Pronto Xi ERP Software - Solutions Overview

Trademarks

Pronto Software, Pronto, Pronto Xi, the Pronto interrobang logo, the P interrobang logo, Pronto Woven, Pronto iQ and Pronto Cloud are all registered trademarks of Pronto Software Limited. All other marks are the property of their respective owners.

Copyright © 2022 Pronto Software Limited (ABN 47001337248).

Disclaimer

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 770 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

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 to monitor and control every aspect of your business, from top floor to shop floor. Pronto Xi, our flagship Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software helps you to monitor and control every aspect of your business, from top floor to shop floor.

From improving productivity and customer service to increased inventory accuracy and more, you gain actionable insights that allow you to easily identify what is making you money and how to grow your best opportunities.

Headquartered in Melbourne, we have offices and consultants across the country – as well as a local Development Centre – to support our customers, who interact every day with the experts working to solve their challenges. Our consistent R&D investment in bold initiatives help us deliver groundbreaking results for our customers.

The Pronto Software group includes Pronto Woven, our digital consultancy division; Pronto Cloud, offering cloud and managed solutions; and Pronto iQ, enabling 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 40 years.

Chad Gates Managing Director, Pronto Software Limited

Introduction

We focus on helping you run your business so you can focus on growing it

Powerful ERP software helps you manage all the 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 ERP needs aren’t limited by your business size or type. You could be a growing local business, a global manufacturer, or somewhere in-between — it always starts with your business goals, because these are what lead us to build a solution that answers even your hardest questions. For us, every engagement is an opportunity to develop a long-lasting partnership.

Pronto Xi is modular, meaning we build based on your business needs, not the other way round. Our diverse competency set gives your business 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 the innermost workings of your company, you can make critical decisions quickly and with confidence. It’s why ERP is often described as a business management solution.

Whether you’re seeking to expand your workforce or improve workflow, with Pronto Xi you can step up and 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 is designed to easily adapt to your business structure and processes

Getting to know you

With a flexible and scalable offering, Pronto Xi is suited to a wide range of industries. Build your ideal business management solution off the back of our core offering, add competencies and discover insights that make sense for your business.

Core offering

Let’s start with the basics

Quality is said to be the result of intelligent effort. And no matter what your industry, business size or market, there are certain things you’ll need to take care of. At Pronto Software, we help you build a solution to reduce effort and increase results.

When we developed 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 more. Get instant insight into your business and make crucial business decisions with confidence. Plus, Pronto Xi is protected by an enterprise-grade secure authentication method that supports your growth.

Additional competencies

Flex and grow

We have a diverse customer base, from the fields they specialise in to the size of their operations. Through our long-lasting relationships with clients in almost every industry, we have developed a comprehensive suite of competencies encompassing almost all facets of business.

We’ll help you to choose the right modules for your business requirements, and we can adapt those modules to better suit your needs.

By getting the most out of Pronto Xi, you’ll be getting the most out of your business.

Extra intelligence

Boost your business IQ

When you’re juggling the myriad demands of a business, it is easy to overlook the finer details — and even easier to miss the bigger picture. Sometimes the answers to your biggest problems are lost in complex or repetitive data; sometimes, your biggest problems are themselves obscured by an inability to pull back and see the big picture.

Our analytics, fine-tuned to your exact requirements, work hard to uncover the numbers and patterns to support the most crucial business decisions.

Built on IBM Cognos Analytics technology, our integrated Business Intelligence (BI) modules reveal unique business insights, from a broad overview to minute detail.

IBM Cognos Analytics gives you instant access to a range of tools, enabling you to better analyse your business through a single, easyto-use interface.

And, because it’s all online, you can access the information you need whenever you want, wherever you want.

Pronto Xi product family

Platform & Applications

Individual modules from our competency set are easily adaptable to suit your unique business needs

The tools of your trade

Foundation

A platform to build on

To run cleverly and seamlessly, Pronto Xi’s modular applications rely on a core infrastructure that’s virtually bulletproof.

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 choice of connectivity, Pronto Connect offers industrystandard RESTful APIs that allow 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 own web applications and native mobile apps, and our rapidly expanding Solution Partner ecosystem – that has the reliability and transactional performance of Pronto Xi at its very core.

With Webhooks and Alert Intelligence, build do-it-yourself data-broadcast integrations to push data to third-party 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 make Pronto Xi the perfect fit for your unique 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, as well as providing 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 the needs of your business.

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

Financials

Accountability is the bottom line

Pronto Xi’s powerful transaction engine integrates all your financial activities into a single control centre, providing you with the crucial information you need to monitor and grow profitability.

Achieve perfect balance with the fully integrated General Ledger, and get the complete financial picture with automatic transaction posting from sub-ledgers including Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable and Inventory. You can even manage multiple currencies and multiple companies, making it easy to control complex enterprise data across group companies.

By presenting the financial outcomes of your organisation’s activities, Financials gives you crucial insights and information to monitor and maintain your bottom line.

Payroll & Resources

Maximise the potential of your assets

Optimise your business resources with Pronto Xi’s Resource Management and Resource Scheduler modules. These integrate directly into Project, Service, Plant Maintenance and Payroll modules, enabling you to efficiently manage resources, teams or equipment. In addition, the Human Resource Management (HRM) module helps you control detailed staff information, so 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 full-time, part-time and casual employees, hourly rates and annual salaries, and it 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.

Employee Portal offers your staff a self-service option for pay slips, as well as leave and timesheet entry.

Distribution

Inventory in motion

Keep the heart of your supply chain healthy 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 the stock coming in and out of your door with the Sales and Purchasing modules. Automatically allocate backorders and stock replenishment, calculate freight, and track dispatch across multiple countries and currencies, all while having full access to your activity history.

Retail

Retail

One platform, full visibility

With fully integrated Point of Sale and eCommerce modules, Pronto Xi provides a true 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 in-store with the Pronto POS App, or use it as your complete point-of-sale solution.

B2B eCommerce

Transforming your reach

Pronto Xi Avenue enables B2B organisations to rapidly extend the in-store experience to online while delivering omni-channel excellence.

As part of ERP and analytics software, Avenue seamlessly integrates with other powerful applications aligned to key aspects of the eCommerce experience. With a stunning and intuitive user interface, Avenue is a rapidly scalable platform that enables your business to deliver frictionless eCommerce, from browsing to purchasing.

B2B eCommerce

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 you’re 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 more. It also allows your sales teams to perform advanced segmentation, enabling targeted and personalised customer communications.

Supply Chain

On time, every time

Track your current supply chain activity and forecast future movements through the seamless coordination and integration of your product, information and distribution network.

Automate supplier priorities, lead times and inventory targets to make sure your supply always matches your 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 automatic allocation of incoming goods to locations, efficient picking, automatic replenishment, dispatch confirmation and location control of warehouse stock.

Supply Chain

CRM

Asset & Facility Management

Simplified services

Manage your projects with a fully integrated project management solution. From tender stage to project delivery, Pronto Xi’s Project module helps you manage your resources, tasks and milestones so you can focus on exceptions.

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’ high availability.

Manufacturing

Make more with less

Quality control is at the core of our flexible suite of manufacturing tools, designed to cater to almost any production technique 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 are designed to ensure you run a tight ship.

Plan your production with 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 your 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, allowing you 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 helps you dig deeper into every aspect of your operations.

Customer expectations evolve quickly – so you need to know more than just the current state of your business. Business leaders need to answer questions such as: “How did we get here?”, “What do we expect will happen next?” and “What key decisions do we need to make?”

Analysts need to see beyond today for the 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 the user’s 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 help you visualise business trends.

IBM Watson technology leverages the IBM Watson Natural Language Processing capability to provide deeper insights in its Conversation Assistant. IBM Watson Discovery helps users 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 industryleading Analytics platform.

Complementing IBM Cognos technology is a range of Pronto Xi applications developed to take your data analysis to new heights.

Our BI platform is available to all Pronto Xi users, and gives you access to better insights, faster:

• Out-of-the-box operational and financial reports

• Integrated data model to easily build your own custom reports and dashboards

In addition, IBM Cognos Mobile BI provides an interactive and secure environment to view and analyse data on compatible smart devices.

Visualisations

See between the lines

BI is packed with data visualisation tools, delivering a clear picture of your business performance.

Stunning dashboards and KPI widgets are easy to create and customise, giving you a powerful view across your business.

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 most effectively demonstrate your data and share your findings with others.

Data

Better data, better decisions

Behind Pronto Xi’s rich visualisations, a vast amount of data drives reports you 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 are looking for.

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.

Maintain detailed staff information with the Employee Portal

User experience (UX) design is all about simplifying processes. Our deep research and knowledge of UX has allowed us to design a user interface that meets the needs of realworld users and optimises productivity. 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 all straightforward. Data entry is also simple, whether you’re using a keyboard and mouse or a touch-screen mobile device.

Regardless of which Pronto Xi modules you use, their consistent format and functionality makes the tools quick and easy to learn.

Highly accessible

Pronto Xi’s web-based user interface gives you the flexibility to do what you need to do, whenever and wherever you need to do it – all without the need for software installation.

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, so you can have the best of both worlds.

Accelerate accuracy

Data entry validation happens at a field level in real time – not at the end of a task, once a form is submitted. This avoids any lag time or the need for data re-entry, verifies that business process rules are being followed, and helps users 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

Switchedon support

From start to finish, our consulting team will guide you through the implementation of your Pronto Xi system. Our consultants have a wide range of practical business experience across a variety of 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 properly understand the nuances of your business, 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 carry out testing of your new system. This includes running business simulations to resolve any potential issues, building bespoke user interfaces and making any necessary final amendments or customisations.

Finally, we’re right there with you during the go-live process and continue to be on hand until you are confident you’ve got full control over your business.

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 on budget.

We start by working with you to establish a cooperative and controlled project charter. This document 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 plan, and monitor and track progress through regular reporting.

Training

Empower your team

The PIM process also identifies your training needs, based on which Pronto Xi modules are being 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 classroom-based setting or on-site at your business.

Customisations

Ready for anything

We know that in our 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 is designed to accommodate customised enhancements when you upgrade to new releases in the future.

Ongoing support

Always on hand

Your Pronto Xi installation is backed by 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 have backgrounds as software users, accountants, warehouse managers, production managers, administrators and project managers – so you will always be connected with a qualified staff member who understands the specific needs and requirements of your business.

Online help

A wealth of knowledge

In addition to our dedicated help desk, we also 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’ll also find full product manuals, release notes and fixed-readiness information online.

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 get in touch with 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 set-up, you can save on overheads too.

Enterprise security

Secure your data

We offer a range of robust security features, so you can be confident that your business is protected.

Administrators can use roles and security profiles to control access from a company level right down to the field.

Pronto Xi’s Identity and Access Management (IAM) solution - provides integration with Azure Active Directory and Okta, enables SSO, MFA and self-serve password management, increasing security and simplifying 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 at all times.

Roadmap

One step ahead

Our maintenance agreements give you full 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 at any point in time

With Financials, you have access to your business’s complete financial position at any time.

Financials’ four core modules form the basis of your Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system, delivering key financial information that enables solid strategic decision-making across all of Pronto Xi’s integrated modules. Detailed financials are supplemented by a comprehensive budgeting system, helping to drive informed analysis and reporting.

Built for the enterprise, General Ledger (GL) provides a comprehensive solution for handling the financials of multiple companies in any currency, as well as offering multiple budgets, hierarchies, and cost centres. Because the module represents the financial outcome of your organisation’s activities, it forms the basis for Pronto Xi’s reporting and business insights.

Manage the full asset life cycle – from acquisition through to disposal – with Fixed Assets. Multiple acquisition and depreciation methods can be used, allowing you to keep valuations up-to-date. With full reporting and key performance indicator (KPI) capabilities, Fixed Assets is perfect for multinational companies with multi-jurisdictional assets and compliance reporting.

With Accounts Receivable, you ensure all your sales transactions are automatically processed with real-time updates to General Ledger. A fully functional system, Accounts Receivable offers the ability to hold very detailed information about your customers – including information flowing from Sales. Accounts Receivable can be used in a wide variety of environments, including wholesale, retail, service, project management and manufacturing.

Supplier accounts can be easily managed with Accounts Payable. It supports a variety of invoice types and payment options, and has the ability to automate invoice processing to save you time. With full integration with General Ledger and Purchasing, Accounts Payable gives you a detailed view of all supplier arrangements, transactions and approval levels.

Accountability is essential and easily managed within Pronto Xi. In addition to traditional budgeting at the General Ledger level, Pronto Xi provides comprehensive tools that support the budgeting process. For example, sales-based Configurable Budgets can be rolled up to GL Budgets, while any number of Hierarchy Budgets can be developed to meet specific reporting requirements. For lower-level budgets, like employee expenses, Pronto Xi offers transaction tagging, which allows you to easily capture and categorise transactions.

General Ledger

Keep a tight rein on your finances

General Ledger (GL) is at the heart of your Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system, capturing the financial transactions processed in other Pronto Xi modules

Features include:

• 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

• multiple budgets, with multi-currency support

• consolidation functionality, including foreign subsidiaries

• extensive reporting capabilities that utilise reporting hierarchies.

Account structure

To meet your organisation’s specific reporting requirements, Pronto Xi incorporates a Master Chart structure.

The Master Chart gives you the ability to specify what each element within an account code represents. For example, the first two characters of an account code may represent the company; the next four characters a cost centre; characters seven and eight a department; and characters nine to 12 the natural account code.

Having defined which codes are valid for each component of the Master Chart, you can easily generate all, or a selection, of General Ledger accounts. This also has the benefit of 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, you can expand the account code to handle a larger range. Pronto Xi will maintain 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 will map each transaction onto General Ledger. This means that your data entry staff require only minimal knowledge of General Ledger postings.

For management and statutory reporting, you can maintain multiple budgets for each account code. You can also generate a variety of management reports, creating different views based on any number of hierarchies.

Types of accounts

Statistical accounts

To simplify reporting on non-financial key performance indicators (KPIs) – such as cost per unit produced, revenue per employee and cost per kilowatt – statistical accounts collate relevant non-financial operational data.

Expense accounts

Additional details can be captured for expense accounts based on General Ledger tagging. This is particularly useful for expenses such as entertainment, telephone costs and employee travel, or even for tracking small projects.

Budgets

Flexible and intuitive budgeting capabilities are provided across General Ledger, including GL Budgets, Configurable Budgets and Hierarchy Budgets.

This common approach delivers:

• seamless interaction with Excel

• budget collaboration 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. GL Budgets can be maintained at the account code level or group level (such as by department or natural account) to allow budgeting to be performed at the reporting level. Budgeting can be manipulated at the lowest level, with full visibility of changes made.

GL Budgets have been optimised for easy data manipulation, meaning you can either 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; apply spread factors; and export and import smoothly via Excel.

GL Budgets allow multiple people to contribute to the budgeting process using a structured contributor budgeting system that maintains flexibility and simplicity. The Budget Contributor Management function allows individualised and recipient-specific sub-budgets to be distributed. These separate contribution budgets can then be aggregated into the master budget.

Sales and inventory budgets can be pushed up to specified General Ledger account budgets, meaning that important information within the operational budgets can be leveraged 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 allow you to create sales-based budgets using any combination of attributes from the customer and inventory master records.

For example, you could create a three-level budget based on a mixture of Brand, Class, Category, Group, Territory, Warehouse and Industry attributes.

The budgets can be created daily, weekly or per period, and can be based on a range of measures including value, quantity, gross profit and gross profit percentage.

With Configurable Budgets, you can create quantity-based items by customer budgets, which roll up to warehouses. These budgets can then publish a forecast which – because it aggregates to a warehouse – can be used to drive both material requirements planning (MRP) and distribution requirements planning (DRP).

Configurable Budgets can 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.

Configurable Budgets have been optimised to export to and import from Excel. This allows stakeholders from across the business to contribute to the budgeting process using the Budget Contributor Management function.

Hierarchy Budgets

Hierarchy Budgets allow you to create budgets based on existing reporting hierarchies.

Hierarchy Budgets 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 can now occur at any level directly in Pronto Xi. Budgets for the P&L and Balance Sheet can be changed directly in the Hierarchy View, removing the need to export and import data in spreadsheets.

Budgeting by account code

Pronto Xi also 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 are rolled up in the top section, and the elements that make up the budget are broken down in the second section. Maintenance can occur at either level.

Financial reporting

GL Hierarchies provide flexibility in how General Ledger accounts are structured for reporting purposes.

The reporting hierarchies allow the accounts to be structured based on the desired reporting outcome, ensuring that different users can get the reporting they need.

Overview of a small subset of GL Hierarchies

Reporting hierarchy structures

A simple hierarchy structure means that anyone with a knowledge of accounting 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 may sit under Assets and so on. Once the structure is defined, users simply need to determine where their 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 outof-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 p23.

Customised financial reporting

To create your own hierarchy structures and reports based on natural accounts or full General Ledger accounts, you can begin with predefined hierarchies and make any necessary changes, or create hierarchies from scratch to get bespoke reporting outcomes.

From there, you can 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 set accounts such as Cash at Bank to appear as an asset when they have a positive balance, and as a liability when they have a negative balance.

Complex reports

Because GL Hierarchies are built on simple parent-child relationships, they are intuitive and easy to understand. While they are generally populated with natural accounts, they can also be combined 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 needing to create new General Ledger accounts. For example, all motor vehicle expenses can be posted in a single account, using transaction tags to identify the types of expenses.

Tags are highly customisable, with support for hierarchy, budgeting and the ability to capture quantities such as litres of petrol or tonnes of extracted ore.

View a list of tags that can be associated with transactions

Drill down to transaction summaries for any tag

Create quick and powerful snapshots of key financial information with GL Hierarchy View

Financial data

GL Hierarchy View allows you to create 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 back to source transactions within Pronto Xi.

So your team can get the information they need, views can be personalised for an individual and built into their Pronto Xi menu. In addition, because views obey masking, users will only receive appropriate information.

View options

As soon as the GL Hierarchy is populated, you can start using the default P&L View.

If you require non-standard or more complex views, you can use the GL Hierarchy View Designer to create a view exactly the way 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 so you can see information such as the cost of sales as a percentage of sales.

Data updates

Because GL Hierarchy Views are built using staged data, drilling up and down through the various levels is instantaneous.

The GL Hierarchy View can be set to automatically refresh overnight or you can do it “on the fly”. You can also determine how many versions of the snapshot data you want to keep, so you can compare it 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 that contribute to the period balances.

In addition, you can push the views out to Excel for further manipulation or presentation.

Financial summaries

The GL Executive Analysis Summary is a powerful analysis tool. It provides instant insights, and offers drill-downs to source data without having to create reports.

GL Summary Views are highly customisable, and can be based on a combination of General Ledger dimensions. These include natural accounts and departments.

Get an overview of the General Ledger for a chosen period with the GL Executive Analysis Summary

Choose how to calculate your cash flow projection

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, you can easily create effective and flexible cash flow projections.

Choose exactly what will be included in your projections, reflecting assumptions that are specific to your business. This means information that is not currently available in the underlying database (such as upcoming capital expenditure) can be reflected 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.

Multi-company environments

There are four ways to manage multi-company setups:

• maintain multiple companies in one data set

• use separate data sets for each company, and consolidate to a holding company

• use separate data sets for each company’s subsidiary ledger, and share a common General Ledger

• use foreign currency consolidation

Using the Master Data Management module, you can manage multiple franchises, trading companies or international subsidiaries. Get full visibility of all your business entities from a single view, helping you to 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 you do not need to use spreadsheet imports or manual data transfers between your entities’ financial teams, your period-end processing is quicker and error-free.

Multi-currency functionality means you can trade in local currencies while consolidating necessary information in your home currency. You can easily handle inter-company trading and manage transfer pricing with multicurrency transactions, while still 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 entire business across all your locations, domestic or international. 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

In a multi-company environment with a single data set or a common General Ledger, General Ledger can automatically raise intercompany balancing entries. This ensures that each company remains in balance both within itself and within the General Ledger.

Dataset 1

AU$

Dataset 2

NZ$

Local (AUD) GBP£

Consolidated dataset

GBP £

Local (NZD) GBP£

Overview of data consolidation 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 has been designed so transactions can be recorded 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 of the functional currencies.

In doing so, MRC helps complex corporate structures to comply with both local and international reporting, and to transact and report in a variety of currencies and jurisdictions.

The MRC capability can be used 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 through 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 that have 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

Foreign currency transactions are supported in Pronto Xi’s Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable and Purchasing modules, with values maintained in foreign currency and the local currency equivalent in General Ledger.

The Foreign Currency functionality can be used to maintain customer and supplier accounts, raise sales and purchase orders, process cash receipts, make cash payments, maintain bank accounts, and transfer funds to and from foreign bank accounts. Currency revaluations of foreign customer and supplier balances can also be performed

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, as well as identify and isolate the data you need to reconcile tax activities.

To ensure the integrity of the reporting requirements when returns are being prepared, records are collated into a datebased grouping and marked with a userdefined description. This allows multiple work streams to be undertaken without the risk of duplicated accounting.

Commitment accounting

By raising a purchase order for an item, you can use commitment accounting to track the value of outstanding orders against a General Ledger account. This 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 allow you to 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 that it applies to.

User masking

You can use masking to prevent individual users from viewing selected components of General Ledger. For example, you can restrict access to a specific department, company or region.

Integration with Pronto Xi

Most General Ledger transactions are automatically posted from operational transactions processed through other Pronto Xi modules.

Updates to General Ledger and subsidiary ledgers are synchronised in real time and controlled by mapping tables or special accounts.

Mapping tables are simple to set up and allow you to customise postings based on your organisation’s requirements. If the mapping is not fully defined, Pronto Xi uses predefined accounts to avoid operational discontinuity.

Pronto Xi product family

Audits and tracking

General Ledger’s comprehensive audit and tracking tools help to simplify compliance.

Audit Management provides an integrated audit that registers changes to key data – who, what and when are captured automatically. Pronto Xi includes tools that allow you to view and manage the audit data.

Major transaction processes assign a tracking ID to events, while key enquiries allow you to drill back or forward through the various subledgers to view related postings.

A sales order can be traced through Inventory, Customer or General Ledger and all of its transactions viewed.

Excel import and export

Files can be imported from a spreadsheet or a flat file into General Ledger or other Pronto Xi modules such as Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable or Inventory. They can also be exported.

Bank statements, cash receipts and other bank information can also be imported.

Normal and prior-period journals

Transactions can be posted directly into General Ledger without affecting any other ledger.

Journals are normally posted to the accounting period relevant to the transaction date; however, they can be posted 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. These can be identified as being posted after the closure of the accounting period.

Manage standing and self-reversing journals

Automatic journals

Automatic journals can be set up 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 amount to be posted to change each month while the accounts remain static

Cash payments

The Cash Payments functionality records payments from the bank for sundry expenses. It can also be used to post bank charges and other deductions from the bank account.

Cash payments can be made through the General Ledger, either via Accounts Payable or directly from the General Ledger. Details of a manually raised cheque can be included in the Cheque Register for reconciling.

You can also enter the payments’ applicable tax, ensuring it is included in tax reporting and analysis.

You can keep transaction detail history for as long as necessary. In summary mode, General Ledger holds data by period for an indefinite number of years. Previous years’ transactions are archived.

Financial year calendar

General Ledger uses 12 or 13 user-defined periods. The length of each period is defined by the period start dates.

Date-based transactions

The date of each transaction determines the period that it is posted in. The year and period number, relative to the financial calendar, is also stamped on each transaction.

This feature facilitates reporting and exporting information to third-party analytics tools. It also makes it easier to sort or filter transactions by accounting period and year.

End-of-period and end-ofyear tasks

Many of the tasks involved in closing the current period are automatically performed by the Period End Processing function.

At year end, the Profit and Loss accounts are closed out to the Appropriation accounts and year-to-date balances updated. Each of Pronto Xi’s main ledgers (Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable, Inventory and General Ledger) can be rolled independently

Both regular and irregular periods are supported. Irregular accounting periods are utilised in financial calendars – for example, each month can end on the last Friday, or 4–5 week period quarters can be used. Record

Use any of your reporting hierarchies to produce a Statement of Financial Performance, with an option to compare against budget

Emissions Tracking

To help businesses improve their 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 business-specific operations can also be easily integrated by using infrastructure tools.

You can assemble, personalise, analyse and interact with carbon data through a dashboard.

Once you have set emission targets, Emissions Tracking lets you identify and quantify options, establish a strategy and implement a practical plan to achieve real results.

