The Framers Forum

Ricky wrote: Its Exel Based, Works Well For Me & Its Inexpensive At 14.99

Remember Ricky, you get exactly what you pay for!

If business people are "cheap" in what business tools they buy to run their business, they will most likely only be able to cater for customers who are "cheap".

Using that system, you will make almost no profit out of small frames because the markup is the same across the entire range of sizes. Markup on small frames needs to be higher than mid size and markup on large frames needs to be less than mid size.

A chart where you have to add up all the components would be miles better than this! It's just rubbish!

This system is not even OK for a hobbyist let alone a professional framer.

I developed my pricing model in Excel, so out of curiosity I checked out the blurb on the above offering. I must admit, it made me feel uneasy. A bit too simple mebbe?? Call me old-fashioned, but I can't imagine that there's much in the way of technical support offered for such a pittance of a licence fee. I truly believe one gets what one pays for in life. Just my opinion.

It's taken me months of work and a lot of fine tuning over the past two years to develop my model, but it works the way I do (wouldn't dream of inflicting it on anyone else ), and it helps with calculating the odds & sods for object frames etc. Also, it helps me to manage the workshop schedule, monitors collections, and produces my stats.

BTW, if anyone out there is using Excel for stats and hasn't yet discovered pivot tables, check 'em out. They're the biz when you get your head round them.

The ex-techie in me would advise anyone starting up to automate as much of their admin as they can as soon as possible; and to choose a well-tried-and-trusted system with a strong user base. And I can't emphasise strongly enough the importance of system compatibility. To paraphrase a property market truism, when it comes to technology, think "Integration. Integration. Integration." Its a PITA having to do things more than once.

Moglet wrote:BTW, if anyone out there is using Excel for stats and hasn't yet discovered pivot tables, check 'em out. They're the biz when you get your head round them.

Áine's spot on there. We use Excel for our books (check and sales journals, payroll, petty cash, etc). The till output (all of our sales) is the raw input for the pivot table which now has nearly 15,000 lines of data. The pivot table allows us to break out useful information by week, month or year, and check to see how, say, art sales compares with framing over a given period.

She's also right about integration. If you find yourself having to key in the same information more than once, then your system could be improved.

Excel, (with a little bit of VBA scripting), saves us hours of bookwork every month, and reduces a massive annoying chore to a small annoying chore.

Hi All

I Agree with a lot of what every one has said about pricing & pricing systems, but I'm not the worlds greatest Mathematician and I need a helping hand, and yes it does give fixed overall profit margin set at 300% which of course you can choose to use or not at your own discression, but what it does do, is allow me to see in each individual colmn how much its costing me for my materials ie glass, mounts, mouldings ect, ect, then gives me an overall cost price for the frame. (Minus of course the blood,sweat, & tears that have gone into making it,) so I know when I decide how much to charge for the overall job Ive Made A Profit.. as Osgood quite rightly says actual profit marigins have to vary betreen frame sizes, but you do need to know that your'e making a profit. even if its just a small one, at the end of the day its just a guide and you decide how to use it.

Hi Aquaframe

I appreciate it has been a while since you posted your forum request, but it seems I have been chasing the same thing as your goodself and that is answers on software.
Did you ever get anyone to have an opinion on the Quickprice software? Have you played around with any of the software demo's and more importantly, what conclusion have you come to?
Does anyone have any further opinions on this subject, my forum dried up a little? I suspose it is mainly due to most on the forum running EstLite software and there is a great biase towards this.

Very Best Regards
Deepjoy and Excitement!!!

I use MYOB as it \is accounting software and for power shut offs get yourself a UPS (Uniterruptable power supply) they are great.

The reason for using an accounting package is that you can import csv files from moulding comapnies as well as add your own items such as fitting costs or labour costs for various jobs that framers get.
As well you can export these items and update pricing within the software or exporet to Excell and do it there and import back into MYOB or any other good accounting package.

The same good accounting package should be able to produce quotes which you can either print or email to your client providing you have set up a customer card for your client.

