H ELPING S PRUCE C USTOMERS M AKE P ROFITABLE T ECHNOLOGY D ECISIONS Volume 25, Issue 2 April, 2011 Five Questions: Grev Coomer How to Read English A series of informal Spruce customer interviews If the article to the right has you scratching your head at any point, fear not! We had to translate ―millwork‖ to the British when speaking with Grev, after all. Builder’s Merchant Retail Construction Supplier Extension Addition Ironmongery Hardware Joinery Millwork Refurbishment Remodeling Till Cash Register Timber Lumber Inside this issue: Five Questions Customer Interview 1 Head in the Sand PCI Compliance deadline 1 What‘s in a Name? ―SpruceWare.NET” origins 2 Call Log Rollover The Call Log Moves Online 2 Employee Snapshot John Maiuri 2 High Potential Parameters SprucePlus Parameters 3 Delivering Profits Delivery Charges—not? 3 XM What? .NET XML Imports 4 Users United The Spruce Users Group 4 Coomers Ltd. Lies in a hilly area about 40 miles southwest of London and perhaps 35 miles north of the docks at Portsmouth. Once known for dangerous highwaymen (and their hangings), it is now a place of residence for many London commuters, who take the Portsmouth Direct line to work. It is also a popular hiking area due to its position at the end of the 110-mile Greensand Way Footpath and the 64-mile Serpent Trail. We caught up with Grev Coomer, who has helped all SpruceWare.NET users since 2006 by acting as our third beta test site (and our first in the UK). Can you tell me a bit about Coomers Ltd. and your relationship to the business? C o o m e r s i s a s e c on d generation, family-run business that began life selling woodshavings and ended up becoming a builders merchants more by chance than planning! My parents started the business in 1956 and I joined full-time in 1993. We were very proud to be awarded the UK‘s Independent Builders Merchant of the Year for 2010! Your three branches (Haslemere, Oakhanger and now Bordon) offer a wide range of product lines, including bedroom furniture, millwork, landscaping p r o d u c ts , kitchen and bath products, f l o o r i n g , decorating goods, tools, ironmongery (known to us Yankees as “hardware,”) and more. Is this typical for a UK merchant or is this something that sets you apart from your competitors? When we started out our product range was very small but the buying group that we belong to (NBG) has deals in a huge number of products and that has given us the confidence and opportunity to diversify. We like to think we now have a pretty comprehensive offering and this does give us an edge. Haslemere was granted a charter by King Richard II in 1394, and much of the heathland and woodland surrounding the town is protected by the National Trust. Presumably not a lot of your sales come from new construction – so what is a typical customer doing with the products they buy from you? And what’s a typical day look like for you? Although you‘re right in saying the town has old roots, there are still plenty of new houses going up in the area. We also do well from extensions, refurbishments and maintenance projects but we don‘t tend to worry about where it‘s going to all the time the tills are ringing. A typical day: arrive at the office at 7.30am, and the day flies by in a whirlwind of ‗phonecalls and emails. Leave the of f ice jus t bef ore 6pm wondering where the day went. You’ve been using SpruceWare.NET since it was released for UK beta. How has it changed the way you do business? We‘re really pleased with the system we‘re running and all our staff are very comfortable with it. I don‘t think it‘s fundamentally changed the way we do business but it has made us more efficient in every sense. We‘re still learning new features all the time. When are you coming to visit Spruce HQ in Latham, NY? It‘s on the list, I just need to find  a good excuse. Is your credit card clearing head in the sand? In January, letters went out to those Spruce customers using non-PCI-compliant signature pads and/or IC/Verify versions. Though there is a clear July 1st deadline for action, many users have yet to respond. You must take action or you will lose the ability to process credit card transactions on July 1st! In addition, we strongly recommend that everyone contract with their clearing house for quarterly security scans—it‘s a small price for a lot of added peace of mind. What’s in a Name? Do it Card SM If you‘re a Do it Best® member, you already have the ability to work with TD Bankcard to accept the Do it Card. They have a convenient website where you can transactions authorize online—no hookup to a Spruce system necessary! SpruceWare.NET became the name of our flagship Windowsbased software early on in its development cycle. Did you ever wonder where the name came from? SpruceWare was, and is, the name of our original Windows software. It is text-based and is missing modern features, but it continues to serve the needs of a number of Spruce customers. The software is no longer sold, having been replaced by SpruceWare.NET (though we have no intention of ending support for existing SpruceWare users). Retail LBM & Hardware dealers. The .NET suffix is intended to highlight another point about SpruceWare.NET: it has been developed completely in Microsoft‗s revolutionary .NET development environment, which has become the gold standard for modern graphical software. We have developed all the code using Microsoft Visual Studio .NET, and ours is the only 100% .NET software for We always transition the entire package to newer Visual Studio .NET versions so our SpruceWare.NET customers can continue to take advantage of the most modern Windows features available. In keeping with this philosophy, when Visual Studio 2010 is released this month, we‘ll begin testing it in anticipation of a transition to it in the next major SpruceWare.NET release.  