Edition #22

We’ve recently updated some of our commercial and project management processes and features in QFloors, in order to better serve that sector of the flooring industry. This is due to the fact that we’ve been acquiring more commercial customers lately. While we already have a good number of commercial-only dealers, we also have an even larger number of customers who choose to use the project management side of things, as needed.

Many more customers could be using and benefitting from some of these time-saving features, and are not. There are commercial features that can complement, to various degrees, what you are already doing. You may not all be aware of our recent additions. So I wanted to call attention to some of them in this article.

One thing that has become clear is that our QFloors customers handle their commercial work in a variety of ways. Luckily, there are many possibilities on how people can use QFloors for commercial projects. These features seem to be pretty flexible in how they match up to the range of different applications.

For people who are doing commercial estimating and bidding, we have a new process, where people can use Measure Square to estimate, then export to the Measure Square bid template spreadsheet, and then import into QFloors once a bid has been accepted. This has streamlined the bidding process and importing process into QFloors. Most of our customers are not aware of this feature.

We’ve also added quite a few new videos on our training website support site that address using QFloors for commercial flooring. So if you haven’t looked at the commercial features on QFloors for a while, this is a great way to get a glimpse of what is possible. It’s under our training videos menu on our support site under “Commercial”.

We’re excited about these new refinements and additions, and plan to market more heavily to the commercial sector of the market. QFloors can be a great tool, whether you are residential, commercial, multi-family, or a combination of them all.

In recent articles I’ve talked a lot about business decisions you could or should make based upon having accurate and up-to-date financial information. I’m sure a number of you reading this are doing just that. However, our support department and I help many of you (too many of you) who still don’t understand the importance of getting accurate and staying current with your financial statements.

You never know when you will need those financial statements to be ready to share with a product vendor to get a credit line; a bank for a loan; a CPA for a tax return; or an underwriter to approve an opening of an account.

Just a few weeks ago I was helping a QFloors user who needed to qualify for the underwriting of a new credit card processing account. The underwriting department required financial statements but our QFloors customer was way behind on making adjustments and closing the journal and some of the account balances just didn’t make sense. They had to scramble to make the reports match the tax returns and bring them up to date before they could share them.

Another QFloors user was 2 years behind on reconciling their bank accounts and needed to quickly get them caught up in order to submit their financial statements to the CPA to file the income tax return before the deadline.

Those of you who reconcile bank statements know how time consuming it would be to do that. Especially if all of your transactions hadn’t been recorded yet or were lumped together when they needed to be split apart.

I’ve found that nearly all of these emergency situations can be avoided by early intervention and preparation. I’ve also noticed that most of our customers who don’t keep up with our recommended End of Period Procedures, don’t do so because they lack the confidence to do it. You haven’t reconciled a bank statement before, or you haven’t made a journal entry before, or financial statements are just intimidating because you don’t know how to correct them appropriately.

After all, you’re not an accountant, right?

If you need a hand, QFloors offers accounting services where we can help you with financial statement preparation, quarterly reviews, year-end tasks, etc. for $200/hr.

Or, if you really need help, we now offer a new professional service bundle where you can get: 4 quarterly reviews, an EOPP/End of Period Procedures audit (for one of the four reviews), and an industry benchmarking comparison report for one packaged price. Feel free to contact our sales department for more information on these beneficial services.

In the meantime, know that if you have questions about getting caught up on your financial statements, our experienced trainers and accountants are ready to help you with whatever you need. You don’t have to do this alone, and we would love to assist you when possible.

It’s already August! The days and months seem to go by so quickly. In no time at all we’ll be saying the same thing again: “December is already here!” or “I can’t believe it’s now April!” What you don’t want to say is, “It’s April, and my accountant needs my financial statements, but the balances aren’t correct!”

That’s why I’m urging you to start working now, in August 2023, to make sure you’re not scrambling to get your QFloors financial statements in order.

In particular, make sure you’ve adjusted your QFloors accounting balances so that they match the ending balances from your previous system as of some point in time – what we call a General Ledger Conversion, or GL conversion. Too frequently, I talk with customers who haven’t done that. When you purchased QFloors and got it up and running in your company, you worked through our Getting Started Checklist. On page 10 of that document is a section titled, “Enter Accounting Balances from Previous System.” We also call that a General Ledger (GL) Conversion. Entering those balances is critical to having correct financial statements in QFloors, so if your company is one of the many who stopped at page 9, you need to go back and finish.

That section points out that if you had a full on-site training, the GL conversion is included in that package (so we’ll do it for you!). If you didn’t have on-site training, we’re happy to do the GL conversion for you at our current rate for accounting services (see Account Balance Beginning Entry / GL Conversion Assistance).

If you had a GL conversion done in the past, you might need it done again if your accountant filed an income tax return and you didn’t enter their adjustments in QFloors, and/or didn’t close the journal after entering those adjustments.

If you’ve already done a GL conversion, make sure you follow our End of Period Procedures. If you completed those full procedures last year, we recommend that you do our End of Period Short Procedures monthly or quarterly.

We are genuinely interested in your financial success, and we look forward to helping you along the way as you work on these critical projects!

