The newsletter for
Key Operators of
DDMS Systems

Vol. 7, No. 2

July 16, 2007

Comments? Tips for fellow dealers? Success stories?  Ideas to improve ECi technical Support? Email keyops@eci2.com

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Key Ops Dispatch, an e-mail newsletter, comes free of charge to all DDMS® customers.

In This Issue:

Hello from ECi Team Synergy technical support! Each issue features a friendly face of one of your support techs. In this issue of the KeyOps Dispatch:

1. Support Personalizes Release News, Automates Software Shipping
2. Free Web Training on Price Modeling, Customer Price Plans in July
3. Your ECinteractive Questions Answered
4. TIP: Link Your Storefront News To S.P. Richards' Online Flyers
5. Factoring Your Furniture Cost Load
6. DDMS Machine Edition Virtual Class Series July 23-27
7. Balancing Act Part 1: Audit A/R Daily-The Quick and Painless Way
8. What To Do If Your Software Is Expiring

This issue's featured friendly face of your ECi Support Team:

Team Synergy’s Debra Moore first joined the company as a Support Technician in 2000, bringing 11 years of experience in accounting and purchasing with an apartment maintenance supply company. "Debra is always very helpful," said Duong Nguyen of CDS Office Products. "She gets me where I need to be in our system, and waits to make sure everything is working perfectly for me."

Team Collective's Bill Byrd first joined the company to support the Silver Plus product in 1996, and since then has undertaken support for Ensite, SDS Platinum, and DDMS. Previously, he created a customer service department for a pool service company, supported various programming languages and operating systems at Wang Labs, and taught programming at a Dallas community college. “Bill has been great support with any troubles I have had,” said Ginna Willis of The Office Outlet. “I have complete faith in the job and service he provides our company.”

Team Alliance’s Sheila Nolan joined ECi Technical Support in May 2006, bringing nine years of experience with Hoppstetter's Office Products, a long-time customer of ECi subsidiary DDMS. Four of those years were dedicated to machine and equipment sales and service. She also studied accounting at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. "Sheila's memory about our unique procedures is amazing," said Bryon Harlan of Wilson Office Supplies. "It's like she works here everyday."

Team Pinnacle's John Grimes first joined ECi Technical Support in 2003, bringing 13 years of technical support experience with Microsoft and small Web software startups in Seattle, WA. "John is my hero," said Deena Criswell of Del Mar Office Products. "He has been super proactive, and saved our 'cookies' with his work-around on one call. He gets a big HAPPY FACE from all of us!"

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Support Personalizes Release News, Automates Software Shipping

Many of you KeyOps subscribers also receive announcements when ECi releases a new version of DDMS and ECinteractive. The latest, Announcing Maintenance Release DDMS 8.12.30, is the first to feature new automated services, thanks to our new customer relationship management (CRM) system:

• Previously, all software update requests required a manual work order. Now, all dealers who reported issues or requested enhancements that are resolved in each release will automatically be shipped their software update.
• The announcement is personalized, so that dealers see a list of the issues or enhancements addressed in the current release that their company personally reported to ECi Technical Support.
• If a dealer did not report any issues resolved in a release, they see the general highlights per market and information on requesting a software update to take advantage of enhancements.

“OH MY GOODNESS! This is wonderful! Communication like this will help us dealers so much, with problems we may not have anticipated but may come across in the future,” wrote Scott Carnes of CPI Office Products. “E-mails like this are invaluable to us end users.”

As we announced in December 2006, our new CRM system makes it easier for your support teams and their managers to do their jobs. From your initial request to the final closure of a ticket, it tracks every communication between you and ECi more efficiently - whether phone, email or fax, and the status of a ticket at each point in the process.

"We're continually working to improve service levels and make support more convenient, responsive, and knowledgeable," said Andrew Koebbe, technology manager for ECi Technical Support.

