Official Luthiers Forum!

When I ran a guitar/vln shop in LA. I typed out a list of all the typical repair jobs, and used a specific $ amt per hr e.g. 20$perhr x length in hours e.g. 4hrs ,plus retail price of parts e.g.50$, to come up with a rough estimate.Then I would rough estimate the job at $80 labour, plus$ 50, parts +local sales tax. For a rough estimate of $130. Sometimes it would take less time , others more time.If your luthier instincts are working and you feel this particular job required an extra hour add that estimate in. Typically most repair jobs always took longer than my initial estimate to the customer. After a time you develop a knack for estimating certain jobs.But even then unexpected problems turned up in repairs, and it would take way longer to do the job than what I had charged the customer.

Sounds like a job for Quickbooks.

_________________
Brian

You never know what you are capable of until you actually try.

https://www.howardguitarsdelaware.com/

Quickbooks will drive you to drink because you basically have to track EVERYTHING if you want to track ANYTHING. This is not perfect by any means, but it's not awful either. I've been playing with it and I may buy a license. I'm done with quickbooks.

http://www.k-billing.com/

Filippo,

I just finished a Filemaker project at work, which meant I had to come up to speed on the 21st century versions of FM, a big leap from what little I'd known before. I think it would be ideal to build from. It's solid (from my recent experiences with it anyway), relational, cross-platform and does shared access. Thing is there's the $180 buy-in for the latest version of the app. I haven't heard of anything built with FM for such use, but just started playing with it for what we do. What sort of analysis were you after?

Pat

_________________
formerly known around here as burbank
_________________

http://www.patfosterguitars.com

Have a look at Pete Brown's software, Luthiers work bench. This is probably what you're looking for.

http://www.whistlingfishsoftware.com.au ... kbench.htm

_________________
My Facebook Guitar Page

"There's really no wrong way, as long as the results are what's desired." Charles Fox

"We have to constantly remind ourselves what we're doing....No Luthier is putting a man on the moon!" Harry Fleishman

"Generosity is always different in the eye of the person who didn't receive anything, but who wanted some." Waddy Thomson

It's Windows based..

Sorry about that, although I'm sure there are those out there who still use windows based computers. I didn't read down to the p.p.s of the post, sorry Filippo

_________________
My Facebook Guitar Page

"There's really no wrong way, as long as the results are what's desired." Charles Fox

"We have to constantly remind ourselves what we're doing....No Luthier is putting a man on the moon!" Harry Fleishman

"Generosity is always different in the eye of the person who didn't receive anything, but who wanted some." Waddy Thomson

Sorry misread your need fillipo. Hope you find right info.

I was Mac based too. I don't know of anything for the Mac other than a Windows solution running in Parallels or something like that. I looked and looked and looked and looked and the closest I've found is Quickbooks....and I will never use Quickbooks again. Ever.

I just recently got the Invoice2Go app, and I've just started using it, but it seems adequate for my purposes. I can do estimates, invoices, purchase orders, etc. I can use my company logo, email docs as pdf's, set up "products" which are common line items (strings, fretwire, etc). I can also link invoices to my Paypal account, so clients can pay right from the emailed invoice. In the paid version you can sync to their cloud. All in all it seems like a pretty handy app worth the few bucks.

Ken

_________________
Mountain Song Guitars www.mountainsongguitars.com

Numbers (part of the iWork suite) has some pretty decent budget templates built-in that might work for you. With Numbers you can also store files on iCloud and there is an app for iPhone etc.

_________________
Dan

It looks promising. The only complaint I saw was about being charged to use their cloud. I've been using Bento for iPad to track my builds. I use the recipe template... Fitting.. Works nicely.

Thanks for the tip

Yes, I would like to hear more about it too

_________________
Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

FM will do those things, though the estimate part would need to be configured, probably simple to do, using an invoice layout for the estimate, which could be converted from an est. to invoice.

edit: FM Pro 12 comes with an invoicing template, with customer list, parts (services) list with categories (we could use as repairs, custom options, etc.). All the structural stuff is done. Over $200, but pretty easy to qualify for an educ discount.

Pat

_________________
formerly known around here as burbank
_________________

http://www.patfosterguitars.com

Can't you do that with "filesync" for Mac? I use the windows version for syncing between notebook and desktop via network, and used to use it for a fairly sophisticated FileMaker for Windows system that was used by my Headhunter network. It worked for that just fine. You have to install the modified version on both computers, but then all you have to move is the edited db's, of which we had about 50. Just took a few minutes each morning and evening.