Business Intelligence

Financial reports

Pronto Xi includes ready-to-go financial reports for the General Ledger, which include:

• Balance Sheet

• Profit and Loss (P&L)

• Trial Balance

• Transactions

• Expense Analysis – Summary & 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 key performance indicators (KPIs) that 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, providing the ability to analyse trends over time.

Fixed Assets

Fully manage all your fixed asset transactions – including acquisition, disposal, transfer, depreciation, revaluation and reporting –with Fixed Assets

Pronto Xi’s Fixed Assets module is a dynamic, robust and flexible suite of solutions, designed to efficiently manage assets all the way from acquisition to disposal. Fixed Assets is perfect for multinational companies dealing with multi-jurisdictional asset management and reporting.

With Pronto Xi, you can attach unlimited numbers of depreciation regimes to each asset. Each regime (for example, book or tax) can have its own acquisition cost, depreciation method and depreciation rate – and you can retain a full transaction history for as many years as you choose.

Streamline your processes with Pronto Xi’s bulk transactions functionality. All the usual tasks associated with managing your fixed assets can be performed either on an assetby-asset basis or in bulk – and, because bulk transactions can be easily exported to or imported from Excel, you can enhance your efficiency even further.

Make the most of your assets

With Fixed Assets, you can also:

• post depreciation into next year – even when General Ledger has not been rolled

• set default control accounts and only override the exception

• split depreciation expense across multiple accounts at the asset level

• set 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

There are five methods of processing an asset acquisition:

Manually

Create the asset profile from within the Asset Register, which posts amounts to a clearing account in the General Ledger.

From an inventory item

Create an asset from an inventory item, which automatically transfers the item 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. This makes it easy to keep your Asset Register up-to-date.

From a supplier’s invoice

Create an asset profile while processing a supplier’s invoice, without needing to raise a purchase order.

Via bulk entry or bulk import

Acquire multiple assets in a single screen using bulk entry. You can also import multiple assets from Excel, with the system providing all the necessary validations

Asset Maintenance

Pronto Xi’s Asset Maintenance functionality uses a unique asset number or label for each asset, which can be manually or automatically generated. Additional numbers or labels can also be entered against an asset to aid identification (for example, a motor vehicle registration number).

Associated assets may be linked in a parentchild relationship – for example, a “parent” computer may have a keyboard and screen as “child” assets.

Asset Maintenance allows you to view additional details (such as attachments, service maintenance or schedules).

You can also decide how to structure your assets for reporting purposes and easier management.

Easily manage your fixed assets

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 tasks such as depreciation and revaluation to be easily performed on a range of assets.

These groupings also determine General Ledger posting and allow users to:

• set default control accounts and only override the exception

• split depreciation expense across multiple accounts

• set 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 depreciable cost of the asset.

Pronto Xi also allows asset revaluations. The amount of the revaluation is offset to a General Ledger account specified in the interface record, and all subsequent revaluations are handled in accordance with 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

Assets can be grouped to simplify usage depreciation. For example, you can enter a figure for units consumed and apply it to an asset group. All assets in the group will be automatically updated with the new data Make

Depreciation

Pronto Xi supports four depreciation methods: straight line, diminishing value, units of use and variable depreciation.

Where diminishing value depreciation is used, the amount of depreciation for each period can be weighted by applying spread factors.

Variable depreciation can be used to meet the modified accelerated cost recovery system (MACRS) accounting requirements in the United States. Variable depreciation can also be used to assist with low-value pooling under Australian tax rules.

Each asset offers book depreciation and tax depreciation, and you can attach as many additional depreciation regimes as you choose. Each regime can use a different depreciation method and rate. Each depreciation regime can be adjusted independently, and each retains a full transaction history.

Assets can be depreciated either individually or in bulk.

A detailed depreciation schedule can be reviewed before depreciation is posted and the Asset Register and General Ledger are updated.

Record asset usage information for depreciation purposes

Disposals

When disposing of an asset, Fixed Assets can calculate book depreciation up to the disposal date, or for the full year in the year of disposal.

Once the disposal has been posted, no further transactions may be processed 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.

Business Intelligence

Pronto Xi delivers a complete set of readyto-go operational reports, helping finance and accounts staff to run their day-to-day operations and gain real-time insight into the business’s performance.

Operational reports come with in-built filters and summary headers, meaning users have greater control over the information that is reported.

Pronto Xi’s out-of-the-box operational reports include:

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 for reconciliation to 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 General Ledger period.

View

Transactions

View selected Fixed Assets transactions by asset and transaction date. This supports reconciliation, investigation and data verification.

Other features include:

• asset history recording

• recording of finance, land/property and motor vehicle details

• maintenance of service history

• expense recording

• revenue recording for rental assets

• images and captions

Easily reconcile movements with the Reconciliation report

Accounts Receivable

Automatically process all sales transactions and make real-time postings to the General Ledger with Pronto Xi’s integrated Accounts Receivable module

Accounts Receivable features include:

• ageing by seven-day, 14-day, monthly or user-defined 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

Customer Maintenance

Pronto Xi’s Customer Maintenance functionality provides centralised control of your customer data, supporting operational efficiency and sound financial management.

Customer information captured in Customer Maintenance is used as default data in Accounts Receivable and other Pronto Xi modules.

You can maintain very detailed information about your customers, including contacts, email addresses, banking information, currency, licensing details, warranty administration, multiple delivery addresses, delivery instructions and more.

Other key features include:

Ship-to and bill-to accounts

You can 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 being billed to a head office account. You can define special pricing for the head office account, or for branch accounts.

Credit limit

Credit limits can be defined for each customer.

New orders over the credit limit automatically go on hold. On-hold orders can only be released by an authorised credit officer.

A customer’s credit can also be controlled based on the age of outstanding invoices. For example, if the customer is under the specified credit limit but has unpaid accounts that are older than 60 days, new orders can automatically be placed on credit hold.

Accounts can be placed on credit hold by changing the status to No Supply. Additional holds can be placed on sales orders if the gross margin of the order is below a defined percentage.

Accounts Receivable

Settlement discount

You can 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, number of days from the end of month, or on a specified cut-off date.

Security functions

Accounts Receivable can 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

Default sales order information – such as dispatch warehouse, sales representative, territory, applicable tax and price level – is defined by the customer master file. You can override this data during sales order entry. The defaults also define the reporting structure.

The customer master file also captures customer preferences or rules, such as:

• send invoice with goods

• no statement 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 similar documents.

Full enquiry functions

As well as viewing the full details of the customer master file, you can immediately access current and historical sales orders and transactions through enquiry screens and reports.

In addition, you can interrogate the customer’s file for ageing 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 useful if the account code is based on a name that changes.

If a customer’s business is taken over by another customer, you can merge the accounts.

Customers of a sales representative can be transferred to another representative, and customers in one territory can be transferred to another territory.

Customer pricing, discounts, promotions and rebates

Pronto Xi’s flexible pricing structures can be adapted for each customer account or bill-to account.

The sell price is determined 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.

Discounts, promotions and rebates also have the same flexibility.

Budgets and forecasts

Configurable Budgets allow you to create sales-based budgets using any combination of attributes from the customer and inventory master records.

The budgets can be created either daily, weekly or per period, and can be based 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 can streamline 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, you can use a special descriptive line in the invoice to record the sales information.

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.

eInvoices

Customer invoices are the first step in the digitisation of the supply chain. To support this transformation, Pronto Xi offers an eInvoicing capability that allows 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 start sending eInvoices; Ozedi is our recommended partner.

eInvoicing seamlessly integrates with Pronto Xi

Cash receipts

Accounts Receivable provides a variety of allocation methods for cash receipts. You can:

• automatically mark receipts off against invoices

• manually mark receipts off against invoices

• use one receipt to pay invoices from more than one customer account

• leave a receipt unallocated and mark it off against an invoice at a future date.

In addition, prepayments can be applied to a sales order or by reference. These are then applied 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 can be 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. Bank charges may be taken up in the General Ledger or charged back to the customer, and a bank audit report can be produced. You can also print and reprint bank deposit (pay-in) slips.

Pronto Xi’s bank reconciliation programs also enable customer receipting, matching to invoices, and other transactions.

Transfer

transactions between customer accounts via journal

Journals

Accounts Receivable allows you to transfer transactions from one customer account to another via journal.

If you are using 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.

Specific transactions can be written off as bad debts when required, with automatic adjustments of consumer taxes.

Customer General Ledger journals allow you to direct allocate General Ledger amounts to customers. This function is typically used for recharging expenses.

End-of-period rollovers

Accounts Receivable helps to provide a clear process for managing period-end rollovers, minimising downtime and offline maintenance. This 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:

• license or permit requirement to purchase 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, if you have exclusivity arrangements)

• customer partial shipment policy, which indicates whether a customer accepts backorders and how these backorders are handled

• different form layouts where required by customers (such as invoices or statements)

• order surcharge (fixed percentage or dollar amount) for orders below a minimum value

• 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

Documents can be tailored to suit your business requirements with TrueForm Neo integration

Manage customer follow-ups in one place.

Credit officers

Credit officers control the level of credit that is extended to individual customers. They may also 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 automatically be placed on hold until a credit officer releases them. Each credit officer is assigned value limits, which control the amount they are able to release for a customer and the value of individual credit notes they can authorise.

Sales representative commissions

Accounts Receivable allows you to pay commissions, bonuses and penalties to sales representatives, based on sliding scales.

You can also set special commission rates for specific item groups, with up to five sales commission breaks.

Maintain all your promotions, including applicable stores, customers, active date and time and more

Retail Promotions

Pronto Xi’s Retail Promotions feature helps you to manage and track promotions, related expenses and claims when dealing with retailers.

Promotion history is captured at the transaction level for full reporting and powerful summary analysis.

The functionality of Retail Promotions includes:

• user-defined promotions and expenses (for example, deferred or off invoice)

• integration with Pronto Xi’s Sales and General Ledger modules, and the Customer Rebates functionality

• accrual of deferred expenses and rebates in General Ledger, and the ability to review these against the promotion and customer

• options for how the promotion affects sales history and cost of goods sold

• a range of promotion statuses, including Active, On-Hold and Closed

• promotion start and end date

• promotions established by customer and product, or customer and item group

• use of rebate rules

Create a view of a business’s financial health for your CFO

Business Intelligence

Pronto Xi delivers a complete set of readyto-go operational reports and business dashboards, helping finance and accounts staff to run their day-to-day Accounts Receivable operations and gain real-time insight into the business’s performance.

Operational reports

Operational reports come with in-built filters and summary headers, meaning users have greater control over the information that is reported.

The following operational reports are included as standard for Accounts Receivable:

• Aged Trial Balance – displays transactional values per customer in historical ageing buckets, which can be structured by invoice or due date.

• Customer Transactions – view transactions by customer or by transaction date for reconciliation and issue investigation, or for data verification purposes.

Key performance indicators

Pronto Xi’s KPI Library has a wealth of preconfigured key performance indicators (KPIs) that allow 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, KPI data can be captured over time, so you can analyse trends and proactively manage operations.

Data can be viewed via IBM Cognos technology or Pronto Xi Workspaces.

Accounts Payable

Drill down into your supplier accounts with Accounts Payable, giving you a complete view of supplier arrangements, transactions and approval levels

Manage debt, minimise liability

Fully integrated with Pronto Xi’s General Ledger and Purchasing modules, Accounts Payable includes features such as:

• 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 against the account

• full purchase and payment history

• multi-currency support for foreign and local bank accounts

• pay as you go (PAYG) tax withholding/1099

• bank reconciliation for multiple banks

• current and forward commitment tracking

• the ability to recharge expenses back to a customer account

• easy purchase order, invoice and shipment matching.

Supplier maintenance

You can maintain detailed information about your suppliers in the Supplier Maintenance screen.

This information is used as 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 provides a Supplier Type field, which holds a user-definable code and puts suppliers into categories such as General, Contractor or Trade.

Supplier Type can be used to split payable control accounts within the General Ledger, and can limit payment runs or user access to particular accounts.

The field is also a selection criterion for most Accounts Payable reports.

Accounts Payable

Easy options for payments

Accounts Payable is easy to use and offers a range of options for payments. 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

Easily choose a set of invoices to pay

Select invoices to be included in a payment run

Pay-to accounts

Accounts Payable allows you to purchase goods from one supplier but specify that the invoice should be 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.

This type of transaction can be set up using the supplier’s “pay-to” account, which specifies the parent account for payment. When using this functionality, the purchase history is stored 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, the number of days from the end of the month, or a specified cut-off date.

During invoice entry, the system automatically calculates the invoice due date based on the payment terms assigned to the supplier. This due date can be manually changed 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.

Accounts Payable

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 will be included in a payment run or report.

Suppliers are designated as:

• local

• foreign

• a priority code between 1 and 9

• a selection code between A and Z.

Priority payment levels can be assigned to certain suppliers so that, for example, those that need to be paid promptly are given the highest priority.

Default General Ledger accounts

To simplify the processing of invoices, each supplier can be assigned a default General Ledger account. For example, invoices from the local service station may default to a particular motor vehicle expense account.

Invoices

Accounts Payable incorporates a variety of invoice and credit note options, as listed below.

Each transaction can be processed in local or foreign currency. Taxes are automatically calculated, but this can be over-ridden 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 are linked to purchase orders.

If the system identifies a variance between the purchase order and invoice, it must be accounted for during invoice entry. The system can be tailored to handle variances in a number of ways.

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 goods on a purchase order are returned after the invoice has been processed but before it has been paid, the authorised payment amount will automatically be reduced by the value of the return.

Shipment extra charge invoice

These invoices link costs to shipments. Accounts Payable automates the costing of extra shipping charges across the shipment’s inventory.

Non–purchase order invoice

For invoices where a purchase order is not raised, the invoice itself is directly allocated to a General Ledger code. This is typically 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, a supplier’s invoice can be recharged directly to a customer.

Stay on top of your recurring payments

Invoice authorisation tracking

You can 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 where delays are occurring.

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

You can set up Accounts Payable to automatically process invoices that need to be paid periodically, such as leases and insurances. Only those invoices that have a Next Run Date that matches or falls before the specified date will be processed.

The value and date of any periodic payment can be amended as required.

Current and forward commitments

The Payment Commitment by Supplier report will keep you abreast of payments that will become due in the coming months.

Calculations are based on the value of purchase orders and shipments within the system that have not yet been invoice.

Payments

There are four main methods available to pay supplier accounts. Payments may be made against local or foreign banks.

The methods for payment are:

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 will be posted to the General Ledger. Any supplier invoice can be paid manually.

2. Generate payments automatically using Accounts Payable’s flexible payment-run capabilities. Payment options include EFT, cheque or even a customised file for payment by a third party, and you can 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. A list of selected transactions and suppliers may be produced at any time. Once you have completed the review, payments can be automatically created and processed.

4. Use a letter of credit. You can raise a letter of credit, record drawings against a letter of credit, and maintain letter of credit details.

Accounts Payable

Invoice data

Pronto Connect

Purchase Orders

Supplier data

Purchase order data

General Ledger codes

Cost centres

Tax codes

Automation software

Invoices

Suppliers

Integration with accounts payable automation

It’s easy to integrate third-party accounts payable automation solutions with Pronto Xi via the Pronto Connect API platform.

The APIs help organisations 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 right approval workflows before being pushed into Pronto Xi for data entry and filing.

If any supplier invoices cannot be reconciled automatically, they are shown in Pronto Xi so they can be reviewed and validated before being posted to the sub-ledger and General Ledger.

Overview of how Pronto Xi integrates with an accounts payable automation solution

Journals

Accounts Payable allows you to transfer transactions from one supplier account to another using inter-supplier journals.

Using supplier journals, transactions are entered directly between a supplier account and a nominated General Ledger account. If you are using 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 also supports contra journals between Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable accounts.

eInvoices

The first step in the digitisation of the supply chain, eInvoicing allows supplier invoices to be automatically delivered into Pronto Xi. This occurs through an API, with invoices being processed via the suppliers’ invoice functionality.

Transaction history

At month end, all invoices that have been paid in full are transferred to an archive file. Transactions in the archive are fully accessible from standard enquiries and reports.

Account conversions

You can easily to change a supplier’s account code, which is useful if the account code is based on a name that changes.

If a supplier’s business is taken over by another supplier, you can merge the two accounts.

Bank statement entries and reconciliation

With Accounts Payable you can print a Bank Payment Register, which shows presented payments, un-presented payments or both.

The register allows for maintenance requirements and will always display the current status of a payment.

Bank statement details – including electronic transfers, deposits and various bank and government charges – can be entered manually into the payment register. Alternatively, you can download bank statements directly from the bank and edit them as required.

Business Intelligence

Pronto Xi delivers a complete set of readyto-go operational reports and business dashboards, helping finance and accounts staff to run their day-to-day Accounts Payable operation and to gain real-time insight into the business’s performance.

Operational reports

Operational reports contain in-built filters and summary headers, meaning users have greater control over the information that is reported.

Out-of-the-box operational reports include:

• Aged Trial Balance – displays transactional values per customer in historical ageing buckets, which can be structured by invoice or due date.

• Supplier Transactions – view transactions by supplier or transaction date for reconciliation and issue investigation, or for data verification purposes.

• Payment Commitments by Supplier –forecast future payable amounts based on their due date, helping to assist with cash flow forecasting.

• Foreign Currency Exposure – record details of foreign currency that is owed, structured by supplier and invoice.

Key performance indicators

Pronto Xi’s KPI Library has a wealth of preconfigured key performance indicators that allow 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, KPI data can be captured over time so you can analyse trends and proactively manage operations.

Data can be viewed via IBM Cognos technology or Pronto Xi Workspaces.

View all your outgoing payments at a glance

Customer Central

Minimise service strain and improve your cash flow with Customer Central, which empowers customers by giving them the freedom and flexibility to manage accounts at their convenience

Account management that pays

Provide customers with anytime access to their account details, including current orders, past orders and payment due dates

Customer Central is a powerful solution for managing accounts, payments and invoices.

The application streamlines critical processes for businesses and their end-user customers, providing a single integrated touchpoint that utilises the Pronto Xi platform.

Within this self-service portal, customers have anytime access to their accounts, giving them complete oversight of their details. This convenience reduces the need for user support, freeing customer service teams to focus on delivering greater value.

On the administrative level, Customer Central consistently capture all information about past customer interactions and transactions. This creates a single source of truth, and provides the necessary visibility to drive collaboration across operations and support consistent customer communication.

Businesses’ finance and accounts teams can:

• maintain clear and timely communication with just one click, including sending reminders for overdue invoices

• automate payment confirmation and “thank you” emails, and post announcements on customer dashboards

• improve cash flow and build customer relationships with incentives, discounts and special credit terms

• view paid/due invoice issue dates, reminder email trigger dates and recipient details

• add important announcements in the top banner of the customer dashboard, such as product and delivery updates

View all the account details for a specific customer, including account balance, invoices, follow-up notes and users associated with the account

End-user customers can:

• 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

Payroll & Resources Contents

Maximise the potential of your team and resources

Ensure your everyday human and equipment processes are manageable and easy to access

Payroll and Resource Management puts information about the company’s most valuable assets in front of decision makers, helping them to effectively respond to changing priorities. Get a complete view of your workforce and equipment, wherever they are located, in one secure system.

Unlock your resources’ full potential –without overbooking them – with Resource Scheduler. See your team’s workload and resource allocation in real time to easily find required availability.

Keep your people happy with a seamless remuneration process. Payroll is an efficient payroll system that helps you reward your employees for their hard work and effort.

Reduce the administrative burden by enabling management to effectively access important information anywhere, anytime via any mobile device.

Payroll

Designed specifically for Australian organisations, Payroll makes it easy to manage employee wages, entitlements, payments and accruals

Role Control

Pronto Xi’s fully integrated Payroll module gives you complete control over employee pay requirements, as well as the flexibility needed to manage multiple pay frequencies.

Payroll provides the capability to create numerous allowances and deductions, along with leave types, lump-sum payments and salary sacrifice deductions. Overtime payments and shift penalties are easily handled by multiplying the normal pay rate using a scaling factor.

The hours worked by an employee can be defined as a permanent transaction, entered on an ad hoc basis each pay run, or recorded using timesheets. A range of different payment frequencies – from weekly to monthly – can be paid in together or in separate pay runs.

Payroll calculates and deducts the income tax from each employee’s pay according to a tax rate table, which can be updated if tax laws change. There is also provision for before-tax and after-tax additions and deductions, as well as tax adjustments.

There is a high degree of flexibility in defining leave conditions. You can differentiate between accrued and entitled leave, and set different accrual rates before and after a prescribed qualifying period. Personal leave, annual leave, long service leave and rostered days off are automatically accrued according to awards or individual requirements.

Leave requests can be pre-entered. Transactions representing leave taken, leave loading or payments in lieu of leave can then be processed in any pay run.

You can maintain separate General Ledger accounts for salary and wages, leave payments, and provisions for leave and employer obligations. These are automatically posted to the General Ledger.

Employee details

A wide range of employee details can be entered in Payroll, helping to make your company’s payroll as automatic as possible. These include:

• full remuneration details, including information about tax rebates and allowances, tax declarations, Medicare exemptions and any government debt (e.g. STSL obligations)

• superannuation details, including employer and employee payments, and payments for multiple funds (as either a percentage or fixed value)

• leave details, including any special entitlements

• banking details, including the ability to make payments to multiple banks, and to pay a percentage or fixed value in cash

Payroll processing

To simplify processing, you can register permanent transactions to be made for an employee. These include:

• normal hours

• deductions

• allowances

• garnishee debts

• child support

• superannuation contributions

• advance loans

You can also set the tax deduction to a certain percentage if the employee has an income tax variation.

When Payroll is linked with Resource Management, the award system can automate the correct pay rates and allowances based on timesheet hours entered.

Year-to-date (YTD) transactions for each employee can be viewed in Payroll, with a drilldown to full details of each pay run.

Pay run workflow

The steps to prepare and perform a pay run are simple and logical.

Start pay run

This operation clears the previous pay run and allows you to set the pay run posting date.

Select employees for the pay run

Payroll includes permanent pay transactions for employees selected in the pay run.

Employees whose next pay date is after the date being processed will not be included in the pay run. Employees whose pay has been stopped for the current pay period (such as employees on leave without pay or suspended) will also not be included.

Enter timesheets

You can add, modify or delete timesheets while processing the pay run.

Payroll can generate the payment transaction for the employee for the period using:

• permanent transactions

• timesheet hours

Back payments can be easily configured and calculated for all your employees, while payouts can be configured to be made automatically on expiry or on termination.

Whether your employees are receiving a pay increase, bonus or commission, Payroll accurately assesses tax figures for businesses of any size, saving hours of manual work for your payroll teams. With no double-handling of data or Excel-enabled calculations, you can mitigate costly payroll mistakes.

Payroll allows you to accurately compensate employees on leave for extra hours worked. By maintaining this information in Pronto Xi instead of an Excel spreadsheet, your employee leave records remain up-to-date at all times. It allows you to work with your employees to efficiently plan leave, without the necessary information being fragmented across different systems.

Information can be fed through employee timesheets to ensure that data is traceable and accurate – ultimately saving you time and effort in managing employee leave.

Calculate earnings for the pay run

Based on permanent transactions and timesheet entries, Payroll will calculate the PAYG tax to be deducted, as well as determining any allowances and deductions, to arrive at the net value to be paid to each employee in the pay run.

Four reports will be produced:

• Errors and warnings relating to the pay run. If there are errors, the pay run is suspended until they are corrected. Discrepancy warnings (for example, a person who has taken more leave than their entitlement permits) do not stop the pay run.

• Full details of the amounts being paid to each employee in the pay run, including tax and other deductions.

• Employee summary that displays leave accruals, gross and net tax, and all other allowances and deductions.

• Comparison of each employee’s current pay and previous pays, showing any variances.

Print payslips and other advice

This function exports a file to order electronic transfers of funds from the company bank account to employees’ accounts.

It also creates the employee’s payslip, with details of all amounts paid and deducted. Leave accrued, used and outstanding –such as annual leave, personal/carer’s leave, rostered days off (RDOs), and other forms of leave recognised by your organisation – can be included.

The General Ledger Postings Report is also created at this point, displaying the full General Ledger details that will be posted.

