From Paper to Progressive

Recently, we have been engaged by a new client to assist them to switch to a computerized system. The company is a manufacturer of fencing, and has multiple locations. They have been using paper since the business has started, but with the amount of paperwork, they really needed a solution that was simple enough for their staff, but provided for most of the needs of their business. We had spoken with them regarding a solution centered around the QuickBooks Point of Sale software, as it solves for many of their needs.

Early in our discussion it was noted that while the software will solve for many of their problems, it is not a 100% solution. They were looking for something to get them started, and realized that the only way for 100% would be customized software, but they were not ready to make that investment yet. Over the next couple of months we will be transition each location to the computerized system. We are going to be customized the QuickBooks Point of Sale software to better fit their needs. I will be posting about these issues and workarounds that we come up with.

One of the first biggest challenges that we are facing is one of data entry. Because they have done everything before on paper, someone needs to type all this information into a spreadsheet. We chose to do a spreadsheet instead of directly into the software as it is a simpler method to teach, and most people know how to use the basics of Excel. We are going to take this data and then import it into POS (and QuickBooks) to give us a starting base. The client however, has hundreds of items and customers, so this is taking a bit longer than we expected.