The Power of Key Codes

One of the great features of our software is the key code field. This is a user-defined field and you can type anything you want into this field. This makes the key code field a very powerful, customizable tool for you, as you can sort most of your reports by this field. You can also filter your reports on your key codes. The key code field is available when you create a new invoice or purchase order, or setup a new product. There is also a key code report in the Report Wizard.

For example, our customers ask us how to track sales by sales person. When creating an invoice, you can use the key code field to enter a sales persons initials, employee ID or other text to identify the sales person. Then run your key code report which will sub-total your sales by key code. Simple!

Another example is classifying your inventory by key code. For example, you may sell tires and use the key code field to enter the tire sizes, i.e. 14inch, 15inch, 16inch, etc. Then you can run your inventory report, sorted by key code, to group and subtotal your tires by size. You could also filter your report with the word "tire" (assuming you have the word "tire" in your product code, product description or key code) to see only the tires on your inventory report. Very powerful!

Another example could be grouping your sales by cash, credit card, check or money order payments. On a new invoice, you could type in "cash", "CC", "check", "MO", etc. and sort your Invoice Register by key code.

The possibilities are unlimited! The trick is to make your key codes long enough so that your reports can be filtered by your code. For example, a key code of "12" is no good, as this matches to many items, such as dates, invoice, customer numbers and product codes. A much better key code would be "tire12" or "sales12" or "order12" or "emp12", etc., depending on what you are trying to filter. Create good (lengthy) key codes and they will provide you with valuable information.

What fields are searched when you filter your reports? That depends on the report. Next to the report filter is a help button (the question mark). Click on that to find out which fields are searched for the filter you enter by report. The key codes will provide you with user-defined custom sorting and filtering capabilities. Let your imagination run wild! Our key codes and report filter can provide with very powerful tools you can't find in any other software!

We Received This in our Email Today

Hi, I just wanted to say Thank You. I have been using your products for several years now. I started with Billing Manager before you offered Inventory Pro. I have since upgraded a couple of times and have been using InventoryPro 5 for about two years. I am absolutely thrilled with all of your software. It is easy to use and configurable to use in many different ways. I use it to track my sales on eBay, sales in the several shops where I have consigned merchandise, as well as my travel agency. Not only can I track sales, I can generate reports that tell me how my sales and profits are by company, by vendor, by item, by customer, and by category/department. I keep track of expenses using the Purchase Order function and break them down by vendor and accounting category using key codes. Once again, thank you. I look forward to using your products for many more years.

S. McCarty

PDF Invoices, Purchase Orders and Customer Statements

Using FF Inventory Pro Deluxe, you can batch email your invoices, purchase orders and customer statements in PDF and/or plain-text formats. All of our other products can also produce PDF files, however, you can process them only one at a time, which works fine for many of our customers. The batch-email in our other products offers plain-text emails only.

The beauty of PDF (portable document format) files is that you can email them to your customers, and when they print or view them, it will look exactly like it would when printed on a printer. This means all of the graphics such as your company logo, fonts, lines and colors will be displayed. It is a much better look than plain-text emails could ever be and with the free Adobe PDF viewer, millions of people all over the world are able to view your PDF.

However, each format has it's positive and negative features. Using left-justified, plain text, word-wrapping format allows it to be read by ALL email readers. People around the world have their email readers setup in MANY different ways. Some block emails with file attachments (PDF's). Some block HTML invoices and only have their email reader setup for plain text emails only, or use an email reader that can't process HTML. Many use different fonts and font sizes to display their emails and/or use a small viewing window to read their emails. Therefore, using plain text means that the majority of people who receive your email will be able to (A) receive it and (B) to view it. Since we do not send our email as an attachment, all email readers blocking attachments will receive our plain-text emails. Since we do not use HTML, all email readers that are blocking HTML will be able to receive and view our invoices, using whatever font they choose. We added the PDF invoice feature so you can email your invoices to your customers using graphics and colors, but note that any of your customers who are blocking file attachments, will not receive your PDF invoices. Which format you use is up to you.

You can email some customer invoices and print for others.

The email address for the customer is the key. The "Include Customers without E-Mail Address" option will cause the system to send e-mail for ALL customers, even if the customer does not have an email address entered in their customer setup. When this option is turned on, all email for customers without an e-mail address will be sent to your return e-mail address, alerting you that this customer has an empty email address in their customer setup. If this option is turned OFF, customers without an email address will NOT be sent. They will not be marked as printed either, so you will need to run the batch print option to print out these remaining invoices. This allows you to have some customers who receive their invoices (or statements) by email and some customers who have their invoices (or statements) printed and mailed. This is a powerful option which allows you to interact with your customers by postal mailing their invoices, while trying to save money on postage costs by sending email to your customers who have an email address.