Enter leave requests

Terminate employees

Enter timesheets

Check the pay run status

Select the payroll number

Begin the pay run

Add permanent transactions

Post timesheets

Process adjustments

Run calculations, check reports

Generate payslips, reports, ABA files

Finalise, update ledger

Report STP

Perform a pay run using Payroll’s workflow

Update employees

As the final step in the pay run, Pronto Xi updates Payroll and General Ledger. In particular, Pronto Xi will:

• update the employee’s earnings history

• write the payment transactions to the employee

• update the employee’s entitlements for any leave accrued, entitled or taken

• update the YTD history by pay code

• update the General Ledger accounts that are affected by Payroll processing

If needed, there is also the option to restore the previous pay run.

Single Touch Payroll Phase 2

Pronto Xi is compliant with Single Touch Payroll (STP) Phase 2, enabling businesses to complete seamless reporting to the Australian Taxation Office (ATO).

Payroll’s STP reporting solution allows you to report payments such as salaries and wages, pay as you go (PAYG) withholding and superannuation to the ATO.

To submit STP data to the ATO and retrieve ATO responses, Payroll uses a third-party gateway that provides messaging services. This is directly integrated with Payroll via APIs.

Fringe benefits tax

Payroll allows for the entry of an employee’s “grossed-up” annual reportable fringe benefit tax (FBT) amount.

This amount should be entered prior to processing end-of-year finalisation for STP, which must include the reportable FBT.

End of year

At the end of the financial year, STP finalisations can be generated for:

• one or more employees

• all employees

• individual ABNs

• different locations

• current employees

• terminated employees

Payroll prepares for the start of a new financial year by:

• clearing the previous year totals from employee and pay code records

• setting the new payroll financial year.

• This process is done before the first pay run in the new financial year

Reports

Business Intelligence with IBM Cognos Analytics provides an extensive range of reports and report-authoring solutions to meet your organisation’s payroll information needs.

Reports available in Payroll include:

• Earnings by Pay Code

• Leave Liability

• Payroll Tax

• Superannuation Remittance Advice

• Superannuation History

Human Resource Management

Behind every product or service, there is human thinking, effort and time. Human Resource Management (HRM) makes it easy to manage your people

Your organisation’s most valuable asset

HRM allows you to control the detailed information necessary to meet your organisation’s personnel management requirements. HRM is fully integrated with Payroll and includes the following features:

• a user-definable organisation structure

• internal and external training records

• position vacancy tracking

• employee position and salary summary

• easy-to-maintain leave administration

• human resource planning

• ability to review all applicant details for each vacancy

• statistical analysis of all employment categories

Managing Director

Amanda STEWARD

Chief Financial Officer

Nathan PERKINGS

Human Resources Manager

Jeanne GRANT

IT Manager

Melissa DOYLE

Jeff REID

Marketing Manager

Nadine WALKER

Set your organisation structure in Human Resource Management

Retail Manager (VIC/NSW) Herman MORGAN

Warehouse Manager Ray BANKS

Employee Portal

Increase your employees’ and managers’ satisfaction and efficiency by empowering them with Employee Portal

Leave it to me

Managing human resources can place a large administrative burden on many companies. By reducing paper-based processes and streamlining tasks, Pronto Xi helps to reduce this burden.

Built as a fully responsive web application, Employee Portal gives managers direct access to employee-related information, while employees can quickly perform day-to-day tasks using a PC, tablet or smartphone.

Wherever your staff are, they can:

• enter timesheets and allowances

• view and update personal details such as address, emergency contacts and banking information

• submit leave requests and attach digital paperwork such as medical certificates

• view and print payslips

• track submitted leave requests and timesheets

• estimate future leave balances

• accept or decline rosters.

• Managers have access to extended capabilities, including:

• manage their to-do list, such as submitted leave requests

• see who is on leave

• manage timesheet approvals.

• Pronto Xi’s time translation functionality also helps to streamline timesheet processes, allowing you to automatically assign allowances

User administration

Tightly integrated with Payroll, the Employee Portal uses the organisation chart to ensure managers can only view information for staff within their reporting structure.

Administrators can determine the functionality available to Employee Portal users, ensuring alignment with your organisation’s existing policies and processes. This control can even be set at the individual employee level – for example, an administrator can selectively determine which employees can view personal/carer’s leave entitlements.

Administrators can also customise the portal colour scheme and apply their company logo.

Where access is granted, end users can personalise their home page and other view settings, giving them quick access to their own key tasks and information. They can accept or decline rosters directly from an email or from within the portal and can quickly complete weekly timesheets by cloning previous timesheets.

Managers can also approve or decline leave requests via email. Data in Pronto Xi’s Project and Resource Management modules is then updated accordingly in real time.

Resource Management

Plan and manage both human and non-human (asset) resource requirements in a single module with Resource Management

Make the most of your resources

Resource Management provides functionality relating to employees, subcontractors, fixed assets and serialised equipment. It includes:

• time-based timesheets

• time interpretation

• define work cycles

• define resource attributes templates

• rostering

In addition, Resource Management includes features and functionality that is can only be used for employees that are linked to a resource.

Link resource master records to employees, engineers, suppliers, assets or serial items to manage resources within the module’s centralised Resource Schedule view. Identify over- or under-utilisation of resources with ease, and use the screen to reallocate resources as needed.

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.

Benefit from more efficient work allocation to project tasks or service calls with user-defined resource attributes, such as skill codes or position details. Use attribute filters to isolate the most appropriate resource for the job, or create quick filters – which are based on predefined attributes –to easily to schedule multiple resource types with different skill sets.

Project managers and schedulers are often required to plan projects and forecast workloads in advance. To prevent any scheduling issues, Resource Management includes generic resources for planning purposes. These can be replaced with actual resources when the project is approved and dates are confirmed.

Rosters, awards and timesheets

Underpinning Resource Management is a comprehensive work roster and employee award system.

Set up work cycles so you know when people are available and expected to work. Resource Management allows you to determine which employees have the right qualifications or competencies, and to identify the physical locations where they are available to work.

Rosters can then be created to make sure your operations are fully resourced by the right people at the right time.

Budgets can be set for each roster and compared to actual rostered costs to ensure you have full visibility and control.

Timesheets can be entered using total hours or start/stop times. Awards are automatically applied to timesheets, with normal and overtime hours apportioned in accordance with the award definition. Award-specific allowances are also taken into account.

The timesheets are then translated using Pronto Xi’s integrated awards interpreter, ensuring your employees receive the correct pay. Awards in Pronto Xi are user-defined and flexible enough to handle the most demanding employment conditions.

Managers can gain efficiencies by allocating resources quickly using auto-populating timesheets for an entire team, and by moving resources in and out of teams with an audit trail.

Subcontractors can accept or decline work orders, projects tasks or rosters via email without logging onto Pronto Xi. This means that subcontractors 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.

You can also define subcontractor attributes such as insurance requirements, which can leverage Pronto Xi’s integration to trigger warnings or stops within the system if the insurance expires.

Resource Scheduler

Quickly allocate resources with Resource Scheduler, maximising your efficiency

Finding

my best resource

Resource Scheduler is an intuitive singlesystem web application that enables you to efficiently allocate and reschedule resources, teams and equipment, reducing hours of manual work and eliminating disparate systems.

Manage the entire resource management life cycle in Pronto Xi with the Resource Scheduler. You can plan your resource, team or equipment allocations with full visibility across Pronto Xi’s Service, Project, Maintenance Management and Resource Management modules.

This enables your projects to meet deadlines, stay on budget, and ensure minimum strain is placed on employees and resources.

You will also be able to allocate the most appropriate service engineers – as well as 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 will be based on historical data and adjusted to anticipate bottlenecks and low activity periods, eliminating guesswork.

Whether you are resourcing task-based engagements, rosters or specialised services, the Resource Scheduler is a versatile planner that lets you estimate and plan resource allocation visually. Quickly narrow down the available resources with a variety of filters.

With Pronto Xi’s Google Maps integration, you know where your resources are and can route them based on their proximity to call locations.

Unpredictable resource needs are a constant in service organisations. By having a real-time view of your current resource allocations, unplanned situations become an opportunity to delight customers. It means you can focus on serving real customer needs – rather than putting out fires.

User access

Scheduler users can be defined as either enquiry users or maintenance users.

Maintenance users can perform duties on the scheduler based on their specific user access.

Enquiry users can only see what is displayed on the scheduler based on the roles assigned.

View types

The Resource Scheduler is divided into two sections on the one screen – Unallocated Activities and Resource availability.

Different types of views include:

Planner view

Planner view displays all unallocated activities across the modules and resources that the user has access to. It can be toggled to be a dedicated view of unallocated events (which are activities that are yet to be allocated to a resource) based on the module under review. The views are:

• Unallocated Events – Project Tasks

• Unallocated Events – Maintenance Work Orders

• Unallocated Events – Service Calls

Team colour coding gives the user the ability to easily see the utilisation of different teams, while a timescale toggle allows users to quickly move between the day, week and month view on both the Unallocated and resource availability screen sections.

Map view

Using web-based map technology, Pronto Xi helps users to quickly access a map or driving directions for their next service call by clicking the relevant map link on the screen.

Service managers can stay up-to-date with the location of each member of the service team and allocate calls based on real-time information including traffic, route and location.

Service call map view

Service managers can locate the nearest available team members 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 further optimise resource allocation strategies and improve customer service response times.

By understanding the location of your field resources, you can build cost-saving efficiencies into your organisation’s processes without compromising customer satisfaction or work health and safety obligations.

Scheduler view

Scheduler view offers auto-refresh capabilities. This refresh will be performed automatically, but can be configured to control the frequency of the refresh.

Take

Optimise your planning with integrated Google Maps

Inventory in motion

Gain the competitive advantage by streamlining your operations and managing costs –all while meeting customer demand

Applicable to any industry, Inventory helps track your inventory at a granular level. Organise your 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.

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 orders and sales orders. Consisting of Inventory, Sales and Purchasing, 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.

Purchasing is an efficient procurement solution that provides tight cost control and simplifies your purchasing activities by managing your domestic and foreign supplies and shipment processes. Purchase order creation can be automated 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 instantly pushes automated changes across all relevant modules in Pronto Xi, ensuring that the process is seamless and error-free.

Inventory

Efficiently control your product flows with Inventory

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.

Keep track in any field

Maintain detailed information about an inventory item

Inventory includes:

• multiple warehouses, suppliers and prices per item

• multiple units of measure (UOM) and full first-in, first-out (FIFO)

• Support for Global Trade Item Number (GTIN) barcodes

• standard, average, FIFO, actual and replacement costings

• serial number and lot tracking

• item licences

• full stocktake/cycle counting

• interactive image display for products

• item attributes

• automated reordering and replenishment

Inventory master records

Inventory records all the information and transaction history associated with an item. To create or maintain an item, you can use the main Inventory Maintenance screen or an industry-specific screen. Chemical, paper, retail, wholesale distribution, timber and mining are some of the industries that are supported by specialised maintenance screens.

Different types of items handled include:

• Stocked or standard – a normal saleable item, which is typically purchased but can also be manufactured

• Manufactured – items that have components, a bill of material (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 normally held in stock but are instead purchased subject to a sale

• Kit – a combination of various types of items

• Labour – items that can 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 that can have 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.

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 that 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 detailed information about your items, while menu options give you access to additional screens for warehouses, suppliers, pricing, alternatives, notes, BOM and more.

Warehouses

Inventory allows you to maintain pick and bulk locations against each warehouse. Additional inventory tracking is available in Warehouse Management System.

Inventory 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 consignment.

The screen also captures detailed inventorylevel information for each warehouse. This includes stock on hand, supplier orders, and order commitments.

Inventory movements in each warehouse are recorded, summarised and displayed by transaction type.

Suppliers

The Supplier screen allows you to set up a supplier for an item by region, record pertinent information, and track their performance levels. Any number of suppliers can be specified.

Add of edit Supplier details for an item

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’s estimated and most recent lead time

• multiple quantity price breaks by supplier

• foreign currency pricing

Change

Pricing

Inventory allows you to set pricing structures within the inventory master records. You can maintain multiple pricing levels for each item, as well as promotional prices for specified periods; price algorithms and discount matrices can also be set up. Tax rules are appropriately 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.

Prices can be recalculated for items 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 your competitors’ prices.

Inventory master fields

Item code

The item code is an alphanumeric field used to identify items throughout Pronto Xi.

Description

Each item includes a three-line product description. In addition, extended note facilities allow unlimited text to be stored for internal and external purposes.

Product hierarchy

A multi-level classification system, the product hierarchy allows you to clearly define your business’s product taxonomy.

The five-level structure has a wide range of 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 flexible maintenance means the hierarchy to be maintained from the top down, or bottom up, making it suitable for various business needs and industries.

Product group

Items can be categorised 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.

Posting of inventory transactions to the General Ledger is fully automated.

Prices, discounts and promotions can be established based on item groups, for example, contract price by customer type/ item group and promotional discount by customer type/item group. Special commission rates for sales representatives by item group can also be established.

Attributes

Item attributes help extend the description of a product through a structured and ordered categorisation. Importantly, they can be used as data points to “slice and dice” sales data to uncover customers’ 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.

Both APN and GTIN can be used for enquiry, reporting and scanning directly into Inventory.

Units, packs, sizes and weights

Multiple units of measure for the sale, warehouse storage and procurement of each inventory item can be used. Pack weights and cubic dimensions can also be stored.

Traceability

Inventory allows for various methods of traceability:

• Serial-tracked — can be used when the goods are received, at dispatch, or both.

• Lot-tracked (for batch tracking) — 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 (e.g. serial number and lot number), source document and financial information.

Users can 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 there may be a need to record inventory issues manually.

Issues can be recorded 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 normally occurs within the Purchasing module, but Inventory includes a fast and simple option – called Manufactured Goods Receipt – to receive goods that have been purchased without using the BOM to create and process a formal work order.

Manufactured Goods Receipt is a simple method of recording the receipt of manufactured items into an inventory. As goods that have been allocated to a work order are sometimes returned unused, this option can be used to return the components back into inventory.

Quality analysis

Goods for release can be held until they have passed through your quality checks. If goods do not pass the checks, Inventory allows you to reject, scrap or return the items to the supplier.

View a list of all your reorder items and details

Reorder processing

Inventory includes reordering functions that allow you to automatically create purchase orders and work orders according to selected criteria. These can be reviewed prior to the creation of the actual orders.

Reorder Reports calculate the reorder quantities needed to satisfy your business’s commitments, minimum inventory levels, maximum inventory levels, or a combination of these. Average sales history, average warehouse demand or forecast can also be used 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 level, planning group level or item group level.

Budgets can be manually entered for each period of the year. Spread factors – which use weightings/ratios to fix each period’s relative proportion of the annual amount – can also be used.

Pronto Xi offers numerous reports that allow you to compare budgets against actual sales and budget listings.

Costing

Various costs – such as standard, average, FIFO and actual – can be maintained in Inventory for posting purposes, inventory valuations and sales margin reporting.

Inventory valuation reports can be produced at any time using the costing method of your choice and, if necessary, costs can be recalculated 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 from saleable items that can be optionally selected during the sales order process. For example, a personal computer, keyboard, monitor and mouse can be sold individually or as a kit.

Inventory accommodates a various categories of kit component lines, including:

• mandatory

• optional

• variable quantity

• grouped options

Kit pricing can either be generated from the components or simply selected from the item price record.

Stocktake

To help you measure your inventory accuracy, Inventory is able to generate a snapshot view of your holding. 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 can include:

• Initial pre-stocktake check – Inventory reports on any outstanding inventoryrelated transactions that may need to be completed prior to the final snapshot of the book inventory

• 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 – Inventory resets the snapshot file if there has been further reprocessing that will affect the book inventory of the original snapshot

• Enter counts – Inventory employs multiple data entry techniques, including manual data entry

• Produce reports – Inventory generates reports to assist with reconciliation, including Uncounted Items, Variation and Valuation reports

• Update stocktake – Inventory performs an update once the stocktake is finalised to make all necessary adjustments to the stock ledger and General Ledger have been made for the appropriate accounting period

Purchasing

A highly efficient procurement solution, Purchasing helps you manage today’s domestic and foreign supply and shipment processes – and tomorrow’s future inventory requirements

By combining data on inventory levels, sales history and current commitments, Purchasing can automatically create purchase orders.

Purchase orders and shipment receipts automatically trigger updates to inventory levels, while invoices are matched and posted to the General Ledger.

Purchasing functionality includes:

• full 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

Perfect procurement

• multiple cost allocations per line

• shipment recosting

• centralised approvals

• nomination of approver

• reallocation of approvers

• workflow administration for approvals.

Requisitions

Purchasing offers a full range of functions that can be used in association with requisitions, including approval process and full enquiry.

It offers the capacity to raise a requisition prior to the entry of a purchase order, and to ensure that an authorised person approves the requisition before the purchase order is raised.

Create comprehensive purchase order header details

Purchase orders

Purchase orders can be automatically created by Pronto Xi, or entered manually by the purchasing officer following a simple process. There is also the flexibility to configure these steps so they map to your business processes, ensuring efficient order entry.

Purchase order header

When a supplier is selected, its default parameters are automatically applied to the purchase order. Integration with Accounts Payable enables a rapid purchase order entry process, without data duplication and errors.

Once an order has been entered and approved, the order may be printed and the inventory updated to show the quantity now “on order”. Purchase orders may be maintained to 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

Purchase order lines

Within the Purchase Order Lines screen, you have access to full inventory enquiry, warehouse levels, pricing and available units of measure. You can also add notes, internal memos, additional charges and more.

View detailed information for all your purchasing requirements

Purchase order conclusion

Once all items are entered in the purchase order, they can be processed.

Manage your purchase orders from one screen

Purchasing

Purchase order approvals

Once the purchase order has been created, the next step is approval.

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 orders approvals can occur via mobile phone. Pre-packaged alerts provide a one-touch 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

Record

the

Goods received by order

The receipt of goods received by order can be recorded once a purchase order is entered and printed. The invoice can be processed before or after receipt.

If goods are received that do not appear on the original purchase order, you can add a new line to the order.

If you are using first in, first out (FIFO) inventory management, Purchasing writes a FIFO record for each line item in the delivery.

Once the goods are received, you can update the purchase order to allocate the items to the destination warehouse. The received goods are deducted from inventory on order or in transit (depending on order status), and are added to the destination warehouse’s inventory.

Purchasing also records the actual delivery dates to destination warehouses, as well as lead times.

Warranty orders/warranty exchange

Warranty orders result from warranty claims. They are linked to either a dealer/customer claim or a warranty workshop job number.

All items and non-stocked lines are loaded onto a warranty purchase order, and the item(s) to return can be selected. If there is a financial claim, it can be entered via a special line for the amount being claimed.

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Purchasing

Shipment management

Purchasing includes a complete shipment management capability, which allows you to group several orders against multiple international or local suppliers into one shipment.

Subsequent order processing, including delivery and invoicing, is handled through the shipment processing functions.

Shipments are used to record dispatches of goods from suppliers. The shipment can include items from a number of purchase orders and can record any 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 can be automatically recorded and incorporated into revised average and landed costs.

When you receive a shipment, the goods attached to the shipment are booked into the destination warehouse.

Manage shipment details for a set of orders

Incoming shipment notifications

Incoming goods data can be received electronically in advance of the goods arriving, 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 typically be sent via a supplier’s EDI Dispatch Advice or Advanced Shipment Notification (ASN) message.

The ASN will also be used to create or update purchase order shipment information, in preparation for the receipt of goods into your warehouse.

Invoicing

Purchase orders and shipment management invoices are posted via Accounts Payable. These can viewed by running a supplier enquiry and drilling down.

Pronto Xi offers sophisticated handling of purchase order invoice variances, including price, quantity or charge. You can set tolerance limits to determine if a payment approval is required, and can determine whether to apply the change to the goods or raise a credit claim.

Integration with General Ledger

Transactions created and entered through Purchasing are automatically updated to Pronto Xi’s General Ledger and Accounts Payable modules according to the settings you have specified in Special Accounts.

Variance accounts, tariffs and duties

Purchasing allows you to record charges against a shipment that are associated with the goods being shipped. The duty payable is calculated from the duty rate and the purchase price of the item, which means it does not need to be manually entered as a shipment charge.

Costing and recosting

Purchasing calculates the landed cost of an item at both the goods receipt and the recosting stage. 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 goods to be booked into inventory and sold prior to the final charges being known.

At the final recosting stage, Purchasing recalculates the new landed cost of the item, revaluing 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 perform the relevant postings to the Cost of Goods Sold accounts in the General Ledger.

Purchase orders and shipment enquiries

Purchasing’s enquiry function assists you to quickly find and retrieve detailed information on purchase orders and shipments in a number of different ways, including by order number, warehouse, status of order, supplier, item code or requisition number.

Supplier rebates

Supplier rebates can be set up and entered against purchase order invoices at the time of 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.

Actual rebates paid by the supplier can be entered, and Purchasing issues a warning if an amount greater than calculated is entered

Sales

Sales order processes?

Inventory and finance system integration? They’ve never been easier, thanks to Sales

Bring your sales into order

Numerous user-definable options allow you to tailor the entry screen and every stage within the order life cycle process to meet your specific requirements.

Whether you’re dealing with large order volume or highly configured product environments, scalable order entry solutions are a necessity. With the use of order templates and copy features, Sales delivers an optimised approach to order processing that empowers your sales team.

Manage every aspect of distribution – 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 mean that you have a 360-degree view right across your distribution network.

Sales features include:

• user-definable order entry screen

• bill of material (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 is fully integrated 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 all automatically updated by Pronto Xi.

Where electronic data interchange (EDI) is required, Pronto Xi EDI delivers sales order automation at file import. Automatic sales order creation is also found across other modules, with Service, Rental and Project providing bulk creation processes based on agreed billing cycles.

Sales order entry and maintenance

You have the flexibility to configure sales order entry to map your business processes and ensure fast order entry.

Sales order header

Once the customer is selected, the sales representative, price level, territory and available credit are automatically applied to the sales order. Integration with Accounts Receivable ensures a rapid sales order entry process without data duplication and errors.

Sales order lines

Items requested by the customer are entered and extensive inventory information is available to the salesperson, including pricing and availability. If an item is not available, alternatives that may satisfy the customer can be displayed.

Additional costs associated with fulfilment can be recorded and you can choose to charge for freight, packaging and handling or any other costs that need to be recovered.

Sales order conclusion

When all the items have been entered, at conclusion a variety of options are available for further processing.

If the ordered items are available, the picking slip for this sales order is ready to be printed in the allocated warehouse.

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

You can track the progress of a sales order by its status. For example, if its status is “Work Order Created”, the item is in the process of being manufactured.

If the ordered goods are not available in the warehouse that normally dispatches to the customer, you can check if they are available from other warehouses. If they are available, the items can be dispatched automatically or transferred to the originating warehouse.

Pronto Xi can also create work orders or purchase orders directly linked to sales orders for unavailable items. You can drill down from the sales order to track progress.

Create and update sales order lines with detailed costs and stock information

Credit notes

Extensive credit note facilities are available in Sales.

A full or partial credit can be raised, automatically loading the original invoice lines and prompting for the type of credit to be processed. The type of credit can apply to the entire order or line-by-line.

You can set limits for raising and approving credit notes, and appropriate warnings can be given.

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 can produce picking slips and transfer documents, enabling you to control the movement of goods.

Quotations

Sales allows you to produce quotations, and to easily manipulate pricing based on cost, mark-up and other criteria. Inventory is not committed to the quotation until it is converted into an order.

Quotations can be configured for customerspecific requirements. Any adjustments or reconfigurations that are made during negotiation automatically recalculate the details of the quotation.

You can also have quotations pass through an acceptance phase before they are converted 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 to identify trends.

Internal sales

Orders from within your organisation can be accepted within Sales. The department requiring the product will raise an internal requisition, which will be treated as an internal sales order, helping you to 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 that would otherwise be available for immediate sale. Inventory is not allocated to a forward order until closer to the supply date.

Regular deliveries for a forward order can also be scheduled – 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, these details can be recorded on a contract order. During normal order entry, Sales will allow the contract number to be entered and ensure that the contracted details are applied.

Proformas

A proforma order is a standing customer order that lists the items normally purchased. 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 the goods back into the warehouse

• return the goods to your supplier for credit, replacement or repair

• return the goods to the warehouse for resale

• create a work order to have the goods repaired, reworked or disassembled

• raise a full or partial credit note for your customer

• keeping track of goods that have been returned and report on the reasons for returns to assist in forecasting future requirements, addressing areas of concern and recording the supply chain’s performance

Manage individual item returns, including invoice details and reasons for return

Set a recurring schedule for the sales order

Split deliveries

A sales order can be scheduled for a split delivery so that it is fulfilled progressively over time – for example, by a certain quantity every week. You can specify the delivery dates and the number of items for each delivery.

