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Adilas.biz Developer's Notebook Report - All to All - (47)
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Time Id Color Title/Caption Start Date   Notes
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Shop 9996 Working on known issues list 3/29/2023  

Recording notes and working on a list of known issues. See top_secret/secure/known_issues.cfm for more information.

For fun, here is a list of some of the items listed on that page. This list originally was started in 2009. Small list of what are known problems. Some of these things are real problems and some are just warnings. Lots of things have changed since then. It may need to be updated, added to, and some of the items removed, that have been patched, fixed, and/or finished.


  1. Invoice pmts on account with something different than 0.00 value.

  2. Receipt pmts on account with something different than 0.00 value.

  3. Reimbursements (rei's) with a bank assigned on the receipt pmt.

  4. Invoices with mismatch between main and line items.

  5. Deposits with mismatch between main and line items.

  6. Receipts with mismatch between main and line items.

  7. PO's with mismatch between main and line items.

  8. Non verified payments (outstanding deposits and checks).

  9. Duplicates ???

  10. Dates prior to the corp start date or prior to the bank start date. See bank_balance_helper.cfm page.

  11. Dates in the future. see bank_balance_helper.cfm page.

  12. Internal invoices that are not marked as paid.

  13. Receipt payments that are verified but the main is not verified.

  14. Difference between invoices and stock numbers. Created a number of flags to show disconnect.

  15. When paying back splits and rei's - what about both (main and subs) being assigned to income statement expense types? This could double things up on the income statement. Defaulted special multi build (rei and splits) to b.s. items for expense types. Still possible problem on original e/r that may get assigned to the balance sheet.

  16. Update PO's not tied to a balance sheet item (say a loss account or something).

  17. Lien payoff line items on invoice with a 0 cost. The cost and the price should be the same otherwise it puffs up the profit. Did run a report at one time to fix this. Also added code to the cart to match cost and price for lien payoff stuff.

  18. PO payments that have the wrong date and thus the po_paid date is wrong. The system was using the current date as the payment date even if the payment was actually made in the past. Small disconnect between actual payment date (e/r payment date and PO paid date).

  19. Check auto dates that are actually used in I.S. reports or B.S. reports. Need a way to manually change the auto dates if really being used. Check the unit payments, PO payments, other system made payments. The system seems to be ok, the problem is with dates and being able to either set the date when using or edit the date if defaulted to today's date.

  20. Blank expense/receipts (payee_id = 1).

  21. Voided items but part of it is still in play or not fully voided. Need to get to a voided list quickly.

  22. Denied check requests on payables page.

  23. Sales tax problem with work in progress invoices. They don't show up on sales tax reports until they get flipped back to a customer invoice. The problem is that the date (main invoice date - if not moved forward) will not show up on the next month’s tax reports. If this happens, the invoice will fall through the cracks and not be counted for sales tax. Possible option for sales tax, Steve thought that it might be cool to have a point and click interface that we physically pay taxes on certain invoices. That way, they never fall through the cracks and we only pay taxes once we collect the monies. This would also help with a system-maintained b.s. item for accrued sales tax. As an update, Eric was working on a sales tax aggregate project to automate this.

  24. Along with sales tax problems, how do we show this on the balance sheet? We need to show collected, paid, and owed values. Once again, Eric has been working on this in his sales tax aggerate project.

  25. Payroll has similar problems with regards to what has been paid on, what is still needed, and how do we show this info on the financials.

  26. See idea in note book about showing all daily transactions. This is different than a history transaction record. This is what really hit in and out on this day in time according to the system. This is not a known issue but may help with finding issues. Daily monitoring of each account per location, per day, per account or category. This would be awesome.

  27. Check for master/slave relationships between date changes. For instance main invoice date compared with invoice line items dates. PO main date with PO line items date.

  28. Known issue with PO dates. Do we run off the main PO date or the PO received date? Need to standardize. Leaning towards PO received date.

  29. Known issue with location based payables. Both expense/receipts and deposits have the location on the line items not the main. This means that monies could potentially get split between stores which would alter bank balances if only part of the money went in/out of the bank. Known problem here. Solution might be that banks are what they are (full monies in/out) and all sub lines and types are location specific. This could give a false indication as to how much money was available for each location.

  30. What about transition invoices that have the main invoice date overlapping the transition (wip/qti) invoice date range. They don't show up anywhere other than on the main invoice homepage which doesn't tie to anything. Added a small fix on view_transition_dates.cfm page. Still need to check for possible mismatches.

  31. Disconnect between sold date on units and invoice date. This is a disconnect that is unmonitored and will only show up if pulling a sold report (units) and an invoice report for the same time frame.

  32. When backing up the main bank start date, there is a problem with expense payments and deposits that have a date before the main start date and a verified date after the main date. The payment or deposit date is not counted but the verified date is. I had the same problem with Leanna in Poncha and with Drew Middlemiss doing his first bank statement. What a pain. See the bank_balance_helper.cfm report (5/16/09) for small fix. Still a known problem with a starting bank balance not being 0.00.

  33. Advanced pmt on invoices (pre-paid). They hit the bank because they were deposited but they also need to show up as a liability to offset the deposit or cash going up. This should be a system maintained item.

  34. What about deposit types of other income that are assigned to invoices (double counted)? The default is an invoice hits the p&l and only deposit line items that are under other income and revenue adjustments hit or the p&l.

  35. What about bad debt? Do we want to create a system maintained items for this?

  36. What about deposits that are made before pmts are posted to invoices. This is not backward compatible.

  37. Know disconnect between PO dates. The main PO date is currently used as the main search date. The PO received date is the main b.s. date. We are thinking that the main date may become somewhat of a request date or a age player only. The main date will become the received date with the received flag.

  38. If a check request gets approved and assigned to a bank but never written out (bank never sees it), there seems to be a problem. There is also a problem with older check requests and the dates that are set in the background. They are uneditable once the request changes into a normal e/r.

  39. Known issue with i.s. (income statement) deposit types. If used, without an invoice, they don't show up on the income statement. They may also be double booked if on an invoice and also recorded as other income or revenue adjustment.

  40. What about payments made on a PO before it was received. This could happen with a request PO or a basic PO that has not yet been received.

  41. What about inactive (status) on parts and subs. If we have details (activity) but something is inactive, that could cause problems.

  42. Levels of inventory - this could deal with parents, subs, and usage details. We may need to check costs, quantities, dates, etc. Sub inventory was added way after 2009 (original date of this report). We may want to spend a whole session just going over sub inventory levels and possible pit falls.

  43. Steve, Kelly, Molly, and others have lists of balance sheet challenges and other known issues. Check with them and get their lists.

  44. Ecommerce and what plays into the real mix from there - invoices, taxes, costs, prices, discounts, payments, quantities, elements of time, etc. Good questions? Some of this is already figured out, it just needs a little bit of loving.

  45. What about aggregates (somewhat new for us and just barely getting rolled out) and making sure things match up. Category (could be whatever), by day, by location - are there update processes that may be ran to keep things up to date. Manual updates, API sockets, watchers and feeders.

  46. What about backorders? Steve did a whole section on backorders but I'm not sure if we tied in everything to the balance sheet and P&L. Anyways, may need to circle back around.

  47. What about banks that get turned on/off (active/inactive). If we go back in time, we need to know if they were playing.

  48. Same is turn with location. If they get turned on/off (active/inactive), we need to know when they were playing. We may need a start and end date and then be able to pull things accordingly, even if the current state or status is inactive.

  49. What about cost of goods sold on unlimited or special line items? They should be a $0.00 cost because they are unlimited (like a labor or a service). If a cost is needed, it needs to be allocated through an expense to the COGS section or distributed in a thing called SG&A costs. SG&A (selling, general and administrative expenses - aka accounting for general costs by attributing them to a single unit and thus incorporating the true costs into an item). Basically, you take a normal expense like the electric bill or rent and build it into the individual cost of each unit by unitizing the expenses and virtually spreading a bigger general cost to smaller pieces. Sometimes that type of process (SG&A) is required for certain manufacturing and/or production type products. Basically, they (the IRS) don't allow you to expense off the whole expense (rent, insurance, waste, electric, etc.) as a bulk item. It has to be distributed to each smaller piece. If you do real SG&A, it helps assimilate those costs in smaller percentages and thus passing on a truer look at real costs of goods sold.

  50. Anything that is currently marked inactive but may have played a role at some point. This could be locations, banks, part categories, items, vendors, customers, etc. Often, if we make them inactive, they don't get pulled (but maybe we need them at some time in the past).

  51. Other special account options such as in-store credits, vendor credits, punch cards, etc. We already have loyalty points and gift cards that use special accounts. Maybe expand on this and allow for custom options or other digital payment accounts or payment solutions.

  52. I'd love to map out all of the existing balance sheet and P&L values. Make it more widely known and really put it out there. Right now, it all happens behind the scenes and is kinda like a magic box. I'd love to get it all mapped out and presented to the public. We'll get feedback, refinement, and maybe even some other really good ideas. That's my vote, let's get it all out there in the public eye and public realm.

 
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Shop 9689 Steve, Cory, Brandon-Catch up on projects and updates 12/19/2022  

Meeting with Cory to go over projects. We talked about the pick ticket stuff with elements of time. Checking on different errors. Auto emails for PDF attachments for invoices. Going over new date-pickers. Reviewing other projects. Talking about transitional invoices and reserving inventory. Mini conversion and laying claims on certain inventory items. Deep production and manufacturing type stuff.

We also got into talks about backorders, cross-corp invoice to PO stuff, and some new sub barcode requirements and settings. After that, John and I spent some time and talked about Adobe XD files and documentation for certain projects. We also talked about some Docker (server) stuff.

 
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Shop 9054 Steve, Cory, Brandon-Catch up on projects and updates 5/31/2022  

Meeting with Steve and Cory to go over projects. We talked about a couple of projects for Eric. We talked about gift cards, other special account projects (in-store credit, vendor credits, punch cards, coupons, and gift certificates or gift cards). Another one is the mini aggregate project to handle inventory quantities per location. The other possible project for Eric is getting back to the enterprise item catalog project. All of those have value and would be great add-on's.

The next major subject was projects that Alan is either working on and could work on. He is one of our top developers and is in demand, because he can do so many things. One of the projects that Cory really wants him to work on is the transition invoices out in ecommerce land. They already exits out there, they just need a little bit of loving. He could also help Steve out with some BioTrack production stuff.

Lots of talk about other developers and what they are working on. It is a challenge to coordinate projects and developers. Lots of moving pieces. We also talked briefly about some projects for Bryan. We are still trying to help our clients transition from billing in the old independent way to dealing with Adilas as a team or an entity.

Another subject that came up was the number of hours spent in a training and tech support with our clients. It takes a lot of time and effort. One of the benefits is that we learn a lot along the way. The more we help our clients, the more we learn, and can adapt the tools and features that we have to get the desired outcome. Along those lines, sometimes we (internally) need to be reminded of certain processes and tools that exist that we may not remember or are new to us. For example, all of Steve's new backorder stuff that he developed and managing quotes, orders, PO's, and backorders.

Cory was kinda putting her virtual foot down on certain projects. We are trying to retain our clients but sometimes they get out of line. We talked about preventative maintenance type stuff with our existing clients and helping them along the way. We, as a company, are offering more and more internal service offerings. We used to sub it all out to outside independent sub-contractors. We are trying to make those same offerings, but do it all internally now and helping out in new ways. It makes for a better product and better retention.

 
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Shop 8269 Steve, Cory, Brandon-Catch up on projects and updates 10/11/2021  

Cory and Steve catching up on things. Steve was filling Cory in on some new developments with Mike, eXPO, and other things that are going on. After they were done, Cory and I finished up the meeting going over projects that needed help, project management, and quoting. We went over a bunch of options. Here are some of my notes:

- Two big project that might need some help here soon - One of them is dealing with cash drawers, cash management (daily ins and outs), and reports to help manage those pieces. The other big project that is starting to gain momentum is the usage of the sub invoice types (deliver, normal, backorders, ecomm, etc.). We are seeing a need to further breakdown some of our reports and drill-downs based on sub invoice types. It is amazing to me to see how deep certain things need to go. Subs and subs of subs and so on. Very interesting.

- Cory and I were talking about the piggy back type system that we have developed. One client will pay for one thing and then another will step up (virtually) and say, I'll take that to the next level and will fund that project. Meanwhile, our other clients are benefitting from the constant game of piggy back or standing on the other persons shoulders.

- We talked about existing merchant processing options and how a high-level systems administrator needs to help setup and doing any maintenance on those merchant accounts. We would love to push some of those options out to the 3rd party solutions page and let a corp-level administrator take care of those pieces vs a super-high level systems administrator take care of those pieces. Basically, there is a need to give more power and options to the individual corporations vs keeping it all at higher levels.

- Cory needs me to check in with Alan and Eric on some of their projects. We need to get a tighter loop on the communication, progress, hang-ups, etc. - for those bigger project that they are both working on. We need things to get all the way to the finish line. All part of the process and development cycle.

- Cory is going to be upping our development rates to $150/hour. It is just taking more to get things done and we need to cover the costs of what it really takes to do this. Once again, just part of the game.

After the meeting, I was doing emails, texts, and recording notes.

 
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Shop 8294 Adilas Time 10/11/2021  

Steve, Danny, Sean, John, and I on the morning meeting. Lots of the guys just touching base. There ended up being a light sales flavor to the meeting. They were talking about some sales, uncovering some new sweet spots with small to medium sized businesses. Steve and Sean were talking about an on-site deployment that they did for a company that does nuts and bolts and other industrial supply stuff.

