invoicing help!

[melissarae]

i'm in need of a custom billing/invoicing software that will do a couple of things for me... i need a customer catalog & product catalog.... and keep track of profits/unpaid balances that sort of stuff... but my biggest issue is the actual invoice itself.

we own a produce company. we deliver to a large chain of well-known grocery stores. each product has a PLU#. each product comes in quantities that are measured in either count or weight. the count or weight is different for each product and the price is per count or per weight. for instance, Plantains are measured in counts and cost $0.29 per count. so it looks like this:

PLU# Item CT/WT PRICE/UNIT TOTAL
1234 Plantains 65 ct. $0.29 $18.85


the grocery store orders 2 bunches of Plantains, so the total price for that item would be $37.70 because Plantains come in bunches of 65/ct. the receiver at the grocery store has to see on the invoice the quantity (which would be 2) and the PLU# and the total price.

i cannot for the life of me find an invoicing/billing software that can do this for me. i've been trying to create one in Numbers, but i can't get the VLOOKUP to work right or figure out how to make it automatically count out the invoices whenever a new one is created and that sort of stuff.

sorry if this is too long and confusing... i'm getting desperate though... we really need to find a way to electronically produce these invoices. right now everything is done by hand and takes forever to do!

thank you so much for all your help. (i will be out of town till monday, so if i don't reply right away that's why.)

 

[reclusivemonkey]

You cold use a spreadsheet for an invoicing system, but you would be much better off with an database or a dedicated application. What you are describing seems perfectly normal, so I think pretty much any application you could find would do this. What have you tried so far?

 

[teleromeo]

Have a look at Filemaker Pro. It's a relational database with reporting and scripting abillities. You can download a 30-day trial before purchasing at filemaker.com

 

[melissarae]

i've looked into pretty much all the freebie invoicing software... and i've looked into those with 30-day free trials (filemaker pro included)... they all work beautifully... however, i'm unable to have them do the math for me as far as having the PLU# and the equation with the count/weight. everything i've looked at only has the normal/basic QUANTITY, ITEM DESCRIPTION, UNIT PRICE, TOTAL... which won't work for what i need.

any suggestions?!

 

[CanadaRAM]

Have a look at Filemaker Pro. It's a relational database with reporting and scripting abillities. You can download a 30-day trial before purchasing at filemaker.com

Umm... yeah, that's like someone asking for recommendations for furniture and getting a suggestion of where you can chop down some good trees.

Building an invoicing/inventory system from scratch in Filemaker is a long and demanding job to do right.

Filemaker has some pre-canned solutions that you can purchase, and you may be able to find some solutions already made through the community of Filemaker developers. These won't be cheap however, and they WILL need a little or a lot of customization to tailor them for your specific requirements.

What is your budget range? You can have it cheap, or fast or good. But not all three.

A Filemaker consultant/programmer can take a basic template and modify it to suit - you'll want to describe in writing, and in accurate detail, exactly how your business requires the stock and invoicing. With a good decscription of the process, a programmer should be able to give you a quote.

See if you can find a copy of Filemaker Advisor magazine on your local newstand. Or go to http://developer.filemaker.com/search/ or http://developer.filemaker.com/solutions/ or
http://www.fmpro.org/

There are a fair number of customizable business databases available.

 

[melissarae]

wow! thank you very much! i think that'll get me pointed in the right direction ;o)