Merchants System

Government regulations coupled with consumer demand has created a drive in merchandising to improve quality standards and, particularly in the case of the food industry, traceability. With more goods coming from overseas, increased diversity of distribution channels, retailer consolidation and greater need to deliver the right product at the right time, merchants and wholesalers face increasing pressure on margins. Back office operational efficiency and managerial control have never been more important. To make these efficiencies a reality, you need an accessible, flexible financial system at the core of your business.

Turnkey's Merchant System for Windows is a proven solution, already in use in various merchants and wholesalers including Builders’ Merchants, Potato Merchants, Garment Distributors, Auto Parts Distributors and Foodstuffs Merchants. It provides you with the degree of control, adaptability and business agility you need, not only to survive, but to grow your business as well.

Benefits

• Instant access to all company information for tighter financial control
• Save time on data entry with fewer input errors
• Improved customer service and better protect your margins

Features

• Full Windows functionality, utilising ‘point and click’ technology
• Toolbars are available for the most commonly used functions as in other Microsoft products, which cuts learning time for new users and results in increased productivity
• Intuitive, user-friendly graphical interface
• Drop down menus, windows within windows and look-ups all help save time on data entry and leave less opportunity for mistakes
• Links directly with Microsoft Excel and Word providing ‘what if’ processing, graphical presentation of reports and mail merging
• True WYSIWYG on-screen viewing (What you see is what you get)
• Customisation - Turnkey’s Merchants’ System is not a rigid ‘off the shelf’ package, and can be fully tailored and customised to suit your business needs. The program adapts to suit your operations, not the other way around.
• Automatic pricing based on customer and product, down to individual customer by individual product, if required – reduces administration time and ensures accuracy
• Option to manually override prices if required, with margin reporting – guarantees customer service and protects margins
• Different purchase order types for Direct, Special and Back to Back – ensuring accurate processing and appropriate controls
• Ability to process sales orders in back office or at trade counter with analysis of sale type, such as Delivered, Collected, Direct – providing profitability reporting by sale type
• Instant access to all company data
• Access to required transaction data is direct, utilising system-wide navigation with ‘drill-down’ capability – results in considerable time saving and eliminates need for printing
• Flexible reporting (for example by department, by period, by product group etc.)
• Management information available on demand, with or without prints – encourages effective management
• Live stock control and accounting reflecting up to the minute position
• No month end routines or batch updates requiring shutdown
• Robustness of solution – no down time

Stock System

The screen below illustrates a stock record

All the information for stock products is entered into Navision via a card.

From here you can include details such as supplier product number, descriptions, photographs, pricing, unit in which item is to be held in stock/purchased/sold and further information about weight, units per parcel, unit volume and shelf life. You can also list alternative vendors for a specific item and review current stock levels/order commitments. It is easy to add more tabs or change the layout of the item card as desired.

The stock module provides fast access to the information you need, with specific screens to instantly review availability, turnover, sales and purchases over different periods by simply switching between daily, weekly, monthly or yearly views. Navision offers great flexibility for searching and filtering to provide only the information you require.

You can set up an efficient procedure for re-ordering by specifying the minimum and maximum inventory levels and re-order quantity. This information can be used in requisition worksheets to create re-order proposals that can be easily converted to purchase orders.

Purchase Orders

Shown below is a Purchase Order produced automatically by the system, together with the printed confirmation. This confirmation can easily be posted, faxed or even emailed directly to the supplier.

Turnkey’s Navision solution includes a comprehensive purchasing system which can complement the procedures you currently use.

There are several different types of order that can be created in Navision including standard, direct, special and back to back. All relevant documentation can be created and printed at this stage. When the goods actually arrive, the Purchase Order is recalled and booked into stock. Invoices and credits are then matched to receipts and processed ready for payment. The process of paying suppliers can be automated and options exist for creating payments to trade associations such as NMBS or Unimer.

All transactions entering the system automatically update the financial accounts and hence management reports can be run at any time to help you better manage your business.

Management Information

The robustness of the Navision solution is sometimes underestimated. For instance, even in the case or hardware failure halfway through posting a transaction, it is impossible to get an invoice into the ledger without it showing in the management accounts or VAT ledger. This becomes very important when you look at rival systems which can sometimes be down for several days while transactions are unravelled.

Because Navision is transaction based, all the numbers totalled on screen and on printouts can be ‘drilled into’ to see exactly how they are made up. This functionality is very powerful and lets you navigate quickly from management report back to purchase order to ascertain how a total was reached.

The printed management reports can be tailored specifically to your requirements and can be dropped into Excel for final presentation, including graphing.

Point of Sale

The trade desk is an important part of many Builders’ Merchants and Turnkey has implemented two approaches to handle cash sales.

Firstly, Navision can be used directly to provide a till function as shown above. This shows a till screen setup to take cash from personal customers but also allow for trade purchases to be put to account.

Alternatively, for solutions that are based on remote operations and require more resilience, we have a stand-alone POS terminal that can have its transactions uploaded to Navision on a daily, hourly or other timed basis. This gives the trade counter the ability to keep running even if the back office communications go down.

If you would like more information on Turnkey's Merchant System, please supply some details HERE and we will then contact you directly. Alternatively, please contact Stewart Graham on the normal Turnkey number 0141 644 5444.