STEP1 Software Solution
3525 Old Conejo Rd
Suite #110
Newbury Park, CA 91320
PH: 800-553-2602

NEW:    SNAP – STEP1 Notes and Photos

SNAP allows you to set up notes and easily attach photos or documents on most anything in your system. For example, you could attach a photo (or photos) of what a machine looked like when it came in for repair, or attach your customer’s resale certificate to that customer.

Imagine being able to attach a photo of a ‘problem order’ to that order! SNAP also allows you to save documents such as vendor PO acknowledgements and A/P invoices.

The note portion of SNAP is also very helpful. For A/R Tracking, SNAP can auto-generate a call note for a customer requiring a collection call. If the customer promises to send a check, then SNAP will remind you a few days downstream to look to make sure you got the promised check.

SNAP is a product that touches most every employee using STEP1. SNAP helps your employees be more productive and more proactive.

Order Desk

This is an all-inclusive, easy to use order entry package designed to be able to answer most any question that a customer could come up with during the ordering process, without having to leave Order Desk to go find the answer.

Since special pricing is so common in the industries we serve, Order Desk immediately shows you all items that this customer buys, at whatever their price is. If costs went up, Order Desk shows what new price you should be charging this time to get the same margin as last time, plus it shows the last price paid and last order date.

Customer credit, open invoices, and all historical invoices are available to you at the touch of a button.

Order Desk also tracks items that need to be reordered by the customer, to help build up your orders and minimize emergency stock outs at your customer site.

For new items, Order Desk easily lets you search for new items. You can search either by name or by type of item. STEP1 also supports the JM Online Catalog System, which then allows you to view pictures and mfg. descriptions right from within Order Desk. (If you are using any of our on-line ordering products for your customers, then they can access the catalog, too.)

Purchasing Manager

STEP1 has a sophisticated purchasing system that will help you increase your fill rate while simultaneously lowering your average on-hand stock of inventory.

The system watches customer demand on items, so it knows which items you are likely to run out of soon, even if stock levels are OK at the moment!

Color coded Item lines makes it easy to spot which items you must order now and which are recommended. STEP1 calculates each item's daily usage so it knows exactly when you will run out and how much you need to buy to get through to the next purchasing cycle. Knowing what the future holds for your inventory makes it much easier to keep less stock on hand and still mantain and improve your fill rates.

The system also has auto-fill logic so you can get to whatever size purchase order is required for this vendor quickly and easily. Auto fill supports dollars, size, weight, and cubes.

Customer Price Manager

The STEP1 Customer Price Manager is a breakthrough in account management that will help you set, maintain and anticipate pricing for each customer. Customer Price Manager allows you to tighten up price and margin control on special and other prices resulting in your firm enjoying a multiple point increase to your bottom line. That translates to an additional $10,000 per point for every million dollars in annual sales.

It has long been our observation that with so many prices being maintained as 'special' prices, there was simply too much work to maintain margins as costs and prices rose. This was particularly true when you discovered that you could not automatically pass along cost increases to every special price customer as they occurred.

Besides the maintenance problems associated with special prices, the other obvious problem was when a customer wanted to buy a new item. Customer service could not really help them, and the matter needed to be referred back to the salesperson, who in turn would figure out an appropriate special price for this customer, then try to secure the deal. This resulted in lost time and inconvenience to everyone involved. We felt it would be much better if the computer could anticipate the price that the salesperson would come up with, so that customer service could quote and get the order on the spot. Using Customer Price Manager, the salesperson can easily go into an account and set up a policy for a particular customer for a logical group of items. For example, suppose a hospital was purchasing several types and sizes of poly liners. The salesperson had calculated that 27% off list price was the right price point for liners for this customer. He could set up a policy that reflected this, then if the hospital needed a new size, the computer would price it at 27% off list and the order would be completed. Naturally, Customer Price Manager allows exceptions within a group as well.

Sales Manager

This tool is a dream for your sales manager. View your accounts by salesman, or by industry type. Review margins. Check out what customers are buying and what they aren't. Look for problems early before they become big problems.

Your Sales Manager will be in command of your sales force with this impressive package. Track salesman goals, profitability, and order size. Track customer profitability. Easily spot margin problems. Track branch performance and overall company performance. Drill down through the data to get the answers you need, fast and easily.

Virtual Catalog Builder

The Catalog feature allows you to create a list of products which you feel this customer should be buying from you, and also include the customer products that are currently being purchased from you. The Catalog feature is a virtual catalog contained in the various STEP1 order entry platforms. It is not a printed catalog.

The Catalog feature will help direct your Rep, your Customer Service Staff, and the Customer to items that this customer should probably be buying from you. The Catalog will be available for the customer to see in our new Web-Customer Self Service product. This will be much easier for the customer than trying to weed through the thousands of items that are contained in your entire inventory.

