This document contains statements related to our current and future developments that may constitute forward-looking statements. They are subject to changes and may be available in a Pronto Xi 780 service pack or future release of Pronto Xi. All diagrams, drawings, product screenshots and any other types of visualisations in this document, use demo or synthetic data created for display purposes only.
ERP & Analytics Software
Blending innovation and continuity
A message from our Managing Director
Pronto Software is an Australian developer of award-winning business management solutions. Pronto Xi — our flagship Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software — is built around a core engine of financials and business reporting, helping you monitor and control every aspect of your business, from the top floor to the shop floor.
From improving productivity and customer service to increased inventory accuracy, our software allows you to gain actionable insights, quickly identify what is making you money and help you grow your best opportunities. We consistently invest in bold R&D initiatives that help us deliver groundbreaking results for your business.
Chad Gates Managing Director, Pronto Software Limited
We have headquarters and a development centre in Melbourne, as well as offices nationwide. Our consultants work with you to offer support and solve your challenges.
The Pronto Software group includes Pronto Woven, our digital consultancy division; Pronto Cloud, which offers cloud and managed solutions; and Pronto iQ, which enables powerful data analytics and insights. As a team, we strive for innovation — in how we work and in the technology we build.
When you choose Pronto Software, you get a pinpointed approach to helping you achieve exceptional business outcomes, assisted by a team with decades of industry experience. It’s why Pronto Software is the trusted IT partner of more than 1,500 global and Australian businesses — and has been for over 45 years.
Introduction
We focus on helping you run your business so you can focus on growing it
ANALYTICS
BI
BI
BI
Supply
Manufacturing
Powerful ERP software manages critical key aspects of your day-to-day business operations — from financials, sales, marketing, distribution and manufacturing to supply chain, asset and facility management — all within one fully integrated system.
In our work with Australian and global businesses across a wide range of industries, we’ve learnt that your business size or type doesn’t limit your ERP needs. You could be a growing local business, a global manufacturer, or somewhere in-between. For us, it always starts with your business goals because these lead us to build a solution that answers your most challenging questions. Every business we engage with is an opportunity to develop a long-lasting partnership.
Our flagship ERP, Pronto Xi, is modular, which means we build solutions based on your business needs and not the other way around. Our diverse competency set provides your business with solutions to increase productivity, lower costs, simplify tasks and achieve more — faster.
Begin with our core offering of business basics, add the competencies that suit your requirements and leverage actionable insights from our business intelligence tools built on IBM™ Cognos™ technology* — trusted by more than 23,000 leading companies worldwide. With easy and immediate insights into your company’s innermost workings, you can quickly and confidently make critical decisions.
Whether you’re seeking to expand your workforce or improve workflow, Pronto Xi can help you take your business where it needs to be.
About Pronto Xi
Your
business relies on tools that help to increase productivity, lower costs, and simplify tasks. Instead of the market-standard “one-size-fits-all” approach, Pronto Xi easily adapts to your business structure and processes
Pronto Xi’s flexible and scalable offering suits a wide range of industries. Build your ideal business management solution based on our core offering, add competencies and unlock valuable insights to propel your business forward.
Core offering
Let’s start with the basics
No matter your industry, size or market, there are standard things you need to take care of as a business. And that’s where our core offering steps in. At Pronto Software, we’ll help you build a foundational solution to increase results with minimal effort.
In developing the fundamental platform for Pronto Xi, we listened to business leaders from across the globe and built a core framework that expands and grows as you do.
Use Pronto Xi to establish a comprehensive general ledger, take command of tricky paperwork, optimise your supply chain and much more. Get instant insight into your business and make crucial business decisions with confidence. Pronto Xi is protected by enterprise-grade secure authentication systems to keep your business activity safe.
Additional competencies
Flex and grow
Working with a diverse customer base has given us the intel to develop products that suit different specialisations, sizes and industries. Building long-lasting relationships with our customers has also enabled us to develop a comprehensive suite of competencies encompassing almost all facets of business.
We’ll help you choose the right modules for your business requirements and can adapt them to suit your needs better.
By getting the most out of Pronto Xi, you’ll get the most out of your business.
Extra intelligence
Boost your business IQ
When juggling a business’s myriad demands, it’s easy to overlook the finer details and even easier to miss the bigger picture.
Our analytics, fine-tuned to your requirements, work hard to uncover the numbers and patterns to support crucial business decisions. When your most significant challenges are lost in complex or repetitive data, we help you find answers.
Built on IBM Cognos Analytics technology, our integrated Business Intelligence (BI) modules reveal unique business insights, from a broad overview to a minute detail.
IBM Cognos Analytics gives you instant access to a range of tools, enabling you to better analyse your business through a single, easy-touse interface.
And, because it’s all online, you can access the information you need whenever and wherever you want.
Platform & Applications
Easily adapt individual modules from our competency set to suit your unique business needs
Foundation
A platform to build on
Pronto Xi’s modular applications rely on a virtually bulletproof core infrastructure, so they run cleverly and seamlessly.
It begins with the “nuts and bolts” that enable the system to operate: the relational database, operating systems, Runtime and the web interface — your portal to Pronto Xi’s applications.
For added flexibility and connectivity, Pronto Connect offers industry-standard RESTful APIs allowing web, mobile and other applications to access Pronto Xi data via web services. These integration opportunities let you transform your Pronto Xi solution into a platform of connected applications — including our web applications and native mobile apps and our rapidly expanding Solution Partner ecosystem — all of which have the reliability and transactional performance of Pronto Xi at their very core.
Solutions like Webhooks and Alert Intelligence allow you to build do-it-yourself databroadcast integrations to push data to thirdparty applications via Zapier, IFTTT and other middleware. Alert Intelligence and signed URLs can also be integrated into the Pronto Xi Notifier App.
A rich Applistructure layer lets you perfectly fit Pronto Xi to your specific business needs. Set up system alerts, define system tasks, create information data grids for a particular business process, or customise screens to see the most important operational information at a glance.
Pronto Xi also allows you to easily complete day-to-day administrator tasks, from performing backups and setting network protocols to defining roles or security settings.
For businesses that want to do their own customisation, there are a range of developer tools, including the Rapid Application Development Environment (RAD) and a Software Development Kit (SDK).
Integration
The missing link
The Pronto Connect API platform enables secure and real-time data exchange between Pronto Xi and related mobile, web and desktop applications. It also provides the foundation for system-to-system integrations.
With a rich library of standard APIs, plus the ability to author custom APIs, Pronto Connect is highly adaptable to your business needs.
Expand operations and improve the customer experience by integrating Pronto Xi with other software platforms through Pronto Xi Sync. Data flows seamlessly between systems, allowing you to maintain a single source of truth without the accompanying growing pains or administrative burden.
Financials
Achieve perfect balance
Accountability is the bottom line. Pronto Xi’s powerful transaction engine integrates all your financial activities into a single control centre.
Achieve perfect balance with the fully integrated General Ledger, and get a complete financial picture with automatic transaction posting from sub-ledgers, including Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable and Inventory. You can also manage multiple currencies and companies, making it easy to control complex enterprise data across group companies.
Financials give you crucial insights and the information you need to monitor and maintain your bottom line and grow profitability.
Payroll & Resources
Maximise the potential of your assets
Optimise your business resources with Pronto Xi’s Resource Management and Resource Scheduler modules. Integrating directly into the Project, Service, Plant Maintenance and Payroll modules, this functionality enables you to manage resources, teams or equipment efficiently. In addition, the Human Resource Management (HRM) module helps you control detailed staff information so that you can meet the personnel management requirements of your organisation.
Pronto Xi’s fully integrated Payroll module is compliant with Australia’s Single Touch Payroll (STP) guidelines. It takes care of fulltime, part-time and casual employees, hourly rates and annual salaries, and flexibly handles employee leave and tax changes. Pay run workflows are easy to set up and are powered by in-depth reports, including summaries and discrepancies.
The Employee Portal offers your staff a selfservice option for pay slips, as well as leave and timesheet entry.
Distribution
Inventory
in motion
Keep the heart of your supply chain ticking with Distribution.
Easily handle all aspects of your sales ordering, and automatically update your stock and inventory levels.
Get a clear picture of inventory across all business locations through the real-time tracking of stock levels and movement.
Keep a keen eye on stock coming in and out of your door with the Sales and Purchasing modules. Automatically allocate backorders, replenish stock, calculate freight, and track dispatch across multiple countries and currencies while having full access to your activity history.
Retail
One platform, complete visibility
With fully integrated Point of Sale and eCommerce modules, Pronto Xi provides a multichannel approach to retail that engages customers on their preferred mediums.
Create a secure yet simple shopping experience for your customers — on whatever device they use, wherever they are.
Manage warranty claims and repair requests with ease through the Repairs module.
Empower your staff to engage customers instore with the Pronto POS App, or use it as your complete point-of-sale solution.
B2B eCommerce
Transforming your reach
Pronto Xi eCommerce enables B2B organisations to rapidly extend their business to online while delivering omnichannel excellence.
With seamless integration with Pronto Xi and robust B2B eCommerce functionalities including global style guide and page builder out of the box, it provides a consistent experience and simplifies website management requiring no coding expertise.
With a stunning and intuitive user interface, Pronto Xi eCommerce is a scalable platform that enables your business to deliver frictionless eCommerce, from browsing to purchasing.
CRM
The extra mile
Pronto Xi’s fully responsive Customer Relationship Management (CRM) module allows you to maintain a powerful relationship with your customers, whether in the office or on the road.
The CRM makes it easy to manage the complete customer lifecycle, from the early beginnings of prospecting to the final sale and beyond. It also lets your sales teams to perform advanced segmentation for targeted and personalised customer communications.
Supply Chain
On time, every time
Track your current supply chain activity and forecast future movements by seamlessly coordinating and integrating your product, information and distribution network.
Automate supplier priorities, lead times and inventory targets to ensure supply always matches demand.
Maintain a paperless warehouse with state-ofthe-art wireless functionality that lets you keep tabs on your sales and dispatch processes.
Optimise your supply chain planning with accurate, real-time inventory management and analysis designed to help you understand trends and reveal insights into your future demand.
Ensure optimum efficiency with an extended warehouse and inventory management system that supports the automatic allocation of incoming goods to locations, efficient picking, automatic replenishment, dispatch confirmation and location control of warehouse stock.
Asset & Facility Management
Simplified services
Manage your projects with a fully integrated project management solution. From the tender stage to project delivery, Pronto Xi’s Project module manages resources, tasks and milestones so you can focus on the bigger picture.
Reduce asset failure rates and maintenance costs with Pronto Xi’s Maintenance Management solution. Monitor detailed maintenance schedules to extend the life expectancy of your equipment, ensuring your assets are available for longer.
Manufacturing
Make more with less
Quality control is at the core of our flexible suite of manufacturing tools, from make-to-stock to configure-to-order. Whether your goal is trimming the fat on the factory floor or bulking up production volume, our manufacturing tools cater to almost any production technique. They’re designed to ensure you run a tight ship.
Plan efficient production processes through detailed views of manufacturing resources and raw materials and get comprehensive feedback on consumption and production results.
View your entire operations at a glance and adjust production routing to maximise manufacturing resources. Gain a better understanding of how resource capacity impacts on your production requirements and reduce product cycle time to meet your deadlines.
Support continuous improvement and quality management through tighter process control to meet your certification requirements.
Intelligence From a bird’s-eye view to deep insights
Built on IBM Cognos technology, Business Intelligence (BI) puts powerful business insights at your fingertips. Combining dynamic key performance indicator (KPI) dashboards with the ability to create your own custom reports, BI digs deep into every aspect of your operations.
Customer expectations evolve quickly — so your business needs to be ready to adapt rapidly.
“How did we get here?”, “What do we expect will happen next?” and “What key decisions do we need to make?” Business leaders need look beyond the current state of play and ask these types of questions to get ahead.
Analysts also need insights that will help them make more informed decisions tomorrow. The next generation of BI is fuelled by artificial intelligence (AI) and machine-learning capabilities that augment your ability to find insights in complex data.
IBM Cognos Analytics is now integrated with a powerful AI engine, IBM™ Watson™ technology*, which provides data insights and automated data-cleansing, along with date-based forecasts to visualise business trends.
IBM Watson technology leverages the IBM Watson Natural Language Processing capability allowing its Conversation Assistant to provide deeper insights. IBM Watson Discovery helps you to better navigate the product through the Learn panel, while the Data Modules and Data Explorer tools enable greater collaboration and data-driven decision-making.
BI’s user-friendly design means there are no barriers to retrieving the information you need.
By having the right insights available when you need them, you can make better decisions quickly and empower your staff to act based on real-time data.
Customise your workspace to get an overview of key information and metrics
Applications
Unlock deeper insights
Business Intelligence is powered by IBM Cognos Analytics, making it an industry-leading Analytics platform.
Complementing IBM Cognos technology, we have developed a range of Pronto Xi applications to enhance your data analysis.
Our BI platform is available to all Pronto Xi customers and gives you access to better insights faster. Get out-of-the-box operational and financial reports or choose the integrated data model and easily build your own custom reports and dashboards.
In addition, IBM Cognos Mobile BI provides an interactive and secure environment for viewing and analysing data on compatible smart devices.
Visualisations
See between the lines
BI is packed with data visualisation tools, giving you a powerful overview of your business performance.
Stunning dashboards and KPI widgets are easy to create and customise.
Charts and reports are available as an “outof-the-box” solution, or can be configured to suit your unique requirements. BI also offers a range of display options, so you can select the visualisation that allows you to demonstrate your data most effectively and share findings with others.
Data
Better data, better decisions
Behind Pronto Xi’s rich visualisations, a vast amount of data drives the reports you can use to make daily decisions.
Whether you’re accessing KPI snapshots via your workspace or building real-time reports from transactional data, Pronto Xi delivers the answers you seek.
In addition, Pronto Xi’s Data Quality Management (DQM) solution means you can be confident in the quality of your data. This powerful tool safeguards your data’s integrity through the periodic scanning of records, followed by user alerts and suggested actions.
Web Interface
Behind a desk or on the move? Pronto Xi offers a seamless user experience
User experience (UX) design is all about simplifying processes. Our deep research and knowledge of UX allowed us to design a user interface that optimises productivity and meets the needs of real-world users. Using modern web technologies, Pronto Xi delivers a fast and responsive web interface that’s accessible no matter where you are, adapts well to different screen sizes and offers an intuitive approach to interaction design.
Navigating screens and menus, entering and viewing data, running reports, and configuring user preferences and favourites are straightforward processes. Data entry is also simple, whether using a keyboard and mouse or a touch-screen mobile device.
Regardless of which Pronto Xi modules you use, their consistent format and functionality make the tools quick and easy to learn.
Highly accessible
Pronto Xi’s web-based user interface is flexible. You can do what you need to do, whenever and wherever you need to do it, without installing software.
If you do need to use locally installed software or locally attached hardware peripherals, Pronto Xi has an optional local extension explicitly designed for this purpose, giving you the best of both worlds.
Accelerate accuracy
Data entry validation happens in the field in real time and not once a form is submitted at the end of a task. This avoids lag time or the need for data re-entry, verifies that business processes are being followed, and helps your staff to complete their tasks as efficiently as possible.
Pronto Software services
Get the most out of your Pronto Xi system with the support of our expert teams
From start to finish, our consulting team guides you through the implementation of your Pronto Xi system. Our consultants have a wide range of practical business experience across various technologies and industries, so you can be confident you’re talking to someone in the know. Armed with the analytical skills that allow them to understand the nuances of your business properly, they’re ready to help you adopt your new business management software and reveal what it can do for you.
We use our proven implementation framework to make sure your system is installed on time and on budget.
Before handing over the reins, we help you test your new system. Testing includes running business simulations to resolve potential issues, building bespoke user interfaces, and making necessary final amendments or customisations.
Finally, we’re with you during the go-live process and will continue to be available until you’re confident you’ve got full control.
Implementation
Getting things started
We have a tried-and-tested framework to ensure Pronto Xi is up and running as efficiently as possible. We call it the Pronto Implementation Methodology, or PIM. Over the years, PIM has been proven to make the implementation process easier and to drastically reduce the risks usually associated with business-critical projects. It’s a powerful way to ensure your new Pronto Xi solution is delivered on time and within budget.
We start by working with you to establish a cooperative and controlled project charter. This plan helps us determine the correct timing and sequence of implementation processes, and lets you know when you can expect tasks to be completed.
We follow this up with detailed checklists to ensure tasks are carried out according to the project charter and monitor and track our progress through regular reporting.
Training
Empower your team
As part of the PIM process, we identify your training needs, based on the Pronto Xi modules to be installed, how they will be used and who will use them. Training continues to be available post-installation for new staff or for anyone needing to learn new modules or tools.
Training information — including sessions, dates, locations and registration requirements — is posted on our online knowledge base. Training courses are organised either in a classroombased setting or on-site at your business.
Customisations
Ready for anything
We know that in business, there’s no such thing as “one size fits all”. Our team is always looking for new ways to adapt our product to best suit your business, and then deliver those enhancements as quickly as possible.
The architecture of Pronto Xi accommodates customised enhancements when you upgrade to new releases in the future.
Ongoing support
Always on hand
Throughout your Pronto Xi installation we offer comprehensive ongoing support, and we’re always ready to listen and adjust to your needs. Our local support services include a dedicated help desk and online knowledge base, as well as fixes and workarounds for software issues.
Our team has practical experience across a range of industries, company roles and Pronto Xi modules. They’ve had careers as software users, accountants, warehouse managers, production managers, administrators and project managers and understand the challenges businesses face. In working through your support requirements, we will always connect you with a qualified consultant who understands your specific business needs and intricacies.
Online help
A wealth of knowledge
In addition to our dedicated help desk, we offer a range of online tools to help you quickly find answers to your questions.
Our web support resources — including news, user forums and handy hints — are continually updated, and you can find full product manuals, release notes and fixed-readiness information online, too.
Our forums give you access to a community of end users, developers and help desk staff, providing you with practical insight into our products and services.
If you need to contact us, you can log and track your service calls online. You’ll be sent an email confirmation, including your call number, to follow progress in real time.
Managed services
Leave IT to us
Want more time to concentrate on your core business? Then let us take care of your IT system. Pronto Cloud provides custom service packages to manage, monitor and maintain your IT infrastructure.
With Pronto Xi on-premise, hosted or in the cloud, you gain enormous flexibility to modify or scale systems as you grow. Our solutions equip your company with the essential tools for doing business. And, with a simplified, easy-to-use IT setup, you can save on overheads, too.
Enterprise security
Secure your data
We offer a range of robust security features to give you the confidence that your business is protected.
Administrators can use roles and security profiles to control access from company level down to field level.
Pronto Xi’s Identity and Access Management (IAM) solution integrates with Azure Active Directory and Okta, and enables SSO, MFA and self-serve password management for increased security and simplified user access.
HTTPS, digital certificates, reverse proxy servers, two-factor authentication and single tenant architecture are some of the other tools we use to keep Pronto Xi secure.
Roadmap
One step ahead
Our maintenance agreements give you access to Pronto Xi’s future product upgrades, new features and enhancements.
Financials
Accountability is the bottom line
Accountability is the bottom line
Take control of accounts receivable and payable, manage assets and understand your financial position with Financials
Pronto Xi’s Financials gives you access to your business’s complete financial position at any time.
Financials has four core modules that form the basis of your Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. It delivers key financial information, enabling solid strategic decisionmaking across integrated Pronto Xi modules. Detailed financials are supplemented by a comprehensive budgeting system, driving informed analysis and reporting.
Built for enterprises, General Ledger provides a comprehensive solution for handling the financials of multiple companies in any currency. It also offers multiple budgets, hierarchies and cost centres. Because it represents the financial outcome of your organisation’s activities, Financials forms the basis for Pronto Xi’s reporting and business insights.
Manage the full asset lifecycle — from acquisition to disposal — with Fixed Assets. Use multiple acquisition and depreciation methods to keep valuations up to date. With full reporting and KPI capabilities, Fixed Assets is perfect for multinational companies with multi-jurisdictional assets and compliance reporting.
Accounts Receivable automatically processes all sales transactions with real-time updates to General Ledger. A fully functional system, Accounts Receivable offers the ability to hold detailed information about your customers — including information flowing from Sales. Use Accounts Receivable across a wide range of environments, including wholesale, retail, service, project management and manufacturing.
Payroll
General Ledger
Supply Chain
General Ledger integrates with other Pronto Xi applications Manufacturing
Facilities
Easily manage supplier accounts with Accounts Payable. It supports various invoice types and payment options, and automates invoice processing to save you time. Integrating with General Ledger and Purchasing, Accounts Payable gives you a detailed view of all supplier arrangements, transactions and approval levels.
Customer Central is a powerful solution for managing accounts, payments and invoices. The 24/7 self-service portal empowers your customers by giving them the freedom and flexibility to manage accounts at their convenience.
Accountability is essential and easily managed within Pronto Xi. In addition to traditional budgeting built from natural account to the General Ledger level, Pronto Xi provides comprehensive tools that support the budgeting process. For example, roll up salesbased Configurable Budgets to General Ledger Budgets or develop Hierarchy Budgets to meet specific reporting requirements. For lower-level budgets, like employee expenses, Pronto Xi offers transaction tagging, allowing you to capture and categorise transactions quickly.
General Ledger
General Ledger is at the heart of your Enterprise Resource Planning system
General Ledger is a comprehensive solution for your business, capturing all financial transactions processed in other Pronto Xi modules.
Key features include:
• handles the financials across multiple companies, divisions and cost centres
• a high degree of automation
• the ability to process high transaction volumes
• integrated audit and tracking tools to help with regulatory compliance
• the ability to develop multiple budgets with multi-currency support
• consolidation functionality, including foreign subsidiaries
• extensive reporting capabilities that utilise reporting hierarchies
Account structure
Pronto Xi incorporates a Master Chart structure to meet your organisation’s reporting requirements.
The Master Chart specifies what each element within an account code represents. For example, the first two characters of an account code may represent the company; the following four characters a cost centre; characters seven and eight a department; and characters nine to 12 the natural account code.
Having defined valid codes for each component of the Master Chart, you can easily generate all, or a selection, of General Ledger accounts, reducing the chance of posting to incorrect accounts.
Your account structure can change as your business changes. For example, if your company uses one character for a region code and the number of regions increases, expand the account code to handle a more extensive range. Pronto Xi maintains data integrity on the live General Ledger, including all archived history and related sub-ledgers.
Account features
General Ledger automates the flow of postings based on your specific requirements using special accounts to specify how Pronto Xi maps each transaction onto General Ledger. This means data entry staff require only minimal knowledge of General Ledger postings.
Maintain multiple budgets for each account code for management and statutory reporting. You can also generate a variety of management reports, creating different views based on any number of hierarchies.
Types of accounts
General Ledger allows you to create two types of accounts:
Statistical accounts
Statistical accounts collate relevant nonfinancial operational data to simplify reporting on non-financial KPIs — such as cost per unit produced, revenue per employee and cost per kilowatt.
Expense accounts
Capture additional details for expense accounts based on General Ledger tagging. This feature is useful for expenses like entertainment, telephone costs and employee travel, or tracking small projects.
Budgets
General Ledger provides flexible and intuitive budgeting capabilities, including GL Budgets, Configurable Budgets and Hierarchy Budgets, and delivers:
• seamless interaction with Excel
• collaborative budgeting processes
• spreading and automated budget adjustments
• the ability to combine actuals with budgets to create adjusted budgets and forecasts
• sophisticated budget notes and auditing functionality
Budget maintenance and reporting
GL Budgets provide a powerful, simple, flexible and intuitive approach to meet the most demanding financial budgeting requirements. Maintain GL Budgets at the account code level or group level (such as by department or natural account) to perform budgeting at the reporting level. You can also manipulate budgeting at the lowest level and get complete visibility of changes.
GL Budgets are optimised for easy data manipulation, meaning you can use a set of in-solution tools or leverage the power of Excel. These tools enable you to create adjusted forecasts by combining actuals and budgets, applying spread factors, and exporting and importing via Excel.
GL Budgets allow multiple people to contribute to the budgeting process using a structured contributor budgeting system that’s flexible and simple. The Budget Contributor Management function distributes individualised and recipientspecific sub-budgets before aggregating these separate contribution budgets into the master budget.
Push sales and inventory budgets up to specified General Ledger account budgets so you can leverage important information within the operational budgets in the GL Budgets.
GL Hierarchy Views allow you to intuitively view and interact with your budgets based on your Hierarchy Budgets. Your budgets roll up or expand using the same structure as your Profit and Loss (P&L) or Balance Sheet.
Configurable Budgets
Configurable Budgets create sales-based budgets using any combination of attributes from the customer and inventory master records.
For example, develop a three-level budget based on brand, class, category, group, territory, warehouse and industry attributes.
Create budgets daily, weekly or per period, and base them on a range of measures, including value, quantity, gross profit and gross profit percentage.
You can also generate quantity-based items using customer budgets, which roll up to warehouses. These budgets then publish a forecast which — because it aggregates to a warehouse — are used to drive material requirements planning (MRP) and distribution requirements planning (DRP).
Configurable Budgets leverage special account structures to push the sales budget values up to the relevant GL Budgets, helping to provide simple yet practical bottom-up budgeting.
In addition, they have been optimised to export to and import from Excel. This allows stakeholders across the business to contribute to the budgeting process using the Budget Contributor Management function.
Hierarchy Budgets
Hierarchy Budgets produce budgets based on existing reporting hierarchies and are quick and simple to create. They provide the flexibility to budget at any level of granularity, with the budget then rolling up to the higher levels.
Profit and Loss and Balance Sheet budgeting
Profit and Loss (P&L) and Balance Sheet budgeting now occur directly at any level in Pronto Xi. Change budgets for the P&L and Balance Sheet in the Hierarchy View, removing the need to export and import data from spreadsheets.
Build budgets based on natural account
Budgeting by account code
Pronto Xi allows you to budget based on the elements that make up the account code, such as the company and the natural account.
The example below shows budgeting by natural account: freight expenses roll up in the top section, and the elements that make up the budget are broken down in the second section. Maintenance occurs at either level.
Financial reporting
GL Hierarchies provide flexibility in how General Ledger accounts are structured for reporting purposes.
The reporting hierarchies allow you to structure accounts based on the desired reporting outcome, ensuring that different users can get the reports they need.
Overview of small subset of GL Hierarchies
Reporting hierarchy structures
A simple hierarchy structure means anyone with accounting knowledge can easily produce financial reports using GL Hierarchies.
Pronto Xi lets you define the hierarchy structure as a series of parent-child relationships in line with fundamental accounting principles (for example, Current Assets sit under Assets). Once a structure is defined, you simply determine where the natural accounts should attach to the hierarchy.
Out-of-the-box financial reports
General Ledger offers a selection of predefined compatible financial reports and hierarchies.
Attach your natural accounts to the appropriate spot within the hierarchy for out-of-the-box reporting. Reports include P&L, Balance Sheet and a Statement of Cash Flow, with varying levels of detail available. For a detailed list of reports, see page 45.
Example of an IBM Cognos Analytics statement of financial performance report
Customised financial reporting
General Ledger offers customised financial reporting. To produce hierarchy structures and reports based on natural accounts or full General Ledger accounts, use predefined hierarchies and make necessary changes, or create hierarchies from scratch to get bespoke reporting outcomes.
Then, assign a single natural account to different places within a report. For example, a transport company may have a natural account for fuel, but the logistics department wants it to appear as a Cost of Sales account, while the marketing department wants it as an expense.
You can also set accounts, such as Cash at Bank, to appear as an asset when there is a positive balance and a liability when it’s a negative balance.
Complex reports
Because GL Hierarchies are built on simple parent-child relationships, they are intuitive and easy to understand. While generally populated with natural accounts, you can also combine them with separate hierarchies based on various elements of the Master Chart to deliver complex reporting outcomes.
Transaction tagging
Tags allow you to capture and categorise transactions, making it easier to track expenses at a granular level without creating new General Ledger accounts. For example, post all motor vehicle expenses in a single account, using transaction tags to identify the types of expenses.
Tags are highly customisable, with support for hierarchy, budgeting and capturing quantities such as litres or tonnes.
down to the tag level for motor vehicle expenses
Example of the top level of tag reporting
Drill
Create quick and powerful snapshots of key financial information with GL Hierarchy views
Financial data
GL Hierarchy View creates a view of your financial data within a Pronto Xi screen. By presenting financial information in a similar structure to traditional financial reports, GL Hierarchy View makes it easy to validate figures from your financial reports and reconcile them to source transactions within Pronto Xi.
Personalise views based on individual or team information needs and build these into the Pronto Xi menu. Views obey masking, so your team only receives information relevant to them.
View options
Once the GL Hierarchy is populated, you can use the default P&L View.
If you require non-standard or more complex views, use the GL Hierarchy View Designer to create a view exactly how you want it.
View options include:
• using predefined views that mirror your default financial reports
• bringing in actual to budget, then calculating and displaying the variance
• having separate columns for different companies, territories or divisions
• building ratios between the rows to see information such as the cost of sales as a percentage of sales
Data updates
GL Hierarchy Views use staged data, so drilling up and down through the various levels is instantaneous.
Set the GL Hierarchy View to automatically refresh overnight or update “on the fly”. You can also determine how many versions of the snapshot data you want to keep so that you can compare them with current data.
Reporting
GL Hierarchy Views use the same hierarchies as standard Pronto Xi financial reports, enabling you to validate figures in your financial reports. It is also easy to drill through to the underlying transactions contributing to the period balances.
In addition, push views out to Excel for further manipulation or presentation.
See data and drill into more detail with GL Executive Analysis Summary
Financial summaries
The GL Executive Analysis Summary is a powerful analysis tool. It provides instant insights and offers drill-downs to source data without creating reports.
GL Summary Views are highly customisable and can be based on a combination of General Ledger dimensions. These include natural accounts and departments.
Cash flow forecasting
The ability to accurately model projected cash flow is a fundamental requirement for managing a business’s continued liquidity. With General Ledger, it’s easy to generate effective and flexible cash flow projections.
Choose exactly what to include in your projections based on assumptions specific to your business. You can also reflect information not currently available in the underlying database (such as upcoming capital expenditure) in cash flow projections.
Designed to work with Business Intelligence, cash flow reporting combines the power of Pronto Xi and the simplicity of IBM Cognos technology to deliver an outstanding solution.
Use Cash Flow Image with external applications like Excel
Multi-company environments
In General Ledger, there are four ways to manage multi-company setups. You can:
• maintain multiple companies in one dataset
• use separate datasets for each company and consolidate them to a holding company
• use separate datasets for each company’s subsidiary ledger and share a common General Ledger
• use foreign currency consolidation
Use the Master Data Management module to manage multiple franchises, trading companies or international subsidiaries. Get full visibility of your business entities from a single view so you can focus on expanding your business without the data pains.
Data from individual entities rolls up automatically based on defined rules and configurations, significantly reducing the risk of errors due to double handling.
Because spreadsheet imports or manual data transfers between your entities’ financial teams aren’t needed, your period-end processing is quicker and error-free.
Multi-currency functionality allows you to trade in local currencies while consolidating necessary information in your home currency. You can easily handle inter-company trading and manage transfer pricing with multi-currency transactions while adhering to the different tax and legal regulations.
By feeding consolidated data into IBM Cognos reports, you can create a bird’s-eye view of your business across all domestic or international locations. With these powerful aggregation capabilities, you can manage inventory, enforce credit limits for customers, use attributes to segment data and much more.
Inter-company postings
General Ledger can automatically raise intercompany balancing entries in a multi-company environment with a single dataset or a common general ledger. This ensures each company remains in balance within itself and the General Ledger.
Dataset 1
AU$
Dataset 2
NZ$
Local (AUD) GBP£
Consolidated dataset
GBP £
Local (NZD) GBP£
Overview of how data consolidates into a reporting currency
Multi-currency reporting
Pronto Xi’s Multiple Reporting Currencies (MRC) functionality helps you meet demanding International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), which require transactions to be recorded in both a local currency and a “functional” currency.
MRC records transactions in an unlimited number of functional currencies, providing you with complete flexibility. It also supports the “temporal method” of translation for fixed assets across each functional currency.
In doing so, MRC helps complex corporate structures comply with both local and international reporting and transact and report in various currencies and jurisdictions.
Use MRC capability across Pronto Xi’s General Ledger, Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable modules.
Consolidation
With a robust consolidation engine, GL Consolidation is a flexible, intuitive and powerful tool that supports a wide range of financial consolidation needs — from straightforward consolidations to the most complex corporate structures.
Designed to work with Pronto Xi’s Multiple Reporting Currencies, GL Consolidation is ideal for entities with operations in different regions using different local currencies. It is also flexible enough to consolidate datasets with different financial periods and years, regular and irregular periods, and non-uniform charts of accounts.
Foreign currencies
Pronto Xi’s Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable and Purchasing modules support foreign currency transactions, maintaining values in foreign currency and the local currency equivalent in General Ledger.
Use the Foreign Currency functionality to:
• maintain customer and supplier accounts
• raise sales and purchase orders
• process cash receipts
• make cash payments
• maintain bank accounts
• transfer funds to and from foreign bank accounts.
Foreign Currency can also perform currency revaluations of foreign customer and supplier balances.
Tax systems
General Ledger has a globally compatible tax architecture that underpins tax reporting.
With a low-level, data-driven setup, it caters for a broad range of international tax regimes and their ever-changing compliance requirements.
Tax analysis
General Ledger provides a range of tools to analyse and reconcile tax for reporting purposes.
Tax analysis is presented in a data grid, so you can easily apply filters and export information, and identify and isolate data to reconcile tax activities.
Records are collated into date-based groupings and marked with user-defined descriptions, ensuring the integrity of the reporting requirements when returns are being prepared. This allows you to undertake multiple work streams without the risk of duplicated accounting.
Get full analysis for tax reporting
Commitment accounting
You can use commitment accounting to track the value of outstanding orders against a General Ledger account by raising a purchase order for an item. Commitment accounting gives you greater control of expenditure performance against budget and better information to plan cash flow.
Unearned income
Pronto Xi’s Service and Rental modules post unearned income (i.e. income earned on a contract that relates to a future accounting period) to a Balance Sheet holding account and take it up as income in the period it applies to.
User masking
Use masking to prevent individual users from viewing selected components of General Ledger. For example, restrict access to a specific department, company or region.
Optimise every aspect of your business with the Pronto Xi product family
Integration with Pronto Xi
Most General Ledger transactions post automatically from operational transactions processed through other Pronto Xi modules.
Updates to General Ledger and subsidiary ledgers synchronise in real time and are controlled by mapping tables or special accounts.
Mapping tables are simple to set up and allow you to customise postings based on organisational requirements. Pronto Xi uses predefined accounts to avoid operational discontinuity if the mapping is not fully defined.
Audits and tracking
General Ledger’s comprehensive audit and tracking tools simplify compliance.
Audit Management provides an integrated audit that registers changes to key data — and captures who, what and when automatically. Pronto Xi includes tools that allow you to view and manage audit data.
Major transaction processes assign a tracking ID to events, while key enquiries drill back or forward through the various sub-ledgers, allowing you to view related postings.
Trace sales orders through Inventory, Customer or General Ledger and view every transaction.
Excel import and export
Import or export files from a spreadsheet or a flat file into General Ledger or other Pronto Xi modules such as Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable or Inventory.
You can also import bank statements, cash receipts and other bank information.
