Interesting trends in the Food and Beverage Industry

This week, we take a look at some emerging trends that have begun affecting the Food and Beverage industry. Ranging from packaging to promotion, these are some of the most interesting trends in the industry today.

1. Targeting Millennials: While Millennials may seem like a broad and amorphous target, numerous studies show there are some commonalities. Millennials like fresh, less processed foods, as demonstrated by their preference for "fast casual restaurants that offer freshly prepared foods, and shopping the perimeter of grocery stores where fresh and non-packaged foods can be found".

2. Smaller Packages are a Big Trend in Packaging: With one- or two-person households representing 61% of all U.S. households, packages sized to serve one or two people have become a big trend in packaging. Such formats include single-serve packaging, meals for two, multi-packs of individual portions, and resealable packaging. The rise in smaller-footprint stores is also influencing this trend.

3. Packaging for Convenience: Convenience is a major selling point for food and beverage packaging. Features such as ease of opening, resealability, portability, lighter weight, and no-mess dispensing are packaging benefits that influence consumers' purchasing decisions positively.

4. See-Thru Packaging Can Boost Sales: More and more marketers are putting their products in packages that are see-thru or have see-thru windows. Transparency in packaging taps into consumer desire for transparency about how food and beverages are produced, both figuratively and literally. Companies that are transparent about their ingredients, sourcing, and business practices are reaping the benefits in consumer goodwill and trust.

5. Eco-Friendly Packaging Growing: In the past few years, single-serve bottled water has come under attack by environmentalists as epitomizing the wasteful nature of modern society. As a result, some marketers of bottled water have stepped up their introductions of more sustainable packaging. Likewise,  Packaged Facts believes that improved recyclability and sustainability will become ever more important to the success of the single-cup brew market—if not a cost of entry—as this business matures. In the past two years, several American and Canadian marketers have introduced more environmentally friendly designs for use in K-Cup brewers

5 Surprising facts about Manufacturing

Last week we looked at some of the impact that the Manufacturing industry had on the US economy, this week we look  at some additional facts that you may not have considered. American manufacturing has long been the backbone of US prosperity, but with the rise in automation and advances in efficiency and practices, some may be wondering if it still deserves that distinction. In this week's blog we look at 5 surprising facts about the state of manufacturing.

1.The manufacturing industry employs more than 12.3 million Americans, accounting for about 9% of the total workforce. Since the end of the Great Recession, manufacturers have hired more than 800,000 workers. There are 7.7 million and 4.6 million workers in durable and nondurable goods manufacturing, respectively. (Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics)

2. Manufacturers have become more competitive globally over the past two decades. Overall the manufacturing industry has seen a revolution in efficiency. Output per hour for all workers in the manufacturing sector has increased by more than 2.5 times since 1987. In contrast, productivity is roughly 1.7 times greater for all nonfarm businesses. Note that durable goods manufacturers have seen even greater growth, almost tripling its labor productivity over that time frame.

To help illustrate the impact to the bottom line of this growth, unit labor costs in the manufacturing sector have fallen 8.4 percent since the end of the Great Recession, with even larger declines for durable goods firms. (Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System) 

3. Over the past 25 years, U.S.-manufactured goods exports have quadrupled. In 1990, for example, U.S. manufacturers exported $329.5 billion in goods. By 2000, that number had more than doubled to $708.0 billion. In 2014, it reached an all-time high, for the fifth consecutive year, of $1.403 trillion, despite slowing global growth. With that said, a number of economic headwinds have dampened export demand since then, with U.S.-manufactured goods exports down 6.1 percent in 2015 to $1.317 trillion. (Source: National Association of Manufacturers) 

4. For every $1 spent in manufacturing, $1.81 is added to the US economy. This is the greatest multiplier effect of any economic sector. Additionally, for every worker in manufacturing, another four are hired elsewhere. (NAM calculations using economic impact modeling)

5. The cost of federal regulations fall disproportionately on manufacturers, particularly those that are smaller.Manufacturers pay $19,564 per employee on average to comply with federal regulations, or nearly double the $9,991 per employee costs borne by all firms as a whole. In addition, small manufacturers with less than 50 employees spend 2.5 times the amount of large manufacturers. Environmental regulations account for 90 percent of the difference in compliance costs between manufacturers and the average firm. (Source: Crain and Crain (2014))

 5 Surprising Facts About U.S. Manufacturing

In this week's post, we look at five surprising (and frankly, amazing) facts about the current state of the United States manufacturing industry. 

