QuoteMagic!
— our menu price editor — is really quite brilliant!
It was one of the first modern flat rate editing programs offered
to plumbers, and now it has a new name.
I decided that our PricePoint Advantage menu price system needed
more tasks in addition to the regular maintenance required to
keep it current. So, while adding new pages along with the assemblies
and JobLinx descriptions that make up a menu price book, I got
a few ideas on how to improve the software.
Maintaining Advantage requires tracking items in assemblies that have gone stale, along with quarterly repricing of the tasks. I was bothered by the fact that the repricing process lacked a record of the items that had a price change and needed a way to easily find the items that were changed.
Meet
our new Last Price Change dialog!When you click on the File Menu and choose
Reprice QuoteMagic Book, the program now keeps a record of all
the items changed by repricing, what their previous price was,
and what the new price is! To see the changes you only have to
click the Last Price Change button to show the dialog that is
an index into the QuoteMagic book to navigate to the actual task
that was changed! If there is a question as to why the change
occurred, you can click the Links button and open the underlying
assembly.
Also,
notice that the new dialog has a Repricing Settings tab that shows
the settings that were active when the repricing was performed.
You can have all the benefits of PricePoint Advantage and it won't cost you one penny more than what you already spend for your PricePoint subscription! To access the complete system of flat rates, from QuoteMagic! Studio go to the Utilities menu and choose Install PricePoint Advantage (please see note below). PricePoint will download the system from our website. Then you can harness its power on your desktop, laptop, and on a mobile device. I want to encourage each and every member of our subscriber family to get access and use it. - Tim Clover
NOTE: Installing QuoteMagic! Advantage will overwrite all your labor rates, supplier discounts and assemblies. To preserve this data, Follow the steps below:
I have added a clear box to the Document link box when you create an invoice from an estimate.
This was a request from "PricePoint Pioneer"
Frank Vicari at Ultimate Plumbing in Yonkers, NY.-Tim Clover
How often do you get a call in the field from a customer you worked for years ago to do a job right now? You may have a funny feeling associated with the customer but wish you could look at their customer history at your desk to decide if taking the job is worth the risk. What is their payment history? Do they string you along? Have they stiffed you? Very soon you'll be able to take your customer histories out with you on your Android phone or tablet. To learn more about PricePoint Pocket History read about it here: PricePoint Pocket History.
Creating
Service Invoices on the road with QuoteMagic!Looking to spruce up your service department?
Did you know that you can create professional service invoices
on an Android tablet?
Invoices can include items from Advantage Menu Pricing and Time and Materials billing so you're not locked into one or the other!
Here's a couple of screenshots showing the Pricing Tab and a T&M invoice in process.
1) Techs send completed invoices and payments
to the office by email so there is no additional entry required,
they just flow into PricePoint.
2) No training is needed on how to price items
for profit. Time and materials items are all priced to sell with
the profit that you deserve. Materials that have been assigned
shortcut codes are automatically loaded along with Advantage Menu
Pricing. If you wish you can also choose to include Hodes items
to include their extensive list of repair specialties.
3) Professionals get the customer's signed approval
before they start the job and upon completion. QuoteMagic captures
the signatures and sends them to the office. If there's a question,
you have the signatures to prove it.
If you are interested in QuoteMagic! please
explore this link: Full
Rundown- Tim Clover
Want Complete Documentation? If you want to know more
QuoteMagic! is now available for download from the Google Play Store
You may notice that the newsletter no longer includes news from before 2022. That's because we took those items and put them in our archive on the website. To view them click HERE.
We're
proud to release PricePoint 5.6, our newest version that has been
reworked for Windows 11. We hope you like it! The big change is
proper scaling in printed invoices, estimates, proposals, etc.
If you have changed your (Settings) Display, Scale and Layout
to 125% to better read your screen, then you will be well acquainted
with the printout not filling the entire page. Anyway, it's fixed
in 5.6.