Normal and prior-period journals
Post transactions directly into General Ledger without affecting any other ledger.
Journals typically post to the accounting period relevant to the transaction date; however, you can post them to an earlier period or the last period in the previous financial year by using a prior-period journal.
Authorised users can post transactions to closed periods and these are identified as posted after the accounting period closes.
Automatic journals
Set up automatic journals as templates for recurring general journals, eliminating repetitive data entry.
Recurring journal types include:
• Standing journals — Create a batch of entries for posting each month for a nominated number of months.
• Distribution journals — Distribute the total period movement of one account across a range of accounts (for example, allocating expenses across cost centres) by percentage or set amount.
• Masking journals — Distribute the total period movement of multiple accounts across a range of accounts (for example, allocating pooled cost centres across other cost centres).
• Self-reversing journals — Post in the current period and reverse with a future posting in the next period.
• Periodic standing journals — Create a batch of entries for each month but allow the posted amount to also change each month while accounts remain static
Example of a re-used distribution journal
Cash payments
The Cash Payments functionality records payments from the bank for sundry expenses. You can also use it to post bank charges and other deductions from the bank account.
Make cash payments through the General Ledger, either via Accounts Payable or directly from the General Ledger and reconcile details of a manually raised cheque in the Cheque Register.
You can also enter the payments’ applicable tax, ensuring it is included in tax reporting and analysis.
Keep transaction detail history for as long as necessary. In summary mode, General Ledger holds data by period for an indefinite number of years while previous years’ transactions are archived.
Record cash payments in the General Ledger
Reconcile transaction-based bank lines with smart matching
Bank reconciliation
Pronto Xi’s bank reconciliation supports traditional paper-based statements and transaction-based statements that match actual bank lines. Transaction-based reconciliation is driven by the importation of bank lines. Choose whether to automate this process (via a simple onboarding process for Australian banks) or opt for manual upload, which matches against Pronto bank transactions. There is an automated matching feature along with a categorisation function to improve the accuracy of matching transactions.
Financial year calendar
There are 12 or 13 user-defined periods in General Ledger, and the length of each period is defined by period start dates.
Both regular and irregular periods are supported. Irregular accounting periods utilise financial calendars; for example, each month ends on the last Friday, or period quarters can last four to five weeks.
Date-based transactions
The date of each transaction determines the period in which it is posted. The year and period number, relative to the financial calendar, is also stamped on each transaction.
Date-based transactions facilitate reporting and exporting information to third-party analytics tools, making sorting or filtering transactions by accounting period and year easier.
End-of-period and end-of-year tasks
Automatically perform any tasks involved in closing the current period using the Period End Processing function.
At year-end, close out Profit and Loss accounts to the Appropriation accounts and update yearto-date balances. You can also independently roll out to Pronto Xi’s main ledgers: Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable, Inventory and General Ledger.
Emissions Tracking
To help businesses improve sustainability, Pronto Xi’s Emissions Tracking functionality is accessible to every organisation running Financials.
Emissions Tracking captures activity data, calculates emissions and presents results. It records activity data during normal business operations but also integrates business-specific operations using infrastructure tools.
You can assemble, personalise, analyse and interact with carbon data through a dashboard.
Once you have set your emission targets, Emissions Tracking lets you identify and quantify options, establish a strategy and implement a practical plan to achieve accurate results.
Business Intelligence
Financial reports
Pronto Xi includes ready-to-go financial reports for the General Ledger, including:
• balance sheet
• Profit and Loss (P&L)
• trial balance
• transactions
• expense analysis — summary and detail
• projected cash flow
• account movement analysis
• Goods Received Not Invoiced (GRNI)
• statement of cash flow
KPI Library General Ledger metrics
Pronto Xi’s KPI Library has a range of preconfigured KPIs to help you analyse your business and make effective and informed decisions.
The KPIs for General Ledger include:
• current ratio
• quick ratio
• cash ratio
• working capital
• debt/equity
• return on asset
• EBITDA to sales
• return on equity
• return on capital employed
• revenue
• Cost of Goods Sales (COGS)
• gross profit
• operating expenses
• EBIT
• EBITDA
• net income
• GL accounts receivable values
• GL accounts [payable Values
• inventory value
• GL cash value
• GL investments
These metrics can all be shown as snapshots, give you the ability to analyse trends over time.
Create KPI snapshots, email them to colleagues or deploy them within your company
Fixed Assets
A dynamic, robust and flexible suite of solutions, Fixed Assets fully manages your fixed asset transactions
Pronto Xi’s Fixed Assets module efficiently manages assets — including acquisition, disposal, transfer, depreciation, revaluation and reporting — making it the perfect solution for multinational companies dealing with multijurisdictional asset management and reporting.
Attach unlimited numbers of depreciation regimes to each asset with Pronto Xi. Each regime (for example, book or tax) can have its own acquisition cost, depreciation method and depreciation rate, and you can retain transaction history for however long you want.
Streamline your processes with Fixed Asset’s bulk transactions functionality. Perform all the usual tasks associated with managing your fixed assets on an asset-by-asset basis or in bulk. Bulk transactions are easily exported to or imported from Excel, further enhancing efficiency.
With Fixed Assets, you can:
• post depreciation into next year — even when General Ledger has not been rolled
• set default control accounts and only override the exception
• split a depreciation expense across multiple accounts at the asset level
• set a depreciation expense posting at an individual asset level
• revalue classes of assets using the Asset Class field
• set separate user-definable calendars against each depreciation regime
Acquisitions
Fixed Assets allows you to process an asset acquisition using one of five methods.
Manually
Create the asset profile from within the Asset Register, and it’ll post those amounts to a clearing account in the General Ledger.
From an inventory item
Create an asset from an inventory item, which will automatically transfer it from the inventory ledger.
From a purchase order
Create the asset profile while raising the purchase order or post directly to a specific General Ledger account, making it easy to keep your Asset Register current.
From a supplier’s invoice
Create an asset profile while processing a supplier’s invoice without raising a purchase order.
Via bulk entry or bulk import
Acquire multiple assets in a single screen using bulk entry. Or import multiple assets from Excel, with the system providing all the necessary validations.
Easily manage your fixed assets
Asset Maintenance
Pronto Xi’s Asset Maintenance functionality manually or automatically generates a unique asset number or label for each asset. Enter additional numbers or labels against an asset to aid identification (for example, motor vehicle registration numbers).
Link associated assets in a parent-child relationship; for example, a “parent” computer may have a keyboard and screen as “child” assets.
Asset Maintenance lets you view additional details (such as attachments, service maintenance or schedules). You can also decide how to structure your assets for reporting and easier management.
Integration with General Ledger
Fixed Assets posts asset transactions directly to the relevant General Ledger accounts.
Assets are assigned to a group/location combination, enabling you to efficiently perform tasks such as depreciation and revaluation on a range of assets.
These groupings also determine General Ledger postings and allow users to:
• set default control accounts and only override the exception
• split a depreciation expense across multiple accounts
• set a depreciation expense posting at an individual asset level
Asset improvements and revaluations
Use Fixed Assets to record improvements to an asset. The improvement forms an integral part of the asset — it is added to the book capital cost and included in the asset’s depreciable cost.
Pronto Xi also allows asset revaluations. The revaluation amount offsets to a General Ledger account specified in the interface record, and all subsequent revaluations are handled according to the relevant standards.
Registration expiry dates
The Asset Vehicle Maintenance screen tracks a vehicle’s registration expiry, allowing Alert Intelligence to notify users of impending expiry dates across relevant assets.
Bulk usage updates
Group assets to simplify usage depreciation. For example, enter a figure for units consumed and apply it to an asset group. All assets in the group automatically update with the new data.
Make changes to an asset using a range of options
Record asset usage information for depreciation purposes
Depreciation
Pronto Xi supports four depreciation methods:
• straight line
• diminishing value
• units of use
• variable depreciation
When you use diminishing value depreciation, weight the amount of depreciation for each period by applying spread factors.
Variable depreciation is used to meet the United States’ modified accelerated cost recovery system (MACRS) accounting requirements. It can also assist with low-value pooling under Australian tax rules.
Each asset offers book and tax depreciation, and you can attach as many additional depreciation regimes as you choose. Each regime can also use a different depreciation method and rate. Adjust each depreciation regime independently and retain a full transaction history.
Depreciate assets individually or in bulk.
Before depreciation is posted, you can review a detailed depreciation schedule. The Asset Register and General Ledger are then updated.
Disposals
When disposing of an asset, Fixed Assets calculates book depreciation up to the disposal date or for the full year in the year of disposal.
Once the disposal is posted, you can’t process further transactions against the asset.
Fixed Assets can process balancing charges, allowing you to apportion the tax profit on the disposal of an asset against the cost of a replacement asset.
Example of the Fixed Asset reports available on IBM Cognos Analytics
Business Intelligence
Pronto Xi delivers a complete set of readyto-go operational reports, helping finance and accounts staff run day-to-day operations and gain real-time insight into the business’s performance.
Operational reports come with built-in filters and summary headers, meaning you have greater control over the information you report.
• Acquisition — Displays values of all fixed assets by selected acquisition date; it can also be used for reconciliation purposes.
• Activity — Shows movements in value for any asset transacted between selected dates; it can also be used to reconcile General Ledger accounts.
• Disposal — Displays values of disposed assets (including capital gain or loss on disposal) by selected acquisition or disposal date ranges.
• Reconciliation — Shows the reconciliation of fixed assets to the General Ledger for a selected period
Transactions
View selected Fixed Assets transactions by asset and transaction date. This supports reconciliation, investigation and data verification.
Other features include:
• asset history recording
• finance, land/property and motor vehicle recording
• service history maintenance recording
• expense recording
• rental asset revenue recording
• images and captions
Reconcile movements with the Reconciliation report
Accounts Receivable
Automatically process sales transactions and make real-time postings to the General Ledger with Pronto Xi’s integrated Accounts Receivable module
Accounts Receivable is a fully functional system that can hold detailed information about your customers. It suits a wide range of environments, including wholesale, retail, service, project management and manufacturing.
Key features include:
• ageing by seven-day, 14-day, monthly or userdefined categories
• flexible invoicing, tax options and charges
• powerful sales analysis, including enquiries, reports and budgeting
• comprehensive cash receipting for local and foreign values
• automatic or manual cash allocation and full banking slips
• pre-payments, part payments, retentions and credit claims
• support for foreign currency customer accounts
• extensive bank reconciliation functionality, including loss/gain handling
• debt ageing, analysis and credit management
• head office and branch accounts
Define a workflow to process invoices Sales Orders
Issue invoice
Receive payment
Apply invoices & credit notes
Send statements
Follow up overdue accounts
Customer Maintenance
Pronto Xi’s Customer Maintenance functionality centralises the control of your customer data, supporting operational efficiency and sound financial management.
Capture customer information in Customer Maintenance and use it as default data in Accounts Receivable and other Pronto Xi modules. It allows you to maintain very detailed information about your customers, including contacts, email addresses, banking information, currency, licensing details, warranty administration, multiple delivery addresses, delivery instructions, and the following.
Credit request
Approve request for credit
Review accounts on hold
Send reminder letter Reject claim
Ship-to and bill-to accounts
Use Accounts Receivable to set up and maintain head office and branch accounts. Sales may be held against and shipped to a branch account while billed to a head office account. You can define special pricing for the head office account or branch accounts.
Credit limit
Define credit limits for each customer.
New orders over the credit limit automatically go on hold, and on-hold orders can only be released by an authorised credit officer.
Control a customer’s credit based on the age of outstanding invoices. For example, if the customer is under the specified credit limit but has unpaid accounts older than 60 days, the system places new orders on credit hold.
Accounts can also be placed on credit hold by changing the status to No Supply. Place additional holds on sales orders if the gross margin of the order is below a defined percentage.
Settlement discount
Define a settlement discount for each customer. A user-defined table sets out the percentage discount allowed based on the number of days from the invoice date, the number of days from the end of the month, or a specified cut-off date.
Security functions
Accounts Receivable allows you to mask users so they only have access to customers in specified territories. For example, you can give a state manager access to all territories but limit sales representatives to their respective territories.
Additional customer information
Define default reporting structures and sales order information — such as dispatch warehouse, sales representative, territory, applicable tax and price level — in the customer’s master file. If needed, you can override this data during sales order entry.
The customer master file also captures customer preferences or rules, such as:
• send invoice with goods
• no statement is required
• purchase order required
• charge interest on overdue accounts
• allow part shipments
• backorder handling instructions
• backorder release priority
It also includes any customised layouts for invoices, statements and other documents.
Full enquiry functions
View the full details of the customer master file, and immediately access current and historical sales orders and transactions through enquiry screens and reports.
In addition, you can interrogate the customer’s file for aging analysis, product sales history, sales orders, outstanding invoices, current inventory exposure, historical transactions, licenses or permits, complaints, delivery addresses, instructions and more.
View aged balances for a customer
Account conversions
You can easily change a customer’s account code, which is helpful if the account code is based on a name that changes.
If another customer takes over a customer’s business, you can merge the accounts.
Transfer customers of a sales representative to another representative, or customers in one territory to another territory.
Customer pricing, discounts, promotions and rebates
Pronto Xi’s enables flexible pricing structures adaptable for each customer account or bill-to account.
Determine the sell price by a user-defined combination of customer and item attributes, such as Pricing Levels, Contract, Territory, Warehouse, Customer Group, Product Class, Product Type and Item Group.
You also have the same flexibility for discounts, promotions and rebates.
Budgets and forecasts
Configurable Budgets allow you to create sales-based budgets using any combination of attributes from the customer and inventory master records.
Create budgets daily, weekly or per period, and base them on a range of measures, including value, quantity, gross profit and gross profit percentage. Create a detailed Configurable Budget
Invoices and credit notes
Accounts Receivable streamlines straightforward sales order processing. For example, if you take an order, create an invoice and post the order to the customer, you do not need to create an inventory item. Instead, use a descriptive line to record the sales information in the invoice.
If you are manually invoicing a customer for a non-stock item (for example, the recovery of expenses or miscellaneous revenue), Accounts Receivable allocates the invoice to the appropriate General Ledger account.
Perform a variety of common tasks in one area using the Transaction Management screen
Transaction Management
Accounts Receivable officers can now perform many of the tasks relating to customer transactions in a single screen. These include:
• changing the transaction reference
• changing the invoice status to in dispute or under investigation
• writing off invoices (bad debt)
• performing refunds
• supplying contra
• using Journal to a General Ledger account
eInvoices
Customer invoices are the first step in the digitisation of the supply chain. Pronto Xi offers an eInvoicing capability to support this transformation, allowing you to electronically send and receive invoices.
Australia and New Zealand have adopted the global Peppol framework for eInvoicing, and Pronto Xi provides integration that is compliant with these requirements. Simply join with an access point to send eInvoices; OZEDI is our recommended partner.
Seamlessly integrate eInvoicing with Pronto Xi
Cash receipts
Accounts Receivable provides a variety of methods to allocate cash receipts. You can:
• automatically check off invoices and then fall back to the outstanding method
• use an outstanding method (net invoice amount)
• use a manual method (this is useful when copying a receipt from a spreadsheet)
• use one receipt to pay invoices from more than one customer account
• leave a receipt unallocated and check off against an invoice at a future date
In addition, prepayments can be applied to a sales order or reference, and these will be picked up later via the customer journalling process.
Accounts Receivable processes foreign currency values, including associated bank charges. Any exchange gain or loss associated with the transaction is automatically calculated and posted.
Based on a user-defined global tolerance, any short payments are automatically written off to a predefined General Ledger account.
Accounts Receivable also includes processes for dishonoured cheques and the automatic write-back of related transactions. Take up bank charges in the General Ledger or charge them back to the customer and produce a bank audit report. You can also print and reprint bank deposit (pay-in) slips.
Display intuitive cash receipting with reference details in a separate window
Transfer an overpayment between two customers in Journal
Journals
Accounts Receivable allows you to transfer transactions from one customer account to another via the journal.
If you use multiple control accounts, these transactions are only reflected in the General Ledger if they represent activity in different control accounts. The net overall value of the Accounts Receivable ledger is not changed for these journals.
When a company is both a customer and a supplier, values held against the customer account may have contra transactions posted against the supplier account.
When required, write off specific transactions as bad debts, and consumer taxes will automatically adjust.
Customer General Ledger journals allow you to directly allocate General Ledger amounts to customers. This function is typically used to recharge expenses.
End-of-period rollovers
Accounts Receivable provides a clear process for managing period-end rollovers, minimising downtime and offline maintenance, which is particularly valuable for businesses operating in a 24/7 environment.
Each sub-ledger record has a period flag, allowing for a record-by-record period roll — which, in turn, removes the need to log users out during the rollover.
A status screen displays detailed information on the rollover progress.
Special sales features
Accounts Receivable offers a number of features for specialised industries and sales order processing, including:
• licensing or permitting requirement for the purchase of certain products (for example, tobacco or liquor)
• the capacity to print a customer’s item number on the invoice if their item number is different to yours
• the ability to allow only specified customers to buy certain products (for example, exclusivity arrangements)
• customer partial shipment policies, which indicate whether a customer accepts backorders and how these backorders are handled
• different form layouts where required by customers (for example, invoices or statements)
• order surcharge (fixed percentage or dollar amount) for orders below a minimum value
• the mandatory input of customer purchase order number/reference in order entry
• the ability to define a “use-by date”, which is the minimum acceptable shelf-life of a product
Credit officers
Credit officers control the level of credit extended to individual customers and may be responsible for debt collection.
Accounts Receivable allows a credit officer to place a customer on No Supply until the customer pays their account. They can then override the No Supply flag to release all or specific suspended orders.
Credit officers can also send overdue letters to customers and charge interest on overdue accounts through Accounts Receivable.
Orders that exceed a customer’s credit limit can be automatically placed on hold until a credit officer releases them. Each credit officer is assigned value limits, which control the amount they release for a customer and the value of individual credit notes they can authorise.
Manage customer follow-ups in one place
Tailor documents to suit your business requirements with TrueForm Neo
Business Intelligence
Pronto Xi delivers a complete set of ready-to-go operational reports and business dashboards, helping finance and accounts staff seamlessly run day-to-day accounts receivable operations and gain real-time insight into the business’s performance.
Operational reports
Operational reports come with built-in filters and summary headers, meaning users have greater control over the information they report on. The following operational reports are standard in Accounts Receivable:
• Aged Trial Balance — Displays transactional values per customer in historical ageing buckets, structured by invoice or due date
• Customer Transactions — Allows you to view transactions by customer or transaction date for reconciliation and issue investigation or for data verification purposes
KPIs
Pronto Xi’s KPI Library has a wealth of preconfigured KPIs, allowing you to analyse and understand all aspects of your accounts receivable function.
Accounts Receivable KPIs include:
• balance and ageing by invoice date
• balance and ageing by due date
• customer statistics
• new and closed customers
• invoices — value/count
• accounts receivable days
• customer zero sales
Importantly, you can capture KPI data over time to analyse trends and proactively manage operations. View data via IBM Cognos technology or Pronto Xi Workspaces.
Create a view of a business’s financial health for your CFO
Accounts Payable
Drill down into your supplier accounts with Accounts Payable, giving you a complete view of supplier arrangements, transactions and approval levels
Fully integrated with Pronto Xi’s General Ledger and Purchasing modules, Accounts Payable helps you to manage supplier accounts easily.
Key features include:
• separate purchase and pay-to accounts
• customised cheque and remittance generation
• automated payments processing by cheque, electronic funds transfer (EFT) and other formats
• prepayments against purchase orders or the account
• full purchase and payment history
• multi-currency support for foreign and local bank accounts
• pay as you go (PAYG) tax withholding/Form 1099
• bank reconciliation for multiple banks
• current and forward commitment tracking
• recharging expenses back to a customer account
• purchase order, invoice and shipment matching
Supplier maintenance
Maintain detailed information about your suppliers in the Supplier Maintenance screen
This information becomes the default data in all other Pronto Xi modules, giving you centralised control over your supplier data. In turn, this increases your operational efficiency and supports sound financial management.
Enquiry functions
Accounts Payable supports a range of enquiries and analysis, including:
• full transaction history
• ageing analysis
• commitment analysis
• supplier and transaction notes
• purchase order details and General Ledger transactions
• foreign and local invoice amounts
• outstanding purchase orders
Supplier types
Accounts Payable has a Supplier Type field, which holds a user-definable code and puts suppliers into categories such as General, Contractor or Trade.
Use Supplier Type to split payable control accounts within the General Ledger and limit payment runs or user access to particular accounts.
The field is also a selection criterion for most Accounts Payable reports.
Easy options for payments
Accounts Payable is easy to use and offers a range of payment options. You can:
• draw payments using local or foreign currencies
• draw a payment manually and enter its details against the supplier account or direct to a General Ledger account
• draw from foreign bank accounts
• automatically create a single payment
• build, review and refine a file based on suppliers, minimum/maximum amounts, due dates and other selection criteria
• ensure discounts are taken up for a payment run
• automatically perform payment runs by selecting suppliers, due dates, amount limits and more
Select invoices to pay and save the selection option for future use
Select suppliers to pay and easily override or deselect invoices
Automatically calculate invoice due dates based on supplier payment terms
Pay-to accounts
Accounts Payable allows you to purchase goods from one supplier but specify that the invoice is paid to a different supplier account. For example, you might purchase goods from a branch account but make the payment to the head office account.
Set up this type of transaction using the supplier’s “pay-to” account, which specifies the parent account for the payment. This functionality stores the purchase history against the branch account, while the amount owed is held against the head office or “pay-to” account.
Payment terms
Accounts Payable uses smart payment terms to calculate due dates for invoices. Options include the:
• number of days from the invoice date
• number of days from the end of the month
• specified cut-off date
During invoice entry, the system automatically calculates the invoice due date based on the payment terms assigned to the supplier. You can manually change the due date at any time before the invoice is paid.
Payment type
Accounts Payable allows you to determine how a supplier is paid — by cheque, draft, EFT or letter of credit.
Settlement discount code
Suppliers may provide discounts to encourage faster settlements. You can automate the processing of these discounts using the discount terms offered by each supplier.
Maintain detailed information about your suppliers
Payment selection
A payment selection flag helps you to easily select which suppliers to include in a payment run or report.
Designate suppliers as:
• local
• foreign
• priority code between 1 and 9
• selection code between A and Z
Assign priority payment levels to certain suppliers so that, for example, those that need to prompt payment are given the highest priority.
Default General Ledger accounts
Assign each supplier to a default General Ledger account to simplify the processing of invoices. For example, invoices from the local service station default to a particular motor vehicle expense account.
Invoices
Accounts Payable incorporates a variety of invoice and credit note options.
Process each transaction in local or foreign currency. Taxes calculate automatically, but this can be overridden if the calculated amounts are different to the invoice’s tax amounts.
For all invoice types, you can specify whether the sales order lines are consolidated or printed as individual lines.
Purchase order invoice
Purchase order invoices link to purchase orders. You can tailor the system to handle variances in several ways.
If the system identifies a variance between the purchase order and invoice, you must account for it during invoice entry. Invoices can still be authorised for payment if there is a variance. The costing of authorised variances is automatically sent back to inventory, a project or a General Ledger code.
Purchase return
If a supplier returns goods on a purchase order after an invoice has been processed but before it has been paid, the authorised payment amount automatically reduces by the value of the return.
Shipment extra charge invoice
Shipment extra charge invoices link costs to shipments. Accounts Payable automates the cost of extra shipping charges across the shipment’s inventory.
Non–purchase order invoice
For invoices where a purchase order is not raised, the invoice is directly allocated to a General Ledger code. Typically, this is done for utility invoices, telephone accounts and other indirect costs.
Asset invoice
Asset invoices allow accounts payable staff to create a fixed asset record within Fixed Assets. The person managing the Asset Register can then add more information, such as depreciation rates.
Recharge invoices
With recharge invoicing, you can recharge a supplier’s invoice directly to a customer.
Invoice authorisation tracking
Configure an approval and authority process that accurately tracks a supplier’s invoice from the moment it is received, allowing you to see its status at any time and identify any delays.
Invoice approval and payment approval can occur simultaneously or independently. You can also specify approval conditions depending on the type of goods supplied, the value of the goods or even the supplier.
Periodic payments
Set up Accounts Payable to automatically process the payment of periodic invoices, such as leases and insurance. Only invoices with a Next Run Date matching or falling before the specified date are processed.
You can also amend the value and date of any periodic payment as required.
Automate recurring payments for leases, insurance, and more
Stay on top of recurring payments
Current and forward commitments
The Payment Commitment by Supplier report keeps you abreast of all payments due in the coming months.
The report will calculate the value of purchase orders and shipments within the system that have not yet been invoiced.
Invoice data
Supplier data
Purchase order data
General Ledger codes
Cost centres Tax codes
Overview of how Pronto Xi integrates with an accounts payable automation solution
Payments
There are four main methods to pay supplier accounts. You can make payments against local or foreign banks.
The payment methods allow you to:
1. Draw a payment manually and enter its details against the supplier account. If the payment is made in a foreign currency, bank charges and any exchange gain/loss is posted to the General Ledger. Pay supplier invoices manually.
2. Generate payments automatically using Accounts Payable’s flexible payment-run capabilities. Payment options include EFT, cheque, BPAY or a customised file for payment by a third party. You can also reject payments, change due dates or part-pay an invoice before completing a payment run.
3. Build a review file based on a range of criteria to fine-tune and selectively release payments. Produce a list of selected transactions and suppliers at any time. Once the review is complete, payments are automatically created and processed.
4. Use a letter of credit. Raise a letter of credit, record drawings against a letter of credit and maintain letter of credit details.
Integration with accounts payable automation
Integrating third-party accounts payable automation solutions with Pronto Xi via the Pronto Connect API platform is easy.
The platform helps businesses to efficiently process supplier invoices by reducing up to 75% of the processing time and minimising missed or duplicated invoices.
Invoice data is captured electronically, matched against the purchase order and routed through the proper approval workflows before being pushed into Pronto Xi for data entry and filing.
If supplier invoices cannot be reconciled automatically, they are displayed in Pronto Xi so you can review and validate them before posting to the sub-ledger and General Ledger.
Pronto Connect
Journals
Accounts Payable transfers transactions from one supplier account to another using intersupplier journals.
Using a supplier journal, enter transactions directly between a supplier account and a nominated General Ledger account. If there are multiple control accounts, these transactions are only reflected in the General Ledger if they represent activity in different control accounts
Where a supplier is also a customer, Pronto Xi supports contra journals between Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable accounts.
Use contra journals to move funds between associated customers and suppliers
eInvoices
The first step in digitising the supply chain, eInvoicing allows you to automatically deliver supplier invoices into Pronto Xi. This occurs through an API, with invoices processed via the suppliers’ invoice functionality.
Transaction history
At month’s end, all invoices paid in full are transferred to an archive file. You can access these transactions in the archive using standard enquiries and reports.
Account conversions
It’s easy to change a supplier’s account code, which is useful if it is based on a name that changes.
If another supplier takes over a supplier’s business, you can merge the two accounts.
View all your outgoing payments at a glance
Business Intelligence
Pronto Xi delivers a complete set of ready-to-go operational reports and business dashboards, helping finance and accounts staff seamlessly run their day-to-day accounts payable operations and gain real-time insight into the business’s performance.
Operational reports
Operational reports come with built-in filters and summary headers, meaning users have greater control over the information they report on.
The following out-of-the-box operational reports in Accounts Payable include:
• Aged Trial Balance — Displays transactional values per customer in historical ageing buckets, structured by invoice or due date
• Supplier Transactions — Allows you to view transactions by supplier or transaction date for reconciliation and issue investigation or data verification purposes
• Payment Commitments by Supplier — Forecasts future payable amounts based on their due date, helping to assist with cash flow forecasting
• Foreign Currency Exposure — Records details of any owed foreign currency, structured by supplier and invoice
KPIs
Pronto Xi’s KPI Library has a wealth of preconfigured KPIs, allowing you to analyse and understand all aspects of your accounts payable function.
Accounts Payable KPIs include:
• balance and ageing by invoice date
• balance and ageing by due date
• supplier statistics
• new suppliers
• invoices — value/count
• accounts payable days
Importantly, you can capture KPI data over time to analyse trends and proactively manage operations. View data via IBM Cognos technology or Pronto Xi Workspaces.
Customer Central
Minimise service strain and improve your cash flow with Customer Central
Customer Central is a powerful solution for managing accounts, payments and invoices, and it empowers your customers by giving them the freedom and flexibility to manage accounts at their convenience.
The application streamlines critical processes for businesses and their end-user customers, providing a single integrated touchpoint utilising the Pronto Xi platform.
Customers can access their accounts 24/7 within this self-service portal, giving them complete oversight. It’s a convenient solution that reduces the need for user support, freeing your customer service teams to focus on delivering greater value.
On the administrative level, Customer Central consistently captures all information about past customer interactions and transactions. This creates a single source of truth, provides the visibility to drive collaboration across operations and supports consistent customer communications.
Businesses’ finance and accounts teams can use Customer Central to:
• maintain clear and timely communication with just one click, including sending reminders for overdue invoices
• automate payment confirmation and “thankyou” emails, and post announcements on customer dashboards
• improve cash flow and build customer relationships with incentives, discounts and special credit terms
• add important announcements in the top banner of the customer dashboard, such as product and delivery updates
Provide customers with 24/7 access to their account details
View all the account details for a specific customer
Your customers can use Customer Central to:
• review their balance, credit terms and paid/ unpaid/overdue invoices — all on one screen
• print or download invoices to store or send
• view current and past sales orders
• manage and update account details, including name, billing address, email and phone number
• raise a service call directly to discuss accounting queries or invoice disputes
Send customers a personalised reminder on an overdue invoice
Payroll & Resources
Maximise your most valuable assets
Payroll & Resources
Maximise the potential of your assets
Efficiently manage resources activity and equipment processes with time-saving Payroll and Resources tools
Pronto Xi’s Payroll and Resource Management gives you a complete view of your workforce and equipment, wherever they are located, in one secure system.
These modules put information about your most valuable assets in front of decisionmakers, helping them respond to changing priorities effectively. In addition, they reduce the administrative burden by enabling management to effectively access important information anywhere, anytime via any mobile device.
Payroll helps keep your employees happy with a seamless remuneration process. The efficient payroll system assists you in rewarding your employees for their hard work and effort.
The Employee Portal equips managers and employees to quickly perform daily tasks, like submitting leave and updating details.
Resource Management enables you to plan and manage human and equipment resource requirements.
And, unlock your resources’ full potential — without overbooking them — with Resource Scheduler, which gives you a real-time view of your team’s workload, resource allocation and availability.
Payroll
Get comprehensive control over Australian employees’ wages, entitlements and payments with Payroll
Pronto Xi’s Payroll is a one-stop shop for managing your employees. It streamlines remuneration and payments and captures all employee information in one spot, enabling you to run your business more efficiently.
Payroll’s key features and functionality enable you to:
• easily manage employee details, remuneration specifics, superannuation, banking information and permanent transactions
• meet personnel management requirements with Organisation Management’s userdefinable structure
• flexibly define leave conditions and estimate leave values with Leave Management
• link Resource Management to employee profiles for accurate leave entitlement calculations
• streamline employee time management and compliance with annualised salary requirements through Integrated Timesheets
• simplify pay run generation, reconciliation, confirmation and compliance with Single Touch Payroll Phase 2 using Pay Run Management’s centralised workflow process
Payroll employee details
Input a variety of employee information into Payroll to streamline your company’s payroll processes. Information can include:
• Personal details — Add personal details, set Wage Gender Equality (WGEA) reporting standards and create custom categories for analysing employee expenses and benefits
• Remuneration — Cover tax exemptions, thresholds claimed, Medicare exemptions and any governmental debts like STSL obligations
• Superannuation — Specify the employee’s chosen fund and include salary sacrifice or extra superannuation contributions. Additionally, add reportable employee contributions
• Banking information — Define the employee’s default banking preferences and up to six additional banking choices
• Permanent transactions — Establish recurring payments or automatically apply deductions in each pay cycle, such as salary sacrifice deductions, child support payments and union fees
• Earnings history — Get an overview and insight into all payments made to the employee categorised according to ATO STP reporting standards
• Costing — Categorise employees so that the general ledger accounts for salary and wages, as well as leave payments and provisions concerning employee obligations and leave. These entries are automatically reflected in the General Ledger system
Organisation management
Organisation management tools control the detailed information necessary to meet your organisation’s personnel management requirements. The tools allow you to develop a user-definable organisation structure to assist with leave and timesheet approvals.
Managing Director Amanda STEWARD
Leave management
When it comes to defining leave conditions, Payroll is highly flexible. Distinguish between accrued and entitled leave, and establish varying accrual rates before and after a specified qualifying period. Personal leave, annual leave, long service leave and rostered days off accumulate automatically in alignment with awards or individual needs.
Payroll officers can use estimation tools to approximate leave values owed to employees. These tools offer information on owed, projected and accrued values up to the estimation date.
Enter leave requests in advance and they’ll be added to the relevant pay cycle when payment is due. These leave transactions offset any permanent transactions, reducing double handling. You can manage subsequent transactions related to taken leave, leave loading, or payments in lieu of time off during any pay run.
Link Resource Management to an employee profile to create employee work cycle patterns. By defining the work cycle, you can specify what constitutes a working day, which is crucial when calculating leave entitlements as it helps determine the exact number of days or hours accrued through leave requests.
Integrated timesheets
The integrated payroll system seamlessly generates timesheets from various sections of Pronto Xi, automatically incorporating them into your employees’ pay schedules. Timesheets can be user-defined to suit various needs, whether it’s for costing and payroll purposes, costing alone, payroll alone, or entirely notional. This timesheet functionality empowers organisations to effectively manage employee time and uphold compliance with annualised salary requirements.
Connecting Resource Management to an employee profile enables you to establish work cycle patterns for your employees and associate them with time interpretation rules. This way, when timesheets are submitted for or by the employee, the interpretation engine categorises the total work time into different time buckets for regular and overtime components.
Pay run management
A central pay-run workflow process offers great flexibility in processing payroll. Initiating a pay run allows you to set up the specifics, such as defining whether it’s a standard pay cycle (including all employees or only those due for payment), or an adjustment pay run. You can also temporarily pause leave and superannuation entitlements for that particular run.
Pay run generation
Payroll allows you to submit leave requests, track timesheets owed and process permanent transactions. It automates these tasks, streamlining your payroll officers’ workload. After setting up the pay run, payroll officers can easily reconcile payments and input necessary details for each employee.
Whether employees are getting a raise, bonus or commission, Payroll precisely calculates tax amounts, saving your payroll team time on what would otherwise be spent on manual tasks. With no need to handle data multiple times or rely on Excel-based calculations, you can prevent costly errors in payroll processing.
Pay run reconciliation
Analysing pay transactions is simple. When a payroll officer examines an employee’s pay run, they have immediate access to their current pay transactions, leave entitlements owed, generated timesheets and previous pay information. All necessary details are in one place, so payroll officers don’t need to navigate multiple screens.
The payroll system computes the PAYG withheld and the superannuation guarantee owed to each employee to determine the net value paid for that particular pay run. It automatically produces detailed reports, enabling:
• the identification of errors and warnings related to the pay run
• a comprehensive breakdown of amounts paid to each employee in the pay run, including taxes and deductions
• the generation of an employee summary showcasing leave accruals, gross and net tax figures, and other allowances and deductions
• comparison between an employee’s current and past payments highlighting any discrepancies
Pay run confirmation
Once the payroll is reconciled, a payroll officer confirms the payroll. This important step involves creating pay slips, banking information files and general ledger costing information.
