MISys Manufacturing MRP and QuickBooks 2024 | QuickBooks Enterprise and MISys 2024 | All-In-One Demo
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Summary
In this comprehensive demo, Raeann Salter and Daryl from MISys Manufacturing showcase how the MISys Manufacturing MRP integrates seamlessly with QuickBooks Online and Enterprise 2024. They explore the various capabilities of MISys, particularly how it enhances the manufacturing functions that QuickBooks doesn't cover effectively on its own. The discussion includes the benefits of a modular system that helps manufacturers with operations like production scheduling, inventory management, and forecasting, thus offering a robust solution short of a full ERP system.
Highlights
Discover how MISys and QuickBooks can operate almost as one unified system. 🤝
Explore the depth of MISys integration, from production scheduling to inventory control. ⚒️
Understand how this system reduces the burden of manual data entry and ensures accuracy. 📋
Find out how companies can extend the life and capabilities of QuickBooks through MISys. 🚀
Learn how MISys safeguards against inventory gaps and improves production efficiency. 📦
Key Takeaways
MISys integrates flawlessly with QuickBooks, providing a robust manufacturing solution. 🎉
The system offers superior inventory management and production scheduling tools. 📊
MISys enhances the manufacturing process, complementing QuickBooks’ existing capabilities. 🔄
The modular nature of MISys means you can choose the functionalities you need. 🛠️
Forecasting tools in MISys address QuickBooks’ shortcomings in planning capabilities. 🔮
Overview
In a lively and detailed discussion, Raeann Salter and Daryl from MISys Manufacturing dive into how MISys integrates effectively with QuickBooks Online and Enterprise 2024. They highlight the strength of this combination for manufacturers who need advanced functionality beyond what QuickBooks alone can provide.
The presentation covers essential aspects of MISys, including inventory control, production scheduling, and material requirements planning. It showcases MISys as a valuable asset in managing manufacturing tasks, ensuring that businesses avoid costly mistakes and improve overall operational efficiency.
Raeann and Daryl make a compelling case for the benefits of adopting a modular approach with MISys. They explain how this adds flexibility, allowing businesses to select specific features suited to their needs, thereby optimizing manufacturing processes without the financial burden of a full ERP system.
Chapters
00:00 - 01:00: Introduction and Overview The introduction begins with Raeann from Minding My Books, a QuickBooks consultant, who works with QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Enterprise. She introduces the topic of discussion as five reasons why manufacturers choose MISys in conjunction with QuickBooks. Raeann is joined by Daryl from MISys Manufacturing, who is expected to elaborate more on MISys as a manufacturing solution.
01:00 - 04:00: MISys Manufacturing Integration with QuickBooks MISys Manufacturing is a specialized add-on designed to enhance the capabilities of QuickBooks for intensive manufacturing needs. It serves as an advanced extension for companies requiring more robust manufacturing functionalities without transitioning to a full-scale manufacturing ERP system, which could be significantly more expensive. The tool allows businesses to push QuickBooks to its limits in terms of manufacturing capabilities.
04:00 - 08:00: Operations and Inventory Management The chapter discusses the challenges associated with integrating third-party software applications with QuickBooks Online and Enterprise. Many third-party systems only transfer summary information, and their integration with QuickBooks is often considered an afterthought. The chapter specifically mentions MISys's software and its integration capabilities with QuickBooks, suggesting a deeper dive or demonstration into how it achieves this integration compared to others.
08:00 - 12:00: Cost Management and Production Tracking The chapter discusses the integration of MISys with QuickBooks for efficient cost management and production tracking. It highlights the seamless cooperation between the two systems, aiming to avoid the challenges of synchronization by ensuring that data does not have to be redundantly entered or reflected in multiple platforms. This integration facilitates streamlined operations, allowing users to input data into MISys, which then cooperatively works with QuickBooks. The included flowchart further illustrates the effective relationship between MISys and QuickBooks, emphasizing that the primary goal is to simplify the process and reduce redundancy in data management.
12:00 - 17:00: Forecasting and Planning This chapter discusses the integration of QuickBooks with the MISys system for improved forecasting and planning. The focus is on using QuickBooks to handle accounting functions (AR, AP, GL) while MISys complements it by providing additional capabilities. The goal is to use QuickBooks as an extension of existing systems, leveraging familiar functionalities while improving overall efficiency.
17:00 - 21:00: Advanced Features and Customization This chapter delves into the integration of sales systems with QuickBooks, emphasizing that all customer information and transactions such as orders and invoicing are centralized in QuickBooks. MISys effectively interfaces with QuickBooks, enabling real-time monitoring and responsiveness to sales activities. The chapter also highlights MISys’ capability to cater to various customer-facing needs through its compatibility with CRM systems, EDI, and e-commerce integrations.
21:00 - 25:00: Shop Floor Control and Barcoding This chapter discusses the integration of Shop Floor Control and Barcoding with QuickBooks through MISys. It highlights the seamless compatibility provided by using MISys alongside QuickBooks, allowing for a unified system experience. The integration maintains an open setup for sales solutions that are compatible with QuickBooks, thus offering the flexibility of choice while ensuring comprehensive system functionalities akin to a single, unified platform.
25:00 - 30:00: MISys EXT and Real-time Data Collection MISys handles the operational aspects of the business, including purchasing, production, inventory control, planning, scheduling, costing, and traceability. The system integrates with QuickBooks to view orders and past sales activities, streamlining operations and data collection.
30:00 - 37:00: Implementation and Support The chapter discusses the implementation of a system that leverages QuickBooks to enhance forecasting and sales projections. It highlights the capability of analyzing quotes in QuickBooks to drive projections and production recommendations, applicable to various manufacturing methodologies including make to order, make to stock, and make to forecast. The focus is on utilizing visibility into sales activities in QuickBooks to determine production needs.
37:00 - 40:30: Conclusion and Next Steps The chapter discusses the role of MISys in managing complex manufacturing operations with multi-level bills of materials. It highlights the functionality of MISys in identifying needs, calculating purchasing requirements, creating and sending purchase orders, receiving them timely, and tracking the entire production process. Further details are promised in the presentation. The key takeaway is the capabilities of MISys once a process is completed.
MISys Manufacturing MRP and QuickBooks 2024 | QuickBooks Enterprise and MISys 2024 | All-In-One Demo Transcription
00:00 - 00:30 Hi my name is Raeann with Minding My Books. I
am a QuickBooks consultant. What that means is I work with QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks
Enterprise. Today I am talking with Daryl from MISys Manufacturing. Hi Daryl. Yeah…thanks for
having me. Yes Thank you. We've put together five reasons why manufacturers choose MISys with
QuickBooks Online or QuickBooks Enterprise. First of all, to get started, Darryl can you tell
us a little bit about MISys as manufacturing?
00:30 - 01:00 Or what is MISys Manufacturing Yeah sure. We
are a deep manufacturing add-on specifically built to work with QuickBooks. And we basically
represents, um, Uh the sort of last stop the the furthest extent that you can take QuickBooks for
those companies that have some really intensive manufacturing needs but maybe aren't quite ready
to spend six figures on a full manufacturing ERP.
01:00 - 01:30 You know a lot of these third party softwares
you they say they integrate in with QuickBooks Online and Enterprise but what I've run across
is a lot of them just bring over the summary information. Um so can you kind of explain and
demonstrate how MISys's software integrates with QuickBooks? Absolutely So. You're correct There
are a lot of systems. Um, Their integration with QuickBooks is a little bit of an afterthought
They've already kind of done everything in
01:30 - 02:00 their system And then they're just going to dump
what they've done into QuickBooks and um and call it a day. MISys was developed specifically
to work alongside QuickBooks. And what that means is that we've established a cooperative
integration with QuickBooks So up on the screen, Is a flow chart that I think does a pretty
good job of explaining this relationship. The number one theme of this integration is it we're
trying to avoid synchronization. We don't want to do everything in our system and then try to have
to reflect the same information in two different
02:00 - 02:30 places instead. We're trying to treat QuickBooks
almost as an extension of our own system. And have the more cooperative cooperatively together.
So, if you look at this flow chart what we're basically doing here when MISys and QuickBooks are
working together. Is we're allowing QuickBooks to do the things that it already does pretty well And
that most QuickBooks users are already going to be pretty familiar with. That means a QuickBooks is
going to be number one the accounting system. So AR a P G L lives completely in QuickBooks. Um, But
we're also going to allow QuickBooks to remain the
02:30 - 03:00 sales systems. All of your customers will live
only in QuickBooks. Customer orders are entered only in QuickBooks. Invoicing happens only in
QuickBooks. And MISys is basically constantly looking at QuickBooks. We're able to see
everything that's going on there. We're able to respond to it. The other thing that that enables
is there are lots of MISys users that have needs on the customer facing side, whether it's a CRM
system or EDI or e-commerce integrations. And by
03:00 - 03:30 leaving the sales side in QuickBooks it means that
any QuickBooks compatible solution on that side, will therefore be fully compatible with MISys.
We leave that whole side completely open to you. Well MISys. I kind of like to say to is it all
in one system. It kind of gives you everything all in one. The big software companies do.
Exactly Yeah So yes it's a different program than QuickBooks but the way the integration is set
up, it behaves like one kind of unified system.
