iDRY Vacuum Kilns

Sponsors:

Point Of Sale (POS) Systems

Started by YellowHammer, August 14, 2018, 11:09:52 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

YellowHammer

Have any of you folks gone to a computerized point of sale system?  The ones where you tally up the wood on an IPhone, Desktop, or Cash Register like used in a true retail store or restaurant, then swipe cards?

I've used Square for cards but their retail POS system is very weak and doesn't do decimals, so I can't sell a board at 4.6 bdft, I have to round down or up to whole numbers.

I've used Vantiv, one of the big commercial credit card merchant services, but they were too heavy in the fees.

I've also used Heartland, another major merchant service, but their true fees were higher and they wanted between $2,000 and $4,000 for a true counter top retail POS system.

So we still do everything with paper tally sheets, add everything up with a calculator, then swipe customers cards.  Dealing with so many customers, and selling by the board, that is a total pain.  We don't really want to go to barcodes on each board, either.  

I'm looking for a good alternative, does anybody have any ideas?
YellowHammerisms:

Take steps to save steps.

If it won't roll, its not a log; it's still a tree.  Sawmills cut logs, not trees.

Kiln drying wood: When the cookies are burned, they're burned, and you can't fix them.

Sawing is fun for the first couple million boards.

Be smarter than the sawdust

btulloh

I don't have a current recommendation for specific sytems but I would think about two system. One to tally, total, track and then just run the result throyh your square or whatever. Divide and conquer .
HM126

btulloh

HM126

YellowHammer

There were some on the list I hadn't looked at.  I'm going through them, seeing what their limitations are on sale and item screens.  Oddly enough, lumberyard calculations for a POS system are quite difficult, with many not equipped to do real number calculations for multiple items in different categories.  Much more difficult system them selling hats, or shirts. 
YellowHammerisms:

Take steps to save steps.

If it won't roll, its not a log; it's still a tree.  Sawmills cut logs, not trees.

Kiln drying wood: When the cookies are burned, they're burned, and you can't fix them.

Sawing is fun for the first couple million boards.

Be smarter than the sawdust

btulloh

It's an interesting problem.  Everything seems to be geared to restaurants or t-shirts.

An open-source POS could be made to do anything, but that's a project.  It's hard to evaluate at a glance, but most of the things I looked at seem much more complex than needed, which could be harder to beat into shape for a lumber business.  And it's a project.

Is the unit size and lack of partial units the big issue with what you're using?  Perhaps a unit size of >1 bd ft would solve the problem. ??  1 unit = 0.25 bd ft, or 0.125 bd ft, or whatever.  

Maybe a tally sheet app based on a database could produce a final dollar amount and provide inventory control.  That part is a typical database problem.  Does it need to run on a phone, tablet, or laptop, or desktop?

Being in a niche business is tough because the market is not big enough for someone to provide off-the-shelf solutions.  Custom solutions get to be expensive real fast.

From the lack of replies, it doesn't seem like anybody has solved this yet.
HM126

mike_belben

I know its pretty archaic but a microsoft excel spreadsheet with every size piece of lumber you have could be created, and formulas to simply add up the quantities you punch in.  Itll do decimals. 

 So you could have a row for 4/4 by 6" wide boards and then use the columns to note length.. 4s, 6s, 8s, 10s.  You just put in 3 for quantity if the customer gets 3 of the 6 footers.  The formula is whatever you punch in.  Itll multiply that cell times the price you want.  The chart could be organized by species and or grade so that it can calculate all the prices for you and spit them out in cells for totalling.  You could screenshot and print for receipts and records.  Now the customer has a record not only of what they bought, but what you sell.  Youll have a real good record of whats selling and when at a glance through the chart too.  Excel is just a wide open calculator that can be anything you can draw up.  

Use your existing card swiper
Praise The Lord

YellowHammer

At this point I use a hybrid system of master calculation spreadsheet on ICloud, available on my IPhone and Ipad, as I or my wife is walking and initially tallying customers orders on paper receipts which are then used at the main register where people get checked out.  

