April 2013 SpruceNEWS - Spruce Computer Systems

Happy Spring!
H ELPING S PRUCE C USTOMERS M AKE P ROFITABLE T ECHNOLOGY D ECISIONS
Volume 27, Issue 1 April, 2013
‘Software simply designed to click’ When it clicked for this customer that
SpruceWare.NET is the right software for her business
We asked Kim Keepers, Owner of Argonne Lumber & Supply, (Argonne, WI) the
following questions about her decision to use SpruceWare.NET, and the benefits that
her business has seen as a result:
1.) When did it “click” for you that SpruceWare.NET is the right software for your
company? Before transitioning to SpruceWare.NET we were using a Do it Best Point of Sale
program. After learning that this program would no longer
be available, we began researching software tailored for the
Lumber and Building Materials Industry. The more we
researched, the clearer it became that SpruceWare.NET is
not only a Point of Sale system, but is the complete business
management solution we were looking for.
2.) What features of the software are most
useful and important to your business?
SpruceWare.NET’s Purchase Order capabilities
have been extremely useful to us. In particular,
being able to see the linkage of every transaction
has been helpful to our business in so many
different ways.
3.) What improvements have you seen in
your business as a result of switching
to .NET? Since we began using
SpruceWare.NET the biggest improvement we
have seen to our business is the reduction in
inventory shortages, as a result of utilizing
SpruceWare.NET’s inventory control features.
Spruce allows us to track items on a daily basis
and provides the opportunity to catch errors
almost before they happen. Our employees
would be lost without the features offered within
SpruceWare.NET. 
Inside this issue:
Software simply designed to click
1
Customer Testimonial
Letter from the President
1
Synergy within SpruceWare.NET
Cloud Recovery & Backup
Letter from the President Maximize efficiency by combining the use of SpruceWare.NET features
Synergy: The interaction of
elements that when combined
produce a total effect that is greater
than the sum of the individual
elements, contributions.
me give you an example of three
different software modules that
when working in concert will
create a sum greater than the
individual parts.
efficiencies, reduced paperwork
and the ability to inquire as to the
status of a delivery. The status
inquiry is limited to those who
have access to a workstation, and
the “Delivered” status must be
As anyone using the SpruceDelivery Dispatch, Spruce
completed manually or by scanning
Ware.NET software suite is aware, AnyWare (Mobile) and Dashboard
the Delivery Manifest when the
it is loaded with tools to help build are good cases. If you are using the
truck returns. Signatures must also
efficiencies within your business.
Delivery Dispatch software in the
be picked up by scanning the signed
What you may not be aware of is
normal course of business to set
documents when they are back in
how by combining the use of a
up your loads, assign trucks and
the office. If the Spruce AnyWare
number of these tools you can
schedule your deliveries, you are
Mobile App is added to the mix
greatly increase the benefit. Let
deriving benefit from the increased
(Cont. on Page 4)
SpruceNews Volume 27, Issue 1 • April, 2013
2
Important questions to ask yourself
Employee Snapshot
2
Special feature: Then and Now
New SpruceWare.NET customers
3
Welcome to .NET!
Spruce AnyWare Delivers
3
More than your average app
T & T from R & D
4
New column you won’t want to miss!
Save the Date!
4
User Conference 2013
Dashboard Newsletter
Measuring and evaluating add-ons
Page 1
5—7
Harland Technology Services reminds you to ask yourself these important questions...
Is my backup process reliable? What if I don’t have access to my data?
What if we experience a disaster (fire, flood, tornado?) How long can I
“afford” to be down?
Business continuity and disaster recovery (BC/
DR) is a top priority for small and mid-sized
businesses. When it comes to BC/DR small
and mid sized businesses (SMBs) are most
concerned with the following:




Protecting databases (68%)*
Safeguarding e-mail (45%)*
Backing up accounting data (39%)*
Protecting network services (36%)*
Unfortunately, many SMBs have ignored basic
safeguards of proper business continuity and
disaster recovery. These companies are at
greater risk when network operations are
disrupted or a disaster strikes.
Cloud Recovery Service, from Harland
Technology Services will help you protect
your business in three ways:
Backup and Restore: Your data is stored
on an onsite appliance for fast backup and
restore, and is also securely replicated offsite.
Business Continuity & Cloud Recovery:
In the event of a server outage, you can run
servers on the onsite appliance with a single
click until the new hardware is repaired.