_________________
Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

No problem at all. I just did my first two invoices with it, so I'm literally figuring it out as I go. But it seems really cool! The first thing I did was enter the info for my biggest customer, Dream Guitars, so each invoice gets loaded with their contact info after selecting them from my client list. Then I created several common tasks, ie, fret level, crown, and buff; McEntyre Feather pickup install; etc. It doesn't save your time or rate, you just input that each time. In some cases, I wish you could save those values, eg, DiAddario EXP coated strings, 1@$10, for the sake of efficiency. Once you input your time and rate, it inputs the values into the invoice, like Excel. I haven't gone from estimate to invoice yet, but I know it does that, and I'm sure it's very easy. Yes, you just tap the familiar icon in the upper right corner and it gives you options to save, preview, email, print, or copy. There are even a couple of template styles that look pretty good. There's also the ability to customize your template, apply a discount, and on and on. It looks like you get 5mb's of cloud space, but that prob won't go very far. I forget what I paid for it, it's been a couple of weeks...

_________________
Mountain Song Guitars www.mountainsongguitars.com

They also have what seems to be a very good series of help videos.

_________________
Mountain Song Guitars www.mountainsongguitars.com

Filippo,

I'll be setting up client access to a shared FM DB running on a desktop Mac in a few days, though not using iOS. The host will be set up to allow the client to add/delete records, but not alter the structure, which is how I believe access from iOS will work. You can also run the DB stand alone on iOS, but to sync data you need to go through the pain of iTunes. Programming and layouts for the host can't be done from iOS. The DT app has layouts for the iPhone and iPad included in the sample invoicing/product/customer samples, though I haven't used them.

Some handy stuff for us is being able to store images in the DB. Relational DBs can pull customer info into invoices, paid/unpaid invoices, drop down menus to drop items into invoices giving unit price lookups that can be overridden on the invoice, layouts can be tailored for printing, different from what's on the screen. I'll be looking into adding an estimate option. I would also want to add a supplier table, so I could search for an item and see who I've bought it from in the past, cost, etc.

FM Go is free and FM Pro 12 has a free 30-day trial. If you do the D/L, let me know if it doesn't include the invoicing/customer list/product-service lists.

http://www.filemaker.com/support/downloads/

Here's some info from the FM site on what's what.

http://help.filemaker.com/app/answers/d ... _id/10087/

Pat

_________________
formerly known around here as burbank
_________________

http://www.patfosterguitars.com

Luthier's Journal looks fantastic. I wish they had a version for Mac.

So this software salesperson dies and ends up in a purgatory of sorts where he is greeted by a guy sitting at a desk in front of two prominent doors. The guy at the desk tells our software salesman that today they are running a special offering where he, the software salesman, will have the choice of door number one or door number two and as such he may select where he is going to spend eternity.

What's special about todays event is that the software salesman is being afforded the opportunity to open each door and look in before selecting where he will spend eternity.

The salesman opens the first door and looks in. What he sees is what looks like a huge New Years Eve party complete with tons of folks all having a great time. Beautiful women, live band, abundant refreshments, food, lots of smiling faces - a really good time!

So our hero the salesman moves to door number two and peeks in. Inside he sees clear blue skies, a sunny beautiful day, white fluffy clouds with lots of folks standing and floating around on the clouds. The folks are dressed in white, have halos on their heads, and white feathery wings on their backs.... The place looks as peaceful as can be and everyone inside this door looks at peace with themselves and they have smiles on their faces.

So our hero shuts that door and when asked which door he will choose he picks door number one.... After entering door number one, the party, the door immediately disappears from view and instead our hero finds himself shackled in irons to a vertical rock face and everywhere there are fires burning around him and he can see and hear many others also shackled to rock faces screaming in agony....

Just then a ten foot tall figure begins approaching our hero who is shackled to the rock face. This figure is colored red, has horns, a pitch fork and looks as if he is going to do great harm to our hero. Our hero the salesman begins to yell and says "hey wait - this isn't the place that I selected where there was a party happening, beautiful women, lots to eat and drink, and a live band."

Just then the ten foot tall red dude says to the software salesman "oh that - that was our demo....."

