| F.A.Q. |
• BROKERS: base software including brokerage sales and confirmation printing.
• CONSOLIDATION CENTERS: base package plus additional software allowing for items brought into one or more warehouses for storage and/or repacking before resale.
• GROWERS/PACKERS: base package including warehouse/inventory tracking and subsystems to handle crop accounting, packout, and grower accounting.
The following are features highlighted in the base software package:
| Price Maintenance | Truck Load/Profit Accounting |
| Current Market Quotes | Sales Analysis |
| Merchandise Availability | Accounts Receivable |
| Truck Availability | Accounts payable |
| Order entry | General Ledger |
| Truck load building | Financial Statements |
| Truck Distribution/Routing | Fax Prices |
| Truck warehouse loading worksheets | Fax Passings |
| Bills of Lading | Inquiry - Current & History Activity |
| Shipment Tracking | Easy to learn Item/customer alpha ID's |
| Confirmation printing | Tutorial Help screens all programs |
| Invoicing | Inquiry/search capability for data supplied by |
| Redbook Services | Multiple sales offices |
| Multiple companies |
The following features are added to the base software for consolidation/repacking centers:
| Payables/accounting by in-product (vouchers) | Dock loading reports |
| Inventory availability by day | Truck load worksheets(from above) |
| Dock receiving reports | Bill of lading (from above) |
| Warehouse receivings | Shipper account of sales |
| Multiple warehouses | Warehouse transfers |
| Repack charge accounting | Allow repack commodity I.D. changes |
| Commodity Order Schedules by Customer | Expense (freight) proration across multiple vouchers and/or Invoices |
| Organization of Invoices by Route | User Defined Commodity Repack |
The following features are added for growers/packers:
| Scale tickets for incoming bulk product | Crop accounting for house fields |
| Field in-freight charges | Crop accounting for growers |
| Packout(actual or calculated) | Variable rate schedules for charges |
| Inventory packout projections by grower | Payment schedules to growers |
| Cost center accounting by product & whse. | Track seed and chemical use |
| Storage inventory of bulk/unpacked product |
Payroll can be added to any of the above packages and has the following features:
| Fully integrated with the G/L | Labor expenses by job class |
| Handles various overlapping pay periods | Allows simple voiding of checks |
| Handles multiple state payrolls | Includes personnel information |
| Handles salary / commission / hourly | Two levels of security or piecework |
| Allows optional use of time/piecework cards |
The software is fully integrated. Each program interfaces with multiple subsystems, permitting virtually no duplication of data entry. And, its intuitive design allows for a minumum of keystrokes to accomplish complex tasks. This software is a sales oriented set of computer programs that also successfully handles the complex accounting requirements of the produce industry. It produces a profit and loss analysis of each sale through load accounting, posts payables, receivables, and general ledger; and tracks all transactions for a complete sales analysis. All of this is accomplished with basically one entry at order time.
It was necessary to develop the programs exclusively because all other available programs fell short of demonstrating a real understanding of the produce industry. Even programs already designed and installed in produce houses failed to meet the requirements. Typically, programs from other industries had been modified in an effort to meet the needs of the produce business. All systems fell short of the ideal: one set of programs working in tandem to meet the requirements of sales, accounting, and management. THIS SYSTEM IS A RESULT OF TWENTY MAN YEARS OF EXTENSIVE PROGRAM DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT.
THIS SOFTWARE IS A UNIQUE SYSTEM DESIGNED BY WORKING MEMBERS OF THE PRODUCE INDUSTRY. Installation, technical support, and frequent product enhancements are done personally by the initial developers of the system.
THE SYSTEM IS PROVEN, HAS BEEN IN USE AND CONTINUALLY UPDATED FOR FIFTEEN YEARS.
