Category: Doorpack

Software installation and training: It can be a painless process

At the beginning of the installation and training process we often find that people in the office are anxious. They are used to the current system. Change is frightening.

The actual process is fairly straight-forward. After installation, which is handled by our technical staff, we go through a brief overview of the process. DoorPack is easy to use, and the training period is quite short. At least an hour of practice is needed after every training session.

The first one hour session covers service and dispatch. After 30 minutes the staff is able to enter and dispatch service calls and enter new customers. We spend another half hour or so practicing, and covering special requirements. DoorPack is designed to be customized to meet the needs of the company, with user defined fields and screens. These are used to tie to the customer’s Jobs in QuickBooks, and for other special fields and functions.

The second session covers questions and problems, and moves into installations and billing. At that point, the users are able to create work-orders, and bill them. They still are probably not comfortable with the process. We encourage them to call us if they have questions or problems. Customers at this stage get special priority.

In the third one hour session we normally cover equipment and service agreements. We train the users to enter service agreements that will tie back to their equipment and automatically produce maintenance service calls. We also go over the areas in DoorPack that are designed to control the renewal process. At the end of that session the new users are ready to work with PMs, although we are always available for questions as they come up.

The fourth session is set aside for review, questions, and includes a general overview of the process.

The whole process takes about a week, depending on availability of staff. At the end, DoorPack will be up and running. Normally we wait a couple of weeks, and then move to the mobile solution. This typically takes an hour or two to set-up, and one or two hours of training.

Take a few minutes to join us at our next online webinar and review how the DoorPack Service Software for Quick Books can help to streamline your operation, increase your productivity and eliminate the duplication.

Turbo-charge your Service and Recurring Maintenance

QuickBooks is a great accounting program, but it really isn’t designed to meet your operational needs. A Door business needs something that integrates customer history, schedules, contracts and work orders. You can drive yourself crazy trying to keep up with all the detail. Some people put the information into QuickBooks notes, or create appointments with Google or Outlook calendars. Some even try to keep track of everything in Excel. When things get busy it all tends to fall apart. The end result is money down the drain. A simple to use fully integrated service software program can fix the problem, but finding the right product is not easy.

Stand-alone software designed for the Door industry will generally meet your operational needs, but their own built-in billing and accounting can’t match up to QuickBooks. QuickBooks has hundreds of thousands of accounting users around the world, and spends millions to make their product user-friendly. And training your staff to use another accounting software can be a nightmare with a product that isn’t user friendly.

There are a several popular service software products that claim to “work with QuickBooks”. But beware. They may have their own billing and accounting software, separate from QuickBooks.

After creating the customer invoice in their software they push their invoices and accounting into QuickBooks. This is a recipe for disaster when you or your accountant discovers that your customer’s account balance in QuickBooks doesn’t match the balance in their software. Many of their customers end up disconnecting the service software from QuickBooks. They have to put up with the hassle of entering everything twice.

DoorPack allows your customers invoices and accounting to be created inside QuickBooks eliminating duplication.

DoorPack Software – End the lost Paperwork Nightmare

There is something about paperwork that seems to make it hard to find. We’ve all been there before: Everything is right there in the file cabinet, good luck finding it. For example, we need to repair a commercial door we installed last year. We have all the information we need at our fingertips. First we go to the file cabinet or to QuickBooks, drag out all of the old invoices, and identify the equipment. Next we need find warranty dates. Finally, we need to sort through the invoices to pull together the customers repair history. The secretary needs to retype it all again on the work-order for the service techs to reference the prior work done.

Let’s not forget the typical flow from sales to installation. The secretary takes a call from a customer asking for a quote. She leaves a sticky note on the salespersons desk. With luck the salesperson finds the note, calls the prospect, and sets up a site visit. The sales person goes to the site, makes lots of notes, and gives the customer a quote. The salesperson puts the quote in his folder and goes back to the office.

When the customer calls, panic sets in. Where is the quote? Where are the notes from the site visit? We finally pull all of the information together, and try to schedule an install. We hand write a purchase order for our vendor(s). It falls into the same paperwork black hole. With luck, the warehouse guy realizes the unit that just came in must go somewhere. Otherwise, it gets stored in the warehouse until the customer calls complaining about the status of their new installation. This is followed by another wild search.

DoorPack Software for Quick Books is designed to eliminate the paperwork black hole. Installed equipment is automatically recorded, with warranty information. Initial site visit work-orders and notes are linked to the quote and installation work-order automatically. All of this can be printed with the work-order.

