MRSware Documentation - MRSware Sales and Commissions

Navigating MRSweb: How To Get Around

12/7/2016

There are 3 main navigation elements in MRSweb:

1. The Home page icon, shown in the green circle above.

Click here to return to the main application page from anywhere in the app.

2. The drop-down Navigation menu, shown in the red circle above.

Click this down-arrow icon to get the shortcuts menu, allowing for quick navigation to any of the main functional areas of the app.

3. The web browser's Back button.

Go directly to the previous page by clicking the Back button. If in a mode where the web browser's button bar is not showing, sometimes scrolling down or right-clicking in the background of the page will preset the "Back" option (depends on browser and OS).

Bulk Update Companies' Categories from the Customers Listing

9/22/2016

Users can set up companies' categories from the Customers table. (Steps 1 - 5)

You can take this one step further and set up contacts' categories from the results of the companies' category. (Steps 6 - 10)

One of the more common usages for this two step process is for setting up contacts to sync with mobile devices using MRSware Sync*.

Here's how:

1. Click on Customers in the Shortcuts panel or on the Shortcuts toolbar
2. Right-click on a name in the Sales Rep Column and select Filter -> By Selection

Video - How to Send Out Bulk E mails

7/22/2016

"The CAN-SPAM Act establishes requirements for commercial messages, gives recipients the right to have you stop emailing them, and spells out tough penalties for violations." These are rules that all commercial emailers have to follow, which includes you if you are sending out bulk emails.

https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/can-spam-a...

Student Number

6/13/2016

The Student Number is a field available on the Student record (Add/Edit Student dialog). The field is free-form in that any characters (letters, numbers, combinations of those) can be used, following any format that is desired and useful to your company.

The Student Number appears in a couple of places in MRSware for easy reference:

The Add/Edit Student dialog is where the Student Number is entered and updated.
The Student tab on an individual Class shows the Number and Name of the Students.

Q & A:
2. In Student Class Record there is a field for student number. Where does that number come from?

This field isn't used for anything in MRSware itself, it is just a field that is there for your internal use. For example, you could enter something like "Non-Member" or "Member" to be able to quickly see in the Edit Class dialog which of the Students were which... In other words, feel free to use the Student Number field for anything that you like to immediately see next to the Students' Names in a Class and Student Listing.

3. Does mrsware generate a unique customer number for each contact record? Is it currently hidden? Could it be visible? Could it then be applied to their"student number" for any class and follow them through their life with MRERF?

MRSware does not auto-generate a Student Number. You would enter the desired designator (doesn't have to be just a number) when creating the Student's entry in the system.

We will use the student number as a study group number.

Member vs. Non-Member Tuition

6/13/2016

We have 2 Tuition fields available in MRSware. The first is on the Class, and the second is on the Course Term. These 2 fields can be used in various ways, and, as always, should be discussed to make sure they are used consistently.
In MRERF's usage, we have 2 different Tuition amounts that apply to students. The first is a "Member" Tuition, the second is a "Non-Member" Tuition. A Student Category has been created to designate a particular student as Member or Non-Member by checking the appropriate box.
The decided on usage in order to get the proper Student Tuition amount for the Class Master List report, is to use the Class Tuition as the Member tuition amount; and the Course Term Tuition for the Non-Member tuition amount.
I.e. when "Member" is the checked student category, the report will show that the student is liable for the Class' listed Tuition amount; when the "Non-Member category is checked, the report will show the Course Term's listed Tuition amount.
In the absence of a checked category, which will be the case for all existing entries prior to this usage being decided on, the Student will be considered a "Member".

Badge Name

6/13/2016

The Badge Name field in the Class Master List report is currently pulling from the Salutation field of the Contact. Salutation was specifically designed for this use, where the proper, full name of the contact is in the regular name field and their preferred name is in the Salutation.
For example, "Robert Smith" might like to generally be called "Bob Smith". In this usage, the Certificate Name (First Name in MRSware) would be "Robert", the formal usage; while the Badge Name would be "Bob", for the informal usage.

