@JaredBusch

@JaredBusch said in Anybody in online retail and warehousing I need ERP advice:

That is a large part of the problem right there.

It always is. Money doesn't grow off the walls around here.

@JaredBusch said in Anybody in online retail and warehousing I need ERP advice:

Sounds like a wrong decision was made here to begin with. Why buy in on a product that does not do what is needed?

It did 80 other things we wanted. No other solution could be found with the right mix of features.

@JaredBusch said in Anybody in online retail and warehousing I need ERP advice:

No, that is not life, it is bad management. Also you are already against any new solution claiming it is over developed. You are not even open to new ideas at this point.

You mean management, not myself. I am far more aware of the temperament of the business owner than you are. If I walk in and say, well it's time to get rid of quickbooks, spreadsheets, printed papers, shopping cart, shipping software, cloud accounts, and EVERY method and process you've developed over the last 10 years running this business, and buy this all-in-one thing for $5000 a month to run the whole company. I will immediately be fired.

The expectation here is that "boss wants X", everybody must deliver X at the price they want. If not, temper tantrums. They will start looking for somebody else who WILL deliver what they want.

@JaredBusch said in Anybody in online retail and warehousing I need ERP advice:

Again this is a management mistake. The product should have never been purchased if it did not do what was needed.

Nonsense. It's entirely possible that NO software exactly meets every requirement. We have to settle on getting as close as possible within budget and time constraints.
The requirement was "our shopping cart sucks, we need a new one by November". So I had to find carts, but very few off-the-shelf carts within price range could do what we needed. BigC simply got closest. We went through the trial, the demo, had live sessions, Q&As. But at the end of the day, it's a few features shy, and we have hope that the feature we want is on their near roadmap for development. Choices had to be made.

The idea was to upgrade the cart, and then switch to better fulfillment software, and then use the features of the fulfillment software to organize and manage the orders, rather than the shopping cart. Hence ShipStation and the like. Hence running in to a bottle neck of fulfillment software at $40-$80/m versus ERM at $1000-$6000/m. Hence I asked in the OP, where is the middle ground? Where is the $200/m software that does ShipStation+few other things? I just can't find it.

The budget is always a concern.

Previously they used a shopping cart costing only about $400/m. The cart allowed custom order statuses so all orders could have arbitrary statuses, but only one status at a time. This was barely useful, but worked. All vendors/POs are still managed by friggin spreadsheets in Box.

Our new BigCommerce Enterprise blows the previous cart out of the water, but does NOT have custom statuses or tags of any kind. It's already taking us from $400/m to $1600/m just for the cart alone.

That hit the boss hard, so now I'm going to ask for another $500 to $6000 a month for some over developed ERP solution that does 20 cool things we'll never use? They won't go for it! That's just life.

What really pains me during this whole thing is that we move from an outdated crummy cart that is literally down up to 15 hours a month, to a best-in-class "Enterprise" cart that's 3x as much, yet ONE feature is missing in BigC that is a game changer.
In management's eyes, this one feature is YUUUGE, and thus makes BigC seems like the inferior product in their eyes, cause not only did it cost 3x more, but now I have to pay even MORE to use another piece of software to try and get back that one missing feature.

All of this is just so ugly. They are used to the shopping cart essentially handling everything. Now that we are bigger, the company can't run off just a shopping cart, but they still think it can. Always asking for a better cart, for better price, with more and more back office features.

@pchiodo
Ya that's never going to happen.
We ship around 500 orders a month. It's just enough for us to handle "manually" without needing a full ERP.

A product like ShipStation is perfectly suitable for our warehouse to get packages out. Where it fails is one step back, at the order management level. We need to do all the things with orders before it's ready to process for shipment.

This involves nothing more than good "notes" as far as most of us are concerned.

1. When did order get placed?
2. What products were in stock? Are they now pulled/allocated?
3. If not in stock, are they on order? If so, connected to what PO from what vendor? When can we expect delivery?
4. Does a line item need customization? If so do we have it out yet? Where? When expected to return? Are we waiting for a PO AND customizing?
5. Does a line item require customer to send US something? If so, have they sent it? Have we received it? Is it out for assembly or customizing? When is it expected to be done?
6. What is the most current status of the order? That is, the thing it needs immediately before further processing?
7. Who is in charge of processing current steps with the order? Perhaps multiple people.
8. Can orders be auto-tagged when certain conditions are met, or certain products involved. For example X product always need customizing, so it could be auto tagged with certain processes or todo right away.