03:30 - 04:00 So what MISys will actually handle is going to be
the operations side of the business. So MISys is handles purchasing, production, inventory control
planning, scheduling, costing traceability If you need that. And in practice what that looks like
is…if we start in the top right-hand corner of this flow chart. When customers want to place
an order with you that order will be entered in QuickBooks. And MISys can see that order. It
can also see things like past sales activity if
04:00 - 04:30 you want to do, you know, forecasting or sales
projections, it can see quotes If you want to look at your quotes to drive projections.
And it can essentially make production recommendations and. You know it doesn't matter
if you're a make to order custom manufacturer, if you're make to stock or make the forecast.
All we're doing is taking a cue from QuickBooks with visibility into the sales activity in
QuickBooks to figure out what needs to get made.
04:30 - 05:00 And, you know of course for those manufacturers a
little bit more complicated have multi-level bills of materials MISys identifies needs across the
whole structure. And then we even calculate what your purchasing needs are, help you create POS,
send the POS to your vendors, receive those POS at the right time. And track the entire production
process. So we'll get into that over the course of this uh of this presentation but, the biggest
thing here, is that once MISys has completed a
05:00 - 05:30 build of a finished good tracking everything
that it took to make it. We're going to hand that finished good back to QuickBooks as a costed
finished good inventory item. So we're using that inventory control where, uh in QuickBooks where
it's able to track the cost of each unit produced. And then when you invoice in QuickBooks like you
normally would, you can see exactly how much money you made by product, by customer, by order. Um, so
we're just leveraging the tools that are already
05:30 - 06:00 in QuickBooks. We're just tracking more details
on the production and purchasing side. And do you also track the cost based on the the labor cost
and the overhead hours that you track too? Is that able to go into the individual unit costs? So we
will track whatever costs and whatever variables you want to capture. Now if you're a pretty simple
manufacturer and you don't have to track all that, you don't have to in MISys. But, a lot lot of
our users have multiple stages of production and
06:00 - 06:30 they want to know exactly how much time and labor
they're spending on each stage what their overhead is, variables like scrap or yield variations or
even changes to the bill of material. MISys as a dedicated production system is able to capture
every possible thing that could happen between when you start and when you finish a build. And
accurately cost that into what we're sending to QuickBooks as a finished good. That's great. Not
many companies can do that as if any that I know of right now So um that's a really great feature
to offer and to make customers who you know again
06:30 - 07:00 can't afford that really expensive software
feel like they get are getting an all-in-one solution. That's exactly. That's the goal. This
top part of the flow chart is probably the most important aspect, um because that deals with how
the costs are conveyed cleanly to QuickBooks, but there are a couple of other important integration
points that just, uh kind of contribute to this overall theme of keeping both MISys and QuickBooks
always on the same page. One of them just has to
07:00 - 07:30 do with paying your bills. So MISys will take
over purchasing because we have much deeper purchasing functionality and it's integrated into
our planning system. But you still have to pay your bills and QuickBooks and we never want there
to be any duplicate data entry at any point with our set up with QuickBooks. So basically, when you
get a bill from a vendor, you're going to go to a special screen in MISys where you can compare what
you're being billed with, what MISys will show you is actually having received previously. Um make
sure it matches what you ordered and matches the
07:30 - 08:00 price you expected to pay. And once you confirm
that and hit a button MISys will instantly create a bill to be paid in QuickBooks That way you're
still cutting your checks and paying your bills and QuickBooks the way you already would be if
you're using QuickBooks now…So that kind of keeps a bookkeeping function in QuickBooks which is very
nice but you're still keeping…You functioning. Exactly It's sort of that same theme of cleanly
dividing labor so that the accounting is still happening in QuickBooks, but uh purchasing being
integral to the manufacturing operations. getting
08:00 - 08:30 material in at the right times, we're handling
that. It's just a clean handoff. And. That's sort of along the same lines, the last integration
point here is the general ledger. So all of the stuff that MISys is doing, the labor that's being
applied and production process if you do that, tracking the value of inventory, whether that's
in stock or in work in process. All of these little activities that MISys is able to track.
They all affect financials. So when a new MISys
08:30 - 09:00 is customers getting set up, we're going to help
them, Um, map out what accounts they want to have affected in their GL in QuickBooks. Uh by all of
the conceivable things that MISys's doing and it is very configurable We will help you do that. Um,
that way once you start running with MISys, every transaction that you do in MISys produces the
appropriate credits and debits. We do keep it in a sub-ledger because a lot of times accountants want
to review everything before it flows into their GL. Um, but whenever you want usually once a day
you hit a button MISys will upload all of those
09:00 - 09:30 credits and debits to the QuickBooks GL so that
your financials in QuickBooks are able to reflect what both systems are doing. And there's always a
full cross-reference. So if you see any entry in your GL there's going to be a memo field pointing
to exactly where that came from in MISys so you can uh look into it If you need. And then um, as
far as the inventory, so the raw materials reside within MISys so then that that way um again only
the finished goods. For into QuickBooks. Exactly
09:30 - 10:00 And…so one of the interesting things there is a
lot of times by the time the companies come to us, Um, their QuickBooks database is a
little bit full to put it lightly. Um, so one of the benefits that MISys offers is
to offload a lot of the heavy lifting and a lot of the transaction heavy stuff that has to be done
in QuickBooks if you're, if you're running it all by itself. Um which can extend the useful life of
QuickBooks, improve performance, et cetera because
10:00 - 10:30 you're getting all of that all of that transaction
heavy processing out of QuickBooks and bringing it into MISys which sits on a industrial strength
Microsoft SQL database and can handle whatever you throw at it. All right. So really what what
would have to happen is just to get your inventory Um, in an Excel spreadsheet or CSV file and then
you'd be able to work with it to import it in. We can import anything you want from Excel or any
Excel compatible format. But, um, because we were
10:30 - 11:00 designed for QuickBooks users we also have the
ability to directly pull from QuickBooks. Just to ease your setup so we can directly import
uh vendors because we do purchasing, items, even bills of material. If you have good bill's
of material and QuickBooks, MISys can pull that straight out automatically and save you a little
bit of time. That's great! I did not know that because in QuickBooks you can't bring in your bill
of materials through Enterprise. So um that is a
11:00 - 11:30 really that would be a really great time saver
for anyone. Yeah. Oh yeah Obviously those of you, um, QuickBooks Online you're not going to have
bills of material but…in QuickBooks Desktop, Premier or Enterprise. Um, we can pull those
bills and material directly in as part of an initial import which. You know there's going to be
more you'll probably want to set up in MISys after that but the heavy the the, the intensive setup
stuff we can do automatically if you've had if you have good data in QuickBooks of course.
That's great. Hey Daryl can you show us some
11:30 - 12:00 examples of the QuickBooks actually flowing
in or actually MISys flowing into QuickBooks. Sure things So. Goin to switch over to MISys
itself. And if we think about that first part of the integration which is, uh kind of two parts
it's reading and responding to sales activity and tell you kind of what you need to do. And then
it's once production is done, pushing it back. So when we talk about responding to QuickBooks,
there's a bunch of ways that you can do it And
12:00 - 12:30 we'll we'll talk about some, um some more
specific examples in the later sections of this presentation. Um, but even just something as
simple as " What's sales orders do I need to worry about that haven't already been scheduled? This
would apply mostly to make to order manufacturers if you're more made to stock there are other
ways of going about this, but you can actually see MISys connecting to QuickBooks and what it's
done is identified any new customer orders that haven't already been scheduled in production.
And even when we talk about this we are,
12:30 - 13:00 we are looking at QuickBooks records here. We can
see a customer order for a particular item. And you can even see this little drill hovering here.
Now I have QuickBooks open. Um MISys is capable of integrating with QuickBooks in the background if
you're not logged into QuickBooks or if you have somebody who you don't want to be logged into
QuickBooks but who needs the integration…But because QuickBooks is open, if I hit my drill
down tool. Which exists throughout MISys and
13:00 - 13:30 you can drill down to anything you want,
but it also works going into QuickBooks. That instantly bumps me over to the corresponding
QuickBooks sales order so I can see it. This is the nature of the integration. This allows,
uh the two systems almost to act as one…And I can schedule production directly
from there. I just need to choose a, an inventory location MISys has unlimited
inventory locations built in. If I generate a new order here MISys will automatically
populate it with my bill of material…And
13:30 - 14:00 in other sections we'll go into detail about
all the stuff that you can track during the production process, but for now I'm going to keep
it super simple and skip to the end. I'm going to complete this build. So I will complete all 20
units here…And now that I'm done, I want to give that to QuickBooks. So I'm simply going to hit my
transfer to sales button…I'll take all 20 units that I've built. And if we look at QuickBooks
right now…And literally just look at that item
14:00 - 14:30 in our item list in QuickBooks we have none on
hand and QuickBooks. We just finished making it. So I'm going to kick that right over to
QuickBooks. And instantly if we watch that zero. It instantly becomes 20. And not only that. But
if we look at our average cost that's $60 and 62 cents a straight from MISys based on tracking all
of the material labor and overhead that went into that build. Right And now we can sell it like we
normally would. I can even…drill right back down
14:30 - 15:00 to that original, uh sales order from here…And
hit the invoice button and out the door it goes…That is seamless. That's what we're
going for…Now, um, on the purchasing side. That was the second integration point in
the flow chart. We receive a purchase order. So I'm just going to. You'll notice that the uh
the workflows are all visual here in MISys It's
15:00 - 15:30 just like you'd typically see in QuickBooks.
