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Xero & simPRO – Official Release

Friday, July 2nd, 2010

simPRO_XeroThe simPRO to Xero and simPRO Digital Pen to Xero integrations have now officially been released!

Although we have numerous clients using both, it has just be officially signed off and published by the Xero team as a tried & true integration.

It was announced by Xero this week in their June 2010 Product Update Newsletter.

They have also made a nice little video, I must admit that the Xero team are excellent at make very succinct videos that give enough info to whet your interest without going too deep into details, something we need to learn from.

If you want more detail on the Xero online accounting and simPRO online estimating, job management and invoicing solutions, please see below:

Xero & simPRO Enterprise

Xero & simPRO Mobile Digital Pens

If you are looking for an estimation or project management package that gives you flexibility and delivers real productivity benefits then you can’t afford to miss the pairing of simPRO Enterprise and Xero – web based solutions at their best.

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Posted in Accounting, Announcement, Digital Pens, Tips & Tricks, Xero, simPRO, simPRO Enterprise, simPRO Mobile | No Comments »

Curtis Shows us simPRO on the Apple iPad

Friday, May 28th, 2010

As you may know, the Apple iPad was launched today in the UK.

We knew that there was a lot of interest in using the iPad as a tool for simPRO users – both for the engineers to record job data, times, materials usage etc and for management to be able to access all their simPRO business information no matter where they are. We wrote about the iPad previously and how it would run simPRO – but many of you wanted proof.

So, we sent out our intrepid head techie, Curtis Thomson, to get one as soon as it was available and put simPRO through it’s paces.

Curtis queued for hours and endured the company of Apple Fan Boys just to be able to bring this to you, for that we salute his fortitude!

Curtis_Waits_For_iPad

Watch the video below for the first look at simPRO running on the iPad.

The simPRO access via the iPad can be done in a number of different ways:

Engineers can access it through:

The standard `Employee’ login, or

The Ultra Mobile login – click here for more details.

Managers can access it through:

Their standard simPRO address and login.

The great thing about the simPRO system is that it will work immediately on the inbuilt web browser on the iPad. That means you can take the iPad out of the box, turn it on, open the browser and then open simPRO.

No need to download anything

No need for apps.

Like all parts of simPRO – it just works!

Note: That wasn’t really a photo from Curtis, I just found it on this website – just for a laugh.

Posted in Technology, Videos, simPRO | No Comments »

Bad Round Sees no Points in simPRO Racing Formula Ford

Tuesday, May 25th, 2010

Andre Borell suffered in Round 3 of the Formula Ford downunder – championship looks out of reach now.

Read full article on simPRO Aussie Blog.

If you missed it – here was round 2.

Posted in simPRO, simPRO Racing | No Comments »

Xero Accounting Session – London

Tuesday, May 25th, 2010

I attended the Xero session at the beautiful ICAEW building at 1 Moorgate Place London this morning and met Gary Turner (UK MD) and Rod Drury (Kiwi Co-Founder of Xero).

They gave an excellent presentation as to the where Xero came from, the entire philosophy of their business model and where Xero is going.

It was aimed at accountants and bookkeepers as Xero tries to encourage them to become partners and bring on new clients under the Xero Partner Edition which allows practises to really get active in managing and supporting their clients.

As a Developer Partner (and a Xero user for Acorn Software), I was most interested in hearing where Xero is heading. Here are some of the highlights that I noted down:

  • By September this year there will access to automated bank feeds to many thousands of banks globally thanks to an integration with some financial aggregator that pretty much all the banks use. That means for the UK that there will be approximately 80 financial institutions with direct feeds into Xero. Can’t wait for that.
  • Also it is expected that by about September that Xero will be able to produce final accounts – making another compelling reason to go Xero.
  • As part of the above change, online filing with HMRC will become available. I’m not too clear on the dates of that coming into play – but I hope that it will in the same sort of roll out time frame.

One thing about Xero that I wasn’t previously aware about was the fact that it manages both Cash & Accrual based accounting simultaneously. All the data is in the system, you choose which reports to run and it prepare the figures accordingly. What a breath of fresh air considering the tortured process of sending these details from simPRO to Sage that we have been experiencing.

It was also interesting to hear Rod talk about coming up with the business concept for Xero and how it came from the “fundamental shift” to cloud computing being driven by the `mass’ of consumers. But for a traditional business model it is hard to create a web based business for consumers as these consumers generally want everything free (think Gmail, Facebook, Twitter etc etc). So the next largest market to target was the small business (Gary mentioned that there were 4.7 million businesses in the UK, 2 million of them with very small often with only 1 employee). There is a mass of them out there with a decent percentage of them willing pay some money for a product that either

a) makes them more money, or

b) saves them money, or

c) gives them more time.