At the end of the day, all of that is just a whole lot of notes. They could be statuses, or categories, or tags, or text fields. As long as the software makes if VERY easy to see at a glance what orders need what, what they are pending on, what's happening, etc.
The boss wants a constant overview of all pending orders like "12 orders need that thing, 8 orders need that, 3 orders are waiting on that PO, 12 orders are out for customizing at X vendor", etc etc etc. Customizable views for employees so each one can see the set of filters and tags most relevant to them.

Again, a lot of this can be accomplished simply with a robust set of tagging and categorizing and notes.

I don't believe we need full ERP suites with accounting and CRM to accomplish this. All this is, is a bit of enhancement on top of order processing before going to fulfillment. Once we establish "all the things are now allocated and in stock", the order moves on for fulfillment and shipping through something like ShipStation or just the Stamps and UPS software. If they are combined, that's what I'm looking for.

ShipStation is really meant for "those people who ship". What I'm looking for, is more like, something all employees use to process orders, take notes when customers contact us, make changes, etc.

@scottalanmiller said in Zentyal 5.0 release in November:

@guyinpv said in Zentyal 5.0 release in November:

I guess you're right, don't even need Zentyal at this point, lol. But I refuse to not have some kind of GUI/interface to manage my Linux services. I have WAY too much to do in my day to be farting around with command lines when I have work to get done.

Based on the same needs to save time, I refuse to have the GUI Same reason I don't have a GUI on Windows.

You're on crack, and many other things. Never speak to me again.

@Minion-Queen said in Anybody in online retail and warehousing I need ERP advice:

n app for tha

Isn't Xero for accounting?

They handle accounting a little differently. They use QuickBooks but do NOT import every sale and order and invoice etc. The only thing they record is the daily batches, that is, deposits.

Supposedly they just don't want to crowd and fill up QB with thousands of orders and invoices and customers.
Whenever they want financial reports a the customer-order level, I tend to have to create those reports based on the various reports and exports I can get out of the shopping cart.

@NetworkNerd Ya EDI is not really where we're at, with just a single BigCommerce cart. Though personally I want to get us on multiple channels some day, perhaps just Amazon and Ebay even.

@syko24 said in Zentyal 5.0 release in November:

@guyinpv - All the same functionality can be achieved by setting up a Samba AD server. Zentyal just provides a nice web interface to configure everything. However, if you look at the forum posting over the last year the product has been loaded with bugs.

AD is the one thing I DON'T want at this point!

I mainly have Zentyal set up for network share, DHCP, some DNS, hosting, random things. In fact, I now have internal hosting on another VM, cloud sharing on another VM. So frankly my Zentyal seems to be used for just a file share at this point, lol.
I was using it for DHCP until one fine Sunday the DHCP service just turns itself off for no reason, causing a panic in the office (I'm sick at home) and they have to hire a local tech who just turns on DHCP on the router as a fix. I never bothered to switch DHCP back to Zentyal after that. I don't need core services just switching off for no dang reason!

I guess you're right, don't even need Zentyal at this point, lol. But I refuse to not have some kind of GUI/interface to manage my Linux services. I have WAY too much to do in my day to be farting around with command lines when I have work to get done.

I've got a company doing online sales and ships from their local warehouse. They also manufacturer stuff, and do product customizing where the customer actually sends stuff TO them as part of the order.

There is only one sales channel which is their ecommerce store (BigCommerce Enterprise).

Despite BC costing like $1600/m, they have very poor order processing. You can't accept multiple payments, can't do split payments or partial down payments. You can't edit orders after customers makes them or do partial refunds etc etc.
You also can't create custom order statuses or tags/categories or even have a quick notes field that is easy to access and view.

Regardless, due to their complex catalog and offerings, they need something beyond the simple tools in BigC.

I first looked at fulfillment software like ShipStation, ShippingEasy, and Ordoro.
This software is adequate to replace software such as UPS Worldship and Stamps.com, but are not generally acceptable as complete order management tools. ShippingEasy, for example, does not import all orders, only those from certain BigC statuses.
ShipStation imports almost all orders, but skips any that do not actually require "shipping" services, like say digital products. So it can't be considered order management, as some orders never get in to it.
As fulfillment software, they work great and are reasonably priced.

When I try to jump into full order management, I usually get pulled in to these massive all-in-one suites that do everything. ERP, CRM, order, shipping, receiving, vendors, POs, accounting, ecommerce, marketing.
Suites like NetSuite and Bizautomation come to mind. Another called Orderbot is a somewhat customized solution in this space. Problem is all of them are way out of budget and probably over the top in features for our needs. NetSuite being $4k to $5k to start. Orderbot being up to $40k for the first year getting started.

Other systems cross my path like ShipWire.
The problem with a lot of these other tools is they try to be too much. I don't want full accounting, we've already got that. I don't want built-in ecommerce, we're using BigC. I don't need a huge focus on running dozens of channels, we've got just one. I don't need a huge focus on multiple warehouses or global distribution.

