Frequently asked questions Q: How can V-BuS help me in my business? A: V-BuS provides the complete, integrated e-business solution for the small, medium-size business. It can be used for sales (including cash sales conducted by POS), stock control and purchasing, preparing and publishing catalogues on the web, doing accounting, maintaining customer relations, conducting electronic exchange of data between your customers and suppliers and more. Basically the package covers all the general type work, which you need to do in your business using computer. Leaving the standard business activities to computer you can save substantial amounts of time and resources. Q: Why V-BuS? Is there anything special about it? A: The typical software package for the small business was initially designed as an accounting package and subsequently enhanced to accommodate more features, mainly stock control and information about the customers. V-BuS was designed as the full e-business solution with accounting being just a part. The emphasis was made on covering of all aspects of the business in a single software package with intuitive GUI and smooth interaction between integrated subsystems. As a result the system has the most comprehensive set of features for the software package of its class: the product comprises the features which the small business can find only in the set of specialised Accounting, CRM, POS/Inventory packages taken together. The system was designed having in mind application of the latest computer methodologies in business practices, with the prime objective to increase business efficiency. Q: What do you mean by application of computer methodologies in business practices? A: You can do accounting manually, though the use of computer will save you much time, the same with stock control, recording of sales and the purchases, controlling debtors and payment overdue. On the other hand E-mail promotions can't be done without the appropriate software package, you also can't generate online catalogues, conduct electronic exchange or run "business intelligence" operations on your data. These operations proved to be quite useful tools helping to enhance of overall competitiveness of the business. Q: I am using MYOB for accounting, are there any advantages of V-BuS? A: V-BuS supports functionality, which you have in MYOB Primer, MYOB POS and a separate CRM package (except the payroll), so as far as the functionality is concerned V-BuS is substantially larger. Q: Give examples of superior business efficiency facilitated by the software package. A: The scenarios are different for the different types of businesses, we can suggest a couple of examples. Customer relations: you can use the computer package to inform your customers and prospects about specials, sales, automatically generate and send overdue e-mails, etc. The system would extract the name for the particular customer and substitute into the template; you can send these e-mails to the particular groups of customers. You can order your stock based on the customer's response rather than keep it in the store. Analysing sales patterns: you can extract information about the sales patterns, so that based on the history of sales you know which and how much of stock to order. Q: If I do not need all the feature provided by the package, to I need to pay for all of them? A: No, the package can be configured to include only the relevant modules. Q: I do not need any fancy things, would your package still be useful? A: Normally, you need this package of something similar for accounting and stock control. To be absolutely sure, check how much time do you spend to record information about the sale or the purchase including the stock movements, printing quotes and invoices, if computer package will save you only two minutes on a single sale, on the hundred sales you will save more than three hours of your time, add to this the time spent on preparation of the tax return and multiply by the price of an hour, you will get the total saving provided by the computer system. Q: There are very powerful free open source business software systems, what are the advantages of V-BuS? A: The open source systems will require substantial customization, normally conducted by the professional, the amount of labor normally needed to customise an open source system makes it more expensive than the small, mid range commercial system like V-BuS. Q: What are the modules of the system and wand do they do? A: The system consist of the following modules Accounting: the chart of accounts, journals, cash, bills and expenses, payments and deposits, sales and purchases; Catalogue: information about the inventory items, product groups and catalogues prepared for the particular customers and the groups of customers, facility to export the catalogues in csv and xml formats (to display on the web); Inventory: Information about the quantities of inventory in stock sorted by groups or locations, with history of stock movements, stock alerts with automatic generation of purchase orders, bill of materials; CRM/Organizer: Information about the customers, suppliers, clients and prospects, with list of orders and invoices linked to the customers, "appointment book", e-mail advertising module with, e-mail automatically sent to the specified customers or groups. Sales: Sale orders sorted by processing status, with historical information about processing of the order, batch processing, color/size/model information; electronic exchange of orders. Purchases: Purchase orders sorted by processing status, historical information about processing of the order, generating of purchase orders based on the sales orders; Work Orders: the same as sales plus information about labor, equipment and work stages; POS: computer based cash register with up to 48 active keys, processing and generating of the bar codes, can be used for conducting sales as well as recording the new stock. Q: What data model is used in the system is it compatible with other similar system? A: The system is compatible with MYOB (stock items, customers, accounts and journals) and with Quick Books ( accounts and journals). The data can be imported from MYOB into V-BuS. V-BuS keeps more data than MYOB, the system is fully operational if only the basic information is recorder. Q: Why does V-BuS need more data than MYOB? A: The data is used for additional purposes, such as creating (online) catalogues, keeping stock movements for estimates of the future needs, colors, sizes, models, stock batches, etc.. The purpose to make the system applicable to the wider range of business scenarios. Q: I am using MYOB and want to try V-BuS, how can I do that? A: First you need to export your data into V-BuS. Go to Export in MYOB and subsequently choose Accounts, Journals, Customers and Items; choose comma separated format. You will generate a set of text (csv) files which represent your data. Start V-BuS. Open Inventory system. Press "Export", open the file ITEM.TXT generated from MYOB, - the inventory information has been downloaded from MYOB, repeat the same for CUSTOMERS, ACCOUNTS and JOURNALS. All information is downloaded from MYOB. You have successfully transferred the data from MYON to V-BuS and can start using the system with your data. Q: What are the main business scenarios supported by the system? A: The system supports the main business procedures conducted by retailers, wholesalers, workshops and service providers. Selling and purchasing of goods with certain lead time, stock take, printing of the barcodes, dispatching of the goods sold; Cash sales using POS; Preparing catalogues, running promotions, maintaining customer relations, keeping appointments; selling services with certain lead time.