Steve and Sean spent some time rehashing the system setup and possible angles that we could pursue. They were also talking about merchant processing and how some of that flows. We would like to start referring folks to USAePay for ecommerce and full merchant processing, including EMV chip reader stuff. We have used USAePay for well over a decade and would like to possibly be a reseller and/or a rep for them as a merchant processing.

Steve had us check on a database update for backorders and the backorders homepage. We did that and then started talking about sales tax and some growing needs there.

 
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Shop 8232 Internal adilas meeting - part of the June training conference 6/11/2021  

On Friday, June 11th, 2021 we had an internal conference day for just the adilas team. We went from sales to internal code to ideas and plans. All over the place. See attached for my notes. Many great things were discusses. Once again, this was an internal team meeting, but we don't mind sharing what we were talking about. :)

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The attached notes are better formatted, but I wanted to push some of them here for searchability:

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Group Sales Meeting

Marisa, Danny, John, Cory, Sean, Steve, Dustin, Shari O., Dawn, Brendan, Steve (mac), Brandon, Chuck, Alan, Kelly, Bryan

- Kelly was saying that there is some public records per states

- We may try to pull our own list

- Questions... who, what, where, how good, etc.

- Maybe look at a sample of 10

- We may need a more focuses approach

- What about different industries?

- We need to get the name out there

- Kelly was pitching a social presence

- Do we know anybody who wants to do the social stuff

- Word of mouth

- Testimonials

- Some new video graphics

- To the penny, to the gram, every day

- What about small streaming commercials – focused and pointed

- Kelly recommends that we maybe focus on a slightly larger pool

- Dawn – maybe focus on start-ups or that small to medium range

- Get them at the beginning – maybe even tradeshows

- It is a pain in the but to switch over – pain creates options for change

- Focus on services... deployment, oversight, consulting, training, best practices

- How can we deploy something easily and repeatable?

- It is tough to get some of the people started, but once they get all in, they tend to stay

- Kelly has done this over and over again

- Using the professional resources that are available

- From Kelly – Help get the clients all the way in – full system and platform

- Getting the success on the first implementation and then building from there

- What about focusing on those who are having trouble and/or are struggling

- Dawn loves the support, training, and feel good part of it – duplicate that feeling to others

- How quick can we respond – we jump pretty quickly on custom needs, development, training, and support

- Get more testimonials from our clients

- We have some experience to offer to those who want it

- What about pitching best business practices

- It's ok to be non-traditional

- Being Relevant!

- Focus on helping over sales – from Steve (mac)

- Simple things that bring the relevant pieces

- Social webbing – group effort

- Danny, straight up, I don't want to be the social media guy! We have to find the right person and/or persons (small little team)

- We are not QuickBooks... what does that mean? Be our own style!

- Packaging this platform based on the target audience

- Formulating a plan – ease the lift – maybe a monthly meeting with some planning

- Influencers and YouTube options

- Small info tips...

- New age marketing – we have to play to the current market

- Big Dumb Animal Pictures – super simple

- We have to do a cost analysis to see which one(s) make more sense for us

- John, what if we setup our own little social piece (aka maybe the adilas cafe) – we could allow all of our users and power users to pitch and promote – we may need to approve things, but we have tons of very knowledgeable people and users

- We are looking for engagement – back and forth – a relationship – maybe get an intern to help handle this

- Danny – Switching over to the modal message marketing

- How to save the app to your phone

- Make the email piece better

- Small web tool to help with building special html links to embed promotions, direct add to cart, discounts, campaigns, etc. A simple form to help with the backend tech of those URL's and web links.

- Maybe, we need to upgrade our email platform. It is a small holdover from years gone by.

- What about the delay on the outbound emails?

- Marisa – maybe outsource things as needed

- Steve – would like more input on the bulk tools

- Better filtering and target marketing

- Steve wants to work direct with Dawn and Branden

- Matrix and target marketing – even predictive

- Maybe a little itty bitty (super small) native app on the different phones – iOS, Android, etc.

- Steve wants to get into possible predictive marketing

- Steve – looking for great feedback and even ideas and dreams...

- Archiving, saving for later, dismissing, etc. We have the data, what do we want to do with it? – Wet clay...

- Danny – Going back to past clients

- Version 1 vs Version 2 – type attitude

- What kind of clients do we want? We may not want certain kind of clients.

- We love people who like details and are willing to play

- We love people who take things to the fullest level

- We love people who just need a small little piece – there is a gap in their current model and they need some help. We can then grow from there.

- Do a full comparison of what we offer

- Pitch what we do differently – we help deploy and maintain your ERP

- White glove approach

- Playing with the tools that we have and flipping those into marketing messages

- Chuck – maybe check out some groups on Facebook

- Blog posts, articles, info snippets, quick videos

- Talking with Kelly – how have we helped small businesses become bigger or big business – showing the potential – dreams to reality

- The small goals to achieve – steps to get to the next level

- Small goals lead to bigger goals – getting some small successes along the way

- Clients and expectations – not all money is the same – budgeting and planning – what kind of client do we want

- Reoccurring revenue vs one-time revenue

- A quote is just one of many pieces that needs to be done

- People, skills, and cogs in the wheel

- We all care... where would you and your skills fit in best

- Seeing the bigger picture

- Maybe looking at personalities and figuring out the mixing and blending of our options and resources

- Slowing down and taking the time to see where we are at? Virtual time travel – child, youth, adult – as a company

- What's the difference between a goal and dream? A plan!

- The internal group summary that we did... a great start

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Second session - Servers & Infrastructure - Refining Our Processes - Tech Support & Training - Project Management

Steve wants us to show the online label builder

- We had some good talk about where we want to go

- We pointed to our internal summary report

- Steve McNew – helping with the strategic marketing plan, technology road map, timelines to position, plans for action

- Scale – can we grow and can we shrink

- Conversation between big and small – perspective – big and small (sales, number of team members, lines of code, etc.)

- Molly – Is adilas the big guy or the small guy? Think of code (lines of code). We could be considered a big guy if you were looking at code and functionality.

- We like being small (ish), but what if we are big already

- If we want to grow, that means that we want to get better – grow in a good manner and sustainable manner

- The underlying services that support the whole

- Be your own style!

- Steve McNew – old classmate with Steve Berkenkotter – guest speaker – part of the adilas team to help us get some things more standardized – processes and procedures

- Defense contractor for the military – 28 years

- Testing, software, management, auditor

- He has already called, interviewed, and talked with a number of different team members

- He did a 20 page audit and report on what he was seeing

- Getting into some testing and processes – he would like to see more of this

- Not trying to derail the train – we are trying to polish the Ferrari (spelling – awesome car)

- Whitepapers – catering to a higher audience – going beyond stick figures and into technical docs – not everybody will want to read some of these, but there will be some that require it

- Steve B – if we try to sell our product to those who can't afford it, it doesn't really work. They have to be able to pay for what we do (really do – billing for our time and efforts)

- Fin-tech – financial technology

- Using whitepapers as part of our marketing plan

- John M – unit testing – confidence of the developer team – currently only Wayne and Alan are doing this (unit testing)

- Going to ease into this – refining our testing plan

- Version control and when do we update these systems? The older way was wild west... we may want to figure out some specific micro builds.

- It would be nice to keep track of the versions and options.

- The balance between core and custom development

- The application needs some spring cleaning – what is being used, what isn't, what is going slow, etc. – Refactoring

- Priorities – customer priorities or our internal priorities – what is the mix and blend of these pieces

- We all ware many hats... we may need to define that so that we don't overstretch ourselves

- We all use (and can use) the system in different ways – how do we translate that information to our clients, other developers, and other team members (upstream and downstream)

- 2 minute videos – no more

- Work instructions – even giving it to someone who has never done anything in the system

- Danny – Shoutout to Steve and Brandon – we have done great – what is coming next? Resources?

- Talks about earn and burn ratios

- Prices have to match the services

- We are a growing business

- Kelly – going from 1.5 to 10 (millions) – that is a huge change

- We are competing with companies that are hugely funded... what do we want to do?

- There are some real things in our path – there is tons of potential – what do we want to do with it – also, sometimes there is shelf life on potential or advantages

- We don't want debt – however, there is a time for debt – cost analysis and being smart about it

- Making choices, but also being willing to fail

- Marisa – look at our new website

- Steve – there are some percentages of adilas that are available – not looking for vulture capital (just being silly – vulture vs venture)

- Someone looking to take on some risk but helping us to get to the next level, without taking over the company

- Kelly – pitching our vision and business plan – we have to define the vision – Danny seconded the define the vision before looking for the funding – goals, sales, budgeting, maintenance, and getting a business plan.

- Adilas Trust option – co-founders

- Possible option – Maybe take some of IP (intellectual property) and sell that to a new entity and then restructure those new pieces

- Dustin – thoughts on corporate structure – we are all on our own little islands – Ferrari to a tricycle – frontend compared to backend – splitting up those pieces and functions – he wishes that we could be more collaborated.

- John – teams and buddy projects – small sub teams – full stack (all levels) vs specific skills or somewhat limited skills – this needs to be part of our plan.

- Sean – we already have some small teams that are working on some of these projects – cogs of the wheel – buddy tagging the workflow and processes

- John – the adilas docs project – and being able to go to it and also add to it – working on standardizing the pieces – filling in the gaps

- Danny – Navy Seals – two is one, and one is none – at least two on a project – two-by-two

- Kelly – scale – having a back-up

- Danny – accountability back and forth

- John – confidence levels

- Kelly – what about a succession plan?

- John and Dustin – real life buddies and how they help out each other – seeing a different angle or perspective

- Marisa – tooooooooo much weight gets put on single persons

- Kelly – relieving pressure and helping with scale

- Marisa – Cory, Kelly, and Marisa – wonderful training slides, presentation, and delivery for the conference. Awesome job!

- Alan – modularize things – able to be reused – code concepts can relate to business functions – one to many relationships – translating knowledge into real life and different scenarios

- Chuck – last summer Chuck was on a joint project with he, Russell, and a different John. It worked out awesome – Keep pushing towards that kind of rollout of the project

- Molly – thinking and coming up with ideas. Keep it going!

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Next Session - Deployment & Oversight - Design & Layout - Internal Core Development - Custom Development 

- Deployment – where are we going and how can we make this all work – team effort

- Shari O. – first touch and setup corp, Sean and Shay first hour or so, Sean helping to coordinate the next steps and pieces

- Sean does a great job of reporting back

- Report on things, record the notes, get back with us to help us keep pushing

- Doing great with testing and prototyping

- Kelly – who is on settings, who is on planning, maybe even looking at pre-deployment options

- Before Kelly even does a demo, do some consultation – figure some things out without doing any pitching or selling. This is called listening.

- What are you looking for, wanting, expecting, hoping for?

- Make the demos custom to the pain points or key wants and needs

- The prep work is huge to help them be successful

- This platform is not a turn on and go type system – there may be pre demo, consulting, custom planning and demo, then custom hand holding to get them going down the road

- Picking the point of contact... who is going to own this thing?

- Owners, managers, and users

- Users want the easy button – Steve calls this the tail wagging the dog vs the dog wagging the tail – what is and how can we get buy in?

- Tools are great, but solutions to problems and pain points are even better

- Give to get! If you give too much, it can get you into trouble.

- What is the cost to fixing things... on the other hand, failing does help with major learning – there has to be a balance

- We tend to remember pain – setting people up for success

- Often users are looking for a quick switch. This system takes work. Please sell it that way.

- Not going to custom too quickly – learning the manual way – then automating it

- User buy in – light pain and then helping them learn a better way

- Change proposals and scope of work – setting up boundaries

- Feature creep – setting that scope of work – cause and effect of what they want and what they give – expectations and timelines

- Sometimes I start with NO – interesting

- A saying no - sandwich... Yes, I'd like to, no, I can't. Yes, I would love to help do this... - people think that no is a bad word

- Having a plan to say yes, vs just saying yes

- We like to please people – that is awesome – what does that cost?

- Help make the plan to say yes. Maybe, no (first), however we could do this...

- Making things repeatable

- What are the internal costs to do deployment?

- Say $350 for a setup fee – does that cover it? If yes, great. If no, where does that put us?

- Maybe on the setup, prep, an activation fee (define this – turning on the lights), setup and deployment fee (range), training, custom code, imports, labels, etc.

- We like to cater to everyone – that had bitten us

- Actual prices and then use discounts if needed. You can't really ever raise a price after the fact.

- Back-up our prices

- Use adilas to run adilas!!! This is our communication tool, let's use it.

- We are good at the dreaming and software building part of things, we need some major loving on the service side

- There is demand!

- What pulls at our time - It is time, money, skills, etc.

- Kelly – earn has to be more than burn

- Flipping the demand to sales or services that could be provided

- MVP – minimal viable product, plan, player, etc.

- Intangibles

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Next Session – Show and tell! What are you working on?

Calvin – Advanced file and folder finder, resize images, convert images

Brandon – harvesting assets from element of time

Steve – parent attributes report, items not on a recipe (manufacturing), modal message marketing for customers, log notes for vendors and employees (payee/vendor logs), backorders homepage, mini units, auto add item (quick PO behind the scenes), bulk update on the vendor – master copy paster... :)

- Branch 122 – fun

Bryan – cfqueryparams – stop SQL XSS (database hacks – cross site scripting)  - SQL injection – converting from dynamic queries to secure dynamic queries - Example: Corp_id = #Trim(some form or URL var)# or Corp_id = <cfqueryparam etc, etc,> - this stops the SQL hacks

Bryan is also working on eChecks for eXPO, Hypur checkout in the shopping cart (eComm), new API's for delivery (with documentation and samples)

John – Payroll project to allow holiday date picking, timecard flags, timecard totals (pre summing the math to go faster and lead towards bulk payroll), new timecard reports showing grouped sums and totals.