We have multiple customers at a time, and have sometimes up to about 20 species of products and about 9 variations of each, so about 180 possible different specific items, incudng one off slabs and stuff.   Variations would include, for example, 4/4 FAS red oak, 4/4 No. 1 Common red oak, 6/4 FAS red oak, 6/4 No. 1 Common, 8/4 FAS red oak, and so on.  Different species, different thickness, different grades, before long it's quite a selection and we keep track on the spreadsheet.  Each of our boards are numbered by the bdft and we write a list of what a customer is buying, itemized, board by board, on a paper receipt, then multiplied by the bdft foot price of that particular product. So after trying "canned" POS systems, we keep going back to a paper, a pen, and an IPhone.  Very Stone Age.  

Ideally, the system would keep up with individual customers totals, and handle multiple open customers at one time.  When the customer has what they want, we add up all the totals of the boards they have bought, by species and grade, listed by individual board (some boards may cost a pretty penny and the customers always like to check the receipt list to make sure things are accurate) and then we charge it to their card.  

Most POS systems are geared toward whole number quantities, like 1 shirt, or 1 drink, and not bdft in decimal, except some systems that sell by weight, like yogurt shops or produce section of food stores.  Then they have difficulty doing repetive additions and multiplications without having to step back through menus.  Who buys twenty scoops of yogurt, all different weights, at one time?  Then twenty or thirty scoops of a different flavor, and then want to see how much each scoop weighs and costs when they checkout?  We talked to POS programmers and say we are similar to a bar where a table of customers orders different drink sizes, sold by the oz weight of alcohol, of different brands.  Then at the end of the night, each individual drink must be listed in some readable order so the customers can figure how to divvy up the tab, then totals given.  Since people spread their drinking out over time, it's important to have open tabs, and multiple tables going on at the same time.  We have the same problem where people want to check a running total on their tab to see where they are aginst the money they have budgeted.  So we may have a half dozen open tabs at once as people ask "What am I up to?"  To make it worse, it would have to operate on my IPhone while I set up the initial checkouts on the showroom floor, and then also operate at the main regsiter when people decide to checkout for real, and pay.  When we are slammed we have two checkout lines working at once.  It's not a difficult task for a professional restaurant or bar POS system, but they want many thousands of dollars to program it and for the hardware.  So far, NCR, one of the oldest cash register companies out there, who does a lot of lumberyards and retails wood stores, say "no problem, but it's gonna cost ya."

Or I just stick with pen and paper receipt book.  When a customer is "ready" we itemize and add and tally what they have at that time, while they are on the showroom floor, and the paper tally sheet carried with them in their physical shopping cart and is easily adjusted as they add or change pieces of wood.  So we are essentially keeping a paper bar tab on them until they are ready to pay, sometimes minutes, sometimes hours later.  Problem is, we may do 50 to 100 customers in a 7 hour period, so it has to be fast and efficient.  

I'm pretty good with data bases and Excel macros, even a few high level languages, but although macros run on my laptops, they won't run on my Iphones. And as Btullah says, I could do it, but I don't really have time for another project.  

Another problem is that at this time, with our current customer base who uses rewards cards or corporate business cards, Square is still the cheapest credit card system out there as opposed to a true Merchant Service, like Vantiv and Hearland.  However, their POS system is a very rudimentary one, and they respond succinctly back to my inquiries with "Oh we don't do that", or "That's not how our system works".  

Much like the Porta Patti I never dreamed we would need to rent to keep our customers happy, I never figured I would need this.  


YellowHammerisms:

Take steps to save steps.

If it won't roll, its not a log; it's still a tree.  Sawmills cut logs, not trees.

Kiln drying wood: When the cookies are burned, they're burned, and you can't fix them.

Sawing is fun for the first couple million boards.

Be smarter than the sawdust

btulloh

Sounds like you're doing all you can with the ad hoc solutions.  

I see Square does have an API that can be fed from an outside application.  Not sure that solves anything, but it is a thing.  Someone somewhere out there is doing this kind of work and knows the territory.  They could be pretty efficient doing a project like this, but it still adds up pretty quick.  That kind of work usually bills out at $100 plus per hour.  Maybe less, but you get what you pay for.  If you could get a group or 3, 5, 8 people together that all wanted the same solution then everybody gets a solution at a better price.  (Just thinking out loud.)

https://www.upwork.com/o/profiles/browse/?q=pos-application-development


Paladin offers a lumber yard POS solution.  