The Manufacturing Industry is the largest and most dynamic sector of the U.S. economy.

MarketWatch estimates that the gross output of US manufacturing accounts for roughly 36% of the nation's GDP or about $6.2 trillion dollars annually. This is nearly double any other sector such as government, real estate, and professional and business services. Even more surprising when one looks at the fact that the manufacturing industry accounts for only one out of every 11 jobs in the US.

U.S. Manufacturing is the world's 3rd largest economy on the planet.

According to the Manufacturing Institute, in the 20 years ending in 2012, manufacturing output increased more than 83 percent. This feat is even more impressive when one considers that the United states suffered not one but three major recessions including the "Great Recession" which lasted more than six years and a decline in US GDP of 5.1%. 

The Manufacturing Industry is leading the way on renewable energy.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the manufacturing industry used 2,269 BTUs of renewable energy, more than the three other sectors combined. Additionally, of all the sectors manufacturing was the only sector to reduce their CO2 emissions. In fact, between 1990 and 2012 the manufacturing industry has shrunk their CO2 footprint by 13%; no small feat. 

Manufacturing is investing heavily on research and development. 

Annually, the manufacturing sector invests roughly 3.9% of their total sales back into research and development. This is well above the 2.3% found in other industries. This forward-looking approach has yielded many boons for the economy and country in general and should also be credited with the push for greater STEM education as a means of protecting domestic economic security and creating a talented, competitive workforce.

The vast majority of manufacturing companies in the United States are actually very small.

In 2014, there were 251,901 firms in the manufacturing sector, with all but 3,749 firms considered to be small (i.e., having fewer than 500 employees). In fact, three-quarters of these firms have fewer than 20 employees. (Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Statistics of U.S. Businesses)

As more and more companies march towards in-store and online sales integration, it has become clear that there's more than just shipping costs digging into profits.

Why You Should Update Your Inventory Process

Modernizing your inventory management process could be just the change your business needs to stay successful. 

There can be no doubt that as a whole, retail operations have become vastly more complicated within just the past decade. As more and more businesses and companies look to reconcile in-person (in-store) transactions with online sales, the importance of managing that business with an efficient inventory management tool becomes all the more apparent. Poor or inadequate inventory management can open the door to production and order delays, unhappy customers and unexpected expenditures, so it is not difficult to understand the importance of getting it “right”.

The problem seems to stem from the slow adoption of processes and technologies that have been proven to save time and money for businesses in all sectors. For example, according to a recent study 43% of small businesses operating in the United States do not track their inventory or do so through a manual process. In the same study, it was also discovered that 55% of those same small businesses don’t currently track their assets or do so manually. This has resulted in overstocks, out-of-stocks and returns costing the U.S economy more than $1.75 trillion dollars in lost revenue annually, a number that has been steadily increasing. In fact, if you sell a product within the U.S., on average it is costing you $1.43 in inventory costs for every dollar made in sales.

To the business planner looking to forecast costs and sales, numbers like these must seem especially egregious. With nearly $14 billion in industrial assets changing hands and an increase of 15% in eCommerce over the same period last year, many companies may find themselves wondering why their gross margins may not be experiencing the same growth. For some, increasing the number of skus to meet long-tail customer demands has been the solution, but a much more efficient solution is to integrate better processes that remove contributing factors like human error from the equation.

This may be changing, however. As more and more companies look to shore up holes in their budgets, more and more are looking towards taming their inventory as one of the more rewarding opportunities. According to a study by Motorola, 66% of warehouse IT and operations decision makers plan to expand technology investments by 2018, citing automation efficiency and worker productivity as the driving forces behind those decisions.