(more…)

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Posted in Accounting, Technology, Xero, simPRO | No Comments »

Xero Accounting Link – Now Live in Enterprise

Tuesday, May 25th, 2010

simPRO_Xero

We are very pleased today to say that the full Xero Accounting link is live and running in simPRO Enterprise bringing all the simPRO family into line.

You can now run simPRO Enterprise, simPRO Lite and simPRO Mobile with direct links into Xero to create and update invoices.

simPRO Lite & simPRO Enterprise

With both Lite & Enterprise you can now easily create your invoices, receipt invoice payments, create credits, add new clients, suppliers and contractors all directly to Xero from your simPRO system.

As both simPRO & Xero are web based applications, all the grunt work happens in the `cloud’ and you get real time feedback on each transaction for success or failure to post with explanations on why a failure may have occurred so you can rectify the error before it is part of the accounts system.

With simPRO’s powerful operational system, even functions that Xero cannot perform on it’s own like  CIS and stock control, can all be managed making the combination of simPRO & Xero the ultimate solution for contractors and service companies.

simPRO Mobile

simPRO Mobile is our powerful Anoto based digital pen solution for service companies and contractors. We have made simPRO Mobile even more powerful now with a direct integration from paper invoices to your Xero accounting package.

Learn more about the simPRO Mobile Digital Pen to Xero integration on the Xero Blog.

l

Here is how simple the integration to Xero is:

1. Inside simPRO, connect to Xero

1

.

(more…)

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Posted in Digital Pens, Invoicing, Xero, simPRO, simPRO Enterprise, simPRO Lite, simPRO Mobile | 1 Comment »

Tips & Tricks – May 2010

Monday, May 24th, 2010

Quick Tips Due to the constant development of the simPRO software to improve functionality for our users we have decided to share tips & tricks with you regularly so that you can get more out of simPRO.  This month we are going to have a look at a couple of smaller tips to get you using your system more effectively.

Employee activity

Ever wanted to know about what was happening in your simPRO system by whom?  Traditionally you could always look at the log of a job or quote to find out what has happened, though what about an entire activity report so you can ensure that you’re getting the productivity you require or retrace your own steps to find that missing link of some changes you have made.

Enter the employee History log.  Simply this report reads through all the audit trails on the modules with auditing enables, groups it by users and presents the data across the board.  It is a fairly easy report to run, simply go to Reports->Employee->History Log, apply the filtering you are after and click `submit’.

This gives you total transparency as to who has performed what functions in the system.

Un-invoiced jobs

Do you ever wish you could just see at a snapshot of all the jobs you have worked on this month that have not yet had an invoice created? If you run a lot of service jobs I bet the answer is a resounding “YES”.

Another simple and effective report to use that is often underutilised is the Job Activity Report.  There are heaps of options on this report and one of the most useful filters is the “Un-invoiced” option.

Simply head over to Reports > Jobs > Activity apply some filtering (for example current or last month) and turn on the “Un-invoiced” option at the bottom right then click `submit’.   A simple report that will show you any job that has had activity on it (based on your filters) that has not yet had been invoiced.

Job Activity Report - Showing this months uninvoiced jobs.

Uninvoiced Jobs from this Month

Online Resource

Over the past year we have been generating many articles in to what we dub the “simPRO wiki”.  In there you can find plenty of how-to’s, explanations, videos, product walk throughs and technical information.  As we continue to develop new applications and features into simPRO these articles are updated and added into the wiki.

Even the online help system your already familiar with is interfaced with these articles… it is literally a treasure trove of information you can access about your system.

To search for help, articles or tips, simply go to Help > Online Resource and type in your search needs or simply browse by category.

Posted in Tips & Tricks, simPRO | No Comments »

Back to Basics – The 4 W’s of Job Creation

Monday, March 15th, 2010

Welcome to the first article in a series titled “Back 2 Basics” or B2B for short. In the B2B series I’ll be going back to the fundamental roots of simPRO. Whether you are a new user and learning simPRO or an existing user brushing up on your simPRO knowledge there is always something to gain from reviewing some of the simplest practices in your simPRO software package.

As this is the first article in the Back 2 Basics series I will be covering one of the most common question asked to me during implementation and training.

“How do I just create a job?”

