The Service Release Version of ProfitMaster is fully Year 2000 Compliant. In addition, it includes extended support for Windows 3.x, improved on-line documentation, more than 70 refinements, and a new Instant Update Wizard to automate the process of downloading and installing updates from the Internet.

Other items on the CD will include a new version of 2 Hr ProfitMaster Tutorial that now supports Windows 3.x too, an updated version of ProfitMaster Lite for Win95, and an updated version of the Mail Merge Wizard for Word97.

This means that if you are having trouble with your printer, instead of calling the manufacturer and waiting on hold for hours you can quickly go to their web site and download the newest driver, or read a FAQ list that may address your issue. It is also great for downloading product updates or patches, such as the ProfitMaster Year 2000 update. For both businesses and the public the Internet provides a rapid, convenient and inexpensive means for the distribution of information. And we haven’t even touched on email or Chat Rooms!

Getting on the Internet has never been easier. All you need is a computer, modem, phone line and an ISP (Internet Service Provider) or Internet Service (AOL). The software for browsing the Internet is Free and the going rate for monthly service is usually @ $20 for National Providers such as AOL, Earthlink, and ATT, and less if you use a local ISP. There are so many ISP’s that it is hard to pick up a computer magazine and not be bombarded by ads! Also, your local phone company will most likely offer Internet Service too.

Because of the availability of these user-friendly accounting packages many of our customers are now using them in conjunction with ProfitMaster to manage the formal financial aspects of their businesses. The use of two programs to handle two different aspects of the same business begs to question issues of duplicate data entry. However, after reading this article you will see that the two can co-exist rather painlessly!

The method we will explain to use QuickBooks to manage the financial aspect of your business and ProfitMaster to manage the operational aspects is a simple, accrual-based method. If you already use QuickBooks you know that there are probably half a dozen ways to input a payment. As most people do not use or set up QuickBooks the same way you may have to deviate from our method. But, please, if you do deviate use some common sense, and try to follow the architecture of our recommended method. Finally, if you have any questions relating to setting up accounts or where money should go in QuickBooks, you should always consult your accountant.

The relationship of using QuickBooks with ProfitMaster is based on how often you make bank deposits. Essentially, what you do is, when you make a bank deposit of monies received you should then run an Office Performance report in ProfitMaster for the same time period that the received money covers. You then enter this summarized information into QuickBooks and your done! It’s that simple.

O.K., let’s get into the details. First, you probably already have a set routine for making deposits to the bank. It will vary for each user, from daily to weekly to monthly. The time frame is irrelevant as long as you synchronize your ProfitMaster/QuickBooks procedure with it. To do this you first need to set up a customer in QuickBooks that represents the Net Sales in ProfitMaster. You can call this customer whatever you’d like, we’ll use "ProfitMaster Sales", just remember to always use this customer when entering your net sales from ProfitMaster. To set up the customer, in QuickBooks go to the Lists menu and choose Customer:Jobs. The Customer:Job List will appear. On the Customer:Job List click Customer:Job and then New. The New Customer screen will appear. In the Customer field type in "ProfitMaster Sales" or any other name you desire. Filling in any additional information is optional. Click OK and this new customer will be saved.

Now go to the Lists menu and choose Chart of Accounts. The Chart of Accounts screen will appear. Click the Account button and choose new. Change the type field to Income. In the Name field type in the name you want to call the account such as, Income. The rest of the information is optional. Click O.K. to save the account.

With that done we now need to get our information from ProfitMaster. In ProfitMaster print an Office Performance report for the time period covered by your deposit. Print the report and go back into QuickBooks.

We will now enter our Net Sales and Sales Tax into QuickBooks. Go to the Activities menu and choose Create Invoices. A blank invoice will appear. In the Customer Job field type in ProfitMaster Sales. Move the cursor to the Item field on the Invoice. Type in "ProfitMaster Sales" and hit the TAB key. The Item not Found screen will appear. Click Set Up and the New Item screen will appear. Change the Type field to Service, leave the Item Name as "ProfitMaster Sales", leave Rate as 0, put a check mark in the Taxable field and in Description type "PTS Net Sales for:" Click O.K. to save the service Item.

