Spec Sheet | View Demo

The start of many jobs is determining what price to charge. Charge too much and the business is lost to a competitor. Charge too little, and a small profit could quickly become a huge loss. Accuracy is critical in estimating the cost of a job if you are to win the business and make money doing so.

Material, Labor, Outside Services

JobOps Job Management Software provides tools to quickly determine a job’s estimated costs by determining the costs of the job’s components – material, labor, and sub-contracted services.

Integration with the Sage 100 Inventory Management quickly tabulates material costs. Whether you use standard cost, LIFO, FIFO, average cost, lot valuation or a combination of these valuation methods, JobOps will estimate your material cost using the current value of the materials needed. Items not kept in inventory that will need to be purchased direct to the job can also be estimated, without having to add the item to your inventory system.

Labor is estimated by calculating the number of hours to be performed in a work center by your cost for that work center.

Outside services are also estimated in as much detail as you wish to provide.

Speed and Accuracy

To quickly enter the detail for estimated materials, labor, and services, JobOps allows for and estimate/quote to be created from a template, copied from a previous quote, or from and actual job that you have already done or are currently working on.

A template includes a Bill of Material and a Router detailing the steps required to complete the job. If you do similar types of work for various customers on a make-to-order basis, templates are ideal. The template includes the materials, labor and services required to build a single parent item. If your estimate is for a higher quantity, the costs for the parent item will be scaled as needed to give you the total cost for the quantity desired.

Starting your estimate by copying from a past quote or job is similar in approach to the templates described above. However, when copying from a completed job, you also have the option of using the estimated costs from that job or the actual costs that were incurred, providing you with another opportunity to improve the accuracy of your estimate.

Regardless of whether you use templates, past quotes or actual jobs, once the information is copied, JobOps allows for the materials, labor and services to be changed to reflect the unique requirements of the job being estimated.

Price Calculation

Now that the estimated costs have been determined, JobOps can also be used to determine the price to charge. JobOps will determine a suggested price based the desired mark-up using margin or profit for the calculation. You have the final decision on the price to be used, but JobOps allows you to quickly determine the total costs so that you can make the best possible pricing decision.

Spec Sheet | View Demo

You give your customers options. They can choose the size, color, optional components, quantities, materials, style of the products or services that they wish to buy from you.

The flexibility you offer in providing exactly what your customers want has given you a reputation that has helped grow your business. However, there has also been a price to pay in offering configurable products because of the inherent complexities in production and order fulfillment. The flexibility that has been the key to your success could be placing your future growth and profitability at risk.

The JobOps Product Configurator allows you to continue and improve upon the flexibility to your customers while streamlining your operations in creation of work orders to deal with fulfillment.

In fact, with the Product Configurator, you may even speed up your quoting, sales order entry, and creation of production orders, resulting in even faster delivery to your customers.

Here is how it works:

Through a graphical selection wizard, the Product Configurator asks simple questions needed to configure your customer’s product. The Configurator is rules-based, meaning that the questions asked and the available responses are only offered if they are compatible with . the options already selected.

For example, if you build custom doors, the Configurator might ask for the dimensions, type of material, and paint or stain. For the dimensions, the Configurator has rules that only allow responses between the minimum and maximum dimensions that you offer. For the type of material, the Configurator provides a list of materials to choose from and pictures to verify your selection. Finally, if you selected steel as the material, the Configurator asks what color paint to use. If you selected wood, the Configurator offers the choices of available stain.

The possibility of ordering a door that is too narrow, or choose steel materials but use wood stain has been eliminated. Not only are you providing better service to your customers by preventing mistakes in their order, you also avoid asking your production group to create something that may need to be scrapped.

In fact, through the simple responses you provided when creating the order, the Configurator has also calculated the price to your customer, the bill of material necessary to fulfill the order, and the router necessary to instruct your shop floor about how to build the door. It has also calculated the estimated cost of the bill of material and the time and cost of the labor to complete the job.