The benefits of improving tracking and inventory management are numerous, but there are some considerations for businesses still on the fence as to whether to embrace digital solutions (such as All Orders by NumberCruncher) or not. One key consideration that may not be so obvious is that whether you like it or not, customer satisfaction is absolutely an external factor that can affect your ability to forecast inventory or production. Agitating your hard-won customers with low or out of stock items will almost certainly lead your customers to question if their patronage is worth the hassle to get the product and just as a recall can damage a business’ reputation, failure to recognize the value and importance of managing your inventory is a nightmare waiting to happen.

Additionally, for businesses that operate with regulatory or government oversight, proper inventory management can not only improve efficiencies within your business, it can also help to keep your customers safe. In a study by the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers observed that the use of barcode tracking led to a reduction of administrative errors by 41.4% at an academic medical center. In other industries, this might translate into an avoided recall or unexpected costly expenditures so there are other benefits a company can expect to receive by integrating and updating their inventory processes.

If your company is one of the estimated 69% of small to medium-sized businesses expecting revenue growth this fiscal year, it certainly seems worth investing the time and resources to implement an efficient inventory control strategy.

Give your company accurate insights into stock and inventory conditions and see a positive impact on your business’ profitability. Connect with one of our industry inventory specialists today for a free demo or to start your free trial of All Orders from NumberCruncher.

In this week's blog, we look at some popular ways of managing the risk of recall to your business.

Can Your Business Avoid Total Recall?

This week, United Pet Group was forced to recall five different brands of popular rawhide dog chews when it was discovered that several lots contained a quaternary ammonium compound mixture used in some of it's facilities as a processing aid. The recall, which affected five different brands including the very popular Digest-eeze, has been traced back to the company’s Edwardsville, Illinois distribution facility where it was packaged and sent to a wide range of retail locations including many popular online retailers.

What happened to United Pet Group isn't, unfortunately, that uncommon an occurrence. For just the first half of 2017 alone, there have been 78 official product recalls issued by the Food and Drug Administration for reasons ranging from Listeria contamination to undeclared ingredients. Seven of those were this week alone and affected not only pet products like Digest-eeze and Loving Pets (Salmonella), but also retailers like consumer-favorite Trader Joe's (Listeria). When one looks at the affect even a small recall can have on a business and brand, it quickly becomes obvious that having processes and protocols in place can be a company’s blessing should the unthinkable become a reality.

Obviously, the best policy would be to avoid a recall altogether, but when dealing with complex manufacturing or production processes across multiple facilities and/or countries, the task of managing the individual parts can certainly become challenging. It’s too early to see the impact this recall will have upon its brand, but it does provide a chance to look at ways your business can minimize the risk of a recall. Let’s take a look at a few.

It cannot be overstated enough: although often tedious, this is by far the most important method of protecting your company from this kind of embarrassment. Having accurate knowledge of where your materials are, what condition they are in, and when materials are going to be in transit is one of the most essential contributors to maximizing efficiency and being proactive about introducing (and maintaining) processes. It can be a godsend for established businesses that have frequent interactions with multiple customers, manufacturers and suppliers or companies looking at releasing new products.

When looking at establishing procedures or standards for your company, it can often be helpful to model them to support or utilize industry code standards. One valuable resource for this is the American National Standard Institute which can provide comprehensive information about the standards within a variety of industries.

Organization also affords companies traceability of their products and when dealing with complex systems of crates, bins, lots and pallets. For some industries, such as food and beverage, traceability is not only important for internal business but also a matter of compliance with laws like the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act. Having lot traceability, MSDS maintenance, and easily accessible HACCP documentation is one of the simplest methods for staying compliant and can make the process of ensuring quality across the brand easier.