With the new CRM system, we are also laying the foundation for introducing a self-service Web interface in 2007. With this interface, ECi customers will be able to log their own calls, check status, and add information or attachments online. “With our CRM system’s self-service module, customers will get better help through the Web site, at their convenience," Koebbe said.

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Free Web Training on Price Modeling, Customer Price Plans in July

In July, we are offering two free Web-based training classes, where you can learn how to use DDMS EBS applications that make it easier than ever to analyze your customer's sales history and configure their pricing in ways never before possible: Price Modeling and Customer Price Plans.

For the free Price Modeling training, choose from this remaining date:

• Friday, July 20th, 2 pm CDT

For the free Customer Price Plans training, choose from these two dates:

• Monday, July 23rd, 1 pm CDT
• Friday, July 30th, 10 am CDT

No need to register. For more details and connection instructions, see www.DDMS.com/training/free.

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Your ECinteractive Questions Answered

Your support and product management team has amassed a collection of frequently asked questions and documentation about ECinteractive®, from getting started, to migrating customers from Dealer Station, to using specific features:

• Can a dealer set up customer service reps with limited access to the Admin Control Panel to answer basic questions (look up lost orders, held orders, status, rewards, username, password reset)?
• What records, files, or information should I have to prepare for setting up my ECinteractive site?
• Can I set up a demo account on my site that does not incur transaction fees or clutter up my back-end with invalid orders?
• What are some next-generation features only available in ECinteractive?
• Has password security changed on ECinteractive?
• How has ECinteractive improved speed for accounts with multiple departments?
• At what point does ECinteractive pass orders into the DDMS system?
• Does ECinteractive let a customer select items from their favorite organizational categories, and add them all to the cart at once?
• How do I add unique items and display their images, when they are not in the wholesaler's catalog?
• Have any Account Receivable, invoice, or online balance payment functions been added to ECinteractive?

For answers to these and other questions, see ECinteractive Documentation.

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TIP: Link Your Storefront News
To S.P. Richards' Online Flyers

As part of our ongoing work with vendors to implement advancements they make in content, we’d like to offer this tip. S.P. Richards now publishes flyers with dealer-specific quarterly pricing, in its Signature Series of online flyers.

You can publish links to these online flyers on your Web storefront’s Home page or Account-specific news.

For instructions on displaying Signature Series flyers in your Home or Account News pages for the Dealer Station, ECinteractive, and is.D-Force families of products, see Displaying SPR Flyer Links in Account News (pdf).

For related tips, see eCommerce FAQs.

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Factoring Your Furniture Cost Load

A new Calculated Load Factor is available to all DDMS Office Furniture Edition customers as of Version 8.12, released in May 2007. As an alternative to detailed job costing, Load Factoring is a simpler way to reflect your costs on a ticket. With it, you can use your experience and benchmarks to assign different cost load globally, to a customer, or to a vendor:

• Based on your experience across all installation projects, you can assign a reasonable and customary standard cost load factor percentage.
• Depending on how labor-intensive installation or delivery will be for a particular customer, you can assign a different load factor percentage for their account in your Customer database.
• If a certain furniture manufacturer lines have proven to be labor-intensive, you can assign a different load factor percentage in the Vendor Alias.
• Some line items should not include a load factor, such as freight, installation, or subcontractor. You can exclude the load factor on an item or a vendor alias.

Factor Hierarchy. If an order entails a combination of load factors that you’ve set up in your system, a hierarchy determines the load factor used per line item:

• If a line item (or its vendor alias) has load factor excluded, no load factor is used.
• If a Vendor Alias has a load factor, it overrides other load factor types.
• If there is no Vendor Alias factor, the Customer load factor applies.
• If there is no Vendor or Customer factor, the standard load factor applies.

Line Item Calculations. When you end an order, and respond as needed to the prompt for additional charges, each line item’s load factor is calculated. The load factor may be multiplied by the line item’s list price, sell price, a cost or p cost, depending on how you set the standard load factor parameter.