Major functions and features of the system are as follows:
Available to sell and Pricing Since produce is most times bought and sold according to season, allowances were made in the design of the price maintenance and inquiry programs to permit activating and deactivating both shippers and commodities. Therefore, pricing screens can optionally display only those shippers and their associated items designated as currently in season. Prices can be reviewed by geographical area, category, or item. The following are examples of the information displayed on the price maintenance and inquiry screens:
Shipper identification Last date price was updated Commodity code Package type Base Price Other price (cooling / ice) Brokerage type FOB price Brokerage amount Freight charges Handling amount Delivered price (incl. mark-up) Delivered cost (incl. broker/handling) Comments about commodity Miscellaneous codes (freight/other)
IMPORTANT FEATURES OF THE PRICING FUNCTION:
Order entry allows selections directly from the price file. By inspecting the price file at the time an invoice is printed, the system can determine whether other charges such as cooling or palletizing were included in the FOB price to pay to the shipper and itemize those costs separately in the load accounting system. This happens automatically just by assigning those other costs to the commodity while updating prices.
Automatic brokerage protection is provided specific to shipper.
Updating may be done to any component of the price record without affecting the margin. For example, if the FOB price for an item is $6.00 and brokerage is changed from 15 cents to 25 cents, the delivered price will automatically be updated to $6.25 unless a change is made to the delivered price also. Prices are available immediately at all other workstations when changes are made.
Comments pertaining to a particular commodity's availability, quality etc. can be entered and subsequently reviewed while adding detail to an order from prices. To reduce data entry while updating prices, a DUP key was implemented which allows copying a prior commodity's prices by pressing a single key once.
Prices can be organized in shipper quote sequence to allow for fast updating while speaking to the shipper.
A separate set of programs were designed following the advent and boom of fax technology which allow copying price information directly to a separate file for faxing to customers. By copying the information to a separate file, individual lists can be created specific to a group of related customers, geographic area, and/or type of sale (FOB/DEL). When used in conjunction with IBM S/36 and AS/400 hardware, the software provides full integration with an automated faxing system, which allows price list faxing to a customer or the broadcasting of a price list to a user-defined group of customers-- ALL WITHOUT LEAVING YOUR DESK.
Order Entry/Maintenance: By defining system defaults, customer orders are entered with a minimum of keystrokes drawing order detail directly from the price file, commodity file or warehouse inventory. Orders may be placed immediately onto a truck, or into a temporary holding file from which truck loads may be built at a later time. Using powerful search capabilities, these orders can then be directly transferred to a truck by selecting orders that match a specified origination zone/warehouse, destination zone, ship date, commodity, sales terms, buyer and/or seller. Sales Load / Truck Distribution: Sold product is tracked throughout the system by sales loads. The sales load distribution file contains all of the information necessary for invoicing, payables, and truck routing. Some of this information follows:| Shippers/suppliers (pick-up sequence) | Customers (drop-off sequence) |
| Commodities | Quantities bought & sold |
| Cost of goods sold | Customer prices |
| Terms of sale | Ship date |
| Transportation company | Truck passings |
| Freight charges & misc. expenses | Delivered date |
| Truck weight/feet | Comments |
Extensive search parameters may be used to allow display of loads that match specified selections. These selection parameters include sales office, transportation company, shipper, origin zone, customer, origin warehouse, ship date, manifest, sales terms, PO# and/or status codes (ordered, picked up, dropped off, advised, BOL/Load sheet printed). The system also allows exclusive review and update of shipped loads having unassigned buyers.
Truck Availability: Truck information may be further defined for users where much of their business involves delivered sales or for those organizations having a separate truck brokerage company. The following is general information available under the truck availability sub-system:
Types/lengths of trucks Travel areas Number of trucks available Insurance expiration date In addition, more detailed information may be kept for individual trucks:
Truck type (Refrigerated/Flatbed/Van) & length Driver name Current location & dates/times of availablity Phone# at current location Origin and destination zones Other comments
Tracking down available trucks is accomplished easily through searching by trucking company, truck type, truck length, travel areas, current origin and destination zones, and/or availability dates.