Disaster Recovery: Your data is protected
in the event of fire, flood, theft, sabotage,
hardware failure or natural disaster in a secure
offsite datacenter. In the event of a disaster, a
fully loaded appliance with business data and
system information is shipped to your site or a
temporary location as soon as it is needed.
Let Harland Technology Services relieve the
burden of unreliable backup routines while
providing a cost effective business continuity
and disaster recovery plan that protects your
business.
For additional information please contact
Marla Miller at [email protected],
or at 1-800-228-3628 ext. 3269.
* Source: Forrester Global IT Budgets, and Emerging
Technology Survey, June 2011.
Marshall Gero and Earl
Rounds were honored in
December for their 40th
Anniversary with Curtis
Lumber! Congratulations
to Marshall and Earl on
their careers thus far, and
more year’s to come.
Social(.NET)work
‘Like’ us on Facebook to
receive the latest Spruce
updates, customer news,
participate in contests and
much more!
Name: Joe Mroczka
movie he watched was Rio. He has a 5 year
Tenure with Spruce: 9 years
old son and 2 year old daughter, so all he ever
Education and Prior Work Experience: Joe
has a B.S. in Computer Information Systems
from The College of Saint Rose in Albany, NY.
Prior to working with Spruce Joe developed a
Point Of Sale Application for a restaurant &
consists of browsing online technology and
Then: Joe rocking a
news websites. One of Joe’s favorite quotes:
ponytail in his 1996
high school yearbook
Track and Field Photo.
“That scared the CRAP out of me!” - Joe’s 5
year old son after being spooked by a noise.
bar, which is still being used 13 years later. Joe Hobbies and interests: In his time outside of
work Joe enjoys pitching in a fast pitch softball
says the best job he ever had (we’re sure he
means other than Spruce…) was as a paperboy. league, boating, and spending time with his
Main Duties at Spruce: Mobile software
family on the Great Sacandaga Lake.
development, Email & Faxing and various Interesting, Misc. info.: Throughout high
school and college Joe played guitar in Heavy
SpruceWare.NET development projects.
Last good movie you saw, book you read,
quote you heard: Joe admits that the last
SpruceNews Volume 27, Issue 1 • April, 2013
Then and Now:
gets to watch is cartoons! Joe’s daily reading
Metal bands, but is now self proclaimed “pretty
Now: Joe enjoying
boating on the Great
Sacandaga Lake while
representing his love for
the Yankees (or maybe
hiding a ponytail?)
lame.”
Page 2
Spruce AnyWare Delivers More than your average app
Given a choice, you’d rather
work smarter than harder. The
Spruce AnyWare mobile app
lets you do just that.
Just because it’s called an App and runs on your
business, let’s talk about the additional Delivery
smartphone or tablet doesn't mean it fits in the
Dispatch capabilities available to you with Spruce
same category as the other apps currently taking
AnyWare. Newly added Delivery Dispatch
up space on your mobile device. Spruce AnyWare
features provide your drivers the ability to track
is a mobile application, but should be thought of
their deliveries by load manifest, utilize GPS
more accurately as an extension of your Spruce-
mapping and directions from directly within the
Ware.NET software — minus the extension cord.
app, capture customer signatures online or offline
Automatically update physical
inventory status, get proof
of delivery with remote
signature capture, and more.
It’s a pretty smart way to work.
Click the icon to see
Spruce AnyWare in action:
and record proof of delivery in real-time. These
When making the decision whether or not to
smart new features allow your smartphone to be
move into the unknown world of Spruce AnyWare, an office away from the office, and will dramatically
let’s focus on two things you already do know: 1.)
increase efficiency by decreasing the number of
SpruceWare.NET is a complete business
tasks needed to be completed upon return.
management solution, and 2.) your business does
not function completely within the walls of your
Now, we couldn't let the drivers be the only ones
store or your lumber yard. Because a large
to have all the fun! While drivers are out making
percentage of your business activity takes place
their deliveries and impressing customers with
on-the-go as your drivers are making deliveries to
their mobile efficiency, back at the office
customers and traveling to job sites, it only makes
Management can utilize Delivery Dispatch features
sense to utilize your business management
within .NET such as viewing and zooming in on the
software during these interactions as well.
current location of all trucks, tracking each load
individually and querying individual tracking
With the power of Spruce AnyWare in your
positions.
employees hands, time sensitive tasks such as
And then download it here:
creating and finalizing customer orders, retrieving
Spruce AnyWare is not just an app; It’s another
store totals, printing tags and labels and completing essential component of the complete Sprucephysical inventory can all be accomplished from
Ware.NET solution. Implementing Spruce
the jobsite and before even returning to the office.
