nizeX, Inc.

FedEx Meter Numbers

njacques — Wed, 09 May 2012 17:54:12 +0000

Recently we have had some people asking, “What is a FedEx meter number and where do I get it?”. FedEx meter numbers are an internal number that is used to calculate shipping and track rates, unfortunately FedEx support is unaware of this so you will have to get the number your self.

To get a meter number you will have to register your account with the FedEx developer program located here:
http://www.fedex.com/us/developer/

Once you have register and logged into FedEx’s Developer site you will see a menu on the left side of the screen. Click on Technical Resources, then FedEx Web Services for Shipping, and then Move to Production. Once there scroll to the bottom of the page and click Obtain Production Key, you will have to answer some questions, please use the following answers.

Do you intend to resell your software? NO
Please check the box next to each type of FedEx web services you intend to use in your integration solution: FedEx Web Services for Shipping (includes Rate, Track, etc.)
Please indicate whether you are developing your FedEx integration solution as a Corporate Developer or as a Consultant. – Corporate Developer

You will now have to accept the license agreement and fill out your company information. Once you complete those screens you will be provided you Authentication Key and Meter Number. You can enter your meter number into your FedEx contact record, and you should now be ready to ship.

Bluetooth Barcode Scanners

njacques — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 14:28:45 +0000

Recently, nizeX began supporting the Opticon bluetooth barcode scanners in Lizzy. This scanner can work with just about any bluetooth enabled device, but is primarily intended for smartphones and tablets (iPhone, iPad, & Android).

Setup for this scanner is very simple, download the setup PDF file from here and print the PDF.
If you are using the scanner with an iPhone or iPad, just follow the instructions of the second page of the PDF you printed. If you are using an Android device, setup is a little more complicated.
First, you will need to download two different apps from the Android Market OpticonRL and OpticonRL Software Keyboard. Once you have the Android apps downloaded, just follow the directions on the first page of the PDF you printed.

Opticon has also provided some videos that show the process of linking your scanner to your device.

iPhone/iPad

Android

HOWTO: Technician’s Performance Report

ckiraly — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 19:22:40 +0000

Setting up the Technician’s Performance Report:

Prior to using the report, we must first set a few things up. One of the bigger things to set up is Job Classifications. While at first glance, Classifications can be confusing, once you understand what they are used for, you’ll grasp what it does ( if you even need it ) for your reporting.

The first question you need to ask yourself is, do you have multiple labor rates, or do you have a single accross the board labor rate. We find that usually ( not always ), most ATV/Motorcycle dealerships have a single labor rate, and thus should NOT setup any job classifications.

When you have multiple labor rates ( normally because boats/watercraft require higher certification than motorcylces, which require higher certifications than ATVs ), Job Classifications gives you the ability to have one of your technicians have multiple labor rates.

For example, you may have ATVs at 1 labor rate, Boats/Watercraft at a 2nd labor rate, and Cycles at a 3rd labor rate. Now, you also have Joe, Ken, Larry, and Mike as your 4 technicians.

Now Joe is certified to work on ATVs and Cycles. Ken is just certified to work on ATVs. Larry and Mike are certified for all three. So now you go in the Job Classifications settings, and set up your ATVs, Boats, and Cycles as Classifications, then select your technician, and tell the system what they each make at their different classifications. Because Larry and Mike have more certifications, you pay them more per hour, and more bonus for efficiency, because you can charge more for them.

Second, we highly recommend that you have your technicians use Lizzy’s time clock. Otherwise, you lose about 50% of the reporting information efficiencies available from this report.

The Technician’s Performance Report itself:

Now, when you decide to start using the report for efficiency bonuses and what not, you probably should decide when your going to start using it, and go in and process everything up to that point.

For example, we’ll start using it for March – so we should first go in and run it for February, making sure Unprocessed is Selected, and Completed is selected. Now when we run the report, there will be a Process Unprocessed Items button at the bottom. By clicking this now, we’ve processed everything that is on a completed job, so we can start off with a fresh slate.

