Efficient Ways To Take Orders?

[cavsgt]

haha! You are very right about that! Seems like we always want the best for our big friends but at the same time don't want to break the bank!

Wow! I hope my company lasts as long as yours has! I am a college graduate and can't find a job in or out of my field to save my life! So I decided to combine my horse hobby & painting together and see if I could make some money at it! I would love if I could turn it into my full time job because I enjoy doing this much more than the degree I have! LOL

Probably the two best pieces of advice I have is do not get all of your eggs in one basket diversify and let your business tell you where it wants to go. We have built everything from boot harness to movie props and saddles. Neither were where we initially headed but both made us fair money. I like to laugh that at one time we were the leading purveyor of bad taste as boot harness manufactures for the whole country. A salesman came in the shop one night and asked if we could make this boot harness, I said yes but why would I want to when he told me what he was paying for them we signed on.

My point is keep trying to come up with new ideas and do not be afraid to get out of your comfort zone

[TACKyPaints]

Probably the two best pieces of advice I have is do not get all of your eggs in one basket diversify and let your business tell you where it wants to go. We have built everything from boot harness to movie props and saddles. Neither were where we initially headed but both made us fair money. I like to laugh that at one time we were the leading purveyor of bad taste as boot harness manufactures for the whole country. A salesman came in the shop one night and asked if we could make this boot harness, I said yes but why would I want to when he told me what he was paying for them we signed on.

My point is keep trying to come up with new ideas and do not be afraid to get out of your comfort zone

That is great advice! Thank you so much! I will keep that in mind! That's incredible where your business has taken you!!!

I definitely would like to "expand my horizons" rather than stick to my comfort zone! I think after some time it would be a nice change of pace to take on something different than the norm! I've had a few people actually ask me to even paint cowboy boots which would be pretty neat! I'm seriously considering giving that try!

[Dwight]

Anyone have any experience with this or suggestions? Please?

Tacky: I do all my billing, . . . scheduling, . . . tax records, . . . on one little computer program: Microsoft Excel, . . . but I have about 20 years experience at it, . . . and judging from your picture, . . . you probably don't.

Be that as it may, . . . you can use Excel as a calendar, . . . and as you get orders, . . . put them into the calendar. Only load up say 6 hours a day, . . . that gives you the ability to do 2 things: one, you can have a "cushion" of time, . . . just in case stuff goes South, . . . and two, you can visually see where you actually are. It makes all the difference in the world when you are first trying to get stuff together.

You can also print it out in the morning, . . . make pencil changes during the day, . . . correct and re-print tomorrow if pencils work better for you than a keyboard.

I couldn't post an Excel sheet on here, . . . but I did a screen save/convert to *.jpg so you could at least see what one looks like. PM me if you want to look at something more elaborate, . . . I can help you there possibly.

"Organization is the KEY, to production, to profitability, and believe it or not, . . . to sanity". Not an old saying by any means, . . . but I live and believe every word of it.

May God bless,

Dwight

[TACKyPaints]

Tacky: I do all my billing, . . . scheduling, . . . tax records, . . . on one little computer program: Microsoft Excel, . . . but I have about 20 years experience at it, . . . and judging from your picture, . . . you probably don't.

Be that as it may, . . . you can use Excel as a calendar, . . . and as you get orders, . . . put them into the calendar. Only load up say 6 hours a day, . . . that gives you the ability to do 2 things: one, you can have a "cushion" of time, . . . just in case stuff goes South, . . . and two, you can visually see where you actually are. It makes all the difference in the world when you are first trying to get stuff together.

You can also print it out in the morning, . . . make pencil changes during the day, . . . correct and re-print tomorrow if pencils work better for you than a keyboard.

I couldn't post an Excel sheet on here, . . . but I did a screen save/convert to *.jpg so you could at least see what one looks like. PM me if you want to look at something more elaborate, . . . I can help you there possibly.

"Organization is the KEY, to production, to profitability, and believe it or not, . . . to sanity". Not an old saying by any means, . . . but I live and believe every word of it.