If I wanted to quickly receive a purchase order here. Like I've got five spools of wire
that I need to bring in. I'll just check that in…And eventually I'm going to get a bill for
that. Usually a couple of days later maybe. When I get that bill I'm simply going to choose the
same PO. Double check that the quantity and the amount I'm being billed for matches what I should
be paying I can adjust it here if I need to…I
15:30 - 16:00 will just put in a random invoice number here
and I'll hit invoice checked. And instantly again it's going to pass it over to QuickBooks.
And if we were to look at our latest bill here, we're going to see that same one, Rihanna one one
coming right over. Now the item itself doesn't need to exist in QuickBooks. The only items
that you need to have in your QuickBooks item list are um the items you actually sell…So
MISys has giving us a memo field describing
16:00 - 16:30 exactly what it is that we're paying for line
by line. All instantly created in QuickBooks. So it's not even in summary it's it's each line
item. Yep You will see each line item you're paying for straight from MISys, even whether
or not the items ever existed in QuickBooks…Now last but not least when we do these kinds of
activities, it's generating credits and debits here in MISys. So I can even look at that
manufacturing. And see it's history and see
16:30 - 17:00 all of the, um material labor and overhead that
the system's using in order to build this thing. And of course you know just looking at the
inventory we can see that okay In order to do this assembly we consumed all of these
materials. We, uh added this finished Good…And we can even see the credit and debit accounts that
are being affected by all of those transactions. So for example, 1320 is my inventory asset
account. And putting that finished good in
17:00 - 17:30 is debiting that for $1,212 and 40 cents.
So, if we look at just that specific entry, this has not yet been posted to the GL like
I said it's normally done day by day. So if I'm the accountant and it's the end of the day I'm
about to go home which is usually when we do this. We simply had it We simply hit the post
button in our accounting section period end.
17:30 - 18:00 And MISys will take, It'll always offer to create
a backup, It'll take all the unposted credits and debits push them over to QuickBooks with the full
cross-reference. It's simultaneously taking a cool inventory snapshot. So if you do this every day
you have an inventory time machine to look back at what you had at any point in time. Uh that was a
common request from our customers that we put in. But now if we were to go into QuickBooks,
look it over our chart of accounts and maybe just run a little quick report
on that 1320 inventory account…And
18:00 - 18:30 I'm going to sort this to just today.
We're going to be able to see somewhere in here that 12, 12 40. That we
did. We can see it right there. And what we're actually able to see is not only
when we added that to our inventory asset when we transferred it. But also the handoff where we
transfer that out of MISys and into QuickBooks. So line by line we've got it and every transaction
has this memo field deal detailing exactly what
18:30 - 19:00 we did. So this makes your accountant happy. Yeah
it should the account will see, you know eat. When these when these credits and debits start flowing
in, the accountant can see exactly why they all existed. So these little numbers here point to
where you can find the transaction details and MISys or the purchase order it's related to. Um,
so your account will see it And by the way if uh, if you're generating a lot of activity some
accountants don't want all of this detail.
19:00 - 19:30 We allow you to set how much detail you want
to post You can summarize by date by account. Um, just to minimize the amount of stuff floating
into QuickBooks once you're comfortable that everything's going where it should. Can you
show us how it works with QuickBooks Online? Sure So it's actually the exact same setup I
don't even have to switch flow charts All of the integration points are the same. And if I
want it to I've just logged into my…QuickBooks Online copy right here. And I'm just going to
go down to my settings. And tell MISys point
19:30 - 20:00 to QuickBooks Online instead. So that's nice and
easy. I'll just pull down to QuickBooks Online. And…all of my settings should carry over. And then
I'm just going to say connect to QuickBooks…And this little kind of certificate pops up. We've
successfully connected I'll close the window…And I think I just have a different AP account that we
use in QuickBooks Online So I'm going to fix that.
20:00 - 20:30 So now the integration is enabled for QuickBooks
Online. And I can do the exact same thing. I can hit that process sales orders function and
MISys is going to find any of my open orders and QuickBooks Online I might need to go back a
bit. And keep in mind with QuickBooks Online they don't have the sales order form. So how does
that work within MISys how do you, um, Good question Yeah. So, um, so if we go down into our
sales area, QuickBooks Online correct does not
20:30 - 21:00 have, uh, anything called sales orders but what
they do have are similar to QuickBooks desktop they have sales receipts, which MISys is able
to see in both Online and Desktop. But they also have estimates. And the interesting thing
about estimates within QuickBooks Online, Is that all estimates have a little status.
So I'm going to create a new estimate here in QuickBooks Online…So I'll choose a
customer. I'll choose a ship date…I'll
21:00 - 21:30 choose an item that they want to purchase, maybe
we want 500 units of these special desk lamps that I sell…And up here is the key. So right now
this is defaulting to a pending estimate. That's like a quote, but if the customer has already
accepted it, we just move this Uh, to be accepted. And if I save it this is SOS. 0 7 3, 1…And when
I go to my process, Uh sales order screen here in
21:30 - 22:00 MISys. It's going to be able to identify it right
there. Same drill down capabilities. Just like the regular old…So really this is being treated
kind of like a sales order. Exactly. Once it's accepted, we consider that to be the equivalent
of a sales order. So that way Um, you have that order entry capability right in QuickBooks Online
fully compatible with MISys. And from here on end it's the exact same integration points in all the
ways we already showed you with desktop it works
22:00 - 22:30 the exact same way. That's great. So both, so
whoever if you prefer desktop you're fine there, if you prefer Online then, then it reacts the same
way or it gives you the same information. Anything different at all between the two then except for
the estimate. No that is. Literally…everything else is completely identical. Um I suppose Intuit.
Is owed a lot of credit there um, because they gave us a lot of the same capabilities to do
what we do with boast both Online and desktop.
22:30 - 23:00 Um, so when somebody asks us what should
we get we just say whatever you prefer…And it's great. Honestly I would say that your third
party manufacturing software is the very best that I've seen as far as the seamless integration what
it can do. It's incredible. We've been doing it for uh, for 40 years even before QuickBooks
was around Um so we've had a little bit of time to…perfect the uh, the seamlessness of best
we can. That's great. So a lot of my…customers
23:00 - 23:30 call me who use QuickBooks and your QuickBooks
Enterprise, they always ask me about a forecasting solution. Um, One thing about QuickBooks is that
it's great at looking at historical information, but they do absolutely nothing for any kind of
forecasting. And a lot of manufacturers need that. When I get a call from a potential
client or someone who's looking to expand
23:30 - 24:00 software, and they ask about forecasting
that's instantly when I think of MISys. So can you kind of explain and and, and show us
how your forecasting works within your software. Sure. I mean, I've had that conversation a
few times. Um, and it's interesting I mean, it's it's beyond just forecasting. There really
aren't any particularly useful planning tools in
24:00 - 24:30 QuickBooks. I've heard a lot of people talk about
where " We've got a ton of things that we need to build And in order to figure out whether or not we
have enough inventory if we want to in QuickBooks, We literally have to pretend we've already built
weeks worth of production just to see what happens to our inventory after all of that," And of
course, that's not a great situation because now you've, you've potentially you're going
negative on inventory The system won't even let you build it. Um you've pretended to build
a lot of things that you haven't even built yet. MISys has a lot more natural approach to planning.
And for this I'm going to focus specifically on a
24:30 - 25:00 tool called material requirements planning. Now
I've got a uh sort of visual workflow here that I think does a pretty good job of explaining
this. But the one thing I say to everybody is, You know most people who I'm showing this
to are already doing everything I'm about to describe the only differences is you're grabbing
all of this data from QuickBooks and you're putting it into a spreadsheet or you're doing
it in your head. Whereas MISyss is completely
25:00 - 25:30 automatically and instantaneously. So what
we're doing is creating something called a master production schedule. That's like a central
planning interface where all the variables come together automatically. It's going to be. Starting
with everything you have in stock right now, MISys is all about maintaining constantly accurate up
to the second inventory for exactly what you have for raw materials, sub assembly, work in process,
finished goods, everything you've got right now combined with everything that's scheduled.
What purchase orders are due to come in, when,
25:30 - 26:00 what production is scheduled, what are you going
to be using, what are you going to be making? And what are your sales orders in QuickBooks What do
you need to ship out? What are the ship dates? MISys also knows your calendar. We know what
days you're open, what days your closed, where your holidays are, how many hours you're working
per day. We even allow you to bring in a sales forecast which we'll talk about. So, um, you know,
we say forecasting we are looking beyond just the orders that happen to be on hand and we're
trying to anticipate what orders we might see.
26:00 - 26:30 Um, and so there are a lot of cool tools for
creating forecasts which we'll talk about…But once that's all together MISys can figure
out what's missing and make a series of recommendations for what you need to be buying and
when and what you need to be making and when, and then we'll help you automatically generate those
orders and build your schedule, uh very seamlessly and easily. So, again that is. If I had to put…a
point one particular feature in MISys that that that leads to, um, more people kind of choosing
the system over others. It would be this one.