An employee’s payslip provides a comprehensive breakdown of amounts paid and deducted. It also includes details on accrued, used and outstanding leave, including annual leave, personal and carer’s leave, rostered days off (RDOs), and any other type of recognised leave within your organisation.
Upon verification by payroll officers, Pronto Xi updates the Payroll module and generates general ledger postings. Specifically, the system:
• updates the employee’s earnings history
• records payment transactions for each employee
• adjusts employee entitlements related to accrued or taken leave
• updates year-to-date history on various pay codes
• updates general ledger accounts impacted by Payroll processing
Compliance
Single Touch Payroll Phase 2
Pronto Xi’s Payroll complies with Single Touch Payroll (STP) Phase 2, which facilitates business reporting to the Australian Taxation Office (ATO). STP reporting feature allows you to report various payments like salaries, wages, pay-asyou-go (PAYG) withholding and superannuation contributions to the ATO. We safeguard and streamline all interactions with the ATO through our ATO communications gateway.
National Employment Standards (NES)
When it comes to managing leave and compliance, Payroll caters to the National Employment Standards (NES). Users can establish their own rules for leave entitlements, grant extra leave entitlements beyond NES requirements and adapt to various jurisdictions’ regulations on long service leave.
The system also supports paid family domestic and parental leave programs within its leave management features.
Reportable fringe benefits & exempt foreign income
Payroll enables the input of an employee’s reportable fringe benefits or exempt foreign income and reports this through STP.
Reports
Payroll offers a wide array of reports, such as PAYG reconciliation, STP summaries, end-of-year information, earnings by pay code, leave liability, payroll tax, and superannuation remittance advice and history. Cater reporting options to your organisation’s specific payroll information requirements when you use Pronto Xi Payroll in conjunction with IBM Cognos Analytics.
Employee Portal
Boost satisfaction and productivity by granting your staff access to our user-friendly
Employee Portal
Managing human resources poses a significant administrative challenge for many organisations. Pronto Xi’s Employee Portal helps alleviate this burden by digitising processes and optimising workflows.
Developed as a fully adaptable web application, the Employee Portal empowers managers by giving them direct access to employee data. In tandem, employees can efficiently complete daily tasks using a computer, tablet, or smartphone.
No matter where your team members are located, they can:
• record timesheets and allowances
• review and update personal information like addresses, emergency contacts and banking details
• request leave and attach digital documents such as medical certificates
• access and print pay slips
• monitor submitted leave requests and timesheets
• estimate future leave balances
• confirm or reject work schedules
• define home page and other viewing settings to quickly access to essential tasks and information
Managers enjoy additional functionalities that enable them to:
• organise their task lists, including pending time-off requests
• identify who is currently on leave
• approve timesheets
• forecast their teams’ leave obligations during shutdown periods
• approve or reject leave requests via email
User administration
Integrated tightly with Payroll, the Employee Portal leverages your company’s organisational chart to ensure that managers can only access information for employees within their reporting structure.
Administrators can define the features accessible to Employee Portal users, guaranteeing alignment with established policies and procedures. This level of control can even be tailored at an individual employee level, allowing administrators to selectively specify which employees can view personal/ carers’ leave entitlements.
Administrators can also personalise the portal’s colour scheme and incorporate their company logo.
Maintain information about your employees
Resource Management
Plan and manage human and equipment resource requirements with Resource Management
Pronto Xi’s Resource Management integrates Payroll and Facilities Management modules, allowing you to comprehensively plan and manage resources.
Key features include:
• resource attribute definition
• work cycles
• rosters
• time interpretation rules
• timesheet entries
• notifications When used in conjunction with Resource Scheduler, Resource Management simplifies the process of scheduling resources and equipment across different Pronto Xi modules, providing you with real-time visibility into current resource allocations and giving you access to tools like Planner and Map view.
Resource master
A resource comes in the form of personnel, subcontractors or equipment. The Resource Management module connects these resources to various modules within Pronto Xi and interacts with modules like Payroll, Service, Project, Maintenance Management and Plant Maintenance. By establishing links between the modules, you access valuable information about resources across different areas of operation.
Resource management focuses on understanding the availability of resources, whether they meet job requirements and how effectively they are utilised. You can also define important attributes for each resource.
Work cycles
A work cycle is a period in a posted work schedule starting when the cycle begins and ending when it begins to repeat itself. The cycle may span days or weeks or a part of a day or week. You can also define a work cycle as a regular or irregular pattern, allowing you to accommodate any cycle pattern. In addition, it can define the available and scheduled time for a linked resource.
A default location also determines the global unavailability of resources for events such as public holidays or shut-down periods.
Rosters
A resource roster allows you to define the positions required to fulfil a roster, which ensures the resource has the required position qualifications to be assigned.
Rosters coincide with work cycles to determine resource availability. You can also set budgets for each roster and compare these to actual rostered costs, which offers full visibility and control.
Time interpretation
Resource Management can establish time interpretation rules showcasing a detailed breakdown of hours worked. This process involves categorising the total time worked into defined time buckets, representing normal and overtime components for a resource. Additionally, configure categories to include allowances for paid and unpaid breaks, start and finish times, and applicable allowances. An automatic allowance feature analyses work time components and applies relevant allowances based on predefined rules.
Pronto Xi’s time interpretation rules are userdefined and flexible enough to handle the most demanding employment conditions.
Timesheets
Enter timesheets against a resource and analyse using the time interpretation rules to ensure your employees receive the correct pay.
You can also generate and automatically populate timesheets based on a resource’s work cycle or roster, enabling managers to gain greater efficiencies.
Attributes
Attributes are user-defined characteristics that can be applied to your resources. Attributes help you understand what licenses or qualifications are available for a resource, and define insurance for subcontractors, load restrictions for equipment, and customer or equipment requirements. For example, you can state that a resource requires certain inductions for a specific customer.
Notifications
Resources accepts or declines work orders, project tasks or rosters via email without logging into Pronto Xi. This means resources do not need to be set up or trained as Pronto Xi users, simplifying the workflow, reducing costs and making it easier to onboard a new resource.
Pronto Xi module integration
Resource Management integrates into the following Pronto Xi modules, highlighting the additional power it can provide to your business operations.
Payroll
Linking a resource to payroll allows you to apply a work cycle and use it with a leave request to determine the number of days or hours to be paid. In addition, by defining time interpretation rules, you can create timesheets and break them into time buckets for simplified payroll processing. Time interpretation rules automatically create allowances based on specific conditions to assist payroll processing further.
Time and attendance
Resource Management integrates with our partner, Bundy Plus. With this solution, time and attendance timesheets flow into Resource Management for time interpretation, which then flows through to Payroll to pay employee.
Facilities Management (Service, Project and Maintenance Management)
Connecting a resource to an engineer or project enables you to implement a work cycle that assigns calls or tasks to a resource. When assigning an event to your resource, you can instantly check availability, assuring you that they can complete the work. If the resource is also associated with a payroll record, any leave requests update the resource’s availability, providing you with a comprehensive view of their schedule.
The facilities modules also use attribute hierarchies that you can configure to suggest suitable resources for the job. For example, a customer may have specific requirements for indications, or the equipment being serviced may demand particular skills. These attributes are automatically applied to all requirements so when you review a list of available resources for the job, only those matching the criteria are displayed.
Connecting a resource to a plant item can also trigger automatic unavailability if the plant item is being serviced via the Maintenance Management module.
Resource Scheduler
Quickly allocate resources and maximise efficiency with Resource Scheduler
Resource Scheduler helps you efficiently manage and schedule resources, teams and equipment — all in one place. The tool streamlines your resource allocation process and avoids the hassle of dealing with multiple systems.
In Pronto Xi, Resource Scheduler plans and tracks resource allocations across modules like Service, Project, Maintenance Management and Resource Management. It gives you a comprehensive view, ensuring projects are completed on time, within budget and without overburdening employees or resources.
It can be used to easily assign service engineers and equipment for various tasks and simplify maintenance work order assignments. By leveraging historical data, Resource Scheduler anticipates bottlenecks and slow periods to help you make more informed planning decisions. Whether task-based projects or specialised services, Resource Scheduler provides a visual way to estimate resource needs and allocate them accordingly. Use filters to quickly identify available resources for specific tasks.
Integration with Google Maps in Pronto Xi lets you track the location of your resources and optimise their routes based on proximity to job sites. Having this real-time visibility into current resource allocations means you can quickly adapt to unexpected situations in service organisations. It turns challenges into opportunities helping exceed customer expectations by allowing you to focus on genuine customer needs rather than just reacting to emergencies.
View types
The Resource Scheduler divides into two sections on the one screen: Unallocated Activities and Resource availability. The different types of views include:
Planner view
Planner view displays all Unallocated Activities across the modules and resources a user can access. Toggle it for a dedicated view of unallocated events (activities yet to be allocated to a resource) based on the module under review. The views for Unallocated Events are:
• Project Tasks
• Maintenance Work Orders
• Service Calls
Team colour-coding allows you to easily see how different teams are utilised, and a timescale toggle allows you to quickly move between the day, week and month view on both the Unallocated Activities and Resource Availability screen sections.
Map view
Utilising web-based map technology, Pronto Xi enables you to efficiently access a map or driving directions for your upcoming service call by simply clicking the appropriate map link on the screen. Service managers remain informed about the whereabouts of each service team member and can assign calls using real-time data such as traffic conditions, optimal routes and current location.
Service
call map view
Service managers can locate the nearest available team member based on the service call address. With all the relevant resource information (including workload) readily available, it’s easy to select a service team member and immediately allocate them to a call based on availability.
Best
routes and location history
Service managers can review location history to enhance resource allocation strategies and boost customer service response times. By gaining insights into the whereabouts of your field resources, you can integrate cost-saving efficiencies into your organisation’s workflows while upholding customer satisfaction and work health and safety standards.
Scheduler view
Scheduler view auto-refreshes automatically, or you can configure it to control the frequency of the refresh
Optimise your planning with integrated Google Maps
Take an hourly view of your unallocated events and resources
Distribution
Inventory in motion
Inventory in motion
Streamline your operations, better manage costs and gain a competitive advantage
Pronto Xi’s Distribution gives you clear visibility of your inventory across warehouses, with all the detailed information you need to make informed business decisions.
Inventory moves in and out of businesses with the help of purchase and sales orders. Consisting of Inventory, Sales and Purchasing modules, Distribution helps you manage these essential elements of doing business with smart tools to move your stock to the right places at the right time with minimal costs.
Applicable to any industry, Inventory tracks your stock at a granular level. Organise stock by quantity, movement, groups/kits and more. Store detailed and customised information about each item, including detailed price information, and automate ordering and replenishment functions. With information flowing seamlessly into the fully integrated General Ledger, you can be confident that your data is accurate and up to date.
Purchasing is an efficient procurement solution that provides tight cost control. It simplifies purchasing activities by managing domestic and foreign supplies and shipment processes. Automate the creation of purchase orders using rules based on inventory levels, sales order commitments and sales history, freeing up your procurement team to negotiate better deals. A unique approval system allows users to create simple or complex approval processes based on business needs in an easy-to-use workflow administration screen.
Manage the end-to-end sales order life cycle with Sales. A simple but powerful way to manage sales, it processes sales orders, produces picking slips, and prints consignment notes, manifests, labels and customer documentation — all within a single integrated solution. Any updates to sales orders are automated, and changes are instantly pushed across all relevant modules in Pronto Xi, ensuring seamless and error-free processes.
Inventory
Efficiently control your product flows with Inventory
Maintain detailed information about an inventory item
With seamless integration with Pronto Xi modules such as Purchasing and Manufacturing, and the ability to track stock by warehouse, Inventory gives you complete visibility over your business’s inventory.
Key features include:
• multiple warehouses, suppliers and prices per item
• variant items: style, colour and size
• serial number and lot tracking
• multiple units of measure (UOM) and first-in, first-out (FIFO)
• support for Global Trade Item Number (GTIN) barcodes
• standard, average, FIFO, actual and replacement costings
• item licences
• stocktake and cycle counting
• interactive image display for products
• item attributes
• automated reordering and replenishment
Inventory master records
Inventory records the information and transaction history associated with an item. To create or maintain an item, use the main Items Maintenance screen.
We’ve introduced Item templates so you can maintain and manage industry-specific inventory information for industries such as chemical, paper, retail, wholesale distribution, timber and mining.
It handles the following types of items:
• Stocked or standard — A normal saleable item which is typically purchased but can also be manufactured
• Manufactured — Items with components, a bill of materials (BOM) and routings
• Raw materials — Items that are not saleable and do not have a BOM, but can be transferred using a transfer sales order
• Indent — Items that are not generally held in stock but are purchased subject to a sale
• Kit — A combination of various types of items
• Labour — Items that have a cost and a selling price but there is no necessity to control the quantity on hand (for example, items used as components to cost labour in a BOM or in kits)
• Specials — Items with a cost and a selling price, but because they are generally used to control cost overhead recovery or are consumables (for example, expense items such as stationery or electricity), there is no necessity to control the quantity on hand
Inventory master records can also include additional information or notes, such as hazardous or dangerous goods documentation.
Record the information of each inventory items with Inventory master records
Managing multiple processes
Inventory provides you with the flexibility to manage multiple processes for a single inventory item.
For example, you may have an item that needs to be configured as backflushed, in line with your manufacturing process, but also requires license controls. With Inventory’s process requirement functionality, you can configure the required options in one easy step.
Inventory maintenance
The module’s main Inventory Maintenance screen displays selected and relevant information based on your item type. If Inventory Maintenance includes a screen you don’t need, create an item template to hide fields. The mode button at the top also provides access to additional screens for warehouses, suppliers, pricing, alternatives, notes, BOM and more.
Warehouses
Inventory tracking is available in the Warehouse Management System (WMS), but Inventory also allows you to maintain pick and bulk locations against each warehouse in the non-WMS environment.
The inventory warehouse information records and tracks movements, costs and commitments for each item in each warehouse, helping you to manage your reordering requirements.
In addition, the Warehouses screen permits you to:
• determine inventory postings to the General Ledger
• record sales history
• automatically receive items from other warehouses via internal transfer orders
It accommodates various types of warehouses, including standard and advanced warehouses, factories, service vans (inventory stored in fleet vehicles) and consignments.
The screen also captures detailed inventorylevel information for each warehouse, including stock on hand, supplier orders and order commitments.
Inventory movements in each warehouse are recorded, summarised and displayed by transaction type.
Hide fields that are not required within inventory maintenance
Suppliers
The Supplier screen allows you to set up a supplier for an item by region, record pertinent information and track performance levels. Specify any number of suppliers.
Supplier attributes include:
• supplier preference
• supplier item code, description and conversion factor
• minimum order quantity
• supplier item group
• pack quantity and volume for cost apportionment of freight charges
• supplier estimated and most recent lead time
• multiple quantity price breaks by supplier
• foreign currency pricing iPad Air view on Inventory Supplier record
Manage flexible pricing, promotions, and competitor tracking with ease
Pricing
Inventory allows you to set pricing structures within the inventory master records. Maintain multiple pricing levels for each item, apply promotional prices for specified periods or set-up price algorithms and discount matrices. Tax rules are handled either at the item level or globally.
An item’s basic pricing record consists of a base price, multiple prices for different categories or quantity breaks, and the recommended retail price. Each item may have additional pricing structures defined by customer group or Warehouse.
Recalculate item prices based on a mark-up value or by applying a percentage increase over current prices. Your current price list can also be copied into a price maintenance environment — where price changes can be manipulated — before you update the current price lists.
Inventory also allows you to keep track of competitor prices.
Inventory master fields
Inventory includes the following master fields for each item, giving you complete flexibility and control over how you handle the detail.
Item code
The item code is an alphanumeric field used to identify items in Pronto Xi.
Description
Each item includes a three-line product description. In addition, an extended notes facility allows you to store unlimited text for internal and external purposes.
Product hierarchy
The product hierarchy is a multi-level classification system that clearly defines your business’s product classification.
The five-level structure has many benefits, including enhanced inventory management and reporting capability via Pronto Xi modules such as Business Intelligence.
You can select how many of the five “levels” of the hierarchy are turned on, and Inventory’s flexible maintenance means the hierarchy can be maintained from the top down or bottom up, making it suitable for various business needs and industries.
Associated functions such as price maintenance, reordering and bulk item maintenance can leverage active hierarchy levels. Data integrity is maintained by enforcing the hierarchical relationships between each “child” and “parent”.
Product group
Posting inventory transactions to the General Ledger is fully automated.
Categorise items by product groups, which is beneficial for:
• recording sales history
• posting to the General Ledger for sales, cost of goods sold and more
• reporting
• dissection of prices, discounts and promotions
• calculation of sales representative commissions
• inventory valuation
Establish prices, discounts and promotions based on product groups, for example, contract price by customer type/item group and promotional discount by customer type/ item group. You can also establish special commission rates for sales representatives by product group.
Attributes
Item attributes help extend the description of a product through a structured and ordered categorisation. Importantly, use attributes as data points to “slice and dice” sales data and uncover customer buying habits and preferences. These insights can then be used to create sales promotions, forecast purchases and exchange data with Avenue and eCommerce platforms.
APN
An alternative part number (APN) for a specific item can be used to include the code of another item, which is cross-referenced when the first item is superseded.
GTIN
The universally recognised Global Trade Item Number (GTIN) is the industry-accepted barcode for a specific item. A single item can have multiple GTINs to reflect various units of measure, such as consumer unit, traded unit or pallet.
Use APN and GTIN for enquiry, reporting and scanning directly into Inventory.
Units, packs, sizes and weights
Apply multiple units of measure for the sale, warehouse storage and procurement of each inventory item. You can also store pack weights and cubic dimensions.
Traceability
Inventory allows you to trace items using various methods, including:
• Serial-tracked — Used when the goods are received, at dispatch, or both
• Lot-tracked — Used for batch tracking, this facilitates full traceability from purchase to product recall, if required
• Purchase-tracked — Used for tracking by purchase order number
Import tariffs/excise tax
When an item is imported from a foreign supplier, the tariff charged depends on the supplier’s country and the nature of the item.
Inventory uses a country code to identify the country of origin and a tariff code to identify the class of the item for tariff purposes. The country code is stored against the supplier, while the tariff code is held at the item level.
Inventory transactions
Inventory holds comprehensive transaction details for each item and warehouse, including control numbers (for example, serial or lot number), source documents and financial information.
You can also define the retention period for historical data files.
Inventory adjustments
Most inventory issues are captured within other Pronto Xi modules, such as Shopfloor Manufacturing or Sales. However, in some instances, you may need to record inventory issues manually.
Record issues against the following:
• Manufacturing (Factory/WIP or work order)
• Project (General Ledger or Service Call)
• General Ledger
• Maintenance
• Inventory Adjustment
• receipts from purchase order or work order
The manual recording of issues typically occurs within the Purchasing module. However, Inventory includes a fast and simple option — called Manufactured Goods Receipt — to receive goods purchased without using the BOM to create and process a formal work order.
A Manufactured Goods Receipt is a simple method of recording the receipt of manufactured items in an inventory. As goods allocated to a work order are sometimes returned unused, use this option to return the components back into inventory.
Quality analysis
Hold goods for release until they have passed through quality checks. If goods do not pass the checks, Inventory allows you to reject, scrap or return the items to the supplier.
Reorder processing
Inventory includes reordering functions, allowing you to automatically create purchase orders and work orders according to selected criteria and review these before creating the actual orders.
Reorder Reports calculates the reorder quantities needed to satisfy your business’s commitments, minimum and maximum inventory levels, or a combination of these factors. You can also use average sales history, average warehouse demand or forecast to plan requirements.
The reorder processing calculation considers a number of factors, including:
• minimum and maximum days cover
• minimum and maximum inventory levels
• economic order quantity
• lead time
• current inventory level, including current commitments
• items on order from supplier
• in transit
• internal requisitions
Budgets
Inventory holds budget information at the item, planning group or item group level.
You can manually enter budgets for each period of the year. You can also use spread factors which include weightings or ratios to fix each period’s relative proportion of the annual amount.
Pronto Xi also offers numerous reports comparing budgets against actual sales and cost listings.
Costing
Maintain various costs — such as standard, average, FIFO and actual — in Inventory for posting purposes, valuations and sales margin reporting.
Produce inventory valuation reports at any time using the costing method of your choice and, if necessary, recalculate costs based on a range of factors.
Landed costs are calculated as part of the shipment costing process in Accounts Payable.
Kits
Kits are a list of components made up of saleable items that can be optionally selected during the sales order process. For example, a computer, keyboard, monitor and mouse can be sold individually or as a kit.
Inventory accommodates various categories of kit component lines, including:
• mandatory
• optional
• variable quantity
• grouped options
Generate kit pricing from the components or simply select from the item price record.
Stocktake
To help you measure your inventory accurately, Inventory generates a snapshot view of holdings. Any adjustments are automatically reflected in the General Ledger.
To ensure company policies are adhered to, Inventory supports wall-to-wall and cycle counting techniques, as well as data-capturing techniques such as tickets, barcodes, radio frequency (RF) and cards.
The stocktake process includes:
• Initial pre-stocktake check — Inventory reports on any outstanding inventory-related transactions that need completing prior to the book inventory’s final snapshot
• Prepare stocktake — Inventory creates a snapshot file of your inventory holding and, if required, produces a Stocktake Report. A unique stocktake control code is generated as part of this process to facilitate easy identification and parameters
• Stocktake refreeze — Pronto Xi have the ability to refreeze the same stocktake file in the instance of an emergency order despatch
• Enter counts — Inventory employs multiple data-entry techniques, including manual data entry
• Produce reports — Inventory generates reports to assist with reconciliation, including uncounted items, variations and valuation reports
• Update stocktake — Inventory performs an update once the stocktake is finalised, and makes any necessary adjustments to the stock ledger and General Ledger for the appropriate accounting period
Purchasing
A highly efficient procurement solution, Purchasing manages today’s supply and shipment processes — and tomorrow’s future inventory requirements
Purchasing automatically creates purchase orders by combining data on inventory levels, sales history and current commitments. Purchase orders and shipment receipts automatically trigger updates to inventory levels, while invoices are matched and posted to the General Ledger.
Purchasing’s functionality includes:
• integration with all Pronto Xi modules
• purchase authorisation limits
• internal requisitions
• tracking of orders through placement, dispatch, receipt and invoice
• goods receipt by order or shipment
• blanket and contract orders
• returns and quotation requests
• tracking of international shipment charges
• calculation of inventory costs from shipment charges
• allocation of costs by a variety of methods, including weight, value and volume
• automatic reordering
• multiple currencies
• multiple cost allocations per line
• shipment recosting
• centralised approvals
• nomination of approver
• reallocation of approvers
• workflow administration for approvals
The Purchase Order management screen manages all purchases in one spot
Requisitions
Use Purchasing across the full range of functions associated with requisitions, including the approval process and enquiries.
It offers the capacity to raise a requisition before the entry of a purchase order and to ensure that an authorised person approves the requisition before a purchase order is raised.
Create comprehensive purchase order header details
Purchase orders
Pronto Xi automatically creates purchase orders, or the purchasing officer can follow a simple process to enter them manually. There is also the flexibility to configure these steps so they map to your business processes, ensuring efficient order entry.
Purchase order header
Purchasing automatically applies default parameters to the purchase order when a supplier is selected. And because it integrates with Accounts Payable, a rapid purchase order entry process is enabled without data duplication and errors.
Once an order is entered and approved, the order may be printed, and the inventory updated to show the quantity “on order”. Maintain purchase orders and record any changes, such as:
• multiple delivery docket numbers
• altered order status
• updated inventory levels and ledgers
• duplicate, break or split orders
• contract order variances
• returned items
View detailed information on all purchasing requirements
Purchase order lines
Within the Purchase Order Lines screen, you can access inventory enquiries, warehouse levels, pricing and available units of measure. You can also add notes, internal memos, additional charges and more.
Purchase order conclusion
Once all items are entered in the purchase order, they can be processed.
Purchase order approvals
Pronto Xi’s purchase order approval workflow is built to support your business with multiple layers, advanced criteria sets and the ability to trigger approvals based on unique items being purchased.
Approvers can add commentary for the person requesting the approval, see audit history and have one central spot for all their approvals. The requester can see the progression of the approval process, view who the approval is currently with and add their own commentary.
There is also the ability to re-route the workflow if something requires urgent attention.
Purchase order approvals can occur via mobile phone. Pre-packaged alerts provide a onetouch response, taking approvers to the central purchase order approval workflow to action the request.
Use advanced criteria sets to tailor your business’s purchase order approval workflow
Goods received by order
Once you enter and print a purchase order, you can record the receipt of goods. You also have the flexibility to process the invoice before or after receipt.
If you receive goods not on the original purchase order, you can add a new line to the order.
For first in, first out (FIFO) inventory management, Purchasing writes a FIFO record for each line item in the delivery.
If you receive only part of an order, the remainder is placed on backorder — these items are still considered on order and no additional processing is required. If you don’t
place the remainder on backorder, the system automatically cancels the undelivered items and adjust the order quantity accordingly.
Once goods are received, update the purchase order to allocate items to the destination warehouse. The received goods will be deducted from inventory on order or in transit (depending on order status) and added to the destination warehouse’s inventory.
Purchasing also records the actual delivery dates to destination warehouses, as well as lead times.
Streamline goods receipt and inventory updates with flexible order management
Warranty orders/warranty exchange
Warranty orders result from warranty claims and link to a dealer/customer claim or a warranty workshop job number.
Load items and non-stocked lines onto a warranty purchase order and select the item(s) to return. If there is a financial claim, enter it on a special line to claim the amount.
Shipment management
Purchasing includes an end-to-end shipment management capability, allowing you to group several orders against multiple international or local suppliers into one shipment and handle subsequent order processing, including delivery and invoicing, through the shipment processing functions.
Use shipments to record dispatches of goods from suppliers. The shipment can include items from several purchase orders and can record freight or other associated costs. Using shipments lets you track the progress of the goods and calculate landed costs.
Purchasing supports standard, average, FIFO and actual costing techniques for foreign shipments. Charges incurred in the shipment are automatically recorded and incorporated into revised average and landed costs.
When you receive a shipment, the goods attached to it are booked into the destination warehouse.
Manage multi-order shipments, track progress, and calculate landed costs with ease
Find shipment information in a matter of seconds
Incoming shipment notifications
You can receive incoming goods data electronically before goods arrive, allowing you to efficiently plan your inwards goods operation. If you have an established electronic data interchange (EDI) trading relationship in Pronto Xi, this information will be sent via a supplier’s EDI Dispatch Advice or Advanced Shipment Notification (ASN) message.
The ASN is also used to create or update purchase order shipment information in preparation for receiving goods into your warehouse.
Invoicing
Accounts Payable posts purchase orders and shipment management invoices, which you can view by running a supplier enquiry and drilling down.
Pronto Xi provides sophisticated handling of purchase order invoice variances, including price, quantity or charge. Set tolerance limits to determine if you require payment approval and determine whether to apply the change to the goods or raise a credit claim.
Ensure the correct costing of inventory with an invoice-matching process
Check the totals for batch-entered orders
General Ledger integration
Transactions you create and enter through Purchasing automatically update to Pronto Xi’s General Ledger and Accounts Payable modules according to the settings specified in Special Accounts.
Variance accounts, tariffs and duties
Purchasing allows you to record charges against a shipment associated with the goods being shipped. The duty payable is calculated from the duty rate and the purchase price of the item, so you don’t need to enter it manually as a shipment charge.
Costing and recosting
Purchasing calculates the landed cost of an item at the goods receipt and recosting stages. It automatically spreads the value of all shipment charges across all items on the shipment based on the selected distribution method. A Shipment Costing Report detailing the apportionment is produced at this stage.
Flagging the shipment for final recosting allows you to book goods into inventory and sell them before final charges are known.
At the final recosting stage, Purchasing recalculates the new landed cost of the item and reevaluates the inventory on hand.
If the inventory has already been sold, Purchasing creates cost adjustment sales orders to reflect the correct cost for sales history reporting and performs the relevant postings to the Cost of Goods Sold accounts in the General Ledger.
Purchase orders and shipment enquiries
Purchasing’s enquiry function lets you quickly find and retrieve detailed information on purchase orders and shipments in a number of different ways, including:
• order number
• warehouse
• status of order
• supplier
• item code
• requisition number
Supplier rebates
Set-up supplier rebates and enter them against purchase order invoices at invoice entry. The rebate amount is automatically calculated based on the invoice amount.
Supplier target-based rebates — where a quantity or amount is entered with a discount percentage for that target — can also be included. The discount percentage is not applied to an actual purchase order; instead, it is paid as a rebate by the supplier at a later date. The target applies to a period of time, and the discount applies when the cumulative purchases during that period exceed the target.
Enter actual rebates paid by the supplier; if you enter an amount greater than the rebate calculated, Purchasing issues a warning.
Sales
Sales order processes? Inventory and finance system integration? They’ve never been easier, thanks to Pronto Xi Sales
Sales is your go-to tool to simplify sales processes, helping you generate even more sales for your business.
It has numerous user-definable options to meet your specific requirements, and gives you the ability to tailor the entry screen and every stage within the order lifecycle process.
Whether you’re dealing with large order volumes or highly configured product environments, scalable order entry solutions are a necessity. Sales’ order templates and copy features deliver an optimised approach to order processing that empowers your sales team.
Manage every distribution aspect — from forward orders, quotations and consignments to warehouse transfers and returns — within simple, intuitive screens. Drill-back functionality and clear visibility of inventory and costs give you a 360-degree view across your distribution network.
Key features include:
• user-definable order entry screen
• bill of materials (BOM) configuration capability
• automatic inventory allocation
• internal transfer/work orders for unavailable inventory
• management of kits
• credit checking and display at order entry/edit
• multiple warehouse capabilities
• direct links between sales orders, purchase orders and work orders
• automatic freight calculations
• full sales history retention
• item alternatives and multiple units of measure
• full backorder management
Sales order integration
Sales fully integrates with Pronto Xi’s Inventory, Accounts Receivable, General Ledger and Customer Relationship Management modules. When a sales order is updated, available inventory, customer data, sales history, inventory movements and relevant General Ledger accounts are automatically updated across Pronto Xi.
Where electronic data interchange (EDI) is required, Pronto Xi EDI delivers sales order automation when files are imported. You’ll find automatic sales order creation in other modules, with Service, Rental and Project providing bulk creation processes based on agreed billing cycles.
Sales order entry and maintenance
Configure sales order entries to match your business processes and speed up order entries.
Sales order header
Once the customer is selected, the sales representative, price level, territory and available credit are automatically applied to a sales order. Integration with Accounts Receivable ensures a rapid sales order entry process without data duplication and errors.
Sales order lines
Upon entering items, the salesperson can view extensive inventory information, including pricing and availability. If an item is unavailable, Sales displays alternatives that might be of interest to the customer.
You can also record additional costs associated with fulfilment and charges for freight, packaging, handling or any other recoverable costs.
Sales order conclusion
Once all items are entered, Sales presents various options to process the order.
If the ordered items are available, the picking slip for this sales order is ready to be printed in the allocated warehouse.
Create and update sales order lines with detailed costs and stock information
Sales order types
For convenience and flexibility, Sales handles a range of different order types. The order type defines the underlying business process and includes the following:
Normal sales orders
Track the progress of a sales order by its status. For example, if an order status is “Work Order Created”, the item is currently being manufactured.
If ordered goods are unavailable in the warehouse that typically dispatches to the customer, you can check if they are available from other warehouses. If yes, dispatch the items automatically or transfer them to the originating warehouse.
Pronto Xi also creates work orders or purchase orders directly linked to sales orders for unavailable items. Drill down from the sales order to track the progress of these items.
Credit notes
Extensive credit note facilities are available in Sales.
Raise a full or partial credit, which will automatically load the original invoice lines and prompt you to process the type of credit. The type of credit can apply to the entire order or line-by-line.
You can also set limits for raising and approving credit notes and give appropriate warnings.
Available credit types include:
• credit and recharge of inventory
• net price/discount credit and recharge
• return to inventory
• inventory write-off
• credit of a charge
• inventory exchange
• issue new item free
Transfers
Sales allows you to create a transfer order to properly control and document the sequence of events necessary to move stock between warehouses.
In addition, Sales produces picking slips and transfer documents, enabling you to control the movement of goods.
Quotations
Sales produces quotations where it’s easy to manipulate pricing based on cost, mark-up and other criteria. Inventory remains uncommitted until the quotation becomes an order.
Configure quotations for customerspecific requirements. Any adjustments or reconfigurations made during negotiations automatically recalculate the quotation details.
You can also have quotations pass through an acceptance phase before they convert to an order. If the quotation is rejected, you can enter the reason for the lost sale. Reports allow you to track and analyse lost opportunities, assisting you in identifying trends.
Internal sales
Accept orders from within your organisation within Sales. The department requiring the product raises an internal requisition, which is treated as an internal sales order, helping you maintain accurate inventory tracking and manage possible freight charges.
Forward orders
You can enter an order with a future delivery date without immediately allocating stock otherwise available for immediate sale. Inventory isn’t allocated to a forward order until closer to the supply date.
You can also schedule regular deliveries for a forward order — for example, if you need to supply a customer with a quantity of items on the first of every month.
Contracts
When a customer has a contract to purchase goods or services to a maximum value and quantity, record these details on a contract order. During order entry, Sales allows the contract number to be entered and ensures that the contracted details are applied.
Proformas
A proforma order is a standing customer order that lists typically purchased items. You can directly access the proforma and select items from it, helping to minimise the administrative effort associated with a new customer sales order entry.
Return authorisations
Sales enables you to manage and track the entire lifecycle of customer returns. Efficiently log return authorisations and control how items are returned to stock, written off or recharged and credited — all within a single screen.
The returns management process allows you to:
• create a product return request
• review and approve the return request
• confirm the arrival of goods back into the warehouse
• return goods to your supplier for credit, replacement or repair
• return goods to the warehouse for resale
• create a work order to have goods repaired, reworked or disassembled
• raise a full or partial credit note for your customer
• keep track of returned goods and report on the reasons for returns to assist in forecasting future requirements, addressing areas of concern and recording the supply chain’s performance
Streamline customer returns from authorisation to restocking or credit in one screen
Split deliveries
Schedule a sales order as a split delivery so that it is fulfilled progressively over time — for example, by a certain quantity every week. You can also specify delivery dates and the number of items for each delivery.
Recurring sales orders
Automate the scheduling of recurring orders, reducing administrative time. This is particularly useful for transactions with a predefined supply of goods and services over a given period.
Create billing templates and define the frequency for each invoice. The agreed price of goods and services is set at the creation of the invoice and takes pricing fluctuations into account.
When new invoices or orders are created automatically, Sales’ built-in notification system will alert you via email.
Credit control
Sales generates a warning if a customer is “on hold”, or over their credit limit or terms. The order status is then set to “on hold” or “credit hold”, depending on the circumstances.
Set-up a credit officer to receive an automatic email notification when orders are placed on hold. They can then decide whether to release the order for dispatch.
Automate recurring sales orders to save time and streamline invoicing with built-in notifications
Backorder/inventory allocation
You can view sales orders to check for current inventory commitments anytime. When there is insufficient inventory to satisfy a customer’s order, several options are available, depending on the customer’s nominated backorder and your part shipment policy.