Recurring sales orders

The scheduling of recurring orders can be automated, 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 into account pricing fluctuations.

When new invoices or orders are created automatically, Sales’ built-in notification system will alert you via email.

Credit control

If a customer is “on hold”, or over their credit limit or terms, Sales will provide a warning. The order status will be set to either “on hold” or “credit hold”, depending on the circumstances.

A credit officer can be automatically notified by email when orders are placed on hold, and may choose to release the order for dispatch

Backorder/inventory allocation

You can view sales orders to check for current inventory commitments at any time. When there is insufficient inventory to satisfy a customer’s order, a number of options are available, depending on both the customer’s nominated backorder and your part shipment policy.

Maintain all details of a customer with links to key details

Some of the 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 next order.

• Part shipments allowed – available items are dispatched and the remaining items are placed on backorder.

For ease of tracking, when part of an order is placed on backorder, Sales refers to the original order to identify the backorder.

Inventory allocations can be performed manually or automatically based on the parameters set. Items can also be automatically allocated to backorders on 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 take into account 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 easily find an order. Enquiries can be made 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 can calculate rebates based on percentages, flat values or quantities.

Customer rebates

Rebates can be calculated 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.

As 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 prior to the preparation of statements to calculate the rebate amount earned by the customer.

Manual customer rebates

Rebates can be calculated 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

Royalty rebates can be calculated 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.

This is particularly useful if you manage large numbers of sales orders everyday but do not use Warehouse Management System (WMS) –you will gain significant efficiencies by having all the information in one place, rather than navigating separate enquiry screens based on order status.

Warranty

Easily enter and track warranty claims and manage product returns with Warranty.

Warranty allows you to maintain 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

One platform, full visibility

Create memorable experiences to keep them coming back

In today’s highly competitive retail environment, customer experience matters. Pronto Xi’s Retail applications support your business’s growth strategy by using the latest technology to provide your 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. Multiple tender types are supported, including buy-now, pay-later solutions, as are 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 productselling scenarios.

An intuitive POS solution, the Pronto POS App allows you to create a first-rate in-store experience. Sell anywhere throughout the store, or use the app as your all-in-one POS solution. With all the information your store staff need at their fingertips – including product details, promotions and pricing, customer shopping history and the ability to take payments – the POS App enables your team to easily help customers while they shop, even when the app is offline.

Make it simple to manage after-sales service and customer repairs using a logical life cycle system with Repairs Management. It’s easy to create and complete quotes, labour, parts, transfers and repair payments, allowing you to focus on delivering a 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 on the cash register

All-in-one POS system

View a consolidated sales dashboard with out-of-the-box dashboards

Point of Sale ensures full oversight from your head office right down to each cash register, giving you complete control over your business – regardless of size. Our powerful, flexible system takes the mechanics of transaction processing off the shop floor, providing 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 buy now, 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

Maintain all your cash drawers in one easy-to-use screen

Stay up-to-date with live sales and in-built visualisations

Real-time back office connectivity

Point of Sale is integrated in real time with all of your back-office functions, including financials and distribution. Transactions captured at POS are updated in your General Ledger, ensuring that your financials are always accurate.

Cash drawer management

The Cash Drawer Control function manages both the physical and financial handling of transactions made to a cash drawer.

Cash Drawer Control is compatible with a wide variety of POS hardware. You can choose to operate one drawer for each terminal, or have multiple terminals control a single cash drawer.

Each cash drawer can be configured to suit any individual situation or operator. A variety of sales functions – including 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.

Transactions posted to a cash drawer during a shift are identified by a unique batch number. The drawer total for each type of tender (for example, cash and credit card) is accrued as receipts are processed, allowing the operator to reconcile the contents of the drawer against the recorded totals at any time. At the end of the shift, the operator can close the cash drawer and bank the takings.

Full 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 offers the flexibility to use your own business policy for rounding cash sale transactions.

Retail store reporting

The Retail Store Console draws together common retail functions, making it easier than ever to manage your retail operations.

The console provides rich graphical reporting, so you have the facts you need to confidently make informed decisions. Refresh your reports with a click for 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’s reports are standard IBM Cognos technology reports, based on a Point of Sale package; each report is presented on its own tab. This is a highly adaptable set-up that allows you and your team to modify or author your own business intelligence content and present it on any of the console tabs.

An example of a flexible and powerful POS screen

POS entry

Point of Sale allows your staff to complete sales quickly and simply, reducing stress in peak sales periods and helping to ensure customers receive efficient service.

At the back end, Point of Sale creates a sales order to represent the sale. When a sale is completed at POS, the available inventory is automatically adjusted. 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 accounts and trade accounts.

Sales functions

Point of Sale supports a variety of sales functions, including lay-bys, refunds and exchanges.

Quotations

Point of Sale allows you to produce sales quotations and track them through to a completed sale. Lost sales can be tracked and analysed.

Customer accounts

Retailers can sell to an account customer at POS with full credit control and special pricing rules in place.

New customer accounts can be created at POS, allowing you to track important customer 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, enabling you to provide superior customer service.

In instances where a deposit may be required for 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, while lay-bys can be managed either at POS or in the back office.

Lay-bys – including detailed information – can be recalled from any POS workstation, found via customer or status. Physical lay-by storage locations can be tracked to help staff easily find customer lay-bys, and Point of Sale can even handle the partial pick-up of lay-bys.

Refunds

Point of Sale has the flexibility to manage refunds according to your own needs. In addition, the real-time capabilities of Pronto Xi help to negate a major cause of refund fraud, protecting legitimate customers and your business.

Point of Sale can handle returned items, and can issue credit notes, tender refunds, vouchers or credits to a customer account as specified. Refunds can be validated down to the line level, ensuring the refunded amount is legitimate and accurate.

An optional barcode can also be 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. In addition, the details of the exchange are all tracked and are clearly visible to the supervisor for analysis and reporting.

Multiple orders can also be exchanged 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, then set up rules to select whether one promotion or multiple promotions apply.

It’s simple to plan your promotional strategy ahead of time, as you can 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 POS App or via Avenue, you can also alert customers to relevant promotions while they are shopping, helping to close sales, boost customer loyalty and encourage repeat purchases.

You can easily monitor the progress and outcome of your 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.

of Sale

Point

Manage all your promotions and pricing from one screen

Promotions reporting

Identifying which promotions and items succeeded – and which did not – gives you valuable insight into your business.

To make that insight simple, Point of Sale provides a reporting structure that offers visibility of total revenue and gross profit by variables including item, group and brand, and enables benchmarking of your stores. In doing so, it helps your merchandise officers to better manage replenishment levels, and gives you a platform of solid facts to support your negotiations with suppliers for future promotions.

Inventory Management

In instances 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 present.

Alternatively, a sale can be partly processed, suspended pending the inventory’s arrival, and then resumed for completion when the inventory is available in-store.

Operators can enquire on outstanding purchase orders, check the supplier’s scheduled delivery time, and set appropriate customer expectations. Notifications can also be sent to customers once their product is available.

Tender types

With Point of Sale, you can define the types of tender you will accept at POS. This can include business-specific 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 provides flexibility for retailers to configure their lane preferences to ensure operations are faster and more convenient.

For each of the defined tender types, Point of Sale can be set up 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 a number of established payment providers.

Point of Sale

View daily, weekly or hourly sales by store across the whole company

View your sales 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 your own 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. Data can also be filtered and drilled down with comparisons to budgets.

In addition, a seasons drop-down 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, notional costing results can be viewed 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, screen layouts and features can be added, removed or changed, and applied centrally for each individual cash drawer.

Cash drawer holdings can be viewed via the Retail Store Console while the drawers are active, so your management team can monitor cash balances and determine when cash needs to be cleared 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 can be efficiently reconciled and allocated at the back office. Adjustments to the cash drawer contents can be controlled by managers.

The end-of-shift process may take place at the end of the trading day or at any other designated time. Management has the option to enforce multiple levels of blind reconciliation for a more secure process that offers a clear separation of tasks. Point of Sale can make corrections to tendering errors as part of the reconciliation process, avoiding unnecessary back-office reconciliation.

In addition, Point of Sale offers the ability to list cash drawer transactions, providing useful details that can assist with the balancing of the drawer.

Point of Sale’s Advanced Tender Tracking functionality gives managers the ability to control and monitor value-sensitive tenders, such as gift vouchers, across the organisation. For example, a lost gift voucher can be deactivated so it is unusable, then reactivated if it is found. Changes are closely audited, providing total oversight for your management team.

Rep code password expiry dates can be set to ensure that codes are periodically updated and do not stay active once expired. This prevents staff from using former employees’ passwords to conduct fraudulent transactions.

The Sales Order Reprint function has the option to limit the ability of staff to reprint dockets without supervisor authority, preventing reprinted receipts 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.

Each screen is configured using the POS Theme Editor. Screens are cash drawerspecific, enabling a different screen (or screen type) to be assigned to each cash drawer – a feature that is particularly useful in a multibrand or split-service environment.

The Theme Editor includes a range of template themes that have been pre-configured with a supporting image library, so cash drawers can be used almost straight away.

The Menu Editor allows you to configure workflows by creating a “tree” structure. This structure can be previewed 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 userdefined workflows – enabling you to design a check-out process that suits the nature of 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. You can even engage the user with pop-up button pads. The workflow is presented in a data grid format, enabling you to 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 also makes it easy for operators to use “macros”, or short key entries, to streamline their processing. Up to 80 macros are available to help retail staff to access information instantly. Retailers can also place global security around macros – such as blocking staff from processing a discount macro on a whole order without a supervisor’s authorisation – to make it easier to control this feature.

Create allocation templates to distribute your stock

Fraud mitigation

Point of Sale contains powerful features that both enhance customer service and reduce shrinkage and fraud risk.

The Retail Event Transaction Log allows retailers to take control of more than 65 POSspecific events, from opening a cash drawer to cash clearance or issuing a large amount of change. Events are visible on the Retail Store Console for easy reference and management.

For each event, you can choose to request a reason code from the operator, launch a custom program or even engage the Alert Intelligence notification system. For example, a supervisor can be notified via SMS if a staff member fraudulently tries to guess 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 taken to allocate product, reducing costs and maximising profit. Allocations can also be done based on the historic performance of similar items, without the need to extract data and input it into Pronto Xi.

You can prioritise your locations to allocate stock to preferred stores first using a Store Grading and Allocation Code structure.

Allocation codes link stock and stores with a ratio that predetermines what percentage of stock is 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 can also help to further streamline your procurement cycle. Once the stock is ordered, the allocation routine can be run and attached to the purchase order, ready for receiving and transfer to stores. This decreases the turnaround time in the warehouse and gets stock on the retail floor faster.

Group trading

Consolidating and managing data can be a challenge 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 that 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, you create confidence for everyone involved – as well as your customers.

Payment methods

Point of Sale supports multiple methods of payment, helping you to meet your customers’ changing preferences.

Point of Sale integrates with a number of payment gateways that enable you to accept card payments. These gateways – including Quest (a Pronto Solution Partner), Square, Tyro and Linkly – deliver secure digital payments and send the data into Pronto Xi in real time.

In addition, Afterpay, Zip Pay and Openpay enable you to offer a buy now, pay later option to your customers, so you never miss a sale.

Pronto POS app

Sell anywhere

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 across all product information, helping your staff to find the right products quickly.

The app shows a product’s availability not only for the current store but also for all of your company’s other stores, enabling your staff to find stock if a customer is looking for a product that is not available in the current store.

Customer information

Full customer information can be maintained in the Pronto POS App, including relevant sales history and customer detail. This information allows your staff to personalise their conversations and recommendations.

Find a product by scanning a barcode or using keywords

Sale types and payments

Start a sale by adding products to the shopping cart, update the price or number of products in the cart as needed, 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 at a later stage to complete the transaction.

If a customer is considering a purchase decision, your team can create a quote within the app and include notes to describe the sale.

For orders that customers cannot take with them, the app allows your staff to create delivery orders to be actioned by your warehouse team.

If customers change their minds about a purchase, the app can process returns or exchanges, meaning that customers do not 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 their purchases using the method that best suits their needs.

Once payment has been made, your staff can create digital payment receipts that can be emailed to customers or sent 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 a full in-built Promotions and Pricing Engine that works seamlessly with Pronto Xi. With all your promotions and pricing rules managed from the back end, sales staff can focus on selling, knowing that customer pricing and any promotions will be automatically applied –even if the app is offline.

Offline capability

With full offline capability, the Pronto POS App can function 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.

Configure the Pronto POS app home screen to suit your business’s needs

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 stocktake and transferring and receiving goods – 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 find products easily or narrow down choices to locate products when updating shopping carts.

Later, use attributes to conduct 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, allowing you to configure available functions for your POS devices or even customise the contents of payment receipts.

Employees can switch accounts at the end of shifts from within the Pronto POS App, and you can manage licenses, devices and app users from Pronto Xi.

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

Good as new

View all outstanding repairs by status

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

Repairs Management allows your staff to focus on the customer without needing to understand complex repairs processes or rules. A clearly defined repairs life cycle means repairs can be easily tracked through different stages, located and processed with maximum efficiency.

Repairs reporting

The Repairs Console puts all of the information you need to manage the repairs process at your fingertips.

The console shows at a glance the number of repairs at each stage of the process. It means staff can quickly action a repair and advance it to the next stage without needing to worry about the mechanics of the process, reducing customer response times.

Progress your repair to the next stage

Workflows and processes

Repairs Management simplifies workflows and processes, and ensures nothing goes missing or is forgotten.

Each repair is driven by expected dates and flagged if overdue. Order stages are augmented with detailed notes, ensuring important information is captured. 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, meaning you can keep all the information in one place.

Repairs Management automatically creates key documents (such as a purchase order for the nominated repairer), ensuring that 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 can also be easily accessed.

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.

Easy search functionality using the customer’s name/phone number means your team can still access the necessary information if a customer forgets their paperwork.

Once the repairs are entered and payment is required, the customer receives a printed docket with all the relevant repair details. Dockets can be easily customised with your own terms and conditions to ensure your customer is fully informed every step of the way.

Pronto Xi Avenue

Unlock the true potential of an omnichannel ecosystem by streamlining your operations and customer experience

Pronto Xi Avenue delivers a fully integrated eCommerce 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, Avenue accommodates all your B2B business needs.

A significant problem for many online wholesalers or retailers is the sheer complexity of working with disparate systems to manage your 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, Avenue seamlessly integrates with other powerful applications aligned to key aspects of eCommerce, from financials and reporting to 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.

Customer experience

With customers increasingly expecting a seamless and easy-to-use online shopping experience, successful businesses are seeking out better inventory and order management solutions to meet these expectations.

Avenue connects seamlessly with Pronto Xi, ensuring all your inventory information, accounts, pricing and orders remain in sync across all your platforms and operations. This provides your customers with an engaging and coherent journey from browsing to purchasing, encouraging them to return.

Utilise the product information maintained in Pronto Xi to create unlimited online categories and sell to new or existing customers without creating custom interfaces.

Harness the power and flexibility of Pronto Xi’s Promotions and Pricing Engine within Avenue. 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.

Website design

While Avenue takes care of all the functionality required to help your customers convert, you maintain full control over your site’s design. Deliver an engaging and consistent user experience with ease when you power your site’s back end with Pronto Xi.

Avenue’s reliable framework caters for creativity without limits. The possibilities are endless with Avenue’s user-friendly back end: create stunning product galleries, promotion pages, branded verticals for specific products or campaigns, blogs and so much more.

Website deployment

Avenue’s framework and development tools enable websites to be deployed easily and quickly, regardless of your specific requirements.

Multiple packages are available, including full hosting, which negates the need for additional hardware.

View your eCommerce statistics at a glance

At Pronto Software, we also have in-house web design and user experience expertise to help you create an online store that’s both stunning and highly functional.

Avenue leverages a content delivery network (CDN) to ensure optimal website performance. CDNs cache your website on services located in different geographical locations and on different ISP’s networks. This means your site is delivered faster, and the load on your server and network is reduced.

Payment options

Avenue offers a wide range of payment options to enable global transactions, increase mobile conversion, and raise your brand’s average order value.

With Avenue, the choice is in your hands — its in-built native integrations allow you to select your preferred provider from the best payment platforms in the industry, including Eway, SecurePay, Braintree, Bambora, Merchant Warrior and PayPal. Avenue also offers buy now, pay later options via integrations with Afterpay and Openpay.

Promotions automation

Encourage customer loyalty and simplify targeted promotions by automating coupon distribution with user-defined rules. You can even personalise offers and discounts according to custom rules based on past purchase history, specific products, abandoned carts or user registration, and use rules to trigger emails.

Data is synced automatically between Avenue and Pronto Xi, ensuring these set rules are consistently applied.

Digital catalogues

Create your own tailored digital product catalogues with ease – even while you’re on the road.

Your sales team can build the catalogue, personalise it to specific customers and populate it using Pronto Xi data, then distribute it as either a PDF or an online catalogue. Customers are then able to browse products and directly make purchases by clicking through to your Pronto Xi Avenue website.

Create intuitive product pages for your eCommerce website

Applications Overview

CRM

The extra mile

The extra mile

Make every customer interaction count

By putting the needs of your customers

first, Pronto Xi’s fully integrated Customer Relationship Management (CRM) modules help to drive customer acquisition, retention and satisfaction.

With Pronto Xi CRM, you can analyse customer and prospect needs, identify the customers that require the most attention, and pinpoint the business processes that deliver superior customer service and promote repeat business.

You can track leads, opportunities, transactions and activities for all your accounts and contacts, providing you with detailed insights on every prospect and customer. With attributes, you can flexibly add powerful data points that can be used to identify and segment CRM data.

In turn, the data that you collect about your customers can be used to assist with Salesforce automation, customer service and support, and marketing opportunities.

Achieve all of this while reaping the benefits of an integrated 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 when they’re needed most, as well as real-time information about product availability, sales orders, quotations and customer-specific pricing. You can even accept payments via the app, so you can close more deals on the move.

Pronto Xi CRM

Maintain and strengthen all your customer relationships, from new leads to long-term associations, with Pronto Xi CRM

Take the lead

Pronto Xi Customer Relationship Management (CRM) gives you the power to improve your operations and better communicate with customers, helping you to optimise revenue, profitability and customer satisfaction.

Analyse customer and prospect needs, and easily identify the customers that require the most attention. Discover which business processes work best 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 to 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, which can be 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 all your group companies

Pronto Xi

Pipeline

Pronto Xi’s Pipeline screen gives your sales team a central point to manage their accounts, contacts, leads and opportunities. Flexible visualisations allow you to view the CRM pipeline and track sales against budget, while data grid filters help you to 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 you’re on the road.

Performance metrics

The pre-configured Business Dashboard provides key performance metrics, empowering you to stay abreast of sales activities and helping to increase the visibility of customer relationship activities across your organisation. These 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 all of Pronto Xi’s customer-related functionality. The module’s intuitive screen clearly displays vital customer information, including the date of the last sale, last mail-out and next action date.

• You can categorise and access information about an unlimited number of customers, prospects and companies. 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 – you can 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 – a number of security masks are built into the main screen to restrict customer modifications to authorised users.

• Parent/Child – this links together multiple related companies to give you a view of holding companies or departments with multiple subsidiaries

View sales versus budget and the opportunity pipeline

Attributes

Attributes allow you to define and manage customer characteristics, and then use these characteristics to analyse your customer database to maximise sales opportunities.

For example, you could track the number of staff, sales turnover, competitors’ details, customer interests, item groups or competitive advantages. Attribute groups can also be created for hierarchical management.

Any number of attributes can be assigned 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.

Contact-specific attributes can be applied independently of company-level attributes. Attributes can be optional or mandatory, which ensures there is an automatic prompt for key information when a new account is created.

In multi-company environments, the creation and maintenance of attributes can be controlled by a central administrator, ensuring consistency and relevance when it comes to reporting.

Display accounts and contacts on the screen

Gain a clear understanding of your leads with integrated visualisations

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 the database, duplicate entries can be removed or kept as separate entries, depending on your requirements.

Qualified leads can be selectively converted to opportunities, with all transactional history maintained.

Opportunities

CRM Opportunity Management helps you track the position and quality of each opportunity, maximising the sales potential through clear views and quick access to information.

Specific contacts can be easily accessed from CRM accounts, and all transactional information and activity entries are searchable from a single interface.

In high-volume quoting environments, you can create greater control over the sales process by creating “opportunity quotations”. This unique facility allows you to quarantine quotations inside an opportunity and selectively convert them to “live” quotations or sales orders. Expected revenue can be managed by applying probability factors.

Use integrated visulisations to view your opportunities

Pronto Xi integration

Having CRM integrated with the wider Pronto Xi ERP solution provides increased functionality and ensures there is always ‘one source of the truth’. This means that when interacting with customers, staff can:

• View up-to-the-minute transactions and account notes

• View current sales orders including processing status, e.g. picking slip printed, order invoiced, etc.

• View and quote customer special pricing, quantity discounts or any other unique attributes

• View current inventory details and purchase order details including expected arrival dates

• Create a customer in CRM that writes a record in Accounts Receivable

• View the credit status or any special conditions maintained within Accounts Receivable

• Link to other functional aspects of Pronto Xi. For example, service-based organisations can link to service calls of account customers managed in CRM

Quotations and sales orders

If a customer requests a quotation, it can be entered against a company. If the quotation is accepted, it can be converted to a sales order and a basic (cash on delivery) customer account is automatically created in Accounts Receivable. Security restrictions may apply.

CRM quotations are integrated with quotations generated in other Pronto Xi modules. This allows you to copy quotation details entered for one company to another company, and to update the company transaction logs with the quotation number.

Quotations can also be linked to specific sales campaigns, while unaccepted (lost) quotations are recorded for analysis.

Customer and sales views

Pronto Xi CRM records detailed information about past, present and prospective customers, giving your representatives full access to sales and transactional history.

Get a snapshot of performance with the Central CRM Sales Dashboard

Multi-company CRM

In multi-company environments, Central CRM provides an accurate single view of your customers, with accounts and customer data seamlessly shared between your business entities.

Customer data automatically synchronises between companies. This avoids duplication and reduces time spent in manual data consolidation, and means customers do not need to repeat information if they are doing business with another company within your group.

Consolidated sales, leads and opportunities across the group – combined with centralised attributes – support consistency in reporting. Slicing and dicing of data can also be standardised, giving you a predictable way to gain insights.

Transactions

Transaction manager

Pronto Xi CRM allows you to review and maintain daily transactions such as meetings, emails and calls.

Each transaction is recorded using both the representative code and the login name to enable an audit trail to be followed. 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 can be used to easily create a batch of personalised letters or labels. It utilises the mail merge facilities in word processing applications such as Microsoft Word.

You can create templates to enable direct merging from the CRM. You can also merge sales orders and quotation data into the templates.

Emails with attachments can be sent to multiple accounts and contacts.

When the Send Info function is used, transaction entries are written against the relevant CRM accounts.

Notes and attachments

Notes

With the Notes function, you can record notes by type against CRM accounts. Notes are searchable and can be filtered by type.

Attachments

Any kind of file can be attached to individual contacts or companies in the CRM.

You can directly access images and documents that are related to the selected customer or prospect from within the CRM.

Integrated search

Locating accounts, contacts and information via a keyword search – or, for example, phone numbers – is simple. Critical information can be obtained in just a few keystrokes, giving sales representatives or telephone operators fast access to an account’s details.

The Search function can be configured to be open by default when you navigate to CRM screens.

If a single direct match is not found, Pronto Xi lists 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.

Information about your prospects and customers can then be filtered using various selection criteria to produce reports and mailing lists.

A range of attributes can form part of the selection criteria and can be combined into complex logical expressions. Each list can also be refined using the Keep/Drop option to apply further selection criteria.

Activities

The CRM Activity Scheduler is a simple way to organise all your activities, including booking appointments, call-outs, meetings and more.

You can 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 gives you the option to synchronise your activities to an external calendar.

Campaigns

You can use the CRM Campaign functionality to manage and track campaigns or events, and to track the performance of each representative.