What I DO need, is to manage our order lifecycle. What statuses and tags they are in, who is responsible to do what, what the order is waiting for, what POs the order is attached to waiting for parts. We need fulfillment and shipping, naturally.
That's about it.

So I've found decent fulfillment software but is not order management. I've found fulfillment + inventory and warehouse management (ERP) but also lacking order management.
I've found order management but it's far too expensive and drags along other services we don't need.
I've found software like Megaventory but they don't have integrations, you have to build off their API yourself.
I've found BrightPearl, which is very close to our needs, a little too much, but is just out of budget, being over $500/m to start. They are out of Europe though, and we're a US company.

At this point, my Google is failing. I have "snow eyes" and simply can't find something for our needs.
I started looking for an online retail/ecommerce consultant but this space seems filled with SEO-foo wannabes and I can't tell who is gold and who wants affiliate commissions.

If we could have some ERP features like generating POs, that's ok. I want something that:

1. Pulls in ALL orders from all channels.
2. Advanced order management; tags, filters, categories, statuses, notes, workflows, user assignments, tasks, customer communications tracking. And sync as much of this data as possible back to the channel when done.
3. Fulfillment. Advanced shipping rules, automations, batch label printing, reports, split boxes, split shipments, error checking (address validation etc) and syncing tracking codes and everything back to channel.
4. Affordable for small business. They can't afford one piece of software being an entire employees wage.
5. If full order and fulfillment comes along with basic ERP and CRM or some level of accounting, so be it. But we aren't replacing our current accounting.
6. Ecommerce and marketing not necessary, we already have a cart and other services.

I've reached my limit for doing research on this, either no such software exists, or adequate tools are impossible to find within budget.
The budget we have is not outside what something like ShipStation is, but ShipStation, feature wise, is only getting us about 85% of the way there. It's so close!
Software seems to jump from $40-$80/month strait to $600-$5000/m. Where is the middle market?

If Zentyal is dead, I'm screwed. They are like the only competitor for Windows Server. Maybe. I've barely got my Zentyal fully functional, I hope nothing is dying!

@JaredBusch
I think your "definitions" are getting a little mixed up.

If someone creates a "system image" backup, it's really only meant to restore the entire image to the same computer. This breaks early definition that we should be able to restore any file to any computer, or different computer.
I suppose there is probably a method of extracting just files out of an image, from another machine.

Second it didn't just backup files that were "modified". Apparently when he turned on FileHistory, it backed up everything. Unless you're suggesting he immediately "changed" 58,000 files after turning it on?

And since you're talking about "basic definitions", I think "copy of a file" is a nice basic definition....a copy of a file, on some other media. If I had no other backup options whatsoever, I would at least hope for copies of files!

I don't think FileHistory is perfect by any means, nor have I ever suggested anybody use it. But to the uninformed, when you go in Windows 10 to the "backup" section, this is what they present to people, who will likely NOT go find the little link at the bottom left of the page for the "real" backup, nor understand the difference between the "real" backup and the "fake kinda-backup sorta" thing.

Lastly, despite your condescension, FileHistory DID give them month old files, and without it, they would have nothing whatsoever. So I'll take THAT backup option any day over not having any files at all! I'm glad this person at least turned it on, they were trying, God love them, and they got their files back.

I don't understand why FileHistory is not a backup.

It is taking a file on your computer and copying it to a backup medium (network, USB, etc).

Then depending on settings, when it sees a file has changed, it makes a new copy with a new time stamp. Could be hourly, daily, weekly, etc. It keeps all previous copies for full date-based rollback capabilities.

It then can be set for when the older copies are deleted. Either a month's worth, or just when drive space is needed etc.

The backed up files are not encrypted, compressed, or put in any weird format. They simply have a time stamp added to their file names.

So far all this sounds like a backup to me.

The only thing that is "proprietary" is the file stamp on the file name. Without the Windows tool to help strip these out and recover only newer files, a fancy script of some kind would have to be used to find the latest files, copy them out, and remove the time stamps.

I used the Bulk Rename Utility to remove time stamps and just copied the files manually. If there had been numerous files with multiple time stamps, it would have made things much harder.

@Breffni-Potter

To be fair, Win8/8.1/10 treats it as a backup. After all you go in settings and open "Backup" and that's what you see.

Crazy after 72 years Microsoft still hasn't figured out a way to give Windows users a simple backup utility. Half my career is because Windows people never had good backup abilities. They never even figured they needed such things.

@MattSpeller

Thanks.