Invoicing: All necessary information to print invoices exists in sales loads. Again, because the system is default oriented, only two keystrokes are required to create all of the customer invoices for an entire sales load. (Most of the work was done on the phone when initially setting up the load.) Before the invoices are printed, salesman approval is all that is needed. Changes to initial sales can easily be done through the use of additional invoices or credit memos both hand-written and machine printed. Using this method, an audit trail is created for all transactions affecting the load. Load Accounting: All customer sales, vendor/trucker expenses and shipper payables are tracked by load in the load accounting sub-system. All sales and expenses are tied directly to a shipper so that profit information by shipper is available at all times. All expense and payables information may be updated in load accounting for changes in item costs or quantities, vendor expense charges etc. Since all sales and expenses are tied to a shipper, a brokerage rate may be set up to pay a shipper net proceeds less your brokerage. THIS IS ACCOMPLISHED BY THE USE OF A SINGLE COMMAND KEY.Extensive search parameters may be used to allow display of loads that match specified selections. Loads may be searched by shipper, customer, trucker/vendor, PO#, terms, ship date, delivered date, and manifest. In addition, load payables may be searched by payables type (shipper payable, vendor expense) and paid status (open, approved, paid, to-approve, unpaid).
Accounts Receivable: The accounts receivable sub-system is tied directly to the invoicing function. At the time invoices or credit memos are printed, A/R is also updated. It's that simple. Maintenance to the A/R is seldom needed (mostly for conversion purposes). Standard accounts receivable reports are available including aging reports, and past due reports by salesman. Accounts Payable / Produce Load Payables: Accounts payable for produce and associated expenses is an extention of load accounting. Shipper and vendor payables need only to be approved before checks can be printed. Approval is an easy process since YOU define the number of days after shipment payables are due for each account (but of course, a default is permitted). When all payments are approved, checks are produced automatically and payables are flagged as paid. Check reconciliation, outstanding lists, cash requirements, and past due reports are also available.ACCOUNTS PAYABLE (NON PRODUCE):
Payables for non-produce expenses may be processed one of two ways: hand-written checks, which allow for immediate payment to vendors without first setting up a payables and going through the approval process; and regular A/P, which allows setting up multiple payables with check writing at a later time. Discounts and multiple G/L distributions are allowed and a history of all checks written through the system is retained for later reference or voiding.
General Ledger: ALL SUB-SYSTEMS FEED THE GENERAL LEDGER DYNAMICALLY. Therefore, G/L balances are are always current and prior summarizations are not necessary. Current G/L balance and transaction (both history and current) inquiry are available with user-definable password security. Transaction registers and trial balances are provided for month-end closings and a year-end closing period is allowed. Financial statements include the ability to print any of the last 15 months, with comparisons to any other month or budget. In addition, like accounts may be grouped together and summarized according to user defined specifications. Daily controls for cash, accounts receivable, and all payables are included to safeguard against data entry errors. Sales Analysis: The flexibility of the sales report generator allows sales reports to be completely defined by you. All sales information exists in load accounting and may be accessed in an unlimited number of ways. Management reports can be produced reflecting sales, purchases, and/or profits by salesperson, geographical location, sales office, shipper, customer, commodity, terms, and dates in any selective combination. The results may be displayed on screen and/or printed. Integrated Redbook Redbook account information previously available in hardback only, is now included in the Botsford & Goodfellow produce package with all of the search capabilities one would expect from a state-of-the-art software product. Searching for information about a specific produce company is now as easy as keying a name into a selection field. A special index file created for use in conjuction with the files provided by Redbook allows for immediate response to the following user selections:| Company operation (ie. shipper/broker) |
Commodities |
| Company name | City |
| State | Country |
| Employee name |
Now it is possible to search for all apple growers in the state of Washington, or search for the organization that employs Joe Shmoe. The Redbook program can also be used as an invaluable tool when converting to the Botsford & Goodfellow produce software. Account ID's may be added directly from the redbook to be used in your company's CSTV (customer, shipper, trucker, vendor) file. The time-consuming process of determining consistent, meaningful and easy to remember account ID's used throughout the entire B&G produce software is done automatically by using the redbook feature.