Page templates and style guide defaults with Chuck – Going from old school tables and links to the newer grid and mobile ready code. Part of the adilas docs project. Build once, use many (effective copy and paste). Basic templates (3 new ones). New information icons and popups (modals). Style guides and usage of those pieces.

Servers with Wayne

Chuck – Huge new web site!!! Awesome Job!!!

Global Design Dashboard, adilas docs, and new presentation gallery (sales tool).

Danny – message marketing, custom labels, sales team meetings – hats off to all of us! Keep listening and keep finding solutions. Open table – follow your highest excitement and be yourself! Be happy!

Alan – enterprise level catalogs, refactoring code (custom page settings), standardizing code for speed and reliability.

Random comments – Cory really liked having access to all of the team members, right here at the conference. Marisa – great to meet everyone – keep floating the boat. Sean – he likes the team. Molly – loved watching and wants to be involved. Chuck – idea of everyone joining slack

 
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Shop 7747 Developer weekly update 5/19/2021  

Weekly meeting with Alan to go over projects and code stuff. Both Cory and Sean joined us on our meeting today. We started out with Alan reporting on his current projects and findings. He was working on a page and did a search and found a number of other similar pieces (say 500 ish). He is currently refactoring that part of the application and going to be replacing code so that it runs more efficiently. The code happens to be dealing with custom page settings. We use these custom settings to store both corporation specific settings as well as user defined settings for different pages and sections. We gave him the go ahead to do a little bit of maintenance and refactoring - prepping for the future. Maintenance sometimes isn't that fun, but it plays a key role in the life cycle of a system.

The last half of the meeting was turned over to Sean to show Alan, Cory, and I some of the new stuff that he and Steve have been working on. We logged into a client's site and Sean gave us a great demo and tour of the orders homepage, backorders, fulfilling orders, training amounts requested, remaining, filled, etc. Steve and Sean have been busy. Here are some other notes from the meeting.

- As new features are developed and released, we need to make sure that everybody knows about them - sometimes distributing that information is a big challenge.

- We build special quotes without having real inventory to back them up... Then as the real inventory comes in, we distribute and fill the correct orders. This is a whole new section of the application and Steve and Sean are out there pioneering things.

- The quotes just hold parent items or parent placeholders. Then as the invoices are created, the real parent/child relationships get put in place on the outbound invoices.

- The orders and backorders homepage has three main ways of viewing and sorting the data. It may be vied by quote (order), by item (what orders want what), or by customer (what other things are they still waiting for). Pretty cool!

- Lots of great demos and showing us flow, approval processes, pagination (next page of n), drill-down and filtering options.

- We are gaining some good traction by getting a client who wants something, doing some planning, putting a MVP (minimal viable product) out there, beating it up and refining it - with some hand holding, and then officially releasing it to the public as a new feature. Nice little process.

- Sean also went into some new pages and sections for mini units. This is serialized units that are within the realm of parent/child inventory. The parent is the primary placeholder. The sub inventory or child inventory are the new batches or packages. Then within the new batches or packages, the individual mini unit data is help and recorded. It also shows usage on where it came in, where it went out, etc. (PO's and invoices). The whole process has a tons of great new features.

- Lots of talk about relationships and one-to-one, one-to-many, and one-to-many-to-many. It can get deep, but sometimes that is needed. We play in bulk where possible and then record individual data (and maybe even hide it unless asked for). It makes it look simple, but the whole story is really all there, just nested and/or strategically buried or hidden.

- We spent a bit of time talking about the pains of trying to keep multiple sets of records and juggling multiple systems. We are trying to relieve this burden, but sometimes the transition process is difficult. We have found that clients are so busy, they almost always need a person or small team to help them transition and get the training that they need. Without this, they end up failing on the transitions (switching over).

- Sean did a great job. I was impressed with his demo and knowledge of the system. I can see him doing more and more of that type of thing. He gets in there and spends the time to learn things (tips, tricks, etc.). That makes a difference.

- The value of real live data and real live work flow testing. You have to have a client who will play along, but you gain a ton from that tight of an interaction and/or relationship.

 
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Shop 7705 Adilas Time 5/18/2021  

When I joined the meeting today, Steve and Danny were going over some plans and talking about things. After that, both Steve and I helped Danny get some info on pulling in customer logs into his ecommerce pages. This will help him out with his message marketing project that he and Steve are working on.

After that, Sean and I looked into some possible math errors on the orders homepage (page for orders, fulfillment, and back orders). We made a couple small tweaks and pushed up new files. Worked on emails and other small to do list stuff.

 
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Shop 7699 Adilas Time 5/17/2021  

Monday morning. Merged in some new label changes for Danny and a client on data 17. Looked into some math calcs for the orders and backorders homepage. Made a few changes for Sean and Steve and pushed up files. We did some live debugging and testing. Found a small update statement that was not corporation specific, but should have been. Made the changes and pushed up new files. The update was dealing with a column called sub invoice type (fairly new feature) so it didn't effect that many quotes.

 
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Shop 7502 Adilas Time 4/6/2021  

Started out with some questions on the discount engine. Then Steve and I had a work session on his backorders and fulfillment pages. John had a few questions about the payroll and holiday chooser project. Started talking with Wayne about the new web site and plans there. Mostly random questions and mini work sessions this morning.

 
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Shop 7661 Working with Steve 4/5/2021  

Working with Steve on the backorders homepage. We were working more on logic and flow. This is a section to turn a quote into one or more invoices to help with fulfillment and backorders.

 
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Shop 7658 SAR USA Backorders 4/5/2021  

Steve and I had a work session dealing with the backorders homepage stuff. This is a process where we take a quote and convert it into as many invoices as needed in order to do fulfillment. Clear out to subs and keeping track of what is still out and what has already been fulfilled. Today we were working on more dynamics, loops, validation, and tying things together. Making progress.

 
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Shop 7654 Review of Back Orders 4/1/2021  

Steve reported on a meeting that he had with a payment kiosk company. They were talking about both accepting payments and even doing possible pay outs (monies going out based on approved expenses). That could be pretty cool.

After that, Steve and I did a work session and did some review of adding sub inventory to the back order process. We worked our way through a checklist and actually doing the coding to go along with our hypothetical path (our prior mapping of the logic). Fun session.

 
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Shop 7487 Adilas Time 3/31/2021  

Working with Steve on the backorders homepage. This is taking a quote and slowly (depending on how quick things can be fulfilled) into an invoice or into multiple invoices (depending). We looked at some of his existing code and worked on a plan to improve some efficiency on how things were completed. Lots of fun logic mapping and simple text instructions that he can then translate into actual code (guides or directions).

 
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Shop 7213 Working with Steve 12/10/2020  

On a meeting with Steve. Spencer popped in a couple of times to show us some progress on the barcode labels. Steve and I were working on some code for his orders homepage (filling backorders and what not). We talked sales, developers, and other team members. We are really trying to move more into a focus of "supported by team adilas" vs our older pure independent model. Time and season, but things are changing. We are trying to become more of a team and play better internally with our own dependables vs always reaching outside. We started that way, independent model, but we are now seeing that won't work for our current levels. Constantly learning.

 
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Shop 7122 Adilas Time 12/8/2020  

Working with Steve on some code for his orders and back orders homepage. We were working with multi-dimensional arrays and complex data structures. Only Steve and I were on the meeting today. As we worked, we also chatted about a bunch of different things. We also looked over a flyer that Marisa worked up as a double-sided mailer or postcard flyer. The new postcard flyer has a bunch of pictures of the blue dog - Adilas - the mascot or avatar for adilas.biz. See attached. We also talked about some sales options and the timing on those efforts. We are excited to help our team go to the next level.

 
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Shop 7029 Adilas Time 12/3/2020  

Steve was on with a bunch of the other guys when I joined. They were talking about some new web pages that Chuck had done and playing with them on their phones (custom wire jobs). Steve wanted some help with his orders homepage (dealing with quotes being converted into one or more invoices to handle back orders). We looked at some code and worked on some changes. Wayne popped in just before 9:30.

 
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Shop 7028 Adilas Time 11/9/2020  

Morning meeting and Sean, Steve, John M, Eric, and I were on there. Steve and Eric were going over Metrc issues and talking about database inserts and checking for duplicate records with the Metrc integrations. We then switched gears and started talking about other projects. Sean and Steve were talking about order of operations and needs out in mini unit land (a mini unit is a cross between a part/item and a stock/unit - sell in bulk but track by serial number). Anyways, they are working on a section that deals with orders, backorders, and being able to sell in bulk but still track all of the sub details. We ended up talking about options to flag quotes, orders, and even possible steps and/or phases. Some of the questions where dealing with how to track and manage some of those pieces.

As we got deeper and deeper, we started talking about progression and how we use different tools at different phases of a project. The first tool we use is our minds and head, if we run out of space or the project gets too complicated, we switch and go with paper and pencil, word processing documents, spreadsheets, databases, and software type packages. There is a progression. We usually need the next step as things get more involved and complicated.

This conversion, about progression and what tools to use, lead to a topic of mind mapping, flow charts, use cases, and recording other possible scenarios. If you only have 1 basic path, you may not need this kind of a tool. As it gets more complex, you need better and better tools to help you dive deeper and remember things and also make sure that certain key pieces get included. Good conversation.

 
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Shop 6977 Brandon and Cory short video for flash to html 11/3/2020  

This meeting didn't happen. Cory and I were going to record a video for my cart favorites and the flash buttons. Instead, Sean, Steve, and Cory were talking about sales and the needs to be able to sell in bulk, including items that are not yet in inventory, and still keeping the inventory tight and manageable. That is a challenge. Steve was showing Cory and Sean a demo on his orders homepage (orders is another word or alias for quotes).

If you think of quotes, you may get hung up on the name. If you think of it as a tool and are able to name it whatever... it becomes more clear what is going on. Basically, they have clients who are requesting products and inventory. They want to keep track of the orders and/or virtual requests but don't want them (the orders) to affect inventory until they are ready to be shipped and sent out. There are also all kinds of backorder type needs. A quote, or a non inventory invoice of sorts, is the perfect tool. It just needs a little tweaking and it could be the order process. We could then track the fulfillment of those orders as they become real invoices.

Currently, one quote can have one invoice as a built-in relationship. We are seeing the need to expand and/or extend that relationship from a one-to-one to a one-to-many, meaning one order (quote) could be filled with multiple invoices. The difference between what is ordered and what is fulfilled, becomes the backorders or what is still wanted.

As part of our conversation, we also talked briefly about a possible elevator pitch for sales and marketing. Here is the brief pitch - High-end software as a service (SaaS). Anything dealing with operations and accounting. We use a standard product and then allow for custom on top of that. Click here to see more info on the elevator pitch (30 second intro into adilas.biz).

https://data0.adilas.biz/top_secret/time_web_gallery.cfm?corp=748&id=7089 - elevator pitch for adilas - ideas and concepts

 
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Shop 6878 Adilas Time 10/27/2020  

Steve asked me to run some of the mini units ideas and options by Danny, as he missed out on our conversation the other day. We did lots of drawing, scenarios, and even some typing of what we were hoping to accomplish. Nice little brainstorming and planning session. This is kinda funny, but I was pitching the ideas on mini units like it was my current project. I kept defending certain ideas and concepts, yet nobody was defending an alternate point of view. I don't know why, but I felt like I was trying to pitch something that was being opposed and/or had a conflict. It turned out fine, just not sure why I was so motivated to get the ideas and concepts across. Kinda funny.

We ended up going into options for the mini units and how they could be tied into packages of packages (cases, boxes, crates, etc.), media/content options (specific paperwork per mini unit), and tons of options on flow for how those mini units would flow through the processes (data assembly line and flex bubble stuff). This ended up sending us on a tangent to talk about the order, invoice, fulfillment, and shipping processes. Lots of ideas about bringing things in, tracking and recording inventory, selling items internally, and also selling items externally or through ecommerce. Certain places have subs, sub processes, data entry, uploading documentation, gathering other info, etc. Each side of that story (receiving, stocking, selling, shipping, etc.) all have different needs dealing with the same mini unit or serialized items. Very interesting.

We got into what some of the reports may look like, how to find and filter the records, we also talked about bulk ways to look and match-up those extra details (serial numbers per mini unit). We got into 1-to-many-to-many-to-many relationships. It got kinda deep in places. Build what is needed to track it all the way through. Very interesting.

Steve and Sean were also talking about tracking backorders and using quotes (orders), invoices, and monitoring the fulfillment of those orders. We got into concepts of joiner tables out in database land. A joiner table is a table that creates relationships between different objects. The subject for this meeting was quotes, quote line items (aka the order), and how those were fulfilled on one or more invoices, and invoice line items. We talked about ways of using a joiner table to monitor those relationships and fulfillment needs.

Good meeting, lots of concepts, pitching, planning, and drawing.

 
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Shop 4042 Adilas Time 10/8/2018  

Alan popped in and showed us all some demos on the new invoice homepage (with graphics and charts and summarized data). A couple of us saw a demo last week. Everybody else was just seeing it for the first time. We then went into a discussion on permissions and setting those per user per session. Alan was showing us some new functions and working with database access objects (DAO's). Great demo and discussion.