At the same time if you use an Item listing in your accounting package you can issue Statements for slow payers which framers will have at least three of these type of customers you can issue Item Statements which list purchases as well as payments.

if you use a book system it is rather difficult to maintain consistency in pricing but with an accounting software package that uses item listings you will find more time in your business to do other things that require more of your attention than pricing your services.

I hope this helps?

Ian Goodman wrote:I use MYOB as it \is accounting software and for power shut offs get yourself a UPS (Uniterruptable power supply) they are great.

The reason for using an accounting package is that you can import csv files from moulding comapnies as well as add your own items such as fitting costs or labour costs for various jobs that framers get.
As well you can export these items and update pricing within the software or exporet to Excell and do it there and import back into MYOB or any other good accounting package.

The same good accounting package should be able to produce quotes which you can either print or email to your client providing you have set up a customer card for your client.

At the same time if you use an Item listing in your accounting package you can issue Statements for slow payers which framers will have at least three of these type of customers you can issue Item Statements which list purchases as well as payments.

if you use a book system it is rather difficult to maintain consistency in pricing but with an accounting software package that uses item listings you will find more time in your business to do other things that require more of your attention than pricing your services.

I hope this helps?

This sounds like a very long winded way of pricing your framing - I doubt it would be very effective as a POS tool.

Judging by the number of views to this topic there are a huge number of framers who haven't yet got into the electronic age. Having been framing for over 20 years I would hate to go back to the dark days of having to laboriously work out my grid tables paticularly when a price increase is due. Any system, I use Frameman, has got to be more accurate, for instance when coping with different qualities (and prices) of mount board, glass etc. and prices can be changed almost instantly. I have upped my prices earlier this year and I'm about to do them again. I hope you are all doing the same!
I've been using Frameman for 6/7 years and found it quite complicated to set up, taking me about 6 months. It has got one or two glitches but you get used to them and I believe it has been recently updated so hopefully they have been ironed out. I find the desktop view of the order page over complicated and prefer the layout of Quickprice however Frameman does produce a nice order form/invoice for the customer and a workshop copy which I don't think QP does. It also gives me costs and profit for each job if desired. I know that I make more profit than a neighbouring framer who doesn't use a computor system although he has a higher turnover and is in a high street location.

NYAFs story is a fairly common one.
Sadly it can take a major event to shake up your business, and make you realise that you are too cheap, flogging your tripe out for nothing, and that life is too short.

What we found with Estlite:

POS pricing seriously takes the hassle out of a large slice of your job - pricing up jobs.
Best thing is that staff can use it and come up with the same price as the boss does, and there is no danger of them coming back to you with a "why was it three quid more last week". (consistent)
POS dramatically reduces the number of people who ask for a discount, and makes it easy to instantly offer a cheaper/cheapest option at the click of a mouse.
It increases the percentage of people who OFFER to pay up front.
It enable you to sell up on some options such as UV glass, double mounts without having to work out the whole job again.
It makes sure you dont forget to charge for everything!

We are in the same boat, we are mainly a commercail business suppling to major building contracts over the UK. We do a lot of repeat work and have been doing worksheets manually for the past 15 years. We are looking for software that is capable of handling print reference number and art supplier list, also moulding/mountboard list from our 2 main suppliers (Arquadia and D.J Simons) that can hopefully be downloaded from the internet.
can anyone suggest anything that could be capable

sounds like you need to look at Estlite - http://estlite.scenes.biz/

it should be able to do everything you've requested there, apart from the mountboard stocklist. it can certainly keep moulding stock and prices up to date from the internet.

I have used Estlite for the past 5 years and what a great programme.
Even used it in its basic form without all the knobs and tassles included its perfect for the small busines.s
One main thing that makes it so good is the coding application for the moulds, You dont have to make up a vast list of Library codes to make it work
Just put the price per metre including VAT that you paid for the mould (in pence)in the mould aperature r/h box and it will work out the price. So everytime a price change comes in just alter the pence code on your sample. Simple.
Keep up the good work Estlite I'm a convert .