BusinessWare Technologies recently completed a significant upgrade to its AvailSuite line of field service software, with comprehensive tax reports, an improved user interface, and QuickBooks synchronization. The company also divided the standard version of AvailSuite, with its line now comprised of Standard and Personal. The standard version is suitable for companies with 5-50 employees due to its network capabilities. Organize customer information, manage products and / or services, schedule and dispatch staff, help keep expenses under control, handle billing, sync data with QuickBooks, and much more. The Personal version is available for micro or sole proprietorships. It has most of the functions of the standard version, but with a limited number of employees. Pricing for Standard is $ 299 for a single user license (with an unlimited number of technicians); the Personal price is $ 69.99.
The standard and personal versions are based on the same code base, allowing instant upgrade or quick migration between them. This supports the growth of the business and allows to maintain the same program and avoid retraining of personnel.
Help and support options
A new software product requires some time to even learn how to get started with it. The AvailSuite Quick Start Wizard provides excellent assistance during the process of setting up company information, adding employees and customers, creating orders and invoices, entering payments, and running reports. You can choose the “Show Me” tutorial movie or the “Do it for me” option. The Quick Start Wizard can be accessed at any time by clicking the “Quick Start” button on the main menu. This built-in assist function and traditional help (press the F1 button to access) are very useful. Free unlimited email support is provided for Personal and Standard versions.
Ease of use functionality
The main menu provides seven general work areas: Sales, Production, Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable, Inventory, Reports, and Calendar.
AvailSuite offers several customization features that allow users to configure page and navigation panel layouts. You can hide groups from the main menu or replace them with a small icon and see only the ones that are used frequently. All pages can be customized in the same way: you can add or hide columns, change their places, sort them, group data, etc. For example, the Customers view could have 1 or 21 columns.
Dirty. This is the customer management module where you can click on a customer and immediately view or add new orders, tasks, invoices, payments, service history and next task date, default discount, billing address, notes, etc. , in a single window. The system provides excellent assistance with a workflow, for example, if you add an order, you will be asked about creating a task for this order and then you can schedule your appointments. The Recurring Task Wizard will help you schedule recurring appointments. You can set a very flexible repeating pattern, such as “every third Friday of every month” or “Monday and Thursday of every second week.”
If you want to work with your customer base, you can see the recurring appointments that will be held in the next 7-10 days and send service reminders to your customers via email. View the unique jobs done in the last month to make the list of clients you want to call and schedule the next appointment.
All orders have a status, so they can be viewed as draft orders, completed orders, negotiated orders, canceled orders, and backorders. You can also quickly get some statistical data on orders ordered by customers or by month.
Here you can also create invoices. As long as the system maintains the information for all your customers, when you create a new invoice, their billing information is automatically included and you can specify the tasks for which they must pay from the drop-down list. Invoices can be customized. To include your company logo and configure the text that will be printed on invoices, you must complete the company configuration form and then all this information will automatically appear in your documents. All documents can be printed or emailed to clients as PDF files directly from the system.
Production. This is a module to manage the employees and all the expenses they made to provide their services. You can enter / view all information about an employee, such as name, address, photo, business days and hours, hourly rate and / or monthly salary; add a new task or time card, all in one window.
Employees can submit time spent reports using the time card feature. This is a very useful feature for keeping track of working time, so that you can always be sure that each employee’s time statement was accurate.
Employees can have multiple levels of access. If you want your technician to view the tasks and submit their time cards, you must specify your username and password on the “System Access” tab of the employee card.
Accounts receivable and accounts payable. AvailSuite’s accounting functions are very basic, so for more complicated accounting you need to have additional software such as QuickBooks. In the accounts receivable module you can analyze the debts of your clients as well as all the invoices and payments ordered by client and by month. On the bill payments screen, you will see payments to your vendors and employees and your vendor invoices grouped by status such as Drafts, Negotiated, Completed, Canceled, and On hold.
Inventory. AvailSuite Standard now offers support for multiple warehouse locations, with the ability to track vendors, purchase orders and all the products you have, their location, warranty information, available quantities, price, etc. With the Vendors module, you can quickly review your purchase history, credit limit and discount offered, and everything about vendors: their contact information, grace period, terms, and price list.
This feature is more than just tracking your inventory. AvailSuite notifies you of a shortage of items in stock when you save an order. You can also view a list of products, the quantity of which is less than a certain threshold value. You can create and print purchase orders, track their status and payments, view purchase orders grouped by supplier or by month.
Reports. This is one of the things you need business management software for. AvailSuite provides around 40 reports on all aspects of the business, allowing owners to have key information at their fingertips. Users have one-click access to profit and loss reporting, profit and loss comparisons, accounts payable due, purchase orders, or whatever item they need. A menu groups all available reports by various categories, such as sales reports, accounts receivable reports, accounts payable reports, inventory reports. All reports can be exported to PDF, XML, XTML, Word and Excel for further modification.
Calendar. This is one of the distinguished features of AvailSuite, very flexible and easy to use. It allows you to schedule appointments directly on the Calendar screen and coordinate the workload of technicians, so you can see all the tasks of all your technicians on one screen or see only personal schedules. Once there is an appointment on your calendar, you can set an alert to remind you when the appointment is coming.
The AvailSuite calendar has full point-and-click and drag-and-drop functionality for easy scheduling. You can move tasks from day to day with a single mouse movement or reassign them from one person to another. Resizing the taskbar will change the duration of the task. Double-clicking on the taskbar opens a screen with the complete details of the task. On the same screen you can see all the unassigned tasks.
After scheduling is complete, you can print daily job lists for employees and get them started.
Expandability
Small businesses must strive to become big, so an easy upgrade path is needed. You have it. Starting with one license if it is AvailSuite Standard, you can purchase additional ones and AvailSute will work in multi-user mode. Adding new users is just a matter of purchasing the appropriate number of user licenses.
If you leave AvailSuite Personal behind, switching to another product requires little effort. So whether you’re running small or not, AvailSuite Personal is the best way to start. No other business management software is so well suited for small businesses and startups.
Data migration
New users can import existing data (customers, vendors, services, and inventory) from their legacy software using Microsoft Excel files. A wizard makes the tedious setup process enjoyable. If your software cannot save data to Excel files, please try submitting an inquiry about the migration process to the BusinessWare Tech support team. They currently run a promotional campaign and offer data migration for free.
Customization queries
One of the most common mistakes is that customizing the software and adding new features would be very expensive, so it is useless to ask about it. Have you ever thought that, on the other hand, there is a software product manager who is thinking about the same new features but not adding them to the software development plan because “no one asked about them”? So please ask all you want. That manager is waiting for your feedback and will appreciate it.