Wayne popped in and reported on his database migration project. He took some time and explained some of his process and also told us about some lessons learned. He spent some time talking about unit testing and doing test based or test driven design. Good stuff.

Steve and I briefly talked about Calvin and the adilas label builder. We talked about rounds, versions, and where it still needs to go. We are all on board and headed forward. It is fun to see all of the projects that are coming down the pipeline.

We have some other clients that have requested some backorder and shipping pieces. They submitted some specs and requests over the weekend. We will be looking into that project and breaking it into smaller pieces and seeing who we can get on the projects and who will help fund what parts of it. Later on in the session, I started looking through the email and attachments that they sent us. As I got deeper into this project, there may be some pieces that we could do internally (all adilas clients need) and other pieces that are fully custom. I put the ball back in their court and gave them some contact info for a couple of the developers. I also tried to lightly let them know where I could play without charging them. If it goes beyond that, I would have to charge as well. Basically, I will help my guys and do some initial stuff to get things going for free. If it goes deeper than that, I'll have to charge them as well.

 
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Shop 4032 Adilas Time 10/3/2018  

Our product is kind like open source software only more of an open community software package (anybody could contribute and/or ask for something). They can't go in and make changes on their own, but they can help push things forward based off of input and seed monies. Either way, it takes time you have to pay someone to do that tweaking and/or changing.

As a side note, we are seeing more and more of a need for deeper and deeper ordering, backordering, fulfillment, shipping, manufacturing, sub routines, supply chain stuff, just in time stuff, and other operation based activities. We already have a number of those pieces, we just want to get them more built out and automated. I would really like to see some of this going into elements of time (mixing date/time values where needed) and also more of the data assembly line type methodology. Those would be my wishes.

Alan popped in and showed us some progress on his charts and graphs for some of the new homepages. I think that they will really help with some much needed look and feel for some of those primary homepages (invoices, PO's, deposits, and expense/receipts).

I went in and fixed a small validation bug and the started to work on a new joint venture non disclosure and non compete form with and for Full Circle Interactive Media.

Josh popped in and gave us a report on some things. Some of the report was dealing with a deeper need to mix and blend date and time options for discounts and being able to set things up with easy interfaces and yet be super powerful. Another part of Josh's report was dealing with education and getting clients setup correctly. Basically, there are so many settings that no one really goes in there and plays around with them. Also, another comment was that some of the settings and options were not related to their industry. They saw things like religious tax categories, stock/unit (vehicle and trailer stuff), and other non industry options. Our model is very open, but sometimes that creates a feeling that we don't fully know their business.

- Discount pricing engine and maybe even special my cart favorite buttons that are discount specific. This could be all kinds of stuff. We have also had some other requests on limiting discounting and even allowing or not allowing standalone discounts. It would also be super cool if you could duplicate discounts, clone things, and build off of existing items. Having bulk tools to help where needed.

- Here is some other research on discounts, pricing engines, and my cart favorite buttons, etc. I would like to go in this direction... https://data0.adilas.biz/top_secret/time_web_gallery.cfm?corp=748&id=3666 - you could also search the developer's notebook for pricing engine, discount, or my cart favorite buttons.

- Being able to create new items based off of existing

- Being able to do global settings for different industries... basically, set up a new corp, then be ale to click special setup buttons to update and change settings in bulk. We could have multiple sub options that may be clicked. As a side note, we could also program certain themes (actual folders) and use black box technology to virtually show/hide certain buttons, fields, features, settings, etc.

- Color coding for items going low or needing to be reordered - great idea

- Room based inventory vs a location based inventory (sub levels and sub locations)

- Limiting access to all other areas and/or rooms (once again sub levels and sub locations based on permissions)

- Being able to duplicate items and PO's even quicker. Basically, a save as type option to duplicate an item. Kinda like cloning an item or starting from a known point based off of other items. Make it quick and easy based off of existing items.

- Where is all of the data located? We have tons of great data but all of our data is on specific pages and requires a page to page progression (normal web flow). Some of the other systems are starting to pull multiple data pieces into the same page (ajax and jquery stuff). Basically, putting everything on one page or a one-pager type dashboard and/or interface.

- We have had clients who want us to auto close sub packages. This may be accomplished with settings and rules. Not everybody wants the same things. That takes us into settings and such.

- What about an off line mode? When no Internet is available? What about a local instance that could be synced up later on? This is bigger than you think... If you were to go this route, this may need to be a hybrid type solution where we mix localized software, some kind of queue type system (grabbing and holding the data), and then the ability to sync up the data later on. Alan was talking about a potential risk mitigation process and the need to have companies have other plans in place incase a disaster occurs. Both Josh and Alan were talking about possible news and updates that show options such as MS Excel, setting up a hot spot based off a phone, local software options, good old paper and pencil mode. Idea from Josh - What about a local label maker... that could really help as well (small and limited scope).

- Questions on multiple location pricing. What are the price points and price breaks? This got into a small discussion on what a white label or other entity charges.

- Let's keep working on making it pretty and simple and powerful. If you could mix these things, that makes it awesome.

- People want to set it and forget it... a one time wonder or single setup.

- People want the big dumb animal pictures... super simple.

- Once you become super familiar with something... it gets hard to let that go.

- Training a client to be proficient in all areas is really tough... it comes down to training and maintenance. Keep making things easier and easier.

- We might need to make the tips and tricks and news and updates easier to get to... if people want that stuff.

We gave Josh a task of getting out some pens and paper and sketching out interface ideas and going through the discount needs. We recommended that he use the pyramid (triangle) type approach. This would be starting at the top level (corp-wide settings), then go down to groups (customer types and part categories), then go down to tiers and/or buttons (smaller groups with rules and assignments), and then clear down to the item level. We also need to take into account both includes and excludes.

 
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Shop 4033 Adilas Time 10/2/2018  

Steve and I met this morning and had a good meeting. It was just the two of us. So, we ended up talking shop and strategy. We talked about some of our internal pain points and how we could get someone to help us out with those things. One of the pain points was with merchant processing solutions. We have coded to a number of Internet gateways, and that is working fine.

We have two major needs on the merchant processing level...

1. Is on the chip reader side. We have two gateways that we have coded to, but it takes a person to get people setup and going on that (light babysitting). Those solutions require both web API socket stuff and software installed on a computer. If the company updates their software, we have to recertify and no one wants to pay for that. So far, those solutions have been somewhat of a headache.

2. We need a simple Internet solution where a new merchant could be approved very easily and then they are off to the races. Currently, the Authorize.net's and USAePay (our top two gateways) have pretty deep prerequisites that the merchants have to go through in order to be setup and qualify. As they grow and mature, they may need to go to a bigger processor, but we need a really simple solution to get people started fairly quickly. We are thinking that Stripe might be the best option and/or looking deeper into PayPal or something like that. I personally am leaning more towards Stripe.

We also talked about some other internal needs and who we could put on what projects. Some of the other needs are things like:

- User guides

- How to's

- News and updates (this is biggie for us)

- Billboard sites (world building, roll call accounting, data assembly line, and others)

- Tons of other mini projects that come up

- Build out the full Adilas API sockets and the underlying documentation to make that happen. That is a huge piece of the puzzle.

We would really like to have some focused project management on both internal projects and client projects.

---------------

11:00 to 12:00 pm - Meeting with Global Design and Assembly - orders and backorders

- Not duplicating orders when something gets back ordered. They would love to enter things once and have it flow through.

- They would like a definitive answer of prices and timelines to make that happen.

- They import products and the resell those items. Lots of shipping and fulfilling of orders.

- They would like to go more paperless in the backend office (what is needed, what is ready, what has been shipped, etc.) - Currently, they are doing a lot of paper back and forth. They would like to eliminate the paper model.

- Steve, talking about a transitional PO (similar to a transitional invoice - between a quote and an invoice). This would be used for the on order/not quite inventory yet but maybe we are already making payments, etc. Steve was saying that Will Hudson (adilas developer) was going to be working on the transitional PO project. Basically, a work in progress type PO... it isn't fully valid inventory yet, but it is becoming more and more solid values.

- Jason, I think you guys would have a lot of clients who would like for a more automated backorder process.

- Steve, was talking about the existing manual process of duplicating the original PO and only pushing the backordered items forward. You don't have to build it from scratch, but you duplicate and keep pushing the ball forward. The other side to this, is you only pay for what you really get and have.

- Jason, would really like that process to happen (like magic) so that the whole story is still there but it flows through the whole system.

- Example: Say we ordered 500, you only got 300. What comes next? Do you have a small box that says, move 200 to backorder (aka a new PO) or what other options might be there.

- Small talks about ice-down dates

- On a technical side... how you do you keep cost of goods, inventory, accounts payable, and what is received and what is not received? Some of the questions go clear out to the balance sheet and how to track things.

- Just in time ordering and smaller draws... Say they need 500 total, but only want 100 now and another 100 by next week and then rest when possible. Just in time issues and some tracking nightmares.

- Technically, we may need another couple fields where we could put desired amount, shipped amounts, and backordered amounts.

- There is more of a need for time based ordering - just as, I need this on this date, and that on this other date... Basically, tying things into more of a time or schedule based environment.

- On the just in time... If someone wants 500 and you only have 200, how do you put it on the order? Do you put the whole 500 on there (this would drop your inventory by -200) or do you just do the 200, out the door, and then put the other 300 on another PO/invoice. Basically items still needed to be bought, purchased, and/or shipped.

- Warehousing and stocking shelves - excess inventory and back stock

- ecommerce type scenarios where orders are processed and managed as part of a supply chain scenario.

- Steve, was talking about companies that are proactively pulling sales from the other companies and then keeping a supply chain up and ready based on max/min re-ordering options. Once they (the other company) gets to certain level, a new order is always processed.

- here is a link for some of the older back order or backorder brainstorming from the developer's notebook.

https://data0.adilas.biz/top_secret/developers_notebook_home.cfm?q=back%20order%2Bbackorder

- Steve, was talking about the new plant move and harvesting options that they are building out. It used to be one manual process at a time. Now, they can click a button and move, kill, phase, or group hundreds and hundreds of plants at a time. The whole things was custom built and automated through elements of time, PO's, and parent/child inventory. Totally a new automated process.

- Jason, we only want what really happens to be recorded, but we don't want to lose the other details of the story.

- Brandi, we already have some custom code that helps us see what we have on hand, what has been placed on new orders, and what is still needed (don't have that yet)

- Brandi, we currently have to make a sales order, fulfill it to the level that is true, and then duplicate it and redo what is still needed. This is the current manual process. She would really love to automate that manual process and take out the possible human error (either multiple clicks and/or info that was forgotten).

- Backorders play on both sides of the fence... inbound items and outbound items... Both sides need a standard and automated flow process.

- Steve, was recommending that we see their existing processes and then make a plan.

- Brandon, we somewhat proposed a system that uses a request quantity (what is wanted), actual quantity (real values), and still needed values (backorders and/or wish list). We talked about having and showing all the fields and allowing JavaScript to help do the math, show/hide checkboxes to help automate the duplication process and pushing the virtual backorder and/or wish list forward. We would then keep chaining and flex gridding those pieces together. Basically, the same things that they are doing manually right now, but we speed it up and help to automate it.

- Steve, he loves clients who ask - Can we move this tree? I keep having to walk around it. While other clients just quietly walk around the tree every day. Sometimes those clients who ask the questions really help us move the ball forward.

- Steve, software and application are constantly changing.

- Jason, really likes to look at "scale". Can I do this? Can I do this for x number? Can I double or triple that and still be ok? Can I multiple by n (unknown number)? It all comes to scale.

- Jason, they have really used tons and tons of flex grid... It is now getting to the level where it is getting to be somewhat of a nightmare, due to the number of custom fields and where it is stored.

- Jason, process sequencing - what data (total) do we need to catch and then push to where it goes. First catch the data. Then we can display it, however we want to.

- Jason, he likes farming (talking about idea farming). But, he really like to harvest (seeing it through).

- Jason, will send up some docs on what they want done. We (adilas) will then help plan it out and get them some quotes and what not.

- Dream it up, and we'll help you wire it up.

 
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Shop 3108 Adilas Time 10/25/2017   On the morning GoToMeeting session with Steve. We started out and I asked Steve for some advice on what he would do for a wholesale manufacturing facility. I have a big custom project that I am trying to plan out and design some flow and processes. He had tons of great ideas dealing with flow processes and I was scratching them down on paper as fast as I could. Some of these are random notes, but it should get the idea across.

- Create a recipe with all of the top selling items. Have each item listed at a zero quantity. You could also do the same thing on the advanced grid for my cart favorites. You get a similar outcome. Then use either the recipe/build or the smart group buttons to get a quick entry form for your top selling items.

- You could also create a quote with a quantity of 1 for all items. You could then restore the quote and change quantities as needed. As a side note, quotes with a quantity of 0 will not work due to the cart code. The recipe/build and/or the advanced grid on the my cart favorite buttons do allows zeros.

- Once you start getting a client's history, they will most likely buy the same or similar things over and over again. It saves tons of time if you take an old quote or old invoice and restore it to the cart. You tweak and change quantities and add or subtract as needed. It helps you know their patterns and saves tons of time. This is a great level to start helping your clients.

- Once you get approval on the quote, flip it to a transitional or work in progress (WIP) invoice. This becomes your virtual work orders or what is needed. If needed, we could improve some of the search options and even add some flags to help with flow and what not.