Call Log Rollover “...your own  company logs will be securely available 24/7/365…” We have made major improvements to the support call log, and as a result, your own company logs will be securely available 24/7/365 in the customer area of the Spruce website beginning this month. Open and recently closed calls will be viewable through the ―Issue Tracking‖ link after you log in. New support calls and updates will be posted to this area each night for easy review. Employee Snapshot: John Maiuri Name: John Maiuri Tenure at Spruce: 3 years (but wait...) E d u c at i o n & P r i o r Wo r k Experience: 30 years in the Retail LBM Industry; 26 years as a Spruce Customer (President, Dunn Builders Supply). Main Duties: Regional Territory Manager in the Northeast, covering Maine to Virginia. When he‘s not beefing up the r an ks of Sp r uceWar e.NE T users: John likes waterfowl hunting, motorcycling, camping, fishing, Page 2 In the past we have mailed call logs monthly to a specific contact person. To curtail waste and allow easy access to log information from any location, we will stop sending printed logs, and we will open up access to your company logs to anyone your management team approves. The person who has been receiving the printed logs will automatically be set up to have online access to the new logs. If you would like others to have online access too, assuming they alre ad y hav e cus t om er - ar e a logins, have your main Spruce contact email us the website IDs (without passwords) to support@sprucecomputer . com. As always, website customer area IDs can be requested through support.sprucecomputer.com. Each issue, we briefly profile a Spruce employee reading, and spending time with his grandchildren, family, friends, and dog (a chocolate lab). Favorite Quote: ―Life can be a tragedy for those who feel and a comedy for those who think.‖ —2011 fortune cookie Favorite films: westerns. Old John Wayne Favorite type of Book: Fiction. Favorite type of Music: 50‘s. In his own words: Terrible at body surfing. Built a deck in Alaska in 3 days. Once taught a friend’s son to tie a Windsor knot over the phone.  John with a salmon dinner near Pulaski, NY SpruceNews Volume 25, Issue 2 • April, 2011 High Potential Parameters SprucePlus Special Parameters Part One of a Two-Part Series On the Spruce Plus system there are a number of functions or features that are parameter driven, so as not to affect the standard system. These are found on the S p e c i a l Parameter s c r e e n s (Operations Management > System Maintenance > Special Parameters). There are many parameters that were put in place over the years. Here is a list of some of them that might be of interest to you. Each parameter is listed as it‘s displayed on its parameter page. For each of the parameters there is Help available with more information. Most of the parameters can be set by the user without any intervention from Spruce Support and most will take place immediately once activated. POS GM CALCULATION – Answer Y to this field if you want to be able to modify under System Parameters, the cost that is used at Point of Sale for calculating gross margin. STOCKED FLAG DISPLAY – Answer Y to this field if you want items to display ***STOCKED***, ***NON- Delivering Profits If you‘re reluctant to automatically charge for delivery because of the effect it may have on your best customers, remember that there are many ways for a SpruceWare.NET user to assess such charges. You can even let your great customers off the hook! As we discussed in the S T O C K E D * * * , o r ***DISCONTINUED*** when in Inquiry screens. FINANCE CHG NAME – Answer Y if you want to be able to modify the system parameter finance charge name that prints on statements. EOD SMAN-PRC LVL TRK – Answer Y if you want to be able to have the EOD Salesman-price level tracking turned on. If turned on, the system will track the pricing given to customers by salesman. If the pricing is overridden, the system will round to the nearest price level and track the price given to that level. BR PRINT OF ORDERS – Answer Y if you wish to have the location (Bldg/Aisle/Bin) and quantity available printed on the order when orders are printed to a backroom printer. GS REPRICE IN POS – Answer Y if you wish to allow the repricing function in the options box at Point of Sale to reprice only items from a specified group and section. PRINT LAST 6 CHARS INV# - If you answer Y to this field, only the last six (6) digits of the invoice number will print on the invoice. This does NOT shorten the actual invoice number. It is a ―print only‘ option and all references to the invoice will continue to have the full 12 digit invoice number. DON‘T SHOW CRLIM POS – If you answer Y to this field, the credit limits of the customer accounts WILL NOT show at Point of Sale. POS SELL BACKORDER – You may answer Y if you want orders shipped incomplete to remain open and N if they should be closed and the remaining items not backordered. This defaults the Backorder field on the Invoice Closeout screen. You may also enter a P to backorder the remaining items and print a backorder copy of the order at the same time. RECV ON ACCT MNG OVR – If you answer Y to this field, you will be required to get a manager override when taking a payment on an account using BANKCARD