Press TAB and you will see "PTS Net Sales for" in the description box. Type in the time frame and press TAB. In the Rate field type in the amount of Net Sales from the Office Performance Report Summary. The Tax should automatically be tabulated. Check to ensure the Tax tabulated by QuickBooks is the same as the Sales Tax on the Office Performance Report Summary. If the tax is not the same click the drop down arrow to the right of the Tax field in QuickBooks and choose Add New. Fill in the name information and enter the same tax rate that you are using in ProfitMaster. Click O.K. to save this new Tax Rate.

With this done, click O.K. to save the Invoice. We have just inputted our Net Sales and Sales Tax. Now we need to input the deposit for the corresponding time frame. Chances are your deposit is going to consist of a variety of checks, cash and charges. Calculate the deposit total (should match the ProfitMaster Cash Register Report) and in QuickBooks go to the Activities Menu and choose Receive Payments. The Receive Payments screen will appear. In the Customer:Job field type in ProfitMaster. Any open Invoices will be displayed near the bottom of the screen. Fill in the Date and the amount of the payment. Click Deposit to Checking and place a check mark next to the Invoice you want this Deposit to apply to, any one will do. Fill in the Memo field to note the time frame the payment is for. Click O.K. and the payment will be entered into QuickBooks.

The First Stage is The Initial Customer Call. This is when the customer phones you to inquire into or to book a job. Because ProfitMaster is designed to assist you as soon as the customer calls, in the program you would go to Orders & Estimates and begin to add a new record. Once you’ve inputted the customer’s Company Name or Phone number ProfitMaster will notify you if it is an existing customer or if they need to be added as a new customer.

The Second Stage is Booking the Job. This is when the customer tells you the services they want performed. In ProfitMaster you can fill in these services from a list of pre-defined services or you can add them On-The-Fly as you go.

The Third Stage is Scheduling the Job. This is when you & the customer agree on a date for the services to be performed. ProfitMaster provides you with an easy Calendar scheduling system to perform this task.

Possible Pit Fall: Customer can’t commit to a time or date.
ProfitMaster Solution: Save as a Pending Job with a date to call back. Print the Pending Jobs Report to keep up to date.

The Fourth Stage is Dispatching the Job. This is when you assign the job to a technician. In ProfitMaster you can assign a technician while still on the phone with the customer or you can assign one later. Either way, ProfitMaster provides a handy dispatching report you can give to your technicians that will tell them the jobs assigned to them.

The Fifth Stage is Printing the Work Order. By this time in ProfitMaster you have already completed the Work Order and all you would need to do is print it! As you know, in ProfitMaster a Work Order is for work to be done in the future or today.

The Sixth Stage is the Technician Goes to the Site to perform the work.

The Seventh Stage is the Work is Performed and paperwork returned to the office.

Possible Pit Fall: Not all paperwork returned.
ProfitMaster Solution: Print Outstanding Jobs List.

The Eighth Stage is the Work Order is Invoiced. To Invoice a Work Order in ProfitMaster you first retrieve (Search) the Work Order. Once the Work Order is retrieved on the screen, you choose the edit command and make any necessary changes, such as Up Sells. ProfitMaster compares the job date on the Work Order with your computer’s date and prompts you to convert the Work Order to an Invoice ("Mark As Invoice?") if the job date is equal to or before the current date. Once the work order has been Invoiced you can go ahead and apply payment if it has been received. If not, you save the Invoice and await payment.

The Ninth Stage is Receiving the Payment. If the payment is received when the job has been completed you can enter the payment at the same time you convert the work order to an Invoice. If the payment is received after the date the work is performed you can retrieve the Invoice and choose the edit command. ProfitMaster will recognize you are editing an Invoice that has not been paid yet and immediately prompt you for payment.

Possible Pit Fall: Not all invoices get paid.
ProfitMaster Solution: Print Accounts Receivables Report / Billing Statements. You can even charge interest!

The Tenth Stage is Depositing the Payment into your bank account.

Possible Pit Fall: How do you know all is OK?
ProfitMaster Solution: Print End of Day Report and Cash Register Report and compare to your Deposits.