- Steve was saying that when they do some of their ordering... the companies use generic items and put out the request to multiple companies. Then, later on, they make normal PO's to bring things in.

- When the invoices are shipped and filled, they flip it out of the transitional state (WIP state) into a normal customer invoice. This process already exists and maybe we could enhance it and make it smoother as well.

- Steve started talking about how each customer ends up making a three point triangle of sorts. This was the theory. Each triangle was different just as each customer/client is different. The three different legs of the triangle were: 1. Getting and setting up the client. This is usually the longest leg. This is onboarding the client and getting them to make the first order. 2. The second leg was getting them the actual products and services. Depending, this could be shorter or longer based on needs and availability. 3. The third leg was maintenance and retention of that customer. This includes communicating, offering additional pieces, and building customer loyalty. Basically, keeping the customer a customer and making them happy. Every business needs to apply some of these same things to keep a healthy customer base. The goal is to keep shrinking the triangle as you work with your customers and clients. Good stuff.

- One of the things that helps the most is a good ordering process. This could be ecommerce, internal shopping carts, custom carts, custom interfaces, recipe/builds, groupings, kitting, buttons, etc.

- We talked about new technologies like predictive text for searching, tabs, cards, drop-downs, graphs and charts, and easy to use navigation and buttons.

- We then talked about back orders and how Steve wants to totally re-write the back order process. Currently, most companies make one giant invoice or order and then try to fill it as they can. This creates a nightmare for inventory, receivables, payables, and other accounting problems. Steve would like us to go in the direction that we sell what we have, we bill for what we sell, and we make a second order with the other pieces. That order gets put in the transitional invoices or work in progress invoices and we chip away at it. If needed, we split that order up and bill for what is delivered. It helps us track our inventory better, we collect on what was really shipped, and it helps the person receiving it to keep their inventories better. Along with this, we may need some tools to help split things, monitor progress, do some sub locations, sub phases, and track virtual checkpoints and pods. Keep it real vs trying to put everything in one spot and then have it break from there. Steve would rather link, join, and tie-in multiple pieces to make a whole vs forcing everything under one roof. It is still all there, it just allows for more flexibility and monies are able to cross lines faster. Some great ideas. We could even detail this out more as we go.

- We talked about chaining and moving inventory forward. This helps to track normal flow plus solves the back order issue. Basically, I've got this, I'll send you this, you still need this. Keep pushing the other items to the next invoice (splitting up the invoices) and still maintain a chain and/or connection.

- If we do a back order, we back order a parent item. We then flip that to a child item or mini conversion as they come in and go out. The main back order only holds the parent item or a reference to the main item that is needed.

- Steve showed me a page that he and Russell are working on. It is his campground reservation homepage. He is using the new snow owl theme to show tabs, cards, and show/hiding pieces to create a one-page interface. The web link is: top_secret/secure/campground_reservations_home.cfm. You do have to have the snow owl theme to use that page.

- We talked about what options Russell could bring to our meeting. Russell brings easy and pretty. He is good at researching ideas and templates to show the ideas and concepts. He has hours and hours of looking at templates and thinking about how we could use similar type features. He then uses those ideas instead of trying to build them on his own. A great resource.

- We then talked about maybe having them start with ecommerce and let that be the ordering process. We also talked about how sometimes it is harder to do 1 or 2 steps up as compared to going 4 to 6 steps up and getting the flow correct. It kinda depends on the goals.

- We then talked more about how the online ordering and ecommerce solutions are changing the face of the land on which we live. The shopping cart is one your primary tools. That is huge. We also talked more about mobile and helping users and customers gain access through faster logins and such.

- We talked about emails and communications, no more batches, doing real-time data and transactions as they happen, cash flow and how even daily cash flow could really help speed things up. We talked about using technology to your advantage and how automation of certain tasks can really help. Lot of talk about just in time and how that effects things.

- The last concept we ended up talking about was ways of paying commissions and just in time deposits using ACH transactions for our reps and developers. The quicker we could get that money flowing out and into the right spots, it is like a watering system vs. flash flooding. It just helps things to keep going better. Lubing the system.

After we were done talking, we worked with Alan and Calvin on some of their projects. I then spent some time backing up files and trying to make the bitbucket repository (code bank) smaller.
 
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Shop 1172 Quoting 5/17/2016   Meeting with Shannon and Dave to do quotes. We went over the need to help standardize the training, setup, and consultants for adilas. If a company doesn't get a good consultant, they tend to fail or not do so good. We really need to standardize the onboarding process or orient new customers to expectations and helping them get setup for success.

We then spent the rest of the time on a quote for A Touch of Style out of Texas. They sell handbags, jewelry, and other items. They were wanting some options for searchable backorder pieces and data collection. We listed out a number of ideas and had a good talk about the complexity of backorders and how quickly it can branch and branch. See time id # 1335 for more details on the quote.
 
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Shop 1226 Working with Shawn on the Hypur Project 4/15/2016   Shawn came over to my house to work on the Hypur project. We worked upstairs in the front room (better natural light). We used a small whiteboard and pen and paper to take notes and do some planning. See photo gallery for some of the notes.

Page 1 - We worked on a small flow chart of when and how the Hypur API socket connection would work and how they play into existing flow and processes.

Page 2 - We talked a lot about options for locking down full invoices. We thought that it would be cool to add a couple new columns such as is_locked (1 or a 0) and locked_reason (why it is locked - Hypur, 3rd Party, Audit, Admin lock, ice-down date, etc.)

- Shawn also had the idea to put an extra where clause on the updates that only allowed updates on non locked items. That would create a great fall back on the root or update level.

- The other main topic was flagging and tagging data. The more we look at things, the more we are seeing more needs to be able to flag and tag items within the system. We need easy ways to flag things and then easy ways to search and pull reports based off of the flags.

Page 3 - This page of notes dealt more with a task queue of sorts. We need a queue for the Hypur project but we could also use a queue for other internal adilas projects such as watchers, feeders, auto summing, stats, and gathering and collecting other information. We thought that it could be really cool if we had a web interface (load and unload the queue) and then have a full on software backend that could run longer or more processing intense pieces. Kind of a hybrid of sorts. See scan for some database ideas for the queue table.

- Quote from Shawn - "Please help us as we are working to help other people have work to do." - a line from Shawn's lunch prayer. I liked it.

- Part of the page has some notes about ways to organize and break things into smaller pieces. Think of Legos and building blocks. For example: basic pages (shells), black box access points for custom code, themes, skins, smaller component parts, world building levels, permissions (different levels), settings (different levels), cfc database and logic libraries, special page functions and player functions, watchers and feeders, documentation (help files or videos), histories and logs, real in-line database extensions, flags, tags, and subs. Also different data views and report types (calendar, time slot, horizontal, grouped, details, advanced - build & save your own reports), options for saving and exporting any data from any page.

Page 4 - More looking into special flags and tags. Added some notes about special cases such as returns, vendor credits, customer credits, back orders, and general PO ordering processes.

- We also talked about the task queue and being able to drill-down and see what is going on and what is queued up. We talked about a one-to-many between the queue and the action logs. We listed out a few of the possible queue action statuses - See scan for more info.

Page 5 - Shawn and I took some time to talk about our process and how we want to treat and track our projects. Lots of funnels and sub funnels. There is a lot going on and lots of things to make sure and check. See the attached scan for a small visual of the brainstorming session.
 
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Shop 658 Ideas for the sub phases and sub flags/tags of time 2/2/2016   Quick note from a meeting with Russell and Alan dealing with elements of time. We could potentially get in there and add three flag, tag, grouping - type fields on the main element of time. We could then help control those fields through the time templates. The end goal is somewhat of a mix between what we did for the categories inside of the media/content piece and how the sub action status logs are used. Anyways, if we could record the last known values on the main (similar to action status logs) and then also record the history of the changes (similar to action status logs) that would be super cool.

Anyways, the idea is to create a number of special flag and/or tag type fields. We could then possibly name them, setup rules, and even populate special drop-downs per template. This could end up being a mix between sub dates and time and sub action status logs. The trick is allowing the user to control the usage, the values, and the categorizing and grouping for the elements of time.

See time id # 624 for some more ideas on the subject.

Here are some possible database pieces:
main elements_of_time table: special_flag_1, special_flag_2, and special_flag_3 - These could be varchar(100)'s. This is where the last known value would be stored on the main. If we needed, we could even add as many as 5 special flags. That should give plenty of options.

On the time_templates table: we could add a number of new fields to help control each of the sub flags and special tags. They could be fields like: use_special_flag_1 (yes/no field), special_flag_1_name (what to call it), special_flag_1_list (any possible drop-down values - example: ordered|packaged|shipped|returned|back ordered), special_flag_1_default (what to use as a default), special_flag_1_show (1 or a 0 for show/hide options), special_flag_1_admin_only (1 or a 0 for allowing only admin users to interact with the field - default would be 0 or open to all users).

Anyways, I think we could add similar settings and fields for all 3-5 special flag fields. That would allow us to control a number of special values. Just some ideas.
 
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Shop 2944 General 11/30/2015   11/30/15
5:15-5:30 Emails and small to do list stuff.
8:15-8:45 Emails and light follow up on things.
10:00-7:00 Went into Logan. Got Russell his checks and talked with him a bit about pros and cons of having help. We talked about some of the challenges and Russell just listened. I worked with Nick on sign-off for the 3rd party error logs. We started getting in to integration for the clear cart logic. Next I spent a 2 hour block with Steve working on sub inventory and helping it to be a smoother process. Lots of tracing steps and trying to figure out what is needed and how we can help. Encountering some small errors, problems, and difference in coding techniques. Working through things. After that, Nick and I did another session on the 3rd party error logs. We added all the code for catching clear cart actions as well as actual Hypur API call errors. The clear cart session took a bit of time as we had to break things up into smaller pieces in order to show both main details and individual line items. After that session with Nick, I worked with Alan Williams for about 2 hours on his new settings for switching the normal Flash my cart favorite cart buttons with a non Flash or plain HTML and CSS type button. We got into the details and started at the source of the change dealing with new personal settings. Busy day today. The other thing that was going on today was Bryan was working on an a custom invoice layout or A Touch of Style. It included a special layout, photos for line items, back order stuff, shipping stuff, etc. It is looking pretty good.
9:30-9:45 On the phone with Eric talking about some new rounding logic for the shopping cart for some of his clients. Basically, the code forces the cart to a straight dollar value with no extra cents or change.
 
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AU 3743 Daily Tasks 3/9/2015   • Working on a custom piece of code for the shopping cart. We have a client that needs a special tax fee added to every shopping cart. We are using a black box to add the custom functionality.
• Tested and posted files online.
• Emails and paying bills.
• Emails and phone calls.
• New logo for a client.
• A contact came over to show a developer and me his label software package. We ended up doing a GoToMeeting session and including Steve in the demo. This contact is very sharp and has some great skills and almost 30 years of experience. We sent him home with a jump drive full of files and videos.
• Working with a developer on signing off on his new API socket authorization methods and flow.
• On the phone with Steve doing a GoToMeeting session and working on some on his code.
• My sister came over and we got a call from a client. We went over options for backorders, reward points for referrals, split payments, and eCommerce stuff.
• Working with my sister on options and training for the client. Lots of planning and running through scenarios.
• Sign-off session with a developer on new pieces of the API sockets.
• Uploaded files to servers. Good session.
• Talking to my sister about other tech support calls & questions.
• Light clean-up and follow-up.
• Emails and signing off on code.
 
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AU 3673 Brainstorming - Parts & General Inventory 2/26/2014   Brainstorming on parts, items, and general inventory items. Done on day 2 of the February 2014 adilas training session. 2/26/14
Inventory:
Goals, Features, Advantages, Benefits, Pros/Cons, Known/Unknown, Shortcomings

What do we know?
- PO’s – inventory comes in on PO’s
- Vendor specific inventory – perfectly tied to that vendor, its own special…
- ***Generic inventory*** - purchasing product from multiple vendors but selling it out as the same product or at one price, (if it’s going in a bin, same shelf, mixing, etc., run it as generic)
- Different types of PO’s – 6
- In inventory, on order
- Unit of Measurements – lowest common denominator – what are you selling it out at
- Include/Do not include shipping in COGS
- 5 decimal levels of accuracy – not required, but available
- Cause & effects – payables, affecting inventories
- Get it in – PO/inventory side – then we will pick it up on the Payables side – who do we owe?
- Barcoding
- RFID tags – Radio Frequency Identifier (higher cost)
- Packaging
- Potential backorders
- Pre-ordering
- Pay before receiving product
- Shipping
- Freight – different on financials than inventory pieces
- Mini-manufacturing – making new products, buying in bulk – selling in singles
- How am I selling my products out?
- eCommerce
- Open up brand new markets
- Allow online bill paying
- Recipes – bulk, group, kit, pre-set, flex…
- Multiple pricing structures – tiered pricing structure (i.e. same item w/different pricing)
- Interface for selling advanced add to cart, buttons, ???
- Services
- Unlimited items
- Migrating – find & replace, combining items
- Data imports
- Global mark-ups
- Sales
- Discounts
- Promotions
- Customer loyalty
- Merchant processing
- Gift cards
- Planning – faster, consistency

Shortcomings/Pains:
- When to order?
- Loss/shrinkages/damages/returns
- Potential volume of inventory – can be really challenging to manage
- Tradition, legacy, how it has been done
- How will I enter everything into the system?
- Lots of work getting inventory in…
- Pro/con: Taxes
- Education/training
- Pro/con: Planning
- Expiration dates