Some of these options include:
• No backorders allowed — A backorder will not be created for any item not supplied on the original order
• Part shipments disallowed — The order is held for dispatch until all items are available
• Backorders allowed — The backorder is supplied when the next order is placed, which merges the backordered items with the following order
• Part shipments allowed — Available items are dispatched and the remaining items are placed on backorder
For tracking ease, when part of an order is placed on backorder, Sales refers to the original order to identify the backorder.
Perform inventory allocations manually or automatically based on the parameters set. Items can also be automatically allocated to backorders upon receipt of goods from a purchase order or shipment.
Sales budgets
You can set sales budgets in Pronto Xi’s Sales, Accounts Receivable or Inventory modules based on customer, item code, territory or item group.
Apply a user-defined spread factor across the year or set budgets for each period. The spread factor can consider seasonal fluctuations, geographic differences or other elements that influence sales at various times.
Sales order enquiries
A range of sophisticated enquiry facilities enables you to find an order easily. Make enquiries by account code, product, customer reference, warehouse, user ID, invoice number, credit note number, status, order number, delivery or consignment note number.
Sales rebates
Depending on your specific requirements, Pronto Xi calculates rebates based on percentages, flat values or quantities.
Customer rebates
Calculate rebates for a variety of combinations, including customer code, customer group, item code, item group and item group class. Rebates can also be forwarded to the customer in a number of ways.
When a sale is made to a customer, the invoice program determines if any rebate is due on the sale. When a customer rebate is applicable, Pronto Xi updates the relevant sales history files and makes provisional postings to the General Ledger.
In addition, the program runs a report before preparing statements to calculate the rebate amount earned by the customer.
Manual customer rebates
Calculate rebates by customer and item code using a percentage rebate rate. The rebate is applied to the sales order line shipped amount (excluding tax).
Royalty rebates
Calculate royalty rebates by item using either a value or a percentage. The cost of the sales order line is updated to include the calculated rebate, which affects the sales history.
Sales order management
View of all your sales orders — with any status — on a single screen and gain significant efficiencies by having all the information in one place rather than navigating to separate enquiry screens based on order status. This is particularly useful if you manage large numbers of sales orders every day but do not use the Warehouse Management System (WMS).
Warranty
Quickly enter and track warranty claims and manage product returns with Warranty.
Warranty maintains notes, instructions and fault descriptions for the warranty work. In addition, you can:
• print invoice and consignment notes for the current job
• convert a quotation to an order
• view machine details for the current order
• raise, view or maintain purchase orders
• finish or cancel the current job
View all your sales orders, including their status and other details, on a single screen
One platform, full visibility
One platform, full visibility
Create memorable experiences that keep your customers coming back
In today’s highly competitive retail environment, customer experience matters. Pronto Xi’s Retail applications use the latest technology to support your business’s growth strategy and provide customers with a superb experience across every channel.
Point of Sale is an end-to-end system that handles all aspects of a retail enterprise. It allows you to manage product inventory and sell on multiple sales channels.
Promotions can be designed and triggered based on defined rules. It supports multiple tender types, including buy-now and pay-later solutions, as well as a variety of sales types, such as refunds, exchanges, lay-bys, customer accounts, and quotations.
In addition, flexible point of sale (POS) workflows mean you can create custom screens to handle desirable product-selling scenarios.
The Pronto Software POS App creates a first-rate in-store experience. Sell anywhere throughout the store, or use the app as your intuitive all-in-one POS solution. With all the information at your fingertips – product details, promotions and pricing, customer shopping history and the ability to take payments – the POS App enables your store staff to help customers while they shop, even when the app is offline.
The POS app simplifies after-sales service and customer repairs using a logical life cycle system with Repairs Management. Create and complete quotes, labour, parts, transfers and repair payments quickly, so you’ve got more time to focus on delivering high-quality service.
Point of Sale
Reduce transaction times with our powerful Point of Sale software so your staff can focus on your customers, not the cash register
Point of Sale gives you complete control over your business, regardless of size. Get complete oversight from the head office or drill down to a single cash register.
Our powerful, flexible system takes the mechanics of transaction processing off the shop floor and provides you with an integrated solution that enhances visibility and data integrity, and eliminates double handling.
Key benefits include:
• centrally managed pricing (including updates, special customer pricing and promotions)
• margin tracking
• visual item inventory
• sales, enquiry, management and warehouse functions
• multiple payment methods, including buynow and pay-later solutions
• powerful workflows with multi-button POS
• the ability to link sales transactions to Pronto Xi CRM for analysis
• the flexibility to use Point of Sale on a browser or the iOS Pronto POS App
Flexible transaction options with central management and visibility
Stay up-to-date with live sales and in-built visualisations
Real-time back-office connectivity
Point of Sale integrates with back-office functions in real-time, including financials and distribution. Transactions captured at the point of sale are updated in your General Ledger, ensuring accurate financials.
Cash drawer management
The Cash Drawer Control function manages the physical and financial handling of transactions made to a cash drawer.
Cash Drawer Control is compatible with various POS hardware. Choose to operate one drawer per terminal or have multiple terminals control a single cash drawer.
Each cash drawer can be configured to suit individual situations or operators. A variety of sales functions — lay-by processing, back-order processing and price discounting — can be made accessible, excluded from selection, or be made subject to specific security requirements. Cash drawer balances can be viewed and managed via the Retail Store Console.
A unique batch number identifies transactions posted to a cash drawer during a shift. The drawer total for each type of tender (for example, cash or credit card) accrues as receipts are processed, allowing the operator to reconcile the drawer’s contents against the recorded totals at any time. At the end of the shift, the operator can close the cash drawer and bank the takings.
Cash drawer reconciliation means you can track any settlement differences and post the necessary transactions to the General Ledger. Postings can be uniquely identified and dispersed by store identification and cash drawer number.
The Cash Drawer Control function complies with Australian and international rounding regulations. It also allows you to use your business policy for rounding out cash sale transactions.
Retail store reporting
The Retail Store Console brings together standard retail functions so it’s easier than ever to manage your retail operations.
The console displays rich graphical reporting, giving you the data you need to make informed decisions. Refresh reports with a single click and get live data and analytics.
The console’s primary view provides data for a specific store, filtered by a specific operator, making it easier and faster for operators to access relevant information.
Features within the console include:
• store selection for managers
• pre-defined or custom dates
• sales by operator
• cash drawer balances
• event transaction log
• a user-defined option
The console uses standard IBM Cognos technology reports based on a Point of Sale package, with each report on its own tab. It’s a highly adaptable setup that allows you and your team to modify or author your own business intelligence content and present it on different console tabs.
POS entry
Point of Sale allows your staff to quickly and simply complete sales, reducing stress in peak sales periods and ensuring customers receive efficient service.
At the back end, Point of Sale creates a sales order to represent the sale. The available inventory is automatically adjusted when a sale is completed at POS. Once the sales order is updated, Point of Sale records the financial postings and necessary inventory movements.
Depending on your needs, sales processed at POS can be made to user-defined cash sales and trade accounts.
An example of a flexible and powerful POS screen
Sales functions
Point of Sale supports various sales functions, including lay-bys, refunds and exchanges.
Quotations
Use Point of Sale to produce and track sales quotations to a completed sale. You can also track and analyse lost sales.
Customer accounts
Retailers can sell to an account customer at POS with complete credit control and special pricing rules in place.
You can also create new customer accounts at POS to track important purchases and information.
Account Sales are fully integrated with Accounts Receivable, providing you with customer details and sales history at the touch of a button. Customer accounts can be applied to a sale at any point, with an option to re-price the sale order on the fly for superior customer service.
In instances requiring a deposit, such as special order arrangements or pre-orders for high-demand items, Point of Sale allows you to nominate a default deposit percentage. These streamlined operations provide highquality service and safeguard against financial exposure.
Lay-bys
Point of Sale makes lay-by entries effortless. Terms and conditions are easily defined, and lay-bys can be managed at the POS or in the back office.
Recall lay-bys and detailed information from any POS workstation by searching for the customer or status. Track physical lay-by storage locations to help staff easily find customer lay-bys. Point of Sale even handles the partial pick-up of lay-bys.
Refunds
Point of Sale has the flexibility to manage refunds according to your business needs. In addition, the real-time capabilities of Pronto Xi help negate a major cause of refund fraud, protecting legitimate customers and your business.
Point of Sale handles returned items, and can issue credit notes, tender refunds, vouchers or credits to a customer account. It also validates refunds down to line level, ensuring the refunded amount is legitimate and accurate.
You can also choose to have an optional barcode printed on the docket to assist the operator when processing returns.
Exchanges
Exchanging purchased items can be a frustrating experience for both customers and retail staff. In Point of Sale, exchanges are handled efficiently within a single transaction. Track exchange details so they are clearly visible to the supervisor for analysis and reporting.
Exchange multiple orders within a single order to further reduce complexity and time.
Promotions and pricing
The Promotions and Pricing Engine is a flexible and powerful rule-based engine that helps to manage key aspects of promotional activity for both retailers and wholesalers. By establishing a simple, efficient and effective methodology, it allows you to easily create, copy, manipulate and report on promotions.
Combine customer pricing with promotions, and control whether rules compound. Choose date-driven events or total order incentives, and run a variety of promotion types, including “buy one, get one” (BOGO), multi-buys, discount amount or percentage, and order-level promotions. You can also overlay promotions and set up rules to select whether one promotion or multiple promotions apply.
It’s simple to plan your promotional strategy ahead of time — just create and schedule promotions to automatically open and close on specific dates. You can even schedule events to run at specific times.
By customising promotion triggers at POS, in the Pronto Point of Sale App or via Avenue, you can also alert customers to relevant promotions while they’re shopping, helping to close sales, boost customer loyalty and encourage repeat purchases.
You can easily monitor the progress and outcome of promotions by using a reporting group, promotional code and other associated elements that make up the core promotion. In addition, the POS or the back office can print shelf labels, with or without promotional pricing, based on active promotions. This makes it simpler to run and align promotions across offline, online and POS platforms.
View all your promotions and pricing in the one spot
Promotions reporting
Identifying which promotions and items succeeded (and which didn’t) gives you valuable insight into your business.
Point of Sale’s reporting structure allows you to view total revenue and gross profit by variables — including item, group and brand — and enables benchmarking of stores. This helps your merchandise officers to better replenish stock, and gives you solid facts to support negotiations with suppliers for future promotions.
Inventory Management
Where inventory is unavailable in-store, Point of Sale allows your staff to check other stores and warehouses in real time. This enhanced visibility empowers authorised staff to organise inventory transfers while securing the sale with the customer.
Alternatively, a sale can be partly processed, suspended pending the arrival of the inventory and resumed for completion when the inventory is available in-store.
Staff can enquire about outstanding purchase orders, check the supplier’s scheduled delivery time and set appropriate customer expectations. Customers can also receive notifications when their product is available.
Tender types
With Point of Sale, you can define the tender types you’ll accept at POS, including businessspecific tender types, such as store gift vouchers, store “dollars” and store cards.
In retail environments where checkout lanes are divided by tender type — for example, “cash only” or “card only” — you can assign a specific tender type to a cash drawer. This flexible way for retailers to configure their lane preferences, ensures faster and more convenient operations.
For each tender type, set up Point of Sale to control whether it triggers a cash drawer opening. Staff can also be prompted to request additional information based on your business rules for the tender type.
To make processing more efficient, Point of Sale also includes an integrated payments solution with several established payment providers.
Define tender, such as cash, credit cards and gift cards with Point of Sale.
View weekly, daily or hourly sales by store across the whole company
View your sale and key metrics with in-built charts
Retail sales reporting
Point of Sale’s Retail Sales Summary gives you an immediate view of sales by hour, day, week, month, quarter or year — or custom dates.
It allows you to easily track key performance indicators, including average sales and margins, and items per customer, using data and interactive charts. Sales data can also be filtered and drilled down to compare to budgets.
In addition, a seasons drop-down list lets you compare events that typically do not match up on the calendar, such as Easter falling on different dates and Boxing Day sales falling on different days of the week each year.
If you are using the Supplier Rebates module, view notional costing results via the Retail Sales Summary. This enables you to view the data by the floor cost, net cost or gross cost.
The Retail Sales Summary provides you with up-to-the-minute performance data at every level, from store through to lane or a specific sales representative. It can also be filtered by store or operator, authorising key transactional data to be selectively exposed to store staff.
Management functions
Management functions allow your team to efficiently monitor and manage store activities, from opening cash drawers to closing the day’s trading. For ease of use, add, remove or change screen layouts and features, and centrally apply changes to individual cash drawers.
View cash drawer holdings via the Retail Store Console while drawers are active. This allows your management team to monitor cash balances and determine when to clear cash for security purposes. Alerts can also be emailed to designated managers when a cash drawer balance exceeds a defined limit.
Petty cash is easily transacted at POS, and efficiently reconciled and allocated at the back office. Managers can control adjustments to the cash drawer contents.
The end-of-shift process occurs at the end of the trading day or at any other designated time. Management can enforce multiple levels of blind reconciliation for a more secure process that offers a clear separation of tasks. Point of Sale also corrects tendering errors as part of the reconciliation process, avoiding unnecessary back-office reconciliation.
In addition, it offers the ability to list cash drawer transactions, providing valuable details that can assist in balancing the drawer.
Point of Sale’s Advanced Tender Tracking functionality enables managers to control and monitor value-sensitive tenders, such as gift vouchers, across the business. For example, a lost gift voucher can be deactivated when reported lost and then reactivated if it’s found. Changes are closely audited, providing your management team with complete oversight.
Set rep code password expiry dates to ensure that codes are periodically updated and do not stay active once they have expired. This prevents staff from using former employees’ passwords to conduct fraudulent transactions.
The Sales Order Reprint function is another safety measure. It limits staff’s ability to reprint dockets without supervisor authority, preventing reprinted receipts from being used for fraudulent refunds and exchanges.
Configurable POS screens
Pronto Xi’s graphic capabilities allow you to configure your business’s POS screens, providing significant workflow capabilities, improving branding and reducing staff training time.
Configure each screen using the POS Theme Editor. Screens are cash drawer–specific, enabling a different screen (or screen type) to be assigned to each cash drawer — a particularly useful feature in a multi-brand or split-service environment.
The Theme Editor includes a range of template themes pre-configured with a supporting image library, so you can use cash drawers almost immediately.
The Menu Editor allows you to configure workflows using a “tree” structure. Preview the structure with the Tree View feature, which shows the start point, the action and the end point. Menus can also be tested in preview mode.
In addition, Point of Sale offers up to 70 action buttons and 999 pages, increasing the flexibility of your POS screens and — in conjunction with the ability to create user-defined workflows — enabling you to design a check-out process that suits your business.
From self-serve supermarket check-outs to bespoke food orders, it’s now easy to adapt a powerful POS skin to include multiple navigation paths and pop-up button pads. The workflow is presented in a data-grid format, so you can either make changes directly in Pronto Xi, or export the data grid into a spreadsheet, design the workflow and import it back into Pronto Xi.
Point of Sale makes it easy for operators to use “macros”, or short key entries, to streamline processing. Up to 80 macros are available to help retail staff access information instantly. Retailers can also place global security measures around macros, such as blocking staff from processing a discount macro on a whole order without a supervisor’s authorisation.
Configure your POS skins to suit your business needs
Optimise stock supply to key locations simply and efficiently
Fraud mitigation
Point of Sale contains powerful features that enhance customer service, and reduce shrinkage and fraud risk.
The Retail Event Transaction Log allows retailers to control more than 65 POS-specific events, from opening a cash drawer to clearing cash and issuing a large amount of change. Events are visible on the Retail Store Console for easy reference and management.
For each event, you can request a reason code from the operator or launch a custom program. You can also engage the Alert Intelligence notification system which notifies a supervisor via SMS if a staff member fraudulently tries guessing a supervisor’s password.
Store allocations
Store allocations provide a flexible way to supply stock to a network of locations. By employing a “push” supply model, Point of Sale automatically aligns products with the stores most likely to sell them, minimising the time it takes to allocate products. It also reduces costs and maximises your profits. Base allocations on the historical performance of similar items — there’s no need to extract data and input it into Pronto Xi.
A Store Grading and Allocation Code structure lets you prioritise your locations and allocate stock to preferred stores first. Allocation Codes link stock and stores with a ratio that predetermines the percentage of stock allocated to which stores. Codes can be set up by:
• item
• brand
• levels within the stock hierarchy
• buyer code
• style, colour or size
• supplier
Allocation codes help streamline your procurement cycle. Once the stock is ordered, run the allocation routine and attach it to the purchase order, ready to receive it and transfer to stores. This decreases the turnaround time in the warehouse and gets stock on the retail floor faster.
Consolidating and managing data can be challenging for organisations that provide a product or service to other businesses trading under a specific name or structure, such as franchises, buying groups or cooperatives.
For these organisations, Point of Sale’s Group Trading module provides a structure that streamlines operations and ensures data is clean and reliable.
Key features of the Group Trading solution include:
• head office (master entity) to unique business (child entity) relationships
• consolidated core inventory across the business
• business royalty (franchise) fees management
• catalogue system
• global purchasing system
• global promotions engine
• provisions for customer returns between separate businesses
• new stock requests
• new supplier requests
• aggregated sales data
By maintaining a standardised methodology across your businesses, everyone involved, including your customers, can be confident in the process.
Payment methods
Point of Sale supports multiple payment methods, helping you to meet your customers’ changing preferences.
Point of Sale integrates with multiple payment gateways to accept card payments. These gateways — including Quest, Square (a Pronto Solution Partner), Tyro and Linkly – deliver secure digital payments and send the data to Pronto Xi in real-time.
In addition, Afterpay and Zip Pay allow you to offer your customers a buy-now, pay-later option, so you never miss a sale.
Offline POS
The Pronto Xi Offline POS solution enables you to carry out transactions during external network and server outages. POS users can use the Pronto local instance on Pronto Software–managed hardware to continue processing transactions during an outage. Subsequently, once the connection is reestablished, the Pronto local instance synchronises offline sales with the main Pronto server.
Pronto POS App
A fully functional and intuitive point-of-sale solution
Product information
Easily find products in the Pronto POS App by scanning a barcode with the device camera or integrated Bluetooth scanner. Alternatively, use keywords to search all product information, helping your staff to find the right products quickly.
The app shows stock availability for all stores, not just the current store, meaning staff can find a product for a customer throughout your network.
Customer information
Maintain customer information in the Pronto POS App, including relevant sales history and customer details. This information allows your staff to personalise their conversations and recommendations, creating more sales opportunities.
Find a product by scanning a barcode or using keywords
View product details and availability across stores
Sale types and payments
Start a sale by adding products to the shopping cart, update the price or number of products as needed, and then complete the transaction using one or multiple payment options.
Customers can reserve high-value or fastmoving items in advance by creating a customer order for pick-up and paying a deposit. Your staff can then resume the suspended sale later to complete the transaction.
If a customer is considering a purchase decision, your team can generate a quote within the app and include notes to describe the sale.
For orders that customers can’t take with them, the app allows your staff to organise delivery orders to be actioned by your warehouse team.
If customers change their minds about a purchase, the app processes returns or exchanges, meaning that customers don’t need to queue unnecessarily for a quick transaction.
Pronto POS App works with multiple payment methods, including credit cards, cash and gift cards. It also supports split payments, allowing customers to complete purchases using the method that best suits their needs.
Once payment is made, your staff can create digital payment receipts to email or send wirelessly to Bluetooth printers. Take payment using one or multiple tender types
Instantly calculate promotions — even if the app is offline
Promotions and pricing
The Pronto POS App has an in-built Promotions and Pricing Engine that works seamlessly with Pronto Xi. Manage all promotions and pricing rules from the back end, and they’ll be automatically applied at check out — even if the app is offline.
Offline capability
With full offline capability, the Pronto POS App functions without connecting to Pronto Xi or the internet. Promotions, shopping carts, product and customer search, and other Pronto POS App features all work offline — including card payments.
Click and collect
Get notified instantly when click-and-collect orders are made. Pick the stock for the customer and automatically notify them that their order is ready to collect. When they come in to collect the item, take a photo or get a signature as proof of pick-up.
Stocktake, goods transfer and product scanners
Use the fully integrated Bluetooth scanner or the device camera to scan products, perform stocktake, and transfer and receive goods.
By offering a familiar interface for these tasks, as well as direct validation via Pronto Xi, the app helps to streamline processes and improve staff productivity.
Product attributes
By creating and associating attributes with products, you can easily find products or narrow down choices to locate products when updating shopping carts.
Later, use attributes to conduct an in-depth analysis of sales data and trends to influence future promotional strategies.
App administration
The Pronto POS App offers a high degree of flexibility. It allows you to configure available functions for your POS devices and customise the contents of payment receipts.
Staff can switch accounts at the end of their shift from within the Pronto POS App, while you can manage licenses, devices and app users from Pronto Xi.
Configure the Pronto POS App home screen to suit your business’s needs
Easily count stock using the app’s stocktake function
Repairs Management
Maintain the highest quality customer service by keeping on top of warranty claims and repair requests
Repairs Management makes it easy to validate repair claims by tracking the warranty status and serial number of your stock. Manage every aspect of repairs, from labour and parts to transfers and payments, and allocate charges based on warranty status, fault type or choice of repairer.
Repairs life cycle
With Repairs Management, your staff don’t need to understand complex repair processes or rules, giving them more time to focus on the customer. A clearly defined repair life cycle tracks repairs through different stages, increasing efficiency at every stage.
Repairs reporting
The Repairs Console gathers the information you need to manage the repairs process at your fingertips.
See the number of repairs at each stage of the process at a glance. The console helps staff quickly take action on a repair and advance it to the next stage. Staff don’t need to worry about the mechanics of the process, reducing customer response times.
View all outstanding repairs by status
Workflows and processes
Repairs Management simplifies workflows and processes and ensures nothing is missed or forgotten.
Each repair is driven by expected dates and flagged if overdue. Order stages are augmented with detailed notes, capturing important information. You can easily distinguish between customer and warranty repairs, and separate parts and labour components for better visibility and planning. Repairs Management also offers the ability to add multiple faults on a single repair order to keep information in one place.
Repairs Management automatically creates key documents (such as a purchase order for the nominated repairer), ensuring your data is accurate and complete. Spare parts and accessories are tracked through the process, along with other costs (such as labour), and are used to calculate appropriate customer charges.
Serial-numbered-item history is also easily accessible.
Customer service
Repairs Management is designed with customer service in mind. Easy-to-access information and detailed tracking enable staff to react quickly to an enquiry or proactively address problems.
Quick search functionality using the customer’s name/phone number means your team can access necessary information even if a customer forgets their paperwork.
Once the repairs are entered and payment is required, the customer receives a printed docket with the relevant repair details. Customise dockets with your own terms and conditions to inform your customer every step of the way.
Progress your repair to the next stage
B2B eCommerce
Transforming your digital reach
Pronto Xi eCommerce
Unlock
the true
potential of an omnichannel ecosystem, and streamline your operations and customer experience
Pronto Xi eCommerce is a fully integrated platform, empowering you to effortlessly expand your brand and transform your business’s digital journey. From a simple user interface and stunning online store that enhances the customer experience to an integrated and scalable platform that powers your business, our solution accommodates all your B2B business needs.
A significant challenge for many online wholesalers or retailers is the sheer complexity of working with disparate systems to manage business operations. These systems are usually not integrated, and building complete performance reports can require hours of manual data exports and imports.
As part of Pronto Xi, our out-of-the-box eCommerce solution seamlessly integrates with other powerful applications that align with key aspects of eCommerce, including financials, reporting, inventory, distribution and customer relationship management (CRM). As a result, all your business’s key details remain in Pronto Xi — from pricing to order management — and are in sync across your omnichannel operations.
View eCommerce statistics at a glance
Customer experience
With customers increasingly expecting a seamless and easy-to-use online shopping experience, successful businesses seek better inventory and order management solutions to meet these expectations.
Pronto Xi eCommerce connects seamlessly with Pronto Xi, ensuring all inventory information, accounts, pricing and orders remain in sync across all platforms and operations. It provides your customers with an engaging and coherent journey, from browsing to purchasing, and encourages them to return.
Utilise the product information maintained in Pronto Xi to create unlimited online categories and sell to new or existing customers without building custom interfaces.
Harness the power and flexibility of Pronto Xi’s Promotions and Pricing Engine within your website. With the flexibility and the capacity to deal with detailed product information, the engine gives you a wide range of cross-sell options, from simple “buy one, get one” offers to specific threshold incentives.
With in-sync software, you can offer your customers better service and a more consistent experience — all while lowering your fulfilment costs.
If your business requires a more complex digital transformation, a tailored platform with custom functionality, or the opportunity to deliver unique customer experiences, you can customise Pronto Xi eCommerce Plus to suit your specific needs and strategic objectives.
Website design
While Pronto Xi eCommerce offers the robust functionality that sites need to consistently sell, you maintain control over your site’s design so it aligns with your brand.
Delivering an engaging and consistent user experience is easy when you power your site’s back end with Pronto Xi. As a headless solution, you can design the site’s look and feel without editing a CMS. First, set your website style guide by answering some business questions on the desired aesthetic and set colours, fonts and style choices, then apply those global settings to existing and new pages. Next, utilise Page Builder to create whatever page type you need to communicate and engage with your customers. This could include pages for new product launches, product highlights or other information pages. Page Builder delivers an engaging and consistent customer experience with ease on any device — with customers able to interact and purchase instantly.
Website deployment
Pronto Xi eCommerce’s framework and development tools enable you to deploy websites easily and quickly, regardless of your specific requirements. Multiple packages are available, including hosting, which negates the need for additional hardware. Pronto Software also has in-house web design and user experience expertise to help you create a stunning and highly functional online store.
The eCommerce platform leverages a content delivery network (CDN) to ensure optimal website performance. CDNs cache your website on services in different geographical locations and ISP’s networks. Caching means you deliver your site to customers faster while reducing the load on your server and network.
Pronto Woven also now offers Horizontal Scaling options that help business applications run more efficiently and improve resilience, providing a reliable user experience. This process adopts a microservice architecture where you break the website into smaller, independently scalable parts each with dedicated server space and resources, while further balancing the website traffic load between each part.
The extra mile
The extra mile
Make every customer interaction count
Pronto Xi’s fully integrated Customer Relationship Management (CRM) modules puts your customers first, and drives customer acquisition, retention and satisfaction.
Pronto Xi CRM enables you to analyse customer and prospect needs, identify important customers, pinpoint the business processes that deliver superior customer service and promote repeat business.
Track leads, opportunities, transactions and activities across all accounts and contacts, and get detailed insights on every prospect and customer. With attributes, you can flexibly add powerful data points to identify and segment CRM data.
In turn, use the data you collect on your customers to assist with Salesforce automation, customer service and support, and marketing opportunities.
Achieve all this while reaping the benefits of an integrated CRM solution that eliminates double-handling, and enhances visibility and data integrity.
Pronto Sales App is the perfect companion when your sales team is on the road, offering seamless integration with Pronto Xi CRM. It provides tools for pre-sales, sales and account manager–related activities, as well as real-time information about product availability, sales orders, quotations and customer-specific pricing. You can even accept payments via the app to close more deals on the move.
Pronto Xi CRM
Maintain and strengthen your customer relationships, from new leads to long term partnerships, with Pronto Xi CRM
Pronto Xi Customer Relationship Management (CRM) gives you the power to improve your operations and better communicate with customers. The upshot? Optimised revenue, profitability and customer satisfaction.
Analyse customer and prospect needs and quickly identify the customers requiring the most attention. Discover the best business processes to drive customer satisfaction and encourage repeat business.
Advantages of Pronto Xi CRM include:
• a single point of reference for CRM functions, helping you to manage a pipeline
• the ability to store and manage unlimited customers, prospects and companies
• tools to create, track and qualify leads, and convert leads to opportunities
• the ability to easily access and analyse detailed sales information about your customers and prospects
• improved time management, with records of interactions and simple scheduling of sales activities, synchronised with Microsoft Office, Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace
• the capacity to easily track marketing efforts, with dynamic updates of all activity and key information available at a glance
• the ability to centrally manage your customer data across a group of companies
• partnering with Vision6, an SMS and email marketing platform
Pipeline
Pronto Xi’s Pipeline interface gives your sales team a central point from which to manage their accounts, contacts, leads and opportunities. Flexible visualisations permit you to view the CRM pipeline and track sales against budget, while data grid filters prioritise your most urgent activities.
The Pipeline interface and user experience is identical on a phone or tablet, allowing you to easily access all your critical information while on the road.
Performance metrics
The pre-configured Business Dashboard provides key performance metrics, empowering you to stay abreast of sales activities and increasing the visibility of customer relationship activities across your business. Performance metrics include:
• number of leads and opportunities
• number and opportunity value of quotes in the pipeline
• value of leads by stage
• value of leads and opportunities by the top representatives in the business
Address book and contact manager
Pronto Xi CRM centralises day-to-day customer management, giving you streamlined access to all of Pronto Xi’s customer-related functionality. The module’s intuitive screen displays vital customer information, including the date of the last sale, last mail-out and next action date.
Categorise and access information about an unlimited number of customers, prospects and companies. Address book and contact manager features include:
• Organisations — where the company is a current customer, Pronto Xi sales enquiries are available directly from the CRM’s main screen, giving your team all the historical and status information they need without having to access Accounts Receivable
• Contacts — store information, such as email addresses, mobile phone numbers, home phone numbers and position descriptions, for an unlimited number of individuals or contacts in each organisation
• Security — several security masks are built into the main screen to restrict customer modifications to authorised users
• Parent/Child — links together multiple related companies to give you a view of holding companies or departments with multiple subsidiaries
Display accounts and contacts on screen
Attributes
Attributes define and manage customer characteristics so you can analyse your customer database and maximise sales opportunities.
Track the number of staff, sales turnover, competitors’ details, customer interests, item groups or competitive advantages. You can also create attribute groups for hierarchical management.
Assign a number of attributes to each company or contact. Attributes can also store more than one value under a single attribute, making information such as user preferences — which often have more than one value — easier to retrieve.
Apply contact-specific attributes independent of company-level attributes. Attributes can be optional or mandatory, delivering an automatic prompt for key information when you create a new account.
In multi-company environments, the creation and maintenance of attributes can be controlled by a central administrator for consistency and relevance when reporting.
Gain a clear understanding of your leads with integrated visualisations
Use integrated visualisations to view opportunities
Sales management
Leads
With CRM Lead Management, you can optimise the selling cycle to nurture relationships with prospects and turn leads into opportunities.
Multiple contacts from a company can be selectively associated with new leads. If the contact already exists in your database, remove duplicate entries or keep them separate, depending on your requirements. You can also convert qualified leads to opportunities while maintaining all transactional history.
Opportunities
CRM Opportunity Management tracks the position and quality of each opportunity, giving you a clear view of the sales potential and allowing you to access information quickly.
Easily access specific contacts from CRM accounts, and search all transactional information and activity entries from a single interface.
In high-volume quoting environments, create greater control over the sales process by generating “opportunity quotations”. This unique facility quarantines quotations inside an opportunity and selectively converts them to “live” quotations or sales orders. You can also manage expected revenue by applying probability factors.
Pronto Xi integration
CRM integrates with our Pronto Xi Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution, providing you with a “single source of truth” across your operations.
When interacting with customers, this functionality enables your staff to:
• view up-to-the-minute transactions and account notes
• view current sales orders, including processing status such as picking slip printed and order invoiced
• view and quote special pricing, quantity discounts or any other unique attributes
• view current inventory details and purchase order details, including expected arrival dates
• automatically write a record in Accounts Receivable when creating a customer in the CRM
• view the customer’s credit status or any special conditions maintained within Accounts Receivable
• link to other relevant functions in Pronto Xi; for example, service-based organisations can link to service calls of account customers managed in the CRM
Quotations and sales orders
When a customer requests a quotation, it can be entered against a company. If the quotation is accepted, it converts to a sales order and a basic (cash on delivery) customer account is automatically created in Accounts Receivable. Security restrictions may apply.
CRM quotations integrate with quotations generated in other Pronto Xi modules. This allows you to copy quotation details entered for one company to another and to update company transaction logs with a quotation number.
Link quotations to specific sales campaigns, and record and analyse unaccepted (lost) quotations.
Customer and sales views
Pronto Xi CRM records detailed information about past, present and prospective customers, giving you full access to sales and transactional history. Get a performance snapshot with the Central CRM sales dashboard
Multi-company CRM
In multi-company environments, the Central CRM dashboard provides an accurate single view of your customers, with accounts and customer data seamlessly shared between business entities.
Customer data automatically synchronises between companies, avoiding duplication and reducing time spent in manual data consolidation. It means customers won’t need to repeat information if they are doing business with another company in your group.
Consolidated sales, leads and opportunities across the group – combined with centralised attributes — support consistent reporting. Slicing and dicing of data can also be standardised, giving you a consistent way to gain insights.
Transactions
Transaction manager
Pronto Xi CRM allows you to review and maintain daily transactions, such as meetings, emails and calls.
Record each transaction using a representative code and a login name so you can follow an audit trail if needed. The data grid displays the transaction date and time, campaign, transaction type, response type, action category, target date and actual date, allowing you to view exactly what happened at a given point in time.
Letters, emails and labels
Pronto Xi’s Send Info option easily generates personalised letters or labels using the mail merge function in word-processing applications, such as Microsoft Word.
Create templates for direct merging from the CRM, and merge sales orders and quotation data into templates. Send emails with attachments to multiple accounts and contacts.
When you use the Send Info function, transaction entries are written against the relevant CRM accounts.
Record interactions with your customers and prospects
Notes and attachments
Notes
With the Notes function, you can record, search and filter notes by type against CRM accounts.
Attachments
Attach all file types to individual contacts or companies in the CRM.
You can also access images and documents related to a customer or prospect within the CRM.
Integrated search
Locating accounts, contacts and information via a keyword search or phone number is simple. Obtain critical information in just a few keystrokes to quickly access an account’s details.
The Search function can be configured to open by default when navigating to CRM screens.
If you can’t find a single direct match, Pronto Xi will list all accounts that match the input criteria. You can then select the appropriate account from the suggested list.
Integrated data mining
Pronto Xi’s integrated data mining tool enables you to discover meaningful correlations, patterns and trends in large amounts of data.
Filter prospect and customer information using various selection criteria, and go on to produce reports and mailing lists.
A range of attributes form part of the selection criteria and can be combined into complex logical expressions. Further refine the selection criteria of each list using the Keep/Drop option.
Activities
The CRM Activity Scheduler is a simple way to organise activities, including booking appointments, call-outs, meetings and more.
Design activities to suit your business’s needs. Activities can be recurring or managed in bulk, making it easy to move activities from one sales representative to another or assign a group activity to all representatives.
Pronto Xi’s mail server integration also allows you to synchronise activities to an external calendar.
View all upcoming activities or filter them to show urgent or due tasks
Campaigns
The CRM Campaign functionality manages and tracks campaigns or events, as well as the performance of each representative.
Link sales transactions, quotations, correspondence and activities to any campaign. Pronto Xi CRM stores campaign statistics, enabling you to measure campaign success against the budgeted cost and expected revenue.
Web map links
Pronto Xi CRM links to web-based map data. Click on the relevant map link in the CRM screen to quickly and easily obtain a map or driving directions from servers such as Google Maps.