Lumber Point of Sale - Paladin Point of Sale  

There's no indication of pricing, which means it's not cheap.  


HM126

mike_belben

Im trying to visualize your situation and step in your shoes here to be of some sorta help.  Im not any sort of authority here, no credentials at all just trying to help you brainstorm through the problem with a shallow outside perspective.  Disregard any and all of it as worthless free advice, cuz it may very well be just that.

I see 3 issues that are maintaining your problem.  

1. The insistence that it works for iphone.  Until someone with deeper pockets comes along and gets apple to play ball you may just be dreaming.  If there was something great that worked for iphone cheap or free youd have found it by now because it would dominate the market.

2.  The insistence that your program continues dealing with board feet well after the material has left your sawmill business and entered your retail business.  Your retail store isnt a sawmill.  It is retail.  Retail buys from wholesale in singular units with individualized skew numbers, asigns a price to that skew and tallies the quantity of each skew times price of each unit equals pay up sucker.  It is irrelevant that you are also the sawyer, kiln operator and wholesaler.  Trying to have one cheap, iphone compatible and dependable accounting system for both businesses in one step is giving you a lot of grief because well, no one else is likely doing this. The program doesnt exist because the demand for this very powerful program isnt there.

3. You want it to be cheap (i dont blame you, id want it free) and cheap doesnt command much influence over software developers.  Expensive does.


If you remove any of these 3 requirements youd probably find something that could work.  But i personally think your sawmill business should account for its own operation, and your retail business should buy wholesale from your sawmill business.  This gives you simpler accounting operations on each end, and a good bit more flexibility to place income and expenses in different places for tax advantages.  Having your home, your land, your sawmill and your retail store plus support equipment all in one legal structure is a big easy target for some personal injury lawyer to liquidate when mrs robinson takes a dirt nap over her shoelace in your parking lot.  Breaking this business up into smaller LLC, S or C corporation units is to limit what can be gone after in one fell swoop.  If people arent allowed near your sawmill, the likelyhood of a personal injury there is much smaller.  It would be wise to move the bulk of capital and assets into it.  The retail business could be leasing the land and store from you or the sawmill business or a land holding company etc.  Whichever has the lowest tax rate on income.  All stuff for a pro tax lawyer ofcoarse as its different everywhere and always changing.. But theres a reason why the rich have all sorts of structure built around their assets. To generate deductions, convert income to lesser tax brackets and create layers of legal protection that are difficult for a raider to unravel.

sidenote- If there are any business programs at nearby colleges i would make contact with the faculty and see if you can be involved with an internship situation, especially for business and accounting students or software developers.  Theyd be free senior level student employees to help out around your place, and theyre likely pretty sharp, pretty in tune with the newest most expensive software that the college licenses.  

You may recruit some good management talent early on this way.  I was interned to an older senior pictures photographer.  He was good at photography but no online presence, wasnt social media savvy.  It was myspace back then, didnt cost him a penny, i tripled his revenue in one semester.  He went from worried about money to overwhelmed with bookings.
Praise The Lord

YellowHammer

I appreciate the help and excellent suggestions. We certainly have an unusual situation.
We tried selling by price but bdft has distinct advantages for marketing. We may convert back over but with thousands of boards we have to renumber if we adjust prices, which we do quarterly.  We have found that it's a lot easier to sell boards by the bdft as it avoids sticker shock.  Not that people can't do math but lower numbers sell easier. Also, selling by the bdft makes projects easier to estimate and run trades on different species for comparison shopping. For example is someone needs a 3 foot by 8 foot table, it's 24 bdft of 4/4 and 48 bdft of 8/4. If they want it out of rock maple it's 24x$5 per bdft so $120 for the top, irregardless of board width, and if they want it out of ash it's 24 x $4 so $96.  If a cabinet maker wants an 8 foot tall wall of cabinets 10 feet long, then that's 80 bdft minimum coverage, add some overage call it 100 bdft and then they price it by different species very fast. Maybe we can do labeling by bdft and price but carrying bdft is very useful.  

We are kind of a mix of small retail quantities and wholesale quantities based on grades or types off wood.  For examaple, we sell bulk poplar and oak, by the pallet or by the aggregate board foot but sell little pieces by marked price.  So table legs, $20 each, but a pallet of common redoak by bdft.  

iPhones or Androids or other handhelds seem to be a common capability with the higher end systems. When we got the basic Heartland merchant system, they gave us one desktop system and two handheld mobile devices all paired to our phones. So we've been spoiled.

