Processing sales..

[cyrusgod]

Hi guys and girls,
New to the group so be gentle!

We are a computer repair centre with one location, mainly break/fix with some movement to MSP via Kabuto and been very happy with it as very simple to use.

We are UK based and use Xero (an accounting platform) for invoicing customers and, well, basically everything! It does work well for what we have needed until now, but we are about to expand to a second location and even something like letting our employees login from a second location and having customers invoices showing that second location are proving a challenge. I think we are stretching a cloud accounting platforms capabilities somewhat now!

I wonder what you all use for producing invoices, managing the day to day which ideally integrates with Xero for our accountant and supports two or three locations.

I took a trial of Repairshopr and it just seemed a steep learning curve and almost too much functionality for where we are. Is there a middle ground or am I going to have to jump to repairshopr?

Thanks in advance for your advice!

 

[sapphirescales]

Express Invoice. It's a one-time purchase and more than adequate for our needs. The highest end version ($100 or so) allows you to access the software through a web based interface that's hosted on a computer (not a server, but a regular computer). You can also buy software like Inventoria for managing inventory and Express Accounts for accounting. They all sync together nicely and have web interfaces as well as a local interface on the host computer.

There's no way in hell I'd pay every freaking month for a piece of software. I don't care what it does. Cloud based subscription software is the worst.

 

[cyrusgod]

Thanks for your reply. I will look into that software. However, linking to Xero is a must if we make this step. We will have a team of about 5 between two shops so some way of logging users would be nice. In Xero we use a product code for each engineer that adds a line to the invoice with their name. It would be nice to have something a bit slicker for staff to produce invoices quickly.

Bar code scanning for pricing of stock would also be good although we are more service based and don't need stock inventory tracking yet!?)

Perhaps repairshopr is the only real option here and would replace kabuto as well? Monthly fee isn't an issue if it meets our needs and isn't ridiculously priced.

 

[jonman]

You can Try invoice Ninja, web based accounting software, free for self hosting. https://www.invoiceninja.org/ free version and https://www.invoiceninja.com/ paid cloud version.

 

[Diggs]

letting our employees login from a second location and having customers invoices showing that second location are proving a challenge.

Quickbooks Online (relatively expensive) or Wave Accounting (free) handles this pretty easily.

 

[cyrusgod]

Hi guys,

Thank you for all the comments. Good to see so many people contributing.

I probably didn't explain myself too clearly but Xero is a platform which has as much, if not more flexibility than the likes of Quickbooks (and definitely more than Wave) which I have used before. I don't want to lose this.

It sounds like my options to retain Xero's advanced accounting functionality are limited to Repairshopr, or I am taking a step backwards in my opinion to something like PC Repair Tracker which would then involve a lot of manual faffing to get things exported as csv or excel files to my accountant.. which would be like going back to 2010 in my opinion.

I found repair tracker from this useful page :
https://www.technibble.com/forums/threads/what-is-your-businesses-services-software-stack.67984/

No other alternatives to Repairshopr for businesses with 2 to 3 shops that want Xero integration but without all the advanced stock tracking etc?

 

[kwest]

We use repairshopr and QuickBooks online at my shops. Works well and I am happy to pay monthly if it helps us earn more. Basic business practice.

 

[hiddenpcmaster]

Quickbooks Online (relatively expensive) or Wave Accounting (free) handles this pretty easily.

+1 for Wave.

 

[cyrusgod]

We use repairshopr and QuickBooks online at my shops. Works well and I am happy to pay monthly if it helps us earn more. Basic business practice.

Totally agree, if it saves my time, it's worth spending on good software, be it system tools or accounts.
Repairshopr does integrate with Xero like Quickbooks. Did you find the learning curve steep for those that use it?