As someone who sold and licensed enterprise software for nearly three decades I'm unfortunately no stranger to what may, I say may... happen with the licensing organization while attempting to roll-out the new solution/software. You may hear comments such as "you sold us an elephant to run on a mouse" or "this stuff is running us not us running it..."

Anyway I thought that I would jump in here because this is timely for us as well in that we are in the selection process for some software for our biz too. We flirt with six figures in terms of annual biz and none of us are inclined to waste time using or maintaining software.

Where I think that I can add value to the discussion here, or I would not have jumped in...., is something that I learned yesterday. In interviewing prospective book keepers we were told that everyone knows quick books, everyone being book keepers that is. And that if we select other, lesser known software packages we will be hard pressed to find a book keeper or even the year end tax assistance CPA who is fluent in anything but Quick Books.

I've also learned along the way that the inventory capability of Quick Books is where most folks struggle as noted prior in John's excellent comments.

Our process model is greet the client, assess the instrument, excrete a written estimate with a copy for the client that also serves as their receipt for placing their instrument in our care. Upon completion of the job we need to produce an invoice, accept payment (using IPads with Square...) and then do it all over again with the next client.

We are considering Quick Books in the cloud because I live an hour away and this would provide me access to our books where ever I am. We are also considering Quick Books because a great book keeper is not easy to find and we believe that we have found one but she only knows Quick Books. We are also considering not licensing the inventory capability in so much as we really don't sell anything and see strings, fret wire, pots, etc. as consumables. Most of all we are a small business and attempting to automate processes that may be accomplished manually faster by we bags of mostly water, human beings. If the software solution does no better than we can do quickly with say an inventory why go there?

We want to be in the Lutherie biz and not in the learning/using software biz so much so that I even investigated simply using paper but was shot down by CPAs and book keepers.

Although I am no fan of Quick Books by any means for us it may be a necessary evil in that it's platform agnostic (the cloud version) and we all are Mac fans, it won't screw us over when we select a book keeper or CPA, it's basically the standard of the industry, and without the inventory capability it's pretty easy to produce an estimate, receipt, and later an invoice and cheaper - a word that I'm attracted to.

Hope this helps. And.... our hero the software sales man got a reprieve and instead of being shackled to that rock face these days he's living the dream being part of a busy, well respected, Lutherie practice that has a healthy mix of perfectionists who do great work!

The area that Quickbooks really falls flat on it's face is tracking COGS. In order to do it, you need to have an inventory of EVERY part. What you'd like to be able to do is update cost as you put the part into the invoice. There's no reasonable way to do that in Quickbooks. The one that I linked to has that feature, and that's why I'll be using that until I finish writing my own. So I will be able to type in something like "Strings", or even just "Parts", type my cost and type my price. That's what guys like us need. I understand why Quickbooks does it the way it does, but it just doesn't work for the kinds of things we do because we don't generally stock every part on the planet for every guitar.

Just tracking strings is practically impossible. I buy the bulk packs and use strings as I need them. How do I track that in Quickbooks? Enter every stinking string? Just say screw it and when I use one string charge for a whole pack? Say screw it and just don't track COGS on strings? With the higher levels of Quickbooks, you COULD track individual strings if you really wanted to, and then combine them into packs, but it costs a fortune and it's still not particularly convenient.

String trees, pots, nuts, saddles, frets, etc. Every last screw needs to be inventoried or you can't track COGS unless you simply pretend that you buy everything for each job and forget about keeping things in inventory. To do that, you need to make a purchase order, and then you need to PAY that purchase order from some account. That's a PITA too, and the accounting still won't be right because things you legitimately keep in inventory won't ever show up as inventory. You'll have hundreds or thousands of dollars in expenditures that are not tracked because they've never been entered and you'll have to track all of that by hand anyway, completely defeating the purpose of Quickbooks. It basically turns into a fancy contact manager and invoice creator.

Anyhow, that's just my experience trying to make it work for our repair work. It's nightmarish, and you'd think there's a simple way around it but after 2 years of banging my head against the wall, and many hundreds of dollars spent on various versions and tech support with them and my CPA on the phone, I decided to cut my losses and toss it in the trash. The Mac version has bugs too. Not sure if they fixed this yet, but doing a simple refund/return completely screws up the books...it doesn't do the entries properly. Maybe that's fixed now, but it's shocking that such a simple and common task was ever a problem in the first place.