I agree, free isn't cheap in the long run and you get what you pay for.  

Our two lawyers and CPA firm are looking at ways we can be organized with a smaller business structure. A trucking company, a logging company, a sawmill, primary processing and then retail. Taxes are huge with us, and we are definitely looking into legal alternatives.

Currently we have physically separated the retail and manufacturing areas.  We don't allow customers in the production area.  It's required by our insurance, and we separated and deeded the 5 acres for our business separate from our farm. Surveys, legal fees, years of procedures with spot inspections from all who have an emblem on the side of their car door.

I'm usually able to do my own software, but I'm just not feeling this one.  The days are getting shorter so I may need to spend some time in front of the computer.

This seemed so easy when I started but like many things, it gets complicated real fast and your point if changing the way we do things to simplify other process is certainly worthy of contemplation.  Heres a picture of just one of the walls of our retail storefront, and a gentleman buying just a handful of boards by marked price.  On the backside of the camera are a few folks buying units of wood by the pallet and bdft.

I think this is what is commonly referred to as "growing pains" and definitely is a pain.


 

 


YellowHammerisms:

Take steps to save steps.

If it won't roll, its not a log; it's still a tree.  Sawmills cut logs, not trees.

Kiln drying wood: When the cookies are burned, they're burned, and you can't fix them.

Sawing is fun for the first couple million boards.

Be smarter than the sawdust

mike_belben

Well youre definitely ontop of your game and again from here i cant see the whole peripheral picture how you can.  Im kinda looking through a rifle scope at the image as you paint it out.  Every post broadens the view a bit.  

One thing id never do is any format where every individual piece needs to get touched for a price change.  Id insist on a system whereby one entry in a program or one label on a shelf updates the price of that entire lot, whether 10 pieces or 5000 that fit in that category.   Id rather put a week into a monster excel program once than an inventory update every quarter, me personally.  

Something that always stuck with me is equilibrium pricing. In economics, there are two curves that cross (price/demand and cost/volume maybe? I dont recall) and that intersect is called equilibrium, the sweet spot where you are making the most money with the least pain.  The cheaper you make a widgit the more its demanded so the more volume you must produce. That means more hours, more wages, utilities, fuel etc.  You sold more but worked a ton.  Flip side is raise price too high and demand drops off.  You make a fatter margin per unit but your income gets sporadic.  Sporadic employment cant retain good help.  Equilibrium is that price right below the volume drop off where you are making the most margin per unit while maintaining full employment at straight rate, not overtime.  Demand for commodities naturally bounces around so you have to keep juggling price to stay in the equilibrium target.  Youll see it with car dealers and retail flyers, especially harbor freight. Prices are never really rigid, the catalog has the printed high price.  But some bean counter is always looking at inventory vs volume to figure out what isnt moving this month, to put in the parking lot blowout presidents day sale flyer which is the real moment to moment spot pricer.. Also as a lure into the store to oggle the full price shelves.  Anyhow the point is prices have to be as fluid as demand to maintain equilibrium.  If youre working too hard raise your price.  If you cant keep product X on the shelf, raise its price.  You are below equilibrium at this current demand. If it aint moving, sale.  But you already know this just by feel im sure.

I can understand wanting to stay with board foot out of comfort with it, out of habit and out of making the product feel cheaper, tho it appears that convenience is coming at the expense of being hard to account for electronically.  Youll have to figure out for yourself which means more to you if a suitable solution cant be found within the budget you can tolerate throwing at this problem.  Im guessing the volume of slab sales is a lot smaller than the 3 dimensional lumber in pieces, right?  Maybe keep the slab stuff as a bd ft manual receipt and move the piece stuff to a price figure?   Id be pretty aggravated if lowes had only a bd/ft price on their 2x3s and i had to figure it out.  I walk in knowing how many pieces i need, not how many bd ft.