We are going to use "Salutation" for badge name! :)

Great. Personally, I think it is convenient to do it there, next to the regular first and last name area, so that all changes to someone's name or badge is on one screen.

Reply Automatically with a Template

5/16/2016

Do you get a very common question via email, have an online lead form, or other process that you respond to with an email Template? You can automate that process using a "Reply with Template" Email Rule. When an email is received matching criteria (such as a specific Subject), the Email Rule Replies to the email sending a Template that is stored in MRSware.

Be Prepared, Be Professional, Be Productive

2/16/2016

In July of 2008 I wrote a blog - "Jack Berman's Call Organizer" - about the way I used to prepare for sales calls when I was a manufacturers representative. In the blog I talk about how and why I did this and how successful it was for me.

What I forgot to mention is the time it took to do the preparation. Jack told us (1991, CPMR 101 students) it should take about 15 minutes per call. It often took me much longer to prepare for a call. Here are the steps I took initially:

* went over each manufacturer's reports for sales numbers TY vs LY
* went over each manufacturer's reports (if available) to see what SKU's they were buying
* tried to remember what we talked about the last time we met or talked
* wrote down what I wanted to accomplish during the meeting

Over time the steps changed slightly:

Order Entry Discount Fields

1/20/2016

The Discount Field in Order Entry has two options:

1. Discount by %
2. Discount by $

News mail item filtering

12/10/2015

Add a MRSweb Shortcut/App Icon to Home Screen

10/30/2015

Each mobile device has the ability to add shortcuts to your favorite web apps to the Home screen of the device. Here are the instructions for some of the most popular ones:

MRSweb Charts! Sales and Activity Visualizations

10/12/2015

These consolidated charts each have independent Y-axis on the left- and right-sides. The bars in the chart go with the axis on the left; the line on the chart goes with the axis on the right. This 2-axis system allows for both better use of page space on smaller devices as well as an interesting comparison of the relationship of the metrics involved... For example, if sales are going up but commissions are staying the same (e.g. in a case of decreased commission rates), this would be visible as a greater increase in the relative size of the bars vs the line; likewise a greater increase in the number of sales calls vs the time spent on each would show in the same way on the Activity chart.

4 Ways to Filter your Lists, by Example

10/2/2015

There are several handy ways to filter the listings in MRSware to show just the information you are interested in at the moment.

Here is a little summary of the options in the form of a usage example for each:

Email Quick Filter: show the top senders

9/2/2015

Is your News folder getting a little full, want to clean it up by looking at the most frequent senders? The Quick Filter function filters the message list to show the message from the top senders. This is a quick way to filter your Inbox, News or other folders in order to follow-up, read, or delete in bulk the most frequent senders' messages.

Closed Opportunities, Expenses and Revenue from Project Printout

8/26/2015

The Project Printout report -- a report that is run for an individual Project, summarizing that entry and its linked items -- can optionally include some totals from those linked items. Total costs vs. revenue, and the deal close rate give valuable insight to the profitability of a project.

Data Analysis Totals for Company with Branches

8/17/2015

If you want to see totals - sales and/or commissions - for a company that has several branches, go to Data Analysis.

Here's how to pull up the sales totals for each branch and for the company as a whole:

Unpaid Commissions

8/5/2015

If you would like to be able to send to your Principals a list of the invoices with unpaid commissions that are overdue, here's how:

Using the Line Items section of an Invoice to capture notes and misc. info.

7/28/2015

If you would like to capture additional information on an invoice, so you have it there for future reference or to send to a partner when you are capturing Orders, a good place to put it as a Line Item on the Invoice. Line Item Descriptions have always been customized for such things as private label goods or product variations that are available from the vendor, but there is nothing to say we can't make available any kind of detail about the order that could be helpful.

The Issued Checkbox on Invoices

7/25/2015

The checkbox originally called "Paid" has been renamed "Issued" in an effort to reduce confusion with the Payment Entry screen, to which Issued is unrelated.

