Business Aviator Inventory Know-how

How to get started in 2009

2008-12-30T13:32:00.000-08:00

Well it's been a rough 2008 calendar year for our country. So rough in-fact that Business Aviator Free Edition saw over 25,000 downloads this year! That's a lot of people looking for a Free Inventory Management solution. While I hope that our country can look forward to a brighter 2009, we're very optimistic about Business Aviator going into the new year.

We've been very busy this year installing new customers and publishing updates to the software. So busy in-fact that I haven't had a chance to even post to this blog in quite a while. Hopefully that can change in the new calendar year :)

Today, I figured it best to post about one of the most common questions we've had this year besides "Why are you giving away free software?". Now that you've downloaded the free edition, how do you get started?

The first thing you'll want to do is open our "Reviewer's Guide", which is now automatically added to your Desktop in the latest version of Business Aviator Free Edition. This document is an ideal primer with introductory software usage information.

Then you can login to Business Aviator for the first time and utilize the "Company Setup Wizard" in Business Aviator to setup your Tax Types, Payment Methods, Shipping Methods, Terms and initial Inventory Location. Make sure you put some thought into what you want to name the location, because this can't be changed.

After setting up this preliminary information, I always recommend getting your data into the program first thing - because it's hard to assess whether or not the software will meet your needs if you're not looking at your own data. This is why we offer installation & setup with data migration services, so you can get all your data into Business Aviator and begin learning and using the software with your own data.

1. Enter some of your Customers into the system. Just click on "Customers -> New Customer" and begin entering information.

2. Enter some of your Items into the system. Just click "Items -> New Item" and begin entering item information, clicking "Save" when complete.

3. After you've entered a good number of items, you can perform an "Inventory Count" to adjust the quantities so you have some inventory to work with. Keep in mind that when you access the screen (Inventory -> Inventory Count) it will only affect the location that you're currently logged-into. You can create new locations and login to those to affect the inventory in the new location(s) if you want.

4. Now that you've got some customers, items and inventory - go ahead and create some Sales Orders to get a feel for that process. Notice that you can also automatically generate a Sales Invoice or Sales Receipt (e.g. Paid Invoice) from the Sales Orders by choosing from the "Options" menu.

This is the most basic approach to beginning using and learning the software. Continue through the Reviewer's Guide to get an ideal step-by-step introduction to the system.

When you're comfortable enough to delve in deeper, keep an eye out for the more advanced features that can benefit your Business and let us know if you have any questions by utilizing the "Get Help!" option in the "Help" menu.

If you determine that Business Aviator is a fit and want to integrate with your accounting system, let us know and we'll get rolling with an installation, setup, data migration and accounting integration!

Have a great last day in 2008!

So what gives, you ask?

2008-02-01T07:39:00.000-08:00

My very first blog post here on knowinventory.blogspot.com made the following remark,

"First of all, scrap all the products that are under five-hundred bucks. I hate to burst a bubble, but managing inventory is more than just keeping track of items and quantities"

We've since then proceeded to begin the 2008 calendar year by providing a Free Edition of the Business Aviator Inventory Software. So what gives, you ask? If their isn't really a product under five-hundred bucks that manages inventory, sales and purchasing adequately, why offer a free edition?

If you search for inventory software on business.com as of today, and scroll toward the bottom you'll see these remarks on inventory software by Tonya Vinas,

"The biggest misconception about inventory control software is that it – in and of itself – will reduce inventory. Not true. An inventory software implementation requires a great deal of mapping and thinking before it can do any good."

Whether you're using software for a hundred thousand dollars, ten thousand dollars, fifty dollars, or for free, you can't get around the fact that it will require some thinking, mapping, and preparation to make the inventory software work for you. The real value is not entirely in the software, its in the setup and ongoing support, customizations, integration and scalability of the software.

When a company pays top-dollar, they generally receive that special attention to setup, customization, integration and ongoing support. If you're just buying something off the shelf or online for five-hundred bucks or less, chances are you won't be receiving the first-class special attention you need to be successful with the software.

We realize this with Business Aviator Free Edition, that's why we offer paid memberships so you can access the valuable attention to setup, customization, integration and support that you'll be missing with the other software products. The membership is what makes it feasible to provide a successful implementation with free software.