Sales transactions, quotations, correspondence and activities can be linked to any number of campaigns. Pronto Xi CRM stores the campaign statistics, enabling you to measure campaign success against the budgeted cost and expected revenue.

Web map links

Pronto Xi CRM has the ability to link to webbased map technology. By clicking the relevant map link on the CRM screen, a map or driving directions can be obtained quickly and easily from servers such as Google Maps

Mail server synchronisation

Synchronise your CRM data with cloud-based business applications such as Microsoft Office or Google Workspace.

By doing so, you can improve productivity, promote data capture and increase the acceptance of CRM in your organisation.

Daily communications, contact details, tasks and calendar events are automatically synchronised between Pronto Xi CRM and your mail server, decreasing overheads and ensuring that relevant information is always accessible to those who need it.

The synchronisation helps to ensure that information is consistent across your enterprise, and boosts user adoption through the use of familiar interfaces.

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

• improved reporting capabilities

Pronto Sales App

Always open, always closing

A good business relationship is based on open communication and responsiveness. Pronto Sales App gives your staff the information they need while they’re on the road, making it an essential business tool

Pronto Sales App is the ultimate companion for sales professionals on the move. Innovative and intuitive, it is accessed via a responsive web-based portal, making it easy to deploy and use.

Seamlessly integrated with Pronto Xi CRM, Pronto Sales App offers a complete customer profile view. Representatives can access sites, contacts, transactions and client attributes, and maintain scheduled and ad hoc activities while they’re on the road. The system’s powerful features help to 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 company-approved 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 clients. Pronto Sales App supports shopping cart and payment gateway features, allowing your representatives to process sales and take payment on the spot.

Representatives can link their 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, making it easier for them to track their progress.

Mobile access

With a mobile-first responsive design, Pronto Sales App provides all the functionality of a sales CRM on a smartphone, ensuring your representatives can manage everything on the go.

Details about their activities, contacts, accounts and deals are just a tap away, meaning they can stay up-to-date on their deal before they step into a sales call. Then, after their meeting, they can schedule followup activities and update details as they walk into their next appointment..

Customer details

Effective deal management starts with knowing your customers. With Pronto Sales App, your representatives can capture personal details and conversations with contacts or accounts who are interested in your products, and create deals that can be tracked meticulously in their pipeline.

They can also use the Timeline View to see customer details and scheduled activities or appointments, then use this data to fill their pipeline and increase conversions.

Product Information

A large product range can create challenges – it can be difficult for representatives to know which products are suitable for their clients, while business silos mean it can be difficult 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 in a timely manner. Intuitive product search tools make it easy to find relevant details, so representatives are able to provide your customers with up-to-date product information. As a result, customer interactions are consistent at every touchpoint with the business.

Sales performance

Get a clear overview of your organisation’s sales performance by visiting the Dashboard. 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 your representatives to quickly create orders based on item codes, rather than keying in search terms – giving them more time to create 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, your representatives can facilitate better conversations that lead to repeat purchases, as well as gain insights into fluctuations in order quantities.

With account aging information readily available, your representatives can ensure that have oversight of customers’ unpaid invoices or unused credits.

Pipeline management

Pronto Sales App allows you to manage all your deals one view, giving you total visibility into your pipeline.

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. By acting as a starting point, it keeps their 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 either a contact or an account based on your business preferences, meaning representatives will never miss a follow-up task.

Deal management

Contacts and product information can be added directly to opportunities to create one informative view of a deal.

Sales team members 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 better evaluate a situation and make smarter decisions, helping to increase their productivity.

The detailed visual representation provides a snapshot of how engaged prospects and customers are during a sales process. It shows accounts, contacts, leads and opportunities, and displays a run-down of all touchpoints. Representatives can also instantly record all their information –including their notes, activities and transactions – in one single stream.

On time, every time

On time, every time

Cost-effective. Streamlined. Optimise your supply chain processes, so you can 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, and reduced data errors and administration overheads. You can move and manage your stock entirely within Pronto Xi, reducing paper-based and manual processes.

The Pronto Xi platform can be easily aligned to your supply chain processes via turnkey customisations, ensuring that demand can be matched efficiently to your supply.

Eliminate unnecessary waste by predicting future trends and customer demand with Advanced Forecasting. With advanced statistical methods, smoothing and visualisations, Advanced Forecasting enables you to improve cash flow with lean inventory processes.

If you have multiple warehouse 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. In addition, 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.

Radio Frequency (RF) and Scanpack enable a smooth flow of information and inventory throughout your distribution network. RF allows you to electronically transmit orders from Sales to operators’ portable devices. By replacing paper-based processes, you can increase productivity and reduce 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.

Delivery personnel can use the Pronto Xi Proof of Delivery App to obtain signatures or capture images to record a proof of delivery. Manifest and package details are readily available, along delivery progress updates.

Add further efficiency to your supply chain with Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), which can be used to exchange 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.

Catalogue allows you to store and maintain an unlimited number of supplier products and details, including technical documentation. Streamline your processes by creating inventory records directly from Catalogue when you receive the products.

Warehouse Management System

Maximise warehouse throughput and customer service with Warehouse Management System (WMS), which intelligently controls inventory movement into, around and out of the warehouse

Achieve greater efficiency automatically

Identify where items are stored in a warehouse

Among its many functions, WMS facilitates:

• multiple bin locations per item

• 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

• storage zones

The WMS module is fully integrated with other Pronto Xi modules, including Inventory, Purchasing, Sales, Scanpack, Radio Frequency and Manufacturing.

Picking processes

Each location within your warehouse is specified in a three-dimensional coordinated system, giving you total flexibility to accurately describe your warehouse layout.

User-defined locations are supported, including carton live storage (CLS), carousel and manual pick locations. For each item, you can set up as many carton and pallet storage locations as you want, specifying minimum and maximum picking quantities for each location. Inner cartons are also supported.

Optimal picking paths can be specified to guide the picker or replenisher through the warehouse in the most efficient sequence.

Your warehouse manager also has the flexibility to select and prioritise orders to be processed. Orders can be produced in batches that correspond to one delivery from a designated pick-up point in the warehouse.

In addition, a consolidated picking slip can be produced to optimise the process of picking orders, with items sorted according to the most efficient path through the warehouse.

Process rules

WMS gives you the ability to set rules for a particular location so certain processes are adhered to – for example, if there is a bulk location that should not be picked from.

Replenishments

WMS includes a variety of intelligent topup routines, so you can define a threshold percentage that determines when a location should be replenished.

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:

Automatically generated replenishments

Occurs at the sales order release where 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

Occurs for a location that may not have reached its trigger point.

Item information

WMS’s Storage Details screen allows you to define the attributes of stored items.

Each item is set up with its packaging configuration. Five levels can be defined, ranging from single unit inner and multi-unit outer to pallet configurations.

Dimensions, weights, conversion factor and a Global Trade Item Number (GTIN) can be defined for each unit of measure.

In addition, WMS allows you to define preferred storage zones for each item, which it uses when the inventory location is allocated by an automatic putaway.

You can also define picking methodologies for individual items. For example, WMS may be configured to use first-in, first-out (FIFO) as a picking methodology, although certain items may require the operator to pick based on 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, it enables you to make informed decisions at receipting, replenishing and putaway time, and to optimise your warehouse processes.

See what is available with Pallet/Item Putaway

Putaway

Incoming inventory is set as “awaiting putaway” by WMS. It is not available for sale until it is moved to a location in the warehouse.

Putaway is a logical holding area for inventory that is awaiting allocation to a “pickable” location. Returns from customers, inventory purchased for specific sales orders, and returns to suppliers are also allocated to “non-pickable” locations.

WMS can automatically allocate a storage location for incoming inventory based on the item’s current location, the storage type and its priority. Intelligent putaway routines produce labels that show the locations to be filled. Top-ups can also be performed as part of the putaway process.

WMS supports two methods of bin location controls:

• Quantity-based – The capacity is defined as a certain number of base units, cartons or pallets.

• Three-dimensional – The capacity is determined by height, width and depth.

Goods can be split into appropriate pallet or carton configurations, based on an item’s storage details.

Pallet tickets or labels – either with a barcode or without – can be produced at this point to support accurate inventory control and pallet tracking.

Locations and zones

WMS supports a range of different location types and optional zones, providing a flexible way to design your storage.

Using attributes that can be inherited from the location type (e.g. preferred pick method, replenishment level, picking path) or from the zone (e.g. storage type, customer-specific 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).

Customer-dedicated zones can be used for reserving inventory, as well as for pre-pick work (for example, price ticketing). If desired, the movement of inventory into customerdedicated zones can trigger related processes such as the printing of a trading partner’s price labels.

Customer-dedicated inventory is taken into account when a sales order entry prompts the calculation or display of available inventory.

Delivery requests

WMS enables you to manage delivery requests with attached delivery dates and times.

The system displays a real-time sorted schedule, showing inventory that is 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 is continually refreshed 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 the concepts of “resources” and “pools”. A resource can be an order picker or, in some cases, a packer. A pool is a logical holding area for released orders that are waiting for a resource to pick them up.

When you run WMS in paperless mode using Radio Frequency, the resources and pools are used to 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.

Orders for picking are released to a pool or allocated to a resource and then picked by an appropriate resource. 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 sortation process.

This methodology has a number of benefits, including time savings and resource management.

Smart dispatch

WMS caters for multiple dispatch processes, including individual or multiple order shipments, delivery and route planning, and pallet dispatch.

“Single order dispatch” or “multiple order dispatch” can be selected once the orders have been staged; multiple order dispatch methods include drop sequence and serialised dispatch. Labels and all other documentation can be generated at this time, and confirmation can be done 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.

Carrier manifests can also be created, maintained and printed. In addition, the carrier code and delivery route can be used 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.

Distribution Requirements Planning

Set up and maintain a truly integrated supply chain with Distribution Requirements Planning (DRP)

At the warehouse level, DRP allows you to plan the flow of goods across even the most complex network of satellite, branch and central locations. Restocking is straightforward and flexible – demand from customer orders can be aggregated 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 can also help 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

Connect your supply chain

Complete the dispatch of all open orders, or display the status of orders for delivery in a single datagrid

View all planned quantities

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 facilitating the efficient replenishment of physical inventory locations. It uses a number of optimisation tools that take into consideration supplier priorities, transport costs, lead times, inventory targets and product costs.

Replenishment can be planned through the normal DRP network, or on an item-by-item basis for products that move directly from the supplier into individual warehouses.

Create a visualisation of your distribution network to see the flow of goods

Time-phased distribution plan

Using a similar model to manufacturing’s 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 now offers the flexibility to acquire any item from any source within the network, such as a supplier, factory, branch or a central warehouse.

DRP processing times have been improved by 20%, helping to drive efficiencies for complex networks. The module also offers an improved ability to manage exceptions when defining centralised and local purchasing rules.

An enhanced network visualisation helps users better identify and navigate source rules across the network in a single view.

Advanced Forecasting

Optimise your inventory management with Advanced Forecasting, which enables you to accurately predict future demand for your products

Advanced Forecasting allows you to consider a number of different factors in your forecasts, such as entered sales orders, goods shipped and inventory transfers (usage). Using this data, the system identifies and tracks trends and seasonal fluctuations.

Appropriate smoothing factors are also applied based on a “best fit” method of forecasting. 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

• 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

Predict your future sales

In addition, Advanced Forecasting offers customer attribute forecasting, which gives you the ability to segment specific customers based on attributes – which, in turn, allows 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, then have them run periodically as defined. This enables you to spend less time preparing data and more time on the planning process

For key market intelligence, the source is the best place to access this information. Advanced Forecasting’s contribution process functionality allows you to send data either internally or externally to reviewed and updated, and then simply import it back. This reduces 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 of these requirements –and more.

Understandable

Advanced Forecasting displays calculated and manual forecasts within a chart on the same screen. This makes it is easy for you to determine how suitable any forecast method is for the pattern of sales of any item.

Setup and processing are quite simple and can be automated

Flexible

Advance Forecasting gives you the option of daily, weekly, fortnightly, period, and monthly forecast periods.

You can take known market events into account, allowing you to 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 that has history.

Simple

Set-up and processing are relatively simple and can be automated.

Robust

Advanced Forecasting is underpinned by established statistical methods for forecast generation and selection.

Integrated

Advanced Forecasting is part of Pronto Xi’s fully integrated suite of solutions. As a result, the data used to calculate your forecasts comes directly from the Pronto Xi’s sales operations tools. Once the forecast is published, the results can be used by all the planning and reorder processes in Pronto Xi.

In addition, Business Intelligence (BI) Essentials contains a forecast model containing real-time information that can be used to enhance your reporting and strategic planning processes.

Trends

A trend refers to any general change in sales over time. Advanced Forecasting classifies trends in a number of ways, including:

• Steady demand – This indicates that the demand for the item is more or less constant over time

• Steady trend – This indicates that while demand may be increasing or decreasing, the rate of change of demand (the trend) is constant

• Seasonal demand – This indicates that, while demand may vary over time, demand is more or less constant for the same time period each year

• Seasonal demand with trend – This recognises a steady trend in sales superimposed over a seasonal demand

• Linear trend – This is an amount of increase (or decrease) that is the same over time

• Multiplicative trend – This is 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.

Drill down and understand your statistics further

Create forecast master

Generate forecast

Create a forecast using Advanced Forecasting

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 are to determine the accuracy of the forecast:

• 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 “naïve” forecast (which only uses historical data for the short-term horizon forecasting)

• Tracking signal – a comparison of errors in a forecast over time to determine if they are systematic or random

Purge unwanted history Publish forecast

Improving forecasting accuracy

To refine the accuracy of its forecasts, the Advanced Forecasting algorithm incorporates actual data as it becomes available. There are four key steps:

• Modelling – Advanced Forecasting develops a model of the sales pattern for each item to be forecast, based on trends, seasonality and random fluctuation.

• Forecasting – Using the model, Advanced Forecasting generates new forecasts.

• Feedback – Actual data is added when it becomes available to refine the model.

• Performance – The forecasts’ accuracy is assessed to further refine the model

Electronic Data Interchange

A flexible collaboration tool, Electronic Data Exchange (EDI) facilitates the electronic exchange of information with your suppliers, partners and customers

Make sure they get the message

With a clear and comprehensive data structure, standard file format and integrated import/export mechanism, EDI allows you and your partners to effortlessly connect via a value-added network (VAN).

EDI gives you the flexibility and connectivity to leverage your supply chain to achieve common goals with your customers and suppliers, as well as realising new operational capabilities.

EDI’s 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 can be translated by virtually any VAN into an appropriate format, allowing you to choose the VAN that delivers the most cost-effective solution for your business.

For example, a Pronto Xi file can be converted by the VAN into ANSI X12, EDIFACT, OBI, OCI or XML format, and vice versa.

The VAN controls communication between the 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 means it can fulfil the electronic trading requirements of a wide range of companies. This includes 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 (RF). By replacing paper-based processes, you can lower administration costs, eliminate errors in standard activities such as picking, and streamline the information flow within your system

Boost your productivity

RF 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 Warehouse Management System (WMS) or Scanpack, the full range of RF features include:

• incoming goods (including receipts of purchase orders, work orders, stock transfers)

• stocktaking

• putaway

• replenishment

• inventory transfers (both inter- and intrawarehouse)

• store allocations

• picking

• packing

• order dispatch

• stock and location enquiries

Picking processes

A picker can either pick from a pool – which is a holding area for released orders waiting to be picked up – or from an assigned list.

Multiple picking and packing pools can be created and ranked by priority. If the toppriority pool is empty, RF will automatically scan the next pool in the range. The picker is guided around the warehouse using intelligent pick-path information.

When managing multiple warehouses, RF users can also alternate between warehouses to process tasks such as putaways, replenishments and transfers.

Integration and flexibility

By integrating RF with other Pronto Xi modules (such as Inventory, Scanpack and Warehouse Management System), you can easily tailor it to support your business specific needs.

Tasks ranging from stocktaking to processes using more advanced automation – such as picking, putaway and replenishment – are all facilitated with RF’s fully configurable menus.

For example, in a large warehouse operation, some staff can be dedicated to stock putaway and replenishment tasks, while others are picking and packing orders. The configurable RF menu functionality ensures that each user is provided with the appropriate interface.

Picking goods screen

Scanpack

Streamline warehouse processes, increase the accuracy of stock movements and enhance “track and trace” visibility with Scanpack, your solution for the efficient picking, packing and dispatch of goods Keep track of stock

24/7

Scanpack allows you to scan, track and manage large numbers of items, cartons and pallets via barcode technology, including the automated printing of barcode packing and Serial Shipping Container Code (SSCC) labels. It enables you to easily capture carton and pallet content information, reducing errors and increasing the accuracy of order fulfilment.

Typically, orders are managed using the following process:

• Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) purchase orders are received from customers with the required quantity and price of each item.

• Purchase orders are converted into sales orders within Pronto Xi. Sales orders are generated by store or distribution centre.

• The required quantity of each item is packed and validated.

• Once a sales order is completed, 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. 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 is integrated with the Inventory, Warehouse Management System and Financials modules.

Catalogue

Stay on top of your suppliers’ offerings with Catalogue, which can hold thousands of catalogue items – helping you keep track of products that aren’t captured in Inventory

Keep up to date with your supplier’s products

Search the catalogue for a particular item

Catalogue items can be stored as formatted or unformatted text, and can be crossreferenced to other Pronto Xi modules This means catalogue items can be searched for via inventory enquiries, and new items can be dynamically created as normal inventory master records.

Each catalogue item can hold virtually unlimited information, including technical product specifications, supplier or manufacturer information, prices and part numbers.

Catalogue also allows you to create supplier contracts linked 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 can be given priority-one status.

Expiry dates can be set for each supplier contract, and reports are available to assist in the review of existing and potential contracts.

Pronto Xi Proof of Delivery App

Maintain digital records of goods delivered to your premises, franchises and customers with Pronto Xi Proof of Delivery App

Loading of goods

The Pronto Xi Proof of Delivery App includes all the manifest information for a load. Users can add manifest information from within the app to keep administrative staff informed of a load’s progress.

All the details of a package – including its contents – are readily available in the app, allowing your staff to double-check every order being 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 also supports the pick-up of goods from your warehouse.

Easily identify goods that are ready for pickup using an assigned sales order number or customer number. The app includes all the package’s details, including its contents, so your staff can easily check each order.

Delivery made easy

View all your order manifests on one screen

Delivery information

All your deliveries or pick-ups are shown arranged by the nearest destination to your current location.

You can advise the 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 can remain updated on the delivery status of all your packages.

At the point of pick-up or delivery, customers can sign for confirmation, or you can capture an image as a proof of delivery or pickup. For failed or partial deliveries, you can record the reasons for this and update the status accordingly, so that the customer can be informed.

Offline capability

The Proof of Delivery App works offline, meaning you can stay connected if the cellular network drops out while you are on the road.

App administration

Keep your delivery data secure at all times 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.

Asset & Facility Management

Simplified services

Focus your people, processes and assets on a single goal –achieving business excellence

When your service engineers are on the field, Mobile Service equips them with the functionality they need to complete predictive or reactive work. They can also invoice customers and complete payment transactions on the site.

Resource Management enables you to plan your human and non-human resources. It provides a thorough work roster and employee award system that allows you to optimise your resource utilisation. Complete the end-to-end process with the allocation of appropriate awards and allowances, with information flowing smoothly into Payroll.

With Pronto Xi’s Service, Mobile Service and Service Connect modules, you can handle the full end-to-end life cycle of service calls.

Enable your customers to raise service calls by using Service Connect. Through this user-friendly web portal, your customers can track the status of their service call and review the accompanying conversations in real time, giving them the ability to obtain information on demand.

Minimise your customers’ waiting times by keeping track of high-priority service issues, customer service history, warranties and time-critical customer service-level agreements (SLAs) with Service. By allowing your back office to manage service calls – from contracts to call allocation and invoicing to reporting – in a central location, Service enables you to focus on providing exceptional care for your clients.

Schedule your 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.

From quotation through to completion, Project makes it easy to conduct granular tracking of a project at task level. Cost breakdowns and direct integration with Pronto Xi’s Resource Management module also enable your projects to stay within allocated budget.

Maximise your planning and control of plant maintenance activities with Maintenance Management. By ensuring your equipment is always in top shape, Maintenance Management helps you to 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.

Project

Smart money

Project automates the time-consuming aspects of project quotation, giving you greater control over costing procedures

By integrating with other Pronto Xi modules, you will be kept up to date with work orders, sales orders and service calls, minimising unforeseen costs.

Key functionalities include:

• Multiple cost centres and budgets per project

• Full Cost Breakdown Structure (CBS) for greater cost granularity

• Project Tasks and milestones deliver more control over project activities and deliverables

• Project Tasks fully integrate with Resource Management to enable visualisation and scheduling

• Flexible progressive invoicing or via Claim Schedule

• Create Project parent/child hierarchies up to 20 levels deep

• Customisable profit take-up and release rules

• Create timesheets flexibly via Projects or Resource Management and seamlessly update Payroll through integration

Intelligence

Keep your projects on track using Business Dashboard for Project. Quickly identify how projects are performing and how they are likely to track over the medium and long term. Key performance metrics are included to help you gain this visibility at a glance:

• Project profit, income and costs per year

• Unpaid claims

• Claims to be submitted

• Claims to be certified

• In progress cost to complete by branch

• In progress project count

• Total contract amount by project type

Project workflow

When creating a quotation or responding to a tender, you can 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. Project Tasks can then be set up to define the activities, resources and commitments required to carry out the project phases.

Once the project is in progress, you can track costs incurred and income earned. With full integration with Pronto Xi modules such as Accounts Payable and Purchasing, Project allows you to record the project and cost category against any purchase order or supplier invoice.

Purchase orders for required materials can be raised directly from the project budgets and applied to each relevant Project Task, ensuring that all commitments are managed in conjunction with the project activity or deliverable. Purchase orders can be consolidated to help save on shipping costs, and materials can be held in a dedicated warehouse until due on site.

Where items will be built specifically to be used by the project, Project can create manufacturing work orders based on a standard bill of material (BOM) or allow for customised configurations using the Sales Configurator tool.

Project is integrated with Pronto Xi’s Payroll, Resource Management, Resource Scheduler and the 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, ensuring that the true cost of a resource is accounted for.

Throughout the life of the project you can examine costs and income for each cost category or against the master item details referenced by the project. This means you can easily compare the information to your original budgets.

Project tightly controls variations to the original quotation. You can enter provisional variations, submit these to the customer, record them as rejected or approved, and modify the budgets accordingly.

The Master Claim Schedule can also reflect these costs and income against the original item list or any items defined for the variations of the project

Project types

A “project” can be any work undertaken by your company over any period of time. It is either performed for a customer defined in Accounts Receivable, or is posted to a General Ledger or Fixed Asset account.

Project allows for a number of types of projects, including:

• contract

• time and materials

• asset creation

• enhancement

• General Ledger cost

• cost tracking

• warranty

• rework

• manufactured (requires Shopfloor Manufacturing)

• maintenance management (requires Maintenance Management)

• service (requires Service Management)

• Service (requires Service Management)

Find all project details in one central area

Project life cycles

A project goes through a number of stages between its creation and its completion, with each stage represented by a different status.

Raise a Quotation

Quotations can be generated based on estimated costs. The details of the customer and nature of the project are also recorded.

Modify Quotation

Quotations can be easily modified at the negotiation or re-evaluation stage. If costs are incurred before the final sign-off of the budget, these are recorded before the project is moved to In Progress.

Accept/Reject Quotation

Once the quotation is raised, it must be either accepted or rejected. An accepted quotation becomes a project in progress, while a rejected quotation is archived as a lost quotation.

Setup

During the setup stage, initial project details can be captured. Some costs can be recorded against the project, and original cost estimates can be revised.

In progress

Once a project is in progress, costs incurred can be recorded against the project, invoices generated, variations processed and profit taken up.

Close the project

When a project is completed, 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 is changed to ‘finished’.

The close-out operation is not reversible, although sub-projects can be attached to a closed parent project.

Close-out rules

Close-out rules and posting rules can be set according to different types of projects and locations, providing flexibility for companies that need it.

For example, you can require contract projects to be fully invoiced to the contract value before close-out. However, you may prefer the invoiced value for time-and-materials projects to be determined by their costs.