 

[alexsmith2709]

I use Vend as my POS which then integrates with Xero. I only have 1 location but you can have a vend subscription which allows more locations. I have a retail store that sells hardware, cartridges, printing etc as well so a proper POS was useful to me. Vend allows you to print receipts and invoices without syncing to Xero, but the invoices especially look like sh!te so for my business customers i always use the one from Xero and walk-in customers get a normal receipt.
I think in Xero you can set different invoice templates, maybe this is what you need to look at to allow you to show different location data?

I looked at Repairshopr too and while i like some of its features, the POS side of it was not for us and would need a lot of improving for us to be able to use it.

 

[Markverhyden]

Have you looked at adding Squareup to process payments? Been using them for years and I know many others that have as well. I did a quick check and purportedly they integrate with Xero but have no idea to what extent. I'm sure you could just signup for Squareup and take a look. Free to signup and get the basic card reader ( no chips though, that extra ).

 

[cyrusgod]

Thanks guys. Using iZettle at the moment for in person card payments at our repair centre and for engineers onsite. Was with them when they had a better rate than the fixed they give new customers thankfully.

Gocardless works great for direct debits we find. Will look into Xero templates, that's all we may need but Vend sounds nice.
Just looking for that missing front end to tie all these excellent services together!

We don't sell too much in terms of cabling as you tend to get a few moaners. The usual types. I need it now and I don't care you have to pay rent, rates, electricity and staff. "Why are you selling that for £12 when I can buy it on ebay for £5!"
How dare you make any profit off me..
OK, you had better go to ebay.. Please leave my shop!
Luckily the majority of customers in our area are nice and willing to pay for convenience and service.

 

[cypress]

mainly break/fix with some movement to MSP via Kabuto and been very happy with it as very simple to use.

Are you still actively using Kabuto? I was with them from the very beginning but dropped them a couple years ago just like many other members because they stopped supporting it and moved onto Syncro after they merged with Repairshopr. Even then it wasn't as good as it should have been.

 

[cyrusgod]

I have heard that. To be honest it just does what we need. We can remote in easily to customers, on the odd occasion it doesn't work we use AeroAdmin. We like the system monitoring and Emisoft capabilities. Really we would also just like a clean, easy to use backup system integrated. Think MSP 360 is the next thing we need to look at using. Again though, just seemed to be geared more for business level. 90% of our customers are home users with simple needs.

 

[cypress]

I have heard that. To be honest it just does what we need. We can remote in easily to customers, on the odd occasion it doesn't work we use AeroAdmin. We like the system monitoring and Emisoft capabilities. Really we would also just like a clean, easy to use backup system integrated. Think MSP 360 is the next thing we need to look at using. Again though, just seemed to be geared more for business level. 90% of our customers are home users with simple needs.

Syncro the next product they moved onto has gotten really good reviews especially from some techs here. You can look into them if you want to expand products.

 

[alexsmith2709]

We don't sell too much in terms of cabling as you tend to get a few moaners. The usual types. I need it now and I don't care you have to pay rent, rates, electricity and staff. "Why are you selling that for £12 when I can buy it on ebay for £5!"
How dare you make any profit off me..
OK, you had better go to ebay.. Please leave my shop!
Luckily the majority of customers in our area are nice and willing to pay for convenience and service.

I get the same, but going by your location, your pretty close to me so i guess we have the same sort of customers. We have the 2 ends of the scale here.
I seem to be in the same position as you, mainly been doing break/fix but looking to get into MSP, but dont really know where to start

 

[cyrusgod]

I get the same, but going by your location, your pretty close to me so i guess we have the same sort of customers. We have the 2 ends of the scale here.
I seem to be in the same position as you, mainly been doing break/fix but looking to get into MSP, but dont really know where to start

Thank you Cypress, I did look at that previously but found it just a little too complex.. maybe time for a review.
Alex - We use Kabuto now and it has worked well so far. We have just over 100 customers taking managed security from us. When we started a lot of options were probably too expensive with few users so Kabuto worked well; now I think we can look at expanding with a solid set of users to migrate and spread cost. Let me know how you get on; are you in Surrey as well? Feel free to PM me.

 

[frase]

+1 for Wave