There are two types of Catalogs you can create. The first is called a ‘Customer Catalog’, and is intended to be directed at a single customer, or customers connected in a logical way (like individual school buildings that are all part of the same school district). The Catalog Creator was written from the perspective that the individual Sales Rep in charge of this account is probably the right person to create the catalog, so it was designed to be intuitive and easy for the Sales Rep to use.

The second type of catalog you can create is called a ‘Market Catalog’. Suppose your company does very well in Medical Clinics. Chances are the items that a Clinic should buy are pretty similar from one to the next. The Catalog Creator allows you to create a catalog for ‘Medical Clinics’, and then apply it to all customers set up with a Sales Group of ‘Clinics’.

You can also easily copy from an existing catalog (of either type) to create a new catalog (of either type). So for example if you had a large Medical Clinic customer that you did a Customer Catalog for, you could copy that, rearrange it as necessary to make it more general for Clinics, and save it out as a Market Catalog. Or, you could copy in the Market Catalog, add items that this particular customer needs, and then save it out as a Customer Catalog.

Warehouse Manager

Once the orders are entered, this package helps you traffic and manage them. You can sort your orders into electronic 'bins' by truck route, which then builds the manifest for each truck run.

One touch of a button and you can see if you are going to have any backorders for anything on this truck before you even begin picking for it, thus allowing you to decide who will be backordered.

Warehouse Manager also supports what we call 'wave picking'. This produces a picking ticket for the entire truck, so you only make one sweep through the warehouse to collect all items on all orders for this truck run. Note, you are not forced to do this, it's just there if you want to do it. You can pick by order as well.

Query Manager

This program is an ad-hoc query tool used to ask questions of the database. It is easy to use, and allows anyone with Windows knowledge to make basic queries of the data. For example if you would like to sort your health care customers by profitability, then query is the tool you would use.

A/R Manager

The system is very helpful for your A/R manager. You can effortlessly customize the A/R screen at any moment to show any of these conditions:

       • All customers

       • All customers with balances

       • Delinquent customers only

       • All customers for a salesman

       • All customers for a branch sales office

You can also sort with just one click to get the customers sequenced from most delinquent to least delinquent, making it easier to know who to call first.

Posting checks is extremely easy. It shows you all open items for the account, and you just highlight those being paid with your mouse. If the customer is just making a payment on account, there is a button you click that applies the payment for you.

If you have any group of customers that pay all on one check, then you can link individual A/R accounts together to form what we call a 'payment group'. This allows you to have all the open invoices from all the accounts show up in A/R looking like one account, which makes applying cash easy. It then knows which invoices were paid for the various accounts, and marks them appropriately.

Also, there is an easy way to find which customer this is if all you have to go by is your invoice number.

A/P Manager & A/P Checks

There are 2 separate programs for this, since some companies have clerks that only enter A/P items and never write checks. This is an easy program to use, allowing you to enter vendor invoices, and check against the PO's on the fly. You can deploy a payment to as many as 10 expense accounts, all with easy Windows lookup buttons if you don't know all the account numbers.

Check writing is easy as well. There's a suggested pay program that tells you which checks should be issued today. You can control things like payment due dates and if you want to take advantage of discounts.

Billing Manager

This program allows you to quickly and easily keep up with your invoicing. You can invoice by truck run, which really makes billing fast. Suppose twenty-five orders went out on a truck run, and when the driver got back there was 1 order that needed to be modified (refused item, or whatever). The billing mgr would just fix the one order that was wrong, then would bill all the rest of the truck with one click.

Billing Manager also supports individual review and invoicing of orders, if you prefer.

Bank Reconciliation

Supports Bank Rec for single or multiple checking accounts.

G/L Manager

We have a robust G/L program for you! It produces both monthly and quarterly financial statements, which your bank will love.

You can also have departmental and consolidated income statements.

There is a recurring entry feature for things like depreciation, payroll, etc. Very handy and easy to use, it allows you to set up the accounts to be affected, then just plug in the amounts as you're ready to post the entry.

You can also go to any ledger, then click an entry and it will display the transaction that generated the entry. This makes it extremely easy to back track through the system.

Data Maintenance Manager (DMain)

DMAIN is a one-stop shop to maintain all data in your system. You can set up items, customers, vendors, salesmen, and anything else that needs to be setup. You can also modify your data from this easy to use tool.

Customers tell us that this module has really helped them. It makes it easier to maintain data, and there's only one place you need to go to do it.

Rebate Manager

If you have any vendors that require you to submit proof of sales to certain customers to get rebates back on inventory purchased, then you will need this feature. This tool makes a very complex job easy.

Knowledge Base (KBase)

This program can be used to tally information about your company for your employees. Procedures for a special customer, for example. Or your employee policies.