26:30 - 27:00 I can attest to that. Yeah. And this one's really
hard to do without the right tools. I'm going to create uh master production schedule. We're just
going to call this MPS for short. And to give you an idea. Here's my QuickBooks Here's my customer
area in QuickBooks. I have shipping between we're on February 3rd right now, between February 6th
and the end of April. I have nearly $800,000
27:00 - 27:30 worth of open orders. And, um, I am a a. Uh, not
a typical example because against all of those orders, I literally have next to nothing going on.
Just a few different production runs scheduled. So I'm looking for something, Um, to help us avoid
some of these uh situations here…So I am going to fire this up. I'm also going to tell the system
to maintain my safety stock levels at all times.
27:30 - 28:00 That way uh we're always maintaining a little bit
of extra inventory. You don't have to literally run down to nothing. The system maintains your
cushions for you…And when I fire this up MISys you'll see it connecting to QuickBooks. It's
going to scroll through a few hundred orders in QuickBooks. Look at their ship dates figure
out what's going out the door. And what it's actually doing is working backwards from those
ship dates to figure out what needs to happen…So
28:00 - 28:30 then I'm going to go over to my summary tab and
right off the bat, I can see what's going to be going on. In this case, over the next few months
you can go as far into the future as you want with this planning tool…The lower half of the screen is
listing every single inventory item of any kind. That's going to have something
happen to it. And of course, you know as you'd assume. Items you see on
the top in red represent your trouble spots. So here for example, is one of my finished goods.
And I can see that well, I'm doing fine right now
28:30 - 29:00 I am well above my safety stock level in inventory
right now but…I don't know what is happening on February 9th but we're taking a pretty steep drop
at that point. And why is that happening. Well, It looks like we have a very large
sales order here going out and again, QuickBooks integration so if we need to check out
that sales order in more detail for any reason…We can just hit our drill down tool and
we're instantly looking at it. It's a
29:00 - 29:30 5,000 units. I can reschedule that now if I
need to if I think that's going to present an issue but, I don't think it will…So I'm
able to see these kinds of future shortages. Now that's an example of me selling a lot
of stuff and identifying that I need more. Now I do want to talk about another
particular example though…Where…Here we have a situation where a particular item
This is one of my components my raw materials
29:30 - 30:00 that I use. Well in this case, I'm showing that I
have production scheduled where I need a bunch of this stuff. And a purchase order coming in later
that'll take care of it. So I don't need to order more. I have a timing issue. And this is something
that only this tool can spot. A system that warns you when you're running low on something will not
be able to tell you "Hey. In a couple of weeks,
30:00 - 30:30 you're going to have a gap in your inventory."
And this happens all the time because this is exactly what you would see if you placed a big PO
for a part. And it I'm sure it never happens for anybody but your vendor ends up being delayed. And
they say they can't deliver something anymore. In a. In a week. But it's coming in. You know two
weeks late. Well when that happens…You've got a gap and of course MISys will tell you the
ramifications of that so that you have the opportunity to drill down to that work order.
Reschedule that for March 3rd in this case…And
30:30 - 31:00 that way you don't go you know day before day
of production and realized oh no we don't have the stuff that we need we were supposed to get it
all It's because the vendor delayed it. And now we need to scramble to reschedule production No.
My MISys allows you to make all of the necessary adjustments. And if that requires delaying a
customer order or anything like that, we give you ample time to do that. Incidentally, just along
that line, on our dashboard MISys has a series
31:00 - 31:30 of customizable dashboard alerts. There we go. We
no longer have our gap by the way. And one of the things you can do with these alerts is generate
automatic emails. So along those lines, what a lot of our customers are doing these days is creating
alerts go off. A week or two in advance of an expected delivery And having that generate an
email directly to the vendor automatically saying, Hey we're showing the following items are due
to be delivered in two weeks Can you please confirm that still on schedule so that there is
going to be an issue, they can get it updated in
31:30 - 32:00 the system well in advance. Make the necessary
adjustments like we did…So this is just. This is saving on so much extra work that most companies
have to do to get this information. Yeah I mean…I come from personally a background in
bakery manufacturing, and we bought MISys, um, years and years and years ago. I'm not going
to say how many. Because we had a similar incident to what just happened there. We had to reschedule
production for some reason, but the spreadsheet I
32:00 - 32:30 was using didn't account for the fact that,
you know all we're bumping up production, we haven't brought in a delivery date on a key
piece of packaging that we needed. So bakery manufacturing you're making $10,000 of muffins
per run. And if you have nothing to package it and it just goes straight to the dumpster So we
literally threw away $10,000 worth of product. All because we didn't have a system able to
identify a gap like that. So this became,
32:30 - 33:00 um, sort of the eyes in the back of my head as
a planner. Uh to make sure that we always had what we need when we needed it And if there was
going to be an issue, we could see it coming…What I also see with a lot of businesses is they will
have one or two people that know everything that's going on, but if something happens with them…Then
you're in a lot of trouble. So, yeah You don't
33:00 - 33:30 want to leave it up to to you know human error
right The guy or gal who builds, who builds the super complicated spreadsheet that they need to
oversee all of this stuff. And not get sick. They can't take a day off. Because nobody else can run
things. At least this way you're centralizing the data. You're automating that and hopefully freeing
up that person to do more useful things. They can at least take a vacation once or twice a year.
There you go…Um, the other stuff here again we've
33:30 - 34:00 got a lot of things that we need to build. And
this is where it gets particularly cool because sure we can see that there's a shortage here and
maybe we want to manually click here and tell the system what we want to make. But we can use some
easy buttons. We can say you know what MISys, I can see there's a shortage, you can see there's
a shortage, why don't you figure out how to get rid of that? The system will take care of
that automatically. But here's the thing. We're manufacturers. There are potentially we
know there's going to be raw materials that we need. There could be sub-assemblies and sub sub
assemblies going out into, you know, 10 12 even
34:00 - 34:30 16 layers deep…So we actually just lost ground.
We, we started off with only a few shortages, now we have even more because we don't make the
stuff out of thin air. But next to the resolve shortage button we have the resolve all shortages
button. And the system will go through the entire bill of material structure and automatically
figure out what we need at each level underneath. And not only that but it's also understanding
lead times. So if it knows what date you need
34:30 - 35:00 to ship a product, it'll figure out how many days
it takes to make it. It will figure out what else you need to do, what else you need to buy, and how
long it takes to get that in from your vendors, how long it takes to make sub assemblies. So
it's literally working backwards understanding that lead time. So when it comes up with
a plan it's actually a realistic. Um and everything's working in concert. We're not
pretending that you can build a sub-assembly um in a day when it might take you five
days to complete that run. I went out
35:00 - 35:30 pretending you can get a part in in a day when you
realistically might take you two or three weeks. Wow…Um 16 subassemblies deep Is that
right? Or…That's a maximum level I think a jumbo jet goes like 12 levels deep.
So hopefully that's enough for folks. Yeah. Um, And of course. That's incredilbe that it
can read all the sub-assemblies also though. Yeah. Again it's odd It's completely automatic.
A lot of people see this and they go " There's
35:30 - 36:00 so much data here, how could we ever set this up
?" To be clear the only data that has been set up in my system that allows me to do this stuff,
is accurate bills material, accurate inventory, which MISys this is all geared around tracking,
and lead times. How many days does it take you to get stuff from your vendors? How long does
it take you to make stuff? So you set that up and the system can do all of this stuff
And when it comes to lead times by the way, it can track actual lead times too So it tracks
your vendor performance automatically. It'll tell
36:00 - 36:30 you that hey this vendor, you know you might be
planning on seven days but the vendor is taking an average of 10 days sometimes up to 21 days.
So maybe want to plan on a longer lead time…Um and it can leverage that information going
the opposite way too because you know sure In this case we're working backwards
from all of our ship dates but what if a customer calls and says "Hey, we want to
place this obscenely large order with you. How soon can you get it for us ?" Well using
that same exact information the system can
36:30 - 37:00 go okay well do we have that now, no we don't.
We're going to have to make it. How long does it take to make it? Do we have enough stuff to
make it? No we don't. We need to buy parts. We need to build sub-assemblies. So using all of
that same information it'll project forward…And uh in another section you'll see all of the
data that goes underneath this particular product in terms of manufacturing process
information and capacities which it's even taking into account for those that want to go
that detailed. It's completely optional…But when it's done it'll tell me All right That's
March 13th. that's more than a month away because
37:00 - 37:30 of all of the things we need to set up and,
if you want to be safe tell the customer March 20th give yourself a little cushion…Wow.
Those analytics are incredible. Yeah…And, um, you had originally asked about forecasting
and of course in this case we're only looking at actual orders. But MISys has, um, yes this
would be the crystal ball option. If we you use the workflow where we're using a future what if,
we can do our normal planning. But we have the
37:30 - 38:00 ability to introduce a what if scenario call
it a we'll call this Raeann's forecast…And a forecast can be something as simple as you
saying I think that we need to sell this many of this item out of this location on this date.
That's a forecast. It's just very manual…We can also import anything from Excel…So
MISys can import anything from an Excel or any Excel compatible format.
You can see all the options there.
