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Dave Fulton's Fab Four

System Tips from the Top

PFW Password - spring 2007The PFW Dealership Management System and PFW IntellilDealer are
systems that contain a myriad of features and
functions. Because it’s simply not possible to always know the best way to get the desired results, we asked one of our resident system gurus, VP of Client Services Dave Fulton, to provide a “Fab Four” from his recent PFW Dealership Management Conference presentation, “The Electric Ten: Ten System Features that Mean Business”.We think that you may want to keep Dave’s list nearby
as a useful resource.

1. Equipment Default / Automatic Journal Entry Setup is not only handy for any multi-branch dealer who transfers equipment between locations, but is also useful within a store when changing the status of a stock number, e.g., Inventory to Rental. When building the equipment default table it is important to know the logic the system follows when deciding on how many entries you have to load. CO, DIV, BR, and Type must be filled in—you cannot use wildcards for these fields. Make, Status and Group code can
be set to a “Generic” or “Wildcarded” setting by putting “AA” in Make, “A” in Status, or “AAAAAAAAAA” in the Group field. This allows you some flexibility when setting up this table where you do not need an exact match on each unit to still get the G/L
entry desired.

Take the following example: You are a two-branch Komatsu dealer and you have only two inventory accounts for all of your non-Komatsu equipment—one for new and one for used. Since you have many different makes and statuses, the setup could be quite a large task. Because of the wildcard option, you can handle the above example with two entries for each branch. Main-line entries still require setup, but the rest of the equipment would be handled as follows.

2. Customer Parts Discounts allows for the storage of customer-related discounts.
The CUSTOMER DISCOUNT PRICING(Y,N)? field in the CMBR table indicates whether
the particular user has customer discount pricing active. The Customer Discounts screen must be completed. Note that the Special Price box is used to indicate a part discount record that should be used, regardless of whether the price calculates as higher, or lower, than any other discount prices—or existing part price levels. If Special Price is
not used, the customer discount module looks for any duplicate records—duplicates indicate that a customer qualifies for more than one discount—and retrieves the best possible price for the customer. If it is not desired to give the best price to the
customer, the Special Price box indicates the discount to be used.

Note that PFW John Deere AG dealers can receive Deere Best Buy or Good Deals data via an offering from Deere, whereby dealers can sign up customers who then receive a Deere parts catalog containing their special pricing. Dealers will get this information automatically, as it is part of the special terms switch that has been set “on” for all our dealers. This information is transferred through DTF and populates the Customer Parts Discounts system.

3. Labor Pricing allows you the flexibility of pre-setting your labor rates with a variety of choices. For example, you can now set up customer Labor Discounts for your higher-level customers automatically. If a customer always receives a reduced labor rate on CASE work orders, but the normal shop rate on all other types of shop work, simply
set up a different labor price by W/O type.

Another huge benefit of utilizing labor pricing is in the case of warranty vendors, where vendors pay out at different rates. Now your technicians don’t have to worry what the Vermeer labor rate is. If you set up Labor Pricing by warranty customer number, a constant rate is applied for that particular vendor with no need to have separate
premium codes for each separate line.

As well, you may be conducting a sale where every customer that comes into your shop during the month of January for welding work will receive an automatic 10% off labor. Special Pricing can be set up to automatically start on January 1 and end on January 31. For internal work orders where different rates are applied to sweeping floors and equipment work, simply set up labor pricing by W/O type.

4. Location Tax gives you the option to set a default tax by location. This tax will be used for all store sales unless a customer exception is loaded. Since all customers are taxed as per where they buy a product or service, the location tax should always be the starting point in assigning the correct tax code. However, in many states and provinces there could be a different tax code assigned if the product or service is shipped to another location. This can be handled through our current “Ship To” tax code defaults.
To understand this better, here is the system hierarchy when setting
up your tax defaults:

If you do not turn on the location tax system, the invoicing modules will use the tax code loaded on the customer CMASTR as the default tax. If you load a default location tax for your branch, this will now be the tax code used as the default tax.If you load a specific location tax on a customer through the location tax tab in customer profile, this will now be the tax code used as the default tax.