The Eleventh Stage is Placing Advertisement. ProfitMaster has a Source Performance feature that allows you to track the performance of your ads. Since advertising is so expensive it is critical to know which ads are bringing you in business and which aren’t.

Possible Pit Fall: Is my Advertising Profitable?
ProfitMaster Solution: Run the Source Performance Report.

One of the great features built into the End of Day Report is its ability to indicate potential improper data entry. Though a great feature, without understanding how it works it could lead to some confusion. Here’s why:

Suppose you run an End of Day Report for 1/1/98. Normally, you would expect to see all Invoices for jobs performed on 1/1/98. However, you get a report that shows Invoices for 1/1/98 jobs and one for 12/29/97 (See Example). Baffled, you wonder what you did wrong.

Actually, you did nothing wrong! The way the report works is when you enter the day (or time period) you want the report for, ProfitMaster finds all the Work Orders closed (converted to an Invoice) for jobs performed on that day. Then it finds the lowest and highest Invoice number’s in this group of data. Once determined, it tries to account for each Invoice number in the sequence. If it finds an Invoice that falls within the sequence, but the job was not performed on the same day as the others, it reports that Invoice separately to alert you to this anomaly.

The logic behind this is that all jobs performed on a particular day would also be closed on the same day. For example, all jobs performed on a Monday would probably be closed on the following day, Tuesday. Thus, a sequence of Invoice numbers would be generated for all jobs performed on a certain day.

In our example we have 4 jobs performed on 1/1/98 and 1 job performed on 12/29/97. Logically, the job performed on 12/29 would be closed (invoiced) before later date jobs are closed! But, if we close the first 3 jobs performed on 1/1/98 then close the 12/29 job and then the last job for 1/1/98 you can see how this 12/29 job now falls within the Invoice number sequence of the 1/1 jobs. When you run the report for 1/1/98, the program finds the jobs closed for 1/1 and then looks at the Invoice sequence. In our example, it would look for the Invoice numbers between 5013 & 5017. When it sees that the job for 5016 was not performed on the same day as the others, it reports it separately.

Without casting any judgement or creating any undue paranoia, there could be several reasons for jobs not to be closed on the same day such as employee fraud, forgetfulness or just poor organizational skills. So next time you run an End of Day report and get this type of result, take a close look at the sequence of Invoice numbers and their respective work dates.

Of course NOT! For the same exact reason you should always carry a Service Plan for your ProfitMaster. Since a smooth operation of this tool is critical to the success of your business. You should always have us at your corner ready to assist with any type of question, concern, but most importantly accidents.

As many of you may know Computer Accidents do happen just as frequent as any other type of accidents. Our records indicate that when a computer crashes, the last thing you want to hear about is "YOU ARE OUT OF SERVICE, I NEED YOUR CREDIT CARD BEFORE YOU CAN SPEAK TO A TECHNICIAN!

Most importantly our record indicates that to avoid this hassle many of you will than try to fix the problem yourself or enroll the help of unqualified help. Which may make the problem even worse. For a price lower than your typical cable service you may now have complete peace of mind and avoid unexpected, unbudgeted expenses. Our new Service & Updates subscription program (see New Service Options, Pg. 10) will cover all your computer accidents and even remove the hassle and cost impact of Update fees.

Any one of you who had the misfortune of computer crash, and than proceeded to attempt fixing it himself or with unqualified help knows how frustrating it is to suffer the loss of years of data - and than learn you could have avoided the loss had you taken advantage of our qualified help. Surly, some of you think "I DO BACKUP DAILY- I don't need your help". Let me than share with you the following story:

"RESTORE HORROR" a TRUE STORY!!!

A many years customer of one of our competitor recently had a computer crash. When calling their service he was informed he was out of service and would have to pay for help. Frustrated, he went back to try and restore from a backup set he had from just the day before. To his horror he than received countless ERROR MESSAGES. Even more horrified he than received similar errors from all his other BACKUP sets. Calling back our competitor service, being as frustrated and fragile as he now was, and with the added aggravation of not being enrolled in their service, he ends up getting too angry at their unwillingness to help.