I have created a bunch of new shortcut codes for copper fittings and Viega press water fittings as part of the improvements that are in the works for our QuoteMagic app. If you would like to download the new shortcut codes, First back up your shortcut codes, Utilities, Selective backup, and check Shortcut codes, then click Utilities, Bonus Programs and choose Import Shortcut codes for all manufacturers. - Tim Clover
You may not recall our Quotemagic app, It puts your PricePoint flat rate book into a android tablet so that service work can be billed in the field. We've been frankly dissapointed by its reception and are wondering if its flat rate only model is the problem. I've been experimenting with adding a T&M section to the application so users can add materials, labor and extra charges to an invoice, Let me know if this might be of any interest to you (415-492-9211) - Tim Clover
Occasionally, I'll have a discussion with a user about how to set up pricing for a particular set of items. Explaining how we set up discounts on items can be complicated although the process is pretty simple. An alternative to setting up discounts is to select the Nets button and then select Real Prices from the Supplier Net setting. To improve the accuracy of the real prices for many items in our database, the real prices for many of the above items are now coming from Hodes, an online source of plumbing materials with a long track record of competitive pricing. I have improved real prices on galvanized and black steel nipples in common sizes and red brass nipples (1/2" through 2"). Polished chrome plated brass nipples 3/8" and 1/2" have also been added in common sizes. -Tim
Hey folks, I've gotten a lot of questions recently about the disappearance of the bookmark buttons in the updated pricing app. I have decided to bring them back so people can continue to use them. Nothing else has changed in Pricing, just added the buttons to the materials tab below the insert line button.
Announcement: we are instituting new installers for our software. This month is the last time we'll use the old installers that are built in a tool whose creators went out of business. If you install PricePoint on a new computer, you will get to use the new installers this month. - Tim Clover
Pricing has been the center of the PricePoint experience since we began our journey in 1993 and now we progress to streamline and simplify while still giving people the control they need over their bill of materials. To cover the changes that we have made, we begin by showing the old pricing screen so it can be easily compared to the new arrangement.
Our first priority was to keep users from having to search all over the screen for their settings so we added a settings panel on the left side of the Materials tab. At first glance we can see that Profit % moved to the top right above the Cost+, List and Retail buttons and next to the repositioned Pricebook button.
We removed the Use Nets checkbox and transformed it into the Supplier Cost Basis control. The Net and Discount buttons toggle to indicate how PricePoint calculates the cost of an item. To simplify and make things more logical we moved the Supplier Net/Discount Setting and grouped it below Supplier Cost Basis so we can see both settings at a glance.
Below that, show details, delete line, insert line and reprice item buttons have been reduced in size. We added a right-click popup menu to the materials grid to access the functions of those buttons that is more direct and less fussy. Show in Pricebook gives users a "drill down" into the bill of materials to show the item in the Pricebook to replace it with a neighboring item and eliminated the bookmark buttons. To add items to the list, right click the like item and select Show in Pricebook, then click the empty last item in the materials grid and select the new item(s) in the pricebook.
We
rearranged this dialog so it will fit to the left of the pricing
window. The Discount off List display is now just to the right
of Net Cost and the Save Discount button has been reduced. Markup
Setting display is now below them to fit the new format.
We've added nice new features to the price book too!
You can set the Price Book to display either List or Cost in the
right hand column by selecting Display Options. With Cost active,
cost will reflect your Supplier Cost Basis settings. If there
is no Net or discount for the item then the List price will be
displayed with "L" added.
Click the sort toggle to present the table titles in sorted/unsorted view. To jump to a particular starting letter just type the letter on the keyboard to find that item in the list! When you are using the sorted view, the table titles are changed from their familiar physical order in the price book so it takes some getting used to but you'll get the hang of it pretty fast.
Also, you'll notice the Go Back buttons have been simplified to just a left arrow although they work just the same they did before!
We have been studying and polishing this new chapter in the PricePoint saga for quite a while and we really hope you like the changes that we have made. We're so proud that our little software package is still a part of the lives of our customers after thirty one years! - Tim Clover
Revenue Report now has a report by fiscal year option. To access the new feature click the option dropdown and choose Fiscal Year Report, click the button on the the date picker and pick the start of your fiscal year. The report will show results by date and by quarter with the ending month(s) indicated by an asterisk. Thanks to Pat at Bruce Allyn Plumbing in Pamona, CA for her suggestion-Tim
Bonus Programs Enhancement: Export Invoices/Customers to Excel. Now we can filter invoices by state, township or zip code. Added Materials, Labor, Other, Tax and Total fields to report.
Bell & Gossett - Checked and added missing
items.
Brass Craft - checked
Hart & Cooley - checked and added
ISE - checked
Sloan Valve - Updated Flush Valves
Zurn - Updated Flush Valves
McDonald, AY - checked and added
Conbraco- checked and added
T&S Brass - checked and added many new items.
