Business Operating System (BOS)

What are business cycles?

Every business — no matter what product or service they are in — goes through these business cycles:

• Sales
• Operations
• Accounts
• Reporting

These four cycles define the processes that take place within the business in order for it to produce a product or service in exchange for profit. We unpack these cycles below, and how QuickEasy has been designed to serve them.

A word on ERP, or BOS

Enterprise Resource Planning software for manufacturers (ERP) is what we call Business Operating System, or BOS. BOS integrates every business cycle into one system, ensuring that every cycle is in communication with the other — instant analysis and reports for decision-makers, and no need for a heavy admin department. There are many more reasons why BOS is vital for all SMEs — see the BOS ERP overview.

Sales Cycle

No matter how sleek and sophisticated your estimating, production and accounting systems are, if your MIS or ERP system doesn't have a strong sales focus, it is ineffective. QuickEasy BOS incorporates all the functionality required to perpetuate and manage your sales processes.

Estimating and Quoting

Get the competitive advantage with fast, accurate quotations. If you quote too low, you lose money; if you quote too high, you don't get the job. So how do you know what to quote?

• Estimating, especially for complex manufactured jobs, is the core on which QuickEasy was built. It's what we do best.
• Powerful functionality enables you to set up costing models in a quick and easy way.
• Once the model has been set up you simply capture the specification of the job and QuickEasy instantly and automatically produces a list of all materials required to manufacture the job, an ordered list of services, a neatly generated quote description, and a technical specification for the workticket.
• Increase revenue with accurate pricing.
• Always cover costs (even hidden ones) so your bottom line is improved.
• Job history provides more insight on previous jobs so you can quote even more accurately on time, expenses and materials.
• Save on expenses estimator salaries as the system does all the think-work for you.
• Allocate your team resources efficiently.

Leads and sales conversions

Prospective customers can be reached in various ways: cold calling, e-mailing, events, etc. If a prospect is not ready to order now, maintaining contact and keeping them aware of your products means they may be ready to become a customer in the future. Sending out a quote is not the final stage of prospecting — keep hot leads, hot, with ease.

• Stay in the loop: contact records are linked to customers.
• Easily accessible information on the database that everyone can use, even when the sales staff leave.
• Follow-up reminders mean you will never miss another follow-up again.

Follow-up on quotations is equally important: perhaps you misinterpreted the specification, maybe you came in too high on price initially and want the option to offer a more competitive price, or the customer might only be ready to place an order next month. Without following up on quotes, you lose the opportunity to convert leads into sales.

• Easily create reminders that are linked to your quotations.
• Chart your sales pipeline through your customised sales statuses.
• No more micro-managing needed — your sales reps are prompted to follow up on a quote until it is accepted or rejected.
• Wondering why your quotes are being rejected? Reasons for losing quotes are linked to rejected quotations to guide management on how to become more competitive.

CRM (Customer Relationship Management)

It all starts with the customer. It's vital for the health of your sales cycle to maintain updated customer information and your contact history.

• Maintain unlimited customer and contact records.
• Use only the information that your company sees as vital for healthy CRM with customised user fields.
• Find customer information easily.
• Easy reporting with grouping and categories.

Marketing

Marketing creates favourable awareness of your products and services to prospective customers. Do it effectively and your sales pipeline will always be full.

• Send personalised bulk e-mails to clients and prospects in your sales cycle.
• Use built-in workflows to manage your marketing campaigns.
• Increase revenue by keeping your customers aware of your offering.
• Save on marketing costs by using built-in functionality.

Point of Sale

When your company does over-the-counter sales, you need dedicated software that enables staff to quickly capture and process sales.

• The touchscreen PoS application can run on any operating system.
• Reduce errors: users add items from a lookup list, by scanning barcodes or typing in a custom description.
• Take all payment types: cash, card, EFT, cheque, voucher and more.

Operations Cycle

This cycle allows you to plan ahead efficiently, eliminating guesswork and keeping you abreast of your costs and figures. It all starts when an order is placed, and ends when production is complete. QuickEasy BOS is easily customised to meet the varying operational requirements of companies in all business sectors, and can also include workflows and transactions that are not part of the daily business cycle — for example product development. QuickEasy BOS covers everything you need to efficiently manage your production, staff and inventory, to consistently meet deadlines and manage your investment.