Major functions and features added to the base system for produce consolidation and repack operations include the following:
Voucher Inventory / Payables The voucher sub-system is the facility through which produce bought from outside shippers is brought into a warehouse for storage, repacking and reselling. Produce costs and service expenses associated with the arrival of product are paid for through voucher payables (not load accounting). Internal warehouse charges associated with produce repacking are kept track of and income or liability G/L accounts for these charges are user-defined. The ability to remit to the shipper sales revenue less load expenses and your brokerage has also been included in the voucher system. All information for each item bought including ordered & received quantities, sales (paid and unpaid), expenses, payables, internal warehouse charges and average profit per selling unit is available for review on ONE SCREEN. Inventory: An inventory is maintained and automatically updated by voucher payables, receipts, adjustments, customer orders, sales loads, and BOL. The following information is displayed when reviewing inventory or when adding to orders from warehouse inventory:| Order quantity | Quality |
| Received quantity | Label |
| Adjustment quantity | Base cost |
| Shipped quantity | Other cost ( i.e. palletizing/cooling) |
| On hand quantity | FOB total cost |
| Quantity already reserved | Suggested price |
| Quantity available for sale | Corresponding pounds if priced by weight |
Quantities are added to inventory through the use of receiving tickets. On-hand quantities and pounds may be adjusted or updated at any time. Warehouse history is generated for each transaction affecting on-hand inventory and may be reviewed at any time. In addition, inventory availability, on-hand and adjustment reports can be printed which contain pertinent information such as quantities and pounds for each item as well as unit and extended costs. Receiving and loading reports may also be printed for any or all warehouses on a selected receive/ship date.
Load Sheets / Bills of Lading To ease the task of loading warehouse inventory onto a truck for distribution, load sheets may be printed listing items to be loaded, loading sequence, and total counts. Bills of lading may also be printed for each customer and warehouse. Both of these reports are printed at the touch of a key. Route Invoices/Accounting: For organizations where accounting by truck load is unnecessary, the route accounting system is provided. The route accounting system dramatically simplifies the entire process by making the invoice the fundamental accounting unit instead of the truck load. Consequently, sales load distribution and load accounting are not used, thereby substantially reducing the complexity of the system. Customer orders are input directly into an invoice (invoice number is computer generated) by drawing from the commodity file, inventory, or shipper price file. Assignment of vouchers (product received into inventory) can be done automatically on a FIFO basis, after which, profitability for the invoice can be displayed on the invoice entry screen. Backorders can be processed easily through automatic creation of "child" invoices based on the original order quantity not shipped (backorder). Individual commodities on an invoice can be sold on a consignment basis by specifying PAS (price after sale) as the price. At the time the initial consignment invoice is printed, a "child" invoice is automatically created (containing only those commodities specified as PAS) upon which, after settling with the customer, price may be specified. Customer is then re-invoiced for the settled price. Repack: Product consolidation and/or repack can be accomplished with ease using a "user-defined" commodity repack file. You tell the computer what product(s) you use to create another and the quantity conversions (including shrinkage) applicable. During the course of the day, the sales staff create orders containing the repack product (to be "made" during the night shift). At the end of the day, you print out a worksheet which contains a list of all repacked product you need for tomorrow and associated "source" product(s) (currently in inventory) that should be used to create the repacked commodities. The next day, the worksheet is returned to you from the warehouse with the actual used/packed quantities indicated. From that list, you tell the computer exactly what was repacked. That’s it! Your inventory is updated and quantity and cost conversions are done automatically! Adjusting Inventory: Inventory accounting is, by no means, an exact science. Warehouse product decays, gets run over by a forklift, gets stolen by unscrupulous warehouse personnel (or sales staff), or gets used for the repack operation when another product should have. These types of problems are frequent occurrences in the produce business. That’s why we decided to automate the process of adjusting inventory. What do you do when your computer inventory says you have 45 boxes of granny smith apples when you really have 10? Somehow, you’ve got to make an adjustment to the inventory. However, adjusting inventory is not such a simple task. What is needed is a method of relieving or restoring inventory for a particular commodity through the normal channels—ie. creating new vouchers (to restore) or creating new invoices (to relieve). This would be an ominous task if inventory control wasn’t tightly kept and you had to accomplish it manually. Ideally, the user should only have to look at the warehouse onhand total for commodities, make adjustments to indicate the actual onhand quantity and press a key to automatically generate the invoices and/or vouchers necessary to correct the inventory. That’s what we’ve done! It’s a huge time-saver in comparison to manual methods—and it’s more accurate.Major functions and features added to the base system for SHIPPERS/PACKERS include the following:
Scale Tickets: Scale ticket entry is available for those packing sheds that receive produce in bulk. Each scale ticket entered identifies the truck, field and packout run or storage location. Through the use of scale tickets, field freight expenses payable to outside trucking companies are set up, receiving charges are calculated from default rates set up in field accounting, and warehouse inventory is updated by category for dumped pounds. A truck file is maintained separately which permits usage of defaults while entering scale tickets. Grower Packout: Two methods of recording packout are provided:Grower Inventory: On hand inventory is maintained and is updated automatically by packout and shipments. In addition, available to sell by day (up to 18 future days) is automatically updated by packout projections, packout requests, on order to receive, and customer orders. Inventory information may be displayed on screens by day, packout run, all packout runs summarized (house totals), warehouse, commodity. The following information is available for display on inquiry or order selection screens:• 1) Entry of actual packout for a packout run and grower from an outside source, i.e.- counters.
• 2) FIFO method of determining packout, where product shipped reduces availability for the oldest product onhand (received 1st). If negative inventory is the result, the current packout run is updated as if the product shipped was actually packed out. At the end of a packout run, an actual physical count of inventory is taken to determine its total packout.
| Beginning inventory | FOB price |
| Packout and receipts | Cooling cost |
| Adjustments | Palletization cost |
| Shipped quantity | Ice |
| On hand ending inventory | Gassing |
| Projected packout packout | Loaded FOB cost |
| Reserved for customer orders | Freight |
| Available for sale | Delivered cost |
The above may be displayed as YTD or as today's activity. A history file is maintained containing each transaction affecting on-hand inventory. This transaction file is available for inquiry at any time.
Field Crop Cost Accounting: Accounting to the grower is to the field crop level. Information includes contract information, payment schedules, seed and material application, crop costs (packing shed and/or grower's) , and monthly crop budgets (packing shed and/or grower's) Also included are schedules or fixed rates for in charge, packing charge, container, inspection, and state charges. Summary and detail information is captured for the field and each packing run for the field as follows: in-pounds, in-charges, and field freight from scale tickets; pack out pounds, quantity, and charges from daily pack out; crop costs for seed, materials, equipment, and labor from accounting; sold pounds, quantity, and dollars from invoicing; total charges and the status of each field. It also contains packout, sales, charges, and packout percentages for each commodity. This information may be viewed or printed for grower accountability. Detail inquiry or printing of scale tickets, packout, crop costs, and sales is also provided. The packing shed has an option to remit the net proceeds (Sales less all packing house charges, expenses, and crop costs) to the grower on a revenue sharing basis or at a fixed cost. In addition, sales revenue reported to the grower may be actual, projected, or pooled revenues. Grower Projections: Integrated within the shipper's system is the option to project grower run revenues based upon over-rideable entries of in-pounds, pack percentages, and sale prices. If this feature is used, all sales are equated to projected packout, and all charges and sales are recalculated based on the projection entries. This enables you to project costs and returns for the field. This projection can be printed and used for determining the profitability of the run, or for pre-settlement with the grower. Payroll: This sub-system is a complete set of programs that handles the entire payroll and labor cost function. It accommodates nearly all of the different types of payrolls used in the produce industry. For example, the system allows for up to five pay types: hourly, salaried, pension, piecework, and commission employees. For sales staff paid on commission, salaried office personnel, or laborers paid on hourly or piecework basis, all are accounted for and each can be defined in separate job classifications for proper labor cost accounting.User defined voluntary deductions and job classes allow you to tailor the payroll to your specific needs. User defined tax tables allow for no restrictions in setting up payrolls in multiple states or localities. Program modifications are therefore not necessary when tax laws are changed.