What about giving the customer a clipboard with a printed inventory roster of product and pricing when they walk in?   Chain a pencil and cheap calculator to a few for the non smart phone crowd, then they can walk around and keep tabs on their own "bar tab."  It would free up your cashier and put that burden on the customers time at their expense rather than yours.  You could put formulas on the bottom or leave blanks like on hardware store fastener bags so they can scribble in the quantity x price per bd/ft or unit.. Then a subtotal and X tax rate line then total so they know when they hit their debit limit.   Making a price change only requires you to update the file and print a master copy then xerox it.  
Just be sure to put expiration date on top so no one comes in with last months sheet demanding you honor it. Keep current master over the register.  

All i can think of for now, hopefully something in there that fits.  Theres no easy money except in the media, its all an illusion.  Honest money is hard to get no matter what line of work youre in, and it should be.  Easy money just creates excess inflation.

And hey.. Maybe the system you have now is just fine, but you need an afternoon out in the kayak or tree stand to get away from it. Burnout is always a factor that software cant solve.  Its like a trucker going for that 4th coffee when what he really needs is a day to sleep.



Praise The Lord

Peter Drouin

The sweet spot on lumber prices can be a challenge.
I do everything on paper too.
A&P saw Mill LLC.
45' of Wood Mizer, cutting since 1987.
License NH softwood grader.

Southside

What if you did something along the lines of how the big box stores sell items like rebar, loose nuts and bolts, etc.  The individual item is not barcoded given the complexity of doing so, but the cashier has a book with photos of the items and the assigned barcode.  Simply match up what the customer has in their hand with the correct barcode in the book and scan the code - enter the volume and you have an instant price along with inventory reduction automatically.  When re-stocking do the same only add into inventory.  

You would need to assign a barcode for each categeory / price point, but even if that were 100 codes set the book, or even a poster on the wall up in a way that made it very fast to find the codes, alphabetically by species per column and then increasing thickness per row within the column, would only take a few moments to find the right code and scan it.  

I don't know about I phone but my several year old, somewhat slow - but completely waterproof without any additional case I may add - Android has a QR reader so I am guessing Apple can do the same.   

A customer of mine builds and writes apps for Capital One, I can put you in touch if you would like, he may be willing to do some horse trading for lumber given his interests.    
Franklin buncher and skidder
JD Processor
Woodmizer LT Super 70 and LT35 sawmill, KD250 kiln, BMS 250 sharpener and setter
Riehl Edger
Woodmaster 725 and 4000 planner and moulder
Enough cows to ensure there is no spare time.
White Oak Meadows

PA_Walnut

Check out EPOSNOW. Although I have literally owned almost every Apple device ever invented (currently use 9) they are too worried about keeping users in their iBubble. Android is much more inclined to work for you.

Take a look at EPOSNOW system with handheld retail tablet. You and your team can use it as you work with customers, to keep inventory and sales tally, then beam is to the checkout base for final checkout and pay. It will go standalone and work with WiFi or cellular also, in case your main checkout is jammed with too many wood hoarders waiting to fill your coffers!!  :D
I own my own small piece of the world on an 8 acre plot on the side of a mountain with walnut, hickory, ash and spruce.
LT40HD Wide 35HP Diesel
Peterson Dedicated Wide Slabber
Kubota M62 Tractor/Backhoe
WoodMizer KD250 Kiln
Northland 800 Kiln

Brucer

This isn't a solution to your problem ... it's a kind of a push that might get you looking at the problem from a different angle.

Most online sales websites have a shopping cart that the customers add things to until they are ready to check out. Any number of customers can be shopping at once. So what if you had an on-line shopping site (maybe you already do) that's optimized for smartphone based shopping? Those of your customers that happen to have smart phones could "shop" on your website as they walk around the physical premises and add things to their electronic shopping cart as they add them to the physical cart.

You yourself could use the same system when helping a customer that doesn't have a smartphone.

The underlying principle is that your customers keep track of stuff themselves until they get to the physical checkout, instead of you doing it for them.

Bruce    LT40HDG28 bandsaw
"Complex problems have simple, easy to understand wrong answers."

PA_Walnut

99 outta 100 people shopping for lumber don't/won't wanna mess with an electronic device to do so. Its the antithesis to the reason.