Invoice Entry

Functionality has been added to the Invoices in MRSware to designate them as Issued or Not-Issued. The intended use of this checkbox is to indicate the state of an invoice for those Users who may do any of the following:

enter an order before an invoice is shipped,
enter an invoice before a manufacturer sends the agency a copy,
generate their own invoices to customers, or
have other special-case invoices that need to be logically separated from other, paid invoices.

This checkbox is simply an indicator for the User, so that they can differentiate a group of invoices from the others. Such as, "the Invoices with the Issued box not checked are ones that are waiting for confirmation from the vendor; when I get confirmation, I check the Issued box".

MRSware Passwords

7/17/2015

Lately we have been getting a lot of questions about the passwords in MRSware. There are three different places where passwords are used in MRSware.

MRSware Desktop login – this is the main password that allows you to login and access your MRSware information – companies, contacts, activities, sales history, files, etc.
MRSware Mailbox – if you use MRSware as your e-mail provider you will have a separate mailbox password
MRSweb login – this is a third and separate password for access to the mobile version of MRSware via a web browser. You can use your web browser (Chrome, Safari, Foxfire,etc.) to access MRSweb on your desktop, laptop, smartphone, or tablet – companies, contacts, activities.

You can use the same password for all three, but we don’t recommend doing so. For security reasons we suggest you set separate passwords for all three. But if you do use the same password, try to use a core password and add a couple of characters to it.

Spam & it's folder; the Blocked List & the expectation

7/16/2015

Why do we deliver email to the Spam folder? Because the filtering is never going to be 100% accurate. If we didn't have a Spam folder, we would have no way to recover those messages that are not really spam.

Why when I use the Blocked Senders List to block an address or domain does it still continue to go to the Spam folder? Mistakes are made (quite often), and without the Spam folder there would be no way to recover those emails that were mistakenly blocked.

So we need that darn Spam folder, but it is indeed a productivity drain to have everyone in the company reviewing their spam folder all the time, especially since lots of the spam we all receive is sent to everyone in the company -- the same spam message, multiple mailboxes. What do we do to get back to productive time with email?

We introduce the company-wide spam folder, the Spam Filter Portal. This pre-delivery filtering holds all of the most egregious spam messages from being delivered to each User's Mailbox, in a central place where one, assigned person at each company can review and release any messages that were caught in error.

MRSweb - How to enter a Journal using your phone's Speech-to-Text function

6/8/2015

Can we talk? Have you ever known a successful sales person that was at a loss for words? Let's use this ability to easily enter call reports into MRSweb.

Here's the scenario:

You've just finished a sales call, sales meeting, training session, etc. You want to enter some notes about what happened during the call and what your next steps are. You use your smartphone to enter these details into MRSweb using your phone's Speech-to-Text function.

Here's how:

MRSweb - Use the Filter button to easily find companies and contacts

6/4/2015

In MRSweb, instead of scrolling through a long list when you're looking for a specific company or contact, use the "Filter" option to quickly find your company or contact. Think of this as the MRSweb Quick Contact Selector.

Here's how:

Spam Filtering: Blocking Non-Existent Mailboxes, SPF Records, and Best Practises

5/29/2015

Spam email is a productivity killer in the business. This is true both on the receiving side, where we have to monitor to make sure we are not missing important communications; as well as on the sending side, where we cannot be absolutely sure that our emails are always seen by the intended recipients. However, there are rules and best practices to follow that can enhance the effective filtering on both sent and received emails. Here are some of those rules:

Generic CSV Invoice Import Wizard User Manual

5/22/2015

The Generic CSV Invoice Import Wizard saves time and entry errors by allowing you to take a spreadsheet, convert it to a free-form Comma Separated Values (CSV) file and translate the data into MRSware invoices.

Invoice Import Wizard User Manual

Because MRSware is not a static entity, parts of the User Manual may be out of date. Check back periodically to view the new additions and changes to the User Manual.