Brainstorming on stock/units: Flavor of stock/units

What do we know?
- Serialized
- Big ticket items
- Individual Needs/Level – needs some love – what happens to THIS item
- One by one
- Vehicles
- Trailers
- RV’s
- Campers
- Planes
- Boats
- Buildings
- Hotel/Rentals/etc.
- Homes
- Motor sports – motorcycles, sleds, rhinos, 4-wheelers, etc.
- Firearms
- Jewelry
- ***Jobs*** - Job costing
- Can contain subs
- Can be sold
- Sub buckets
- Job histories
- Can be tied to locations – tracked to different locations – mobility
- 5 deep level categorizations:
o Inventory type
o Sub inventory type
o Make
o Model
o Physical unit (with additional subs)
- Sales tool – with some “haggle” ability built in – cost variables
- 100 photos per stock unit
- Manager’s checkbook – slush fund
- Fictitious costing
- Somewhat fixed items
- Mixed items: almost between serialized & non-serialized items
- Not a standalone item on invoices
- Wholesale & manufacturing of stock/units
- Stock units that product other stock/units – (manufacturing, harvesting)
- Very powerful, very diverse, very functional
- Documentation – media content, unlimited documentation, not just photos – add the design specs, the paperwork, contracts, etc.
- Rentals – (stock/units to elements of time)
- Reservations
- Needing to attribute subs to individual pieces
- Details – main
What is possible?
Features:
Advantages:
Benefits:
Shortcomings:
- They are big
- Require a lot of data if you really want to play the game
- Time intensive to sell – paperwork, financing, trade-ins, contracts,
- Human error – to help with this, making things editable & tracking histories
- Search multiple buckets – to get your data back out (pro/con)
- Economic downturns – big ticket inventory can become very difficult
- Education/training to be able to work with complicated/detailed items – associated permissions
- High entry cost to serialized units
- With more stock/units – potentially requires more people/space – money, employees, security
- Taxes and random settings
- Paperwork
 
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AU 1747 Daily Ideas 8/3/2013   -I’d like to add a new set of reports that are on the adilas upper admin level. In world building terms – this is at the universe level. This would be global specs, how many customers, invoices, quotes, expense/receipts, deposits, PO’s, parts, locations, banks, cart favorite buttons, users, logins, etc. This could be daily, weekly, monthly, or custom. It could also include photos and other universe level stats. I’m not worried about the details – this is just for general stats and usage.
-As a note, we need to remember to only get what we need. Each corporation or world takes care of their own business!
-Other universe level reports are: How many logins per day? How many unique users per day or date range? How many images and what is their total storage size? Etc.
-We may want to standardize the customer and part number data import files and structures. If yes, we could move through those files in a much quicker format. If custom is needed, then we could run that separately or on a per client basis. Basically, I’m spending too much time on some of these files.
-Ideas for a new “split cart” POS interface – Steve was playing with ideas and we are thinking about making it a new standard option inside of adilas. The split cart would be my cart favorite buttons on one side and the main cart on the other side. As a button gets pushed on the left, the right side updates and shows the changes. In a way, it will be almost like having two windows open at a time but they (the two windows) will be interacting and playing together.
-Here are some needed features of the split cart:
- HTML frameset – my cart favorite buttons (left side), normal adilas shopping cart (right side)
- New mappings on URL addresses and window targets
- Custom code for different button types and button groups
- Ability to reset the split cart
- Ability to toggle between a normal cart and the split cart
- Simple dynamic nav on the left. - dummied down interface
- Maybe even a dummied down cart for the right side
-Along with the split cart, it would be cool, if we had a couple more personal settings to go along with that. I was thinking: Normal cart or split cart (cart view modes), who’s cart favorites to use, and any other my cart favorite settings that might be needed.
-Help our users get in and out as quick as possible. At the same time, they still need to provide enough data to make the trans-action happen.
-A possible usage of “invoice classifications” (future project) is as a custom “checkpoint” for invoices. This could be a date and/or a date range, an invoice classification, and maybe some notes. Invoice classifications may also be used for eCommerce or even steps in the eCommerce process. For example: ordered, filled, skipped, backordered, etc.
-A couple pages back there is an entry about making a data or business data assembly line with custom checkpoints. The invoice classifications or something like that may end up playing in or filling that need. As a note, we already do a custom mapping for “transition invoices”. The invoice classifications could easily be something like that and/or something similar. For future reference, see top_secret/secure/view_transition_dates.cfm for more info and sub settings for transition invoices.
 
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AU 1146 Daily Ideas 3/23/2013   Simple title for LTF DVD
-Learn to Freeride presents – Introduction to snowboard freestyle
-If sales and inventory tracking is our core module, what else really needs to be fixed and done?
- eCommerce
- PO order status
- Training on PO’s, parts, quotes, invoices, customers
- Invoice classifications
- Customer gift cards and customer credits
- Credit card refunds
- Reports for ordered, promised, have
- Time – rentals, reservations, scheduling
- Back orders
- Promotion codes & sales
- Bulk management tools
-Adilas is broader than a sales and inventory tracking system. You get sales, inventory tracking, POS (Point of Sale), CRM (Customer Relations Management), scheduling, online expense tracking, BI (Business Intelligence), Payroll, Timecards, Backend office, accounting functions, and much more. –With adilas… You get it all!
 
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AU 894 Daily Tasks 8/24/2012   • Signing off on code, other small code tweaks.
• Updating online tick list with ideas.
• On the phone with Steve going over new and upcoming challenges. Spent lots of time talking about custom documents (paperwork), eCommerce settings, sales tax report re-work, back orders, date helper reports and balance sheet tweaks that would help.
• Small tweak to the advanced PO search results page. Added a payment count.
• Added a small callout box for current cart info on the my cart favorites section.
 
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Adi 396 PO's - PO Backorders - Tied to the Duplicate PO Process 7/19/2012   We need two new tweaks to the duplicate PO section...

1. We need a global function that will switch between "auto" and "old" on the costs... (currently the value "old" does not exist as a keyword).

2. We need a quick link that allows for a backorder to be created and only advanced the products that were not received.
 
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AU 864 Daily Tasks 7/19/2012   • On the phone with Steve going over our plan and current pain and current progress. We talked about our sub-contractor working for us and money and budget things. Great conversation.
• Working on the adilas YouTube training videos and organizing videos.
• On the phone with tech sub-contractor going over back orders and new options that are needed.
• Watching YouTube videos and writing video summaries (what pages or topics does it cover).
 
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AU 874 Daily Ideas 7/19/2012   -Sales tax – we need to start on the location homepage. We need to assign real vendors, real expense types and real user-maintained balance sheet items. The key is the location - that is tied to tax settings, that is how it is recorded and collected, that is how it will be paid out. If any more questions are needed, talk to user I discussed tax information with.
-On duplicate PO’s – we need two new adjustments and options.
1. We need a global function that will switch between “auto” and “old” on the costs. Currently the value “old” does not exist as a keyword.
2. We need a quick link that allows for a back order to be created and only advance the products that were not received.
-If we are going to do data mapping, we need to be able to do real-time mapping from players, by dates, with possible complicated relationships that may have one or more variables. Having said that, we may also need to make it on a beginner/intermediate level (single, dual, triple, quad, multi – mapping, just for fun).
 
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AU 756 Daily Ideas 3/15/2012   -On the current thumbnails – take off the height attribute and re-do all thumbnails.
-On the customer side – maybe link the thumbnail images right to the big photos, a friend’s idea.
-Go through and simplify the view parts page and the edit parts page. They have a lot of info that may not be required for edits and such. Having so many required page params is a hindrance to development on that section.
-On the customer we pages (eCommerce) – we may need a page that has or shows specials. Key off the web price settings. Maybe a section for special we price, best price and cost.
-Maybe pass back data in xml format instead of letting ColdFusion generate the data – this would make our methods more usable to other developers. Maybe a step further down the line. This could pass a param (ColdFusion, or xml) to the web services. If xml – convert and send back, use a sub function that converts a structure to xml.
Other ideas for adilas eCommerce:
-The price setting per item will either allow a sale or not.
-What about quantities on hand? How do we monitor that? Do we check the real site or do we just do it and sort things out later (like back orders, credits, refunds, etc.). For the record, it is always easier to check first and deny at the door rather than ask someone to leave what is already in and committed.
-Our goal is to provide the service; however, wherever possible we should also help our users learn to use good practices.
-Keep it ultra-simple – show a crumb trail.
-Use email and/or text messages.
-Have special reports for web sales.
-Treat all sales as customer invoices.
-Allow customers to login via the customer id and email address tied to that customer.
-I want to provide some simple buttons that allow a customer to create basic things like a quote, restore to cart, save as…(new quote), statement, pay a bill, real cart check-out, check on outstanding invoices.
-Allow customer HTML to be assigned to parts and stock/units. This could be links to movies, tables with rates, calendar graphics, virtual tours, sub navigation, additional verbiage, headers, footers, special notes, etc. Think anything custom. It could be added before or after an item – or both allow 1-many, allow before or after settings, allow for sorting. Basically, mini snippets or wrappers. Other ideas – links to like products, promotions, ratings, testimonials, availability, reminders, colors, sizes, options, recommendations, waivers, forms, checklists, rosters, syllabus, course work, coupons for local businesses, updates, closures, etc. (General customer web feature. Customer HTML per item.)
 
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AU 604 Daily Ideas 9/13/2011   E-Commerce and promotions:
-Small time eCommerce is where we want to go with this thing (adilas). People will pay the monthly fee just so that they can sell things.
-We also need a way to track sales and promotions. I have a great start done on LTF, it would need to be modified and beefed up a bit, but a great start. Be able to pass promo codes in from outside sources.
-Along with promotion codes, people want to track the source from where the codes come from and how often they are used. This could be for specific reps, specific items or products or from specific places (sites, banners, ads, magazines, etc.). Basically, they need a way to track their marketing.
-We have created a fun thing in the buttons and what they can do (my cart favorites). What if we allowed a similar thing with eCommerce?
-A customer sign-in could be the customer id number and the email associated for that client. The customer id would look-up the corp id.
-I want to have a customer bill pay section where they can pay their bills, look at their payables and print invoices and histories. Maybe even their won statements with limited functionality.
-One big challenge might be shipping and handling. They are separate but somewhat linked. We need free, set, dynamic and variable options.
-I will be building a cart on one server and then passing the whole cart to another server for payment and committing to the database.
-What about inventory levels and selling items that don’t exist? How do we handle back orders?
-What about custom or we services? Do we want to use XML, ColdFusion web services, basic HTML, etc.? We want to make it portable, yet flexible. We will provide a cookie cutter or pre-built cart and allow for custom options.
-Building custom carts could be a great side gig and money maker for me or a development company. That may be a great spot for interns and college folk. Create the tools and then open the road.
-We may need some mass or bulk update tools to help with shopping cart stuff: sales, hide/show, active/inactive, my cart favorites, special reports, etc.
-Make the process as easy as possible. Many of our clients will be in the under 10 items pool. We may have others who are in the 100-10,000 item pool. Think small to big…
-Add photo upload options for categories, buttons and promotional banners. The more we can put at our users finger tips, the better!
-Allow a customer to create and save their own quote.
-What about merging customer info? We already have them on file but they get entered again.
-There will need to be corp-wide settings setup and maintained just for the shopping cart: what location, what invoice type, what customer type, what taxes, what promotions, etc.
-A flash shopping cart may also be a fun option. (Extra)
-Emails and promotion stuff.
-Quick reports and notifications. Email about new sales.
Ask customers and clients what they want.
 
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Adi 7 Web - Full eCommerce 6/3/2011   Here are a number of ideas related to eCommerce... no specific order... just dumping...

- Small time eCommerce is where we want to go with this thing (adilas). People will pay the monthly fee just so that they can sell things.

- We have created a fun thing in the buttons and what they can do (my cart favorites)... What if we allowed a similar thing with eCommerce.

- A customer sign-in could be the customer id number and the email associated for that customer. The customer id would be able to look up the corp id.

- I want to have a customer bill pay section where they can pay their bills, look at their payables, print invoices, and histories. Maybe even their own statements with limited functionality.

- One big challenge might be shipping and handling... They are separate but somewhat linked. We need free, set, dynamic, and variable options.

- I will be building a cart on one server and then passing the whole cart to another server for payment and committing to the database. That could get a little bit tricky and making sure that both sites (send and receive) get updated correctly.

- What about inventory levels and selling items that don't exist? How do we handle back orders?

- What about custom or web service options... Do we want to use XML, ColdFusion web services, basic HTML, etc? We want to make it portable, yet flexible. We will provide a cookie cutter or pre-built cart and allow for custom options.

- Building custom carts could be a great side gig and money maker for me and/or another development company. That may be a great spot for interns and college folk. Create the tools and then open up the road.

- We may need some mass or bulk update tools to help with shopping cart stuff. Sales, hide/show, active/inactive, my cart favorites, etc. Special reports.

- Make the process as easy as possible. Many of our clients will be in the under 10 items pool. We may have others who are in the 100-10,000+ item pool. Think small to big...

- Add photo upload options for part categories, buttons, and promotional banners. The more we can put at our user's finger tips, the better!

- Allow a customer to create and save their own quote.

- What about merging customer info... We already have them on file but they get entered or created again.

- There will need to be corp-wide settings setup and maintained just for the shopping cart... What location, what invoice type, what user (generic), what customer type, what taxes, what promotions, etc.