Customers also are likely to measure wrong, have the inability to modify pricing for defects allowances and/or discounts, etc

I believe that the burden of process is on Robert and he'll figure out something simple, elegant and effective. Once he does, I know it'll be my future path! ;D :D
I own my own small piece of the world on an 8 acre plot on the side of a mountain with walnut, hickory, ash and spruce.
LT40HD Wide 35HP Diesel
Peterson Dedicated Wide Slabber
Kubota M62 Tractor/Backhoe
WoodMizer KD250 Kiln
Northland 800 Kiln

YellowHammer

Thanks for the vote of confidence, I haven't had the "Eureka" moment yet, but it will come when it comes.  Maybe. :D :D

This is one one those problems that vexes me, aggravates me and keeps grinding in the back of my mind.

Lets see, we've sent men to the moon (supposedly :D), hybrid cars, machines that talk to us, drones that deliver packages, computerized refrigerators that know what's inside them like from the Jetsons, and yet when I sell wood the steps are:

1.  Measure the board with $2 tape measure
2.  Hand calculate the board footage with my $800 iPhone, using a spreadsheet I bought and developed on my $3,000 MacBook.
3.  Use a 50 cent Sharpie and write the board footage or price or both on the end of the board for the customer to see, or on a 5 cent piece of duct tape and stick it to a $350 walnut slab.
4.  When the customer picks out boards or slabs, I put on my $2 Amazon Prime reading glasses, use my 10 cent ball point pen and manually write the board footage on a 1960's era reciept book held in a clipboard.
5.  When the customer is finished shopping, I open the free calculator app on my $800 iPhone, and add up the numbers I'd written on the piece of paper, much like I was taking a 2nd grade math test in elementary school (wow, sure glad I got an engineering degree and a minor in Math.  That semester of Differential Equations is really paying off).  Of course, the customer is talking to me during the whole time, yakking in my ear.
6.  I then walk toward the checkout desk to get my iPhone or even more expensive and technologically advanced iPad within range of my advanced wireless technology Bluetooth Card Reader, and hand type in the totals from my sheet of paper.  Then I retype them in because I hit the wrong key, oops, because the customer is still yakking in my ear. :D :D :D
7.  After I chip scan the credit card, or just tap their iPhone against my iPhone (kind of creepy) the equally advanced credit card system contacts home base, runs an approval check on the customer, determines if their credit account legit, and then hopefully, approves the purchase using the high tech Wifi system installed in our building.  Probably the only "barn" in New Market, Alabama with a dedicated Wifi System, because we're "high tech".   :D  If the customer hands me cash, I put my thumb on the fingerprint reader on the cash register and it opens up so I can make change.  Pretty cool, always good for a few comments from the customers on the incredible advancements in technology.
8.  Once approved, the customer signs the iPhone or iPad in the signature box using a special stylus pen, or their finger, on the touchscreen.  I then send them their receipt digitally in a half second to the personal phone, and their pocket beeps and I know they have the digital summary receipt.  The customer then loads the wood into their computerized car or truck, and I can hear their dashboard heads up display GPS that they forgot to turn off saying "You have arrived at your destination."  then the customer hits another key and I hear "Calculating route Home."
9. Since the high tech, digitally emailed receipt only gives them the overall total, I then tear off the top paper copy of the receipt book and hand it to them, and I keep the other copy and put it on the stack.
10. Then I say "Who's next in line?"

What could possibly be easier and more streamlined than this? :D :D :D

The irony and contrast of using the kind of advanced technology not yet imagined in "2001, A Space Odyssey"






and old school, manual methods, like used in "Green Acres" is not lost on me.





I've been taking B12 vitamins, it supposedly helps brain function, I need it.  Here are a few months of hand written receipts. below.  Makes my head hurt, just thinking about it. ;D  What fun, I just wanna saw wood.

YellowHammerisms:

Take steps to save steps.

If it won't roll, its not a log; it's still a tree.  Sawmills cut logs, not trees.

Kiln drying wood: When the cookies are burned, they're burned, and you can't fix them.

Sawing is fun for the first couple million boards.

Be smarter than the sawdust

PA_Walnut

Quote from: YellowHammer on August 20, 2018, 10:04:43 AM4.  When the customer picks out boards or slabs, I put on my $2 Amazon Prime reading glasses, use my 10 cent ball point pen and manually write the board footage on a 1960's era reciept book held in a clipboard.