38:00 - 38:30 But probably most useful, we give you the another
one of those easy buttons. Where we can look at your sales history in QuickBooks. So if you were
to transition from QuickBooks alone to MISys tomorrow all that sales history that's sitting in
QuickBooks is available to my MISys on day one…So we can look at invoices, we can look at estimates
and quotes. If you want to look at it if you're more made to order and you want to say okay what
if some of these quotes convert what happens then? We can look at sales receipts as well. I'm going
to stick with invoices and I'm going to say well,
38:30 - 39:00 let's look at Q2 of last year. So let's look
at um, I'm gonna look at April 1st, 2022 until June 30th, again of 2022…I want to look at
everything you can filter down to just certain items or product lines. You can use all sorts of
filters to target this list but I don't sell that much so I'm going to look at everything. I'm also
going to pretend that my business is growing by
39:00 - 39:30 leaps and bounds. I'm going to double the volume
that I sold last year and projected for this year. And of course because we're projecting
one year ago, I just need to offset it. And MISys's going to automatically build a
forecast based on all of my sales activity from last year Q2 so that I can plan on it
for this year Q2. So if I save that forecast, I can pop it right into this overall plan.
There's Raeann's forecast, we'll post it
39:30 - 40:00 in…And now the system's literally going
to show us how that projection affects us…And we can do the same thing resolve
all of our shortages. And now when we go through and actually start creating
purchase orders or scheduling production, It's going to cover, not just our current orders
but all the ones we anticipate coming into…That's a great feature. I've had a couple of,
um, people who have, um, integrated with their QuickBooks Enterprise with MISys and I
asked what was the most important feature that
40:00 - 40:30 you liked And they said we really like the
what if. They said you really need to know, Um you know, if I do it this way You know, Um
how many more man hours does that take and just um, you know just all of that. And…part of it
is. Um we've been doing this for a long time, but it's it's become more and more important
lately because projecting a longterm needs has become more important just due to the way the
supply chain works now. Um, You need to stake your
40:30 - 41:00 claim to stuff pretty far in advance. We used to
sell this tool as a way of minimizing the amount of inventory that you're holding onto and it's
great for that because it tells you exactly what you need and when. But in a scenario where you
have limited supply of something, and it becomes available and you need to jump on it because
you don't know when it might be available again. Then using a forecasting tool like this allows you
to understand okay well, over the next six months over the next year how much am I going to need
for that? Um, And that way you know exactly how
41:00 - 41:30 much you should get because I can't tell you how
many people I've spoken with who are saying " We have hundreds of thousands of dollars or more of
excess inventory because it became available and we just bought what we could and then didn't
realize that oh, we don't use that much or we weren't going to need that much ." Um, And this
gives you a much more educated guess uh and a much better projection. Another thing it can
do…Is it's coming up with the numbers We don't
41:30 - 42:00 have to create purchase orders for this stuff
right now. So we actually have some customers that will use this to make projections and then
they will send forecasts to their vendors and say, We're not ordering this now. But these are the
volumes that we anticipate so that their vendors can have things ready for them. Um it helps their
vendors. And it helps them kind of get their foot in the door for any stock that they might need in
the future So…there is so much that you can do. Um, With a planning…So the vendor can actually
forecast also. To make sure that they get those
42:00 - 42:30 products. Exactly Exactly I mean. You know,
If you're just using QuickBooks to plan. There tends to be a lot of last minute oh-oh's.
And then you call your vendors and you're putting your vendors on their heels trying to get things
to you. Um, if you know what you need longterm, and you can share that with your vendors,
then it's smooth as it smooths out so much. And it helps everybody and hopefully improves
your relationship with your vendors…Exactly.
42:30 - 43:00 Now. All of this is just planning…until we
pull the trigger. So we can do any kind of analysis we want. MISys even has a handy
little cash commitment summary so we can project how much money you're going to spend
if you did want to go ahead with this forecast. But I'm going to hit the button and that allows
us to start creating the orders that we need. Now the planning is done. The first question is
going to ask is do you want to create purchase orders right now. Maybe you don't. Maybe you're
doing this to set up a production schedule…But I'm going to say yes. And notice we're not getting
a report. MISys doesn't want you to look over
43:00 - 43:30 numbers manually and then try to create your POS
by hand. We are literally going to present to you what you need to buy in one. So we look at this
particular item. This is a blue wire nut. I use this to make lots and lots of different products.
And here the system's telling me I need a total of 20,269. That represents the total quantity
of this one item that I need across the board. Already rolled up. So. Those customers that, you
know, make a lot of volume that have common parts
43:30 - 44:00 across many of the items that they build. This is
huge because now you're not ordering. Things order by order as well We need this much for this order
and then you go to the next oh we need more We got to go back. It's all totaled up here. That's also
understanding that we don't just need this Now we need it. Over the course of the next several
weeks So on the lower half of the screen it's literally breaking down Okay I need. Um, 3,600 by
February 8th which means we need to order it by
44:00 - 44:30 January 27th and we need another thousand
by the ninth et cetera. And as a purchaser, I'm not going to make my vendor I drive out here
on the eighth and the ninth and the 10th and the 13th. I'm probably going to say all right. Let
me get enough for February. Buy that altogether. And which vendor do we want to use? We've got two
qualified vendors here each with their own unique product codes Different units may be different
lead times. And I'm going to either create a new PO or add it onto an existing one. So this is
fantastic if you do blanket orders or contract
44:30 - 45:00 buys and you just want to add releases when you
need more, um you can just add onto your blanket order right here or. I'm going to create a new
one. And 91 81 is a little bit of an odd number. I have to order this in multiples of full
pallets of a thousand So the system will do that. We even get into price breaks. You can set
up a minimum minimum order quantity on certain items if you have one from your vendor. Um, all
of which can be incorporated into the system. And if you're ignoring your lead time like I
am, it's just giving me a heads up that Hey.
45:00 - 45:30 January 27th was a few days ago. In fact it's
been giving me error messages this whole time about my lead time. Um, it will always watch
your back and make sure you don't place an order without at least telling you that you might
be rushing the vendor a little bit on this one…So it really makes it hard for people to make
mistakes. Yes. Yeah that's the idea…Uh you don't you don't want to send out a PO not realizing that
you're asking for it sooner than your vendor can
45:30 - 46:00 deliver because sometimes it'll take a day or two
or not at all for your vendor to say wait a minute we can't do that…And there is a buy all button.
You know you typically wouldn't do this for six months worth of purchasing but you can use it for
targeted lists. You can get all the items or item types from a particular vendor and hit buy all
and create one giant order. Bunch of tools that you have here to interactively create your POS to
address your needs. And this is plugged directly into what you need for production So. for the
purchaser, there's no more guesswork, there's
46:00 - 46:30 no more manual calculations, no more pouring over
spreadsheets. Once you've done your planning and incorporated everything you want. This is the
shopping list that'll keep production fed…I'm going to leave here. Of course the flip
side of the coin is the system is going to ask me about scheduling production. So
just like you did with purchasing. It's going to give me a list of everything that
I need to make. Not just our finished goods, but also sub-assemblies. And when it comes to
sub-assemblies if we've got common sub-assemblies
46:30 - 47:00 used to make lots of lots of different things,
just like we did grouping purchase orders together, we can group sub assembly requirements
together. This is huge for production managers because if you have a better awareness of your
overall needs of a particular part or sub assembly that you need to make. So we need this many this
week this many next week. Why wouldn't you just do a single efficient production run and knock out
your requirements for the next few weeks. Rather
47:00 - 47:30 than having to keep revisiting it and keep those
changeovers going on the lines and all of that…Now in this case. Uh I can either hit
build all I could build individual ones. But it's just like purchasing
and you're zapping requirements live…So again everything's automated. Exactly right. So
we've talked about the material planning. Um, but what do you do with the production schedules? So
how does that work? Yeah. I mean, if you're in
47:30 - 48:00 production the schedule is not something that
you set and forget. It's constantly in flux. And a lot of companies have very limited. Um,
Capacities that they're constantly juggling. The uh, there are plenty of companies that get,
that are in the fortunate position of getting more orders than they have time to deal with…Now.
Not only does MISys allow you to schedule bills independent of when the orders are shipping. So
you know, if you have time and you want to get to
48:00 - 48:30 an order that doesn't have to ship for a couple
of weeks right now. MISys allows you to do that because if we look at our production schedule
here, and we're building all of this. Right here It's all visual We can even drag things
around just by dragging and dropping to adjust it…But. For some manufacturers those that want
it. There's a little bit more happening underneath each one of these bars. Now building this R
50 item for me that you see I have stacked up
48:30 - 49:00 quite a bit here. Involves using machines people
resources that are finite in their capacity…So we can go to a slightly different view here
called the shop operations view. And this is part of the MISys shop floor control module.
This is completely optional. So for anyone who doesn't need to go to this level don't worry
about it. But if capacity is an issue for you. What we're able to do here I'm going to
look between now and the end of March. We can go into a schedule that actually
looks at each step in the production process.
49:00 - 49:30 And how it lines up. Now to give you a
sense of what we're looking at here I have five different orders that are basically
using the same exact resources at the same exact times. So everything is bright
red indicating there's a conflict…So when you see these conflicts there's a few
different things you can do. You can simply drag and drop and say all right well I'll just
do this order a little bit later or better yet
49:30 - 50:00 a little bit earlier…The fifth happens to be a
weekend so maybe we'll start this afternoon…And we can get that done and notice it turns
yellow because it's no longer in conflict. That's easy enough but, um, obviously most
of our customers have potentially hundreds of open orders at any given time all jockeying
for position with finite resources. So we give you a lot more within this interface. Number one.