AnyWare is as simple as it is smart. And we
promise, there will still be more than enough room
Now that we’ve moved past thinking of Spruce
on your smart phone or tablet for Angry Birds and
AnyWare as just another mobile app, and moved
all the other useful apps you’ve already got on
on to thinking of it as an extension of
there! 
SpruceWare.NET into the mobile aspects of your
Welcome to our newest
SpruceWare.NET users:
Congratulations to the following companies
that recently went live on SpruceWare.NET:
 Evergreen Wood Products—Etna, WY
 Bedford Stone & Masonry Supply Corp.
 HomCo Lumber & Hardware
 Hardel Do it Best Builders Center—Olympia, WA
 Blue Ridge Supply
 Johnson Lumber Co.
 Carl’s Building Supply, Inc.
 Liverpool Lumber Co. Inc.
 Chittenango Lumber Co.
 Old Monroe Lumber Co. Inc.
 Evergreen Wood Products, Inc.
 Scott’s Building Center
 Fraco, Inc.
 Seekamp Lumber
 Intermountain Wood Products—Salt Lake City, UT
 Nashville Lumber—Nashville, TN
 Oostburg Lumber Co—Oostburg, WI
 Parkes Lumber Co—Lawrenceburg, TN
SpruceNews Volume 27, Issue 1 • April, 2013
 Henry Poor Lumber
Page 3
Letter from the President (Cont. from Page 1)
SpruceNews is published by
Spruce Computer Systems.
© 2012. All rights reserved.
Spruce Computer Systems
9 Cornell Road
Phone: 800-SPRUCE1
Fax: 518-783-6685
Social(.NET)work with us
the benefits multiply. As material
is dropped on the jobsite an
electronic signature, and if
desired, a photo of the material on
the ground can be captured on the
mobile device. The signature and
photo can then be linked to the
original document in the
SpruceWare.NET system. In
addition, as the signature is
captured the status of the delivery
is then automatically updated as
“Delivered” in the Delivery
module.
Anyone with a mobile device
running Spruce AnyWare has the
Spruce is proud to work
with Joe Ehle of Liverpool
capability of viewing the delivery
status of orders directly from that
device. The GPS capability in the
mobile device will also allow for
tracking of the truck’s location
through the mapping utility in the
Delivery module.
If you are using the On Time and
In Full (OTIF) feature in the
Delivery module there is a new pie
chart that indicates the
percentages of OTIF deliveries and
those that were not delivered
OTIF, categorized by reason.
Now, add Dashboard to the
equation and you have some real
power. There is a new set of
Dashboard charts available that
will track Delivered dollars and
gross margin by day, drill down to
the same by truck, and will also
drill down to dollars and gross
margin by Delivery Route.
All three of the modules work
seamlessly together to give you
more than each would on its own.
Synergy!
Sincerely,
T&T from R&D Tips and Tricks courtesy of our Research & Development team!
Consider this new column your
be used on the item prompt to
number it is not necessary to
trusty cheat sheet of time saving
retrieve any SO items found in
key in all 10 digits. If it is a
Lumber Company whose
tips, tricks and shortcuts within
invoices. ‘Word1%Word2’ on a
numeric document number, you
father, Harry Ehle, was
SpruceWare.NET! Our Research description search will cause a
posthumously named
Central New York Retail
only need to key in the last
& Development team has
pattern match on any description significant (non-zero) digits.
compiled this list to help you
where word1 is followed
Leading zeros will be inserted to
work even more efficiently on
somewhere by word2.
round out the last six, and
common tasks within .NET. We 2. Commonly referenced main
know your time is very valuable, and utility transactions can be
pattern matching will occur for
and even the smallest changes
bookmarked under favorites.
selection list.
can add up to a significant time
The user can rename and
5. If you generate a selection list
Congratulations also to
savings when used regularly.
re-order the list which allows for of things like accounts, items,
Andy Brown of Brown
Let’s begin with these five
easier navigation between forms
etc. the ‘Next’ function key will
tips:
which span applications.
bring the next selection into the
Lumber Dealer
Association’s 2012 Lumber
Person of the year!