Happy Holidays!

2007-12-28T06:01:00.000-08:00

Have you ever searched for that perfect holiday gift? A gift that caught your eye, couldn’t be ignored, and was an instant must-have?

We’ve been searching for the ultimate gift to give our existing and new Business Aviator Inventory Management customers all year. Throughout the 2007 calendar year, we setup and installed numerous customers inventories, gathered input from them and you, and eventually determined that to provide the best possible product with the best possible ongoing support at the best possible prices, we needed to reach the largest possible audience and get everyone collaborating, discussing and sharing their inventory management success stories with us and each other.

On December 26th 2007, the result of this combination of spending the last year gathering input and searching for the perfect gift was released.

Business Aviator Inventory Free Edition is now available on Download.com as the ultimate gift to our existing and new customers!

The free version of Business Aviator Inventory Software will have no limitations, but we do recommend signing-up for our support services for a nominal fee to access our help desk, documentation, videos, and collaborative forums that are making all of this possible. We’ll even give you the Transaction Agent for QuickBooks for free when you sign up!

Check our new website for the product download link.
http://free.businessaviator.com

Have a safe and happy holiday season!
GS

Gotcha! Hook, Line & Sinker

2007-11-01T13:10:00.000-07:00

It's often difficult to educate consumers, looking for their first all-powerful inventory management product to run their business, that it's not in their best interest to commit to one of the high-priced "solutions". By "high-priced", I'm referring to the solutions that cost greater than a typical employee's yearly salary (often more than two).

These high-priced solutions have been around since the dawn of accounting and inventory management applications; dating back to the DOS days and prior. Back then, they were truly costly to develop, maintain and support; the price tag was highly justified.

Fast forward to today, and these high-priced solutions still exist despite modern advances in database and programming technology. They exist solely because the marketing, salesmen, and courtship the companies provide to get your business come at a price. They will promise the world, travel on-site to consult, provide demonstrations, and hook you on the idea of this "all-powerful" inventory management solution until they've got you signed-on.

Once these "high-priced" "solutions" get you signed-on, you'll be delivered a product that is no better than the less-pricey solutions and not nearly what you expected for the money. At this point, they've gotcha! Hook, Line & Sinker!

There are companies (see http://www.businessaviator.com) that can provide legitimate solutions without the price tag, but educating consumers to avoid the salesmanship and marketing ploys of the other solutions is our hardest feat.

Too often, we don't get the business until AFTER you've been burned.

Inventory Needs

2007-10-08T13:49:00.001-07:00

I couldn't have said it better myself,

The most critical aspect of choosing an inventory software for business is proper needs analysis. Knowing what to look for in an inventory software product is key to determining if it will function adequately in your day-to-day business. This requires knowing and understanding not only inventory functions, but also accounting, software technology, database platforms and other key ingredients that make up a successful solution.

We provide this needs analysis service as a result of years of experience dealing with customers that were sold other inadequate pricey solutions.

For companies that are in-between the lower-end or need more customization than the mid-range products allow, a needs analysis service is an ideal way to figure out how our customer's needs stack up to the available inventory software solutions in their price range.

Screen Shots, Hot or Not?

2007-09-12T16:12:00.001-07:00

We just performed some updates to the Business Aviator website. Specifically, we added information and screen shots regarding our new handheld software. In addition to this, we've updated all the screen shots on the Business Aviator Screen Shots page of the site so they reflect our version 2.0 product.

What do you think of the updated screens?

Beyond 2.0

2007-09-12T05:26:00.000-07:00

Most of the features incorporated into the Business Aviator product are customer requests and customizations. The additions to our version 2.0 product include some very powerful features to sell inventory out of multiple locations, manage transportation routes for distribution, maintain multiple units of measure, reports for buying and assessing customer profitability, and way more!

If you look at each of the update notes for Business Aviator you'll usually see between ten and twenty really cool updates for each major release. We intend to continue this trend for version 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, and beyond version 10.0 someday in the distant future.

Aside from the core product, we're also always working to improve other aspects of our inventory management capability by providing things like handheld scanner software support for Business Aviator and custom commission and reporting modules.