Whether you make cabinets, custom machines, computers, install network systems for office buildings, or offer repair services that can be configured to order, with the JobOps Product Configurator software, you can quickly enter the options your customers need, deliver on-time and continue to grow your business while avoiding potential costly mistakes!start of many jobs is determining what price to charge. Charge too much and the business is lost to a competitor. Charge too little, and a small profit could quickly become a huge loss. Accuracy is critical in estimating the cost of a job if you are to win the business and make money doing so.

Spec Sheet | View Demo

Entering orders into your ERP software system is many different things for different companies. An order may be a sales order from your customer. The sales order could be a repeat order or it could be from a quote that you provided to the customer. It may be an order for a stock item or it may be a make-to-order item or service. You may also need to enter a work order that describes how to build the product or perform the service from the sales order. Finally you may also have work orders that are to fulfill your own stock requirements.

With JobOps and Sage 100 ERP, entering orders is simplified because the sales order and work order are linked and generated in the same order entry step.

Sales Orders

Sales orders are entered using the Sales Order Module of Sage 100 ERP. JobOps integrates this function with the creation of work orders (or work tickets) that are created directly from the sales order line. What does this mean? Let’s say your customer wants to order a red wagon and you need to make this wagon. If you gave your customer a quote for the wagon, both the sales order and the work ticket are created by merely pulling up the quote and clicking on “convert to order.” NOTHING NEEDS TO BE RE-ENTERED!

Work Orders

Creating a work ticket to fulfill a sales order is also done for you by JobOps. In the example above, if the red wagon was not previously quoted, entering the line item for red wagon in the sales order can automatically create the work ticket to make the wagon by using the template associated with the red wagon.  In other words, by entering “red wagon” as a line in the sales order, you have also created a complete router describing how to build the wagon and a bill of materials listing all of parts and raw materials required for the job.

If work tickets are required to fulfill stock requirements, JobOps will auto-generate the work tickets whenever demand and allocations for the stock item will bring inventories down to your minimum stock level.

Spec Sheet | View Demo

Somewhere between the creating the quote, entering the sales order, and the completing the job, lies the responsibility of Job Planning or Production Control. Verifying the accuracy of the router, the bill of materials, determining material availability, notifying purchasing of shortages, checking production schedules to see if resources are available to meet the required ship dates...

This is a critical step in the work flow of your operations. Potential problems identified now can avoid costly mistakes during production.

Communication

How do you tie it all together? How does sales order entry notify Production Control that a firm order is now ready for production? With JobOps and the Sage 100 Business Alerts Module, communications between your different work groups can be automated.

JobOps tracks status changes to the work tickets. When a status change is detected by the Business Alerts module, it automatically sends and e-mail to the next person in line responsible for the job. In other words, as soon as the sales order is entered, Production Control is immediately notified that they can begin checking the order before the job is released for work.

Tracking of Original, Revised, and Actual Costs

JobOps also allows you to track the impact on job costs that result from necessary Production Control changes. The estimated job costs from materials, labor and services that were entered either as a quote or a sales order can be tracked against the revisions made by production control. When work on the job begins, the actual costs are tracked separately from the original estimates and the revised estimates.

The result is that if your profits have been less than expected, you now have better visibility as to where the issues lie.

• Is estimating being overly optimistic about costs?
• Is Production Control unrealistic about how much work can get done in a day?
• Or are the actual production operations not running as efficiently as possible?

Using JobOps to compare the original costs from your estimators to the revised costs of production control to the actual costs reported from the job gives you better visibility and more management control to improve your operations.

Spec Sheet | View Demo

Purchase materials only when a job requires the material! When your customer places an order with you, material requirements for that job are determined, and then the materials should be ordered from the vendor to be delivered as close as possible to when the job needs it.

Sound like the perfect world? Sure, but if you have a lot of jobs to track, it can become difficult to administer.

JobOps, Job Management Software has created a solution designed specifically for this problem. JobOps tracks the start date for each step, operation, or phase of a job. Then it reviews the bill of material (BOM) required for each of those steps. The due date for the material needed for a step then becomes the date that the step is scheduled to begin.