When introducing new products or making changes to existing ones, it is not uncommon to receive components that do not conform to your specifications. Having the ability to trace components to their origin allows you the capacity to address quality control issues early on or to identify suppliers that produce inconsistent materials for your business. There are a variety of ways to accomplish this by leveraging software and experience, but one of the simplest is to establish and cultivate relationships with your suppliers.

Very few products today can be created from components manufactured in-house, so the use of third party suppliers is a well-established tradition in nearly every industry. Just as you would (likely) not buy a car sight-unseen, it is important to have a good understanding and relationship with your suppliers.

Although we are talking about recalls, the cultivation of these relationships have multiple benefits that reach beyond just ensuring your materials are of a suitable quality. For example, a company that produces food may want to ensure that their ingredients come from clean processing facilities or that the supplier meets kosher or organic guidelines in their production.

Even with all the planning and standardization, no system can really be considered complete until it has been tested. It is obvious that no company wants to issue a recall, but how can you know if all the work you put into place to protect your business from it works? You test it.

Many companies find great benefit in running mock recalls once or twice a year to target specific aspects of their production and distribution cycle. On the Quality Assurance & Food Safety website, Brian Honigbaum dives deeper into the how’s and why’s a company would want to run a mock recall, but the primary reason is to find holes in whatever system you have established for your company. Speed and the goal to locate 100% of a product regardless of production or distribution stage is an activity that affords a company the chance to refine processes and make improvements to its system. This will in turn ensure that high standards are not only adhered to, but maintained and refined across the landscape of your business.

The resilience of your customer base should the worst happen is dependent in very large part upon that consumer’s faith that your products are safe, that you take every available opportunity to ensure that all laws and regulations are followed, that your company is fully in control and being proactive by taking immediate action against specific lots and batches getting to the consumer.

A Software Solution

All Orders™ by NumberCruncher helps make avoiding recalls easier and managing them more efficient with a full suite of tools and features. Lot Number Tracking ensures that no batches can be created and no stock moved into or out of inventory without the correct data entered. This system of locks and gates means whether your company is consuming raw materials or ingredients with lot numbers, or even producing new batches with new expiration dates and lot assignments you will always be able to maintain full visibility of all the components of your production.

Receive lot numbers into stock, create Work Orders to deplete existing raw material numbers and move them into newly manufactured WIP or Finished Good Lot numbers. Transfers allow lot numbers to be moved around the warehouse and Ship Docs enable users to pick and choose which ones are sent to the customer and which will be invoiced to QuickBooks. Once tracking is configured, no user will be able to circumvent it always ensuring data integrity.

In the unfortunate event that a recall is needed, various tools are in place to take advantage of all existing tracking data that has been entered as lot numbers in All Orders™. The Lot Number Find Screen allows users to enter any series of lot numbers and generate a list of every document it appears on in an easy to filter Inventory Movement Detail Report that can provide logistical information such as a breakdown of precisely where each affected lot number was used.

Various Receiving, Ship Doc and Work Orders Log Reports have even more detailed breakdowns specific to each type of movement to help pin down as many details as possible for the lot numbers in questions. Production reports help find raw materials that went into the productions batch/lot numbers in the event that contaminated inferior raw material went into various batches or lots and lists all related production batches your company may need to have recalled.

Each of these reports is easily exportable to Excel, Access, CSV and PDF formats. Database experts love our SQL Server back end database for building any type of customer queries, connected Excel sheets, and custom business intelligence dashboard reporting. When combined or used in concert, these tools give users the capabilities they need to efficiently address the recall with precision and efficiency.

Contact us today for your 30 day free trial or to schedule a demo with one of our industry experts to see how All Orders™ can help you.

RELEASE NOTES 

All Orders 6.2.16

DOWNLOAD 64bit 32bit

What's New

Starting with release 6.2.16, All Orders has added features that will enable users to easily export/import and edit bulk information within the software.

This is was one of the most requested features from our users and was voted on at the "Creative Feature Session" at this year's CRUNCHTREAT.

In addition we have enhanced our tools for update BOMs in bulk, added multi line custom fields and more. Read on for the details!  