May God bless,

Dwight

Thanks for the great advice Dwight! I do have quite a bit of experience using Excel, but never thought of using it for organizing my orders!!! I will most likely end up printing them out each morning as I tend to like to have things in hand. It would probably be easier than simply having the invoices in front of me! Perhaps this will help with my organization and help me better prioritize my use of time! I do believe my organization is a big part of the problem! haha!

Thanks again for the great advice!!

[particle]

Like Dwight - we (my wife and I) also use Excel for my orders, though we use it in a different way. I built my website using the free Concrete 5 site builder. I'm currently using their form component to receive my new orders. Once we receive the order and print it out, we hand-write any updates to the order should the customer decide to make any changes. When I am in the shop (my garage), I have a set of stacking in/out paper trays. I place all my orders in the trays - one order per tray. That printed order form stays with the holster until it's ready to be shipped out. Meanwhile, my wife types the contents of the order form into Excel (one customer per row) as we receive the new orders. As an order is completed, she hilights the customer's row of information and shades the cells gray to indicate the order is complete. This gives us a quick reference for how many outstanding orders we have left to complete. It contains detailed information about what they ordered, as well as the customer's contact information and the total amount of the order. When it's time to file taxes, my wife prints out a nice and tidy spreadsheet that shows the entire year's orders and how much money the business has brought in and we hand this over to our tax guy.

You can also use Outlook to schedule your shop time. You can create a new appointment, they copy and paste the contents of the customer's order form into your appointment if you wanted so you don't have to go digging through old emails to find the order information. Theoretically, you could schedule all your existing orders out for the next X days or weeks, provided you're that organized with your time. I ask my wife "what's next" and she tells me what to work on.

A better method would be to tie the order form to a database so that once the customer's information is received, the data is automatically submitted to the database. Using a private back-end page, you could access the contents of the database on a per-order basis and have fields where you can add notes and such. You could have a method of marking the order as active so your customers could log into the website and see what ticket number you're working on so they'll know many orders are in front of their own. I'm not a big database guy, but would love to know how to do it. They're very powerful if they're setup correctly from the start.

Edited December 29, 2011 by particle

[Leatherimages]

Great discussion guys. Thank you.

I understand this for job scheduleing, and it is a problem even after 40 years in; shoe repair (it'll be ready on Tuesday), boot making (I'll be working on it next October), and general leatherwork (It'll be a week or two, I'll call when it's done.)

But howabout, are there suggetions for programs for Project Managment that show where you are in the time line of a job?

Paul

[particle]

Paul - Microsoft Project is a great program for scheduling your time out, but I think it's quite expensive. There may be cheaper alternatives, or even free versions. I haven't looked lately. Project will allow you to create parent objects, so if you wanted to itemize your production for a few projects, you could do something like....

Project A

Cut pieces

>Transfer Pattern Marks

>Dye Pieces

>Assemble Pieces

>Stitch Pieces

Project B

Blah blah blah

You get the idea. You tell the program how long you think each task will take. If cutting the pieces for all your orders will take 5 hours, you tell it 5 hours. If it happens to take 10 hours, the final date of completion will get bumped back 5 additional hours if you update the schedule. If you tell Project B that it can't begin until after Project A is complete, the start date of Project B will automatically shift out that same additional 5 hours. Pretty powerful scheduling tool. If you don't make any adjustments along the way, you can keep track of how far behind you're getting (or how far ahead), and you can adjust your working hours according to make up for lost time (or take a vacation!).

[McJeep]

There's a pretty darned useful client management software - more for managing repeat client info and scheduling your time than anything else - called maximizer.

Used it in the finance biz - works well - reasonable cost. I mostly just use outlook on my computer - schedules all my time and the reminders are invaluable. Very useful to have the computer bleep at me to wake me up when I get lost in a job.

There are lots of ways to manage time, schedule jobs, estimate jobs - but at what point are you spending more time scheduling then doing??