Mail server synchronisation
Synchronise your CRM data with cloud-based business applications like Microsoft Office or Google Workspace. This improves productivity, promoted data capture and increases CRM acceptance in your business.
Daily communications, contact details, tasks and calendar events automatically synchronise between Pronto Xi CRM and your mail server, helping to decrease overheads and ensuring relevant information is always accessible to those who need it.
The synchronisation ensures the consistency of information across your enterprise and boosts adoption through familiarity.
It also supports:
• entering or managing contact information between systems
• sending out and recording emails for future reference
• creating new or updated tasks
• entering or updating activities
• calendar events
• exporting data to spreadsheets
• automated updating
SMS and email marketing
Our partnership with Vision6 enables Pronto CRM users to leverage superior mailout capabilities. Synchronise your Pronto Xi CRM contacts with Vision6 to facilitate and improve marketing performance.
The benefits of Vision6 integration and some of its features include:
• Creating email campaigns that look beautiful on any device with a class-leading email designer
• Sending powerful promotional or transactional emails with automation and personalisation tools
• Boosting engagement with SMS marketing
• Growing leads with Web Forms
• Improving ROI with real-time reports
• Knowing that all data is stored locally in Australia, with a Data Centre that is ISO 27001 compliant
• Getting local support when needed
Pronto Sales App
A good business relationship is about open communication and responsiveness. Pronto Sales App is an essential business tool, giving your staff the information they need, wherever they are
Pronto Sales App is the ultimate companion for sales professionals on the move. Innovative and intuitive, it’s accessed via a responsive webbased portal, and is simple to deploy and use.
Integrating seamlessly with Pronto Xi CRM, Pronto Sales App offers a complete customer profile view. Representatives can access sites, contacts, transactions and client attributes, as well as maintain scheduled and ad hoc activities while on the road. The system’s powerful features improve your deal responsiveness and, by empowering your representatives to negotiate on price, ensure your sales teams stand out from the pack with quality customer service.
Through its advanced business-to-business capabilities, Pronto Sales App makes it easy to enter sales orders or quotations that adhere to business standards and controls, such as credit limits, product restrictions and customerspecific pricing.
Representatives can apply their own companyapproved price overrides to get a deal over the line. They can also review outstanding orders and balances, helping to deliver a well-rounded and informed service to their customers.
Pronto Sales App supports shopping cart and payment gateway features so representatives can process sales and take payment on the spot.
Representatives can link in-progress sales orders to deals in their pipeline, arming them with the information they need to meet their sales objectives. They also have access to dashboards that give them a quick understanding of their top clients, products and prior sales, and their sales progress.
Review sales activity at a glance with the Sales Rep dashboard
Mobile access
With a mobile-first responsive design, Pronto Sales App provides all the functionality of a desktop sales CRM on a smartphone, allowing your representatives to manage customer relationships and sales on the go.
Activities, contacts, accounts and deals are just a tap away. Representatives can access up-todate information on their deal before they step into a sales meeting, then schedule follow-up activities and update details as they walk into their next appointment.
Customer details
Closing a deal starts with knowing your customers. Pronto Sales App allows your representatives to capture personal details and conversations with interested contacts or accounts, then use this information to track deals in their pipeline to conversion.
Representatives can also use the Timeline View to see customer details and scheduled activities or appointments, using the data to fill their pipeline.
Product information
An extensive product range has its challenges — it can be difficult for representatives to know which products are suitable for clients. At the same time, business silos can make it challenging to manage inventory information.
With real-time inventory synchronisation via Pronto Xi, including stock levels and pricing, Pronto Sales App gives your representatives access to key promotional, technical and marketing information. Intuitive product search tools make it easy to find relevant details so representatives can provide customers with up-to-date product information. As a result, customer interactions are consistent at every touchpoint with your business.
Sales performance
Visit the Dashboard to get a clear overview of your organisation’s sales performance. Analyse your best customers, products, representatives and activities, as well as recent sales and other critical data — all in one place. With multiple reports on a single screen, you can gain valuable insights and chart progress towards your goals.
Order creation
Pronto Sales App incorporates tools that allow representatives to quickly generate orders based on item codes, rather than keying in search terms. This saves time and allows them to focus on building relationships.
To make regular customers’ orders easier to handle, representatives can even create clientor task-specific template orders, which they can either order as templated or adjust the quantities as needed.
Order history
With full visibility into a customer’s order history, Pronto Sales App enables representatives to facilitate conversations that lead to repeat purchases and gain insights into fluctuations in order quantities.
With account aging information readily available, representatives can also oversee customers’ unpaid invoices or unused credits.
Pipeline management
Pronto Sales App manages all your deals in one view, giving you total visibility into your pipeline.
You can drag and drop your leads or opportunities between different stages of the sales funnel, and use the insights you gain to improve your strategic decision-making and the quality of your engagements.
By providing a clear visual of the current status of deals and next steps, the pipeline helps to focus your representatives’ efforts, keeping actions organised and in line with your business objectives.
Activities
Representatives can schedule activities and attach them to deals in their pipeline, allowing them to see their entire to-do list on one easyto-navigate page.
Activities can also be assigned to a contact or an account based on your business preferences, meaning representatives never miss a follow-up task.
Deal management
Add contacts and product information directly to opportunities to create one informative view of a deal.
Representatives can also quickly assess the health of a pipeline and apply filters to access in-depth pipeline analysis, helping them stay on top of sales performance.
Sales engagement tracking
Pronto Sales App’s Timeline View displays sales activity chronologically. It enables staff to evaluate a situation better and make smarter decisions, helping increase productivity.
The detailed visual representation provides a snapshot of how engaged prospects and customers are during the sales process. It shows accounts, contacts, leads and opportunities, and displays a rundown of all touchpoints. Representatives can also instantly record all their information — including notes and activities — in one single stream.
Supply Chain
On time, every time
On time, every time Cost-effective. Streamlined. Optimise your supply chain processes to meet customer demand — every time
Supply Chain gives you complete visibility across your entire supply chain — from planning your distribution and forecasting your stock requirements to managing your warehouses.
A fully integrated suite of products, Supply Chain equips you with the tools to minimise costs through lower inventory and shipping spend, as well as reduced data errors and administration overheads. Move and manage your stock entirely within Pronto Xi, reducing paper-based and manual processes.
The Pronto Xi platform seamlessly aligns to your supply chain processes via turnkey customisations, ensuring demand matches supply.
Warehouse Management System (WMS) is an intelligent, automated system that gives increased flexibility and tighter stock control to large or busy warehouses. Manage a wide variety of functions, including custom warehouse layouts, top-up, replenishment and putaway routines, wave picking, storage zones, smart dispatch and more.
Eliminate unnecessary waste by predicting future trends and customer demand with Advanced Forecasting. Utilising leadingedge statistical methods, smoothing and visualisations, Advanced Forecasting enables you to improve cash flow through lean inventory processes.
Do you have multiple warehouses and factories? Distribution Requirements Planning (DRP) is a powerful tool for handling complex networks. It helps to optimise replenishment and implement a time-phased distribution plan, so that you can streamline the flow of stock and information between multiple sites.
Make your supply chain even more efficient with Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), which exchanges structured business documents with your trading partners via value-added networks (VAN). Purchase orders (PO), purchase order acknowledgements (POA), advanced shipping notices (ASN) and invoices are all supported for digital interchange.
Radio Frequency and Scanpack enable a smooth flow of information and inventory throughout your distribution network. Radio Frequency allows you to electronically transmit orders from Sales to operators’ portable devices. Replacing paper-based processes means an increase in productivity and a reduction in human errors for operations such as picking, replenishments and putaway. At the same time, Scanpack increases the accuracy of order fulfilment and warehouse inventory by allowing cartons and pallets to be scanned and tracked with barcodes.
Catalogue stores and maintains unlimited supplier products and details, including technical documentation. Streamline your processes by creating inventory records directly from Catalogue when you receive products.
Delivery personnel will find the Pronto Xi Proof of Delivery App vital in obtaining signatures or capturing images to record proof of delivery. Manifest and package details are readily available, along with delivery progress updates.
Warehouse Management System
Maximise warehouse throughput with Warehouse Management System and intelligently control inventory in, around and out of the warehouse
Identify where items are stored in your warehouse
Warehouse Management System (WMS) is a smart, flexible way to manage a wide range of warehouse functions so you can run a tight ship.
Among its many functions, WMS facilitates:
• multiple bin locations per item
• storage zones
• flexible three-dimensional warehouse layouts
• user-defined location types
• unit, carton and pallet storage
• efficient picking location selections
• optimised picking paths
• intelligent top-up, replenishment and putaway routines
• inwards and cross-dock processing
The WMS module fully integrates with other Pronto Xi modules, including Inventory, Purchasing, Sales, Scanpack, Radio Frequency and Manufacturing.
Picking processes
WMS specifies each location within your warehouse in a three-dimensional coordinated system, giving you total flexibility to accurately describe your warehouse layout.
It also supports inner cartons and user-defined locations, including carton live storage (CLS), carousel and manual pick locations. For each item, set up as many carton and pallet storage locations as you want, and specify the minimum and maximum picking quantities for each location.
Guide the picker or replenisher through the warehouse in the most efficient sequence with optimal pick paths.
Your warehouse manager also has the flexibility to select and prioritise orders to be processed. Produce orders in batches corresponding to one delivery from a designated pick-up point in the warehouse.
In addition, you can produce a consolidated picking slip to optimise the process of picking orders, with items sorted according to the most efficient path through the warehouse.
Process rules
WMS allows you to set rules for a particular location, enabling you to adhere to businessspecific processes; for example, if there is a bulk location that staff shouldn’t pick from.
Replenishments
WMS includes a variety of intelligent topup routines, so you can define a threshold percentage that determines when to replenish a location. The system supports:
• two-stage replenishment
• queuing of replenishments
• allocation of replenishments to particular users
• manual replenishments
• pre-pick replenishments
It also supports a range of replenishment methodologies, including the following:
Automatically generated replenishments
This occurs at sales order release when shortages are identified, or at the inward putaway release to satisfy shortages of intermediate and pick bin locations.
Manually generated replenishments
Listed on a report or directly accessed by Radio Frequency handheld terminals, these are generated between bulk, intermediate and pick locations.
Multiple replenishments
Fulfilled as batches and carried out based on an optimum pick-and-drop path, these can be further prioritised using an ABC classification structure attached to the item’s inventory master record. The pick-and-drop operations can be distinct processes and carried out by different resources.
Forced replenishment
This occurs for a location that may not have reached its trigger point.
Item information
WMS’s Storage Details screen defines the attributes of stored items.
Set up each item with a packaging configuration defined up to five levels, ranging from single-unit inner and multi-unit outer to pallet configurations.
Dimensions, weights, conversion factor, and a Global Trade Item Number (GTIN) can also be defined for each unit of measure.
In addition, WMS allows you to define preferred storage zones for each item, which it uses when an automatic putaway allocates the inventory location.
You can also define picking methodologies for individual items. For example, configure WMS to use first-in, first-out (FIFO) as a picking methodology, even when certain items require an operator to pick based on the expiry date.
WMS’s Location Enquiry screen delivers important location metrics for each stock item, including location storage capacities, replenishment points and location utilisation percentages. In doing so, you can make informed decisions at receipting, replenishing and putaway time, optimising warehouse processes.
Putaway
WMS sets incoming inventory as “awaiting putaway”, meaning an item is not available for sale until it moves to a location in the warehouse.
Putaway is a logical holding area for inventory awaiting allocation to a “pickable” location. Returns from customers, inventory purchased for specific sales orders and returns to suppliers can all be allocated to “non-pickable” locations.
WMS automatically allocates a storage location for incoming inventory based on the item’s current location, storage type and priority. Intelligent putaway routines produce labels showing locations to be filled. You can also perform top-ups as part of the putaway process.
WMS supports two methods of bin location controls:
• Quantity-based — Defines capacity as a certain number of base units, cartons or pallets
• Three-dimensional — Determines capacity by height, width and depth
In addition, split goods into appropriate pallet or carton configurations based on an item’s storage details. At this point you can produce pallet tickets or labels — either with a barcode or without — to support accurate inventory control and pallet tracking.
See what inventory is available with Pallet/Item Putaway
Locations and zones
WMS supports a range of different location types and optional zones, providing a flexible way to design your storage.
Using attributes inherited from the location type (for example, preferred pick method, replenishment level or picking path) or from the zone (for example, storage type or customerspecific location), you can create a wide variety of storage types and picking methodologies. These include:
• pick bins
• cold rooms
• bulk locations
• bulk stack with last-in, first-out (LIFO)
• carton line storage
• FIFO picking
• carousel
• use-by date (expiry date)
Dedicate special customer zones for reserving inventory and pre-pick work (for example, price ticketing). If desired, moving inventory into customer-dedicated zones can trigger related processes such as the printing of a trading partner’s price labels.
Customer-dedicated inventory is considered when a sales order entry prompts the calculation or display of available inventory.
Delivery requests
WMS enables you to manage delivery requests, dates and times.
The system displays a real-time sorted schedule, showing inventory ready to be dispatched, with an indication of pallet size and the number of pallets or part pallets.
Delivery requests are sorted into a date/time order, and the schedule continually refreshes to display up-to-date information. You can select to view all orders awaiting dispatch or orders by customer.
Order picking
For order picking, WMS uses “resources” and “pools”. A resource is an order picker or, in some cases, a packer. A pool is a logical holding area for released orders waiting for a resource to pick them up.
When you run WMS in paperless mode using Radio Frequency, resources and pools control the allocation of orders to the various picking staff. For example, pools can be prioritised to have an urgent picking order pool and a general picking pool.
Release orders for picking to a pool or allocate them to an appropriate resource for picking. The criteria to release orders for picking include:
• dates (due, earliest and latest delivery)
• priority
• item code
• delivery zone
• customer and customer type
• bill to account
• order number
• carrier code
• territory
• customer reference
Picking paths and picking slips can be split by zone, allowing different personnel to pick different areas using varying methodologies for groups or individual orders. Picking paths can be as simple or complex as required.
Wave picking
Wave picking allows you to group multiple orders to be picked as if they were a consolidated requirement and then deliver the consolidated requirement to a sorting process.
Time savings and better resource management are some of the benefits of this methodology.
Smart dispatch
WMS caters for multiple dispatch processes, including individual or multiple order shipments, delivery and route planning, and pallet dispatch.
Select “single order dispatch” or “multiple order dispatch” once orders have been staged using multiple order dispatch methods, including drop sequence and serialised dispatch. Generate labels and any other documentation at this time, and confirm manually or using barcodes.
You can specify whether each order must have a distinct consignment note or whether orders should be consolidated on a single consignment note.
Create, maintain and print carrier manifests, too. In addition, use the carrier code and delivery route to select a group of orders that total a required weight or volume (for example, to fill an appropriately sized truck).
Enquiries
The module includes a range of sophisticated enquiry facilities to help you manage your operations and track performance. These include:
• warehouse inventory by location or by item
• warehouse profile view
• full customer information
• full sales order information
• full purchase order information
• warehouse resources
In addition, you can access a range of inventory item enquiries using the Inventory Enquiry Console.
Advanced Forecasting
Optimise your inventory management with Advanced Forecasting and accurately predict future demand for your products
Advanced Forecasting considers different forecasting factors, such as entered sales orders, goods shipped and inventory transfers (usage), to identify and track trends and seasonal fluctuations.
The system also applies appropriate smoothing factors based on a “best fit” forecasting method. Algorithms include triple exponential smoothing (Winter’s Method) and moving averaging. With triple exponential smoothing, past observations are given exponentially smaller weights as the observations get older. This method provides more accurate forecasts when there are expected or known seasonal variations in the data.
Advanced Forecasting offers:
• graphical displays
• exception handling
• the ability to expand on exception handling to include history linking and item linking
• trend classifications, including steady demand, seasonal demand, seasonal trends and averaging
• the ability to include service levels
• multiple calculation methods
In addition, Advanced Forecasting offers customer attribute forecasting, giving you the ability to segment specific customers based on attributes — which, in turn, enables you to forecast based on attribute groups rather than specific warehouse locations. The forecast method can then calculate for each group and aggregate the demand at the planning level.
Advanced Forecasting’s sequencing functionality allows you to set up a series of generational requirements as a one-off task and then run them periodically as defined. This means you spend less time preparing data and more time on the planning process.
For key market intelligence, the source is the best place to access information. Advanced Forecasting’s contribution process functionality allows you to send data internally or externally for review and updating, and then simply import it back, reducing the risk of potential error.
Forecasting system
Your forecasting system should be understandable, flexible, simple to use, accurate, robust and integrated. Advanced Forecasting meets all these requirements — and more.
Advanced Forecasting displays calculated and manual forecasts within a chart on the same screen, making it easy to determine how suitable any forecasting method is for the pattern of sales of any item.
By taking known market events into account, you can smooth out unusual events from the past and account for anticipated events in the future. Easily forecast a new item with no history by linking it to a similar item with a history.
With Advanced Forecasting, set-up and processing are relatively simple and can be automated. Underpinning the system is established statistical methods for forecast generation and selection. And because it is part of Pronto Xi’s fully integrated suite of solutions, the data you use to calculate forecasts comes directly from Pronto Xi’s sales operations tools. Once the forecast is published, the results can be used by all planning and reordering processes in Pronto Xi.
In addition, Business Intelligence Essentials contains a forecast model containing real-time information to enhance your reporting and strategic planning processes.
Visualise and predict potential sales trends to reorder critical inventory items without impacting business/company cash flow
Setup and processing are simple and automated
Trends
A trend refers to changes in sales over time. Advanced Forecasting classifies trends in a number of ways, including:
• Steady demand — The demand for the item is more or less constant over time
• Steady trend — While demand may increase or decrease, the rate of change of demand (the trend) is constant
• Seasonal demand — While demand may vary over time, demand is more or less constant for the same period each year
• Seasonal demand with trend — A steady trend in sales superimposed over a seasonal demand
• Linear trend — An increase or decrease that is the same over time
• Multiplicative trend — A percentage increase or decrease that is the same over time
Advanced Forecasting determines which of these trends is the best “fit” for each inventory item by creating a forecast based on each trend and then comparing them with measured (actual) demand.
Measures of accuracy
Advanced Forecasting has the flexibility to handle items that do not lend themselves to traditional forecasting techniques. It uses three statistical analysis techniques to determine the accuracy of the forecast. These are:
• Mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) — The percentage by which the forecast differs from the actual sales achieved
• U-statistic — A comparison of the forecast with the “naive” forecast, which only uses historical data for short-term horizon forecasting
• Tracking signal — A comparison of errors in a forecast over time to determine if they are systematic or random
Improving forecasting accuracy
To refine the accuracy of its forecasts, the Advanced Forecasting algorithm incorporates actual data as it becomes available using four key steps:
• Modelling — Advanced Forecasting develops a model of the sales pattern for each forecasted item based on trends, seasonality and random fluctuation
• Forecasting — Using the model, Advanced Forecasting generates new forecasts
• Feedback — Advanced Forecasting adds actual data to refine the model as it becomes available
• Performance — Assesses the forecasts’ accuracy
Distribution Requirements Planning
Set up and maintain a truly integrated supply chain with Distribution Requirements Planning
Distribution Requirements Planning (DRP) plans the flow of goods across even the most complex network of satellite, branch and central locations at the warehouse level. Restocking is straightforward and flexible — aggregate demand from customer orders back to a central distribution centre with replenishment based on user-defined criteria.
As well as supporting the distribution of goods or materials between warehouses, DRP also helps you to plan for the production or acquisition of items.
For example, you can use the output from DRP to:
• plan at the factory level with master production scheduling (MPS) and material requirements planning (MRP)
• automatically generate purchase orders
• create warehouse transfer orders to facilitate replenishment
Complete the dispatch of all open orders or display the status of orders for delivery in a single data grid
View all planned enquiries
Warehouse replenishment
As the number of item codes, suppliers and warehouses increase, so too does the complexity of supply chain management.
DRP simplifies the supply chain by efficiently replenishing physical inventory locations. It uses optimisation tools that consider supplier priorities, transport costs, lead times, inventory targets and product costs.
Plan replenishment through the DRP network or on an item-by-item basis for products that move directly from the supplier into individual warehouses.
Time-phased distribution plan
Using a similar model to manufacturing’s material requirements planning (MRP), DRP provides a time-phased distribution plan with a consistent level of visibility across the entire network of warehouses, distribution centres and suppliers.
Access information quickly, with source documents and inventory data only a single click away from the central DRP Enquiry screen.
Complex networks
To support large and complex networks, DRP offers the flexibility to acquire any item from any source within the network, such as a supplier, factory, branch or central warehouse.
We’ve improved DRP processing times by 20%, helping to drive efficiencies for complex networks. The module also offers a better approach to managing exceptions when defining centralised and local purchasing rules.
In addition, an enhanced network visualisation helps you better identify and navigate source rules across the network in a single view.
Create a visualisation of your distribution network to see the flow of goods
Electronic Data Interchange
Electronic Data Interchange is a flexible collaboration tool that seamlessly exchanges information with your suppliers, partners and customers
With a clear and comprehensive data structure, standard file format and integrated import/export mechanism, Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) effortlessly connects you and your partners via a value-added network (VAN).
EDI gives you the flexibility and connectivity to leverage your supply chain, achieve common goals with your customers and suppliers, and realise new operational capabilities.
Key benefits include:
• a fully auditable order trail
• reduced transaction costs
• an easy-to-maintain system
• reduced manual intervention
• flexible invoice exclusion
Connectivity
Pronto Xi specifies standard format files that virtually any VAN can translate into an appropriate format, so you can choose the VAN that delivers the most cost-effective solution for your business.
For example, the VAN can convert a Pronto Xi file into ANSI X12, EDIFACT, OBI, OCI or XML format, and vice versa.
The VAN controls communication between parties, data manipulation and mapping, translation and transaction logging. There is also the flexibility to exclude orders from an EDI batch.
Documents supported by EDI include:
• purchase orders (PO) — incoming and outgoing
• purchase order acknowledgements (POA) — outgoing
• purchase order changes (POC) — incoming
• advanced shipping notices (ASN) — incoming and outgoing
• invoices — incoming and outgoing
Trading partners
EDI’s flexibility and adaptability mean it can fulfil the electronic trading requirements of a wide range of companies, including major retailers such as Coles, Woolworths Group, David Jones and many more.
Create trading partners
Maintain trading partner details and processing steps
Radio Frequency
Transform your warehouse into a paperless environment with Radio Frequency
By replacing paper-based processes, Radio Frequency lowers administration costs, eliminates errors in standard activities such as picking, and streamlines the information flow within your system.
Radio Frequency allows you to electronically transmit orders from Sales to your operators’ handheld or vehicle-mounted terminals. It also includes options to automate a range of business processes.
When used in conjunction with the Warehouse Management System (WMS) or Scanpack, the full range of Radio Frequency’s features include:
• incoming goods, including purchase order receipts, work orders and stock transfers
• stocktaking
• putaway
• replenishment
• inventory transfers for inter- and intra-warehouse
• store allocations
• picking
• packing
• order dispatch
• stock and location enquiries
Picking processes
A picker can pick from a pool — the holding area for released orders waiting to be picked — or from an assigned list.
Create multiple picking and packing pools and rank by priority. If the top-priority pool is empty, Radio Frequency automatically scans the next pool in the range. Intelligent pickpath information guides the picker around the warehouse.
When managing multiple warehouses, Radio Frequency users can alternate between warehouses to process tasks such as putaway, replenishments and transfers.
Integration and flexibility
Tailor Radio Frequency to support your specific business needs by integrating it with other Pronto Xi modules such as Inventory, Scanpack and WMS.
Radio Frequency’s fully configurable menus facilitate tasks ranging from stocktaking to processes using more advanced automation processes like picking, putaway and replenishment.
For example, in a large warehouse operation, dedicate some staff to putaway and replenishment tasks, while others can pick and pack orders. The configurable Radio Frequency menu functionality ensures that each user is provided with the appropriate interface.
The ease and simplicity of the picking goods screen
Scanpack
Scanpack is the smart solution for the efficient picking, packing and dispatch of goods
Streamline warehouse processes, increase the accuracy of stock movements and enhance “track and trace” visibility with Scanpack. It allows you to scan, track and manage large numbers of items, cartons and pallets using barcode technology, including the automated printing of barcode packing and Serial Shipping Container Code (SSCC) labels. Scanpack enables you to capture carton and pallet content information, reducing errors and increasing order fulfilment accuracy.
Scanpack typically manages orders using the following process:
• Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) purchase orders containing the required quantity and price of each item are received from customers
• purchase orders convert into sales orders within Pronto Xi, and sales orders are generated by store or distribution centre
• the required quantity of each item is packed and validated
• once a sales order is complete or when the carton is full, the carton size code is entered into Scanpack and a serialised label is printed
• the carrier, consignment details, dispatch date/time, expected arrival date/time and transport reference are all recorded in Scanpack
• total order weight and volume are calculated, but this can be overridden if needed
• dispatch documentation is created in Scanpack and a shipment invoice is printed
• SSCC details are sent back to the customer in an EDI advanced shipping notice (ASN)
Scanpack supports industry standards and integrates with Pronto Xi’s Inventory, Warehouse Management System and Financials modules.
Package dimensions to be captured at dispatch using WMS RF Scan pack module
Catalogue
Stay on top of your suppliers’ offerings with Catalogue
Catalogue can hold thousands of catalogue items, helping you keep track of products that aren’t captured in Inventory. Store catalogue items as formatted or unformatted text and cross-reference them to other Pronto Xi modules so you can search for catalogue items via inventory enquiries. Dynamically create new items as normal inventory master records.
Each catalogue item contains unlimited information, including technical product specifications, supplier or manufacturer information, prices and part numbers.
Catalogue also allows you to create supplier contracts and link these to multiple catalogue items. Once the contract is activated, the agreed prices and contract numbers are captured against the individual companies, and the agreed supplier is given priority-one status.
Set expiry dates for each supplier contract, and generate reports to review existing and potential contracts.
Search Catalogue for a particular item
Pronto Xi Proof of Delivery App
Maintain digital records of goods delivered to your premises, franchises and customers with the Pronto Xi Proof of Delivery App
The Pronto Xi Proof of Delivery App is a real-time window into your deliveries, and a vital step in organising, processing and recording deliveries.
Loading of goods
The Pronto Xi Proof of Delivery App includes the manifest information for a load, keeping administrative staff informed of a load’s progress.
The app captures all package details, including its contents, allowing your staff to double-check every order loaded into delivery vehicles. If a load fails for any reason, you can record the failure and its cause, so that back-office staff can action it accordingly.
Pick-up of goods
The Proof of Delivery App supports the pickup of goods from your warehouse.
Easily identify goods ready for pick-up using an assigned sales order number or customer number.
Delivery information
The app allows you to view all deliveries or pick-ups by the nearest destination to your current location.
Advise customers of your estimated arrival time based on distance and real-time traffic details from the app’s integrated Google Maps functionality. At the same time, your operations staff remain updated on the delivery status of all packages.
Consolidate orders and instructions for delivery to the same customer and address. Save proof of delivery information once and the POD app will distribute the information to individual orders.
Customers sign for confirmation at the point of pick-up or delivery, or you can take an image as proof of delivery or pick-up. Record reasons for failed or partial deliveries, and update the status accordingly to keep the customer informed.
Offline capability
The Proof of Delivery App works offline, meaning you can stay connected if the cellular network drops out while on the road.
App administration
Keep your delivery data secure by registering or removing mobile devices’ information in the Pronto Xi back end. Reset passwords, register carriers, track API calls and more — all from a single administration area within Pronto Xi.
Capture signatures to record proof of delivery
View the contents of a package
A view of the delivery work bench
Asset & Facility Management
Simplified services
Focus your people, processes and assets on a single goal — achieving business excellence
With Pronto Xi’s service modules — Project, Service, Pronto Service App, Service Connect, Maintenance Management and Rental — you have a complete end-to-end lifecycle solution for your customers.
From quotation to completion, Project makes it easy to conduct granular project tracking at task level. Cost breakdowns and direct integration with Pronto Xi’s Resource Management module also enable your projects to stay within budget.
Service allows you to minimise customer wait times by keeping track of high-priority service issues, customer service history, warranties and time-critical customer service–level agreements (SLAs). By authorising your back office to manage service calls — from contracts and call allocation to invoicing and reporting — in a central location, Service gives you more time to focus on providing exceptional customer care.
When service engineers are in the field, Pronto Service App equips them with the functionality they need to complete predictive or reactive work. They can also invoice customers and complete payment transactions onsite.
Service Connect is a user-friendly web portal which enables your customers to raise service calls, track the status and review the accompanying conversations in real time, giving them the ability to obtain information on demand.
Maximise planning and control of plant maintenance activities with Maintenance Management. By ensuring your equipment is always in top shape, Maintenance Management helps you reduce breakdowns and service costs.
Rental lets you keep track of rental products in a fully integrated system, including current rental status, traceable contracts, service and rental history, and asset depreciation.
Finally, all the above modules integrate with Pronto Xi’s Resource Management and Resource Scheduler, enabling you to plan human and non-human resources. It provides a thorough work roster and employee award system to optimise your workforce. Once the end-to-end process is complete, awards and allowances flow smoothly into Payroll.
Schedule resources, teams and equipment with Resource Scheduler. An intuitive web application, it offers an effective visual overview of your resource allocation and enables quick rescheduling in response to ever-changing daily operational needs.
Project
Project automates the time-consuming aspects of project quotation for greater cost control
Project integrates with other Pronto Xi modules to keep you updated on work orders, sales orders and service calls, minimising unforeseen costs.
Key features of Project include:
• multiple cost centres and budgets per project
• full Cost Breakdown Structure (CBS) for greater cost granularity
• Project Tasks and milestones, helping you achieve greater control over project activities and deliverables
• full integration of Project Tasks into Resource Management for clear visualisation and scheduling
• flexible, progressive invoicing or billing via Claim Schedule
• project hierarchies of up to 20 levels
• customisable profit take-up and release rules
• flexible timesheet creation via Project or Resource Management, with seamless updates to Payroll
Executive Summaries
Project Executive Summary is a powerful analysis tool that provides instant insights. It also allows you to drill down to source data without creating reports.
Project Summary Views are highly customisable and can be based on a combination of Project dimensions. Use the predefined views or customise numerous drill paths to suit your requirements. You can also use project hierarchies to group data. View comprehensive project data and drill down to
Find all project details in one central area
Project types
A “project” is any work undertaken by your company over any time period. It is either performed for a customer defined in Accounts Receivable, or is posted to a General Ledger or Fixed Asset account.
Project allows you to create number of different project types, including:
Creating a quotation or responding to a tender? Define a hierarchical Cost Breakdown Structure (CBS) for all related labour and materials. Simply apply margins to each element to formulate a detailed Claim Schedule, which can be used as the basis for billing. Set up Project Tasks to define the activities, resources and commitments required to carry out each project phase.
Once projects are in progress, track incurred costs and income earned. Project fully integrates with Pronto Xi modules, such as Accounts Payable and Purchasing, allowing you to record the project and cost category against any purchase order or supplier invoice.
In addition, you can directly raise purchase orders for required materials from project budgets and apply these to each relevant Project Task. This ensures all commitments are managed in conjunction with the project activity or deliverable. Purchase orders can also be consolidated to help save on shipping costs, and materials held in a dedicated warehouse until due onsite.
Where items are built specifically for a project, Project creates manufacturing work orders based on a standard bill of material (BOM). You can also customise configurations using the Sales Configurator tool.
Project integrates with Pronto Xi’s Payroll, Resource Management, Resource Scheduler and Fixed Asset modules, allowing you to record labour expenses and equipment hire through timesheet entry. Where applicable, Project automates Payroll postings on costs to the project so the true cost of a resource is accounted for.
Throughout the project lifecycle, you can examine costs and income for each cost category or against the master item details referenced by the project to easily compare the information to your original budgets.
Project tightly controls variations to the original quotation. Enter provisional variations, submit these to the customer, record them as rejected or approved, and modify the budgets accordingly.
The Master Claim Schedule also reflects these costs and income against the original item list or any items defined as variations of the project.
Project lifecycles
A project goes through a number of stages from creation to completion, and a different status represents each stage.
Raise a Quotation
Generate quotations based on estimated costs, and record customer details and nature of the project at the same time.
Modify Quotation
Modify quotations at the negotiation or reevaluation stage. If costs are incurred before the final budget sign-off, record these before moving the project to In Progress.
Accept/Reject Quotation
Once the quotation is raised, accept or reject it. An accepted quotation becomes a project In Progress, while a rejected quotation is archived as a lost quotation.
Setup
Capture initial project details during the setup stage. You can also record any costs against the project and revise original cost estimates.
In progress
Once a project is In Progress, record costs incurred against the project, as well as invoices generated, variations processed and profit taken up.
Close the project
When a project is complete, the close-out operation calculates its final profit/loss (profit can be taken up to a nominated account in the General Ledger) and its status changes to “finished”.
The close-out operation is irreversible, but subprojects can be attached to a closed parent project.
Close-out rules
Set close-out rules according to different types of projects and locations, providing flexibility for businesses that need it.
For example, choose to fully invoice contract projects to their full value before close-out. Or invoice the value for time-and-materials projects once those costs are determined.
Apply up to 11 close-out rules to a project. These can include:
• prevent closing if the project is not invoiced fully according to contract value
• prevent closing if purchase orders are not both received and invoiced
• prevent closing if work in progress is not cleared
• prevent closing until all variations are approved
• run a system integrity check upon closing
• use a defined method of profit take-up at closure, or define that no profit take-up is used at all
Relationships between projects
Use Project to build a hierarchy of projects for enquiry, reporting and invoicing purposes. Four hierarchy levels are available, with up to 20 Child projects available under the Grandparent/Parent hierarchy. The levels are:
• Grandparent — The highest-level projects, available only for enquiry purposes. Pronto Xi rolls up the budgets and actuals of the lowerlevel projects to the Grandparent
• Parent — These projects can have subprojects attached, with budgets and actuals rolled up to the Parent project for enquiry and reporting. If the customer is invoiced at this level, costs from the Parent and sub-projects aggregate, the mark-up is applied, and the parent project is billed
• Child — These sub-projects are attached to a Parent project but have their own budgets and scheduling. Costs may be posted directly to sub-projects and projects invoiced at the Parent or Child level
• Adult — Independent projects with no relationship to other projects
Cost management
Project enables you to maintain accurate and timely cost control of projects with its Cost Breakdown Structure (CBS), allowing for greater costing granularity, cost allocation and margin management.
The CBS provides a sequential framework of activities and their related costs. You can itemise and prioritise tasks within a cost category to assist in the scoping, quoting and tendering of projects.
Multiple CBS levels can be linked to a Project Task to align material commitments and resource requirements with activity time frames. By breaking down costs within a hierarchical structure, you gain greater control when applying mark-ups, factoring variations or managing the analysis of project budgets versus actual costs.
To further streamline the quoting process, Pronto Xi includes a Copy to Claim Schedule option to pass detailed cost structures directly to the Claim Schedule area. This ensures greater consistency across the project and delivers the foundation elements for quoting and invoicing.
