder quantities for all products, don't do it. Min/max reordering should be used for some products.

Consumables used by the key products you sell, such as large photocopiers, must be on hand at all times. Those products should be purchased using min/max, to ensure they are in stock even if they are not selling regularly

Start by identifying your key products by product category

Use the min/max run to automatically suggest min/max levels. Use product categories to limit the products extracted. Then apply those min/max levels

Drag min/max onto your purchase reorder line window and edit min/max levels live as you review each purchase run

Setup purchase runs sets for different suppliers, days of week and times of day

Automatic purchasing is controlled by run sets which save the settings used by each automatic purchase run. 

Save a range of purchase runs to suit your purchasing requirements for each day, time of day etc.

Then document your purchase run procedure. So any staff member can run the purchasing process for a few days using the documented procedure if your purchasing officer is away

Use drop shipments, allocated purchases and regular purchases

Use drop shipments purchase orders that support the supplier delivering the goods directly to the customer and you invoicing the customer when you receive the invoice from the supplier

Use allocated purchase orders, as allocated purchases will only allocate to the sale order or service order to which they are linked. This allows you to order specifically for a particular sale

Use regular purchases are for normal stock. When they are received, remember to put any backorders aside, don't put stock received for back orders onto the normal shelves

Review parts requested by service technicians

Service technicians can request purchase of parts you do not stock. Ensure there is a person in the service department reviewing those requests. You can often use some other part in order to prevent too many parts building up as product lines in your parts inventory

Follow best purchasing practice

Create a product for every line you purchase if it is going to be in stock for any amount of time

Avoid using miscellaneous non-stock products on purchase orders. You can't track stock for non-stock lines

Archive products that have not been purchased or shipped for a year and have been created more than a year ago

Get security right with users and roles

The user guide explains how to manage security with users and roles. Review the documentation

Plan the roles that apply to your business and the security levels you are going to allow to users

Ensure all users are in an appropriate role

Review you role and user plan every three months

Turn operator entry on for workstations used for sales by many users, such as pos workstations. Then setup operator codes for your users. That way each transaction will be logged against the correct user, without having to log out

Check your ticket list once a week

Check your tickets once a week. Sometimes tickets are delayed for good reason. But if you notice any tickets that seem to be taking longer than expected, give us a call to discuss

Use product categories to drive financials and sales reports

Setup non-stock categories for all your services, this applies in all cases but particularly if you are using the service module

Check the general ledger account overrides to direct service changes to the right general ledger accounts