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Anyone here run a small business?

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ph001
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Anyone here run a small business?

Post by ph001 » Wed Nov 14, 2018 3:18 pm

Hi chaps, I know it's a bit of strange topic for a car forum but generally find the members on here quite professional and knowledgeable about most things!

So, I've been running a small electronics engineering company for around 15 years. Main activities being AC-DC power supply repair / refurbishment and also a bit of electronics design work.

As typical with most small companies, we started off with a very basic administration system using Microsoft Office suite. Than as time went on and things got more complex we moved onto a Sage ACT! system which is a fairly basic database / CRM back end which has functionality to do quotes / invoicing, customer reports etc and also interfaces with Outlook to provide email history to enquiries.

Our fundamental needs are booking repair jobs in to our lab, creating job sheets, quoting, invoicing and dispatching items back out via courier. The invoices are then manually input into our accounts / financial package which is Xero. We employ 12 staff and turnover between £500k - £1m

The accounts / financial side works OK but the Sage ACT system feels clunky and is slow and cumbersome. I'm really struggling to find any commercial off the shelf software that fits with what we do in our organisation. Everything either seems far too complex (and usually expensive) or just doesn't have the right feature set.

Can anybody give any insight on what companies typically do at this stage? Should we bite the bullet and invest in custom software, if so what programming language and who to do it? What sort of budget would we be looking at? Alternatively, what commercial stuff is out there that is suitable for a business our size and doesn't cost the Earth?
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Anyone here run a small business?

Post by Beedub » Wed Nov 14, 2018 3:43 pm

following.... im a startup currently... business is doing OK.... If i get to your position i will be very happy... only been trading for 5 months and woozer.... its no joke i cant lie sometimes i really struggle and feel quite lonely! Anyway on topic , following because im interested in anything business related. :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup:
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Anyone here run a small business?

Post by A1GSS » Wed Nov 14, 2018 3:44 pm

I'm a Xero fan, moved our business to Xero from Sage about 5 years ago

You can do quite a bit natively in Xero, obviously quotes, invoices, cash management, payable accounting etc in Xero. Adding Projects to your subscription would let to add tasks and expenses, log time, and track the progress and profitability of your projects. You can try it out in the Xero Demo company.

Otherwise. have you looked at the third party integrations Xero supports?
https://www.xero.com/uk/marketplace/
Last edited by A1GSS on Thu Nov 15, 2018 12:24 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Anyone here run a small business?

Post by BeeEmm » Wed Nov 14, 2018 6:36 pm

I had a business for 18 years which involved driver training for LGV (Lorry) and PCV (Bus) drivers. We had contracts with bus operators and trained their staff on a regular basis for various courses. I also employed up to 15 Trainers at one point.
Due to the high cost of online database design (£12,000 10 years ago) I designed and developed our own databases to suit our needs. I learned basic ‘Visual Basic’ and used Microsoft Access and we were able to keep track of which courses we booked people on, dates, licence numbers and any other information we required. It was a completely bespoke system that I adapted to suit our needs. The only problem with Access though is that it is not an online system but various people can access the databases using ‘Team Viewer’ or GoToMyPC. A local site backend would allow limitless users on the same network to access the databases. Microsoft Access is quite a powerful programme.

For our accounts we used Quickbooks online plus, which allowed unlimited invoices on the go and connects to your bank account, calculates VAT and files it. You can connect to HMRC within Quickbooks. It also has a free mobile app up to 5 users and loads more.
Have a look here: quickbooks.intuit.com/uk/accounting-software

I am unsure of your exact requirements, but if you were interested in a bespoke Access database and felt that it might suit you, let me know. I am now retired and looking for things to fill my time. After speaking to you I would happily put something together to see if it meets your needs. I am not a trained Developer so I do have limitations, but happy to help.
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Anyone here run a small business?

Post by Doddsy » Wed Nov 14, 2018 6:52 pm

Not sure about the costs but when I worked for Newcastle Audi we used ADP Autoline Kerridge. I imagine there’s better stuff out there now but a lot of dealers are still using it. Just my two cents worth
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Anyone here run a small business?

Post by buzyg » Wed Nov 14, 2018 7:11 pm

How big do you think your company could be. I have written several bespoke ms access databases over the years. They are quick to develope by database standards and both powerful and flexible, if done correctly. There are limits though. A typical Access data base works well with up to a few dozen concurrent users, but try logging 50+ people in at once and it is not up to it. They don't do internet connectivity that well either, though this much better with msAccess 2016. We are currently looking to replace my data bases with more robust ones, as we are passing those limits. We have SAP, IFS and have been looking at LEO. My preference would have been LEO.
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But we are a large organisation, so may be more than you need right now.
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Anyone here run a small business?

Post by ph001 » Thu Nov 15, 2018 11:41 am

Thanks for the replies - all really helpful comments.

Xero and Quickbooks are pretty similar and they both seem a bit too accounts focused to do Enterprise Resource Planning very well. They don't really help with information flow through our business process such as:

Customer enquiry>Quotation>RMA>Booking in>Job sheet creation>Invoice>Despatch note>Booking out.

The CRM aspects also seem quite limited (although we don't need anything too complex here). The main drawback would be keeping track of enquires i.e. who has responded to who, lead management etc.

We don't currently really need remote access and we don't have vans on the road etc so our requirements are comparatively simple. A custom Microsoft Access / Visual basic system would almost certainly be sufficient for now, but maybe not in 3-5yrs time - and that's perhaps the biggest dilemma here.

Inevitably, porting data over to any new system is fraught with difficultly. Then you have a ton of de-bugging, dry running and finally staff training to contend with. My advice to anyone starting up would be to get something flexible and scalable as early on as possible. But finding the right solution is hard.

Speaking to a few other business owners yesterday, a couple of packages came up:

1) Odoo
2) Dolibarr

I have no experience of either but the marketing blurb sounds good (doesn't it always!).
2007 E85 Z4 3.0Si manual :driving:
19" CSL's | Eibach Springs | Aeroskirts | Z4M front bumper | Clear brake light | ZHP | RCH+| Stubby

2004 E46 M3 coupe manual - gone but not forgotten.

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