as the method of payment. PRT ORD MSG IN INV – If this field is set to Y, the userentered information that is contained in the message field on orders will print in the header area of the invoice form. PRT REPRINT IN INV – If you answer Y to this field, the term REPRINT will print in the header of the invoice when you reprint invoices. NO DATE=CUST PICKUP – If this field is set to Y, when no delivery date is entered at Point of Sale the delivery date will SpruceWare.NET TimeSaver You may have wished you could have each Spruce separate window display a different icon so it would be easy to tell them apart in the system tray. way to do it is through the ―File‖ option from any menu. Choose ―Change Icon‖ and pick a new icon for that window. You can do this permanently too—for information on that option, enter ―change icon‖ in the SpruceWare.NET Help index. Charging for delivery doesn’t have to be one-size-fits-all September, 2008 SpruceNEWS, which is still available on our website, there are methods of assessing delivery charges that offer different features, including hidden vs. printed, automatic vs. manual, taxable vs. non-taxable, and global vs. per-customer. One Spruce user recently began putting global zip-code-based SpruceNews Volume 25, Issue 2 • April, 2011 delivery charges on their best customers‘ contracts with zero prices so they would automatically show up, but at no cost. This is a clever way to let your top customers know who‘s got their backs!  The  “...let your top customers know who’s got their backs!…” Page 3 High Potential SprucePlus Parameters SpruceNews is published by Spruce Computer Systems. © 2011. All rights reserved. Log in! Spruce1 .com (Continued from page 3) display and print "CUST PICKUP" on the invoice/order. DON‘T PRT QTY BLW AVL – Answering Y to this field turns off the "Quantity Below Available" message that displays at Point of Sale when the user tries to sell a quantity of an item that is greater than the quantity the system shows as available for that item. ORDER CLOSEOUT QTY – This field is used to determine the default for the Price/Qty field on the order closeout screen. The options are: XM What? Phone: 800-SPRUCE1 Fax: 518-783-6685 Hooah! Longtime Spruce Customer a n d c u r r e n t SpruceWare.NET Dykes Weehauken, user Lumber, NJ, was mentioned in the March 9th PROSALES Business Update as having been recognized for their 75th Anniversary as an LMC Member. Dykes also recently added their 10th branch location after acquiring the J.J. Demarest Supply facility in Closter, NJ. Two XML imports, WTS Software‘s Base Camp and Saberis‘s XPressPOS, work with multiple vendors, and you can thus get a lot of bang for the buck. Base Camp allows the import of POS information from any vendor Users United  N - to not print prices and quantities.  P - to print only prices, but no quantities.  1 - to print the selling quantity only (NOT extended/shipping).  2 - to print the selling quantity (NOT extended/ shipping) and prices only. not want to print totals by default. PO REPL COST DEFAULT – Enter Y if you want the replacement cost to be used when writing a purchase order rather than the market cost. POS NO CASH DEFAULT – If you answer Y, the system will not default a sale that is using a cash account or no account to the cash field on the closeout screen. Instead, it leaves the user at the "Enter field to modify" prompt. The user must then choose the appropriate method of payment.  ORD CLOSE TOTAL PRNT – Enter Y if you want the default for printing totals on orders to be yes and enter N if you do that uses an up to date version of WTS‘s manufacturing software, WTS Paradigm. Some of the vendors that allow import into SpruceWare.NET Point of Sale through Base Camp include:  Alenco  Atrium Doors  Eagle Windows  Great Lakes Window  Hurd Windows  Kolbe & Kolbe  Lepage Millwork  Mathews Brothers  MW Patriot  Paradigm (Kohltech)  Pella  Ply Gem Pacific  Ross Windows & Door  Sun Windows  Ventana USA  Windsor XPressPOS operates with a number of vendors as well, including:               Andersen iQ BROSCO BWI Bridgewater Comsense Jeld-Wen Kitchens for 2020 Kolbe & Kolbe Lincoln Luxwood Design Tools Marvin MOE Milgard Paradigm (Kohltech) Professional Estimating Silver Line iQ Contact your Spruce Territory Manager to order Base Camp or XPressPOS. Don’t miss out on the Spruce User’s Group The Spruce Users‘ Google Group is alive and well. If you are a member but you haven‘t set your Google Account up to deliver the group‘s messages via email, you have to read it online or you will miss out on the topics being discussed. Recent topics have included Page 4 Y - to print both prices and quantities on the order. Base Camp and XpressPOS XML Imports Improve Productivity SpruceWare.NET includes a number of ways of importing data that can really make life easier for everyone in Sales. Many of these are available at no charge with in the software, but XML imports r e q u i r e customized setup and so require a nominal fee. Spruce Computer Systems 9 Cornell Road Latham, NY 12110  thin clients brands, document security, customer statements, balancing Accrued Accounts Payable, and document attachments. If you aren‘t a member of the group already, signing up is easy. Just log into the spruce website customer area (at support.sprucecomputer.com) and enter your email address in the box on the right side. The group is not an alternative to the formal request process, but it is a great way to discuss thoughts and questions! Open to all Spruce customers.  SpruceNews Volume 25, Issue 2 • April, 2011