Export/Import

You will notice on various lists and entity editing screens throughout the system a new Excel Export button. Some of the more popular ares it is available in include the item, customer, vendor and price level lists. This button can be used to export the data you need into the same format as our standard Excel import templates. By doing this we eliminate the need for exporting data from reports and then copying and pasting into our standard import template. Now you can export, make the changes you need and then import all without having to copy and paste a thing!

Bulk Updating BOMs

We've added a new and enhanced screen that will allow users to bulk edit bill of materials (BOMs). Simply go to the Production menu and click on the Bulk Update BOMs button.From here users can easily add new components in bulk, remove components in bulk or replace existing components in bulk. Select the components and the assemblies and click Process to quickly and efficiently get all your BOMs in order!

Multi Line Custom Fields

Ever wanted to add a new custom field to have notes, comments, or store any other type of data that needs to have multiple lines? Now you can! When managing custom fields and adding or modifying a Text type of field a Lines box will appear where a number of lines can be entered for how many lines should be visible for that custom field. Once a number larger than 1 is entered it automatically turns the custom field into a multi line that can store as many lines as needed and the number entered will be how many lines are immediately visible on the custom field entry screen before the user needs to scroll down.

Customer/Vendor Notes

Now users can view notes and comments for customers and/or vendors while saving order documents.

Edit Custom Fields on read only Ship Docs

Now users can create and edit custom fields on shipping documents even after the document has been marked as shipped or invoiced which would have rendered the fields as read only in the past.

Additional Features

• Importing sales order from QB picks up custom fields as well.
• Setting for showing customer/vendor notes when saving order documents.
• Cost fields on the BOM screen made wider.
• Download button on the attachments screen for downloading web based attachments locally.
• New setting to leave inactive items off new order being created by duplicating existing orders.

Hey Everyone! Hope you enjoyed your weekend and are ready for another busy work week! I know the NumberCruncher blog has been on a bit of a hiatus the last couple of weeks, but we're back and ready to Crunch through these long hot South Florida summer days. During these summer months our Support Team has been hard at work answering our current clients questions and helping setup All Orders by NumberCruncher on new client's networks. The grind never seems to slow down at our offices, especially during summer, when companies are reevaluating their current Inventory Management software and are deciding if its up-to-par or if their needs are not being met or satisfied. If your company is in the midst of reevaluating your software, please remember that NumberCruncher provides all prospective clients with an hour-long demo to make sure our software is a perfect fit, as well as, a 30-day no commitment FULL software trial before you decide to buy. We don't want your company buying our software, if it isn't the ideal fit for your business. To Learn more about ALL ORDERS please click HERE or give us a call at 866-278-6243 TODAY!

Recently, All Orders by NumberCruncher got featured on a number of websites. To begin the month, Financesonline.com wrote a review and named ALL ORDERS as one of their Rising Stars for 2016. Finances Online also recognized All Orders with their Great User Experience Certificate & Award. 

NumberCruncher.com would like to thank Financesonline.com for recognizing us and writing a review on All Orders. Finances Online is the fastest growing independent review platform for B2B, SaaS and Financial Solutions.  

Also this month, Scott Gregory of Better Bottom Line: the QuickBooks Expert, included NumberCruncher in his "Can QuickBooks Handle My Inventory?" guide. Scott is a certified QuickBooks Expert who has worked with QuickBooks software for 15+ years and knows a thing or two about QuickBooks add-on solutions. For him to feature NumberCruncher is his guide, is a big deal to us!

To check out the FREE Inventory guide or to learn more about QuickBooks solutions, please visit BetterBottomLine's website HERE.

Refresh, Relax & Reconnect at the 2017 NumberCruncher Retreat

The NumberCruncher team has also started planning a NumberCruncher Retreat here in Sunny South Florida, during the rough Winter months. Details are being finalized and you can expect an official announcement VERY SOON! If you are interested in attending or know someone in your company who will be interested, please send me an email at jgoldberg@numbercruncher.com with the details, so i can add you to our Pre-Announcement Blast. By being a part of our Pre-Announcement Blast, you will be the first to receive the event flyer and registration information, ALSO, you will receive a special prize during the Retreat, for being part of our Pre-Announcement Blast List.