So long as you have 2 pens available, this will never fail you. 8)
I own my own small piece of the world on an 8 acre plot on the side of a mountain with walnut, hickory, ash and spruce.
LT40HD Wide 35HP Diesel
Peterson Dedicated Wide Slabber
Kubota M62 Tractor/Backhoe
WoodMizer KD250 Kiln
Northland 800 Kiln

mike_belben

I was gonna say, the problem is clearly those cheap pens. 

:D
Praise The Lord

WDH

And I bet that you still use Mr. Haney as a crop Consultant :D. 

Google
Woodmizer LT40HDD35, John Deere 2155, Kubota M5-111, Kubota L2501, Nyle L53 Dehumidification Kiln, and a passion for all things with leafs, twigs, and bark.  hamsleyhardwood.com

scsmith42

Robert, this is a very good discussion topic and I have enjoyed reading this thread.

Thinking out loud, I'm wondering if it would be worthwhile to calculate board footage by weight instead of physically measuring.  Presumably all of your lumber is dried to a similar MC%, and there is information available per species that list the weight per bd ft based upon MC%.  Board footage could be automatically calculated relatively simply by weight if you input the species and MC%.

If you had a POS with an electronic scale (like the grocery store) that you could lay a board on, select the species and thickness from a screen it could tally as you go.

Alternatively you could pre-weigh all of the boards and bar code them with the species, thickness and calculated board footage so that you could later use a bar code scanner to tally them up at check out.

The advantage of the former system is that you don't have to go back and inventory all of your existing lumber - simply scan it as people check out.  Your check out person would need to be able to determine species though.

The advantage of the pre-weigh system is that you could have a complete inventory of the total board footage that you have in stock, broken out by species and thickness, but you'd have to take the time to inventory the entire store and then keep it current as you added more material.

Just something to think about.  I look forward to learning from what you come up with.

Scott

Peterson 10" WPF with 65' of track
Smith - Gallagher dedicated slabber
Tom's 3638D Baker band mill
and a mix of log handling heavy equipment.

BradMarks

I do not sell wood, but I sell a lot of other stuff, online, over the phone, in person.  Not that this is an endorsement at all, but we use QuickBooks Pro, 18 yrs now.  Need to buy new once in a while, but currently using 2014 version. It allows for as many SKU numbers you want to dream up, both alpha and numeric, separate or in combos. I.E.: DFK 1x8S4S12 (doug-fir kiln dry 1x8 sanded 4 sides 12' long)or DFG 2x6R10(doug-fir green 2x6 rough sawn 10' long). Not that this would be the code, just showing what can be done. And they can be changed if needed. Goes to 5 decimal points, allows fractions (in decimals) of whole selling units, can set pricing levels for specific customers or quantity discounts. It does a good job of invoicing, inventory control, and purchase orders. I would say average to poor on accounting, and we really don't use those functions, except sales numbers and cost of goods.  You can track sales by sku, customer name or type, zip code, or any number of classifications you might have. Same thing with purchases. Has sales tax functions if you need it.  And can certainly be wireless, probably not to a smart phone. And really not too expensive.  It is just one system, I'm sure there are others

YellowHammer

I hadn't thought about using weight.  Use Unfortunately, the system we already use, and always fall back on, is Square, and they don't do decimal quantities, believe it or not.  So they can't do weights or fractions.  Some of the other systems can, but it's a common weakness of several POS systems in that they only do quantity in whole numbers.  It's a major gripe I have with Square, and because of it, they have contacted me to be a Beta Tester for their new software upgrades that will include this capability, but it won't be for several months.  We will see.  

I haven't really dug deep into Quickbooks, it seems capable, I need to look at it more closely.

Mr Haney was a hoot.  



YellowHammerisms:

Take steps to save steps.

If it won't roll, its not a log; it's still a tree.  Sawmills cut logs, not trees.

Kiln drying wood: When the cookies are burned, they're burned, and you can't fix them.

Sawing is fun for the first couple million boards.

Be smarter than the sawdust

bigtrees

I haven't read all of the responses, but have a suggestion.

It sounds like you are having an issue selling 2.4 bd ft at $8 per bd ft.

Could you simply sell 24 units at $0.80 per unit, where 1 unit is 0.1 bd ft?

mike_belben

Then he will need a better cleaning system for all the customer heads that explode!

:D
Praise The Lord

Thank You Sponsors!