Up to 11 close-out rules can be applied to projects, including:

• prevent closing if the project is not fully invoiced 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

You can use Project to build a hierarchy of projects for enquiry, reporting and invoicing purposes. Up to four hierarchy levels are available, with up to 20 levels of child projects available under the grandparent/parent hierarchy. The levels are:

• Grandparent – these are the highestlevel projects, available only for enquiry purposes. Pronto Xi rolls up the budgets and actuals of the lower-level projects attached.

• Parent – these projects can have subprojects attached, with the budgets and actuals rolled up to the parent project for enquiry and reporting. If customer invoicing is done at this level, costs from the parent and sub-projects are aggregated, mark-up is applied and the parent project is billed.

• Child – these are sub-projects that are attached to a parent project, but have their own budgets and scheduling. Costs may be posted directly to sub-projects, with invoicing done at the parent or child level.

• Adult – these are projects established independently, with no relationship to other projects

Review

granular cost details with the Cost Breakdown Structure

Cost management

Project enables you to maintain accurate and timely cost control of projects, with the Cost Breakdown Structure (CBS) allowing for a greater level of costing granularity, cost allocation and margin management.

The CBS provides a sequential framework of activities and their related costs, meaning you can itemise and prioritise works within a cost category to assist in the scoping, quoting and tendering of major or minor 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 hierarchy structure of this type, you gain greater control when applying mark-ups, factoring variations or managing analysis of project budget versus actual costs.

To further streamline the quoting process, Pronto Xi includes a Copy to Claim Schedule option, so that detailed cost structures can be passed directly to the Claim Schedule area. This ensures greater consistency across the project and delivers the foundation elements for quoting and invoicing.

Other benefits include:

• consolidation of multiple CBS structures when tendering for multi-site opportunities

• user-defined CBS row colours to improve visualisation and differentation of segments

• ability to upload CBS structures from Excel

• automation of actual cost disbursement across CBS elements

• ability to copy CBS structures from other projects

• visibility of percentage completion for linked tasks

• ability to identify and minimise potential cost overruns while the project is in progress

• capacity to generate more accurate quotations, cost tracking and service warranties

Cost categories

You can choose to group certain types of costs within a project into cost categories. Each category can then have separate budgets and cost totals assigned to it to assist with budgeting and analysis.

Costs

There are a number of ways you can incur direct costs against a project:

• sub-contracting

• purchasing

• supplying inventory to the project

• posting a supplier’s invoice

• posting direct journals

• using timesheets.

Inventory can be issued to a project via a direct inventory issue, a sales order, a purchase order or a supplier invoice.

Timesheet entries record costs for both labour and equipment hire, including overhead cost generation.

Journal entries – using the journal functions 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. This dramatically increases the efficiency of enquiry functions.

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 brings together budgeted cost estimates and the activity details necessary to get the job done on time and to budget.

Project Tasks allows you to view the percentage completion and status of each individual task, helping to deliver greater insight into the progress of a project. Under the Project Task structure, you can plan and organise deliverables in line with critical milestones, ensuring that 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 – whether 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 can deliver instant notifications to keep all your allocated resources fully informed.

Project Tasks can be seen on the Resource Scheduler. You can email key task details to allocated staff in advance of the scheduled work, and can also attach calendar appointments that include the task details.

Other key features of Project Tasks include:

• intuitive and logical task workflow

• Resource Scheduler for graphical visualisation and task rescheduling

Orders

CBS

Predecessors

Resources

Resource Scheduler

reason code

Yes

status to ‘Complete’ and 100%

Yes

Yes

Set Task attributes

Create Task Optional links

Set Task status to ‘Notified’

• 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

Scheduled project claims

The Project Claim Schedule creates invoices for customer billing. It can be used to develop the project budget.

Customer claim entry

Once the project moves to the status of In Progress, work begins and you can raise claims to receive funds from the customer.

No

Resource attached? No

No

No Yes

Visualise and reschedule planned tasks, then import your final plan back to Project

There are three claiming methods facilitated by the Claim Control function:

• Invoice method – a direct invoicing method that does not take into account any certification or progress claims.

• Progress invoices – these are based on cost 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 attempt to retain more than the agreed values.

Claim entry

Claims can be entered either manually or in bulk via an amount or percentage. These values can be defined against each master item or against any of the sub-total or grand total lines of the claim, which will then be applied pro rata across the appropriate sections of the claim.

Claim life cycle

A typical claim life cycle progresses through a number of stages, represented by the following statuses: Entered, Internal Approval, On Hold, Submitted, Certified and Paid.

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, each action can have a set of notes to capture details such as phone calls, letters and faxes.

Certification

A submitted claim is sent to the customer for their review and approval prior to them returning a payment advice. This document states the claimed, assessed and retention amounts defined by the customer, as well as 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 for certifying claim amounts.

The defer method records the difference as a separate amount on each claim item. This can then be discussed with the customer and possibly offset in the future.

Customer retention release

If the customer has retained any funds during the claim process, they can be requested for release via a retention release order. This can occur at any time during the project but typically happens near its finalisation.

Claims enquiries

The Claims Enquiry screen makes it easy to find claims by offering a variety of powerful search parameters, including dates, statuses, types of claims, and claims that have variations.

Income

In addition to capturing incurred costs, Project also records income earned. Income is recognised 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.

Invoices can be generated in stages using an invoice schedule based on either a fixed amount or a percentage complete.

Progress claim

This method creates a sales order invoice but holds the order back from invoicing and tax presentation until the claim is certified.

Profit

Progressive profit take-up is often used on long-term projects. Project uses a “percentage of completion” method to determine the amount of profit to take. If no profit is taken up during the life of the project, 100% of the profit will be 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 – this 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 – this assumes that the true completion status of a project is the amount invoiced against the contract value.

• Actual-based method – this assumes a project is 100% complete and therefore takes up all actual values.

• Cost/sales-based method – this uses the cost- based 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 General Ledger based on userdefinable fields and project types. This allows you to ensure postings end up on the correct balance sheet or profit-and-loss statement according to your company’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 on both your team and your customers’ team, helping to facilitate communication.

Issue Register

The Issue Register lists administrative events and activities that need to take place during a project.

You can assign responsibility for events and activities to specific individuals. The My Issues function allows the individuals to review their allocated issues and actions across multiple projects; any issues or actions that are approaching their due date can be shown in calendar view.

Sub-contracting

Project Sub-Contractor is a sub-module that provides a series of functions and controls to initiate and manage outsourced project tasks.

Supplier agreements

Sub-contractor or supplier agreements create a commitment that can be broken down across multiple cost categories.

You can capture details of the tasks performed by sub-contractors as:

• scheduled rates or lump-sum payments

• retention percentages

• currency codes

• estimated start and end dates.

Sub-contractor claims

Claims for work performed by sub-contractors can be entered using either a summary or detail method. They are assessed based on the terms and conditions of the original subcontractor agreement.

Entries include claimed and assessed amounts, reasons for any differences, retention amounts, tax amounts and percentage of labour. Project Sub-Contractor automatically calculates the default retention amount, along with the tax component of the assessed amount.

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

You can release held retentions at any point in the life cycle 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 a large number of sub-contractors and projects, making it important to have a powerful enquiry tool. With Project SubContractor, sub-contractor data can be filtered according to a wide range of criteria.

Agreements can also be filtered by type (such as lump sum, scheduled rates or supply), status, variation types or claim types. These criteria can then be used to select matching sub-contractors.

The enquiry tool also allows users to drill down into the detail of the record based on the criteria entered.

Create project

supplier

Sub-contractor claims workflow

Subcontractor

Review tender/ request

Create project

Create master budget

Create quote

Set project to In Progress

Perform work

Create claim

Security

Budget limits

Project Manager Limits enable you to set the amount (in budget or contract value) that a manager controls at different stages of an individual project. If desired, you can also set an in-progress limit but not a completion limit.

Branch masking

Users can be restricted to specific projects based on branch masking rules. This ensures that branch data remains secure.

Credit limits

Project can notify you if a project budget takes a customer over their credit limit. You have the option to 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 allows you to record and report labour costs, hours and overheads against a project or service call.

With the Timesheet Control table, you can customise timesheet entry for your business’s needs. Some of the 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 of detail required for timesheet entry

• the ability to post additional on-costs (for example, superannuation or personal/ carer’s leave)

• timesheet approval options

You can 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 these can be automatically posted.

Equipment cost and charge-out rates

An equipment resource may be assigned 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.

Manage all the activities in the tender process

Tenders

Tender Management manages future prospects, tenders and their associated contracts.

With Tender Management, you have the ability to forecast probable contract values and margins on tenders, current jobs and service contracts.

Once the tender has been won, the data flows seamlessly into the linked project.

The following functionality is available in Tender Management:

• go/win factor

• the ability to build a detailed CBS 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.

Direct and serve

Integration

Service is fully integrated with all Pronto Xi applications, removing unnecessary rekeying of data. It simplifies the management of service contracts, and efficiently logs and processes service calls.

The Service to Project link provides integration 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 with easy-to-use drill-up and drill-down data exploration functionality. Analytics Dashboards provide an extended library of pre-built reports and performance metrics to help further improve the performance of your service operations.

Contracts

You can set up service contracts for serialised and non-serialised items, recurring billing values, warranty obligations, preventive maintenance schedules and other userdefined contract types. The contract details define the service units covered, as well as the duration and terms of the contract.

To improve the customer experience, you can use templates to expedite the creation of service contracts and projects. In addition, auto-population of standard parameters helps you to maintain data protocols across your contracts.

For users of Pronto Xi’s Sales and Inventory modules, covered service units may include items that have previously been sold to that customer, either directly or through a distributor. Equipment sold by another supplier is also catered for, with a description and serial number recorded separately from your normal inventory.

Get a bird’s-eye view of service performance

Time-based service recording

You can use time-based service recording for your contracts’ labour or travel coverage. This enables you to sell prepaid service coverage, with three billing cycles available:

• time-based at the contract level

• time-based at the unit level

• time-based at the contract level with voucher numbers recorded.

After you select 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 only for serialised items.

Contract invoicing

Bulk contract invoicing routines in Service streamline the invoicing process. They calculate and recognise both 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. Customer-facing invoices can be tailored for both contract and calls, with flexible crediting features to cater for partial or full invoice credit arrangements.

Billing cycles

There is 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, as well as for the contract itself. This means that you can add or remove units from the contract, and the next invoice is adjusted on a pro-rata basis.

Advanced billing or unearned income

When invoices are raised for service contracts, it is likely they will cover services that may be required in the future. 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 you 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.

See all relevant service contract details in one place

Equipment/unit Service inventory

Preventive maintenance invoicing

Preventive maintenance

Preventive maintenance tasks

Service management workflow

Contract on hold and billing on hold

Service contract

Service calls

Scheduling Allocation of resources

Notification of resources Work performed

Timesheet entry

Invoicing

Project costing

Cost category

Budget

Actual transactions

Profitability

You can choose to put a contract on hold without closing it. This may occur 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 calls

Service includes a call-processing component to help you control the day-to-day activities of your service department.

Call logging

Calls can be logged using either the Wizard Call Logging screen or the Form Entry Logging screen, which extend to other integrated Pronto Xi modules such as Service Connect, Mobile Service and Resource Management.

Because each screen of the wizard prompts the user to select the correct information, it is particularly useful for casual users or new users. The Form Entry Logging option is better suited to more experienced users, permitting them to log calls in a minimum amount of time.

To ease the administrative burden of creating service calls for repeated work, the Copy Service Call function allows for a call to be created from a previous logged call.

Logged service calls fall into three main types:

• internal calls, where the unit to be serviced will be brought to your workshop

• on-site calls, where your engineers must go on site

• telephone support calls

Calls are logged 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 status of the account in the Accounts Receivable module. Simultaneously, the service site address is validated using Google Maps.

Estimated Travel Time provides a notional representation of travel time to site, based on a time zone table. Resource Scheduler and the Schedule View in Resource Management both display the travel time and then the working time. A separate Google Maps licence is available.

At the time 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 will identify whether the subject of the call is under warranty. Once the call is logged, a docket showing the address and details of the job can be printed for the engineer’s reference. Service supports a variety of preprinted formats.

When a call is logged, a quotation can be entered at the same time. This places the job on hold pending acceptance of the quotation.

Log service calls raised by back-office staff

Allocate

Service call maintenance

Combining all major 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 for 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, which supports flexible reporting methods.

Critical calls

Service offers multi-level call monitoring to allow you to measure actual performance against call level and contractual obligations.

Critical codes provide the building blocks to define the targets that need to be met. They are automatically set against service calls according to defined rulesets, or are set manually as required.

Service call transactions are then used to record when key milestones – Response Time, On-Site and Completed Repair – are met throughout the life cycle of the service call. 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 milestones that might be missed. This will enable them to take pre-emptive action to meet the targets or allow them to manage customer expectations.

Service centres

Service calls are usually logged in a service centre, which may be a workshop where the service work is actually carried out 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 can be identified at the time 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

There are more than seven different types of notes within the service module, ranging from repair notes 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.

See how the service call had been tracked and if the call response was within the target time with a timeline visual

Preventive maintenance

Service offers in-built flexibility for generating preventive maintenance (PM) calls. It uses the following approach:

• Detailed PM service calls are generated in accordance with the equipment 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 a type of contract that 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

Hierarchical run-based PM calls are managed by consolidating serviceable equipment within a single PM service call for each run. Service technicians can then perform each routine for the service run, all within Mobile Service. If monthly and weekly tasks are due at the same time, the incremental weekly tasks for the month are automatically generated.

With Resource Management turned on, you can allocate resources as a single engineer, as a team or by attribute codes. You can choose to not allocate an engineer on weekends or non-working days, or can allocate them automatically based on their next availability.

Equipment locations

Equipment Site Location lets you record 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 history of work 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, which is a useful option for large or complex sites.

Locations are managed against a contract as free-form text. They can then be attached to equipment or units.

Equipment on contracts

A contract can include one or many pieces of equipment that are serviced. 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 tracking inventory, Service recognises an engineer’s van as a “location” that is attached to the warehouse from which the inventory has been taken. Inventory levels can be checked and regulated as required, and replenishment ordering can ensure that necessary inventory levels are maintained.

Engineers’ vans can also be set up as individual warehouses so that stocktakes can be done for one unit or a group.

Integration with Distribution

Because Service is fully integrated with Distribution, inventory allocations to service calls can range from informal material issue through to formal picking slips creation.

Service is also linked with Pronto Xi’s Purchasing functionality. Purchase orders can be created and the entire procurement life cycle managed against each service call. Calls can be set to Parts Required status to keep service technicians and their customers informed throughout the call and purchasing process.

Engineers

Each of your engineers is linked to a specific service centre and service calls are allocated accordingly. If required, calls can also be allocated to engineers from other service centres.

The activity of each engineer can be displayed in Resource Scheduler, allowing you to develop and monitor their call schedule. Payroll can also store the employee number of each engineer, so you are able to record additional payroll information.

Service visually displays incoming service calls and engineer workloads, and its integration with Resource Scheduler allows calls to be allocated to engineers using the drag-anddrop method.

Integration with Resource Management

Resource Management is an optional module that can be activated by 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 can define 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, it can be allocated to a single engineer, multiple engineers or even a team of resources. You can have the system set up to do this as the call is entered, or choose to have an engineer recommended based on contractual preference, skill, attributes, territory or availability.

Service can automatically notify an engineer of a call allocation using Pronto Xi products such as Service Connect or Mobile Service, or via SMS or email.

The status of a particular call can be checked at any time. Calls can be grouped by engineer, making it easy to see if someone is behind schedule so their calls can be reassigned to another engineer.

Pronto Xi records “real-time” work on each call as well as billable time. Once work is complete, you can enter full details from the docket, including the fault, which can be assigned a code so you can analyse calls by fault type.

Cancelled calls and finished calls are retained on file and can be reactivated into live calls at any time, even if they have been archived.

When a call is complete, Pronto Xi generates an invoice that includes amounts for labour, travel, a call fee, parts used and metered charges. A replacement unit or component can also be recorded at this point, and the customer’s contract amended accordingly.

Tailored minimum time blocks can also be charged within the billing cycle of a service contract to pre-bill blocks of time, which are consumed at the call level as engineers post timesheets.

Preferred and blacklisted service engineers

Any contract site can hold a table of preferred engineers. Your clients can build trust in familiar engineers, leading to increased 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 there is a resource type called “equipment”, which is either serialised inventory or assets. Equipment can be linked to an engineer or can be standalone.

For further insights, Pronto Xi provides a visual that helps you to 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, stay on budget, and ensure minimum strain is placed on employees and resources.

You will also be able 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 will be based on historical data and adjusted to anticipate bottlenecks and low activity periods, eliminating guesswork.

Mobile Service

Deliver the information your technicians or field engineers need, anytime, anywhere, with Mobile Service

Using web-based technology, Mobile Service links directly with Service to allow you to efficiently log, process and track all service activities. It is also flexible enough to manage all reactive and predictive service calls while ensuring you meet and exceed your service level agreements (SLAs).

Keep the wheels turning

Mobile Service delivers a complete feature set – from call management through to invoicing and payment receipt – making it the ideal field service solution for commercial and consumer service organisations.

When Mobile Service is used in conjunction with Service, you get a powerful service delivery platform that simplifies complex routines. By giving you more time to manage exceptions and uncover richer business insights, it generates greater efficiency and helps give your business a tangible competitive edge

Real-time information

With Mobile Service, your field workforce stays connected and informed. Your 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), Mobile Service 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 that all the data captured throughout the service routine is represented on Mobile Service’s summary screens and on the customer invoice. Technicians can also choose to email the invoice if their van does not have a physical printer.

Mobile Service has been designed to suit complex B2B and B2C service delivery environments. It allows multiple technicians to undertake work on the same call, and maintenance schedules for multiple items of equipment to be managed by a single technician.

A separate Google Maps licence is available.

Data capture

Because information can be updated on the go, Mobile Service helps field users manage their day-to-day workload, particularly when there are unplanned events.

Easily capture van parts that have been used, complete timesheets, raise purchase orders, raise materials orders from a central warehouse, and add photos. Mobile Service also delivers improved cash flow as customer signatures are captured on site, reducing the time between completing the job and charging for it.

Connectivity

If a field engineer goes offline, Mobile Service will store all necessary data within the browser cache of their mobile device and upload it as soon as there is a connection.

Notes and documentation

Mobile Service delivers a level of technical document management that is unsurpassed by any other offering. Link diagrams and specifications to your jobs, make comments, and sketch annotations.

You can also save notes, allowing you to easily to collaborate with your teams. Take photos, attach them to your job and annotate them.

Scheduling

Mobile Service incorporates a My Schedule view of all allocated service calls and their required start times, allowing engineers to plan their days or weeks. In turn, this ensures better workforce utilisation and improved forward planning.

Office staff can also easily schedule engineers’ days and see their activities in real time, with Pronto Xi’s Resource Management and Resource Scheduler modules seamlessly updating information flow between applications.

See the next call based on an expected scheduled attendance time

Proof of presence

View all equipment for a call

Invoice attributes

As a part of commercial compliance, onsite engineers are often required to obtain a customer signature as proof of presence.

As Mobile Service is paperless, field engineers can easily log proofs of presence against transactions in a service call.

Safety compliance

Mobile Service 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. Due to its adaptability, Mobile Service can ask the questions that are most relevant to your business and your people, giving you greater control over workplace health and safety practices.

To cater for flexibility in relation to on-site customer billing arrangements, 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.

Easy adoption

If you have ever introduced new procedures and forms to your mobile workforce, then you know that compliance and adoption are difficult. Because Mobile Service makes daily routines easier, changes can be adopted very quickly.

In Service Management the administration user can configure the front end mobile screens to display the information required to the business

Material orders

Engineers can request parts via a material requisition for either their van or the service call. Requisitions can be created directly on Mobile Service, eliminating the need to call the office, and are fully tracked within Service, Inventory and Mobile Service workflows.

As a result, material requests during service calls are more visible, and the stocking and distribution of supplies is more efficient

Navigation

The Mobile Service landing page serves as a hub of daily functions, allowing users to quickly access the most important functions at the click of a button.

Work instructions

Mobile Service’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 can also function as customer site forms, which can be presented to the customer via email as a reference for completed work.

Serial attributes

To deliver increased compliance, identification and reporting capabilities, you can set unique attributes against serialised stock and serviceable units.

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 Mobile Service, engineers can add new serviceable 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, waiting for approval before they items are allocated 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 that have been from an existing contract.

Call escalation

Superior customer service delivery hinges on your ability to respond to critical issues within agreed time frames.

Mobile Service provides critical call escalation routines that manage high-priority calls. This feature constantly monitors calls and escalates them to ensure they are responded to, attended to and repaired within the customer’s SLA.

Service Connect

Keep your customers informed on the progress of service calls with Service Connect’s easy-to-use online web portal – freeing up your service centre resources

Stay on track

An extension of Service, Service Connect empowers your customers by giving them access to up-to-date service call information –including their own history and conversations. This engaging service experience increases customer satisfaction, as they remain informed every step of the way.

Key features of Service Connect include:

• quick deployment to customers

• an intuitive modern web interface that is 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 can create and track service calls in real time, allowing them to plan work around ETAs.

They can start conversations directly with the service staff and navigate chats in an easy-tofollow timeline, helping them to feel looked after.

Users can find the information they need by applying filters, which help to remove distractions and enable quick actions.

To quickly provide detailed up-front information, customers can scan items using a device camera or upload images. In turn, this allows your staff to deliver faster call resolutions.

View call information via the Service Connect Dashboard

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 teams 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

Service calls can be managed end-to-end when Service Connect is used in conjuction with Pronto Xi’s Resource Management and Mobile Service modules, meaning your staff 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.

Different user types are associated with specific roles and functions within the application:

• Service desk administrators and executive users – these roles manage your service desk, and have access to all call information and the ability to change any details on any calls; administrative users can also set up advanced configurations for forms and data fields.

• Customer users – your customers get a limited access account, which allows them to see calls that their company has raised and manage the work accordingly

View a timeline of important milestones

See the status of individual service calls

Maintenance Management

Reduce breakdowns and service costs by leveraging Maintenance Management to make sure your equipment is in top shape – then ensure the right parts and people are available if something goes wrong

Mind your overheads

Maximise your 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 from across your facilities, giving you full control over how you view your outcomes. Swiftly spot failures and identify maintenance improvement opportunities with fault analysis reporting, and keep an eye on repairs with full work order integration.

Some of the key features of Maintenance Management are:

• full equipment profile of components and parent items

• 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 for completed work

Equipment information

Maintenance contains an Equipment Register, which records detailed information about the equipment.

Items can be classed as:

• Asset – relates to a fixed asset.

• Component – relates to an inventory item.

• Level – used in costing/enquiry mode, and relates plant items to each other

You can identify each item by its own unique number as well as an identifier related to a fixed asset or an item serial number. This means you can quickly identify items and allocate maintenance details to the correct item.

The identifier may reflect an existing equipment numbering system already in use.

Equipment can be grouped by cost centre, type and location, and categorised by equipment, assemblies and sub-assemblies.

The Equipment Register records manufacturer details, as well as information such as the supplier, warranty date, installed costs, installation date and other associated costs. Budgets and actual costs incurred are held by plant item 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.

Preventive and predictive maintenance

Plant managers can implement a maintenance strategy in the form of preventive and predictive maintenance tasks. It can be implemented 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 schedule service intervals and frequencies. Because PM Tasks has a oneto-many relationship with plant items, any changes to tasks automatically flow through to all attached serviceable items.

Plant managers can compare “scheduled” versus “actual” for both activity and costs. Full cost history reporting assists with decision-making in relation to replacing or maintaining 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 life cycle of the work order.

Maintenance work order raised Parts issued

Materials requisition

Spare parts warehouse

Pick slip

Component swapped Repair job raised

Rotable return Repair completed

Return pick slip Transfer

Repairs warehouse

Return repaired part as spare

Returning materials to an alternative warehouse

When you’re managing picking slips for work orders, you may need to return allocated materials to an alternative repair warehouse. If this is the case, the warehouse code on the picking slip header can be changed to an alternative warehouse when you raise the return picking slip.

Component change-outs

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

An item of plant and equipment may consist of several large components – for example, a truck will have 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, as the plant item is quickly back to being productive. The large or complex component can then be repaired over a more manageable time frame, or be sent out 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.

Tracking components

Using Pronto Xi’s Inventory and Project modules, you can track the components being repaired, scrapped or reworked, whether this occurs in-house or via an external service provider.

This is controlled via a picking slip workflow.

Work order management

Maintenance Management provides tools to manage the full work order cycle, from planning to completion.