For more information about the latest updates, they're always posted to our inventory software website for review. If you don't feel like reading through them (have I lost you yet?) then we have the answer coming soon. We'll be providing a Business Aviator Reviewer's Guide that has step-by-step screenshots of how to utilize the features in Business Aviator. In conjunction with the Reviewer's Guide, we also plan to release some video tutorials that showcase the Business Aviator functionality.

What Makes 2.0?

2007-05-29T16:05:00.000-07:00

One of the most arduous tasks with inventory is migrating from an existing system to a new one. This is true whether you're using a cheap off-the-shelf product or some hundred-thousand dollar proprietary software. No matter how accessible the data, the actual conversion between systems and attention to timing required is no small feat, yet we do conversions on a regular basis.

Why do we put ourselves through this time and time again?

Because we believe that our product improves with each conversion. Inevitably, we always find new ways of doing things with inventory. Sometimes these things are externally noticeable, like the way a received-item’s line is tagged with a serial number and passed through the system; and sometimes the features are internal, like the way a particular aspect of some data is stored. Either way, we always end up improving Business Aviator by incorporating something new during a conversion.

As a result, Business Aviator could be compared to an internet “mashup”. We have incorporated all the most requested features and ways of doing things into the inventory software and topped it off with a robust mechanism to customize the product so you can still pick and choose what will be part of your mashup.

Version 2.0 of Business Aviator Inventory includes even more features, even more customization capabilities and is suited to even more industries, like the Furniture Retail Industry for example.

The next couple entries, I’ll explain a bit about how some of the new features can be used to benefit any industry.

Redefining Rapid Development

2007-03-15T10:43:00.000-07:00

During a recent deployment of Business Aviator, I was astounded at how awe-struck our customer was by our rapid customization & updates process. In-fact I was so astounded that I just had to write about the experience.

If you really read through our website you’ll see tons of references to “we customize this” and “we customize that”. Most software products are what they are; you get the features the software has to offer at the time of purchase and nothing else. With Business Aviator we wanted to let people have their cake and eat it too, so we took a “you get what you want” (within reason) approach and designed the software from the ground up with this in mind, so we can customize the product on-the-fly, and we do customize it quite a bit during the deployment process for our Premium product customers.

This most recent installation lead to our making well over 10 significant additions to our Inventory Software to accommodate the client’s needs. Throughout the second and third day of the deployment, we pushed between five and ten updates to the product and the end result was that our client’s needs were met and we were able to provide some great update content for our updates subscribers, bug free. The customer was left in awe at our rapid development, deployment and update process, and we were very satisfied with the outcome.

Business Aviator redefines the rapid development process often referred to as agile software development by making it possible to develop and deploy solutions in days instead of weeks or months.

If you ask any software development team how confident they would be performing program updates on-the-fly (writing code and deploying updates the same day), I’ll bet the result is that not many would even consider doing this for a variety of reasons. With Business Aviator, we wrote it so that we could do this. We rarely (if ever) have to change any base code to provide an update, so we don’t have to worry about breaking existing functionality, and we can add layer upon layer to the application in an independent fashion that compliments the existing functionality without affecting its operation.

I’m very proud of where we’ve come from and where we’re headed with the product, and maybe someday I’ll share the actual development processes we use to make it all possible, but not today, I’ll save that for another blog.

The Honest Analysis

2007-02-20T11:27:00.000-08:00

“The salesman said they had this feature and that feature but we didn’t realize it was not actually there until the system was installed.”

This is what we hear too often in the inventory software industry. A salesman eager to make a deal promises features and functionality that aren’t there and aren’t even planned for a future update.

For the salesman it’s a catch-22; they don’t want to lose a deal over some feature that could possibly be added easily by development, but they also don’t know enough about software or the development cycle to make such a promise with any level of certainty.

Even being an honest person and software developer with years of experience designing, developing and time estimating software projects I can’t give an on-the-fly estimate with any certainty without putting in some up-front time. The salesman consulting with a developer isn’t going in with much greater level of certainty.

That’s why with Business Aviator, we’re honest.

We won’t tell a potential customer that we have a feature that isn’t in the product. If it’s a feature that’s already in development or being designed, we’ll let them know that the feature is on the way, but we aren’t going to act like we have every feature they can imagine unless that’s the truth. We don't want to lead anyone on until they’ve purchased a product that doesn’t do what they need.

In return, we expect honesty from our potential customers.