Benefits include:
• consolidation of multiple CBS structures when tendering for multi-site opportunities
• user-defined CBS row colours so segments can be easily visualised and differentiated
• the ability to upload CBS structures from Excel
• automation of actual cost disbursement across CBS elements
• the ability to copy CBS structures from other projects
• visibility of what percentage is completed for linked tasks
• the ability to identify and minimise potential cost overruns while the project is in progress
• the capacity to generate more accurate quotations, cost tracking and service warranties
Cost categories
You can group certain types of costs within a project into cost categories and assign separate budgets and cost totals to each category to assist with budgeting and analysis.
Costs
There are multiple ways to incur direct costs against a project, including:
• sub-contracting
• purchasing
• inventory
• supplier invoices
• journals
• timesheets
Issue inventory to a project directly or via a sales order, purchase order or supplier invoice.
Timesheet entries record costs for labour and equipment hire, including overhead cost generation.
Journal entries — using the journal function in Financials — can be used to record indirect costs against projects.
Variations
Project allows you to make and manage variations to the original project.
Monthly summary
Project stores data in monthly buckets each time a transaction is processed against a project, dramatically increasing the efficiency of enquiry functions.
View details of a Project Task
Project Tasks
Project Xi’s Project Tasks functionality improves your ability to manage projects by activity and duration. By attributing a task to a specified element within the project CBS, Project Tasks brings together budgeted cost estimates and the activity details necessary to get the job done on time and on budget.
Project Tasks allows you to view each task’s percentage completion and status, helping to deliver greater insight into the project’s progress. Under the Project Task structure, you can plan and organise deliverables in line with critical milestones, ensuring preliminary tasks are completed before subsequent tasks begin.
Attach purchase orders, material requisitions, resources and CBS elements to tasks, allowing better tracking and commitment reconciliation at the activity level.
Importantly, Project Tasks delivers the framework you need to efficiently allocate resources — such as personnel/employees, plant equipment or contractors — to tasks. Through Resource Management, you can also use generic resources, resource your teams, and accept and decline workflows.
Project Tasks also manages communications with your resources. As time frames change and milestones are impacted, it delivers instant notifications to keep all allocated resources fully informed.
Find Project Tasks on the Resource Scheduler. Email key task details to allocated staff in advance of the scheduled work and attach calendar appointments that include the task details.
Other key features of Project Tasks include:
• an intuitive and logical task workflow
• Resource Scheduler for graphical visualisation and task rescheduling
• a rescheduling tool that automatically reschedules task time frames and resources where capacity clashes are identified
• the ability to copy a task profile from an existing project
• the ability to link tasks to create dependencies so that a task may not commence until the preceding task is complete
Orders
CBS
Predecessors
Resources
Resource
Scheduler
Automatically sends email to resource
Set hold reason code
Set cancellation reason code
Set Task status to ‘Complete’ and 100%
Create Task Optional links Set Task attributes
Set Task status to ‘Notified’
Set task status to ‘Deferred’ or “In Progress’ with % Resource attached? Task on hold?
Scheduled project claims
The Project Claim Schedule creates invoices for customer billing, and can be used to develop a project budget.
Customer claim entry
Work begins once the project status is In Progress and you can raise claims to invoice the customer.
The Claim Control function facilitates three claiming methods:
• Invoice method — A direct invoicing method that does not consider certification or progress claims.
• Progress invoices — These are based on costs for time and materials, defined project stage completion, or percentage completion.
• Progress claim — This method creates a sales order invoice but holds the order back from invoicing and tax presentation until the claim is certified
Claim retention percentages
You can define retention percentages for the overall project and for each claim, helping to ensure the customer does not attempts to retain more than the agreed values.
Claim entry
Enter claims manually or in bulk via an amount or percentage. Define these values against a master item or any of the sub-total or grand total lines of the claim, then apply pro rata across the appropriate sections of the claim.
Claim lifecycle
A typical claim lifecycle progresses through a number of stages, represented by the following statuses: Entered, Internal Approval, On Hold, Submitted, Certified and Paid.
Visualise and reschedule planned tasks, then import your final plan back to Project
Actions
Actions record the various events for a claim, including status changes and other manual events that can be entered to add value to the claim process.
To assist you when you are reviewing a project, use the notes tool against each action to capture details, such as phone calls, letters and faxes.
Certification
A submitted claim is sent to the customer for their review and approval before they return a payment advice. This document states the claimed, assessed and retention amounts defined by the customer, and any prepayment drawdown amounts.
These details are entered against the claim via the certification process, where any differences are recorded against the claim details.
Various methods are available to certify claim amounts.
The defer method records the difference as a separate amount on each claim item. You can then discuss this with your customer and potentially offset in the future.
Customer retention release
If the customer retains funds during the claim process, you can request their release via a retention release order. This can occur at any time but typically happens towards the end of a project.
Claims enquiries
The Claims Enquiry screen makes it easy to find claims through powerful search parameters, including dates, statuses, types of claims and claims with variations.
Create and submit Project claims
Income
In addition to capturing incurred costs, Project records income earned. Recognise income by posting an invoice in Accounts Receivable, manually raising a sales order, or generating a progress invoice or claim.
Invoice income category
Income transactions are posted to the project as a “credit” in an income category. You can have multiple income categories on a project.
Progress invoices
Project calculates invoices for time-andmaterials projects using costs recorded against the project.
Generate invoices in stages using an invoice schedule based on either a fixed amount or a percentage complete.
Progress claim
A sales order invoice is created for progress claims but is held back from invoicing and tax presentation until the claim is certified.
Profit
Progressive profit take-up is often used on longterm projects. Project uses a “percentage of completion” method to determine the profit to take. If no profit is taken up during the project’s lifecycle, 100% of the profit is taken up when the project is closed.
Profit take-up methods
To suit different types of projects, there are four methods that can be used for taking up profit:
• Cost-based method — Assumes that the true completion status of a project is best measured using the actual costs as a percentage of the forecast cost
• Sales-based method — Assumes that the true completion status of a project is the amount invoiced against the contract value
• Actual-based method — Assumes a project is 100% complete and takes up all actual values
• Cost/sales-based method — Uses the costbased method to calculate the percentage complete but does not allow you to take up more revenue than you have invoiced
Posting rules
Project allows you to set up different posting rules to the General Ledger based on userdefinable fields and project types. This ensures postings end up on the correct balance sheet or profit-and-loss statement according to your business’s general ledger requirements.
Project management tools
Contacts and Functions
The Contacts and Functions feature records the names and details of people associated with the project for your team and your customers’ team, helping to facilitate communication.
Issue Register
The Issue Register lists administrative events and activities that need to occur during a project, and assigns responsibility for events and activities to specific individuals. The My Issues function allows individuals to review allocated issues and actions across multiple projects; any issues or actions approaching their due date display in calendar view.
Sub-contracting
Project Sub-Contractor is a sub-module that provides functions and controls to initiate and manage outsourced project tasks.
Supplier agreements
Sub-contractor or supplier agreements create a commitment that you can break down across multiple cost categories.
Capture details of the tasks performed by subcontractors as:
• scheduled rates or lump-sum payments
• retention percentages
• currency codes
• estimated start and end dates
Sub-contractor claims
Enter claims for work performed by subcontractors using either a summary or detail method and assess them based on the terms and conditions of the sub-contractor agreement.
Entries include:
• claimed and assessed amounts
• reasons for any differences
• retention amounts
• tax amounts
• percentage of labour
Project Sub-Contractor automatically calculates the default retention amount and the assessed amount’s tax component.
Once all amounts are accepted, you can raise a claim or invoice showing the claim number, amount, currency rate, date and pay-by date.
Variations
During the life of a sub-contractor agreement, either you or the sub-contractor may request changes to the terms or scope of work. Project Sub-Contractor facilitates multiple variations that can be made to agreements during the claim entry process.
Sub-contractor retention release
Release held retentions at any point in the lifecycle of a sub-contractor agreement. Any retained funds are held in a separate General Ledger account. When they are ready for release, Pronto Xi will automatically create a taxable payment for the sub-contractor.
Enquiry on sub-contractor agreements
A single project manager may be responsible for many sub-contractors and projects, making it important to have a powerful enquiry tool. With Project Sub-Contractor, you can filter subcontractor data according to various criteria.
You can also filter agreements by type (such as lump sum, scheduled rates or supply), status, variation types or claim types. Use criteria to select matching sub-contractors.
The enquiry tool allows users to drill down into the detail of the record based on the criteria entered.
Create project Construction Company using Pronto Xi
Select supplier quote
Create subcontract agreement
Subcontract agreement Quote
Review tender/ request
Create project
Create master budget
Create quote
Set project to In Progress
Perform work
Assess claim
Payment run
Retention release
Payment run
Progress claim
Payment advice
Cheque/EFT
Retention invoice
Cheque/EFT
Create a sub-contractor claims workflow
Create claim
Certify claim
Cash receipt
Retention release
Cash receipt
Security
Budget limits
Project Manager Limits enables you to set the budget or contract value amount for a manager to control at different stages of an individual project. You can also set an in-progress limit but not a completion limit.
Branch masking
Restrict users to specific projects based on branch masking rules to ensure branch data remains secure.
Credit limits
Project notifies you if a project budget takes a customer over their credit limit. You can receive a warning message but allow the project to continue, or you can leave the project at the quotation stage until approval to proceed is received from a credit officer.
Timesheets
Time recording and timesheet entry
Project has a user-friendly time-recording function that allows organisations to record, track and authorise timesheets for work performed in Pronto Xi’s Project and Service modules. Timesheet entry records and reports labour costs, hours and overheads against a project or service call.
With the Timesheet Control table, customise timesheet entry based on your business needs. Customisation options include:
• a variety of methods for calculating cost rates
• a variety of methods for calculating chargeout rates
• the option to integrate timesheets with Payroll, either via Projects or using the Resource Management module (if turned on)
• choice in the detail required for timesheet entry
• the ability to post additional on-costs (for example, superannuation or personal/ carer’s leave)
• timesheet approval
Add timesheet security requirements at different levels, such as authorising specified users to run reports or to maintain and set up timesheet control records.
You can also set rates for overhead recovery against labour costs and automatically post these.
Equipment cost and charge-out rates
Assign an equipment resource by default cost and charge-out rates for different periods (for example, per day or week). When you enter timesheet transactions against the equipment resource, the default cost and charge-out rates are easily posted to the project or service call.
Create a timesheet entry in Resource Management and link to Projects
Manage all activities in the Tender process
Tenders
Tender Management manages future prospects, tenders and their associated contracts.
With Tender Management, you can forecast probable contract values and margins on tenders, current jobs and service contracts.
Once the tender is won, the data flows seamlessly into the linked project.
Key features of Tender Management include:
• go/win factor
• the ability to build a detailed Cost Breakdown Structure to capture tender-related costs
• history of changes to tender
• notes associated with tender or prospect
• a to-do register that itemises responsibilities and timeframes
• forecasting and phasing of sales and margins
• tender and prospect reports
Service
Minimise your customers’ waiting time and empower your staff to deliver outstanding support with Service
Create contracts, direct maintenance activities, analyse warranties and track service unit history with Service. Accelerate call resolution and simplify contract management with sophisticated multi-level call monitoring delivered through a simple, informative interface.
Calls are summarised at a service centre level and separated into chronological order, letting you easily catalogue and access previous and current client enquiries. Gain awareness into key performance metrics at a glance using the Service Business Dashboard.
Integration with Project
Service integrates with all Pronto Xi applications, removing unnecessary re-keying of data. It simplifies the management of service contracts, and efficiently logs and processes service calls.
The Service to Project link integrates with Project. It directly links a service contract to a project, allowing you to track costs and income, set budgets and measure contract profitability. It also provides service call profitability analysis.
Intelligence
The Service Business Dashboard provides an at-a-glance insight into service operation performance, enabling you to optimise productivity and maximise engineer utilisation.
Performance metrics include:
• number of contracts due for renewal in the next 30 days
• number of unallocated calls for the day
• percentage of calls for the day that are unallocated
• number of outstanding calls
• current call counts by active status
• number of overdue unallocated calls by call service centre
An extended library of Business Intelligence metrics is also available for deeper analysis. Analytics supports effortless analysis and intuitive investigation through its easy-touse drill-up and drill-down data exploration functionality.
Analytics Dashboards provide an extended library of pre-built reports and performance metrics to further improve the performance of your service operations.
Contracts
Set up service contracts for serialised and non-serialised items, recurring billing values, warranty obligations, preventive maintenance schedules and other user-defined contract types. The contract details define the service units covered, and the duration and terms of the contract.
To improve the customer experience, use templates to expedite the creation of service contracts and projects. In addition, it autopopulates standard parameters to help you maintain data protocols across your contracts.
For users of Pronto Xi’s Sales and Inventory modules, covered service units include items previously sold to that customer, either directly or through a distributor. It also caters to equipment sold by another supplier, recording a description and serial number and keeping this separate from your regular inventory.
Time-based service recording
You can use time-based service recording for your contracts’ labour or travel coverage, enabling you to sell prepaid service coverage. Three time-based billing cycles are available at:
1. contract level
2. unit level
3. contract level with voucher numbers recorded
After selecting the billing cycle, you can enter the number of time blocks sold, the duration of each time block and the charge per block. Time-based unit-level contracts require the time details for serialised items only.
Contract invoicing
Bulk contract invoicing routines in Service streamline the invoicing process. They calculate and recognise earned and unearned contract revenue, providing greater visibility of projected income values.
The invoice value of a contract is the sum of the service rate of the units attached to that contract by one of the many available billing cycles. Tailor customer-facing invoices for contracts and calls, with flexible crediting features to cater for partial or full invoice credit arrangements. Get a bird’s-eye view of service performance
See all relevant service contract details in one place
Billing cycles
Get complete flexibility in how you set the billing cycle for a contract. When an invoice is raised, Service calculates the amount due for each unit by multiplying the number of billing cycles invoiced by each unit’s service rate. The “invoiced-up-to” date is then incremented by the billing cycle period.
An “invoiced-up-to” date is held for each unit on the contract, and the contract itself, meaning you can add or remove units from the contract. The next invoice is adjusted on a pro-rata basis.
Advanced billing or unearned income
When invoices are raised for service contracts, they will likely cover future services. General Ledger considers payments received for such invoices as “unearned income” and records them as a liability until the revenue is earned.
Renewals
To help get existing contracts renewed once they are close to their expiry date, you can send out up to three renewal notices to customers at specified intervals before the expiry date. If a renewal is accepted, Service automatically creates a renewal invoice.
Contract on hold and billing on hold
You can choose to put a contract on hold without closing it because:
• the contract is no longer active, but final sign-off is not complete
• the contract may not require billing for a defined period
• there is a dispute
Service inventory
Preventive maintenance invoicing
Equipment/unit
Preventive maintenance
Preventive maintenance tasks
Service contract
Service calls
Scheduling Allocation of resources
Notification of resources
Work performed
Timesheet entry
Invoicing
Create a service management workflow
Service calls
Service includes a call-processing component to control the day-to-day activities of your service department.
New fields to code tables
We’ve added a new Transaction Start Code field in the Service Centres code table. Enter the code into this field, and it will define the action that initiates the activity.
New call type fields for RM Attributes and RM Attribute Groups now appear on the Call Type code table. Enter the resource attribute status of the service centre and the attribute group code, respectively, in these fields.
Custom date fields
We’ve introduced a new exportable procedure. Use this procedure to customise date fields in the Pronto Service App.
Code tables validations
We’ve applied validations to several codes, such as Action Code, Call Priority and Call Type, and Service Centres code tables. When you set up these tables with default data, the data is validated against existing data. If the field does not exist, it’s deemed invalid and you’ll see an error message.
Project costing
Cost category
Budget
Actual transactions
Profitability
Call logging
Log calls using either the Wizard Call Logging screen or the Form Entry Logging screen. This extends to other Pronto Xi modules, such as Service Connect, Pronto Service App and Resource Management.
Because each screen prompts you to select the correct information, Wizard Call Logging is particularly useful for casual users or new users. Meanwhile, Form Entry Logging suits more experienced users, permitting them to log calls quickly.
To ease the administrative burden of creating service calls for repeat work, the Copy Service Call function creates a call from a previously logged call.
There are three main types of logged service call:
1. internal calls, where the unit to be serviced will be brought to your workshop
2. onsite calls, where your engineers must go onsite
3. telephone support calls
Log calls using a simple, flexible process that is fast enough to be used by a phone operator. As the call is logged, Pronto Xi performs a credit check and verifies the account status in the Accounts Receivable module.
Simultaneously, the service site address is validated using Google Maps, and it generates an Estimated Travel Time to provide a notional representation of travel time to the site based on a time-zone table. Resource Scheduler and the Schedule View in Resource Management both display the travel and working times. A separate Google Maps licence is available.
When the call is assigned, the operator has immediate access to any existing service history to help them decide which engineer to allocate to the job.
You can also check whether the contract is active and the caller is authorised to place the call, although there doesn’t need to be an active service contract to log a call.
Service also identifies whether the subject of the call is under warranty. Once the call is logged, you can print a docket showing the address and details of the job for the engineer’s reference. Service supports a variety of preprinted formats.
Enter a quotation at the same time a call is logged to place the job on hold pending its acceptance.
Allocate resources to a call
Log service calls raised by back-office staff
Service call maintenance
Combining all service functions in one central area, the Service Call Maintenance Desktop gives operators a complete view of their service operations in a single screen, allowing fast and efficient processing.
With drill-down capabilities at the click of a button, the Service Call Maintenance Desktop gives operators access to detailed information and functionality without leaving the desktop.
Contract and call enquiries
The Selective Contract and Call Enquiry function makes it easy to search for service information, with parameters including service centres, outstanding service calls or engineers. The search results are displayed in a data grid, supporting flexible reporting methods.
Critical calls
Service offers multi-level call monitoring to measure actual performance against call level and contractual obligations.
Critical codes provide the building blocks to define your targets. They are automatically set against service calls according to defined rule sets or can be set manually.
Service call transactions record when you meet key milestones — Response Time, Onsite and Completed Repair — throughout the service call lifecycle. By comparing these actual times to the target times calculated by the critical codes, you receive better insights into customer and contract-based service levels.
In addition, by storing target times against each service call, service teams and administrators can be informed of missed milestones. This enables them to take pre-emptive action to meet the targets or manage customer expectations.
Service centres
Service calls are usually logged in a service centre, which may be a workshop where the service work is conducted, or a centralised base that monitors service calls and distributes them to engineers who travel to sites to perform the work.
If you have a centralised service centre taking calls from various regions, the regions are identified when the call is logged. For a region in a different time zone, the call is automatically logged in the time zone of the customer making the call.
Notes
The Service module has more than seven different types of notes, ranging from repair to contract notes.
Carryover notes highlight additional information specific to each service call. For example, the service centre can input temporary key collection points or safety requirements to ensure the engineer is aware of them before they attend the site.
A timeline visual lets you see how a service call was tracked and if the call response was within the target
Preventive maintenance
Service offers in-built flexibility for generating preventive maintenance (PM) calls using the following approach:
• Detailed PM service calls are generated according to the equipment’s routine frequency
• Equipment on the contract is maintained on a scheduled maintenance basis
• PM calls are generated in a run format within a routine hierarchy sequence. This type of contract produces a service call for each scheduled maintenance visit
• Calls can also be set to a standard PM run that produces a call for all scheduled visits due on the same day that are allocated to a particular run
Manage hierarchical run-based PM calls by consolidating serviceable equipment within a single PM service call for each run. Service technicians can then perform each routine for the service run within Pronto Service App. If monthly and weekly tasks are due simultaneously, incremental weekly tasks for the month are generated automatically.
Turn on Resource Management to allocate resources as a single person or team, or by attribute codes. You can allocate an engineer only on their work days or automatically based on their next availability.
Equipment locations
Equipment Site Location records the location of any item or piece of equipment belonging to a service contract, making it easier for engineers visiting the site to find the equipment.
Office staff can use location data to examine the work history at a location or for a specific piece of equipment.
Location codes can refer to a hierarchy of attributes and attribute sets. These generate additional information about an item’s location, a useful option for large or complex sites.
Manage locations against a contract as freeform text, then attach to equipment or units.
Equipment on contracts
A contract can include one or multiple pieces of equipment to service. These units can be serialised or non-serialised, have been sold by the service provider, have a PM component or be marked as a single unit.
Van inventory
For ease of inventory tracking, Service recognises an engineer’s vehicle as a “location” attached to the warehouse from which the inventory has been taken. Check and regulate inventory levels as required, and replenish ordering to maintain inventory levels.
Engineers’ vehicles can also be set up as individual warehouses to do stocktakes for one unit or a group.
Integration with Distribution
Service fully integrates with Distribution, so inventory allocations and service calls can range from informal material issues to formal picking slips creation.
Service also links to Pronto Xi’s Purchasing functionality. Create purchase orders and manage the entire procurement lifecycle against each service call. Set calls to Parts Required status to keep service technicians and their customers informed throughout the call and purchasing process.
Engineers
Each engineer is linked to a specific service centre and service calls are allocated accordingly. If required, allocated calls to engineers can be from other service centres.
Display the activity of each engineer in Resource Scheduler, allowing you to develop and monitor their call schedule. Payroll can also store each engineer’s employee number, so you can record additional payroll information.
Service visually displays incoming service calls and engineer workloads, and its integration with Resource Scheduler allows you to allocate calls to engineers using the drag-and-drop method.
Ranking Points
Use ranking points and attributes to allocate the most appropriate resource to the call.
Ranking points utilise the Resource Management attributes against Service calls by creating a weighted list of engineers based on points allocated for each ranking type. This weighted list is then used to allocate engineers to Service Calls and Project Tasks.
Set up ranking points globally or by service centre based on the following:
• matching service centre
• blacklisted engineer
• preferred engineer
• matching attributes
• last attended within specified days
• engineer on contract
Matching
Attributes
Points Allocation
Define Resource Management attributes to the required levels and roll attributes up to the service call to allocate engineers.
Allocate ranking points to Resource Management attributes defined on the call. Resources have matching attributes that can match 100% up to the resource ranking. Base rankings on the last time an engineer attended a call from this service centre, giving extra weight in points.
Integration with Resource Management
Resource Management is an optional module that can be activated by the service centre.
When Resource Management is activated, it supersedes the standard service call allocation by allowing you to see all your resources in the Schedule View and then filter by attributes (which can be defined by the engineer’s skill set and skill group). This allows you to understand who is available and when.
You can also allocate multiple resources — including personnel, sub-contractors, teams and equipment — from one centralised screen.
The Resource Master Screen defines the resource type, status, award, location and calendar — the essential elements and characteristics of each resource that feed into allocation considerations.
Call resources
Once a call is logged, allocate it to a single engineer, multiple engineers or a team of resources. Set up your system to do this as the call is entered, or choose to recommend an engineer based on contractual preference, skill, attributes, ranking points, territory or availability.
Service automatically notifies an engineer of a call allocation using Pronto Xi products, such as Service Connect or Pronto Service App, or via SMS or email.
Check the status of a call at any time. Group calls by the engineer to easily see if someone is behind schedule, allowing you to reassign their calls to another engineer.
Pronto Xi records “real-time” work on each call and billable time. Once work is complete, you can enter full details from the docket, including the fault; in turn, you can assign a code and analyse calls by fault type.
Retain cancelled calls and finished calls on file and reactivate into live calls at any time, even if archived.
When a call is complete, Pronto Xi generates an invoice that includes amounts for labour, travel, call fee, parts used and metered charges. A replacement unit or component can also be recorded, and the customer’s contract can be amended accordingly.
You can also charge tailored minimum time blocks within the billing cycle of a service contract to pre-bill blocks of time, which are consumed at call level when an engineer timesheets.
Preferred and blacklisted service engineers
Any contract site can hold a table of preferred engineers, allowing your customers to build trust in familiar engineers, increasing customer satisfaction.
Conversely, you can blacklist technicians in the preferred engineer table to block them from specific customer contracts.
Allocating resource teams to service calls
People, equipment and resources are often allocated together on service calls, plant work orders or project tasks. Resource Management allows you to predefine these teams for faster allocation.
Linking equipment to engineers
Within Resource Management, you can link a resource type called “equipment” (serialised inventory or assets) to an engineer or leave it to stand alone.
For further insights, Pronto Xi provides a visual to help you see which engineers are linked to which equipment and to know when certain equipment is booked out on a particular service call.
Integration with Resource Scheduler
Resource scheduling is essential to service, project and maintenance management activities. Pronto Xi’s Resource Scheduler enables your projects to meet deadlines and stay on budget, ensuring minimum strain is placed on employees and resources.
It allows you to allocate the most appropriate service engineers — including required equipment — to carry out service work. This functionality is equally applicable to fulfilling maintenance work order requirements.
Once the Resource Scheduler is in use, planning is based on historical data and adjusted to anticipate bottlenecks and low activity periods, eliminating guesswork.
Pronto Service App
Deliver the information your field staff/ employees/workforce need, anytime…
Pronto Service App links directly with Service to efficiently log, process and track all service activities. It’s also flexible enough to manage all reactive and predictive service calls, ensuring you meet and exceed your service level agreements (SLAs).
Pronto Service App delivers a complete feature set — from call management to invoicing and payment receipt — making it the ideal field service solution for commercial and consumer service businesses.
When Pronto Service App is used with Service, you get a powerful service delivery platform that simplifies complex routines. It gives you more time to manage exceptions and uncover richer business insights, generating greater efficiency and giving you a tangible competitive edge.
Real-time information
With Pronto Service App, your field workforce stays connected and informed, and managers have fast access to real-time information — whether they’re creating and dispatching calls or measuring performance and overall productivity.
To ensure the fastest possible call-to-cash process and, in turn, reduced days sales outstanding (DSO), Pronto Service App provides service technicians with the information and functionality they need to carry out all predictive and reactive works. At the call conclusion, they can invoice the customer and collect payment via a secure payment gateway.
Automated back-end processes — such as updating timesheets and purchase order commitments — ensure all data captured throughout the service routine is represented on Pronto Service App’s summary screens and the customer invoice. Technicians can email the invoice if their vehicle does not have a physical printer.
Pronto Service App was designed to suit complex B2B and B2C service delivery environments. It allows multiple technicians to work on the same call, and maintenance schedules for multiple equipment items to be managed by a single technician.
A separate Google Maps licence is available to access directions.
Data capture
With Pronto Service App, information can be updated on the go, helping field technicians manage their day-to-day workload, including unplanned events.
Field technicians can capture vehicle parts they’ve used, complete timesheets, raise purchase orders, raise materials orders from a central warehouse, and add photos. Pronto Service App also delivers improved cash flow as customer signatures are captured onsite, reducing the time between completing and charging for the job.
Connectivity
If a field technician goes offline, Pronto Service App stores the data within the browser cache of their mobile device and uploads it as soon as there is a connection.
Notes and documentation
Pronto Service App delivers technical document management unsurpassed by any other offering. Link diagrams and specifications to your jobs, make comments and sketch annotations. Take photos, attach them to the job and annotate them.
You can also save notes to easily collaborate with your teams.
Scheduling
Pronto Service App incorporates a My Schedule view of allocated service calls and their required start times, allowing field technicians to plan their days or weeks. This ensures better workforce utilisation and improved planning for your business.
Office staff can also easily schedule technicians’ days and see activity in real time with Pronto Xi’s Resource Management and Resource Scheduler modules, which seamlessly update information flow between applications.
Engineer Scheduled Attendances
The Engineer Scheduled Attendances screen has been updated with a Schedule Lock field so you can edit the lock flag when the schedule status is incomplete.
Security & access controls
New attributes to Mobile servicer roles and engineer screens allow you to better manage access to the Pronto Service App, as well as user access granted to add materials.
Need to send a mail alert to an engineer, but they don’t have a login ID assigned? A new public exportable procedure called publicsend-mail without-login means you can get in contact.
Proof of presence
As a part of commercial compliance, onsite engineers are often required to obtain a customer signature as proof of presence.
Pronto Service App is paperless, enabling field engineers to easily log proofs of presence against transactions in a service call.
Safety compliance
Pronto Service App asks engineers before they start work to verify occupational health and safety (OH&S) compliance, including requirements relating to height, temperature, lighting, traffic buffers, electrical safety and more. Pronto Service App’s adaptability means you can ask the most relevant questions for your business and your people, giving you greater control over workplace health and safety practices.
A Signature & Attachments mode to the Safety Details for Call screen lets you to view the engineer’s sign-off signature for the service call and any transaction attachments.
Invoice attributes
The Process Attributes feature allows contract managers to activate or deactivate invoicing and payment receipting features at a customer, contract, service type or service centre level for greater flexibility with onsite customer billing arrangements.
Easy adoption
If you have ever introduced new procedures and forms to your mobile workforce, you know compliance and adoption are difficult. Pronto Service App simplifies the changes in daily routines, promoting early adoption.
In Service Management, the administration user can configure the front-end mobile screens to display the information required to the business using the following:
• Screen Configuration — Configure general screen settings
• Registered Users — Manage user licences
• Service Engineers — Maintain engineer details
• Configuration — View and maintain a work instruction set
API Configuration and Licence Control have an added “hide” field in the Pronto Service App screen (Screen Administration), allowing you to hide or show the selected field in the Pronto Service App.
Material orders
Engineers can request parts via a material requisition for either their vehicle or the service call. Create requisitions directly in Pronto Service App, which eliminates the need to call the office, and track within Service, Inventory and Pronto Service App workflows.
As a result, material requests during service calls are more visible, and the stocking and distribution of supplies are more efficient.
Navigation
The Pronto Service App landing page serves as a hub of daily functions, allowing users to quickly access the most important functions at the click of a button.
Call screen updates
A new Signature & Attachments mode has been added to the Safety Details for Call screen so that you can view the engineer’s sign-off signature for the service call and any transaction attachments. There’s also an RM Attributes mode to view and maintain the resource attributes for the service item.
Work instructions
Pronto Service App’s Work Instructions functionality provides a series of questions, tasks and notes that step an engineer through the work needed to complete a service call.
Businesses can track the required procedures, ensuring that all mandatory activities of a service call have been completed.
Work instructions also function as customer site forms and emailed to the customer as a reference for the completed work.
Group Details, which allow the Parent Group field to select only those entries with a lower sequence number as a dependent group, is another enhanced feature.
Element Details for Group screen
We’ve made following changes and additions to the Work Instruction Element Details for Group screen:
• Parent Element Sequence and Parent Element ID — These two fields allow you to enter the sequence number that defines the order in which the elements are displayed on the Pronto Service App and the parent element ID, respectively
• Type — The Type field now supports an Input Range element type
• Lines Reseq — Use this mode to resequence elements of a group into the required sequence order in increments of 1.0
Add work instructions to a service call by using the add Work Instruction Set mode function under instructions.
Serial attributes
You can set unique attributes against serialised stock and serviceable units to deliver increased compliance, identification and reporting capabilities.
Use templates to define standard equipment attributes, then copy the templates from one equipment profile to another to facilitate the setup and management of customer-owned equipment held under a service contract.
Adding new serviceable items
With Pronto Service App, engineers can add new items as they identify them during their service run. They can also include relevant details, such as make, model, serial number, installation and warranty dates.
Once captured, the service contract’s Pending Units table stores the identifying details, and waits for approval before allocating the items to a contract.
With this easy-to-use mobile interface, engineers can identify and capture all related equipment at the start of a new maintenance contract, or capture units from an existing contract.
Call escalation
Superior customer service delivery hinges on your ability to respond to critical issues within agreed timeframes.
Pronto Service App provides critical call escalation routines that manage high-priority calls. This feature monitors calls and escalates them to ensure they are responded to, attended to and repaired within the customer’s SLA.
Service Connect
Inform your customers on the progress of service calls with Service Connect’s easy-to-use online web portal — and free up service centre resources
An extension of Service, Service Connect gives your customers access to up-to-date service call information, including history and conversations. It’s an engaging service experience that empowers you to increase customer satisfaction. The benefit? They remain informed every step of the way.
Key features of Service Connect include:
• quick deployment to customers
• an intuitive, modern web interface accessible from any device
• the ability to raise and track current and past service calls
• full integration with Service
• seamless synchronisation of key data
• easy customisation options to support your business processes
Service call creation and tracking
Your customers want to feel looked after. With Service Connect, they can create and track service calls in real time, allowing them to plan work-around ETAs, start direct conversations with service staff and navigate chats in an easyto-follow timeline. They can also apply filters to find the information they need, helping them to remove distractions and act quickly.
Customers simply scan items using a device camera or upload images to receive detailed information up-front. In turn, this allows your staff to deliver faster call resolutions.
With convenient access to the Service Connect portal on any device, customers no longer need to phone your staff to obtain progress updates. This means your team can focus on completing the service call satisfactorily, helping your business to achieve service excellence. Invoices can also be easily accessed by your customer’s accounting teams, ensuring timely payments.
User and call management
Manage service calls end-to-end when you use Service Connect in conjunction with Pronto Xi’s Resource Management and Mobile Service modules. The portal encourages your staff to spend less time managing a call or locating disparate information and more time resolving the problem.
All service calls logged via the Service Connect are fully audited, allowing back-office staff to track the calls and their histories.
Service Connect enables you to associate different user types with specific roles and functions, such as:
• Service desk administrators and executive users — These roles manage your service desk, have access to all call information and can change details on calls. Administrative users can also set up advanced configurations for forms and data fields
• Customer users — Your customers get a limited access account. They can see any calls their company raises and manage the work accordingly
View a timeline of important milestones
See the status of individual service calls
Maintenance Management
Leverage Maintenance Management to keep your equipment in top shape, helping you reduce breakdowns and service costs, and act quickly if an issue occurs
Maximise the planning and control of plant maintenance activities with Maintenance Management.
Effortlessly monitor your preventive and predictive maintenance, plant downtime, failure rate against targets, expected life, fault repairs and equipment and repair costs within a single comprehensive module.
Maintenance Management automatically collates vital data across your facilities, giving you full control over your equipment. Swiftly spot failures, identify maintenance improvement opportunities with fault-analysis reporting and monitor repairs through the work order integration.
Key features of Maintenance Management include:
• equipment profile of parent items and components
• priority work order allocation
• condition monitoring
• automatic inventory allocation
• work order forecasting
• work request process
• configurable monitor points
• defect work order recording
• integration with Microsoft Project
• stock purchasing
• customer invoicing
Equipment information
Maintenance Management contains an Equipment Register that records detailed information about the equipment.
Class items as:
• Assets — Relates to a fixed asset
• Components — Relates to an inventory item
• Levels — Used in costing/enquiry mode, and relates plant items to each other
Identify each item by its own unique number, an identifier related to a fixed asset, or an item serial number, which helps you quickly find items and allocate maintenance details to the correct item.
The identifier can also reflect an existing equipment numbering system you already use.
Group equipment by cost centre, type and location, and categorise by equipment, assemblies and sub-assemblies.
The Equipment Register records manufacturer details and information such as the supplier, warranty date, installed costs, installation date and other associated costs. Budgets and actual costs incurred are held by plant items per period per year for labour, materials and usage.
The Plant Tree view allows easy access to the plant item records, and provides a clear overview of plant items and their components.
Preventative and predictive maintenance
Plant managers can implement a maintenance strategy in the form of preventative and predictive maintenance tasks based on run time, condition, statutory inspection requirements or scheduled shutdowns.
Pronto Xi’s flexible Preventative Maintenance (PM) Tasks functionality can be tailored to specific scheduled service intervals and frequencies. PM Tasks has a one-to-many relationship with plant items, so task changes automatically flow through to all attached serviceable items.