If you have multiple machines capable of doing the
50:00 - 50:30 same thing or multiple areas where you can do an
individual step. The system has some substitution logic. So if I know that I need to get this
drilling process done here but I can see that my main drill won't be available until days after
I need it. And actually the day after I need it…I could instead find another alternative
that happens to be open. So I have a portable drill It's a little bit slower,
it's only 75% as efficient. But if I flip
50:30 - 51:00 that…It'll at least relieve the conflict on
that particular order. So we can do it somewhere else…Finally. If you imagine a much
more busy production schedule…Or better yet. Um we're going to use the magic of
editing and I'm going to populate the schedule with lots more stuff right now…So I've just
populated our schedule with lots more stuff, tons and tons of stuff. Between now and the end of May.
And all kinds of conflicts Well, If I click on…an
51:00 - 51:30 area that I know is a bottleneck for me. What I'm
able to see is, well geez it looks like we have a couple of peaks but even just by eyeballing
it I know we have enough time to get this all done. So I just need to spread some things
out. And fill in some of those open times…And you'll be able to see that very quickly restart
to catch up a bit on our capacity. Okay. So. This
51:30 - 52:00 tool ends up being terrific for people who have
a finite capacity they have to juggle it. Uh I'm not going to obviously solve this whole puzzle
right now. But it can even eyeball it so that you know, all right how much of my available capacity
am I scheduled to use? Where do I have time where do I not have time? So you can level this off and
you can make decisions on which cuff if there's a conflict and somebody needs to get shorted you can
make decisions on which one that's going to be.
52:00 - 52:30 Um, And MISys even as safe safeguards in place.
Including an option that if you are making things for particular customers, it will not allow
you to accidentally schedule production to be done after that customer's promised ship date.
It'll force you to update the ship date first. Does it give you an alert or how does it notify
you? If I were to drag all of these are for stock fortunately but if I were to drag one of these
past a ship date for a customer that has one it pops up immediately says, um, Uh completion
date cannot be later than ship that you can't
52:30 - 53:00 schedule it to be done after you're supposed
to ship it. So forces you to change the ship date first. Which typically involves notifying the
customer. Of course if you don't want to do that, MISys also allows you to. I'll just save my
changes here. Um, it also allows you to include optional shifts. So if you have overtime when you
get particularly busy you're going to open up a half day on a weekend or a couple extra hours each
day during the week. You check this box and MISys
53:00 - 53:30 will give you some extra time. In this case, if
I were to look at that same, um, that same area. What you'll notice is that my black dotted
line has a small bump out every Saturday. Because I've got a half day Saturday that
I'd opened up for overtime. So it's kind of like a what if situation. Oh yeah definitely.
Another one of those What if tools that allows you to build a realistic schedule. Because if
you start doing all of your material planning and you don't pay attention to your production
capacity. Then, you know, you go into production
53:30 - 54:00 one day with a to-do list a mile long. Can't
get it done. Now everything starts cascading. This allows you to, uh to get going. And even
for customers that are just getting started with MISys, they typically just have everything on
back order and they're just trying to comb through it as best they can with no kind of longterm plan
of how to get out. It's every day is an emergency. This allows you to start digging out and deciding
when you're going to get to each of those orders.
54:00 - 54:30 So literally as as these customers go Online with
MISys and start using these, they start to build things out and start calling customers and say all
right we have an estimated date now for when we can get this to you. Um, And they are able to come
up with a more realistic plan. So it keeps the customer happy and it saves the company money…It's
certainly better than just telling the customers We don't know when we're going to get to it. Or
just saying everything's 16 weeks out or something
54:30 - 55:00 like that…Exactly. Yeah. The one other thing I do
want to say…about that is if you're interested in those tools, check out our next section where
we talk about shop floor control. We're going to talk about all of the uh data that goes into
allowing that module to work specifically about steps and processes and timing. Okay So as
we're talking about the production schedule, um, a lot of what I hear from my customers
Um is that they they can't keep track of
55:00 - 55:30 their actual labor and their overhead costs.
So in QuickBooks Enterprise they're putting in, Uh just estimates of what they think
the cost is in which you know, that that. We'll not really give you an accurate cost. Um so
now that we've talked about like the production schedule, Can we talk about the shop floor
control and how that works within MISys. Yeah So, um, so it's interesting. The section that we
just got done with is production scheduling
55:30 - 56:00 and that talks about steps in the process
and everything like that. And in a way, setting that up. Allows you to kill two birds
with one stone. It not only gives you much more detailed scheduling information. But it allows
you to get much more detailed costing information. So the way that you and I do want to be clear
here not every manufacturer needs to go to this level. So if you look at this and this is well
beyond where you need to be, don't worry about it. You don't have to set this stuff up. But
the people who need this really need it…I'm
56:00 - 56:30 going to head down to, um, our bills of material
area. Now some of my products here like this one. It's a regular old bill of material I got a
bunch of parts I got some sub-assemblies it's multilevel and that's all well and good but that's
it. That's all it is. There is nothing here on the routing tab…So it is optional. But if I go to a
different item, this one, we not only have this
56:30 - 57:00 bill of material and all of these parts. But
we have a process to find. And this process tells MISys how you make this product, what
steps need to happen That's what the operations are…What works centers those steps
happen at a work center is basically any machine area ,sometimes a work center as a person
out on the floor who needs to do the work…And then we have timing. And we define timing
cause different manufacturers work in different
57:00 - 57:30 ways. So you can have a runtime per unit so you
can take the number of units multiply it by the time it takes per unit And you know how long
it's going to take. That can also be set up time whether that's a changeover if you have to change
the line over and it takes a certain amount of time to set up regardless of whether you're making
one 10 a hundred or a thousand units. Uh that can also be for batch processors setup time applies
to a batch. So if we, you know, we're making things in gallons or pounds because we're a batch
processor, but the batches going to be 200 pounds
57:30 - 58:00 per batch at the stage you say how long it takes
to do for each batch. So this system looks at how many batches you need and calculates the total
time there. You can have Q time like a buffer between steps. You can have wait time. Paint
needs to dry, product needs to cool, bread needs to proof. Um the accommodates non-active time,
nobody's working on it, there's no labor going into it but we've got to wait a certain amount
of time before we move on to the next step…So
58:00 - 58:30 that is what allows the system to do
what we covered in our previous…section on capacity scheduling. The system knows how
much time we need that These different areas…But if we look at the uh, the main screen on
our bill of material MISys's also giving us these material labor and overhead
numbers. And it's getting particularly the labor the labor and overhead numbers
from those same routing details because when we call out a work center here like the
assembly area…And I'm just drilling down to
58:30 - 59:00 it…Each work center allows you to set up what
resources that work center uses and the resources use can be classified as material labor or
overhead. So you can even put consumable materials consumed at the work center level like gloves et
cetera And that way you don't have to put them in your bill of material. Uh every bill of material
that goes through there you just put it on the work center and the system knows that anything
going through here is going to use. Uh some gloves
59:00 - 59:30 and other consumables. But here we're talking
about labor. And in labor what we're saying is that for every hour that this works in a runs it
consumes one hour of labor rate A…in other words, one person who makes our stockroom labor rate
approximately is going to be there at all times. And if you have five people on the line you would
say five people five units of labor per hour. You can have various labor rates. You can have
overhead like electricity. Or even labor overhead
59:30 - 60:00 to go along with the direct labor costs you're
putting in there…Can I just ask a quick question. Um, so, um, is this what helps you with the,
um other production planning and, and the what ifs and that type of thing is that where it's
getting the numbers from? Well actually it can So um, you know this one, not everybody needs to
do this but um, you see it a lot with companies that have to hire a large number of temps…In
addition to. um, material planning telling you
60:00 - 60:30 what you need and when you need it, and capacity
scheduling where you're building your schedule so that everything fits within your work center or
machine capacity. A lot of people go okay well, we've got everything fitting but how many people
do I need to have working on each of these days? Well MISys can literally look at all of that
scheduled activity and tell you how many labor hours of every type you've scheduled each day.
Um, so that's a pretty fancy one but, um but the system has that data and again a it can give
you sort of a an hour requirements list…That's
60:30 - 61:00 great…So we do have, um, That all set up here
And of course that is what's driving You know, when we multiply the time that this bill
of material needs at each of these stages that's what's driving our material
labor and overhead costs here…Now. The other question that I always get
when I described that as okay Well, That's the bill of material but when we, when the
rubber meets the road and we start making stuff,
61:00 - 61:30 It's not always what we think. We'd sometimes
take more time or less time or machine goes down et cetera. So. When we talk about the shop floor
control module…It means setting up routing details and defining the process. But it also means being
able to schedule around that process that capacity scheduling that we just saw. Um, and it means
being able to track that process not only record what's actually happening at each step. But also
following the order through multiple stages of
61:30 - 62:00 work in process. A lot of QuickBooks add ons don't
even track work in process period. Not only does MISys allow you to track what's been allocated to
production, what orders are currently in process, what inventory has been taken off the shelf
and is currently being worked on but isn't a finished good yet. Both in terms of finances and
in terms of inventory. But we can literally say that this inventory is at step three of six.