A wide range of reports and enquiries are available to assist users to prioritise and plan maintenance work orders. You can search for work orders based on components, related plant items, or via 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 a status of Defect. Defects can then be addressed, and corrections and maintenance tasks planned and scheduled.

You can also generate an estimate of hours, equipment and parts required for the task. This information may be predefined on a preventive maintenance task and used as a template for the work order.

To allow meter readings, comments and actual downtime or duration to be captured, the status of a work order changes progressively until completion.

Work order forecasting

Use work order forecasting to produce the maintenance schedule, confirm manpower requirements, and analyse key performance indicators (KPIs) to understand scheduled loading and completion trends.

Work order forecasting also allows you to generate preventive maintenance work orders when they become due. Planned maintenance can be entered into the system, transferred from a work request, or converted 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. The use of priority codes enables key work to be planned and executed in a timely and efficient manner.

Resource planning

The predicted workload for each type of labour can be compared to the available working hours, helping to identify potential work overload.

Create tasks from your work orders

Integration with Resource Management

Maintenance Management works seamlessly with Resource Management, providing a significant boost to your maintenance productivity.

You can 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. You can also group and assign resources to work orders as a team, simplifying 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.

Maintenance Management

| Asset & Facility Management

Integration with Resource Scheduler

Resource scheduling is essential to service, project and maintenance management activities. Pronto Xi’s Resource Scheduler enables you to meet deadlines, stay on budget, and ensure 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 will be based on historical data and adjusted to anticipate bottlenecks and low activity periods, eliminating guesswork.

Inventory management

Manage your 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 a number of 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 a number of flexible criteria.

Intelligence

Perform effortless and deeper analysis of key aspects of maintenance management using Analytics Dimensions. A pre-built hierarchical data format allows intuitive analysis of plant items, work orders and work order transactions using easy 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 – so you don’t have to chase them later Hire power

Create and maintain all the details of a rental contract

Rental works from your agreement with your customer, so the rental contract defines 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 functionalities 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 a rental contract is created, a percentage value can be added for stamp duty and damage waiver. You can create reminder notices when invoices are overdue, and can archive all customer correspondence within the contract notes.

Rental offers the flexibility of multiple billing cycles. You can opt to charge a deposit, invoice immediately or at a later date, and control the billing of items in a contract.

Depending on the agreement with your customer, you can increase rental rates based on consumer price index (CPI) or use periodic increases.

Rental’s complete integration with Pronto Xi modules such as Project and Service means you can attach and post all revenue from a rental contract to a project and schedule the preventive maintenance of your equipment.

Rental is fully auditable and allows you to define the functions that can be accessed by each staff member.

Charges

Any extra charges (for example, a physical item, an attached service such as transport or installation, or simply a cost incurred) associated with the rental of a unit are linked to the particular unit on the contract line. They are terminated from the contract at the same time as the unit.

These charges can also be invoiced periodically, or by a lump-sum charge on the first invoice.

The charges are represented by 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, so that the serial number of a rental unit is assigned to the fixed asset. This allows you to account for the depreciation costs of the unit.

Contract invoicing

Customer invoicing is easily managed 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 to bill in accordance with the billing cycle set out in the contract. Depending on the agreement, billing will take place in arrears or in advance.

Depending on your accounting requirements, a General Ledger journal may be raised when an invoice is raised. It recognises the value of the unearned income as a liability, which is reduced 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 also makes it easier to efficiently raise credit invoices for either a partial bill cycle or the last invoice previously raised.

A comprehensive credit process allows for individual contract or bulk crediting if required. Alternatively, an outages 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, “one-off” invoices can be raised when the contract is approved, an item is terminated from the contract, or the contract is terminated.

This allows for adjustments to be made to the initial and final rental invoices using the normal sales order functionality.

Billing cycle

The billing cycle forms part of the rental contract. It can be set to hourly, weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly or other periods.

Pronto Xi can also cater for rental cycles that exclude specific days, such as periods when weather conditions make it impossible for hired equipment to be used. This also means that invoicing can be done for a seven-day week, a five-day 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. Units can be added or removed from the contract, with appropriate adjustments included in 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 to the customer’s account.

Payment reminders

Overdue payments can trigger a reminder notice. The contract is automatically updated with notes regarding the reminders.

Tracking

Rental allows full serial tracking of items. Rental invoices and trial balances can be produced at almost any time.

Make more with less

Make more with less

From trimming the fat on the factory floor to bulking up your production volume, ensure your operations are lean, scalable and cost-effective

Optimise your materials and capacity planning over multiple sites with Manufacturing Planning, which provides tools such as Master Production Scheduling (MPS), Material Requirements Planning (MRP), Distribution Requirements Planning (DRP), Capacity Requirements Planning (CRP) and more.

As an operations manager or team leader, Manufacturing Scheduler allows you to view your entire operations at a glance. This enables you to maximise your manufacturing resources to reduce product cycle time, foresee downtimes and meet your deadlines. Manufacturing Scheduler provides clear visibility of workload versus available capacity, and allows you to manually or systematically manage sequences and optimise work.

Plan production efficiently with Shopfloor Manufacturing’s paperless reports detailing manufacturing resources and raw materials. A flexible product that adapts easily to various production environments, Shopfloor Manufacturing allows you to easily implement lean manufacturing practices.

Manage production data such as bill of materials (BOMs) and item control while efficiently operating the shopfloor with detailed work orders, production feedback and more. Customise your production processes with manufacturing methods such as make to stock, make to order, configure to order and more. No matter which method of production you use, your manufacturing costs can be posted to the General Ledger to ensure that your financials remain up-todate at all times.

With Quality Management and Laboratory, you can enable continuous improvement through tighter process control and increased audibility. With the ability to log test results accurately, Pronto Xi allows you to efficiently track product quality and create official certificates to reinforce your product testing and compliance processes.

Manufacturing processes can vary greatly between industries – and even within the same company – with each production stage requiring different planning and control methods. Pronto Xi’s Manufacturing modules have the flexibility to 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 are planning to go lean or are looking to bulk up high volume output, Shopfloor Manufacturing will help you keep your manufacturing operations in shape

A highly flexible solution, Shopfloor Manufacturing includes a sub-module called Manufacturing Planning. Together, these modules will streamline your:

• Product data management – with item control, single and multiple bill of materials (BOMs), routing, work centres, product configurator and kitting

• Shopfloor control – with work orders, production feedback, alternative routings, subcontract operations, costing and General Ledger posting

Trim the fat

• Manufacturing processes – with make to stock, repetitive, batch, make to order, assemble to order, configure to order and engineer to order

• Planning – with materials, capacity, exception reporting, subcontracting, sales and operations planning, planning BOMs, super bills and rough-cut capacity planning

• Quality control – with traceability by lot, batch and serial number

• Costing – with standard, average, actual, first-in, first-out (FIFO) and more

Manufacturing workflow

Shopfloor Manufacturing easily adapts to different production environments. This is because 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-to-stock operations.

To support lean manufacturing processes, production can be controlled with or without work orders. Raw materials usage is controlled through traditional stock issue functions, automatic backflushing of materials, or a combination of these.

Production results can be captured in real time using barcode readers, radio frequency (RF) units, or via traditional desktop computers. Multi-level batch, lot and serial number tracking are all fully supported throughout the entire system, as is external time and attendance model integration.

Pronto Xi supports sales order kitting and manufacturing of kit items, and offers a powerful configurator module. This means that make-to-stock, make-to-order, assembleto-order and mass customisation operations are all supported.

Choose your kit items from a predefined list, then have them shipped as a kit or, after some assembly, a finished product.

Manage work orders in one convenient location

Product data management

A manufacturing system is controlled by the characteristics of the individual item master and its associated records. Items can be set as “normal” saleable inventory items, manufactured products, raw material (not for resale), kit, 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 warehouse.

Product life-cycle management is performed through a number of condition flags and time periods.

Item control occurs via lot, batch and serial number tracking.

Other crucial information such as export details, chemical or hazchem classification, and production drawings (references) can also be captured.

Centrally manage your bill of materials

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 of these items, and manages costs, work centres and routing processes by warehouse.

Get a high level view of BOM data, with access to detailed information if needed

Different types of bills can be built to meet product life cycles – from planning to configured to super bills – that manage every variation of configurable products in make-toorder, assemble-to-order or engineer-to-order environments.

Create and store versions of the same bill for multiple factories, as well as different types of versions. These can be managed through a combination of BOM effective date, version control, engineering change order (ECO) or user-controlled flags. Pronto Xi will also handle designators, split fills, calculated component quantities and other industry-specific solutions.

A BOM can be costed in different ways, including standard cost, average cost, FIFO and warehouse level. For added flexibility, you can vary the costing methods for different items – for example, standard cost may be set for a stock item, while FIFO or average cost can be set for a warehouse item.

In addition, you have the ability to add either fixed or average costs (such as overhead operating costs) per unit, which improves the accuracy of the true BOM cost.

In multi-factory manufacturing operations, Pronto Xi delivers BOM cost rollup by 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.

Bill of Materials lines

Stock Master

Bill of Materials header

Component weight formula

Routing

Stock Master

Variable Maintenance

Wizard sections

Out instruction formula Wizard options

Usage quantity formula

BOM structure

Wizard frames

Routing, operations and work centres

These are the sequential steps, operations, equipment and the setup and run times required to make a particular product. This information, together with the associated labour and overhead costs, 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, labour and overhead costs can be recorded via Labour and Special Items rather than using the Pronto Xi routing.

BOMs and routings can also be maintained separately. You can easily define or change component information for bills or operation details. A BOM or routing can be created as new, or can be modified based on an existing version. Revisions are time-stamped, so you can determine the latest version if multiple revisions occur on the same date

Review detailed operations information for planning

Set up unique work centre costings and parameters

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 sub-assembly 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. Straightforward features and option scenarios are easily implemented through a kit BOM.

The Sales Configurator equips sales personnel with an easy-to-use wizard-based interface, designed 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 a set of 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) that is 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 when the quotation has been accepted by your customer. 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, you can use lookup tables to provide links for any unique parameter relationships that may exist.

This simplified approach takes 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 pre-defined variables. Easily visualise each component of the configuration 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 is seamlessly linked to the Project module, allowing users to create projects and attach configured BOMs.

Offering in-built flexibility and oversight of all stages of the process, Project achieves best practice within the industry. You can 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 of all transactions necessary for ETO work to be completed.

Shopfloor processes

Work orders

Work orders are typically used to manage the planning, execution, raw materials consumption and feedback of production results.

In a lean manufacturing environment, Pronto Xi offers orderless and paperless recording of production, 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 for other special operations such as rework and repack.

Production feedback

Production feedback results can be entered in various ways.

As a web-based application with a responsive interface, Shopfloor Manufacturing allows shopfloor managers to easily enter product results on the go using a mobile device.

Back-office users have several ways to enter production results, including the ability to bulk enter production feedback. Quick production entry screens also 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 also make changes to 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 make quick changes to individual work orders before production has commenced.

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 life cycle of the work order.

The completion of a subcontractor process can be controlled by either 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 the need for double-handling or the creation of dummy items.

Easy to use data grids for production feedback

Shopfloor Manufacturing

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.

Discrete manufacturing, rate-based production, parallel routing, multiple cavity tooling, alternative routing streams and subcontract operations are all supported.

Other standard features include make-toorder, assemble-to-order, configure-to-order and engineer-to-order manufacturing.

Quality control

Traceability

Shopfloor Manufacturing includes an extensive range of traceability tools.

Manufactured goods and purchased raw materials can be tracked by manufacturing batch or lot.

Raw materials and components can also be lot-tracked by their purchase order number if required.

Serial numbered items can be recorded and tracked at various user-controllable transaction points.

Quality assurance

Purchased or manufactured items can be nominated to require quality assurance (QA) inspection before they are formally accepted as saleable items. Following QA inspection, items can be either fully or partially accepted, rejected or returned.

Use-by-date

In many process industries, shelf-life is an important issue. Pronto Xi can automatically generate use-by dates for product labels and other documentation.

Costing and General Ledger posting

Cost calculations and postings to General Ledger can be controlled in a number of ways. Costs can be generated from standard costs, single and multiple BOMs and routings. Alternatively, they can be generated from actual labour and machine time reports, actual cash costs posted to the work order, or timesheet records.

The General Ledger account structure can be set up to attribute costs and variances to a factory, department, item group or work centre. Any updates to product costs and inventory will be handled according to the system cost selected by the user.

Manufacturing modules can be linked 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

Tailored complexity

By using a combination of actual orders, forecasts, Distribution Requirements Planning (DRP), days cover, and the minimum/ maximum replenishment logic, Pronto Xi makes it easy to aggregate demand from a network of distribution centres.

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 are used to create a list of planned work orders.

Once verified, planned work orders are automatically converted to a work order 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 can be displayed graphically via 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 moste effectively satisfy the current and projected levels of sales and forecasts.

Production Plans can be entered by quantity or dollars at the planning group level and exploded via a super BOM and bill of resource to help establish and develop production rates, 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 as represented by demand, forecast and backlog.

The MPS sets out the quantity of each manufactured item that you plan to manufacture each month. Planned quantities can be set up to 12 months in advance.

A data grid in the MPS Maintenance/Enquiry screen enables you to sort and filter MPS data. Filter using inventory fields such as planning group, reorder policy, warehouse and condition code, then once filtered, 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 these work orders by 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 onorder quantities at each level determines the timing and quantity of purchasing and manufacturing.

See material requirements for products at a single glance

Pronto Xi’s planning engine enables sourcing and production visibility across multiple factories. It facilitates alternate factory planning and results in more efficient manufacturing operations.

In addition, MRP, DRP and MPS run sequentially in a single routine, which ensures up-to-date demand quantities.

A vertical MRP view, in addition to a horizontal view, helps you to easily visualise results.

Capacity Requirements Planning (CRP)

Capacity Requirements Planning (CRP) creates a detailed plan by department or work centre based on the constraints as 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.

Manufacturing Scheduler

Make sure you have the right hands in the right places with Manufacturing Scheduler

Track and yield

Using a Windows-based drag-and-drop application, Manufacturing Scheduler simplifies scheduling and planning for work centres that process many jobs simultaneously.

You can manage variations in the current schedule, see when priorities have changed or a work centre is unavailable, and view the available options to resolve an issue.

Manufacturing Scheduler also displays visual warnings when work orders are late or when scheduling conflicts occur within a work centre.

Schedule planning

An electronic whiteboard scheduler, Manufacturing Scheduler is used 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, operations can be moved to a new production slot with a simple drag and drop. Operations can be sorted based on multiple criteria. Once the order of the jobs is set, Manufacturing Scheduler automatically sequences each operation.

You can lock operations or entire work centres once the scheduling has been completed. Locked operations are taken into account according to your settings if you re-run CRP.

Schedule optimisation

As a visual management tool, Manufacturing Scheduler allows you to easily manage your workload to factory capacity constraints with the use of CRP.

You can refine the timing of product batches during weekly production cycles and, for added flexibility, sequence and optimise work based on user-definable parameters.

Alternative schedules can be developed and saved as “what-if” scenarios before the data is submitted to Pronto Xi, where all relevant elements are updated.

Gantt view

Manufacturing Scheduler allows you to sort 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

Manufacturing Scheduler data (including routing sequence, work centre and work order data) can be exported to a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet template, allowing you to report and print the production plan.

Visualisation that enable managing production schedules

Laboratory

Make sure you are always dealing with the best by testing, recording and comparing your purchased and manufactured products in Laboratory

Making the grade

Laboratory gives you the power to make reprocessing decisions quickly and confidently.

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 desired usage, release or future development.

Test results

Laboratory makes it easy to handle numerous types of test results. Grading or classification can be done based on all types of results.

If you are manufacturing the product, the test results will always be actual results.

For purchased products, results can be entered based on a sample or the certificate of analysis provided by the supplier. Actual results can be entered separately and compared against the supplier’s sample or certificate of analysis.

As each batch passes through its test procedures, you can enter the results obtained, along with related notes.

Once the test results are entered, the batch can be reclassified. If all classification criteria are met, Laboratory will automatically classify the batch in the highest possible grade.

Reclassified batches are only added to stock and made available for sale if the new classification is flagged as usable.

Auditing

Classification changes and test result changes, are fully audited.

Batches requiring testing

Laboratory provides a screen that displays all non-classified lots and batches you have recently manufactured or received from your supplier. You can use this screen to edit test results and classify these batches.

Selection and dispatch

If a sales order requires a specific grade of product, 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 during the dispatch proces.

Analysis certificates

Products that have passed your quality tests can be automatically issued with an official certificate of analysis, which can be provided to your customers or to government agencies. The layout and test results printed on the certification document can be tailored to your needs.

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 certification requirements.

Management overview

Give your 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 it is suitable for any type of document, the register is normally used for internal documents. Details recorded in the register include the document’s location on the network, who authorised the document, and which department is responsible for it.

Drawings and blueprints

Catalogue technical drawings, blueprints, files or construction details with the Drawing Index.

The locations of drawings and blueprints – both physical artefacts and files – can be entered and maintained. Drawings can be accessed over the network and opened 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.

Quality control

Complaints

Log any complaint or request for action that has been received from a customer or generated internally.

You can 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, you can enter the item code to ensure the complaint records are specific to the one item. You may then enter detailed notes about the nature of the complaint for further action.

Complaints are linked to corrective action logs.

Complaints can be reviewed by customer or by inventory item for Accounts Receivable and Inventory. A customer invoice can also be flagged as “in dispute” and a debtor complaint raised.

Action logs

The Action List allows you to review and maintain log/list/corrective action details. Logged problems are assigned to specific staff for action. When the complaint has been resolved, the resolution is 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 you have issued, showing the date of issue, the date it became effective and the author.

Audit scheduling

As a part of your organisation’s quality standard certification, it may be necessary to conduct regular audits of your procedures. 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. You can specify how frequently calibrations are needed on each piece of equipment, the method to be used, and the level of accuracy required.

Other funcionality

Quality Management is integrated with other Pronto Xi modules, allowing you access to a range of features that support quality improvement.

Product batch/lot search

Pronto Xi gives you the ability 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 have been scrapped.

Engineering change orders

The Engineering Change Order (ECO) Register allows you to control the updating of a bill of material (BOM) or product specification through a formalised process.

Instigated by service, manufacturing or research and development staff, or by a customer call, these specification changes are monitored and released for action via an approval process. This means that Pronto Xi maintains a complete historical record of all ECOs.

Vendor performance analysis

Pronto Xi allows you to monitor the performance of vendors to check they are meeting your standards or contractual obligations.

Laboratory

You can access the Laboratory module from within Quality Management to monitor test results and ensure product consistency.

Track system settings changes with Engineering Change Orders

Quality Management

| Manufacturing

Foundation

A platform to build on

Technology

Build the foundation for your future

Pronto Xi’s continuous technological innovation enables you to proactively respond to a rapidly changing business environment.

From the ground up, Pronto Xi’s design and architecture focuses on helping you to handle growth and wide-ranging business requirements.

All of Pronto Xi’s applications have been built on the core platform. Thanks to applistructure design and Pronto Connect APIs, you can customise or extend Pronto Xi’s functionality to align the software to your business processes.

Pronto Xi can be flexibly accessed using a web browser on a desktop, laptop or tablet. If you use cloud-based Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software, your staff can access Pronto Xi modules wherever they are, on a variety of devices – and you can benefit from the low cost, quick deployment and hassle-free maintenance that the cloud provides.

Core platform

The core platform underpins Pronto Xi and its modular architecture. It is designed to adapt as the applications scale, expand, extend and grow. Runtime, the relational database, the proprietary fourth-generation programming language (4GL) and the web interface form the main components of the platform.

Every business is different – and so is your use of Pronto Xi. It’s why Pronto Xi incorporates an applistructure solution that makes it easy to customise the software modules to precisely fit your needs. This means our software adapts to your business needs and processes – not the other way around. This means our software adapts to your business needs and processes, not the other way around.

Custom applications

Core applications

Infrastructure

API services

Application services

Foundation

Data dictionary

Message services

Platform abstraction

Resource management

Users and sessions

Runtime engine

Web interface

Combining modern web technologies and extensive user research, Pronto Xi’s web interface frees you from the office desk. You can transact, report and use any Pronto Xi module from anywhere – with zero installation. With designs optimised for tablet devices, Pronto Xi’s web interface means you can keep operating your business flexibly with just a tablet device and a browser.

Enterprise security

As a result of increased adoption of mobile and cloud technologies, along with legislative changes, IT security has never been more important. Pronto Xi incorporates a range of technologies and mechanisms to protect your organisation, giving you enterprise-grade security at all times.

Forms management

Customer-facing and business documents can be easily designed and customised using TrueForm Neo. Manage documents such as sales orders, invoices, purchase orders, pay slips, picking slips and more – and, with a builtin what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) designer, you can customise the output to your business.

Documents can be printed or emailed directly from within the product, reducing the burden of document management.

Developer tools

If you want to undertake your own customisation, we can provide development tools that include rapid application development (RAD) and a software development kit (SDK). These tools are used by our own development and professional services teams.

In addition, you can be confident that we will continue to upgrade Pronto Xi so it’s always compatible with the latest versions of supported operating systems, databases, web browsers and business applications.

API integration platform

Extend the functionality of Pronto Xi by connecting it to your other systems and complementary solutions using Pronto Connect. A comprehensive and scalable API framework and development platform, Pronto Xi equips your systems to exchange data effortlessly, securely and in real time.

Core platform

The core platform of Pronto Xi gives you a robust, enterprise-grade foundation for business success. It is a powerful launch pad for powerful business performance

Where everything clicks

Runtime engine

Runtime “brokers” communication between Pronto Xi applications and the underlying IT platform, providing a layer of abstraction from the operating system (OS) and relational database (RDBMS).

Key features include:

• technology abstraction, which decouples applications from their environment

• ability to execute and manage the applications and general system environment

• high-availability and high-volume transaction processing

Relational database support

Pronto Xi is optimised to provide powerful and flexible relational database support, which delivers high-performance transactional processing both for Pronto Xi applications and for Business Intelligence

Related benefits include data security, handsfree administration, high resiliency, and the ability to scale with your business

Overview of Pronto Xi technology

Customisation

Optimise user efficiency and minimise input errors with Screen Customiser, an administrator-level customisation tool. You can change Pronto Xi screens; create, remove and modify fields; change default values; and even apply rules to data within fields – for any company, group or user.

Change screen prompts and fields

Move screen prompts and fields, edit text, or change font, colour and size.

Change field defaults

Field defaults may be predefined for different operators or different types of operator. For example, you may want the default warehouse to be “SYD” for all Sydney-based operators.

Hide fields, buttons and screen prompts

Where a field is not necessary – because it will always contain the same value or will not be used – it can be suppressed.

Make fields “read-only”

Change an editable field to a read-only field, so the content cannot be altered.

Create linked procedures in Screen Customiser

Mask sensitive field values

Any field containing sensitive information can be either fully or partially masked.

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 that’s separate to the main function of the screen based on user activity. For example, you can calculate 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 processes that 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 these fields to be easily included in regular input screens.

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.

Application Services

The clever Application Services daemon means programs can be scheduled without needing to set up scheduled tasks at the operating system level. All running services are checked at one-minute intervals to determine whether any program is due for execution.

You can set up Application Services to perform backups, run reports and update functions according to predefined values. It can even be used to control such vital functions as end-of-period processing, real-time data synchronisation across databases, streaming updates, and messagebased functions used to communicate between distributed servers, databases and applications.

Processes can be set up to run multiple times during the day, or at any given point in time. Every time a program is executed, it is logged for easy and direct verification.

A single service can be set up to execute a program in multiple companies, either concurrently or consecutively. As all services operate independently, there is no risk that a job will not be executed because the execution of a program by another service has failed.

Message services

Pronto Xi’s Message Bus facilitates the sharing of data between two disconnected Pronto Xi databases or companies. It is ideal for situations where reliable synchronisation between data sets on remote sites is required, such as franchise systems that share a common inventory database or a point of sale (POS) system where redundancy is used.

Data can be selectively shared 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 the message queues and processes the message data. It identifies Pronto Xi datasets both locally and remotely, and automatically handles the exchange of data between datasets on the same physical server.

Message Broker is independent of any communication protocols, so it functions consistently and reliably, regardless of the communication medium it is working over.

Message Broker also incorporates several measures to enhance security and data quality, including message validation routines that ensure what is sent is exactly what is received.