Often times, the most time consuming part of running a payroll is the entry of information into the system. By defining default values for each pay period and employee from the beginning, the system can literally run itself. An "auto calculation" feature was implemented which sets up a current payroll period by taking default values (i.e . days, weeks, hours) from the pay period and employee master files and automatically calculates gross and net pay for each employee in the pay period. Once the payroll information is entered (or "auto" entered) into the current pay period file, the user may inquire on each employee for verification of hours, days, and weeks worked as well as gross pay amount, all withholding taxes (automatically calculated), voluntary deductions and net pay amount.
Also integrated within the payroll system is the option to use time card entry for the purpose of calculating payroll. Using this feature, time card information may be entered into a time card file on a daily basis. When payroll entry/review is run at the end of the pay period, the current payroll file is updated automatically from the information in the time card file. Days, weeks, regular and overtime hours are calculated and the gross pay is extended automatically.
Payroll check printing within the system is fully automatic. After all checks are printed, a check register is printed and all G/L updating is done. If any errors are found following the check printing procedure, checks may be voided and all G/L reversal entries are made corresponding to the information on the voided check.
This Payroll system is designed to be completely interactive with the user. All file updating is done at the time of entry or at the time of payroll check printing. Quarter-to-date and year-to-date files are updated after each payroll run. Also, five year history records are updated in the Employee master record for management review
What platforms does the software support?The software was written originally for the IBM System/34. Over the years, it has been modified and enhanced to take advantage of the processing power of newer IBM hardware. Currently, the software runs on IBM AS/400 servers with personal computers running IBM Client Access connected to the AS/400 via ethernet network. This gives users the best of both worlds: a personal computer which they may use for what PCs do best (word processing, spread-sheets etc.); and, full-featured, bug-free business software which runs on a proven, robust operating system.
How many organizations are currently using the software?
Currently, our installed base is 12. There are several reasons for this number being as low as it is:
What kind of technical support will I receive if I purchase the software?
In addition to e-mail, phone support is provided for each installation 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for a monthly maintenance fee of $250. The B&G software package is continually being improved (we average 3 new releases per year). Each new release is sent to every customer as a benefit of maintaining a support agreement with Botsford & Goodfellow. Customizations are frequently requested, and if the request is determined to be applicable to other users, it is included as an enhancement of the software with no customization fee. And, because the support staff are the original developers, most of the questions we encounter take fewer than 15 minutes to answer.
The system has proven itself in operation. Some of its benefits include:
- Improved customer service
- Consistent procedures for sales and accounting personnel
- Improved, accurate, and timely management information
- More timely and accurate information for sales personnel
- Increased sales efficiency and sales volume with no increase in sales personnel
- Improved accurate invoicing and check writing
- Dramatic reduction in accounting personnel due to capturing of information at the point of sale.
Some benefits represent very tangible dollar savings. Other benefits are intangible. It is up to the perspective buyer to determine the actual dollar benefits the company will achieve.
MAIL OR PHONE INQUIRIES TO: Botsford &
Goodfellow
8440 SE Sunnybrook St. Suite-B
Clackamas, Oregon 97015-0889
(503) 653-9930
keith@botsfordgoodfellow.com