He ends up calling the Computer Manufacturer (Packard Bell), after hours of waiting in the hold queues he was notified they need to reformat his hard drive and can not recover his data. Beaten, he now proceeds to call the manufacturer of the BACKUP drive (IOMEGA) only to be told, after hours of telephone queues that they can't help him either as he used a different backup software (Microsoft). At this point, after 3 days of hardly any sleep, his business not functioning, hours of phone hold frustration, and knowing he can't get such help from Microsoft, he gives up. Frustrated as he now is, he decides to call us and order our product mostly because he is so upset with our competitor.

When getting his order and after hearing his story Miki (my beloved wife) asked him, if he would like us to try recovering his data. He kindly tells her that he is too frustrated, he wasted 3 days already, and he really doesn't want to speak about that any more. Well, she than tells him "if any one could recover your data it would be Ron" (Wife's confidence). He literally tells her he will call later; he is just too tired now. Being the caring, strong willed (i.e obnoxious) person she is, she tells him since he is already on the phone and Ron is rarely available but is miraculously available now (never mind the fact that I am interviewing prospective tech support person at that time) he simply has to talk to me. To make long (and scary) story short, after some 15 minutes on the phone with him, I realized that the errors he was getting when restoring are a simple matter of one setting (i.e. checkbox) in the options of the restore program. Needless to say this story has a happy (surprising!) ending, as we were able to restore all his data on our first attempt, once this setting was corrected.

Just imagine that your business is like a ship, the more leaks it has the more profits you lose, and the more chances that you are sunk. So, your job is to find all of the leaks and plug ‘em up so your business operates like a tight ship and keeps afloat. And, what is the one simple step to plugging all the leaks in your business that costs nothing, anybody can do, yet almost nobody does?

Tracking.

Tracking?! Yes. When you implement tracking in your business you can take the most rotted out dinghy and transform it into a luxury liner almost over night. You will find out what works and what doesn’t. You can stop wasting money and find profits hidden in your business like untapped "gold mines".

Advertising

Let’s start by plugging the leaks in the most important area of your business: marketing.

To "track" is to hold your advertising accountable for every dollar it brings in. So, at the touch of a button you can know in an instant what campaigns are working and which ones have fallen flat on their face. At a whim you can see what marketing is working and what dollars it is pulling in. You can project the month’s revenue by comparing with past months and never waste your money on a "loser" ad again.

Of course, this means no more "image" advertising for you. Just in case you are still stuck in the "get your name out there" mentality, "getting your name out there" is not trackable and therefore is a waste of your money. When you start using direct response marketing you can track every dollar you spend on your marketing and watch your income skyrocket as you master tracking your results.

So, once you start using direct response marketing you’re ready to track.

"But How Can I Possibly Track Everyone That Comes In Contact With My Company?"

Every time the phone rings and someone wants to use your services you find out where the client lives and what their phone number is, and you write it on some form of a work order, correct? So, add one more question to the roster: "How did you hear about us?" Record the person’s answer on the work order and when the info gets entered into the computer: you’re tracking.

Some of you might be thinking, "But I don’t have a computer." Or "I don’t have the right software." Of course, it’s easiest if you have a computer and software that allows you to enter marketing source code information. But, don’t put off tracking until you can afford the right computer or software. Do it the old fashion way (with pen and paper) become innovative, but just DO IT. You can get the new computer or software with the money you’ll find "hidden" in your business.

When you start to do this your eyes will be open to exactly how good your company is really doing. You might be shocked to learn that you are losing money on your favorite ad. You might be stunned at just how much that big expensive Yellow Page ad doesn’t bring in every month. You might be surprised at how much of your business is repeat and referrals. And you might find that you have one or two really killer ads.

This is valuable information for you. Now, you can trash loser ads, improve you Yellow Pages, and put more money into the campaigns that do work.

Become A "Master Tracker" And Your Business Won’t Just Keep Afloat It Will Sail

Marketing is the most important thing for you to track but it’s not the only thing. So, once you get the hang of tracking your marketing apply this knowledge to your whole business.

Track the phone calls that come in and out of your office, and learn how much time your office staff may be wasting and flushing your profits down the toilet.

Track how much chemical your tech’s are using and find out if there are inconsistencies, and over usage that are sucking profits out of your company.