Plant managers can also compare “scheduled” versus “actual” for both activity and costs, while full cost history reporting helps you decide whether to replace or maintain equipment.
Fault reason codes
You can record fault reason codes against work orders before the completion of work, allowing you to analyse and track work orders by fault reason code during the lifecycle of the work order.
Returning materials to an alternative warehouse
Sometimes, you may need to return allocated materials to an alternative repair warehouse. If this is the case, change the warehouse code on the picking slip header to an alternative warehouse when you raise the return picking slip.
Component change-outs and tracking
A “rotable repair” refers to a new or previously repaired item or component that replaces a failed item, which in turn is repaired and kept for another exchange.
There are effectively two processes:
• The repair of the plant item, where the rotable item is one of the components of the repair. (The repair could include multiple items, with the rotable item being just one of many items)
• The repair of the rotable item itself
A plant and equipment item may consist of several large components. For example, a truck has an engine, drive train, suspension and pumps. The pressure to keep a truck on the road means its maintenance needs to be completed quickly. It is often more efficient to replace a large or complex component than repair the component itself, as this allows the plant item to resume production more quickly. The large or complex component can then be repaired over a more manageable timeframe or sent to a third party for repair.
Components removed from a plant item during maintenance are not always scrapped or discarded — an item such as a truck engine, for example, can be reconditioned and reused. Many reconditioned components have a limited overall life, however, and will eventually be scrapped.
Using Pronto Xi’s Inventory and Project modules, you can track the components being repaired, scrapped or reworked, whether in-house or via an external service provider, and control this via a picking slip workflow.
Work order management
Maintenance Management provides tools to manage the entire work order cycle, from planning to completion.
A wide range of reports and enquiries are available to assist users in prioritising and planning maintenance work orders. Search for work orders based on components, related plant items, or text string pattern searches.
Work orders can also be set up to approve the printing of any specialised documentation, licences or plans.
Maintenance work order planning
Enter maintenance requirements directly into Maintenance Management as a work request, then review the request and reject or approve it, or set it to Defect status. You can then address defects, and plan and schedule corrections and maintenance tasks.
You can also estimate the hours, equipment and parts required for the task. Predefine this information on a preventative maintenance task and use it as a template for the work order.
The work order status captures meter readings, comments and actual downtime or duration and changes progressively until the task is complete.
Work order forecasting
Use work order forecasting to produce the maintenance schedule, confirm staffing requirements and analyse key performance indicators (KPIs) to understand scheduled loading and completion trends.
Work order forecasting also allows you to generate preventative maintenance work orders when they become due. Enter planned maintenance into the system, transfer from a work request, or convert from a work order forecast.
Once a work order has been generated via the forecasting process and issued to the person responsible for maintenance, it is in progress.
Work order priorities
Maintenance Management supports work order classification and escalation by priority. Priority codes enable key work to be planned and executed in a timely and efficient manner.
Resource planning
Compare the predicted workload for each type of labour to the available working hours, helping you identify potential work overload.
Create and maintain work orders
Create tasks from your work orders
Resource Management integration
Maintenance Management works seamlessly with Resource Management, significantly boosting maintenance productivity.
Prevent scheduling issues and conflicts with planned maintenance by treating the plant items as resources and updating their availability information.
Generic resources can be associated with your Maintenance Labour Categories. Group and assign resources to work orders as a team and simplify your maintenance planning.
Resource Management also allows subcontractors or users to accept or decline work orders, projects task or rosters via email without logging onto Pronto Xi.
Resource Scheduler integration
Resource scheduling is essential to service, project and maintenance management activities. Pronto Xi’s Resource Scheduler enables you to meet deadlines and stay on budget, and ensures minimum strain is placed on employees and resources.
Resource Scheduler allows you to allocate the most appropriate resources to carry out maintenance work order requirements. Once the Resource Scheduler is in use, planning is based on historical data and adjusted to anticipate bottlenecks and low activity periods, eliminating guesswork.
Inventory management
Manage spare parts availability with inventory management. Inventory control, warehousing and purchasing are all supported when Maintenance Management is linked to other modules of Pronto Xi.
Serial number tracking of component issues allows you to easily identify component items within a plant asset.
Integration with Inventory and Purchasing
When coupled with Pronto Xi’s Inventory and Purchasing modules, Maintenance Management provides optimised warehouse throughput and customer service by intelligently controlling movements of replacement parts into, around and out of the warehouse.
Maintenance Management keeps track of both repairable and rotable inventory items, including the procurement of necessary parts and services. Inventory contains a wide range of reports and on-screen enquiries into inventory levels, prices, sales orders, purchase orders and historical sales.
Purchasing provides several functions to help you plan future inventory requirements. By combining data on inventory levels, sales history and current commitments, you can automatically generate purchase orders based on flexible criteria.
Intelligence
Perform deep analysis of key aspects of maintenance management effortlessly using Analytics Dimensions. A pre-built hierarchical data format allows intuitive analysis of plant items, work orders and work order transactions using drill-up and drill-down navigation.
View and enter detailed information about an inventory item
Rental
Track rental contracts with Rental’s fully integrated, flexible system
Create and maintain all the details of a rental contract
Rental uses your rental contract with your customer to define the units rented and the conditions of the rental.
It keeps a comprehensive inventory of your serialised rental items — including asset depreciation, service and rental-history records — helping you understand what is making you money now and what will make you more money in the future.
Key features of Rental include:
• contract authorisation
• flexible billing cycles
• multiple sites management and contract grouping
• recognition of unearned income
• contract copy function
• serialised and non-serialised rental units
• pro-rata catch-up invoices
• full rental history by unit
• depreciation and returns for items
• automatic creation of assets through integration with General Ledger
View details of any rental contract
Financials
When creating a rental contract, you can add a percentage value for stamp duty and damage waiver. Create reminder notices when invoices are overdue and archive all customer correspondence within the contract notes.
Rental offers the flexibility of multiple billing cycles. Elect to charge a deposit, invoice immediately or later, and control the billing of items in a contract.
Depending on the customer agreement, you can increase rental rates based on the consumer price index (CPI) or use periodic increases.
Rental integrates with Pronto Xi modules, such as Project and Service, which means you can attach and post all revenue from a rental contract to a project and schedule the preventative maintenance of your equipment.
Rental is fully auditable and allows you to define the functions each staff member can access.
Charges
Any extra charges — for example, to a physical item, an attached service such as transport or installation, or a cost incurred — associated with the unit rental links to a unit on the contract line. Charges terminate from the contract at the same time the unit is terminated.
They can also be periodically invoiced or charged as a lump sum on the first invoice.
The charges appear as an item code entered in the inventory master file. If they represent a physical item supplied on the rental contract, they are effectively “expensed” when the contract is created. Service options can be defined as a special (non-stocked) inventory item.
Fixed asset units
Rental links to Fixed Assets, which assigns the fixed asset to the serial number of a rental unit, allowing you to depreciate costs of the unit.
Contract invoicing
Easily manage customer invoicing in Rental.
The invoice value of a contract is the sum of the rental rate of each “on hire” or “allocated” unit, addition and option.
The invoice process is designed for billing in accordance with the billing cycle set out in the contract. Depending on the agreement, billing takes place in arrears or in advance.
Depending on your accounting requirements, you can raise a General Ledger journal when an invoice is raised. It recognises the value of the unearned income as a liability, which reduces as the income is earned.
To enable better reconciliation and revenue tracking, all billing history is registered against the contract. The billing history includes periods billed, current and historical rates, and item code details.
Rental efficiently raises credit invoices for either a partial bill cycle or the last invoice previously raised.
A comprehensive credit process allows for individual contracts or bulk crediting if required. Alternatively, an outage function allows a credit to be raised for a given period where equipment downtime prevented its use.
One-off invoices
In addition to recurring invoices, you can raise “one-off” invoices when a contract is approved, an item is terminated from the contract, or a contract is terminated.
This allows you to adjust the initial and final rental invoices using the sales order functionality.
Billing cycle
The billing cycle forms part of the rental contract and can be set to hourly, weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly or other periods.
Pronto Xi caters for rental cycles that exclude specific periods, such as when weather conditions make hiring out equipment impossible. Invoice for a seven-day week, a fiveday week, or any required combination.
When an invoice is raised, Pronto Xi calculates the amount due for each unit by multiplying the number of invoiced billing cycles by each unit’s rental rate. Add or remove units from the contract, and include appropriate adjustments on the next invoice.
By selecting the contract number and the customer code, recurring invoices can be produced in bulk for a set of contracts. Each invoice is posted directly to the General Ledger and the customer’s account.
Payment reminders
Overdue payments trigger a reminder notice. The contract automatically updates with notes regarding the reminders.
Tracking
Rental allows full serial tracking of items. Produce rental invoices and trial balances at almost any time.
Stages of a contract lifecycle
Manufacturing
Make more with
Introduction
Trim the fat on the factory floor and bulk up production volume for lean, scalable and cost-effective operations
Whether your goal is trimming the fat on the factory floor or bulking up production volume, Pronto Xi’s Manufacturing modules cater to almost any production technique, ensuring you run a tight ship.
Efficiently plan production with Shopfloor Manufacturing’s paperless reports detailing manufacturing resources and raw materials. A flexible product that easily adapts to various production environments, Shopfloor Manufacturing allows you to implement lean manufacturing practices.
Manage production data such as a bill of materials (BOMs) and item control while seamlessly operating the shopfloor with detailed work orders, production feedback and more. Customise production processes with manufacturing methods, such as make to stock, make to order, configure to order and more. Regardless of which production method you use, manufacturing costs can be posted to the General Ledger, ensuring up-to-date financials at all times.
Optimise materials and capacity planning over multiple sites with Manufacturing Planning. Tools, such as Master Production Scheduling (MPS), Material Requirements Planning (MRP), Distribution Requirements Planning (DRP), Capacity Requirements Planning (CRP) and more, give you excellent visibility for planning operations.
As an operations manager or team leader, Manufacturing Scheduler lets you view entire operations at a glance, maximising manufacturing resources to reduce product cycle time, foreseeing downtimes and meeting deadlines. Manufacturing Scheduler provides clear visibility of workload versus available capacity and allows you to manually or systematically manage sequences and optimise work.
With Laboratory and Quality Management, you enable continuous improvement through tighter process control and increased audibility. With the ability to accurately log test results, these two Pronto Xi modules efficiently track product quality and create official certificates to reinforce product testing and compliance processes.
Manufacturing processes vary significantly between industries — and even within the same business — with each production stage requiring different planning and control methods. Pronto Xi’s Manufacturing modules are flexible and can support most manufacturing processes, including highvolume production, lean manufacturing environments and mass customisation. Each module also integrates seamlessly with other Pronto Xi modules, providing a comprehensive — yet focused — view of your business.
Shopfloor Manufacturing
Whether you want to go lean or are looking to bulk up high-volume output, Shopfloor Manufacturing keeps your manufacturing operations shipshape
Shopfloor Manufacturing is a highly flexible solution that includes a sub module called Manufacturing Planning. Together, these modules streamline your:
• Product data management — Manage item control, single and multiple bills of materials (BOMs), routing, work centres, product configurator and kitting
• Shopfloor control — Organise work orders, production feedback, alternative routings, subcontract operations, costing and General Ledger posting
• Manufacturing processes — Workflow make to stock, repetitive, batch, make to order, assemble to order, configure to order and engineer to order
• Planning — Plan materials, capacity, exception reporting, subcontracting, sales and operations planning, planning BOMs, super bills and rough-cut capacity planning
• Quality control — Check traceability by lot, batch and serial number
• Costing — Allocate costs for standard, average, actual, first-in, first-out (FIFO) and more
Manufacturing workflow
Shopfloor Manufacturing easily adapts to different production environments. Its Master Production Scheduling (MPS), Material Requirements Planning (MRP) and Capacity Requirements Planning (CRP) tools — as well as sales and operations planning using planning BOMs and super bills — all support make-tostock operations.
Control production with or without work orders to support lean manufacturing processes. Organise raw materials use through traditional stock-issue functions, automatic backflushing of materials, or a combination of both.
Capture real-time production results using barcode readers, radio frequency (RF) units, or desktop computers. Multi-level batch, lot and serial number tracking are fully supported throughout the entire system, and so is external time and attendance-model integration.
Pronto Xi supports sales order kitting and the manufacturing of kit items and offers a powerful configurator module. It supports all your maketo-stock, make-to-order, assemble-to-order and mass customisation operations. Choose kit items from a predefined list, then ship them as a kit or as an assembled product. Manage
Centrally manage your bill of materials (BOM)
Product data management
Control a manufacturing system by the characteristics of the individual item master and its associated records. Set items as “normal” saleable inventory, manufactured products, raw material (not for resale), kits, labour, special or indent.
Planning parameters determine the replenishment algorithms for the MRP or reorder system, and minimum inventory settings provide separate replenishment levels by the warehouse.
Perform product life-cycle management through a number of condition flags and time periods, and control items via lot, batch and serial number tracking.
You can also capture crucial information, such as export details, chemical or hazchem classification, and production drawings (references).
Bill of Materials
Bill of Materials (BOM) supports up to 50 levels of sub-assembly bill structures required to produce the parent assembly. It also displays the quantities of each item, and manages costs, work centres and routing processes by warehouse.
Get a high-level view of BOM data and access detailed information if needed
Build different types of bills to meet product life cycles — from planning and configured to super bills — and manage every variation of configurable products in make-to-order, assemble-to-order or engineer-to-order environments.
Create and store versions of the same bill for multiple factories, and different types of store versions. Manage bills through BOM-effective date, version control, engineering change order (ECO) or user-controlled flags. Pronto Xi also handles designators, split fills, calculated component quantities and other industryspecific solutions.
A BOM can be costed in different ways, including standard cost, average cost, FIFO and at warehouse level. For added flexibility, you can vary the costing methods for different items; for example, set a standard cost for a stock item or set FIFO or average cost for a warehouse item.
In addition, you can add fixed or average costs (such as overhead operating costs) per unit, improving the accuracy of the true BOM cost.
In multi-factory manufacturing operations, Pronto Xi delivers BOM cost rollup by the production factory. Where the same BOM exists across multiple factories, a cost-simulation feature uses source warehouse mapping to ensure the information for each factory is as accurate as possible.
Stock Master
Out instruction formula
Usage quantity formula
BOM structure
Bill of Materials header
Routing
Routing, operations and work centres
These are the sequential steps, operations, equipment, setup and run times required to make a particular product. Together with the associated labour and overhead costs, this information is used to support:
• discrete manufacturing
• rate-based production
• parallel routing
• multiple cavity tooling
• alternative routing streams
• subcontracting operations
If production capacity reporting is not required, record labour and overhead costs using Labour and Special Items rather than Pronto Xi routing.
You can maintain BOMs and routings separately and easily define or change component information for bills or operation details. Create a new BOM or routing, or modify an existing version. Revisions are time-stamped, so you can determine the latest version if multiple revisions occur on the same date.
Get route planning and set-up information at your fingertips
Review detailed operations information for planning
Exploded BOM view
A data grid view of exploded BOMs is available from the Product Data Management menu.
This view shows details across all levels of subassembly components, making it easier to filter and sort your BOMs.
Product configuration
Shopfloor Manufacturing provides powerful configuration and kitting features to support make-to-order, assemble-to-order and engineer-to-order industries. Quickly implement straightforward features and option scenarios through a kit BOM.
The Sales Configurator equips sales personnel with an easy-to-use, wizard-based interface to step the user through item configuration, BOM creation and quoting.
The Sales Configurator acts as a virtual salesperson, enabling users to build a tailored solution based on the components and characteristics defined within the configurable BOM. The outcome of this process is the generation of a sales order or quotation order. The Sales Configurator also allows you to create unlimited BOM variations based on a generic BOM, which is a master bill (or master recipe). It’s designed for every possible permutation of an item, with built-in constraints for product and manufacturing processes.
When issuing a quotation for a configured item, you can build the item up-front or upon customer acceptance of the quotation. This reduces the need to manage the life cycle of many discrete inventory items if the quotation is rejected.
The Sales Configurator includes tools to calculate materials usage and production times, including setup, costs and prices. Because relationships between various parameters are typically linear and arithmetic, use lookup tables to provide links for any unique parameter relationships, taking away the complexity found in more traditional item configuration processes. Reduce the likelihood of error by navigating through a series of radio buttons designed to prompt users for a single response to predefined variables. Easily visualise each configuration component by using the free space in the wizard screens to display images throughout the stages of configuration.
Create BOMS on the fly with the Sales Configurator
The Sales Configurator seamlessly links to the Project module, allowing users to create projects and attach configured BOMs.
Offering in-built flexibility and oversight of process stages, Project achieves best practice within the industry. Create orders from Manufacturing, Sales Configurator or general bill of materials, or simply raise general material requisitions or purchase orders.
Engineer to Order (ETO) applies individual engineering design or significant customisation to satisfy a customer’s unique specification. As an integrated solution, Project can take on most ETO requirements, including the costing and tracking all transactions necessary to complete ETO work.
Easy-to-use data grids for production feedback
Shopfloor processes
Work orders
Work orders are typically used to manage the planning, execution, consumption of raw materials and feedback on production results.
In a lean manufacturing environment, Pronto Xi offers orderless and paperless production recording, using back-flush methods for raw materials consumption and progressive crediting of labour and overhead “hours earned”.
Special work order types and processes are available for disassembly-type industries and other special operations such as rework and repack.
Production feedback
Shopfloor Manufacturing allows you to enter production feedback results on desktop or mobile.
The web-based application’s responsive interface means shopfloor managers can enter product results on the go using a mobile device.
Back-office users can also enter production results in several ways, including bulk entering of production feedback.
Quick production entry screens allow users to copy and paste from external applications.
Alternative routing
Shopfloor Manufacturing allows you to select a specific route from a predefined range on the day of actual production.
You can change the route ID against an open work order, whether it’s at “firm planned” or “committed” status. This provides greater flexibility if you need to quickly change individual work orders before production commences.
Lot, batch and serial number tracking are supported for finished goods, as well as for components or raw materials.
Subcontracting
With Shopfloor Manufacturing’s subcontracting functionality, you can raise purchase orders at various times throughout the work order’s life cycle.
Control the completion of a subcontractor process using standard purchasing goods receipt or work order production entry.
Shopfloor Manufacturing fully preserves the integrity of stock control of goods produced and payment for subcontracting services, without double-handling or creating dummy items.
Manufacturing processes
Shopfloor Manufacturing supports a range of processes that make it easy to manage your make-to-stock, repetitive and batch-production functions, which together form a vital hub of supply chain management.
These processes include:
• materials planning via forecasting
• sales orders and stock replenishment policies
• automatic creation of work orders and purchase orders
• initiation of subcontract operations
• creation of vendor schedules
• capacity planning of actual production
• release of shopfloor documentation
• reporting of production results
The module supports discrete manufacturing, rate-based production, parallel routing, multiple cavity tooling, alternative routing streams and subcontract operations.
Other standard features include make-to-order, assemble-to-order, configure-to-order and engineer-to-order manufacturing.
Quality control
Traceability
Shopfloor Manufacturing includes an extensive range of traceability tools.
Track manufactured goods and purchased raw materials by manufacturing batch or lot.
Or, lot-track raw materials and components by purchase order number if required.
You can also record and track serialnumbered items at various user-controlled transaction points.
Quality assurance
Nominate purchased or manufactured items for quality assurance (QA) inspection before they are formally accepted as saleable items. Following QA inspection, items can be fully or partially accepted, rejected or returned.
Use-by-date
In many process industries, shelf-life is important. Pronto Xi automatically generates use-by dates for product labels and other documentation.
Costing and General Ledger posting
You can control cost calculations and postings to the General Ledger in a number of ways. Generate costs from standard costs, single and multiple BOMs, and routings. Alternatively, costs can be generated from actual labour and machine time reports, actual cash costs posted to the work order, or timesheet records.
Set up your General Ledger account structure to attribute costs and variances to a factory, department, item group or work centre. Users can handle any updates to product costs and inventory according to the system cost they select.
In addition, link manufacturing modules to Payroll by recording the times from the work order against the employee code.
Manufacturing Planning
Optimise your materials and capacity planning over single or multiple sites with Manufacturing Planning
Pronto Xi’s Manufacturing Planning module makes it easy to aggregate demand from a network of distribution centres by combining actual orders, forecasts, Distribution Requirements Planning (DRP), days cover, and minimum/maximum replenishment logic.
Use Production Planning, Master Production Scheduling (MPS), Material Requirements Planning (MRP), DRP, super bills, planning BOMs and supply/demand data from the inventory and distribution system to create a list of planned work orders.
Once verified, planned work orders automatically convert to a work or purchase order in bulk, grouped by product or other operational requirements. The system generates MRP exception messages while factory-loading capacity and materials information is displayed graphically in the Manufacturing Scheduler.
Display when production will be released, completed and available
Manage planning requirements in real time
Production Planning
Production Planning (PP), super BOMs and planning BOMs facilitate the sales and operations planning process. The Production Plan sets the overall level of manufacturing output and other activities to most effectively satisfy the current and projected levels of sales and forecasts.
Enter production plans by quantity or dollars at the planning group level and explode via a super BOM and bill of resources to establish and develop production rates and support plans for material procurements and workforce requirements.
Master Production Scheduling
Master Production Scheduling (MPS) is the anticipated build plan for critical manufactured items that drive the overall manufacturing plan. It includes the projected on-hand inventory and the available-to-promise quantity represented by demand, forecast and backlog.
The MPS sets out the quantity of each manufactured item that you plan to manufacture each month. Set planned quantities up to 12 months in advance.
A data grid in the MPS Maintenance/Enquiry screen lets you sort and filter MPS data. Filter using inventory fields, such as planning group, reorder policy, warehouse and condition code, then save views and drill through to MPS results, including pegging details, receipts and exception details.
Rough-cut Capacity Planning
Rough-Cut Capacity Planning (RCCP) enables you to convert the MPS into requirements for key resources such as labour, machines, warehouse space and suppliers’ capabilities.
Material Requirements Planning
Material Requirements Planning (MRP) organises the release of recommended replenishment orders at the appropriate date in the current working time bucket to satisfy the demand for items when they become due.
With MRP, you can:
• create planned work order requirements for components and sub-assemblies
• produce a list of suggested purchases to satisfy the known demand
• plan the completion dates for work orders using lead time
• print released planned orders and exception reports
Planned work orders are a result of the time phasing of demand management. The net requirement for items is exploded through all levels of their BOM to determine the gross requirements at each level. Applying lead time and adjusting for on-hand and on-order quantities at each level determines the timing and quantity of purchasing and manufacturing.
Pronto Xi’s planning engine enables sourcing and production visibility across multiple factories. It facilitates alternate factory planning, resulting in more efficient manufacturing operations.
In addition, MRP, DRP and MPS run sequentially in a single routine, ensuring up-to-date demand quantities.
A vertical MRP view, in addition to a horizontal view, helps you visualise results easily.
Capacity Requirements Planning (CRP)
Capacity Requirements Planning (CRP) creates a detailed plan by department or work centre based on the constraints defined by the calendar of resource availability.
The CRP process uses finite scheduling and infinite scheduling to produce a detailed plan of all open work orders and planned requirements from the MRP.
See material requirements for products at a glance
Manufacturing Scheduler
Have the right hands in the right places with Manufacturing Scheduler
Using a Windows-based drag-and-drop application, Manufacturing Scheduler simplifies scheduling and planning for work centres that process many jobs simultaneously.
Manage variations in the current schedule, see when priorities have changed or a work centre is unavailable, and view available options to resolve an issue.
Manufacturing Scheduler also displays visual warnings when work orders are late or scheduling conflicts occur within a work centre.
Schedule planning
Use Manufacturing Scheduler, an electronic whiteboard scheduler, in conjunction with Capacity Requirements Planning (CRP). CRP information used by Manufacturing Scheduler includes a calendar of resource availability, and work-centre and work-order data.
For each work centre, move operations to a new production slot with a simple drag and drop. Sort operations based on multiple criteria; once the job order is set, Manufacturing Scheduler automatically sequences each operation.
Lock operations or entire work centres once you have completed scheduling. If you re-run CRP, locked operations are based on your settings.
Schedule optimisation
As a visual management tool, Manufacturing Scheduler allows you to seamlessly manage your workload to factory capacity constraints using CRP.
Refine the timing of product batches during weekly production cycles and, for added flexibility, sequence and optimise work based on user-definable parameters.
You can also develop alternative schedules and save these as “what-if” scenarios before the data is submitted to Pronto Xi, where all relevant elements are updated.
Gantt view
Manufacturing Scheduler sorts the operations of a selected product by the routing sequence in a Gantt chart. In this view, you can analyse operations in line with the work-order routing sequence by displaying links between operations. This simplifies the maintenance and optimisation of production schedules.
Printing and reporting
Export Manufacturing Scheduler data (including routing sequence, work-centre and workorder data) to a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet template, allowing you to report and print the production plan.
Better manage production schedules with engaging visuals
Laboratory
Always deal with the best by testing, recording and comparing your purchased and manufactured products in Laboratory
Laboratory gives you the power to quickly and confidently make reprocessing decisions.
Record and track quality or test criteria for purchased and manufactured products, and lower your operating costs by identifying the lowest complying set of products for any given requirement. Grade-test product batches, then classify graded products depending on the desired use, release or future development.
Test results
Laboratory effortlessly handles, grades and classifies all types of test results.
If you are manufacturing the product, the test results are actual results.
For purchased products, enter results based on a sample or the certificate of analysis provided by the supplier. Enter actual results separately and compare them against the supplier’s sample or certificate of analysis.
As each batch passes through its test procedures, enter the results obtained, along with related notes.
Once test results are entered, the batch can be reclassified. Laboratory automatically classifies the batch as the highest possible grade if all classification criteria are met.
If the new classification is flagged as usable, add reclassified batches to stock and make them available for sale.
Auditing
Laboratory allows you to audit classification and test result changes fully.
Batches requiring testing
Laboratory provides a screen that displays all non-classified lots and batches you have recently manufactured or received from your supplier. Use this screen to edit test results and classify batches.
Selection and dispatch
If a sales order requires a specific product grade, Pronto Xi only allows you to select lots that meet the specifications for that grade or a higher grade.
Laboratory highlights the lowest possible complying batch that meets requirements so that higher-grade lots are not unnecessarily selected or dispatched.
Regardless of customer requirements, only saleable grades can be selected for dispatch.
Analysis certificates
Products that have passed your quality tests are automatically issued an official certificate of analysis, which can be provided to your customers or to government agencies. Tailor the layout and test results printed on the certification document to your needs.
Detail testing requirements for products
Quality Management
With flexible and comprehensive quality management procedures, Quality Management is your key to ongoing optimisation
Quality Management supports continuous improvement and quality management through tighter process control, increased auditing capabilities and dedicated certification requirements.
Management overview
Quality Management gives managers a clear overview of the status of audits, corrective actions, suggestions and complaints.
Document register
Record and maintain your organisation’s documents with the Document Register.
Although suitable for all document types, the register is typically used for internal documents. Details recorded in the register include the document’s location in the network, who authorised it, and which department is responsible for it.
Drawings and blueprints
Catalogue technical drawings, blueprints, files or construction details with the Drawing Index, and enter and maintain the locations of drawings and blueprints, whether physical artefacts or files. You can access drawings over the network and open them with an appropriate viewer.
Technical publications
Record and maintain a complete library register of standard reference works, technical bulletins, magazines and periodicals, and any other technical publication used by your organisation, with the Technical Library.
Complaints
Complaints allows you to log complaints or requests for action from a customer or employee.
Record a brief description of the complaint, along with the name of the department or employee affected by the complaint.
If the complaint regards an inventory item, enter the item code to ensure complaint records are specific to the item. You can also enter detailed notes about the complaint for further action.
Complaints link to corrective action logs and can be reviewed by customers or by inventory items for Accounts Receivable and Inventory. You can also flag a customer invoice as “in dispute” and raise a debtor complaint.
Action logs
The Action List allows you to review and maintain log, list and corrective-action details, and assign logged problems to specific staff for action. When the complaint is resolved, it’s recorded for future reference.
Using the action list, you can also implement an electronic “suggestion box” and use it as a Corrective Action Request (CAR). Quality Management also provides comprehensive reporting functionality.
Technical bulletins
Technical bulletins can be viewed, maintained and searched by your organisation. Quality Management maintains a separate record of the bulletins issued, showing the date of issue, the date it became effective and the author.
Audit scheduling
As part of your organisation’s quality standard certification, conducting regular audits of your procedures may be necessary. With Quality Management, you can schedule the audits as appropriate, maintain details of necessary corrective actions, and ensure each action is performed.
Equipment calibration
With automated warnings if a calibration is overdue, the Calibration Register makes it easy to maintain your equipment calibration records. Specify how frequently calibrations are needed on each piece of equipment, the method to be used, and the level of accuracy required.
Manage your equipment calibration requirements
Track system settings changes with Engineering Change Orders
Other functionality
Quality Management integrates with other Pronto Xi modules, giving you access to a range of features that support quality improvement.
Product batch/lot search
Pronto Xi allows you to search for and trace product batches/lots, and to view and edit quality information for specific products. This includes information about products that have failed quality procedures or were scrapped.
Engineering change orders
The Engineering Change Order (ECO) Register controls updating a bill of materials (BOM) or product specification through a formal process.
Instigated by service, manufacturing or research and development staff, or a customer call, you can monitor specification changes and release them for action via an approval process. Pronto Xi maintains a complete historical record of all ECOs.
Vendor performance analysis
Pronto Xi monitors the performance of vendors to check they meet your standards or contractual obligations.
Laboratory
Access the Laboratory module within Quality Management to monitor test results and ensure product consistency.
Platform Overview
Foundation
A
platform to build on
Technology
Build the foundation for your future
Pronto Xi's continuous technological innovation empowers you to adapt to a rapidly evolving business landscape proactively. Its design and architecture are carefully crafted to support scalability and diverse business needs from the ground up.
All applications within Pronto Xi are developed on its core platform. Leveraging applistructure design and Pronto Connect APIs, you can tailor or expand Pronto Xi's capabilities to suit specific business processes.
Pronto Xi offers versatile access through a web browser on desktops, laptops, or tablets. By utilising cloud-based Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software, your staff can conveniently access Pronto Xi modules from anywhere, using various devices. Furthermore, you can leverage the cost-effectiveness, rapid deployment and seamless maintenance of cloud services.
Core platform
Pronto Xi’s core platform supports a modular architecture designed to evolve as applications grow and expand. Forming the core of the platform are runtime, relational database, proprietary fourth-generation programming language (4GL) and web interface functions.
Recognising the unique nature of your business, Pronto Xi is customisable — its applistructure solution means software modules align precisely with your individual requirements. The software adjusts to accommodate your business needs and processes for increased adaptability and flexibility.
Web interface
By leveraging modern web technologies and based on thorough user research, Pronto Xi's web interface liberates you from the confines of your office desk. The innovative interface enables you to conduct transactions, generate reports and access any Pronto Xi module from any location without needing installation.
Tailored for tablet devices, Pronto Xi's web interface allows you to manage business operations seamlessly using just a tablet and web browser.
Enterprise security
Due to the rising adoption of mobile and cloud technologies, coupled with legislative alterations, the significance of IT security has reached unprecedented levels. Pronto Xi integrates various technologies and mechanisms to safeguard your business, ensuring enterprise-grade security consistently.
Forms management
Effortlessly create and personalise customerfacing and business documents with TrueForm Neo. The tool handles various documents such as sales orders, invoices, purchase orders, pay slips, picking slips and more. With an integrated “what you see is what you get” (WYSIWYG) designer, you can tailor the output to suit your business. Moreover, you can conveniently print or email documents directly from the platform, streamlining the document management process.
Developer tools
To customise your experience, development tools, such as Rapid Application Development (RAD) and a Software Development Kit (SDK), are available and utilised by Pronto Software’s internal development and professional services teams.
Furthermore, Pronto Xi is consistently being optimised so it remains compatible with the most recent versions of supported operating systems, databases, web browsers and business applications.
API integration platform
Enhance the capabilities of Pronto Xi by integrating it with your existing systems and complementary solutions through Pronto Connect. Pronto Xi offers a robust and adaptable API framework and development platform, enabling seamless, secure and realtime data exchange across your systems.
New Technology Stack
The modernisation of Pronto Xi through a new technology stack enhances its efficiency and scalability as a cloud-based ERP platform. The upgrade strengthens Pronto Xi's eXtensible Infrastructure (Xi) concept, bringing the products in line with market demands. Utilising cloud infrastructure augments scalability and resilience, and boosts integration, deployment and maintenance capabilities.
Core Platform
Pronto Xi’s core platform gives you a robust, enterprise-grade foundation for business success and is a powerful launching pad for enhanced performance
Runtime engine
Runtime “brokers” communication between Pronto Xi applications and the underlying IT platform. It provides a layer of abstraction from the operating system (OS) and relational database (RDBMS).
Key features include:
• technology abstraction, which decouples applications from their environment
• the ability to execute and manage the applications and general system environment
• high-availability and high-volume transaction processing
Relational database support
Pronto Xi provides powerful and flexible relational database support, delivering highperformance transactional processing for Pronto Xi applications and Business Intelligence.
The benefits of relational data support include increased data security, hands-free administration, high resiliency, and the ability to scale with your business.
Overview of Pronto Xi technology
Customisation
Enhance user productivity and reduce input errors using Screen Customiser, a dedicated tool tailored to address customisation requirements. The tool lets you customise Pronto Xi screens, enabling you to add, delete, or adjust fields, modify default values and implement data rules within fields. These capabilities are available for all company, group, or individual user settings.
Change screen prompts and fields
Move screen prompts and fields, edit text, or change font, colour and size to enhance the user experience.
Change field defaults
Predefine field defaults for different operators or different types of operators. For example, set the default warehouse to “SYD” for all Sydneybased operators.
You can also hide fields, buttons and screen prompts, and suppress a field when it consistently holds a fixed value or remains unused.
Make fields “read-only”
Change an editable field to read-only so content cannot be altered. Create linked procedures in Screen Customiser
Mask sensitive field values
Completely or partially mask any field with sensitive information.
Change help information
While Pronto Xi has built-in context-sensitive help, you can also include company-specific help information.
Add screen, field or button triggers
Launch a process separate from the screen’s main function based on user activity. For example, determine the starting value of a field based on previously entered information or notify a manager if a sales order exceeds a specified dollar amount.
Create user-defined buttons
Create additional buttons to launch the processes you have defined.
Allow access to user-definable fields
Many of the master and transaction tables include a set of fields that you can use for supplementary data storage. Screen Customiser allows you to include these fields in regular input screens easily.
Add calculated or lookup fields to data grids and forms
Ensure the information you need is shown on your screen by including data from other tables or information that is calculated on the fly.
Company A data
Message Broker
messages in/out
B data
Broker
messages in/out
Overview of how Message Bus and Message Broker work
Application Services
Schedule programs without setting up scheduled tasks at the operating system level with the clever Application Services daemon. Running services are checked at one-minute intervals to determine whether any program is due for execution.
Set up Application Services to perform backups, run reports and update functions according to predefined values. And control vital functions, such as end-of-period processing, real-time data synchronisation across databases and streaming updates. Use message-based functions to communicate between distributed servers, databases and applications.
Run processes multiple times during the day or at any time. Every time a program is executed, it is logged for easy and direct verification.