DoorPack Service Software for Quick Books- The Perfect Match

Fireline Systems is an authorized Intuit QuickBooks Silver Development Partner and creator of the leading DoorPack Software which is designed specifically for door and access control dealers. DoorPack Service Software and QuickBooks Software are seamlessly integrated together to provide a complete software solution for all of your operational needs. (Click for PDF)

What are the advantages of using DoorPack Software?
DoorPack Software when combined with QuickBooks increases the overall efficiency of your entire company by helping to; increase sales; eliminate time wasting double and triple entry; reduce your paperwork; eliminate manual process of scheduling service and installation jobs; streamlining your quote preparation; managing your advertising campaigns and much, much more. And you can continue using QuickBooks for all of your normal billing and accounting processes.

DoorPack is the perfect compliment for QuickBooks. Take a minute to look at some of the additional features and benefits provided to your company by DoorPack Software:

Provides Additional Customer History information including:

  • Tracking work order history for each customer job location and billing customer
  • Detailed customer work order history – with drill-down details
  • Tracking installed customer equipment – by manufacturer, serial numbers, warranty information, size, type and other details
  • Unlimited customer contacts with phone numbers, emails, etc.
  • Attaching scanned document – including before and after pictures
  • Tracking unlimited customer notes
  • Tracking preventative maintenance schedules and agreements
  • Provides the added flexibility to expand your customer history with additional customer user-defined fields, installed product user-defined fields, work order user-defined fields and additional contact fields for each customer.

Company-wide Viewing of Your Scheduling Calendars plus: Continue reading “DoorPack Service Software for Quick Books- The Perfect Match”

IDAExpo -2014 – Fireline Systems-DoorPack Software for Quickbooks

Stop by our booth #89 and see how easy and user friendly DoorPack by Fireline seemlessly integrates with Quickbooks. Also,Fireline’s mobile solution is designed to give you complete control of your business information. All of your software and data reside on your computers, and no-one can shut you off. We also offer a complete technical support and upgrade package.

DoorPack Software for QuickBooks – Is Mobile For You?: March Newsletter

There are four reasons to consider a mobile solution:

 

  1. Faster turnaround. Payment is normally made to the tech on site. This can make a big difference in your cash flow. You get your money faster, and don’t have to worry about invoicing and collections.

 

  1. Reduced paperwork. The technician enters the information and sends it back to the office. Data is automatically pulled into your software then processed to QuickBooks. This saves a lot of time and effort in the office.

 

  1. Better on-site information. Your technician has on-site access to notes and history from previous visits, and to equipment history.

 

  1. 4.    Your customers expect it.

DoorPack’s mobile solution is simple, inexpensive and uses technology you already have in place to provide a mobile solution that is designed to fit your needs. DoorPack provides the technician with all the information needed to get the job done. More importantly, your customer base is safe and protected because it is not in the cloud of increasingly risky web servers.

 

Why not invest a few minutes to join us at our next online webinar and see for yourself how DoorPack Software for Quick Books can streamline your operation and increase your profitability.

DoorPack Newsletter

Selling in hard times

Frankly, coming up with new ideas for columns is not my strong point. In desperation, I asked our west coast salesperson for ideas. He consistently sells well, even in hard times.

He felt it all boiled down to a few simple things:

1. Sell a good product.

2. Try different things, (and keep track of what works).

3. Work harder when times are tough.

It’s all a numbers game. If you send out a hundred mailings in good times to make a sale, you need to do two or three hundred in hard times to make the same sale.

DoorPack is designed to help you with this process. We track and measure sales activities, by campaign. You know that it has taken 100 calls to produce a sale in good times. When you need to ramp things up, you have a baseline and history to start from.

You can also set-up goals for your sales-people, based on the activities needed to reach the sales volume you need. It’s all a numbers game. You need information to make it manageable.

Customer Satisfaction, the key to success

Customer satisfaction is the most important thing that drives a business to success. Whenever you lose a good customer, you need to backtrack  to the service and installation problems that proceeded the loss. You may get an unpleasant surprise.

What’s that? You can’t pull together information on previous service and installation delays without a long drawn out manual search? That may be a symptom of the problem.

You need to know what customer’s have been inconvenienced, and why. When you lose business, you need to backtrack the problem. DoorPack pulls all of the information together into one place, so you can identify and fix problems before you lose the customer.

Check out https://www.doorpack.com/customer-service-history on our website.