Um, and should be moving to this next stage
62:00 - 62:30 So…So for the accounting purposes of it really
gives you a great knowledge…of what you're making, what you're not making, what's I mean it just
gives you a great overall picture of where your stand. Exactly. And right in QuickBooks you
can have a series of asset accounts. What's, what's my raw material in MISys worth.
And how much do I have in physical work in process at this moment. So you can get a
breakdown. It's not just sitting all sitting
62:30 - 63:00 an inventory. You can get a breakdown of what's on
the shelves versus what somewhere in production. Um, other considerations here. Is, um, the ability
to security protect individual steps So typically you see a QA step. You can lock that down so
that only qualified individuals can sign off on it. Otherwise you can't proceed or can't get
a finished good. Um, there's a location here. We get a lot of people that outsource certain parts
of their process. So not only does MISys allow you to set up outside vendors as work centers
so that, um, so that you can track when that
63:00 - 63:30 order goes out to them And when that material
leaves your facility to go over there, But we tie it in so well that if you complete.
Uh if you start an outside process MISys will automatically generate shipping documentation
for you to send that stuff out. And when you complete that outside process will automatically
receive against a purchase order for the service you're paying that vendor for all as part
of the same transaction So you don't have to remember to do multiple things. It's all just
tied in…Well that's a time savings because I know
63:30 - 64:00 that's a real issue within QuickBooks
Enterprise if anything is outsourced. Yeah. So it's all part of the process here. And
the one final thing that I want to say. And this might foreshadow what we're going to cover in
our next session section When we talk about how the people on the floor actually interact
with the system. Uh and update the system. But MISys allows you to add unlimited custom
fields in just about any area of the system. And here in our routing details would I have
done is added some custom fields. One being
64:00 - 64:30 a detailed, uh operation instructions field so I
can put some detailed instructions for each step. And even a link to an external file here. And the
reason that's useful as well, not just to have it in the data. But this stuff can become accessible
from the floor and you can literally create custom information screens for each operator to see when
they log in. So we'll see that if if, if shop floor data collection live data entry from the
people doing the work is important to you be sure
64:30 - 65:00 to check out. Uh the next section on barcoding
and the shop floor interface. All right So in today's times like everything everybody needs
everything right now. They need to be able to access information right away They need to access
it. Um you know when manufacturing a lot of it is. through the barcode scanning being able to process
things in real time. And so I was looking and it looks like you have what's called MISys EXT. And
I was wondering if you could tell us like what,
65:00 - 65:30 what your…process with that and in how it looks or
how it shows in there so we can get kind of a demo on that. Yeah. MISys's been doing barcoding
for years. And it's always existed because, um, there's obviously a lot that happens in a
manufacturing environment. And, you know probably the hardest way to go about keeping your system
current is to have a bunch of paperwork floating
65:30 - 66:00 out on the floor and then…hopefully collect
that all back in. Dump it on poor some poor soul's desk in the office so they can manually
enter everything that went on that day. Um, you know not that there's anything wrong with that
If that's what you're doing and that's the way you want to do it but there is a more efficient
way if you'd like, And that's to collect it from the floor and Barcoding's usually the way of doing
it. And we've gone through multiple generations of bar coding software. And the one thing that
was always a sticking point with barcoding
66:00 - 66:30 is that um, Let's just say that a lot of times the
people who are out on the production floor doing the work are not the most tech savvy folks.
And even if they are they're not necessarily interested in stopping their important job to go
keep that system up to date. So. And the latest generation of barcoding which we call MISys EXT
it's beyond just barcoding. It's an entire shop floor interface. That in our um, in our design
anyway. It's a little bit more active in terms of
66:30 - 67:00 guiding activities and allows you to maybe replace
some of that paperwork that needs to go out to the floor with interactive screens. So that not only
you don't have to get the paperwork printed and prepped and everything like that. Uh but also so
that somebody who's using will go to a device, the same device they enter their data on, to see what
they need to do next. So they're actually getting something out of using the system other than just
being forced to enter something after the fact.
67:00 - 67:30 So we have already in the previous chapters set up
a bunch of purchase orders. And scheduled a bunch of production. Now we're going to talk about how
that all gets knocked down. And, um and how it's actually updated from the floor. That's going
to happen through this tool MISys EXT. now the one thing you're noticing you might notice here is
that we are now in a web browser. You're no longer in the MISys application. We specifically
designed this to be a web application. No
67:30 - 68:00 app to install. This will literally run on
any device that has a web browser in it. Um, If you use Chrome you can use the live
translation tool. So if you have people that, um you know, Eh where English is an issue. You
know, people using this all over the world in multiple languages just using the built-in
Google translate. And because it's in a web browser. It will run on any whoops any device
with a web browser in it. Including say iPad, iPhones, Android devices, handheld all in one
scanners. The only requirement is that it have
68:00 - 68:30 a modern web browser…So I'm going to log in
now as a different user. I am a guy on the floor. And I'm going to get a much more simplified
interface. I don't create orders here I, I can't edit bills of material. I'm not doing any of that
administrative stuff. I only process transactions. So if I'm a receiver and the only thing I ever
do is receive purchase orders. I can go right here on screen. If I'm getting a delivery I
can choose or scan the purchase order that's
68:30 - 69:00 coming in. I'm going to do a lot of clicking
here because I don't have a scanner on me…I can see what items I'm supposed to receive here. I
can receive one or more items. I can choose a bin put them in If you need bin tracking. I can assign
lot numbers or serial numbers if you need a lot of serial tracking. In this case I'm just going
to say we received everything that we ordered. And it comes, it's instantly added to inventory
and MISys no waiting. It'll even offer to print
69:00 - 69:30 out barcode labels because end of the day this is
a barcoding solution and any time we introduce new material whether it's because we received it. Or
because we just made it in production. It's nice to have that consistently labeled so that we ever
touch it again, go to user and, go to count the inventory, go to ship it, whatever. We've got a
consistent barcode we can scan. So I'll say yes. We do use zebra label printers for this. So you
can have a default printer, default label you like to use. I don't have any zebra labels printers
handy. Oh I'll just show you on screen. An example
69:30 - 70:00 of. Uh something So we could say, you know barcode
for the item and where it's going. We could have um, just an item description. You can even
use the, uh zebra label printer to customize your own labels using any of the many fields
that we reveal. You literally just use the zebra printer software to change these…So that's
receiving. And then of course we have production. Now MISys allows you to do the old school route
traditional manufacturing systems will typically
70:00 - 70:30 have you print out these. Uh barcoded
shop travelers. So that essentially the idea is that you scan the order number scan the
step, start the timer and then scan scan again, enter your quantity. And you're done.
MISys supports that. You could absolutely use, uh these barcoded travelers send them
to the floor and scan your way through. But an increasingly popular option with MISys EXT
is leveraging dashboard alerts. Yeah Every um,
70:30 - 71:00 every copy of MISys allows you to set. Unlimited
customizable dashboard alerts for each individual user. And when you think about that in the
context of somebody on the floor, that typically means some kind of a to-do list. Targeting an
individual person or an individual area with all of the orders that might be scheduled for them
on a given day. So if I look at my to-do list I happened to be the guy in the kitting area and
I'm the one who's supposed to be. Um, You know, taking care of these orders. So I'll grab one of
the orders that we scheduled previously. I can see
71:00 - 71:30 all of these uh all of these key fields that I've
decided I need to be able to see including custom fields. Like detailed operation instructions, a
link to an external file. I've literally had um, a customer recently say that they created a library
of YouTube videos showing how to load tooling onto their various machines. And they added a field
on each step showing the appropriate YouTube video for that machine so that the operator,
when they see what they're supposed to do can
71:30 - 72:00 also access the YouTube video showing how to load
the machine. So there's a link right to it? Yeah it's a high it's a clickable hyperlink. This one
just goes to MISys.com but that could be a file, that could be a YouTube video. Anything with
the URL right at your fingertips. And so this is what I talk about when, you know, We say, the
operators getting something out of the bargain here. They go in and they can see everything that
they're supposed to do. And this is really easily customizable. You don't need any special skills.
You just edit your your MISys alert. And that'll
72:00 - 72:30 dictate exactly what your operators see and it can
be different for each department, each operator, depending on what they do and their individual
preferences. Can you have custom fields on here too? Yeah these last two are actually custom
fields right here I added these myself just by um, you know doing the add custom fields
function in MISys. Which is super easy. And of course. As an operator once I see
everything that I'm supposed to do and maybe open up the linked file here. All I need to
do is jump in. And start my timer…All right
72:30 - 73:00 Easy. Yeah. You know I can access the whole bill
of material. So if I need to see what materials I'm supposed to be grabbing cause in this case I'm
the kitting guy I'm supposed to grab a bunch of materials. I can see the entire bill of material
and normally I would be scanning my way through this but, uh in this case I'm going to tap so I
can issue these individual components. I can see how many I'm supposed to get. Um I could even say
well I know I only need to use 40 but I'm going
73:00 - 73:30 to put the whole box in there. So maybe it's 200
parts even though we only need 40. I can literally scan everything I'm doing. MISys has a transaction
for everything you could physically do with your inventory. And it can be logged right from mobile
device. Uh tablet, PC whatever on the floor. Just to keep again everything up to date. And
there's an audit trail for all this stuff. So every little thing that I'm doing is going
into the uh the audit trail, my name's on it.