Everything seems to work just fine, it sees the drive, sees the previous backup, seems to connect to it to use, but the Restore screen just says there is nothing to restore, and I see all the files on the USB drive.

@MattSpeller

The guy believes he did the Win10 free upgrade. And when I installed Win10 it didn't require a code or activation or any of that, it knew who I was and went through fine.

I can't say about the Win8 question though. The backed up files are over a month old so I guess it's totally possible he did the backup set on Win8 and then upgraded Win10 after that. Maybe this is why it never started backing up new files?

I haven't read anything about Win8/10 not being compatible though.

Right now this guy just wants his files recovered.

I can't just copy them from the USB, it's hundreds of gigs and every single file has an appended timestamp on it.

I need the FileHistory system to recovery them.

The backup was a USB drive.
Win10 installed fresh on a new hard drive.
Connected USB and attempted to get FileHistory to connect to it for recovery. Not working.

Short story: hard drive died on a computer, replaced it and loaded up Win10.

They had a USB drive connected to File History. The drive is completely full and I see the FileHistory folder on it and all the files from their last backup (sadly, over a month old by the time stamps).

Regardless, I can't get Windows to recover from the previous backup. When I go to select the drive, that part works. When I use the "old" Control Panel to connect the drive, it actually SEES the old backup and tells me the correct timestamp of it. When I say to use it, everything seems to be fine.

But then I go to the Restore Personal Files section and it just tells me "there isn't any history of your files, folders, or libraries."

But of course there is history! It's on the drive, I see it, I see all the files with their file names edited with the time stamp, the drive connect wizard SHOWS me the old backup is there and I can connect to it.

I don't know how else to get it to connect to the old backup and allow me to restore all the files.

I really don't want to have to build some kind of crazy script to read every file and rename them and so forth. I just want File History to do what it's supposed to do! Connect to the old backup!

Ideas?

@prcssupport This is like, instant headache in about 20 minutes.

I've got two and I'm only just about ready to try three.

@RamblingBiped said in Logical IT Certification Progression:

@Dashrender said in Logical IT Certification Progression:

@guyinpv said in Logical IT Certification Progression:

al details. I don't regret buying or reading through any of them. Books on Windows, DOS, printers, networks, repair and troubleshooting techniques, system design and building, etc etc. All of that is good.

Answer questions posed at an interview.

Besides, bench techs don't think, according to @scottalanmiller, they work by script - aka, reading a script and doing what it says. Once you have to start making decisions, you're no longer a bench tech, you're in IT.

Arguably, if you've done bench work for any extended amount of time it really doesn't require much thought. You see the same types of issues coming in and your response is almost reflex, especially if you are working on a standardized set of hardware.

Yes and no.

I had to do a lot of bizarre stuff and a lot of bizarre requests. We would solder loose power ports on laptops, or USB ports. Reseat loose mobo chips. Analyze POST codes. Do advanced data recovery on dying hard drives, repair MBRs from viruses. Replace various broken control boards on CRT monitors.
After about 8 years you've certainly seen it all. Like wanting DOS 7 installed in a WinXP world. Or recalibrating a dot matrix printer for an old custom application on DOS.

Bench tech used to be fun when people actually wanted "repair". Nowadays it's either replace hardware and reload. Or just reload. People don't care about "fixing" any more, half the time it's faster to wipe out and start over.

@scottalanmiller said in Logical IT Certification Progression:

@guyinpv said in Logical IT Certification Progression:

People put too much hate on A+.

Sure if you've already been a bench tech for a few years it kind of doesn't mean much at that point, you've seen enough problems to be a good tech.

Because it's a cert for bench, sold to IT on a scam marketing binge, that is horribly outdated and treated as a joke by the company that makes it. It's really that bad. The data on the test isn't real world or useful. And it's for an industry different than the one it is sold to.

All this may be true, but I'm speaking of the training you do before taking the test.

My computer hardware and software and repair books were quite valid training materials with a ton of references and technical details. I don't regret buying or reading through any of them. Books on Windows, DOS, printers, networks, repair and troubleshooting techniques, system design and building, etc etc. All of that is good.
The $140 test is inconsequential at that point. Take it not, depends on if your job market puts any validity behind it.

If you want to hire for a basic bench tech position, what are you going to ask for? There are only a few options.

1. Some kind of undergrad or computer science degree. But who gets a degree like that to get a bench tech job at $10/hr?
2. Years of experience. Again, what experience tech wants a beginner bench tech job?
3. Some random certs that at least prove they must have read a computer repair book once.

I'm not saying A+ is awesome, but what else is a decent alternative? CCNAs don't want $10/hr tech jobs. Net+ has nothing to do with bench tech really. MS Windows certs only barely apply, if at all.

What is a beginner bench tech to do?