Intelligent business tasks can also be performed without user intervention, such as masking data in certain fields depending on the subscriber. Message Broker also contains a “refresh” function to bring remote datasets into line with a master dataset in case of data corruption or hardware failure.

Extensibility

Message Broker’s service-oriented architecture permits high levels of customisation without compromising stability. At each stage, standard business rules can be replaced with custom business rules 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. You can set up a staging area, allowing master data changes to be held back from broadcast until the desired time – for example, price changes can be sent at a scheduled time ahead of a promotion.

POS redundancy

POS systems that use 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 that 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

With System Administration, you can specify how you intend to use your selected modules. In turn, this will – to a large extent – control the way that Pronto Xi works for you.

While many processes only need to be performed once during installation, you will always have the flexibility to fine-tune your set-up down the track. Additional System Administration functions may be used for ongoing maintenance or “housekeeping”.

The System Administration utility provides a menu of functions for administering Pronto Xi. This provides the ability to maintain certain parts of the Linux system without needing to remember command lines or file formats.

For example:

• Backup/Restore Data

• User Control

• Terminal Control

• Printer Control

• Batch Queue Admin

• Database Control

Roles and securities

User-level access is controlled 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. Wildcards can be used to indicate all functions.

Where multiple companies exist, you can specify which companies or directories each user may access. You can also define what access each user has within each company.

Develop your own roles to define a job function according to your company’s needs, or simply use Pronto Xi’s “out-of-the-box” roles. User-defined functions can also be added 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. You can select a specific date to notify users of an upcoming change of status.

Data masking

To complement Pronto Xi’s tight but flexible functional security, System Administration deploys data masking to restrict access to certain application data. Data masking is also automatically applied in Business Intelligence reporting.

Auditing

Pronto Xi audits many activities within the system and monitors changes to master records and major function flags. This gives you total control over the changes that are made to your system and keeps you informed about which users are making changes.

System Audit can create 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 provides a strong audit capability by recording data changes (insert, delete and update) to key files. Files defined as requiring audit 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 that are 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.

View a detailed audit log of all data changes

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.

You can manage data issues as they arise by correcting master records or perform bulk replacements. DQM will validate the corrected data, removing the issue from the DQM Dashboard.

Business Intelligence administration

With Pronto Xi, you have complete flexibility to ensure your Business Intelligence suite provides the right information to the right people. You can set access controls and user capabilities, as well as other reporting server functions. These include:

• server setup

• URL path maintenance

• data source configuration

• calendar and time dimension settings

Web interface

A modern user interface that performs flawlessly on a range of platforms

Our innovative approach to user experience (UX) design is all about simplifying processes and making you more productive. Using modern web technologies, the web interface delivers a fast and responsive work environment that is accessible no matter where you are or what device you are using.

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 a variety of data entry methods, whether you are 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.

Brilliant and modern

www.I Full Pronto Xi access within a web browser

Elegant and intuitive to navigate

Mobile access

F1

Increased user productivity

Quick to learn and easy to use

Available on a range of devices

Secure connection between web interface and server

WebSocket technology delivers real-time field-level validation

Supports personalisation and shortcuts HTML5 and CSS3

Latest web UX methodologies

Accessible from any mobile device with a 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

Integrated back pane

An integrated back pane allows business system information to be delivered to any 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.

Data grids

Data grids allow you to view Pronto Xi data in a table format. Data can be filtered, sorted and highlighted according to each user’s preferences, and exported to a spreadsheet (such as Excel or Google Sheets) or an XML report.

You can maintain control over data entry by setting personal field defaults. For example, when creating a new customer account, a user may always use a specific customer type. The personal field defaults enable screens to suggest field values appropriate for the user’s role or department.

Data grids will also auto-scale to maximise the full real estate of your display, ensuring you have the best view of your information as you need it.

Links

Quick Links allows you to attach any file, website or network location to anything in the Pronto Xi database. This means you can associate images, documents, spreadsheets, PDF files, movies or web pages with any stock item, customer, supplier, sales order, purchase order line or any other element within Pronto Xi.

Links can be opened directly from the Pronto Xi screen using a toolbar button, streamlining routine tasks.

Field-level validation

The latest WebSocket technology delivers fast user performance and real-time fieldlevel data entry validation, helping to improve productivity and efficiency.

Validation happens at a field level as data entry occurs, not at the end once the form is submitted. Not only does this avoid user frustration due to lag time and data re-entry, it also ensures that 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, integrating with locally installed programs or to communicating with locally attached hardware peripheral.

An example of the web interface

Web

An example of a workspace

Workspaces

Workspaces is an interactive, drag-and-drop canvas that displays real-time information relevant to each staff member. The workspaces facilitate decision-making and priority-setting, and enhance collaboration across your organisation.

Choose from more than 80 key performance indicators (KPIs) and other widgets, then see how you perform against those KPIs in a single click. You can enhance user personalisation with a variety of options for formatting data, including:

• select from a variety of chart types

• view trends over a period of time

• sort, filter and more

Workspaces is an alternative option to Pronto Xi’s right-hand pane, which displays web pages, workflows and company information.

Search

Enterprise Search enables users to quickly find frequently used data or menu functions across modules.

Search all available modules or select the ones that are most relevant. 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 options to:

• maintain or enquire on 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 utilises best practices in application security and offers a range of security settings to keep your organisation safe

Your safety is our priority

Pronto Connect

applications

IBM Cognos

Analytics

Pronto Cloud File Share

Security standards

Pronto Xi adheres to security standards and industry best practices to maximise the security of your organisation – for example, communications use digital certificates and highly secure protocols such as HTTPS and WSS (WebSockets over SSL/TLS).

Regular security penetration testing also helps to ensure that your organisation remains protected against new and evolving security threats.

Application security

Pronto Xi’s administration tools enable user permissions to be controlled through the use of roles and security profiles. Permissions can be scoped to individual companies, modules, screens or functions; through screen customisation, you can even control the individual fields that a user sees.

In addition, you can use data masking to limit the data a user can access. For example, access can be restricted to individual locations, territories, branches, asset groups and more.

These application security capabilities can also help you to achieve segregation of duties (SoD).

Pronto Software

IAM

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 has your security needs 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 can login to Pronto Xi, then access related applications without needing to go through the login process again. This makes 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.

Overview of how Pronto Software Identity and Access Management works

Forms management

Design, produce and distribute documents aligned to your brand with TrueForm Neo, an easy-to-use forms management solution

Your documents, personalised

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 makes it easy to create high-quality, professional forms, including invoices, statements, purchase orders, credit notes, picking slips, pay slips and many others.

Boxes, lines and other graphic elements, as well as images such as company logos, can be accurately positioned wherever required 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) can be automatically converted 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

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 allows you to manage print queues. This enables you to 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 ensures business documents are distributed efficiently. Its features include:

• an intuitive interface to define document distribution rules and workflow

• simplified print queues

• reduced (or eliminated) physical document storage and distribution costs

• automatic conversion of raw Pronto Xi data into professionally published PDF documents for distribution

• dynamically defined document names and save locations for simple archiving

You can also email any Pronto Xi document or report directly from Pronto Xi. This reduces printing and postage costs, as well as the labour costs of folding, addressing and posting documents. By fully automating document delivery, this also reduces the time taken to do a monthly statement run from days to minutes.

Tasks and alerts

Automation and efficiency tools to keep your operations running like clockwork

Intelligent, informative, efficient

Alerts

Alert Intelligence provides automated alerts that facilitate exception management, automation and system integration. It is easy to define which events will trigger a notification, who will be notified, and what action should be taken.

Typical events include an unusually high transaction being processed through Accounts Payable; inventory levels dropping below the minimum; or a service call being allocated to a technician.

Alert Intelligence is not just limited to event monitoring, however. It can also periodically check 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 can use webhooks to easily send data to other business applications, either by calling their APIs directly or by using middleware (such as Zapier or IFTTT) that includes out-of-the-box integration with a large number of applications. This do-it-yourself method enables businesses to build custom integration workflows with little or no development effort.

Alert Intelligence can also be used in conjunction with signed URLs to present users with options that are immediately actionable with a click of a button – for example, accepting a roster or approving a request. This can occur via Pronto Notifier app, a button in an email, a link in an SMS message, or even a button in a Slack channel via webhooks integration.

Notification Action

Purchase Approval Notification

CB2 Pronto Xi Alert Intelligence. Automatically generated email.

19/02/2020 11:41

Purchase order requires approval

Order: 261

Order Details;

Supplier: AMERWATER

Warehouse: 200

Ordered: 12 Mar 2020

Expected Arrival: 14 May 2020

Open order here to approve

Get notified via Alert Intelligence

Home Purchase Date

23 Jan

Pronto Xi Alert – Purchase ...

Pronto Xi Alert Intelligence. Autom...

Notification

Tasks

Task Intelligence extends the functionality of Alert Intelligence to ensure tasks are carried out quickly and efficiently. You can assign staff to carry out particular tasks and automatically synchronise these tasks with each person’s Microsoft Outlook or Microsoft 365 task list.

A range of criteria can be applied to a task, including how the staff member should be notified, how much time has been allocated and the priority of the task. You can also specify a time for a reminder notice to be sent and provide feedback about the status of the task.

Data

Data Intelligence makes it easy for your staff to extract and present data. Data tables can be filtered, sorted and highlighted to suit individual needs, and can be exported to formats including XML, OpenDocument Spreadsheet (ODS), Comma Separated Value (CSV), and Excel.

Data Intelligence also includes a range of tools to help you find and secure information within your data tables. The Data Finder allows you to search for a particular value across multiple tables, while the Table Security tool offers protection for 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.

This app works across the entire supply chain so that you can keep it moving to meet customer demands on time. For example, you can be notified of production downtime or any urgent warehouse replenishment requests – or even purchase order approval requests. The app allows you to click through to Pronto Xi screens from the notification, enabling users to take quick action when they’re away from their desk. In addition, because the app maintains all your alerts in one place, you can action multiple items quickly.

Home

Developer tools

If you are looking to make more extensive customisations to the codebase, your development team can use exactly the same tools that we do

The right tools for the job

Rapid application development (RAD)

Pronto Rapid Application Development (RAD) is a fully integrated fourth-generation language facility that enables developers to extend or generate Pronto Xi applications

– ranging from simple to complex – with minimum time and effort. RAD incorporates the following features:

• data dictionary (database) generation and maintenance

• 4GL – the fourth-generation language that most Pronto Xi applications are written in

• 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

Build and develop extensions to Pronto Xi

Software development kit

The Software Development Kit (SDK) is a resource centre for Pronto Xi developers. The SDK can be used in combination 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 allows the activity of Pronto Xi functions to be tracked, stored and reported. Used by both developers and support teams, this function traces input/output (disk reads/ writes), procedures and the environment that a program has been executed under. It is helpful when testing or troubleshooting custom code changes using RAD.

API integration platform

Global in, global out

Using industrystandard web services architecture, Pronto Connect enables application mobility and allows you to integrate your external applications and platforms with Pronto Xi

Advances in mobile communications have made smartphones and tablet computers inexpensive and widely available. Data transfer between platforms is also inexpensive, while the technologies that enable real-time data transfer are now faster, more reliable and more secure. HTML5 and JavaScript make it possible to create adaptive user interfaces that work on many devices.

APIs

Application programming interfaces (APIs) simplify the exchange of data between unconnected applications or processes. APIs help developers create ways for applications to exchange data freely and efficiently, without human intervention. This reduces data double-handling and human error, allowing for substantial increases in productivity and cost-effectiveness.

The most popular type of API is representational state transfer (REST). Pronto Connect offers standard out-of-the-box RESTful APIs, as well as a development environment that lets you create custom APIs to improve your information flow.

Web services architecture

There are several benefits to using web services architecture instead of traditional “flat file” or field-based API connectivity approaches. These include:

• real-time information exchange, meaning processes can be completed using up-todate information – not yesterday’s data

• user authentication, so only those who are entitled to access and view data can do so

• no need to maintain a flat file transfer mechanism, which saves time and money

• fewer upload or synchronisation errors thanks to a reliable messaging system that ensures requested data is delivered as expected

Technical capabilities

TPronto 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

With Pronto Xi Sync, you can fully leverage the power and functionality of Pronto Xi Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)

Pronto Woven is the award-winning digital consultancy division of Pronto Software. The team’s innovative solutions extend the capabilities of Pronto Xi ERP to transform customer and employee engagement across digital channels.

Businesses often use multiple systems to manage different areas of their operations –and, typically, these systems aren’t integrated. This means it can take hours of manual data exports and imports to build a report or gather insights.

With Sync, you can enhance the customer experience and expand your reach by seamlessly integrating Pronto Xi with other software tools. Connect to Amazon Marketplace, Shopify, Adobe Commerce, WooCommerce, Salesforce, HubSpot and many more. Sync ensures you maintain

“a single source of truth” by enabling data to flow seamlessly between systems without the accompanying growing pains or administrative burden.

All backend data – including online inventory changes and sales orders – is automatically updated in Pronto Xi in real time, removing the need for manual updates between the systems. With a single source of truth, organisations benefit from deep insights across all their operations, helping to maximise revenue and deliver an exceptional omnichannel customer experience

Deployment

Pronto Software has a range of flexible deployment options to suit your implementation needs.

Cloud implementation is a smart solution for most businesses, although on-premises installation is still an option if needed

Secure, scalable infrastructure that is always on

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

Pronto Cloud is the ideal option for businesses looking to lower their costs and remove the complexity of managing their own hardware requirements.

Because Pronto Cloud handles the infrastructure, businesses choosing cloud ERP have significantly lower up-front costs than those choosing on-premises implementation. As well as removing the need to invest in infrastructure, cloud ERP means businesses no longer need to allow for expenses such as ongoing hardware support. Pronto Cloud can also host non–Pronto Xi systems in our data centres, enabling you to remove your server room completely.

Cloud implementation offers advantages for small and medium-sized businesses, in particular. As it is a scalable solution, you can choose the applications you need – without paying for those you don’t.

In addition, Pronto Cloud supports a mobile business environment by giving users have access to their business data, whenever they want and wherever they are. All that is needed is an internet connection.

Data security

Data security is a key consideration for any business. Pronto Cloud uses secure, purposebuilt data centres that are located across Australia. We offer guaranteed uptime rates of 99.99% and multiple backups of your data stored across data centres.

In addition, Pronto Cloud provides a comprehensive security solution that uses 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 and

compliance, and more. All of our systems receive nightly backups, which are replicated automatically across multiple data centres. Data recovery can be performed in a matter of minutes.

Disaster recovery

Pronto Cloud EverSync is a disaster recovery solution that continuously protects business data and enables critical applications to be back online rapidly when disaster strikes. Applications can be up and running again in the cloud in as little as 20 minutes, while data is up-to-date to within 10 seconds before the disaster occurred.

Because EverSync virtualises all business applications, hardware compatibility between active and backup infrastructure is no longer required – which saves costs and headaches.

EverSync also allows disaster situation to be simulated and failover processes tested at any time, ensuring your business is ready when an actual disaster strikes.

On-premises

Pronto Software can also help businesses that need an on-premises solution. Our technical consultants can advise on infrastructure design and modelling, as well as broader IT strategy and future-proofing your IT environment.

In addition, we can offer remote monitoring of your systems and provide strategies for data backup and disaster recovery. Backup and recovery are critical areas for any business, but they are especially important if you are managing your own system implementation. With assistance from the team at Pronto Software, you can ensure your business is protected.

We also offer 24/7 phone support and help desk facilities.

Business Intelligence Overview

Analytics

From a bird’s-eye view

to deep insights

Business Intelligence Visualisations

From a bird’s-eye view to deep insights

Create smart and interactive visualisations with Pronto Xi data to tell rich, engaging business performance stories

Pronto Xi fully integrates with IBM Cognos Analytics, an enterprise-level solution for report authoring and distribution. Providing an enhanced understanding of your data, Pronto Xi and IBM Cognos Analytics empower you to make smart, informed decisions on your business strategies.

Create beautiful interactive reports and dashboards that can be consumed both on the web and on mobile devices. As a result, everyone receives the information they need – while only being able to access to the information you want them to see. Run reports on demand or schedule them in advance so they are delivered at the right time with actionable insights.

Business Intelligence (BI) delivers out-of-thebox operational and financial reports, while IBM Cognos Analytics provides the tools to build custom reports and dashboards that are specific to your requirements.

The Pronto iQ team can also help you to uncover the more advanced features of IBM Cognos Analytics, such as data exploration, to optimise data-driven decisions.

Visualise your data in dashboards, reports, and stories. There are a plethora of widgets available – including charts, tables, key performance indicator (KPI) figures and more –as well as 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. Other sources include Excel, databases and more. These sources can be merged into data models, datasets or specialised Analytics Cubes to create optimised data sources for high-performing visualisations.

Made for the enterprise, IBM Cognos Analytics also comes with in-built access control and security to protect one of your most precious assets – your business data. Create

Authoring Tools

Create and deliver the most compelling datadriven stories about your business with Pronto Xi’s out-of-thebox tools and IBM’s leading data analysis platform, IBM Cognos

Analytics

IBM Cognos Analytics has multiple components, all playing a specialised role to help you manage and get the most out of your data. When IBM Cognos Analytics is combined with Business Intelligence, users have the ultimate power to get the most out of their data.

User tools

BI’s dashboarding capabilities make it easy to explore your data.

Create visualisations simply by dragging fields onto the canvas and letting Cognos Artificial Intelligence (AI) automatically determine the best way to display that information.

Similarly, map creation is as easy as dropping data onto the authoring canvas. With in-built Global Map Intelligence, BI allows you to report at a global level or even at an Australian postcode level. The ability to zoom right down to the street level helps you go from eagle’s eye view to a more localised view on your business data – in one screen.

A simple interface makes deploying insightful dashboards to your organisation faster than ever, while Cognos Functions gives you the ability to craft your own custom calculations.

Through BI Administration, you can set reporting date ranges, user roles, and even security policies for Mobile BI users such as time expiry on cached mobile report content.

Data tools

Enrich your Pronto Xi business transactions data by uploading your own information. Using IBM Cognos Analytics datasets, external data –such as GPS, weather and foot traffic – can be drag and dropped into your reports as easily as your Pronto Xi data, providing you with a deeper understanding of trends and analyses.

Data Modules and Data Sets

A dataset is a smaller subset of your entire business data that can be used in a dashboard or report.

Using a dataset as a source makes it significantly easier to retrieve data on the dashboard. By requiring fewer queries, datasets also reduce the burden on your business database.

When datasets are combined with other sources such as existing packages and uploaded data, they are grouped into data modules to be used on dashboards or reports.

Data Models

BI’s enhanced modelling components enable you to aggregate multiple sources of data, ranging from Excel spreadsheets, relational databases, text files and more.

These fused models can then become the source, allowing you to create meaningful visualisations in the form of reports, dashboards and stories.

Visualisations

Packed with data visualisation tools and in-built artificial intelligence (AI), Pronto Xi easily surfaces the most appropriate visualisation for the data being explored

20/20 vision

Business Intelligence (BI) enables you to analyse data faster and produce stunning dashboards that are easy to create and customise, 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.

KPI Workspaces is customisable, allowing you to include only what you need right now, while aggregated data makes for fast performance. Choose from a wide range of visualisations to display your insights.

Select from pre-defined measures in the KPI Library to easily see how your business is performing.

Designing your own KPI Workspaces canvas is simple, with a user-friendly layout that makes it easy to add the widgets you need and change them as your information requirements evolve. Quickly alter the layout of the widgets, select different chart types and more.

View real-time streaming dashboards

Create customised charts using fused data models

Key performance indicators

KPI Analysis tools allow you to go deeper into your business data, giving you the insights to understand your business performance and to 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, time 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 help you display the data in a meaningful way, making it easy to share your vision with other users, while powerful drill-downs allow you to get to the source of the data for more in-depth analysis.

Powerful drill-downs

Dashboards allow you to access and interact with high-level data in the form of visualisations.

When more detail is needed, it is easy to drill down to the reports that the visualisations were based on and, in turn, drill down further to the underlying data. This can enhance your understanding of the visualisation and help you to consider the impact of a number of variables.

Data stories

Data stories help to improve your audiences’ understanding of business data.

Data widgets can be sequenced in a scene template, and multiple scenes can be created to help tell a business story. You can share and play back these animated story scenes to 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 performance of the business. These include a suite of financial reports, as well as commonly accessed reporting on Pronto Xi’s Sales, Purchasing and Service modules, among others. Instantly check inventory history, revenues, engineer allocations or any other key reports.

You can create real-time reports from live transactional data, or schedule and deliver them via email. Report data can be exported in a wide range of formats to cater to the needs of all users.

IBM Cognos Analytics custom reports

BI is fully integrated with IBM Cognos Analytics, giving you to ability to create a wide range of custom materials. Run, schedule, export, and share reports as required – all in the format you need them in. You can even specify the scope and type of information presented in each report, tailoring it to individual audiences’ needs.

Cognos® custom reporting allows you to author meaningful data displays at any level of the business, 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 any of the details.

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.

With Pronto Xi’s Mobile BI app, you can stay connected on the go, giving you access to your data and the ability to receive alerts on your phone.

Thanks to IBM Cognos Analytics, Pronto Xi users can enjoy the same rich visualisations on their smart devices. The responsive layout allows you to view multiple chart types on your smartphones and tablets, 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.

Data

Behind Pronto Xi’s rich visualisations, a vast amount of data drives the reports you use to make daily decisions

Whether you are accessing KPI snapshots via Workspaces or building real-time reports from transactional data, Business Intelligence (BI) delivers all the answers you are looking for.

For large dataset analytics, Analytics Cubes is a powerful tool that processes high volumes of data at a rapid rate, meaning you no longer need to spend time waiting for your reports to run.

From numbers to insights

Key performance indicators

KPI Library includes a large number of industry-standard key performance indicators (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 own 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 you need it, improving the accuracy and timeliness of your operational reports and monitoring. Real-time operational reports are equipped with in-built filters, giving you greater control over the information that is displayed.

External data

IBM Cognos Analytics makes it easy to upload data from external sources, cleanse it and then use it to create datasets and data modules. By linking this data directly to the Pronto Xi transactional information, you gain deep insights into trends.

Data quality

When you rely on your data to make critical decisions about your business, its quality and integrity of data are of the utmost importance.

Data Quality Management (DQM) provides you with visibility of, and confidence about, the integrity of your data.

DQM monitors your data’s integrity and relationships, and highlights areas that require attention. You will receive alerts 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, DQM can be run in the background, ensuring the quality of the data without impacting on users.

Data tables

Data Intelligence (DI) simplifies the creation of your own data tables. A user-friendly interface makes it easy to create, filter and sort data tables, without the need for advanced technical skills.

In addition, DI Objects allows you to effortlessly merge existing tables, input calculations and other rules, and combine 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 do not have to be an data scientist to uncover insights from interconnected data. IBM Cognos Analytics’ exploration functionality helps you to discover hidden relationships and patterns in complex data. With this information, you can create insightful, simple and easy-to-understand data relationships, which you can then harness in your reports and dashboards.

Next Level Analytics

Make informed strategic decisions quickly with Pronto Xi

Business Intelligence (BI) offers advanced business analytics, with supercharged infrastructure options – using Microsoft Analysis Services and SQL server data warehousing technology – that make reporting on large volumes of complex data even faster. Get your data in seconds, and consolidate multiple servers, datasets and complex company structures to reveal the full picture of your enterprise.

Analytics Cubes

Analytics Cubes is a fast and efficient way to deploy advanced business intelligence infrastructure, for a fraction of the cost of other solutions.

Analytics Cubes supports snapshot data, allowing you to analyse past performance trends and multi-dataset reporting at an enterprise level. Importantly, Analytics Cubes is designed to analyse data, not just store it –and it can do this at a rapid rate.

With this powerful tool, you have the power to combine and consolidate multiple instances of Pronto Xi data, giving you a complete overview of complex business structures and scenarios. You gain the ability to create dynamic “what-if” reporting forecasts, which can help you make decisions and set your business strategy.

ETL Express

From data to diamonds

ETL Express makes it easy to blend Pronto Xi transactional data with existing data warehousing solutions. ETL Express only extracts data that has changed, which makes the extract, transform and load (ETL) process as quick as possible.

Fully compatible with Microsoft SQL Server, ETL Express leverages the power of the SQL Server Integration Services platform to efficiently integrate Pronto Xi data.

1300

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 40 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.

77 66 86)