Even though there are more than one methods to ‘just create a job’ (with two explained is this article), there are four questions that you must always ask yourself. I like to call these ‘ The 4 W’s’

Who, Where, What and When

Who – Who is paying for the work to be done?

Where – Where is the work to be done?

What – What work is required to be done?

When – When is the work to be done?

All other factors expand upon this.

(more…)

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Posted in Scheduling Software, Tips & Tricks, simPRO | 1 Comment »

simPRO Tips & Tricks – March 2010

Wednesday, March 10th, 2010

Quick TipsThis month in Tips & Tricks we show you how to:

i. Invoice multiple jobs at once,

ii. Set up your client side simPRO login, and

iii. Decide on who gets a Christmas Hamper this year.

    Invoice multiple jobs at once

    Do you do heaps of smaller jobs that could be invoiced without manual intervention or checking every single one?  What about using recurring jobs or jobs from the maintenance planner that you know are already at the correct rate?  You ask “Why oh why do I need to go into each one to send the invoice?”

    Answer, you don’t.

    A really neat little feature that not many people know about is the ability to invoice any number of jobs with a single click.  Simply head over to the completed jobs list, then tick off the jobs you would like to raise an invoice for down the left hand side (if you would like all of them just tick the box at the top) then go to the bottom of the list in your completed job options and click the invoice button.  Now obviously doing it this way won’t give you the opportunity to drill into each one to check them off but if you know you don’t need to then this is an easy peasy way to get it done.

    Now let’s say you have just created 100 invoices, rather than going to each of them to print them off, why not just print them all off at once?  Head on over to Report > Sales > Invoices, filter by invoices created today then select the format you would like the invoices printed (or emailed) in and click print to drop them onto your printer, or email to send them out to everyone’s inbox.

    Job done.  Now where’s that coffee?

    (more…)

Posted in Productivity, Tips & Tricks, simPRO, simPRO Enterprise | No Comments »

Does simPRO Run on the Apple iPad? It Sure Does!

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010
iPad Views

iPad Views

With all the excitement over the past week about the launch of the Apple iPad we have been getting people asking us – “does simPRO work on the iPad?”

First of all, if you have been asleep for the past week, the iPad is the new tablet computer release from Apple. It has sparked a lot of renewed interest in the tablet computer that has been available in various guises for many many years.

The tablet never really took off except for a few specialised industrial uses (simPRO has been available on most of the devices often called Ultra Mobile PCs for a few years).

The iPad has sparked this renewed interest in this computer format for a number of reason:

1) It is Apple and they put their brand reputation into it and let the Apple FanBoys whip up uber excitement across the web.

2) Since it is Apple you are pretty sure that it will look good and it will work.

3) It is actually a fraction of the cost of standard Windows based UMPCs & tablets.

4) Netbooks have been around for awhile and people are open to the smaller form factor that is mostly designed to be a web browsing (thin client) style product, not an all singing all dancing power computer.

5) As it is built on the iPhone OS, it will be supporting all the existing (squillions) of apps for the iPhone.

So – where does it fit in with simPRO systems. It fits in very well actually. Considering that it is effectively a stylish touch screen portable web browser, the iPad is a perfect fit for the simPRO user.

(more…)

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Posted in Announcement, Web-Based Software, simPRO, simPRO Mobile | 3 Comments »

Motorola MC9500-K – Works on simPRO

Tuesday, January 12th, 2010
Image of Motorola MV9500-K

Image of Motorola MV9500-K

The new Motorola MC9500-K is one of the most rugged and powerful mobile devices for the field service management industry yet.

It is a striking looking unit that is packed with features that ensures it will be a perfect tool for field service companies everywhere with ergonomically designed ruggerdised casing, multiple communications standards (GSM, HSDPA, CDMA, Wi-fi) and a bar code reader.

In terms of a fit for simPRO integration, it is a perfect unit. Running on Windows Mobile 6.1, the large 3.7″ screen, full QWERTY keyboard and blazing fast 3.5G connection means that it is fully supportive of the simPRO Mobile PDA/Smartphone application.

Because it also has Bluetooth connectivity, the Motorola MC9500 is also compatible with the simPRO Mobile Digital Pen solution.

The combination of the PDA application & the Digital Pen solution creates the ultimate in field service systems delivering real time data to the PDA with stock control, job dispatch, purchase orders etc and combining that with reporting, client signature capture, incident reports and site diaries driven from the pen and paper.  Utilising these tools together brings the field worker and the office together like never before.

(more…)

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Posted in Productivity, simPRO, simPRO Mobile | 1 Comment »

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