For more information go to Pricing Corner
Bug FixesOccasionally, I'll have a discussion with a user about how to set up pricing for a particular set of items. Explaining how we set up discounts on items can be complicated although the process is pretty simple. An alternative to setting up discounts is to check the use nets box and then select Real Prices from the Supplier Net setting. To improve the accuracy of the real prices for many items in our database, the real prices for many of the above items are now coming from Hodes, an online source of plumbing materials with a long track record of competitive pricing. I'll continue to improve our Real Prices as time goes on. -Tim Clover
When entering a new customer (Invoice, Estimate, Work Order) the Cty State Zip field will incorporate a dropdown of previously entered City, State and Zip fields to pick from. You'll notice the new feature when you add a new customer in Customer Information and when creating an invoice, estimate or workorder. This good idea was suggested by Carl Lewis at Alert Plumbing in Arcadia, FL. - Tim Clover
This new version of PricePoint introduces date based deletion of obsolete attachments. To use this feature: go to Maintain, Purge Obsolete Attachments on the Main Menu bar. The dialog starts with a date that is a couple of years old.
We have made a few minor changes under the hood to make the Proposals feature more reliable. I hope this will improve your experience using PricePoint.-Tim Clover
Things keep getting more expensive! Prior to this month, PricePoint had a maximum price limit of $9,999.99. That is now increased to $999,999,99 so pricing for commercial water heaters and boilers, etc will be included in the database. We made some changes to our program that communicates with our data partner, Trade Service, that allows the transmission of prices that were previously excluded from the data we received from them.
What did I do on my summer vacation? I created a new feature called Paste Wizard in the Pricing app! What is Paste Wizard? It's a new way to bring information from your suppliers such as invoice .PDF files, and apply it to a Bill Of Materials. While you're at it, you can set your net prices for that supplier. The items you create can be linked to database items via Shortcut Code, Manufacturers Catalog# or UPC Code or they can be manually entered items if that's easier. To use it, you open up Pricing and click the Paste Wizard button.
I'm not going to go into a lot of detail here in the newsletter because I also created a set of videos on our website to teach our users how to use Paste Wizard. There's even a button that will open your browser and show you the videos! Naturally, I have also included in depth How To information in the help file that can be accessed by clicking the Help button. - Tim Clover
Go to our website www.pricepnt.com and click on the Users Corner and you'll see the buttons for the videos.
You've been able to paste quantities and shortcut codes into our pricing grid for many years now. It's part of the synergy with Excel to be able to copy the two columns in a spreadsheet and choose Edit, Paste Qty + Shortcut Code and PricePoint will find and price out the items for you. Our first improvement will allow you to use UPC rather than Shortcut code. Our second improvement will allow you to add a column of net prices from your spreadsheet.
Why am I so excited about this? For example let's say you made a purchase of fittings and you have a PDF of the invoice from your supplier. You can copy each column in the PDF: Quantity, Shortcut Code and Net and then paste it into a blank spreadsheet so the columns are in the correct order. Copy the cells in the spreadsheet, click Use Nets and set the Supplier Net Setting to the correct supplier and paste. PricePoint will prompt you to save the net price for each entry or you can push the Autosave button to save all the nets automatically!
The supplier's SC Codes probably won't match the codes that come with PricePoint so to make this work you'll need to edit the SC codes so they agree by clicking PriceBook and checking Show Shortcut codes. We added the UPC paste option so there is an alternate way of linking. The UPC code for each item is 11-12 digits and is standardized by the manufacturers. Give this a try and let us know how it works out.-Tim Clover
If your company is using a gmail address to send documents to customers, you've probably noticed that PricePoint's email sender has stopped working. Gmail now requires that you set up an App Password for PricePoint after setting up 2-step verification on your account. Follow the steps below to set up:
Bug
Fixes in this IssueNone this month
We've come up with a set of lessons to help folks be more productive in the Pricing portion of the program. The new videos will play a graphical lesson with narration right on your computer that will give all users a boost! There are three tutorials available as of this date and more will be coming. To run the tutorials from the Main Functions menu click Help, Tutorials.
New Version
5.00 Manual
Only $48.95 + $13.00s/h
Have all the details on the new version. Call Support Services at 415-492-9211 to order your copy today!
Customer Service -
415-492-9211
E-Mail - cloversoftmail@earthlink.net
Web - www.pricepnt.com
How to Print the Entire
Newsletter:
From the Menu bar in Internet Explorer:
Choose File, Print and make sure you check the option below