The purpose of this Retreat is too allow our clients a refresher on the NumberCruncher family of products, an introduction to our NEWEST software and most importantly a chance for us to reconnect with our loyal customer base, in a relaxing, stress-free, Sunny and HOT environment; while the rest of the country is getting hit by Winter storms. 

Follow our Blog, Website and Social Media channels (Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin Company Page, Linkedin Group) to stay up-to-date on the latest developments of the NumberCruncher Retreat. 

SMALL BUSINESS APP SHOWDOWN 

Finally this week, NumberCruncher has entered our All Orders software into the 2016 $100,000 Intuit Developer Small Business APP Showdown with the winner being announced at QuickBooks Connect 2016 being held in October in San Jose, California.

More information on how to vote, will be published in an upcoming BLOG post, an email blast & our Facebook/Twitter pages. In Order to WIN, we're going to need the help of our Loyal Cruncher Family! Please follow our Blog/Social Media pages, to find out about some perks we are offering for those clients who vote for us, in the $100,000 Intuit Developer Small Business APP Showdown

The next NumberCruncher Blog will feature a sneak peek of our newest software, that we are releasing at the beginning of next year (2017)! Make sure you check back next week for the latest on Order Time!

Monday Morning. The two most dreaded words someone could hear. Nobody likes returning to work after a relaxing, stress-free weekend. But its necessary to ensure that your company runs smoothly and efficiently. The same way its necessary to ensure your company's technology is maximizing its output, not hindering it. That's our goal here at NumberCruncher.com, to offer the best customer service while offering an award winning product. If your a current member of the NumberCruncher family, welcome back and thank you for being a loyal customer. If you aren't part of the family, what are you waiting for?!? We offer a FREE, No-Commitment 30 day FULL trial of the software, so you can see just how beneficial our software could be for your company! If you would like to sign up for a trial, or if you have any questions, comments or concerns about All Orders, please visit our support page or give us a call at 866-278-6243 so that we can set you and your company up for a training session TODAY!

On Friday, NumberCruncher.com was proud to unveil our newest product, the All Orders Integrator. The All Orders Integrator by NumberCruncher.com, is a robust inventory and order processing system that can be integrated with your E-Commerce, Web Store or Online Shopping Cart. The Integrator will significantly reduce the time and errors in entering new customers and web orders. The Integrator is a software utility that is installed on the same network as All Orders and can be ran in attended or unattended modes. The Integrator will import orders and customers from your website, as well as, update the order status and inventory quantities on your website. The All Orders Integrator works with 3dcart, Magento, SalesForce, Volusion, WooCommerce, Shopify, BigCommerce, AspDotNetStorefront, Aabaco Small Business from Yahoo! & XCart.

NumberCruncher.com is going on the road this fall! Stay tuned for details and dates.

Since it's getting to be the time of year for our customers to renew their service, I just wanted to remind all of our followers that every year when you renew your All Orders plan, your included training hours reset, this allows us to ensure that our clients always stay up-to-date on the latest and greatest features NumberCruncher is bringing you. If you have recently renewed, please give us a call to set up your training refresher TODAY! This training session could be used to learn about all the benefits of the All Orders Integrator add-on.

Please find our BlogBlast Signup form at the bottom of this blog. All users who signup by June 31^st, will be entered to win a surprise from the NumberCruncher family!

NumebrCruncher.com thoughts are with all the families impacted by the Orlando massacre, over the weekend. To help donate to the Orlando Victims Fund please click HERE

Hope everyone has a successful week and as always, please feel free to send me an email at jgoldberg@numbercruncher.com, with any questions, concerns or comments about our blog or family of products!