The results for each line item are added together to produce a total blended cost, which is automatically charged against commission. Dealers can choose whether the load factor is printed on the invoices.

Below, an example order shows how the hierarchy works. Assume a standard factor is set to 3.1% of sell, the easy Customer carries a load of 2.8%, and the labor-intensive Manufacturer Line A carries a load of 4%. A global load factor will not apply on this order, since either Vendor or Customer load already applies.

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DDMS Machine Edition
Virtual Class Series July 23-27

ECi is offering virtual training on DDMS Machines & Equipment Edition, July 23-27, 2007. This week-long Web training series on the Version 8 software features five classes for dealers who are transitioning from DDMS text-based serialized applications to graphical DDMS Machines and Equipment edition.

Each class is $100. You must register separately for each of the five classes that you wish to attend. Please register only once for each class per company. To register online, see our DDMS Virtual Classes page. The listing for these classes is near the bottom of the page, class numbers OM1a through OM5a.

If you are having trouble registering or if you are getting a 'class is full' response, please email training@eci2.com.

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Balancing Act Part 1: Audit A/R Daily
— The Quick and Painless Way

This is the first article in a series to discuss how to keep your books balanced. Today, we'll discuss why you should audit daily, how to use your day-end reports to collect the key totals, and how to use our new spreadsheet to automatically calculate sums and variances to make sure A/R is in balance.

Experienced bookkeepers keep a notebook to audit their daily batch and account totals. If you audit daily:

• You can be assured your accounts will balance at month- and year-end.
• You can be assured the numbers you give to your bank are accurate.
• It's much easier to analyze one day of postings and changes for mistakes that put the numbers out of balance, and adjust as needed.

Your day-end procs give you the key totals you need to make sure accounts receivable (A/R) is in balance every day for each general ledger (G/L) location:

• Your previous day’s (PDA) A/R Total reflects your starting balance.
• Your A/R Batch Report total reflects what has newly posted to the A/R Trade account (102-01 by default) in general ledger.
• Your (PDA) President’s Screen A/R Total reflects postings in AR-MASTER.
• The sum of your previous day’s (PDA) A/R Total and the current A/R Batch Report total should match the current (PDA) President’s Screen A/R Total. If not, A/R is out of balance by the difference, which can assist in troubleshooting.

To make it easier than ever to complete your daily balance log, we’ve created a handy spreadsheet, DDMS Daily Audit Log for Accounts Receivable (xls). It gives you space for a month of daily audits per location. First, carry over last month’s President’s Screen Total. For each date you do business this month, simply fill in your current batch total and current President’s screen total as you file your day-end reports. The spreadsheet will calculate any variance, and the variance column's background color will indicate whether your A/R master file is greater than the G/L A/R Trade account, or vice versa. (Updated 7/18/2007 with practical sample numbers, and dates that skip weekends and holidays.) To learn how to find A/R batch & (PDA) totals, see Balancing Your A/R (pdf).

In Part 2 of this series (coming next month), learn how auditing A/P is slightly different. Later in the series, learn what to do if your numbers are out of balance.

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What If Your Software Is Expiring?

What does it mean when you see a message in DDMS or DDMS about your software expiring?

It depends on the message, and there are two types.

But in general, if you allow your software to expire, it will no longer operate. To avoid any impact to your business, take the steps necessary to update your system as soon as an expiration message appears.

"Software Version Expires on MM/DD/YY"

If your message includes “Version” as shown above, simply request a software update in an email to ddmssupport@ecisolutions.com.  DDMS and DDMS software has a timer that is reset to one year each time you load a new general release version, and begins to count down 90 days before expiration. Installing a DDMS software update will remove the message.

 “Software Expires in 30 days. KeyOp: refer to www.DDMS.com\auth”

If your message includes “auth” as shown above, you need to verify your account status and your authorization according to the instructions on http://www.DDMS.com/auth/.

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