Track incoming and outgoing mail. Track your employee’s time. Track job costs. Track your referrals. If it’s measurable, track it. (Remember "without measurement there is no growth".)

Once you start tracking all marketing and technical aspects of your business you will never have to guess what to do (or what not to do) next. You will know your numbers and know exactly what works for your business. There will be no more profits "leaking" out of your business as you streamline your company. You will see phenomenal leaps in your income because you will always know your numbers. And you will always know your numbers as long as you track.

In 1976, Sam went to help a friend of a friend clean carpets. It was a simple operation; they parked their van in a neighborhood and went door to door offering to clean carpets. After a year of going door to door, Sam parted with his partner and started his own business. By this time he had built up enough clients to stop going door to door and by servicing his previous clients and gaining referrals his business grew.

After over 20 years in the business Sam is now the largest independent carpet cleaner in Melbourne, providing carpet & upholstery cleaning, duct cleaning and water damage restoration. On average he performs 40 cleaning jobs a day, and 10-15 water damage restorations a week. His average water damage job exceeds $1000, while a carpet cleaning job averages $140 (Aus).

Sam shared with us some of the ups and downs he has experienced as a carpet cleaner.

The one thing Sam does not like about carpet cleaning are the customers that are never happy no matter what you do. Especially, the customers that call hysterically when a driver is a few minutes late. Sam does have his drivers inform customers when they will be late but sometimes it is to no avail.

Another downside is litigation, and he his happy to report that he has only been involved in one lawsuit, but it is a suit worth mention. Apparently, Sam had cleaned a house of carpet and unbeknownst to him this customer had a shed ½ a kilometer away where he stored deer antlers for export to Korea as an aphrodisiac. Sam cleaned the house and left. The customer exported his antlers but the Koreans rejected them for some reason. The customer then sued Sam saying that the cleaning Sam performed in the house somehow led to the antler's deterioration in the shed ½ kilometer away. Sam prevailed in the suit, and as it was in Australia the customer had to reimburse Sam for his legal expenses.

One of the best experiences Sam had happened when he was starting out in 1976 or 77. He cleaned a woman's apartment and she turned out to be a real estate agent that moved from one real estate agency to another. Each time she got a new job, Sam became the preferred carpet cleaner for that agency. As you can imagine this was great for his growth!

Having been in the business for over 20 years Sam has developed rules for running his business:

Be prepared to refuse work from people you won't make money from. For Sam Pubs, Nightclubs and Builders are not the most preferred customers. "They are tough on price and slow on paying." Here are some of his observations on why they are not profitable for him:

Nightclubs - They require after hours cleaning and have a high frequency of cancellations.

Builders - Are very demanding in scheduling and are hard to collect from.

Restaurants & Pubs - Sometimes require additional work and equipment maintenance that can become unprofitable

Though this is strictly a judgment call, over all, he has found working for these businesses to be unprofitable.

• Never clean for practice or promise of future work. This relates to the customer who asks for a discount or free work on the promise that he will give you tons of referrals and/or future work. However, you should give a discount to your good or high volume customers.
• Authorize your drivers to leave if the customer tries to renegotiate or dispute the price they were given over the phone. No freebies! This is for the customer that tries to bargain with your technician once he has arrived to perform the work.
• Keep up to date on Accounts Receivable and pursue them to litigation if you must. According to Sam it seldom gets that far.
• Be more concerned with your profit margin then the size of your business.
• Have firm policies and stick with them. Provide a quality product performed by quality workers.

Sam has several techniques he uses to ensure his business is providing a quality product by quality workers. Each customer is provided with a survey card and is encouraged to fill it out and send it in. In addition, 10 customers a day are called for a phone survey.

He also believes that good pay attracts good technicians and claims to have a list of technicians wanting to work for him. In exchange for the good pay he expects his employee's to abide by the rules in the 8-page contract they have to sign. Among these rules are absolutely no theft or side work, good appearance, and technicians are only permitted a 1% redo rate. He highly recommends establishing a rulebook or manual for employees and having them abide by it!