Normally, when ‘paying bonuses/commissions’, you want to look at Unprocessed and Completed jobs. Unprocessed, because naturally, you don’t want to pay them for something you’ve already paid them for, and completed, because you don’t want to pay them for work on a job that isn’t finished. The main reason for that is of course, since the job isn’t finished, there can be all kinds of issues that can affect the efficiency #s on an uncompleted job ( such as more tech time being assinged after you’ve paid, but before completed. ) We advise you to handle your bonuses this way so strongly, that we won’t allow you to process unprocessed jobs, unless you are running the report for unprocessed and completed jobs only.

Now, the report itself will at first show you a summary of all unassigned jobs, and every technician who has performed the type of labor specified for the given time frame ( or has not labor processed prior to the period given. )
The report will show you how much time each tech was turning a wrench ( time worked on a given job ), how long they were clocked in for, how much time you billed to the customers ( Billable Time ), how much money you billed to the customers ( Billable Amount ), how much you should have billed based on time worked ( Expected Billable ), the Tech’s Efficiency ( what % of expected billing did you actually bill to the customer ( the higher the better ) ), Wrench time efficiency % ( How much time did the tech turn his wrench vs time available to bill ( clocked in ) ), and billable time efficiency % ( how much time was billed to the customer vs time available to bill ( clocked in time ) ).

Clicking on a given technician will then drill down and show you his efficiencies per job classification ( which, if you don’t have any classifications set up, this should match the summary ).

Clicking on a given job classification will then drill down and show you all the invoices/job details that make up those efficiency #s.

Now some things that may NOT add up ( just be aware… )

It is very possible that the per date detail will not add up to the summary above it due to the fact that the per date detail is just that, per date. You may easily have a situation where you have multiple days of labor on the same job, so that job’s billable time and billable amount will appear multiple times in the detail ( for each day line item ).

Also, please note that if you do a “flat” job – your efficiencies will be screwed up because a flat labor job has no billable time nor an hourly labor rate, so your billable time % won’t be accurate, your Expected Billable won’t be accurate, and your efficiency % won’t be accurate ( so 50% of your efficiencies, and 60% of your total report won’t be accurate. )

Employee Advancements / AR Deductions from Payroll

ckiraly — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 17:47:52 +0000

Employee Advance:

To give an employee an advance on pay – go to Contacts > Locate Contact (Employee). Once you select the employee, go to Accounting > Checking > Create New Entry and cut a check out of checking hitting the Lizzy 199.99.999 flush account. Then, go to Accounts Receivable and add a new customer receivable to their AR account offsetting with the 199.99.999 flush account.

AR Deductions from Payroll:

Go to Settings > Payroll > General and create a Deduction in the system. Set the deduction type to be an A/R Payroll Deduction. Select the 259.99.998 account for AR Payroll Deductions and make sure you set the tax type to “Other Deduction from Net Pay.”
Go to Settings > Payroll > Employee and add this deduction to the employee. When you do this, the name of the deduction turns blue (a clickable link) that you need to click on and check mark the apply box so that when lizzy deducts the amount from payroll, she will automatically go in and apply it to the employees accounts receivable account. If you are taking a set amount out, you can fill in the amount to deduct. Our recommendation is to leave the amount blank, this way when you are generating checks, you can set the amount when you generate payroll.
Go generate your paychecks and lizzy will apply the deductions to the employees AR account, reducing the balances there.

Why doesn’t Report X match up to my Profit & Loss Statement?

ckiraly — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 17:43:18 +0000

I would like to take some time to explain to everyone why the P&L and Sales Tax reports that you think should balance – won’t balance.

I would like to use real world figures, and present evidence for you, why 3 reports match to the penny when comparing apples to apples to apples – but won’t ever visually appear to match because you are matching apples to oranges to grapes – and this is simply due to user interaction with Lizzy during the normal course of business.

I say three reports because it has always been our contention that the Sales Summary Report and the Sales Tax Report should match, and that if they don’t, 99% of the time its because something didn’t get processed on the Tax Report for a prior month, and so that you will understand that these reports do, in essence, match to the penny, when the users don’t interfere.

Lets start with the Sales Summary report.

If you run the Sales Summary report, you get a Grand Total of 562123.64. Now we will subtract out our Tax Figures ( 3194.50, 1806.28, 17890.47, 162.28, 266.55 ) which will leave us with 538803.56. There is our test figure.