Accurate cost estimating

Quick and accurate cost estimating is an important requirement for companies that produce custom products or deliver custom services. The QuickEasy business operating system (BOS) estimate types can be configured for use in manufacturing, construction, functions, services, installations, etc. Once an estimate type has been configured, users only need to input a job specification from which a list of services and materials (BoM) will be generated.

• A quote letter, cost sheet and a workticket can also be created from the completed quotation.
• Multiple items and quantities can be estimated and priced individually on one quotation.
• No duplication of information is required — the quotation includes all the information required to create the downstream transactions: sales orders, work orders, purchase orders, delivery notes and invoices.
• Restrict users to the input screen and selling prices.
• Enable sales reps to do their own estimating and quoting.

WIP overview

QuickEasy BOS is mostly used by companies with a complex operations cycle, which means the sales order and work-in-progress functionality is an important part of their management information system. Downstream transactions are restricted according to how the sales order items are resolved: an item that is to be issued from stock can only be copied to a goods issue transaction, an item that needs to be purchased can only be copied to a purchase order, and an item that needs to be produced can only be copied to a work order.

WIP process

• When a customer's credit limit is checked, QuickEasy checks outstanding invoices as well as work that is in progress.
• Order processing can be blocked if an overdue or overdrawn account is suspended.
• Work in progress can be tracked from start to finish using status changes.
• Part deliveries and invoices are easy to manage.
• Checks are in place to ensure that every job gets fully delivered and invoiced.

Capture production data

The QuickEasy job tracker provides a touch-screen interface for capturing production data from the factory floor. The data captured can be extracted in reports to measure the productivity of cost centres and operators, and provides the information to ensure that estimated hours stay in line with actual production hours.

Job tracking

• The QuickEasy planning board is updated live by the job tracker.
• Feature-rich touchscreen interface for quick operator input and visual feedback.
• Notes can be added to timekeeping records.
• Information like meter readings, spoils quantity, quantity completed, etc. can be captured.
• Material issues can be recorded.

Interactive production planning board

Harness the simplicity of a manual production board with the processing power of a computer with BOS's planning board. It ensures that your jobs are delivered on time while driving down overtime by keeping your production centres loaded.

Planning board

• Production progress information is readily available to all staff.
• Set the latest start date for each production task in order to meet the job deadline.
• View the cumulative hours before any task in the queue can start.
• Know how many production hours are loaded in each work station.
• Easy re-ordering of production tasks using drag-and-drop.
• Live updates from the job tracker.

Profitable purchasing

Material and outwork purchases make up the lion's share of a company's turnover — especially when it comes to manufacturing. A company's profitability is, therefore, significantly influenced by how well you buy. QuickEasy BOS offers comprehensive procurement functionality.

• Multiple supplier prices can be linked to items to provide price comparisons.
• One click on an item summary gives you insight into inventory, supplier prices and purchasing history.
• Jam-packed with functionality to track and manage outstanding purchase orders.
• Costing analysis functionality gives you full clarity and control.

Powerful stock and inventory management

With QuickEasy BOS you're able to maintain and manage all the raw materials, components, finished goods and tools in your business.

• Inventory is updated automatically as you perform your daily transactions — you always know what is "on hand" and what is "available".
• Tracking functionality ensures a product can be traced right back to its production batch, including the raw materials used in the batch.
• Image, specification and user-defined fields are available to capture all the item's information.
• Multiple units of measure and conversions between units of measure are supported.
• Customer-specific items can be linked to customers.
• Multiple supplier prices can be linked to supplied items.
• Multiple production methods can be linked to produced items.
• Only items that are kept in stock are flagged as inventory items — inventory lists are not bloated with non-stock items.
• Multiple inventory locations are supported.
• Replenishment is driven by "minimum" and "re-order" quantities, in turn driven by historical or projected demand, economical batch sizes and replenishment lead times — it's up to you.

Transparent and dynamic workflow

When transactions are copied in QuickEasy, they are automatically linked — so the sales order is linked to a quotation, the work order is linked to a sales order, and so on. In addition, QuickEasy also provides an optional workflow module where users can record all the transactions and communications related to a job, from the initial customer enquiry right up to invoicing.

Workflow

• Have total clarity and control over all transactions and customer interactions at all times.
• Link transactions, notes, files and images to the workflow.
• Find a workflow by searching on any transaction number in the workflow.
• Drill down to any of the linked transactions from within the workflow.
• Set follow-up reminders for other users — for instance, the sales rep could set a reminder for the estimator to revise a quotation, or for the production manager to produce the order.