Set up a single service to execute a program across multiple companies concurrently or consecutively. As all services operate independently, there is no risk that a job isn’t executed because the execution of a program by another service has failed.
Message services
Pronto Xi’s Message Bus facilitates data sharing between two disconnected Pronto Xi databases or companies. It’s ideal for situations requiring reliable synchronisation between data sets on remote sites, such as franchise systems with a common inventory database or a point of sale (POS) system where redundancy is used.
Selectively share data between remote installations, employing a “publish and subscribe” methodology to ensure efficient message delivery and synchronisation.
At the heart of Message Bus is Message Broker, which manages message queues and processes message data. It identifies Pronto Xi datasets locally and remotely, and automatically handles data exchange between datasets on the same physical server.
Message Broker is independent of any communication protocols, so it functions consistently and reliably, regardless of medium. Message Broker also incorporates several measures to enhance security and data quality, including message validation routines that ensure what is sent is precisely what is received.
You can perform intelligent business tasks without user intervention, such as masking data in specific fields depending on the subscriber. Message Broker also contains a “refresh” function to bring remote datasets into line with a master dataset in case data corrupts or hardware fails.
Extensibility
Message Broker’s service-oriented architecture permits high levels of customisation without compromising stability. At each stage, you can replace standard business rules with custom ones that suit your needs.
Franchise inventory
Quality inventory information is a key requirement for franchise operations. With Message Broker, core inventory data is selectively shared with franchisees. Set up a staging area to hold back master data changes from broadcast until the desired time — for example, you can send price changes at a scheduled time ahead of a promotion.
POS redundancy (Offline POS)
POS systems using redundancy can leverage Message Bus’s advanced technology to keep remote servers synchronised with head office. Incremental changes are continually sent to remote servers so stores can trade with the most up-to-date information.
Administration
Take control of day-to-day administrator tasks — from performing backups and setting network protocols to defining roles and security settings — with complete ease.
System Administration
By utilising System Administration, you can define the usage of your chosen modules, ultimately influencing how Pronto Xi operates for you. While some processes are typically executed only once during set-up, you retain the flexibility to adjust configurations in the future. Moreover, additional System Administration features support continuous maintenance and housekeeping tasks.
The System Administration tool offers a range of functions for managing Pronto Xi, enabling you to oversee specific aspects of the Linux system without requiring knowledge of command lines or file formats; for example:
• backup/restore data
• user control
• terminal control
• printer control
• batch queue admin
• database control
Roles and securities
Control user-level access by a wide selection of roles and security profiles. System administrators can tailor user permissions to restrict access to individual companies, entire modules or specific functions within individual screens.
When new users are created, they are assigned one or multiple roles to define their access to Pronto Xi. To speed up this task, each role contains a list of authorised Pronto Xi modules and functions. Use wildcards to indicate all functions.
Where multiple companies exist, you can specify which companies or directories each user may access. You can also define the access each user has within each company.
Develop custom roles to define a job function according to your company’s needs, or use Pronto Xi’s “out-of-the-box” roles. You can also add user-defined functions to an existing role.
Use of codes
To prevent a code being used, Code Table Status Control allows you to set an active/ inactive status for warehouse, territory, item group and sales representative code tables. Select a specific date to notify users of an upcoming status change.
Data masking
To complement Pronto Xi’s tight but flexible functional security, System Administration deploys data masking to restrict access to specific application data. Data masking is also automatically applied to Business Intelligence reporting.
Auditing
Pronto Xi audits many activities within the system and monitors changes to master records and major function flags.
System Audit gives you total control over system changes, and creates reports that detail changes made to system settings, who made them and when. Other reports record changes to “static” master files and transaction processing.
Audit Management’s strong audit capability records data changes (insert, delete and update) to key files. Files defined as requiring auditing are flagged at a dictionary or schema level.
The Audit Management menu allows authorised staff to configure the audit environment. You can determine the number of days included in each log file and the number of log files to retain. You can also define which users have security access to audit information for specific data tables.
Data quality
Data Quality Management (DQM) increases system availability by reducing the downtime caused by administration processes. DQM has new data-checking programs that supersede the integrity routines in prior versions of Pronto Xi.
Data checks
By default, DQM only checks changed data, making the entire procedure more efficient. You can control the frequency of DQM processes via Application Services and define the types of checks to run.
Data status
The DQM Dashboard displays the status of DQM processes, as well as all identified issues.
Data clean-up
DQM groups issues by module and classifies them as Referential, Calculated or Orphan/Other.
Manage data issues as they arise by correcting master records or performing bulk replacements. DQM validates the corrected data and removes the issue from the DQM Dashboard.
Business Intelligence administration
Pronto Xi gives you complete flexibility to ensure your Business Intelligence suite provides the right information to the right people. Set access controls, user capabilities, and other reporting server functions, including:
• server set-up
• URL path maintenance
• data source configuration
• calendar and time dimension settings
Web interface
A contemporary user interface that functions seamlessly across various platforms
Our user experience (UX) design strategy streamlines processes and boosts productivity. By leveraging contemporary web technologies, the web interface offers a fast and responsive work environment that remains accessible regardless of location or device.
User experience
We’ve updated the web client to give users more control over their experience. Now you can define which information is displayed, hide columns in data grids, pin relevant screen sections, and prioritise the most important sections.
Usability
Modern and simple, the web interface makes navigating screens and menus, entering and viewing data, running reports and configuring user preferences extremely straightforward.
The interface caters for various data-entry methods, whether you’re using a keyboard and mouse or a touchscreen mobile device.
In addition, Pronto Xi modules have a consistent format and function, making it quick and easy to learn new modules.
Icon support
The web client supports a standard list of icons to improve usability, enhance the user experience and make the system more accessible to a broader range of users.
A view of the Pronto Xi menu
Mobile access
Accessible from a mobile device browser and supporting varied screen sizes, Pronto Xi makes it easy to access your business data when you are out of the office or on the road. View Workspaces reports, search Pronto Xi data, update sales orders, view customer relationship management (CRM) information, and much more.
Easily view data grids on smaller screens, like mobile phones
Integrated back pane
An integrated back pane delivers business system information to users within your organisation directly from the web interface.
In addition, it allows you to easily access intranets, external websites, corporate noticeboards, executive information systems, interactive workflow diagrams, reports, business dashboards or customised web pages.
Get the most out of Pronto Xi with these enhanced features
Full Pronto Xi access within a web browser
Elegant and intuitive to navigate
Supports personalisation and shortcuts
Increased user productivity
Quick to learn and easy to use
Available on a range of devices
Secure connection between web interface and server
Data grids allow you to view Pronto Xi data in a table format. Filter, sort and highlight data according to each user’s preferences, and export to a spreadsheet (such as Excel or Google Sheets) or an XML report.
Control data entry by setting personal field defaults. For example, it ensures users create a new customer account using a specific customer type. The personal field defaults enable screens to suggest field values appropriate for the user’s role or department.
Data grids also auto-scale to maximise the real estate of your display, ensuring you have the best view of the information you need.
Links
Quick Links lets you attach any file, website or network location to the Pronto Xi database. This means you can associate images, documents, spreadsheets, PDFs, movies or web pages with any stock item, customer, supplier, sales order, purchase order line or any other element within Pronto Xi.
Field-level validation
The latest WebSocket technology delivers fast user performance and real-time, field-level data-entry validation, helping you improve productivity and efficiency.
Validation happens at a field level as data entry occurs, not at the end once the form is submitted. This avoids user frustration due to lag time and data re-entry and ensures business process rules are followed during a transaction.
Security
Local Agent is a Windows application that supports a secure web interface and restricted access to an end user’s computer for workflows that benefit from increased security, for example, the integration with locally installed programs or communicating with a locally attached hardware peripheral.
Directly open links from the Pronto Xi screen using a toolbar button, streamlining routine tasks. An example of the Pronto Xi web interface
Display interactive real-time data with Workspaces
Workspaces
Workspaces is an interactive, drag-anddrop canvas that displays relevant real-time information to staff members. Workspaces facilitates decision-making and prioritysetting, enhancing collaboration across your organisation.
Choose from more than 80 key performance indicators (KPIs) and other widgets, and see how you perform against those KPIs in a single click. Further personalise the user experience with a variety of data options, including:
• selecting from a variety of chart types
• viewing trends over a period of time
• sorting, filtering and more
Workspaces is an alternative option to Pronto Xi’s right-hand pane.
Search
Enterprise Search lets users quickly find frequently used data or menu functions across modules.
Search all available modules or select the ones most relevant to you. Each search result presents a range of options, so you can easily find the information you need.
For example, searching for a stock item code gives you the option to:
• maintain or enquire about the item
• do a stock adjustment
• do a quality assurance (QA) release
You can also define the default actions for various users.
Enterprise security
Pronto Xi’s best-practice application security standards help keep your organisation safe
Pronto Connect applications
IBM Cognos
Analytics
Pronto Cloud File Share
Pronto Software IAM
Overview of how Pronto Software Identity and Access Management works
Security standards
Regular security penetration testing ensures your organisation remains protected against new and evolving security threats. Pronto Xi strictly adheres to security standards and industry best practices to help safeguard your organisation’s security.
An example? Communications use digital certificates and highly secure protocols such as HTTPS and WSS (WebSockets over SSL/TLS).
Application security
Pronto Xi’s administration tools enable you to control user permissions by using roles and security profiles — give scope permissions to individual companies, modules, screens or functions. With screen customisation, you can even control the individual fields a user sees.
In addition, data masking can be used to limit the data a user can access, such as restricting access to individual locations, territories, branches, asset groups and more.
These application security capabilities can also help you achieve segregation of duties (SoD).
Infrastructure security
We highly recommend using digital certificates and reverse proxy servers to maximise the security of your infrastructure. Pronto Software and our partners have extensive expertise in deploying infrastructure that puts the security of your business at the forefront.
Multi-factor authentication
Pronto Software Identity and Access Management (IAM) enhances Pronto Xi’s enterprise security by providing a single, consistent multi-factor authentication solution for a number of Pronto Xi applications.
Single sign-on
Users login to Pronto Xi and then access related applications without needing to login again, making the login process frictionless yet highly secure.
Supported applications
Identity and Access Management is supported on the web interface, Employee Portal, Mobile Service, Resource Scheduler, IBM Cognos Analytics, and Pronto Cloud File Share.
Forms management
Design, produce and distribute documents aligned to your brand with TrueForm Neo, a user-friendly forms management solution
TrueForm Neo
TrueForm Neo allows you to format and personalise your customer-facing and business documents and distribute them from Pronto Xi.
Form designer
With an intuitive design interface, TrueForm Neo simply creates high-quality, professional forms, including invoices, statements, purchase orders, credit notes, picking slips, pay slips and many others.
Accurately position boxes, lines, graphic elements and images such as logos to ensure a professional-looking output.
Barcodes
TrueForm Neo offers native barcode support, so any piece of data, such as an item code, customer code or invoice number, automatically converts into a barcode or QR code format at print time.
Pagination control
TrueForm Neo handles all pagination requirements, giving you complete control over your page design.
Templates
With a range of standard templates in both landscape and portrait formats, TrueForm Neo gets you up and running quicker with key business forms. Templates include:
• Sales Order Quotation
• Sales Order Picking Slip
• Sales Order Delivery Docket
• Sales Order Confirmation
• Sales Order Tax Invoice
• Sales Order Credit Note
• Sales Order Transfer
• Payment Summaries
• Overdue Letters
• Purchase Order
• Customer Statement
• EFT Remittance
• Pay Slip
• Advanced Warehouse Picking Slip
• Consignment Note
• Work Order Job Card
• Plant Work Job Sheet
• Progress Claim Invoice
• Service Docket
• Work Instructions All standard templates contain alternate row shading for the detail area of the forms, placeholders for logos, and data mapping from standard Pronto Xi fields.
Conditional display
Data, static text and graphic formatting can be made conditional on data within the form, enabling businesses to operate in multiple languages, use different logos for different trading names or suppress certain fields for particular customers.
Printer queue management
Managed as part of a central server component, TrueForm Neo can manage print queues so you can control an array of functions, including printer queue configuration and the management of log files.
Form output management
By converting manual procedures into a single automated electronic process, TrueForm Neo efficiently distributes business documents.
Key features include:
• an intuitive interface to define document distribution rules and workflow
• simplified print queues
• seduced (or eliminated) physical document storage and distribution costs
• automatic conversion of raw Pronto Xi data into professionally published PDFs for distribution
• dynamically defined document names and save locations for simple archiving
You can email any Pronto Xi document or report directly from Pronto Xi, reducing printing and postage costs, and the labour costs of folding, addressing and posting documents. By fully automating document delivery, you also reduce the time it takes to do a monthly statement run from days to minutes.
Tasks and alerts
Automation and efficiency tools to streamline tasks and operations
Alerts
Alert Intelligence provides automated alerts that facilitate exceptional management, automation and system integration. It allows you to define which events trigger a notification, who is notified and the action to take. For example, it could alert you to the processing of an unusually high transaction through Accounts Payable, inventory levels dropping below the minimum or a service call being allocated to a technician.
Alert Intelligence isn’t just limited to event monitoring. It also periodically checks the status of any record or set of records at scheduled times. For example, a manager could establish a monthly Alert Intelligence task that raises an alert when expenses exceed budget by more than 10%.
In addition to notification methods such as email and SMS messages, Alert Intelligence uses webhooks to send data to other business applications, calling the APIs directly or using middleware (such as Zapier or IFTTT) that includes out-of-the-box integration with a large number of applications. This do-ityourself method enables businesses to build custom integration workflows with little or no development effort.
Use Alert Intelligence in conjunction with signed URLs to immediately give users actionable options at the click of a button, such as accepting a roster or approving a request. Signed URLs occur via the Pronto Notifier app, an email button, SMS message link, or even a Slack channel button in a webhook integration.
Tasks
Task Intelligence extends the functionality of Alert Intelligence to ensure tasks are carried out quickly and efficiently. Assign staff to tasks and automatically synchronise these tasks with each person’s Microsoft Outlook or Microsoft 365 task list.
You can also apply a range of criteria to a task, including how the staff member should be notified, how much time has been allocated and the task priority. Specify a time for a reminder notice to be sent and provide feedback about the task status.
Data
Data Intelligence enables your staff to extract and present data. Filter, sort and highlight data tables to suit individual needs, and export to formats including XML, OpenDocument Spreadsheet (ODS), Comma Separated Value (CSV) and Excel.
Data Intelligence also includes tools to help you find and secure information within your data tables. The Data Finder searches for a particular value across multiple tables, while the Table Security tool protects valuable data by specifying who can access which tables.
Notifications
Available on iOS and Android, the Pronto Notifier app lets users know when key events occur within the system based on Alert Intelligence triggers in Pronto Xi.
Pronto Notifier works across the supply chain, helping you meet customer demands on time. For example, get notified about production downtime, any urgent warehouse replenishment requests, or purchase order approval requests. The app allows you to click through to Pronto Xi screens from the notification for quick action when you’re away from your desk. In addition, because the app maintains all alerts in one place, you can action multiple items rapidly.
Get notified instantly via Alert Intelligence
Developer tools Implement more advanced customisation to the codebase using our tools
Rapid Application Development (RAD)
Pronto Software’s Rapid Application
Development (RAD) is a fully integrated, fourthgeneration language facility that enables developers to extend or generate Pronto Xi applications — from simple to complex — with minimum time and effort.
RAD’s key features include:
• data dictionary (database) generation and maintenance
• 4GL — the fourth-generation language used in most Pronto Xi applications
• SQL — a query language facility for general reports and ad-hoc user queries
• LST — the default report generator used with SQL
• RPT — an alternative to LST for more complex reports
• screen-based application generation and maintenance routines
• interactive program debugging facilities
Software development kit
The Software Development Kit (SDK) is a resource centre for Pronto Xi developers and can be used in conjunction with RAD. It includes documentation, code samples, tips, tools and utilities — all collected into a central repository that continually evolves and grows over time as our community requires new programmatic functionality.
The SDK contains detailed technical information covering:
• Pronto Xi Object ActiveX control
• component libraries comprising both core and publicly exportable procedures
• API calls
• program calling methods
• suppressed data entry fields
• dictionary objects and fields
• code samples
Real-time trace
Real-Time Trace Control is a diagnostics utility that tracks, stores and reports the activity of Pronto Xi functions. Used by developers and support teams, this function traces input/ output (disk reads/writes), procedures and the environment under which a program was executed. Use RAD to test or troubleshoot custom code changes.
Build and develop extensions to Pronto Xi
API Integration Platform
Utilise industry-standard web services architecture through Pronto Connect
Advancements in mobile communications have significantly lowered the cost and increased the accessibility of smartphones and tablet computers. Moreover, data transfer across different platforms is now cost-effective, with real-time data-transfer technologies now faster, more reliable and more secure. Both HTML5 and JavaScript have enabled the development of adaptive user interfaces that function seamlessly across various devices.
APIs
Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) streamline the data exchange process between disparate applications or processes. APIs empower developers to establish seamless and efficient data exchange mechanisms for applications, eliminating the need for manual intervention. This streamlines operations, minimises data duplication and reduces human errors, ultimately leading to significant enhancements in productivity and cost efficiency.
Representational State Transfer (REST) is the most widely used among the various APIs. Pronto Connect provides pre-built RESTful APIs and a flexible development environment, enabling you to create customised APIs for better information flow.
Web services architecture
A web services architecture offers numerous advantages over traditional methods like “flat file” or field-based API connectivity.
The benefits of a web services architecture include:
• Real-time information exchange, enabling tasks to be carried out with the most current data available rather than outdated information
• User authentication, ensuring that only authorised individuals can access and view data
• The elimination of the need to uphold a flat file transfer system, leading to time and cost savings
• Reduced upload or synchronisation errors due to a dependable messaging system that guarantees the delivery of requested data as anticipated
Technical capabilities
Pronto Connect’s technical capabilities include:
• dynamic data transfer using web-services
• document-based APIs (XML, JSON)
• incoming web services API calls
• outbound HTTPS calls via Runtime
• user-based security, which restricts data access based on the connecting user
• secure data transfer using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)
Pronto Xi Sync
Fully leverage the power and functionality of Pronto Xi Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) with Pronto Xi Sync
Customisation is typically necessary for most enterprise integrations with third-party applications. Integrating any third-party application into any ERP system requires thorough attention to downstream processing and data integrity from a single source of truth. Post-implementation, these integrations also demand regular maintenance and enhancements to stay abreast of evolving technology and changing business processes.
Pronto Xi Sync provides a lean platform to manage your integrations with Pronto Xi efficiently. It utilises streamlined tools and technology patterns, eliminating the need for a dedicated integration team, and offering a bloatfree experience compared to other integration platforms and gateways.
The system utilises APIs and data-transfer mechanisms that seamlessly align with Pronto Xi, facilitating ongoing support and troubleshooting for day-to-day business operations.
Pronto Xi Sync was built from the ground up to work natively with Pronto Xi and provides a framework for connecting other software applications. With its secure infrastructure, Pronto Xi Sync supports organisations as they grow and add more complex software to their ecosystem. Pronto Xi Sync allows rapid connection to the systems and tools leaders often rely on to run high-performance teams. Thes integrations aim to sync software and data across the business, ensuring employees stay connected to the latest updates, thereby boosting the productivity and results of day-to-day operations.
Pronto Woven
Pronto Woven is Pronto Software’s award-winning digital consultancy division. Our team’s innovative solutions extend the capabilities of Pronto Xi ERP to transform customer and employee engagement across digital channels.
Deployment
With flexible deployment options to suit your implementation needs, Pronto Cloud is a smart solution for your business
Pronto Cloud
Pronto Cloud, our cloud and hosted solutions division, offers a range of benefits for Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) implementation — from lower up-front licence costs to a reduced need for in-house IT resources.
Cloud ERP
The ideal option for businesses looking to significantly lower up-front costs and simplify the management of their hardware requirements? Pronto Cloud.
A cloud-based ERP removes the need to invest in infrastructure, meaning businesses no longer have to pay for ongoing hardware support. Pronto Cloud also hosts non–Pronto Xi systems in our data centres so you can get rid of your server room completely.
Cloud implementation offers advantages for small and medium-sized businesses, in particular. It’s a scalable solution, so you choose the applications you need — without paying for those you don’t.
In addition, Pronto Cloud supports a mobile business environment by giving users access to their business data whenever they want and wherever they are. All you need is an internet connection.
However, if you want to remain on your own infrastructure (outside of the Pronto Cloud environment), Pronto Cloud can still help with our Managed Services which includes building your platform, remote monitoring, disaster recovery, management and patching.
Data security
Data security is a critical consideration for any business. Pronto Cloud uses secure, purposebuilt data centres located across Australia. We offer guaranteed uptime rates of 99.99% and store backup data across multiple data centres.
In addition, Pronto Cloud provides a comprehensive security solution using:
• the latest hardware and software solutions
• authentication best practices
• 24/7 security and monitoring
• encryption in transition and at rest
• ISO 27001
• ASAE 3402 auditing
• compliance and more
All systems receive nightly backups, which are replicated automatically across multiple data centres. Perform data recovery in a matter of minutes.
Disaster recovery
Pronto Cloud’s Disaster Recovery (DR) solutions continuously protect your data and enables your business- critical applications to be back online rapidly when a disaster strikes.
System Recovery Service (SRS) is a disaster recovery solution offered to cloud hosted customers, where Pronto Cloud replicate your production cloud environment to a secondary datacentre. As the replication is created within the same environment as the original, teams are able to switch to the parallel system with data as current as seconds for the incident with a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of under a minute.
Pronto Cloud EverSync is a disaster recovery solution that continuously protects business data and enables critical applications for on-premise organisations. Eversync sits as a protective layer on top of your virtualised servers, that replicates the data in real-time. EverSync removes the need of duplicated infrastructure and frees up valuable IT resources required for back-up management.
Analytics
From a bird’s-eye view to deep insights
From a bird’s-eye view to deep insights
Use Pronto Xi data to create smart and interactive visualisations and tell rich, engaging business performance stories
Pronto Xi fully integrates with IBM Cognos Analytics, an enterprise-level report authoring and distribution solution. Digging deep into your data, Pronto Xi and IBM Cognos Analytics empowers you to make smart, informed decisions on your business strategies.
Create beautiful interactive reports and dashboards for web and mobile devices so everyone receives the information they need, with access to only the information you want them to see. Run reports on-demand or schedule in advance to deliver them at the right time.
Our Business Intelligence (BI) application delivers out-of-the-box operational and financial reports with actionable insights. At the same time, IBM Cognos Analytics provides the tools to build custom reports and dashboards specific to your requirements.
Visualise your data in dashboards, reports and stories — a plethora of widgets are available including charts, tables, key performance indicators and more. There’s also the ability to drill down to the underlying data.
Visualisations use underlying Pronto Xi data as a source, including the KPI Library and Data Intelligence reports, or you can utilise other sources such as Excel or internal databases. Merge sources into data models, datasets or specialised Analytics Cubes and create optimised data sources for high-performing visualisations.
Made for the enterprise, IBM Cognos Analytics comes with built-in access control and security to protect one of your most precious assets — your business data.
Need more? Pronto iQ, our BI expert team, can help you uncover the advanced features of IBM Cognos Analytics and get the most out of the business intelligence tools, such as data exploration, helping you optimise data-driven decisions.
Authoring tools
Create and deliver compelling data-driven business stories with Pronto Xi and IBM Cognos Analytics
IBM’s leading data analysis platform, IBM Cognos Analytics’ multiple components helps you get the most out of your data. Combined with Pronto Xi’s out-of-the-box Business Intelligence (BI), it takes your data reporting and insights to the next level.
Get advanced analytics and unparalleled insights into every aspect of your business with our BI Unlimited licence, which allows you to report on all data — regardless of its source. A BI licence allows your team to run reports and view dashboards with BI Essentials, or create reports and dashboards through BI Designer. You can also manage your server, user and schedule administration tasks with BI Administer.
Elevate reporting with IBM Cognos Analytics data modelling and authoring tools
User tools
BI’s dashboarding capabilities make it easy to explore data.
Create visualisations simply by dragging fields onto the canvas and letting IBM Cognos Artificial Intelligence (AI) automatically determine the best way to display that information.
Similarly, map creation is as effortless as dropping data onto the authoring canvas. With built-in Global Map Intelligence, BI allows you to report globally or even at an Australian postcode level. Zooming right down to the street helps you go from an eagle’s eye view to a more localised view of your business data — all in one screen.
A simple interface makes deploying insightful dashboards to your organisation faster than ever while IBM Cognos Functions crafts custom calculations.
Use BI Administration to set reporting date ranges, user roles, and security policies for mobile BI users such as time expiration on cached mobile report content.
Data tools
Enrich Pronto Xi’s business transaction data by uploading your own information. Using IBM Cognos Analytics datasets, external data — such as GPS, weather and foot traffic — can be dragged and dropped into your reports alongside Pronto Xi data, providing you with a deeper understanding of trends and analyses.
Data modules and datasets
A dataset is a smaller subset of your business data and can be used in a dashboard or report. Using a dataset as a source makes retrieving data on the dashboard significantly easier. By requiring fewer queries, datasets also reduce the burden on your business database. When you combine datasets with other sources, such as existing packages and uploaded data, they are grouped into data modules for use on dashboards or reports.
Upgrade your business intelligence capabilities by creating and modelling new data packages with our Data Module and Data Explorer licences. With this toolset, you can create repeatable and consistent data modules to publish to your users, giving them everything they require. Data Explorer harnesses the depth of the IBM Watson AI engine to derive forecasts and key data drivers to uncover hidden insights rapidly.
Data Models and AI
BI’s enhanced modelling components aggregate multiple data sources from Excel spreadsheets, relational databases, text files and more. These fused models become “the source”, allowing you to create meaningful visualisations in reports, dashboards and stories.
Gain meaningful insights from data you can trust with AI-powered automation and insights in IBM Cognos Analytics. With its natural language AI assistant, simply describe the question you need the answer to or a hypothesis you want to test, and let the AI build stunning insight-driven visualisations.
Visualisations
Packed with data visualisation tools and built-in AI, Pronto Xi surfaces the most impactful visualisation of your data
Business Intelligence (BI) analyses data faster and produces stunning customisable dashboards, giving you a powerful view across your business.
Workspaces
KPI Workspaces is an interactive canvas that displays relevant business key performance indicators (KPIs) to each staff member.
The customisable tool includes only what you need right now and aggregates data for fast performance.
Choose from a wide range of visualisations to display insights and select from pre-defined measures in the KPI Library to quickly see business performance.
Designing your own KPI Workspaces canvas is simple, with the user-friendly layout making it easy to add widgets and change them as your information requirements evolve. In addition, you can alter the layout of widgets, select different chart types and more.
Key performance indicators
KPI Analysis tools dig deep into your business data, giving you insights to understand your business performance and determine exactly how you are tracking against critical business goals.
Choose your drill path, and slice and dice the data to explore the relationships that matter to you, including performance by territory, categories, period and more. Apply custom filters to focus only on the most important data, add multiple variables and analyse trends over time.
BI offers a range of visualisations to display the data meaningfully, making it easy to share your vision with other users.
Unlock AI-driven data insights with powerful visualisations in Pronto Xi
Powerful drill-downs
Dashboards allow you to access and interact with high-level data using visualisations. For more in-depth analysis, drill down to the reports that visualisations are based on and further into the underlying data. This powerful feature enhances your understanding of the visualisation and helps you consider the impact of the variables.
Data stories
Data stories are a dynamic way to improve your audiences’ understanding of business data.
To tell your business story, sequence data widgets in a scene template, creating multiple scenes to share and play back. The animated story scenes highlight the light-bulb moments — giving you the power to link data insights to desired outcomes.
Real-time operational reports
BI delivers ready-to-go operational reports, providing awareness of the day-to-day business performance, including a suite of financial reports and commonly accessed reports from Pronto Xi’s Sales, Purchasing and Service modules. Instantly check inventory history, revenues, engineer allocations or other key reports.
Create real-time reports from live transactional data, or schedule and deliver them via email. Export report data in a wide range of formats to cater to different user needs.
IBM Cognos Analytics custom reports
BI fully integrates with IBM Cognos Analytics, allowing you to create a wide range of custom reports. Run, schedule, export and share reports as required, in whatever format you need them. You can even specify the scope and type of information presented in each report, tailoring it to individual audiences’ needs.
IBM Cognos custom reporting authors meaningful data displays at any business level, homing in on the areas that matter to you. Combine data from different reports to give you a more complete business performance picture — without losing detail.
Create custom reports for real-time performance monitoring, and schedule regular content for presentations and board packs.
Mobile access
In an increasingly mobile business environment, it’s vital to have the same level of access to your data, no matter where you are.
Stay connected on the go, access data and receive alerts on your phone with Pronto Xi’s Mobile BI app.
Thanks to IBM Cognos Analytics, Pronto Xi users enjoy the same rich visualisations on smartphones and tablets as on desktops. The responsive layout means you can view multiple chart types and drill into data levels as required. The IBM Cognos Analytics interface was specifically designed with touch screens in mind and adapts to smaller screen sizes.
Stay connected with Pronto Xi Mobile BI, delivering rich, responsive data insights on the go
Data
Pronto Xi’s rich visualisations process vast amounts of business data and drive the reports you need to make informed decisions
Whether you are accessing KPI snapshots via Workspaces or building real-time reports from transactional data, Business Intelligence (BI) delivers the answers you’re looking for.
For extensive dataset analytics, Analytics Cubes is a powerful tool that processes high volumes of data rapidly, meaning you no longer need to spend time waiting for reports to run.
Across various query modes, we’ve got you covered
Dynamic Query Mode (DQM) and Compatibility Query Mode (CQM) are the two query modes supported by IBM Cognos technology. Pronto Software bases all our core packages and reports on CQM. DQM is a 64-bit Java query engine and, for several years, IBM’s preferred query mode with most of the latest features and functionalities in IBM Cognos Analytics built on DQM.
While we will continue supporting existing CQM packages and their content, starting with Pronto Xi 780, all core packages and operational reports will be based on DQM.
Key performance indicators
KPI Library includes a large number of industrystandard KPIs and business metrics.
Data is aggregated across most Pronto Xi modules — including General Ledger, Accounts Receivable, Sales, Inventory and more — and stored based on pre-defined drill paths, delivering fast access to your critical data. Choosing your snapshot frequency means the data is as fresh as you need it to be.
Transactional data
Access your operational data and build reports and dashboards with IBM Cognos Analytics.
View real-time data when needed, improving the accuracy and timeliness of your operational reports and monitoring. Real-time operational reports have built-in filters, giving you greater control over the displayed information.
External data
IBM Cognos Analytics makes it easy to upload data from external sources, clean it and then use it to create datasets and data modules. Gain deep insights into trends by linking this data directly to Pronto Xi transactional information.
Data quality
When you rely on your data to make critical decisions about your business, its quality and integrity are paramount.
Data Quality Management (DQM) provides you with visibility of and confidence about the integrity of your data. It monitors your data’s integrity and relationships, and highlights areas requiring attention. If this happens, you’ll receive an alert and can access a dashboard of exceptions to review and act on.
DQM also has a range of advanced data correction tools to help with system migrations, poor-quality data from legacy systems and more.
In addition, you can run DQM in the background, ensuring data quality without impacting on users.
Data tables
Data Intelligence (DI) simplifies the creation of your data tables. A user-friendly interface makes it easy to create, filter and sort data tables without advanced technical skills.
In addition, DI Objects effortlessly merges existing tables, inputs calculations and other rules, and combines data from multiple tables.
Schedule data populations to happen in the background, and then automatically create list-style IBM Cognos reports or author more complex reports.
Data exploration
You don’t have to be a data scientist to uncover insights from interconnected data. IBM Cognos Analytics’ exploration functionality discovers hidden relationships and patterns in complex data. With this information, you can create insightful, simple and easy-to-understand data relationships, which you can harness in your reports and dashboards.
Uncover hidden data insights with IBM Cognos Analytics’ intuitive exploration tools
Auditing in IBM Cognos Analytics
Unlock the power of your data and gain valuable insights with IBM Cognos Analytics Audit
Gain strategic insight into business intelligence usage patterns by leveraging IBM Cognos Analytics Audit’s comprehensive audit reports. IBM Cognos Analytics Audit puts you in control, empowering you to make informed decisions that drive efficiency and maximise the value of Pronto Xi Business Intelligence.
Use audit reports to optimise capacity planning, monitor performance, and identify and streamline unused content, and discover the true impact these reports can have on business operations, from usage frequency to user engagement.
Next level analytics
Pronto iQ, our Business Intelligence (BI) division, helps you transform your data into actionable insights tailored to your specific needs
Pronto iQ is a dedicated team of Pronto Software specialists you can draw upon when your business needs that extra something. The team builds models and designs BI solutions that consolidate business data across multiple sources — with interactive dashboards to deliver clear visualisations relevant to the needs of individual business users.
Our Business Intelligence (BI) solutions leverage cutting-edge technology to provide fast and comprehensive analytics. Easily manage and report on large volumes of complex data, and consolidate multiple servers, datasets and intricate company structures to gain a complete view of your enterprise in seconds.
Analytics Cubes
Analytics Cubes offer a powerful yet affordable solution for deploying advanced business intelligence infrastructure. For example, Financial Cubes enable finance teams to quickly analyse operational and financial transactions across multiple currencies and reconcile diverse datasets within seconds.
Key features include:
• support for historical snapshot data to analyse past performance trends
• enterprise-level multi-dataset reporting
• rapid data analysis, not just storage
• integration of multiple instances of Pronto Xi data for a comprehensive business overview
• dynamic “What if?” reporting forecasts to inform strategic business decisions
Enterprise Data Warehousing with Pronto iQ Livelink
As data volumes and complexity increase, a single source of truth becomes critical. Enterprise Data Warehousing is a comprehensive solution that integrates data from multiple systems, including Pronto Xi. Our Data Warehousing solution, Pronto iQ Livelink, utilises event-driven replication, ensuring you report on the most current data to power your outcomes. It facilitates low-latency, near-realtime data transfers that quickly and easily replicate Pronto Xi data into enterprise-level data warehouses.
Our robust data warehousing capabilities ensure:
• Centralised data management: Consolidate data from various sources into a single, unified repository
• Centralised data security and governance: Implement robust security measures and governance policies to protect your data and ensure compliance
• Enhanced data accuracy: Ensure consistency and reliability across your organisation by maintaining a single source of truth
• Scalability: Easily handle growing data volumes and complexity without compromising performance
With Pronto iQ Livelink, your organisation can easily navigate the complexities of data management with ease, ensuring you have the right information at the right time to make informed decisions.
We are an Australian developer of award winning business management and analytics solutions. Pronto Xi, our Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software, integrates accounting, operational and mobile features in a single system – optimising business processes and unlocking actionable insights. That’s why for more than 45 years, over 1,500 Australian and global organisations, across a wide range of industries, have trusted Pronto Xi to simplify their most complex challenges. With headquarters and our Development Centre located in Melbourne, we have support offices and consultants based across Australia, as well as a global network of Resellers and Solution Partners. Specialised business units within Pronto Software have the expertise to assist you with pivotal technology – Digital Transformation with Pronto Woven, Cloud and Hosting services with Pronto Cloud and Business Intelligence solutions with Pronto iQ.
When you choose Pronto Software, you gain a team with deep industry experience, giving us the ability to understand your specific needs and build innovative solutions that drive business growth and revenue.