- A flash shopping cart may also be a fun option. Kinda extra.

- Emails and promotions, etc.

- Quick reports and notifications. Email about new sales.

- Ask customers and clients what they want.

- We may need a page that has or shows specials. Key off of the web price settings. Maybe have a section for special web prices, best prices, etc.

- The price setting per item will either allow a sale or not.

- What about quantities on hand? How do we monitor that? Do we check the real site or do we just do it and sort things out later (like back order, credits, refunds, etc.). For the record, it is easier to check first and deny at the door rather than ask someone to leave that is already in and committed.

- Our goal is to provide the service... however, wherever possible we should also help our users learn and use good practices.

- Keep it ultra simple - show a crumb trail (where you are at and where you are going).

- Use email and/or text messages.

- Have special reports for web sales.

- Treat all sales as either customer sales or transition invoices.

- I want to provide some simple buttons that allow a customer to create basic things like a quote, restore to cart, save as... (new quote), statements, pay a bill, real cart checkout, check on outstanding invoices.

- Allow custom HTML to be assigned to parts and stock/units. This could be links to movies, tables with rates, calendar graphics, virtual tours, sub navigation, additional verbage, headers, footers, special notes, etc. Think anything custom. It could be added before or after an item - or even both. It could be a one-to-many relationship between the custom sections and the items. We need to allow for sorting, spacing, etc. Basically, a mini snippet or wrapper. Other ideas... links to like products, promotions, ratings, testimonials, availability, reminders, colors, sizes, options, recommendations, waivers, forms, checklists, rosters, syllabus, course work, coupons for local businesses, updates, closures, etc.

- Maybe pass back data in XML format instead of letting ColdFusion generate the data. This would make our methods more usable to other developers. Maybe a step further down the line would be to pass a param (coldfusion or xml) to the web services and then let the user decide how they want to deal with the results. If xml, convert and send back. If coldfusion, just process as normal. The XML could be a standalone function that takes a ColdFusion structure and creates the XML notes and pieces. Think reuse...

- On the stock/unit photo galleries... we need the captions to show up like they do on the parts galleries.

- eCommerce may also include custom pdf documents or other special paperwork or forms (pdf, word, excel, other).

- On the corp-wide settings... Maybe have options for show only (default), quote only, or full eCommerce. Maybe instead of a choice (one or the other), maybe create a list of options and let the users select what they want people to do. This list may be extended to customer login, bill pay, reservations, statements, etc. Think options...

To help with outside code (additional web services or custom eCommerce web sites), pass all incoming data through a verifier or validator or sorts. If the incoming data is missing one or more pieces, either ask for it or use a default value. That way all of the main code can run as needed. This allows us to update things (normal flow and values) and still allow for possible older outside code to function correctly.
 
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AU 3630 No Dates: Buying & Selling - Invoices, Shopping Carts, Parts, PO's, Stock/Units 1/1/2011   Scan 54 & 55 – Invoices – Payments – Deposit Line Items
Invoices – Payments – Deposit Line Items Known Issues:
1. Need a received checkbox on each payment
2. Need a date received on each payment
3. Need to know what deposit the payment was on
a. Old data may not have link to payment and/or invoice
4. Deposits are very loose right now
a. Still need ability to be loose
b. Need to tighten up sales or field deposits
c. Must require an invoice or payment to deposit
5. On invoices – link back to deposits and show flag if payments have been deposited
6. Receivables will be run off of payments not yet received and invoice not masked “all monies”. This is a double check in ways.
7. What about invoice that are marked “all monies” but don’t have all the payment, mismatch on numbers, or still has outstanding payment. Maybe a special search or flag.
8. Along the way (A/R path) need to record progress – invoice, deposited, verified, posted.
9. Need to deal with other possible deposits such as:
a. Deposit or special order; Deposit on existing inventory, Refunds (taxes, purchases, inventory), credit (discounts or pay early), shareholders, loans, donations, sales (assets, inventory, services)
10. What about different deposits. Say you get $25 for an invoice but then bought something out of petty cash for more than you had and had to borrow from the cash drawer?
11. Do we need to track by invoice and deposit or payment id and deposit line item id? Both – main numbers for humans and id numbers for computers.
12. Add customer’s name on deposit line items.


Scan 61 & 62 – Invoices, Shopping Carts, PO’s
Invoices, Shopping Carts, PO’s:
- Go to page automatically
- Java script jump menus
- Skip the “go” button
- Special – limited
o Corp-wide setting for invoice limited format
- Edit invoice line items & PO line items
o Not updating the main corp-wide setting
- Back Orders – Dup Invoice
o Auto – see split invoice – also PO’s
- Sigs – per packing slip or amt invoice
o Corp-wide
o Quotes
o Normal invoice
o Limited format
o Mini version
- Ability to price multi items by customers purchases (last)
o Maybe have a custom pricing permission
o Ended up doing the advanced add to cart
o This could also open up the price field on parts homepage item (1-many from parts to customers) and view parts pages. Also advanced search results page.
o Corp-wide setting
o Open price field before adding line
- Left & Right on remove – shopping cart vs. invoices – may need to standardize
- External PO #: do you need a PO # on your invoices
o Make it very visible and part of the flow
o Customer PO’s on invoice
o Standing out – corp-wide setting
o Pull it out in the middle
o Have a corp-wide setting for the verbage of what to call it. Have another one to hide/show the option
o Needs to go to quotes as well
- PO’s need 4 dates
o Start
o Ordered (optional)
o Ship
o Received
o Bill or pay (due date)
- Corp-wide setting for show/hide on tax category on printable invoices
- Corp-wide setting – special notes per line item on invoices and PO’s
o Similar to a line item and a new line item for verbage
- Surgery on an invoice – be able to split invoice
o Invoice quick edit or invoice master edit
o “invoice” based Shopping Cart
o Old qty
o New qty
o Original – new back order or split
o Next or forward
o Corp-wide setting
- On 1-many between parts and customer and parts and vendors
o Select cust
o Show everything that tied to cust
o Sort by most activity
o Show (might need to adjust layout and fields)
• Qty on hand
• Our part
• Their part
• Qty to add
• Current price
• Last price (non-editable)
• Cost (non-editable)
• Contract price
• Profit per line that gets figured on the fly
o If customer is set in cart, check for 1-many to parts. If yes, show special link to all items
- Maybe add a permission that allows open adding to carts, quotes, and invoices. This would open up fields like price, qty, description, and tax category all at once. Advanced add to cart.
- Ordered, promised, and qty on hand. Quick report – what do I have where?


Scan 70 – Outstanding PO’s
Outstanding PO’s – grab current and past ones
- Select – sum po amt
- From PO’s
- Where core =
o PO paid = 0
o PO date <= use date
o Grab list
o See if any payments have been made
o Grab a list of PO’s to exclude
o See if any other PO’s have been paid on after the use date that aren’t in the exclude list.


Scan 71 – Stock/Units
Stock/Units:
- 1 = vin
- 2 = stock year
- 3 = make name
- 4 = sub inventory type
- 5 = model
- 6 = miles
- 14 = title and registration
o Cust address
o Cust city, state, zip
o Cust county
- 15 = owners name
o Owner’s address
o Owner’s city, state, zip
- 15a = gda
- 18 = seller name
o Miles 2
- 20 = trade year
o Trade make
o Trade vin
o Additional trades (yes/no)
- 21 = sale price
o Less trade
o Fair market
o Taxable amount
o Tax
o Late tax
o State tax
o Amount of tax due
- 21g = tax paid to state
- 22 = salesperson name
o Salesperson date
- 23 = customer name
o Customer date
Pre-check semi
Trailer type semi


Scan 87 – Invoices
Invoices with all info – sale, price, etc.
Parts – we already what we are selling, we may or may not have that item assigned to our store.
Customer gives us a down payment in order to complete the invoice we have to have it in inventory. This POS’s a problem – (ops, arc)
Incoming money:
- Deposit on – special order
- Deposit on existing “inventory”
- Refunds – Taxes, amounts, purchased, inventory returned
- Credit – on accounts we pay early or for doing so – like sales tax
- Shareholder – investments
- Loans – from banks
- Donations – if your non-profit or sponsorship
- Sales – Assets or lnv or Services
Who I am? Where I am? What I want? – Great way to think about it.


Scan 91 – Invoices
Invoice – Salida (create)
- Invoice
- A/R – can do deposit from this page
- Deposit Home
- Payroll


Scan 106 – Buying & Selling Processes
Selling/Offering:
- Product or service
- Quote
- Invoice
o Revenue Statement
o Contract to sell
- Payment received
o Mini loop that may occur
- Deposit
- Posted (done)

Buying/Wanting:
- Product or Service
- Expense Quote Thing
o “order” – Expense Request – (contract to buy on pay)
• PO
• Payroll
• Inventory
• Bill/statement
• Reoccurring
• Reimbursement
- Receipt
- Payments Made
o Mini loop that may occur
- Withdrawal
- Posted (done)


Scan 134 –
-New permission for consulting “monitor quantities” on parts
-Add a saleprice option for trailers and toppers. Also add description counters
Reverse mark-up options – they got to enter what they want or make
• Mark-up vs.
• Profit percentage

-Maybe make this a corp-wide permission and educate them on the difference between the two – maybe some java script to help with calcs and reverse calcs.

-Parts begin homozanus like milk, water, steel, wood, bolts, pile of things
-Quantitative ye non vendor specific – bulk, generic, pile, general, transparent, group, school, pack, case, lot, special
-Non-vendor specific PO’s:
-Special PO – special selected, vendors, mixed vendors, bulk or grouped items
-On the search for general PO’s – make them choose a vendor and then display matching parts.


Scan 135 – Questions & Answers
Questions & Answers Continued:
3. Continued
- Send a price & availability Quote
- Send part # & description.
o This may be a generic “here is what I want” request
o You may or may not want the vendor part numbers on it
- Get quotes back from vendors
- Compare numbers and create multi PO’s if necessary (different vendors)
o This includes comparing locations of where the products are
- Gather in the products
o This could be pick-up
o Wait for shipping
o Whatever
- (Morning meeting – communicate what needs to be done)
- Sales of the day (what is needed – date range)
o Order #
o Quick list
o Qty ordered (their order)
o Qty on hand
o Qty on order (our incoming order qty)


Scan 136 – Parts
Your Part:
Ref Num:

Vendor:
Main PO:
- Line Items
o Parts

Notes:
- Start an invoice from a specific customer
- Multi-decimal
- PDF or PO’s
- Hide line items on PO’s
- Sort line item on invoice & PO’s
- Order – Request PO
- Multi-part ref. chart
- Add a part reference – special line item part
- Corp Settings for special line items
- Own little world on special line items – this includes show/hide and the ability to add custom unlimited parts


Scan 139 –
Drop downs – st verbage for 30, 60, etc.
Lookout – late fees
Searchable “invoice” field to see who we need to print and mail invoice – currently have to type text into name field.
Email options – flex grid:
- Occupancy date
- Vacate date – able to enter advance date
Edit statement to fit in envelope.
Why printable, printer friendly, then print (3 clicks to get an invoice) – multipoint
Last payment made date (not date of invoice it was applied to)
Recurring & frequency fields (searchable)
Balance due

Have following fields that we can select from customer list (or somewhere). Need to see entire customer list – which would allow us to check everyone that has a unit without having to go into different parts of the system, figure out if missing someone because they prepay or pay quarterly etc. Would also allow us to catch anyone that doesn’t have billing set, vacated, etc.
Recurring or invoice
Customer – be able to select phone, email etc. to show
Customer status
Last Invoice Date
Last date invoice, last payment made
Balance due
Occupancy date
Vacate date
Follow up date? /Log

Above with searchable timeframes, eg
Anyone with only current – less than 30 days
30+ days
60+ days

Ability to invoice and/or create statement
Is there a way to attach that to email. Currently if hit email in customer contact info, it does open email to that customer, but how to attach invoice/statement without saving as a pdf first.
Discount applied?
On going
3 mo – get 4th for whatever time frame expires
Poss – set up each unit as an inventory item – tie to customer?


Scan 140 – Units, Customers
Units, Customer
(Sketches – Please see scan in photo gallery)


Scan 151 – Recipe/Builds
Recipe/Builds:
- 1 = dummy
- 2 = build & sell
- 3 = build & hold
- 4 = build & build

PO Types:
- 1 = dummy
- 2 = basic live
- 3 = update
- 4 = internal build
- 5 = basic request
- 6 = special request
- 7 = special live

Deposit Line Items –
- Also check the remove line item code
- Check the void code
- Line in_out
o 1 = neg or ingredient
o 0 = output or final product

Rework on recipes & builds:
- Add in extra verbage to show what is what PO side, invoice side, mini manufacturing, just in time manufacturing
- Be able to pass a valid PO number to and through the page flow, even during editing and building
- Make sure that costs flow through correctly and may be added to the outcome value correctly
- What about total costs, profits, and prices?
- Make sure that the duplicator or multiplier field works
- What about adding an item (part number) during the process
- A PO must be started first, then checked for a valid build PO (PO type id = 4)
- What about hidden line items on build and hold PO’s and recipes?
- Be able to duplicate a PO including switching locations and PO types.
- On the build prep – check for and output value
- Is it too strict… just internal builds and only if an output value is used or should we open it up…???