Accounting Cycle

Unlike other ERPs, we don't charge you extra for each module. With your monthly subscription, you get all of BOS's powerful accounting functionality included.

Automated transactions

While your staff are doing their day-to-day processing, they are also creating the transactions that automatically update your accounting. For instance, creating a customer invoice will automatically update your sales, age analysis, VAT and income statement. Payments and receipts can be imported directly from your bank account using the QuickEasy BOS banking module.

Receivables and age analysis

QuickEasy accounting software's customer age analysis and accounts receivable functions include periodic reports that can categorise a customer's accounts according to how long an invoice has been outstanding.

• Accounts will be flagged when they have exceeded their credit limit.
• Functionality to suspend overdrawn accounts directly from the age analysis.
• A filter to view all active accounts or outstanding accounts only.
• The grid view helps filter, group and sort all listed accounts with any outstanding amounts over 90 days, sortable from highest to lowest amount owing.
• A date filter that allows you to check the status of any account at any date — useful for sending backdated statements.
• Add remarks and reminders linked to an account.
• Drill-down functionality allows you to open the customer summary.
• Batch e-mail statements in no more than four mouse-clicks.
• All your monthly statements are delivered quickly and efficiently.

Ledger

View all of your accounting transactions from one interface, provided by the ledger.

Payables and supplier age analysis

The supplier age analysis, or accounts payable functions, are periodic reports that categorise a company's accounts payable according to the length of time an invoice has been outstanding.

Income statement analysis

The income statement, also known as the profit and loss statement, indicates whether your business is making a profit or a loss, and can be viewed in any date period.

• Values are displayed for the selected period as well as for the same period a year ago.
• View your growth as a percentage in the growth column.
• The companion graph provides a visual display of the year-on-year changes in nett profit, cost of sales and expenses.
• Users can drill down to the account summary, which displays all the transactions for the selected account and period.

Trial balance

The trial balance function provides an overview of all transactions that make up the accounts, including income statement and balance sheet transactions. If the debit and credit columns balance, the accounting transactions have been captured correctly.

• The QuickEasy BOS trial balance function gives an opening balance for each account, as well as the movement of income for the selected period.
• This is then totalled in the debit or credit column.
• This balance can be viewed for the full financial year or for any group of periods in the financial year.
• By default, the trial balance is viewed as a summary of the accounts.
• In the detailed view, users can see all the transactions that make up the trial balance.
• The QuickEasy trial balance is interactive and offers far more functionality than a printed report.
• Users are also able to group and filter columns on the income statement or on the balance sheet accounts.
• Drill-down functionality is provided to view all the transactions that make up an account's movement in the account summary — users can also open any transaction in the ledger from the account summary.

Balance sheet

The balance sheet provides a snapshot of the company's financial position as at a specific date.

• Liabilities and equity are grouped so that the total can be compared to assets, which should be equal.
• The balance sheet displays the values for the selected date as well as comparative values for the same date one year ago — the difference is indicated as a percentage in the variance column.
• The companion graph provides a visual display of the year-on-year changes in assets, liabilities and equity.
• Users can drill down to the account summary, which displays a list of all the transactions for the year preceding the date selected.

Reporting Cycle

QuickEasy reports enable you to measure the activity and efficiency of your sales consultants as well as your sales department. Because QuickEasy BOS is a fully-integrated operating system, you can extract important information from your database in an instant — a record of essential information such as sales activity, work in progress, receivables, payables and cash flow, instantly accessible and easy to understand.

Monitor key areas of your business with ease

QuickEasy Software has a built-in indicator system that allows you to monitor the key areas of your business, such as:

• Sales activity vs. target by sales rep
• Quotations vs. target
• Orders vs. target
• Invoiced vs. target
• Profit vs. target
• Available hours vs. scheduled task hours
• Overtime vs. downtime
• Cash flow: inflow vs. outflow
• Receivables vs. payables

Transaction summaries and pivot tables

Our software contains a built-in summary view for every kind of transaction, which can also be viewed in a pivot table format — allowing you to see all tasks due on a particular day, in the next few months, even in the year ahead.

Don't be left behind. Modernise your business with QuickEasy BOS today.

QuickEasy Software contains built-in features that provide you with instant access to information, from staff member information to customer details, supplier data or even a specific product item — our integrated software gives you easy access to the information you need at the click of a button. Modernising your business with QuickEasy BOS ensures you have clarity, control, and confidence for every part of your business.

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