73:30 - 74:00 Um, You know and it's also of course subject
to security permissions and all of that…And whenever I'm done. I can say done. Stop
my timer. Log how many units I did…And that's not all by the way. Um, when I do that,
this was an order that I'd already worked on but. When I do that I can also log things like
scrap. If I have to throw something away, um, basically we just want it to be easy to
capture everything that's going on on on the
74:00 - 74:30 floor. And that ties it all back to our first
section where we talking about the QuickBooks integration. All these little variables that
we're capturing go into the final cost of the products that we're making and are past over to
QuickBooks. So that you can have confidence that when you look at your cost to goods sold and how
much money you're making on each product and what they cost you to make. All these variables find
their way in. You're just getting the accurate costing and then the accounting function on
QuickBooks. They're getting everything they.
74:30 - 75:00 Yeah. It really gives a business owner everything
that they need to be successful. Definitely. And because this does every last transaction, um
that MISys supports. You can go all the way up to the end where you put the finished good away. You
can trigger the transfer right over to QuickBooks right from this device. Um, Uh, and. You know the
kind of unsung uh but maybe the biggest benefit.
75:00 - 75:30 Everybody does an inventory count every now and
then. I've never met anybody who looks forward to it. Um, when you have barcoding and you do
physical inventory and a barcoding system. Now you're not chicken scratching into account sheet
that's um, uh somebody in the office needs to try to translate. You literally just scan the already
labeled items enter quantity move on to the next one. Um, And then you can post it and if we even
MISys even has tools where if multiple people are counting the system can detect if it looks like
somebody might account, you know, two different
75:30 - 76:00 people counted the same thing twice. Um, some
really sophisticated tools to, to do cycle counts or count up your inventory whenever you have to.
Would you say most companies go with this option? More and more of them now…You know the other. The
other thing about something like this MISys's a modular system. Um, So you get to pick and choose
the functions that you need. At the time. So um, more and more companies are just getting
this right out of the gate because uh having
76:00 - 76:30 shuffler data entry and barcoding. a priority.
Uh but there's still a lot of companies that say, this looks great. We do want to be able
to do this but we've got a long way to go. We need to the folks in the office
were implementing the system need to get comfortable before they start training
the people out on the floor to use it. Um, That's fine. Baby steps and because it's
modular you can leave this off but add it when you need it…I've noticed that this is a feature that
a lot of my clients ask for. Yeah. If. If I had
76:30 - 77:00 to guess I would say somewhere between 40 and 50%
of our new users get this right out of the gates. Um, But I ended up doing a lot of uh demos for
existing customers who. Uh who are planning on adding it? I can imagine. Yep. Yeah no that's
a great feature and especially um just all that you're able to do and um just, it even just
creates another degree of accuracy. Yeah. Yeah. And. You know as the guy who used to be the
guy who entered the data after the fact the stack
77:00 - 77:30 of bakery manufacturing So the stack of flour
and crusted papers that had to find their way back to me. The attempts to read the pen that was
smudged by the uh by the oil that got spilled on. Um, And the donut that was being eaten.
Exactly. Oh that was me. Um…but when that comes back in. Instead of having to
hand enter that. We're shifting it.
77:30 - 78:00 Um, Over to the people who were actually doing
the work and, you know, I almost said shifting the burden but the way this is designed to work
especially with the paperless element. It's much less of a burden because the information that
they would've had to look for on that piece of paper is now shown on screen. And then
all they need to do to log what they did is couple of more taps to start and stop
that timer…And it makes it easier for this shop floor people. They will make many less
mistakes. Hands down. Um you know and this,
78:00 - 78:30 this was a relatively simple example but you.
I'm sure there are a lot of folks out there that have specialized requirements. They have
warehouse management and bin location tracking where they need to record where everything's
being taken from and being put back into, or more importantly, like we had at my previous
company Uh, serial or lot number traceability. And that's another MISys obviously supports serial
and or lot tracking on an item by item basis.
78:30 - 79:00 Um, but when you're using this it's going to
prompt you or what. What lot number did you receive? What lot number did you use? What serial
number did you make? What serial number went into this serial number? What lot number went into that
lot number? All entered through here. So the end of the day if you ever need to look something
up if there's a quality issue you now have full traceability and it came straight from the people
who physically put that stuff together…Yeah. I think I would I could see a lot more people
um purchasing this nowadays…This part of it
79:00 - 79:30 Yeah. And, you know again, The biggest thing
is this is the kind of horsepower that you typically see in those bigger manufacturing
ERP. But we only cover the operation side. All of the accounting all the sales stuff just
stays in QuickBooks And we're only going to take over, uh the side of the business that we handle
better. Yes because QuickBooks doesn't really do a great job with the manufacturing portion of it.
Unless you just have very light manufacturing and
79:30 - 80:00 you already know what your labor costs are going
to be in your overhead costs. And that's where QuickBooks Enterprise is fine in that area.
Um but what's great about your product is that is just such a seamless integration and
it's almost like it's working as one system. And…again that is Exactly what we are going for.
Um, unfortunately for us I mean years and years ago when we decided to rebuild the system from the
ground up specifically with QuickBooks in mind,
80:00 - 80:30 I was a little bit of a risk. Um, but
it's, uh it has really taken off. We sold our software all in all to more than 7,000
manufacturing companies since we've been around. Um, And this approach of linking this kind of
manufacturing capability to…the accounting system that folks are already familiar with really seems
to, um, strike a cord for. You know, if you're if you're not ready to spend hundreds of thousands of
dollars to move into the full ERP space. Exactly.
80:30 - 81:00 Exactly. Well perfect Well, Um…we um where we can
go from here is that people who are watching this their interest in the software and QuickBooks, Uh
you can reach out to, to me Um there's a contact link below. And I will set up an appointment
with Daryl um to go over the software. And we can kind of go from there and give you a pricing
information that type of thing And like Daryl had
81:00 - 81:30 mentioned you don't have to go with each, uh, each
individual you can choose different sections that you want to purchase. So you don't have to go with
everything all at once. Um you can um but that's where he can kind of take you through all that
navigation to decide what's best for you. And also give a quote. So, uh that would be I would say the
next steps if you're interested in learning more. Yeah…I would say um, you know all of this stuff is
some hugely powerful tools. One of the other nice
81:30 - 82:00 things is that all of the implementation
resources you need training, support, one-on-one guidance for setup of data and um,
tailoring your, uh your processes to the system and um getting the most out of it. We include
it. That's all done In-house and we provide all the support you need to get up and running. Now
thing one question I do have is what, with your typical implementation, how long does it take?
Very good question The million dollar question.
82:00 - 82:30 Um, so all of our implementation again is included
with, with your your purchase. So you get access to training webinars which we do every single
month. We've got 32 total hours worth of training sessions that we give on a rotating schedule. We
have unlimited tech support and we will assign you with one individual, uh implementation
expert called usher star Coach who will meet with your remote leaves and zoom. Uh and guide you
through each step of the setup process all the way
82:30 - 83:00 up until your go live date. How long that takes
depends heavily on a number of different factors. You know how much data you have to set up. It
takes a little bit longer to set up a hundred thousand items rather than a few hundred. Um,
Every company has different resources. If you've got lots of folks that can chip in and help out,
it's going to be it's going to go a little bit more easily than if you dump it on an intern's lap
which we don't recommend but still some people do. Um, And then of course uh, just your own
internal schedule and what's going on. All
83:00 - 83:30 in all with all those factors considered if
you can chip away at it steadily And we're only talking about uh, uh several man hours per
week not shutting down operations to get it done. We tell people to plan on a timeline
of somewhere between two and six months to go from I just got the software now
what to, we have our go live date…Okay and then…usually you would implement this your
software first and then, and then connected of
83:30 - 84:00 course the QuickBooks once you're ready Yeah.
Yeah So…you are going to operate businesses usual while you all MISyss being set up and while
you're training on it. Now you can connect to QuickBooks to pull that data out using that
automated integration like import your bills and materials and your items et cetera. But you will
not go live with MISys. MISys Isn't going to be posting to QuickBooks any live data until you are
100% ready and confident that your data's good.
84:00 - 84:30 Um and everybody who's going to be using
this system knows what they're doing which of course our sure Start coaches will make
sure…So in, in your your accountants stay in the accounting portion of it and then your
production managers and anyone who needs is part of the production process stays within MISys.
Exactly So sometimes you can save. Uh users on the QuickBooks side or keep people out of your
accounting system that really shouldn't be in there to begin with. And again going back
to the beginning one of the other options is certain people who might need elements of the
QuickBooks integration but who you don't want to
84:30 - 85:00 have direct access to QuickBooks. Um, Intuit, And
in there, one of their many really well thought out and…welcome options with how they allow
third parties like us to integrate with them. Allows our application to log in in the
background so that you don't have to log into QuickBooks but you can still, MISys is
still able to see data. Push data. All those integration points work without the person using
MISys being able to actually get into QuickBooks.
85:00 - 85:30 That's great. Well, I think that's about it. I
thank you so much Darryl for spending all this time with me and going through all the features
that you offer I really appreciate it. My pleasure Thank you Raeann very much And uh, uh, thank you
everybody who will watch the videos. Thank you.