While we likely don't have every feature everyone will ever need, we do offer custom implementation that can bring those features to fruition. We provide honest estimates as-to the cost of implementing said features and during this process is when we value our potential customer honesty.

First, when looking at Business Aviator Premium and expecting to customize it so all the desired features (that aren’t listed on our website) are included, customers should expect that it’s going to cost more than the base price.

Secondly, if the base price is already pushing the budget, being upfront and honest serves both us and our potential customer best interests. That honesty enables us to be honest and inform the customer if we think the customizations required will exceed the budget.

The last thing the customer wants is to spend more money on something that doesn’t meet their needs, and the last thing we want is to be lead-on for months by a potential customer claiming that they’re going to buy the product when they know it’s not within their budget.

Live Online Help!

2007-01-26T14:39:00.000-08:00

I’m taking a break from Inventory today to let you know that Business Aviator is now offering live online help as a convenience to our current customers and to answer any pre-sales questions. Hopefully this further demonstrates our commitment to offering and using the latest technologies to make doing business easier.

Just navigate to our main website and click the Live Help icon in the upper-right corner of your screen to access Virtual Glenn, our one-stop Business Aviator answer-man!

Abstract Inventory

2007-01-15T14:26:00.000-08:00

Inventory software is very abstract compared to other business automation systems. With other systems, a systems analyst can define and document business processes and address these processes by developing a simple data entry application with minimal additional logic in most cases. Often that data entry application will be directly applicable to most (if not all) other businesses that utilize the same business process. A customer management application for example can be defined to behave in a specific manner that will work for most businesses that need to manage customers; the application will record information, require some information recording is mandatory, and provide for error-correcting via editing the customer’s information when necessary. An inventory application doesn’t offer such conveniences; if all it can do is record information, require some recording is mandatory, and provide for error-correcting via editing, the inventory application will be impractical and borderline useless.

An inventory application needs to work for the way you buy and sell inventory, and this differs from business to business. Arguably, no two companies do this the exact same. At the very least, they will have reports and forms that are used to purchase, sell and analyze inventory that look differently than other businesses. Also with inventory, you need to be able to answer questions like, where did it go? You can’t simply edit a transaction without some sort of audit trail being generated or you’re effectively saying, “I don’t care where my inventory went.” Your accountant probably wouldn’t care too much for that.

So we need a system that works for you the way you buy and sell inventory and is traceable. This is far easier said than done and is likely a good reason for the myriad of inventory applications available.

Even with object oriented design including the level of abstraction that’s available today via interfaces and inheritance, there is only so much that can be made definable by the users before the application gets so bloated or complicated that it’s a total nightmare to implement and maintain. So, the approach taken by Business Aviator is to provide the functionality that is often expected in today’s inventory applications as a base, and work with our customers to determine how we can customize the application from this base to work for them. The customizations aren’t definable options like they are in the enterprise inventory applications (see ‘bloated’ or ‘complicated’ as mentioned previously), they’re literally written in code to ensure they work for the customer.

Who cares about cost?

2007-01-04T06:12:00.000-08:00

Many small (and even some medium) size businesses that maintain inventory may not realize the impact inventory valuation has on their company until it’s too late. Most companies we deal with use FIFO (first in – first out) as their costing method, although most inventory software products will only handle the Average Cost costing method.

Here is a little information about inventory valuation taken from Wikipedia.com,

When a dealer sells goods from inventory, the value of the inventory reduces by the cost of goods sold. For commodity items that one cannot track individually, accountants must choose a method to identify the nature of the sale. Two popular methods exist: FIFO and LIFO accounting (first in - first out, last in - first out). FIFO regards the first unit that arrived in inventory the first one sold. LIFO considers the last unit arriving in inventory as the first one sold. Which method an accountant selects can have a significant effect on net income and book value and, in turn, on taxation.

If a company is using inventory software that doesn’t support their costing method, moving to a system that can accurately manage the costing method can take the guess-work out of accounting. What can that mean in practical terms? Less time spent by your accountant and more productive time spent making inventory judgment’s using accurate cost of goods sold and inventory values.

The trick is finding a system that supports your costing method and meets your business needs. Business Aviator was created to address both needs.

Inventory or Accounting?