Next, JobOps creates a list of all the materials that need to be purchased, by looking at all demand from jobs and orders. This is compared to a list of available materials during the same time period. If there is not enough material available, it is flagged as an exception item – and is added to a list of items that need to be ordered.

All of this analysis takes only seconds.

The purchasing tool from JobOps then allows you to automatically create all of the purchase orders to fulfill the material requirements for your jobs and orders during a specified time period. If you want to review only what is needed for the next three weeks, then JobOps won’t include materials that aren’t needed until a later date..

The purchase orders tell your vendor when you need the materials shipped (including their lead time so you get it when you need it) and what jobs the materials are being ordered for.

When the materials are received, the packing slip from the vendor tells your receiving dock what jobs the materials need to be distributed to.

The result is that materials are received on time, to the job they are needed for, and you are spending less in raw materials inventory while still meeting your on-time deliveries!

Spec Sheet | View Demo

The number one reason for implementing a new ERP system is to get control of your work schedule. On-time deliveries can be even more important than price in driving the success of your business.

JobOps Scheduling Software take a realistic approach to delivering the tools the you need, and can use, letting you get control over the scheduling issues that impact getting jobs done on time.

Capable to Promise

Since being able to deliver on time really begins with the original promised ship date, JobOps begins the scheduling process as early as the time of the quote or acceptance of the order. The JobOps Scheduling Module provides for a “Capable to Promise” calculation when quoting or booking orders. This calculation analyzes the time required for the job against the currently scheduled jobs. It also analyzes the availability of materials required for the new job. The Capable to Promise calculator then returns the earliest possible completion date, so that you can discuss it with you customer before committing to the ship date they are requesting.

Capacity Planning

Do you have finite resources available to complete your jobs? In an ideal world, a scheduling system would make sure that your resources are never overloaded.

If you allow sales and customers to determine requested ship dates, in effect, you are running your operations as if your resources have infinite capacity. In the real world, when you overload your resources, you still need to deliver on time. Therefore your options are to run overtime, or reassign the work to another resource.

JobOps Scheduling Engine combines the ideal world with the real world. For those resources that always seem to be the bottlenecks in your schedule, JobOps will plan around these finite resources. For the resources where overtime or reallocation is an option, it will plan infinitely.

The scheduling engine will load your new jobs, according to your finite and infinite rules, into the schedule by reverse scheduling from the promised ship date. If the scheduling engine determines that the start date for the job is earlier than the current date, it will stop the reverse scheduling process and forward schedule the job. JobOps will not create an unrealistic schedule for a job, but it will alert you to jobs that are now marked as “late” and will require additional attention. 

The graphical schedule board will then immediately alert you to overloaded resources that could jeopardize the schedule and also provides tools allowing you to correct the problems. These tools are used in a “what if?” mode so that before committing to the new schedule, you can verify that fixing one problem did not create a new problem elsewhere.

Material Requirements

Planning your workload is only effective if you have the materials available that are required by the jobs you are scheduling. JobOps Scheduling takes your material availability into account in being able to create the optimal schedule. Using JobOps automated purchasing (see the “Purchasing” page) can only assure that materials are ordered on time – it cannot guarantee that your vendors will deliver as promised.

Releasing a schedule to your work force for jobs that have material shortages will only waste their time as they search for the missing materials – thereby increasing the cost of the job, since they have now lost valuable time.

JobOps alerts you to material shortages in the graphical scheduling board. It also allows you to drill down into the status of these materials, letting you make decisions about either postponing the work or “borrowing” the material from another job that the material has been issued to.

Drag and Drop Scheduling

Once alerted to the possible exceptions of capacity overloads, material shortages or late jobs, JobOps scheduling provides tools to help you deal with the issues. Do you have another resource cross-trained to do the work that is currently scheduled to an overloaded resource? JobOps graphical scheduling board displays the workload from jobs as a Gantt chart, or bar graph, against the resources. Simply drag the task to the cross trained resource and the work has been reassigned to get done on time, and without using costly overtime.