Happy Friday to our weekly readers! I hope everyone's week is wrapping up nicely after the extended Memorial Day weekend! I know i'm ready for the weekend after this short but busy work week. With the second half of the year fast approaching, companies are searching for ways to help manage their inventory and keep their stock full for the rest of the year. What better way to find the solutions you need, then with a FREE trial? NumberCruncher provides FREE FULL trials of our software for all new users. All Orders provides you with a 30 day trial, while ReorderPoint.com gives you 14 days to see the benefits of our software. Just like always, if you need any help or have any questions about All Orders or ReorderPoint.com, please visit our support page or give us a call at 866-278-6243 so that we can set you and your company up for a training session! Since a lot of our followers do renew their service with us around the midpoint of the year, I just wanted to remind everyone again that every year when you renew your All Orders plan, your included training hours reset, this allows us to ensure that our clients always stay up-to-date on the latest and greatest features NumberCruncher is bringing you. If you have recently renewed, please give us a call to set up your training refresher TODAY!

Since day 1, NumberCruncher's main goal was to provide an industry changing product with exceptional customer service. We have been fortunate enough to have success on both ends. NumberCruncher was the first company to invest in the Quickbooks SDK from Intuit and is an award  winning gold developer for Quickbooks. NumberCruncher.com is a Better Business Bureau accredited business and has received an A+ rating from them, continually since 2010. But with all our accolades and success, there is always room for improvement and advancement. Over the next quarter, NumberCruncher will be implementing some new features and procedures that is going to make it even easier for us to answer any questions you may have and assist you with any issues that may arise while using any of our products. We also will be incorporating some new technology to help us get into contact with our clients easier and more efficiently.

At the bottom of this post there's a signup for our Blog Blast. Our Blog Blast will be sent out every Friday with the latest NumberCruncher Blog post, some announcements from the NumberCruncher team, the latest technology/accounting news, Client Spotlights and the occasional contest or giveaway.  

If there are any features you would like to see or topics you would like to read about in our Blog or Blog Blast, feel free to leave a comment or send me an email at jgoldberg@numbercruncher.com.

Also please send me an email if you are interested in having your company featured in our "Client Spotlight" feature. 

Finally, I would just like to bring the latest technology hack to the attention of our readers. This week it came out that hackers are using Teamviewer software to hijack PCs and drain PayPal accounts. NumberCruncher utilizes the Teamviewer software as part of our customer service experience, and this threat seems serious enough that our readers should read the article and educate themselves about the hack and ways to protect yourself from becoming a victim.

Hope everyone has a great weekend!  

Hey everyone. Welcome back to another weekly edition of the NumberCruncher blog! As our weekly readers know, our trainer/support tech, Tom, has been writing our weekly blogs for the past few months. But as summer starts to ramp up and Tom's calendar starts to fill with training appointments, I've been asked to take over. My name is Josh Goldberg, and i'm the marketing supervisor here at NumberCruncher. For the fans and loyal readers of our blog posts, please don't panic! Our blog's will continue to include support answers and how to's, for our product's including All Orders. But it will also include other exciting technology news and new features will be popping up all the time, so make sure you subscribe and follow the NumberCruncher blog, because you never know what will appear! As always, if you are struggling or have any questions about All Order's software, please visit our support page or give us a call at 866-278-6243 so that we can set you and your company up for a training session Today! 

Today's blog post will focus on our product line. Kind of a reintroduction of who we are and what we offer. Before we can dive into our award winning products, we need to start with who we are. NumberCruncher, Inc is a leading provider of inventory and order management software for the QuickBooks community. Founded in 1999, NumberCruncher was the first developer to invest in QuickBooks software development kit from Intuit. Our mission has always been to provide innovative, scalable and cost effective inventory management solutions that solve real world business issues, resulting in total customer satisfaction, increased profitability and competitive advantage. Thousands of manufacturers and wholesale distributors rely on NumberCruncher solutions to manage their everyday business activities across the globe. From inventory control to production management to order processing and fulfillment, these solutions are unmatched in the marketplace, setting the standard for QuickBooks inventory add-ons for the manufacturing and wholesale distribution markets. 