Scan 156 – Advanced Add to Cart
Advanced Add to Cart:
- Price helper – price helper
- Tax category – tax 1 (tax category id) edit page – hidden
- Quantity – qty 1 (line quantity) edit page
- Cost per – cost 1 & cost helper
- Mark up – markup value & markup helper
- Price per – price 1 (item price – edit page) & price 1 helper
- Use Special Total – price total & price total helper
o User price total 1 (Unknown price per) & use price total 1 helper
o Use price total 2 (Unknown quantity) & use price total 2 helper
- Discount – apply discount – apply discount type
o Index 0 = value 1 = %
o Index 1 = value 2 = $ off
o Discount helper
- When the check boxes are used… clean all fields and store the used and checked values in the helper set the focus to the discount field


Scan 158 – Printable Items List
To do: Add the customer type on the queue page
Printable Items List:
- FORM main sort by – sort
- FORM quantity filter
- FORM quantity filter match – quantity filter
o 0 = exact
o 1 = greater than >
o 2 = less than <
o 3 = not equal to <>
o Check the show on web settings
 
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AU 2171 Brainstorming Inventory Tracking 10/29/2010   Locations, layers, & levels (who, what, where, how much, how long)
How would I … ??? - PO’s & getting parts/inventory in the system:
1. Request a price quote for 4 items (1), get the quote (1), decide to order all four items (2), track it while ordered (3), get the full ticket (4), pay for it.
a. It might be cool to show how once the pieces are there (vendor, parts, locations) how fast the next or future order would be.
2. Request a price quote for 4 items, get the quote, only take 3 or the 4 items, track it while ordered, get most of the items, track the back order, pay for it.
3. Somebody shows up at my door and I buy 3 things from him. No order, no lag, full payment, instantly live.
4. Request prices from 3 different vendors with one quote. Each vendor comes back with a good deal ion one item, split the original into 3 different orders, track the orders, when it comes in 1 vendor PO is perfect, one is missing items, the other is missing items but I’m okay with that and don’t want the rest of the items from vendor 3.
5. Go to Wal-Mart and buy supplies and parts on the same ticket.
6. Order parts online and prepay for parts and shipping. I need to hold the ordered qty and record the payment before I get anything.
7. I want to sell something that I already have (cordless phone) in my office. It is not recorded in my assets, inventory, etc.
8. I have 5 PO’s for one vendor but nothing has been ordered yet. How do I combine all 5 into one new master PO?
9. I’m building inventory out of raw goods, time and labor
10. I’m growing something out of the ground but I need to track costs over time and then have something to sell.
11. Create a setup PO just to start selling things
12. Update my inventory counts
13. I need to create a special order
14. I just want a price quote on these items
15. I have a large order that will be shipped in 4 different waves all off the same original order.
16. I don’t use the vendor’s part numbers. I have my own internal parts but need to make an order?
17. I buy like this… but I want to sell it like this…
18. I only paid for part of the PO. Times were tough.
19. I got the entire order but I have some broken and defective pieces.
20. I refereed a new customer to one of my vendors; they gave me a $200 credit. How do I record that?
21. I’m buying something for someone but don’t want to track it in my inventory. It needs to go in and out but I still need to charge them for it.
22. I have a duplicate PO in the system, how do I decide which one to use and then what do I do?
23. I’m new or lost, how do I know what is next? Or what do I do now?
24. I want to pay for a single PO.
25. I want to pay for a bunch of PO’s or payoff a statement
26. I want to pay for PO’s, splits (expense/receipts that are on account), and stock #’s all on the same check
27. I broke some stuff… how do I write that off as loss and an expense for doing business?
 
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AU 2169 To-do List & PO's/Tracking Order Status 10/27/2010   Temporary to do list:
- Pull on the customer type into the shopping cart.
- On the add new links, add a button as well. Keep it simple for now… basically a blank form that goes to the correct URL.
- Add a clear cart button to the view cart page.
- Additional PO dates or time frames.
o Dynamic date names for PO date fields (maybe custom fields… maybe like the invoice and quote customer PO field)
o Ship date
o Due date
o Order time frame or transition window???
- Need to be able to split and chain PO’s together to help with back orders coming in.
- Need to be able to print or show printable PO’s for the ordered or transition period. This might need req quantities shown for a live PO.
- Change the verbage on corp-wide settings 43 to reflect the word PO in the defaults.
- Be able to dust off shelves to 5 decimal points – full clean-up.
PO’s & Tracking Order Status:
- Does every PO need an order status? What is the goal here?
- Maybe have an N/A order status and that could be the defaults. For sure builds and updates don’t need an order status.
- The goal is to: 1 – help standardize the ordering process. 2 – Show a report of what is on order. 3 – Show date and time range between order date and received date. 4 – Not to affect inventory and payables until we receive the goods. 5 – be able to filter reports and show what is on order. 6 – Manage back orders and incomplete orders.
- This may not fit right here, but what about people wanting to add on to an order after the fact.
- I would imagine that people/users want to see what is on each PO, invoice, quote, deposit, and expense/receipt without having to click on each item. Let’s help them out. Bulk verify style.
- What happens when an order status changes? What gets recorded? How do I go back in time? It almost sounds like a 1-many or treat it like a transition period. Then again – it might be really simple and inline. I’m only worried about the actual order date.
 
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AU 278 Daily Ideas 10/19/2010   -Add an option on the advanced add to cart page to add a second line at the same time. It would have to be an unlimited part. (May help with conversions.)
-On the add to cart page for special line items, maybe add in all of the unlimited items per corp on the same list. (May help with conversions.)
-Start these idea blocks at the top of the page instead of building up the page… you run out of room.
_Maybe tie the ice-down date to global watchers. The further you go back in time, the more solid the numbers should be.
-On touch screen – what about putting navigation on the entire outside border. Think sides and corner stones.
-Maybe the flags need an in play/out of play status. That way I’m not grabbing out of play objects.
-When searching flags – just grab the max id that is less than or equal to the top end date. Only things that exist will show-up.
-If making a change in the past for global watchers, instead of doing a loop over every day in the past, just grab the dates (where something occurs) and loop over that. The dates are the actions and the key. I’m only worried about when things happen.
-Add statements to the history homepage output.
-Check the page flow for adding line items – how can you help the user know what to do next? Example: Creating a new E/R, you have to scroll way down to the 2nd page to put in a line item
-If you can’t solve it on paper – how will you be able to solve it using code?
-On conversions (for parts) maybe think 1-many from conversion to parts instead of 1-many from parts to conversions. I’m just thinking about maintenance and up keep.
-Be your own style!
-PO’s need at least two more date fields. They are ship by date and due date. These dates don’t play that much for accounting but they do help with operations.
-I would like to make a general payables page for all items that we owe to a single vendor/payee. This could include PO’s, splits, REI’s and stock/units. Basically, this is a one pager that we can pick and choose at will. Partial payments are also allowed for an item including REI’s.
-Need to be able to split invoices and PO’s to help handle backorders. Basically, whatever can go forward does and everything else that is missing goes on to the next invoice or PO. It might also be cool to tie the items together as a flex grid piece of the puzzle. Some sort of relationship gets built.
-Along with the idea above, how would you keep an original order together with its subs and children that it took to fill the entire order.
-We need a report that shows ordered, promised and quantity on hand. This would be a “what do I have where?” report.
-On the scheduler application, include anything that could have a timeline on it… employee/users, vendors, customers, locations, stock/units, parts, blue sky, etc. Think of a flex grid level to tie into, very flexible and diverse. Select time, objects, go – that easy.
-On the scheduler application, it needs to be able to handle scheduling, rentals, reservations, customer time clocks, personal planner, appointments, asset planning, time management, sharing and coordinating timelines and a vacation or trip planner.
 
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AU 196 Daily Tasks 8/5/2010   • On the phone with Steve going over a new tick list of ideas. Tons of good stuff like split invoices (for backorders), 1-many relationships between parts and vendors and parts and customers including contract info and prices. Also discounts, sale prices and quantity price breaks. Tons of new ideas for corp-wide settings, great session.
• Worked on new corp-wide settings like naming the limited invoice format, controlling signatures, dynamic PO types (names), and external customer PO #’s. All of these were new corp-wide settings.
• Posted a couple of new settings online.
• Called and talked with Steve about progress.
 
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AU 110 Daily Ideas 4/10/2010   Talking to Steve on 4/10/10
-Big request: PO – duplicating and point and click to divide PO’s
-Receive parts for a certain vendor.
-Whatever wasn’t received is now available for a different PO.
-PO cart
-Backorders (customers and vendors): backorders need an option to split PO’s and invoices so that it keeps pushing things forward.
-Just in time inventory and order tracking.
 
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AU 1591 Daily Ideas 12/16/2009   Meeting with Steve:
- Multi dew decimal
- Transition sub status for invoices
o 1 to many, on the transition period
o Special order
o Back order
o Layaway
o Order
o Etc.
- Customer and vendor parts
o 1 - many, from parts to customer and vendors
- Part conversions and lowest common unit of measure
- Line item sort for PO’s, Quotes, & Invoices
- Bin numbers on printable PO’s and invoices
 
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AU 2380 Brainstorming - Questions & Ideas for Inventory Tracking 7/28/2009   1. Retail or Bulk?
a. If retail use 1 to 1 ratio
b. If bulk use facto of 1
Table & notes – Please see scan in photo gallery
Example: Starting order #: 14,400 items – Each box was 1800 – take each box of 1800 and measure out quantities of 100,
also need color of what is being done,
need order number,
did a sample of a known quantity (say 1, 10, 25, etc.),
once sample was known weight of 1, they could measure out rough quantities of whatever amount would fit in a bag (smaller sub count 100 or 1,000).
Then they would bag of the smaller counts and store them.
They could also ship them out or have a known product quantity on hand.

I see two different parts or challenges: (Either way I might need to go by any of the measurements.)
1. How do I get thing in qty or weight/measurement or both? How do I want to show that (qty, W/M, or both)?
2. Once I have it and know what I have, how does the customer want to buy it? (qty, W/M, or both)

Questions:
1. What are you standard UM values:
- Could be anything:
o D = 10
o M = 1000 (mil)
o EA = 1
o C = 100 (cien) (guessing… Latin based)
o CW = 100/weight
o LB = pound
o PC 1 (piece)
2. How do you handle back orders? Are they important?
- Stays open until closed
- Version numbering on back orders
- Same invoice number with an extension on it
3. What is the flow… starting from the customer saying “I need this… & that”
- Get an order via phone/fax/email/PO
o On PO
o With request date
o With request quantity/cost/& details
o Their part number or reference
- Create an order with their info and PO info
o With the confirmed ship/delivery date and pricing
- Send a confirmation (customer side)
- Packing ticket (internal side)
o Internal order to process
- Warehouse gets the ticket
o Our part, desc, expected date, qty, weight, loc or bin #, how many in stock, cust part #, extended, possible different expected dates, total weight, notes, order # & customer PO #, no cost & prices, all other details
o On order and PO need a line item note that is required
- If you need to order, do some shopping
o How much
o How do they come packed
o Where and when (availability) (they may need to come in from out of state)
4. What is the process when you have stock (something) and then customer wants it, but needs it waxed, painted, coated, etc.? How do you track part numbers and quantities? (raw goods and outside service/labor = new items)
- Work in progress – build and hold – build and sell – or build and build
- Possible different types of transitional invoices
o Paint ticket
o Bagging ticket
o Plating ticket
o Etc.
o (May need a history as to what it was…)
5. If things are coming and going, how do you track where it is and at what time? How do you track what orders are for whom?
- Bin locations – all under WIP, limbo state
6. If we allow conversions (qty/lbs, lbs/qty, qty/length, length/qty, qty/case, case/qty, etc.)
- Which value do you show?
o System needs to help with the conversions and then step away and let the user enter their own numbers or help with the rounding.
- What do you want to see?
o On PO’s
o On Quotes
o On invoices
o On inventory counts
o On financials
o On recipes
7. What is the time frame from order, processing (possible labor and out sourcing) packaging, and delivery?
- 24 hours to a week
- Some longer than a week – depends on order and availability
- Some jobs have a hot shot or rush fee
8. If you were to simplify the process, what would you do differently?
- Better communication between parties
9. Where are the current bottle-necks, problems, and disconnects?
- Vendor doesn’t have it
- Right info/paperwork
- Order process/build getting the pieces and letting the others know their status (front of house to back of house)
10. What is the most labor intensive part of the process?
- Putting everything together
- Reordering
11. How accurate are we trying to be? Right on, ball part, what? Scary tight?
12. What would make the operations side work smoother? Don’t even worry about the accounting side of things.
- Record all of the pieces at once
o I want this to become, this, and sorted and bagged like this – ready… go!
o Artificial intelligence – where are we going
o Life cycle or path
13. What pieces are tradition and what pieces are necessary to get the job done?
14. What things do you like in your old system?
- Very simple – single screen – short cuts with keyboard – unchanging interface
15. What things do you dislike or hate in your old system?
- Single window – unable to print – unable to back-up or change modes
- Dot matrix – triplicate forms – old system – no way to change current work flow – server issues
16. How can we build the road so that it doesn’t have the gaps? What is the dream or ideal?
- Tell the system the desired outcome or story at the beginning. I started as this, I then want this and that, eventually I will be this… start to finish processing with a monitor or virtual history built-in.
17. What about cross reference and different part numbers?
- This needs to be by each customer and also by vendor.

Tech – Current Parts Table (as of 7/28/09) & Playing around with tables & possible values:
(Please see scan in photo gallery)

Weight Measurement Tables
(Please see scan in photo gallery)

Items that are sold in different quantities – Table
(Please see scan in photo gallery)

Same item can have
- Multi vendors
- Quantity price breaks