2006-12-27T17:53:00.000-08:00

Inventory software requires a sophisticated implementation that puts software development companies into a realm where they need accountants, inventory experts and software experts. Historically, unless a business was ready to invest six-figures into an inventory management product, they would be forced to choose between inventory management capability and accounting capability due to the complexities that exist.

Fortunately in today’s day and age, we have new software development tools available that decrease development time and effort. For example, the ease-of-use and built-in tools available in Microsoft’s .NET Framework and SQL Server 2005 provide much faster development timelines. Also, integration via technologies such as XML allows premium inventory products to integrate with premium accounting packages. With this new reduction in development time & effort and the integration available, more emphasis can finally be placed on streamlining inventory with accounting with reduced end-product prices.

Unfortunately the products that utilize any of these new technologies are few and far between. This is mostly because re-writes have proven to make bad business sense historically and adopting new technology isn’t easy when you have to build off and scrap the old technology. Even the newest versions of some of the most popular inventory products aren’t going to be agile enough to grow with a company, often due to their reliance on old development and database technology.

When reviewing any inventory product for use at a business, a primary consideration should be the technology used to develop the product. Inventory software isn’t something you can scrap, change or upgrade easily so knowing what technology the product was built on can save time, money, and a pain in the neck.

About the author: Glenn has been building, designing and programming computer systems and software for over ten years and graduated from the University of Michigan with a BS in Computer Science. Glenn has been involved in all phases of the development cycle and is the lead architect, needs analyst and programmer for the Business Aviator inventory management application suite.

Business Aviator's Blogging

2006-12-22T11:53:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the Business Aviator Inventory Weblog. Throughout the 2007 calendar year, we are planning to blog regularly. We think it's necessary to have a collective place to inform you about inventory software and how the right choice (whether it's our product or not) can benefit (and hopefully help aviate) your business.

There is a ridiculous myriad of inventory software's available. Just type a search into Google for inventory software and you'll see 36 million sites applicable as-of today! Ok, so not all these sites are software products, but a good portion of them are, so how do you know what product is going to be able to manage your inventory?

First of all, scrap all the products that are under five-hundred bucks. I hate to burst a bubble, but managing inventory is more than just keeping track of items and quantities, and that's about all you'll get for that price. If you're serious about turning your inventory into a profitable machine, you'll need something that can produce seamless accounting transactions or integrate with an accounting system to give you a real feel for your inventory value and cost of goods.

To be honest, you probably won't know what product is right for you, and even if you hire consultants and traverse case studies and white papers, the better marketed product is likely to influence the purchase decision regardless of its fit for the company. To add insult to injury, you're going to get buried in rhetoric and buzzwords that not even the product's own salesmen fully understand. You'll hear about 'modules for this', 'modules for that', and you wont have a clue if the product is a fit for your company until you've laid out some ridiculous chunk of change (often upwards of tens of thousands) and made a commitment you can't look back on.

Take for example the product I was reviewing that lead to the creation of this blog. We often review competing products and even to this day we come across products we've never seen before in the pile-o-inventory products on the web. So, today I stumbled across a product that looks nice, appears to be feature-rich and claims to integrate with a popular accounting package. Ok, so I click to find out what kind of pricing scheme they’ve got going. The pricing page directed me to a PDF document that was 39 pages!! The entire document showed various prices for 'module this', 'module that', many of which were thousands of dollars, and for thirty-nine pages!

Add that final cost up after you’ve consulted with them for 100 hours to determine which ‘modules’ your company needs! I’m even nauseated by the thought.

This type of pricing and heavy consultation is what veterans and consultants in the inventory field have become accustomed-to since the inception of console-based (remember DOS?) inventory software, and unfortunately this industry practice hasn’t changed much since the nineties.

So now that you’re overwhelmed because you just want to manage your inventory without all the hassle and I'm overwhelmed because I need to determine how I'm going to provide a remedy for a hassle that’s been compounded over nearly twenty years, I hope you’re starting to realize…

These industry problems are exactly why we've started this blog!

Throughout the 2007 calendar year, we will begin posting experiences we've had in the field, and begin to describe to you why we created the Business Aviator product to address the myriad of bad choices available in inventory software.

Until next time,
Have a Merry Christmas, Happy Holiday and a Stellar New Year!!