Our flagship product All Orders, is inventory software that bridges the gap between business accounting and business success. All Orders is a comprehensive inventory and order management software application that helps you make better business decisions in purchasing, shipping and receiving, order entry, production and inventory control. All Orders gives the business owner, manager and accountant the tools to be successful faster, easier and more efficiently. The best part about All Orders is the fact the application can be used as a stand-alone inventory software, or users can fully integrate it with QuickBooks, so you never have to enter the same data twice. Besides the integration with QuickBooks, All Orders also supports integration with 3D Cart, Magento, Sales Force, UPS, FedEx & USPS; just to name a few. If you are already an All Orders user, please make sure you have upgraded your software to the latest version 6.2.3, which was released in March. To verify your currently version, please go to Help --> About. The new update was for general maintenance purposes and includes all previous updates and addresses known issues.

After the success of All Orders, NumberCruncher got back to the drawing board and realized that in today's society, there's a growing trend of business owners who are constantly on the go and spend very little time, in their main offices. These owners were the inspiration behind our products All Orders Mobile & All Orders Web. 

All Orders Mobile extends your company's inventory management by bringing it into your warehouse and allows you to take full advantage of the barcode label printing feature within All Orders. The goal of All Orders Mobile is to make your warehouse operations more efficient. After All Orders Mobile is installed on your Windows based device, it connects wirelessly to your All Orders database and download sales orders to be picked, purchase orders to be received and counted. Once a sales order is picked, the picking information will be uploaded in real time back to the All Orders database and automatically creates a Ship Doc. Similarly, once a purchase order is received through All Orders Mobile, the information will be uploaded to All Orders and a receiver will automatically be created. Finally, All Orders Mobile will update your count in All Orders with the new quantities. 

All Orders Web is an e-commerce website that shares a database with your All Orders program. All items, customers, vendors, purchase orders, quotes and orders that are created within All Orders will be instantly available within All Orders Web portal and vice versa. One of the unique features of All Orders Web, is the ability to give role based access to your staff, sales reps, customers and vendors. The role based access feature, will significantly improve customer engagement and quality of service by allowing your customers to view stock availability, create quotes & orders, as well as, check on order statuses. Another beneficial feature of All Orders Web to businesses, is the fact the program is written using ASP.NET, so all the web forms are customizable. You are not only able to customize the look and feel, but you are also able to customize the "business rules" that are specific to your industry. 

Finally, our newest product, ReorderPoint.com, might be the one to impact the industry the most. ReorderPoint.com is a purchasing tool that offers a systematic approach to forecasting inventory needs. ReorderPoint.com is a cloud-based application that integrates with All Orders and QuickBooks. The way it works is, during the initial setup, ReorderPoint.com, will import up to 3 years of historical data from your QuickBooks/All Orders files including sales figures, purchases and component usage. The program then uses statistical methods to determine lead times, trends, seasonality and special orders. Based on the type of trends we identify we apply a model (i.e. a mathematical equation to calculate lead time demand). We then use the lead time demand to calculate the reorder point. The program also regularly imports your current inventory status including on hand, on purchase orders and back order quantities. ReorderPoint.com then compares the inventory status to the reorder point and sends alerts when the status is below of nearing the reorder point. Additionally, ReorderPoint.com provides lists, reports and graphs you can use to analyze your usage and make more informed purchasing decisions. 

Being involved in the software industry means your work is never finished. The minute you take a day off, everything switches up on you. We at NumberCruncher are always participating in new training exercises and growing our knowledge of QuickBooks & technology in general. Woodard is a company that empowers small business advisors through cutting-edge training, networking, coaching & resources. Next week Woodard is hosting their annual Scaling New Heights conference. This year's conference will run May 22nd through May 25th and be located at the Atlantis Resort in Paradise Island, Bahamas. If you will be attending Scaling New Heights, please make sure you stop by the NumberCruncher table at booth #96 and tell our CEO, Ian Benoliel that Josh sent you!