[TACKyPaints]

Like Dwight - we (my wife and I) also use Excel for my orders, though we use it in a different way. I built my website using the free Concrete 5 site builder. I'm currently using their form component to receive my new orders. Once we receive the order and print it out, we hand-write any updates to the order should the customer decide to make any changes. When I am in the shop (my garage), I have a set of stacking in/out paper trays. I place all my orders in the trays - one order per tray. That printed order form stays with the holster until it's ready to be shipped out. Meanwhile, my wife types the contents of the order form into Excel (one customer per row) as we receive the new orders. As an order is completed, she hilights the customer's row of information and shades the cells gray to indicate the order is complete. This gives us a quick reference for how many outstanding orders we have left to complete. It contains detailed information about what they ordered, as well as the customer's contact information and the total amount of the order. When it's time to file taxes, my wife prints out a nice and tidy spreadsheet that shows the entire year's orders and how much money the business has brought in and we hand this over to our tax guy.

You can also use Outlook to schedule your shop time. You can create a new appointment, they copy and paste the contents of the customer's order form into your appointment if you wanted so you don't have to go digging through old emails to find the order information. Theoretically, you could schedule all your existing orders out for the next X days or weeks, provided you're that organized with your time. I ask my wife "what's next" and she tells me what to work on.

A better method would be to tie the order form to a database so that once the customer's information is received, the data is automatically submitted to the database. Using a private back-end page, you could access the contents of the database on a per-order basis and have fields where you can add notes and such. You could have a method of marking the order as active so your customers could log into the website and see what ticket number you're working on so they'll know many orders are in front of their own. I'm not a big database guy, but would love to know how to do it. They're very powerful if they're setup correctly from the start.

Wow! Sounds like you have an EXCELLENT system going!! I will have to try and use some of the ways you go about organizing your orders! I have some paper trays here from when I was in school, perhaps I should give that a try as it would certainly keep me more organized with my coming & going orders! And using Outlook is a genius idea! I have a Blackberry that all my business emails go to but have often found myself searching through emails to make sure I add all the changes to the product that my customer requested! Making an appointment with all of the order information would certainly save me some time!!!

Thank you so much for such great advice!! Perhaps when my business gets a little larger (and therefore more hectic!) I will have to look into the database idea!!! Thanks again!!

[Dwight]

For anyone thinking about a data base, . . . let me just say that Microsoft Access is a keeper for a data base that YOU can manage, . . . YOU can make, . . . You can fix, etc.

I started working with it almost 20 years ago, . . . knew nothing at all about it, . . . took a 1 day class from a woman who didn't know much about it herself, . . . but it did get me started. I wound up peddling my ability into a full time job that kept be righteously employed for over 15 years, . . . when I could easily otherwise have been looking at disabiility retirement.

Two things to remember: 1) purchase the "Dummy" book, . . . Access (insert latest edition here) for Dummies. Read it, . . . follow the instructions, . . . set apart a 4 hour block sometime in the week, . . . do the next chapter each time AND 2) tables are the secret to Access. Queries give you info, . . . Reports tell you what you got, . . . but if it is not in the table, . . . the query cannot find it, . . . and the report won't print it. You almost cannot have too many tables.

Also, . . . make the tables simple, . . . too many people want to make one table have all the information, . . . and it becomes a nightmare trying to insert, edit, change, etc. Whereas if it is a simple table, . . . it is easier to mess with. As an example, . . . use a specific Customer ID number for each of your customers, . . . it can be fixed in Access to add it in for you, . . . making sure that there are never two who are the same. It is easy to get two Bill Smith's, . . . and sending the wrong Bill Smith the holster for a 1911 when he wanted a bridle for his Palomino will cause headaches.

We use Access for our church, . . . tithing, income, expenses, checking acct, bills, employees, virtually everything is in that one little data base, . . . and it was built one piece at a time, . . . took about an hour each, . . .

May God bless,

Dwight

Edited December 30, 2011 by Dwight