Quality workers are paramount to Sam, as he believes fraud by employees is the biggest threat to a carpet cleaning business. In this industry, there is often no stock to control and the employees can't be observed handling money. Technicians that perform extra services and pocket the money, or set up jobs on the side with the customer can hurt carpet cleaners. To combat this, Sam sets up "monitored" jobs when he suspects a technician is not meeting his high expectations of service or quality.

Since his business grew from a one-man operation in 1976 to having 10 crews and an office, Sam needed a business program that could efficiently handle the high volume of jobs he is doing. He bought ProfitMaster. Before ProfitMaster he was using software written by a local programmer to handle some scheduling and accounting functions, but he mostly relied on a large, custom made ledger to schedule appointments and another book to schedule "redo's".

As his business grew this ledger process became burdensome, as only one person at a time could schedule an appointment. Also, the ledger was a victim of wear and tear and pages were getting torn or ripped out.

For the last 2 years he has used ProfitMaster to track 2 companies, with separate commission and ad on rates for each company.

Sam says the overall benefit ProfitMaster has afforded him is accessibility. Now anyone in his office can schedule a job at any time, from anywhere in the office. There is no more ledger to fight over when customers are on the phone trying to book an appointment. He is also able to fax dispatch sheets to his technicians before they come to work. His employee's have benefited too. He can now easily pay his booking agents 1% of each job they book rather then the 50 ¢ per job they were previously getting!

Through Performance reports ProfitMaster also helps him track his technicians' performance. He can quickly see redo percents (try calculating that from a ledger) and add on sales. Because of this he is now able to aggressively pursue the up sells market, track the results and quickly reward his best technicians.

Some things he'd like to see change or added to the program are: a more enhanced self-learning zip code system; a 2nd decimal place added to the dimensions fields; support for in-plant cleaning; "master" estimates that can't be altered; the ability to block out certain dates on the scheduling calendar so his agents would know when a technician will not be available; more support for water damage restoration; and a self learning scheduling system based on zip code or city.

Overall, though, Sam is pretty happy using ProfitMaster and says he could not manage his business now that it's grown with the system he was previously using.

ProfitMaster updates will be available from our web site at http://www.profit-master.com/ or they can be sent to you for a $5 shipping & handling charge.

In addition, we’ve added new features to ProfitMaster to support the new Sears Invoice format, the Remittance Report (Windows) and easier input of Sears Setup Information. To input your Sears information simply go to the Utilities menu, choose preferences, Sears. You will the have the Sears Information screen. Enter your company information and click OK to save. You can also specify the Invoice Version # of the Sears Invoice you are using (2 = New Invoice). To print the Remittance Report, from the File menu choose Print, Performance Reports, Remittance. You will then be prompted for the rest of the information required to print the report.

The structure of CarpetMaster and ProfitMaster was designed to store the year as 4 digits, though it only displayed the year as 2 digits. So, structurally it is Year 2000 compliant but in order for it to be completely compliant some changes were needed to allow for 4 digits being entered for the year. We have resolved this issue and a fully Year 2000 Compliant version, (available now for download), will be included on the FREE SR-1 CD (see related story) being sent to all registered users of ProfitMaster 5.5.

Remote Control Service
This option allows us to actually access and work with your PC or ProfitMaster from our Headquarters in Woodland Hills. In order to have this service you MUST have either PC Anywhere or LapLink. The cost for this service is $100 setup fee and an extra $5 per month in addition to our regular yearly service fee.

Life Time Support & Service
For $30 a month ($10 for each additional user –Network) you will have all ProfitMaster Updates mailed to you for FREE + S & H (Cooling period of 6 months when first signing –waived until 6/1/98). You will also get any new documentation for a nominal fee, plus unlimited Tech Support. After hours Tech Support is available for $5 extra a month.

April
"Nuts" by Kevin & Jackie Freiberg, published by Broadway. This is the story of Herb Kelleher who reinvented air travel when he founded Southwest Airlines 25 years ago. By sidestepping traditional management philosophies and employing its own brand of business success, Kelleher’s airline has turned a profit for twenty-four consecutive years and has seen its stock soar 300% since 1990. Today, Southwest is the safest airline in the world and ranks number 1 in the industry for service, on-time performance, and lowest employee turnover rate; and Fortune magazine has twice ranked Southwest one of the ten best companies to work for in America. This book describes how they did it.