Now, lets run the Sales Tax Report. Our bottom line ( Invoice Totals through the end of the period ) is 550300.73. Now at first glance – this doesn’t match our test figure. Here is why this is an orange instead of an apple. If you scroll back up to the top of the report, your Other State tax BLAH has never been processed. So every invoice in there, except for one, is from a prior period. If you look at the detail, the last invoice, # 1111, is from last month. Every other invoice is from the months before that. Since those are our oranges – lets take them out. 11567.66 ( total of BLAH ) – 70.49 ( our 1 valid invoice for last month ) = 11497.17. Now, if we subtract that from our 550300.73 we get 538803.56. We match our Test figure to the penny. Now – if the BLAH tax isn’t due monthly, then you should be using our other report structure ( which allows you to report only specific taxes, and lists everything else as out of state ) – but we can cover that later…

So now, 2 of our 3 reports match to the penny – so lets look at the P&L. If we generate a P&L for last month, our Total Income is 512434.36. Now of course, this doesn’t match our test figure. Again my argument is that it never will this way, because you, as the user, do things that hit these accounts that aren’t on an invoice, and thus, change this figure from being an apple to a grape. But what happens if we remove the grapes… So lets do that, and prove how it does match before the you, the user, does something in the system that you don’t think to take account for.

So we start with 512434.36. First, account 451.00.000 are overs/shortages that deal with the cash drawer – and thus don’t appear on invoices – so we need to remove that from our GL Total. Also, after further review, 442.10.040 – Arbitration Fee doesn’t come from an invoice – this came from a AR adjustment ( if we go to the General Ledger > Locate, and look at the account for last month – we’ll see that hit ). So that doesn’t appear on an invoice, so we’ll need to remove this 89.41. If we look at 422.99.999 – we see that this is not an invoice transaction – its a Misc Cash entry ( meaning someone used it to adjust the cash drawer ). So that 700 doesn’t belong in our GL Total. So lets remove those. 512434.36 – 121.32 – 89.41 – 700 = 511523.63. So now we need to look at the things that reduced our P&L or weren’t on our P&L. First, we have 5 POs that were posted against our sales accounts ( 1111-00 thru 1115-00 ) for a total of 22287.00. So our GL Total is short that amount – so lets add that back in. 511523.63 + 22287 = 533810.63. Now, there are things on an invoice that don’t hit the sales account – especially on unit sales. Those are License & Registration Fees, Tire Disposal Fee, and a big # – Trade Payoffs ( which become POs to be paid ). If we review those figures, we get 25, 1245.50, and 3722.43. Now these are amounts that affect the invoice total ( and in the case of trade payoffs, the tax as well ) but DO NOT APPEAR ON THE P&L because they are liabilities. But lets add those into our figure. 533810.63 + 25 + 1245.50 + 3722.43 = 538803.56.

So by taking away all the non-invoice user interaction with the tax report and the GL, we see that everything balances. But so long as you do things like have shortages/overages in your cash drawer, write AR adjustments to sales, write Cash Drawer adjustments to sales, sell license and registration fees, have to deal with Tire disposal fees, and take trade ins with a balance owed, your P&L will never match your tax report. Now, since all of those things are a normal part of doing business, you’ll understand why your P&L will never, just by looking at the total income, match your tax report. And if you continue to not pay off everything on your tax report monthly, why your tax report will not match your sales summary report.

My point is that, as you can see, the system is DEAD RIGHT when it comes to its figures. ( As has been proven to many of you dealers who asked me to prove it ). So the issue isn’t the reports – as I’ve shown they all match once you take user issues into account. I hope this evidence proves to you that you can trust the Sales Tax Report, and the Sales Summary, and the P&L Reports – even though they don’t match at first glance.

Another report people ask us about is the Technician’s Performance Report. Why doesn’t it match my Labor Sales on my P&L? Remember, the P&L only reports figures that have hit the GL and an invoice does NOT hit the GL until you cash it out. So a Technician’s Performance Report can show you things that you haven’t cashiered out yet, thus not hitting the GL.

So, you need to keep in mind these factors when trying to compare multiple reports in Lizzy. Remember, you are not always comparing apples to apples – in these two examples above, we were comparing applies to some other type of fruit!.