Lumber Company who was
the yymm to generate a
1. Where appropriate and
appointed chairman of the
3. Highlighting a range of rows
form without having to refer
supported, the SQL wildcard
retrieved to the grid in the
back to the list. You can always
Construction Suppliers
character (%) can be used to
document utility form can be
re-display the list by clicking on
search item numbers,
brought into the viewer all at
the down arrow and use cursor
descriptions, etc. For example,
one time via the function key.
keys to move around in the list
SO% in the document utility can
4. When entering any document for repositioning. 
Association!
2013 Annual User Conference — Save the Date!
This year’s User Conference will take place from Tuesday, November 19th—Thursday, November 21st!
Your input is being taken into strong consideration for the location of this year’s conference. Click here to
answer our 3 poll questions on Facebook about potential locations for the conference. While you’re there, don’t
forget to ‘Like’ Us to receive the latest User Conference information!
SpruceNews Volume 27, Issue 1 • April, 2013
Page 4
Dashboard Newsletter
By Wendy Hitchcock—R&D Department
I have this interesting book called Gross Margin by Bill Lee. It was given out at a Spruce User
Conference years ago. He has 26 factors that affect your bottom line. Here is one of his ideas from
the book that I put into a chart that addresses add-on selling.
He points out the benefits of add-ons are two-fold. First, if a person walks in for the loss leader
items, you certainly want to tack on as many high margin items as well. Second, from a customer
service point of view, you don’t want them to forget something and have to come back. Or
worse, pick up the missing item somewhere else.
The first chart in the screen print below lists how many one line invoices were written in a week’s
time by salesperson.
Clicking on salesperson leads to a second chart, which identifies the single items sold.
What could have been sold in addition to any of these items? One way to find out is to look at
previous invoices containing the item and see what else was sold. Clicking on a sku in the second
chart will present a third chart that summarizes all the merchandise that appeared on an invoice with
the item in question over the past 6 months. Past results are not a guarantee of future results but it
is a place to start. For example, when I clicked on wood pellets, frequently chips, candy
and soda were also sold. I guess people are cold and hungry.
Now that you have identified potential add-ons you can add them to messages, which appear
during invoice processing. In item maintenance click on Common, Codes and set up a message code
to remind the salesperson of add-ons during checkout.
If 1 dollar was added to each of the invoices written that week, that would be an extra $786/wk,
$40,872/yr. But one extra dollar is rather conservative and you get the idea.
If you have upgraded to Release 8, but do not see the
dashboard icon on the Point Of Sale or Inventory
menu, give me a call at 1-800-SPRUCE1 (777-7231) ext. 152
and I’ll install the files needed.
Please contact me with questions or suggestions:
[email protected]
SpruceNews Volume 27, Issue 1 • April, 2013
Page 5
Dashboard Newsletter
By Wendy Hitchcock—R&D Department
Other ideas from his book included:



Getting out of the markup rut. If many of your products are arbitrarily set at a 25, 33 or 50% markup
because that’s easy, you may be leaving money on the table.
Are salespeople able to sell the same special order item for different prices? Make sure everyone is pricing
special order items to maximize margin.
Don’t discount unnecessarily. A chart could sum up all the line item discounts being given so you know how
frequently they are being given and to what extent.
Any of these ideas can be made into a dashboard. If any of these interest you
or you have an idea of your own, please let me know!
SpruceNews Volume 27, Issue 1 • April, 2013
Page 6
Dashboard Newsletter
By Wendy Hitchcock—R&D Department
AR Monitoring
This chart, made in collaboration with training, will be up on the website soon. It adds up all of the
activity that should hit the AR account in GL and compares to what actually is in the journals for the date range
to see if AR and GL are staying in sync.
Are you getting the dreaded “Cannot Navigate to Web Page” Error? If you are, there is a
simple fix. Either Java was updated, or you might need an adjustment to the router to allow
traffic to get through. Please give me a call or email and it can quickly be remedied.
I am going to be speaking at the iDashboard conference in May about Spruce’s partnership
with iDashboards. If you have any testimonials, any creative implementations, I’d love to
work them into my presentation.
Please contact me with questions or suggestions: [email protected]
SpruceNews Volume 27, Issue 1 • April, 2013
Page 7