item price and cost --

[raymond]

so maybe I'm not getting this but I just updated a bunch of items to reflect (our) price and (client) cost yet when I enter this item as a charge, it enters the cost into the price field... what we want is the item price to go into the cost field and the system to calculate the difference between the item price and cost, multiply that by the quantity and enter that as a markup value... the way this system works now, it's useless for us for entering charges on items.

please advise --

thanks --

//ray

[Support Team]

All prices and rates at the Charge level represents what the customer is charged for. Nothing about this is related to your actual costs.

When a Charge is entered into RangerMSP the Item Price is copied and set as the Price for the Charge record.

For example, if you buy a laptop from your supplier for $1,800 - set this as the Item Cost and the set your standard selling price for it to, say, $2,000.
Then, when you select this Item for a new Charge you add in order to charge a customer, the $2,000 (e.g Item Price) will be copied to the Charge record as the Price.
At this stage you can optionally discount/markup it. At the charge level markups are usually not used while discounts are used much more (yet, you can mark it up and charge your customer more than your standard list price for the selected item).

Thanks,
Dina

[raymond]

I understand what it's doing, we just think it's goofy... really, the entire accounting side of the equation is goofy! I've been barking for years about the markup deal (how there is no option to have it apply on a per-piece basis which is insane and how the percent markup doesn't translate well when exporting to QB for invoicing because it doesn't work on a per-piece and incorrectly rounds), now we have this oddity where we can't get the system to map one-to-one between item cost and charge cost (price) -- simply put, the mish-mash makes the item cost field completely useless.

The way CommitCRM deals with material costs really (and I mean really!) needs to be overhauled but this can be done pretty easily. Here is what I would recommend:

1) If you want things to continue to map the way the are (between item and charge) then simply get item cost to show up on the charge (this way we can run reports between cost, price, additional markup and total client costs in ONE simple stroke) -- this means we have a cost, price, quantity, (additional) discount/markup and total available to us on a per charge basis... now we have a tool that we can use to get things done!

2) Add into the Discount/Markup drop down the ability to do this on a per-piece basis (think about it for a moment, every accounting system works on a per-piece basis... just try to find one that doesn't...).

3) Get the % markup to work on a per piece bases like all accounting systems do and round to the nearest penny!!!

That's about all it would take to fix this stuff...

thanks --

//ray

[Support Team]

Thanks for your suggestions ray, some have already been logged into our system from your previous posts. Thanks!

[raymond]

thanks... :-)

[raymond]

I just discovered that our guys have built a spreadsheet on their own to make up for the inaccuracies and shortcomings that CommitCRM has with discounts and markup of products. I find this really disappointing... the system needs to be simple and accurate with markups/discounts. The details are in the above "April 16th, 2012, 03:39 PM" post and earlier in a “July 6th, 2010, 01:20 PM” post.

Can we get someone to really review discounts/markups. This in conjunction with other posts about not being able to properly credit an item purchase (re. subject “product returns... markup and discounts --”) are huge problems with the accounting side of CommitCRM.

For now, my suggestion is to stop adding bells and whistles and get the accounting core function fixed!

thanks --

//ray

[Support Team]

Ray, as I believe you know by now everything is seriously considered. In any case, the suggested changes might break the system for other users that are happy with the system as it is and how it calculates things right now. This makes implementing such changes a long and complex job. We evaluate all options all the time and even though the items you raised makes sense they things are considered in comparison with other items and so far other items scored higher. We have this on file and will keep visiting this.

[nattivillin]

We tried to use CommitCRM to keep up with cost and such, but we stopped immediately. We couldn't figure out what CommitCRM was doing, and couldn't predict its behavior.

Would be nice if it was fixed :)

To echo Ray, I see a pursuit of new features and additions, and I see a host of old features that don't work properly (in our eyes)

CommitCRM is still one of the best products on the market, but theses holes leave the door open for "discussion".......

[raymond]

Sorry to have come off harsh -- I just get super frustrated when simple things like trying to credit a client for a product purchase or tabulating markup on a price per-piece basis simply can't be done (it takes me minutes to enter markup on product when it should take seconds). It gets even more frustrating when we sink a bunch of time trying to come up with a work around (such as using percent to do markups) just to find that the calculations are mathematically incorrect. These things are so fundamental to the product.

Do understand that we like the product (have been going on 6 years now) and appreciate the two-way communication. Also note that v6 was a huge leap forward... thanks for that!

Not sure how many folks are actually using CommitCRM for the accounting side of things -- my guess is “not many” because it just doesn’t work easily or accurately. CommitCRM needs to know this. We have tried numerous times but keep coming back with the same conclusion: it's broken and no amount of "working around" the problems will fix it -- this has to happen at the development side.

Thanks again for listening – we do (truly) appreciate everyone over there... (!)

//ray

[Support Team]

Thanks Ray!

[nattivillin]

CommitCRM "does" accounting as much as quickbooks "does" inventory!

[raymond]

excactly... (!)

:-)

//ray