If you don’t have another resources available, the schedule board allows you to change the work calendar on the fly, meaning that you can increase the hours worked that day to accommodate the requirements from your jobs – it may mean running overtime, but at least the jobs will get done on time!.

Spec Sheet | View Demo

Data Collection

JobOps Time Tracker module let’s your workers report on what they have completed, and the materials they have used, in real time. Using terminals out on the floor, bar coding, or web-based reporting, employees can directly enter their time for the jobs they are working on. Using the same tools, they can also report on the materials they used for the job.

The costs of the employee time and the materials used are immediately available for management reporting.

Real-time Job Costing and Inventory Updates

The actual cost of the employees’ time (including overtime) and the cost of the materials is immediately available for management analysis. The status of a job is available while the job is still being worked on, meaning that cost overruns are visible when you can still react, rather than days or weeks later. Exception reporting can also let you know when a job is not running as scheduled.

Even more important for many companies, when inventory is issued to a job, it is not only costed immediately to the job, but the on-hand quantity of that inventory is also immediately updated. Knowing the actual available inventory quantities allows you to make better purchasing decisions and make sure that inventory will be available for the next job that requires the same material.

Job Tracking

Do your customers ever call asking for the status of their job and whether or not it will be done on time? With JobOps Time Tracker your employees can keep you up to date on the status of all of your jobs – meaning that when the customer calls, you can do an inquiry in JobOps and give them the status of the job while they are still on the phone. Getting it done on time is what you strive for, but knowing when it won’t be is when you need to get involved with hands-on management. JobOps real-time reporting of job status allows you to see exception reports of those jobs where the scheduled work has not been completed.

Accounting Control

What really makes JobOps and Sage 100 different from many ERP software systems is that you don’t sacrifice accounting control in order to gain job control. Even though your operations management has real time access to job costs and inventory usage, your financial group still maintains control of the transaction based journal entries and updates to your General Ledger. The daily activity of running labor and inventory ledgers remains in the control of Accounting so that verification can be made before posting to the journals.

Accounting maintains its controls and procedures while Operations still gets real time reporting on the status of their jobs!

Spec Sheet | View Demo

For companies that offer repair, maintenance and warranty services, the JobOps Field Service and Dispatch module was designed to help you track the costs and revenue of your services in detail.

With Field Service and Dispatch your services departments will be able to respond faster, have quicker access to equipment maintenance history, generate preventive maintenance calls and then be able to dispatch the appropriate technician using graphical scheduling.

What makes the JobOps Field Service and Dispatch so unique is the "dashboard" approach to generating service tickets. When customers call, the dashboard allows quick access to the customer information, equipment history, warranty status, service contract information, typical parts needed for the repair, location of the equipment, what technicians are available and which technicians have the necessary parts available on their truck.

For improved communications, integration with the Microsoft Outlook® sends service ticket information by e-mail to the technician providing them with full details of the call and lets the customer know that a technician has been assigned. Also updated with the service ticket details is the technician's calendar in Microsoft Outlook®. With Pocket PC or Palm technology, your field technicians have real time updates in the field.

All history of past services is also available including full serial and lot tracking information on any level of components included in the equipment.

Preventive maintenance service tickets are generated by Field Service and Dispatch on the required service dates to ensure that your customers receive their contracted services on-time.

Service billing in Field Service and Dispatch is designed to process invoicing quickly, but still provide for the unique requirements of service calls and repair detail. Customer contracts may cover parts and labor, fixed billing or time and material coverage while allowing for overrides to standard coverage for services beyond the scope of the service contract. These exceptions are easily entered to quickly create invoices allowing you collect your services revenue as soon as possible.

In the service industry, speed and service are what keep customers happy. Being able to track costs against the revenue of your services and contracts is what keeps you in business and making a profit.

With the JobOps Field Service and Dispatch, accomplishing both has become much easier.