First, Some News:

We are happy to introduce McKay Ashby, as our new Customer Success Representative. McKay has been an integral part of our company for more than a year, and initially joined our Support and New Customer Care team. He’s excited for this new role, and is ready to use his expertise to enhance your business.

As a Customer Success Representative, he’ll guide you in implementing the specific tools and services we have designed for your success. McKay’s skills have proven to align perfectly with this opportunity, and we eagerly anticipate his fruitful engagement with all of you.

Hiring is an excellent chance to infuse fresh perspectives and talents into your teams, but it can be risky — especially in the sales domain. For a retail flooring business, bringing on a new sales representative requires a significant amount of investment and proper onboarding to ensure their success. In this article, we’ll explore 5 steps you can take to effectively onboard a new retail flooring sales rep.

5 Essential Steps to Onboarding a New Flooring Sales Rep

Step 1: Provide a Clear Job Description and Expectations

The retail flooring industry is unique, with many different types of flooring products and services available. Therefore, it’s crucial to provide a clear job description that outlines your business’s specific expectations and requirements for the new sales rep. This description should include the types of products and services that your business offers, the specific sales goals and targets, and the expectations regarding customer service.

Step 2: Thoroughly Train Them on Your Products and Services

As a retail flooring sales rep, understanding the features and benefits of the products and services that you offer is crucial. The onboarding process should include comprehensive training on the various types of flooring products, their installation process, and any relevant warranties. Additionally, training should include how to measure and price flooring products, as well as how to manage customer expectations during the sales process.

Step 3: Take The Time to Introduce Them to All of Your Team

The retail flooring industry is also unique in that it involves a lot of teamwork between sales reps, project managers, installers, and administrative staff. As such, it is essential to introduce the new sales rep to everyone during the onboarding process. This will help them build relationships with colleagues and understand the roles and responsibilities of each team member. To ensure success, they should be clear on what their new role is and how it relates and impacts everyone else.

Step 4: Provide Them with the Right Sales Tools and Resources

To sell effectively in the retail flooring industry, a new sales rep must have access to various sales tools and resources. These may include product and installation guides, and pricing resources. Additionally, the new sales rep should be provided with access to your business’s CRM system, estimation program, and ERP software to help them manage leads, prospects, customer data, and project workflow. Unbiased plug here, the better your team can learn and apply the features in your software system, the more efficient your business will be.

Step 5: Provide Positive, Ongoing Support and Coaching

The landscape of the flooring industry is ever-changing, marked by the continuous emergence of new products, innovative installation techniques, and evolving customer preferences. Therefore, it is essential to provide ongoing support and positive coaching to your new sales rep. This may include regular check-ins to provide feedback and training on new products or installation methods as they become available.

Effectively onboarding a new retail flooring sales representative is essential for their success in the industry. By following the above steps, you can ensure that your new hire is well-prepared, well-supported, and ready to succeed in their role. As they progress and gain experience, your company offering will reach new heights.

Learn how to maximize productivity (and profitability) in your business. Ask your most pressing business & technology questions to other successful dealers and QFloors management. And do it all, surrounded by the breathtaking scenery of Zion National Park.

The QFloors Users Conference will run Nov 1-4, 2023. Trainings and roundtable discussions will be held in the mornings, leaving you plenty of time to enjoy the great outdoors (hike, bike, jeep, UTV, canyoneer, golf, explore, etc.). Or you can shop, visit the on-site spa, or simply relax in the beautiful setting. The entrance to the national park is a short walk, adjacent to our hotel property.

The Itinerary

We have some of the itinerary already planned, but some training classes are still being nailed down, because we’re letting attendees vote on topics most helpful to them. (Just another reason to sign up now!)

General Sessions will include:

• Training on new features and developments
• Reviewing integrations possible with QConnect (things like showroom QR codes, digital marketing & websites, room visualization, review requests, etc.)
• Helpful QReporter reports you might be missing out on
• QPay – surcharging, pay now requests, and other cool things you can do
• Dealer to Dealer Q&A’s
• Dealer to Dealer presentations (what is working well for others)
• New development discussions, including the latest updates on QPro

Breakouts that are currently being considered include:

• Large Project Management/Progressive Billing
• Financial Fundamentals (managing lists, closing journal, end of period procedures, cleanup, etc.)
• Financial Benchmarking (where you stand compared with industry averages, understanding the ratios and how & where you can improve)
• Advanced Warehousing and Bar Coding
• Digital Marketing
• Measure Square
• Inventory Reconciliation

This is not a finalized itinerary, because, as previously mentioned, we are still gathering feedback from those who have registered. But it gives you a pretty good idea of what to expect.

Anything But Boring

Speaking of feedback, customers tell us that one of their favorite things about QFloors Users Conferences is the high level of collaboration and engagement. This is NOT a tedious software training class with an instructor droning on to glassy-eyed participants. This is an opportunity to participate in high-energy and practical discussions about how to make your business better in every way.

The conference fee is $600 and includes training costs and most meals. Your lodging and transportation is additional. The conference will be held at Cable Mountain Lodge in Springdale, Utah. We have arranged for a 20% discount on lodging for all conference participants. You must call them to make your booking, and mention you are with QFloors in order to get the discount.

However, Cable Mountain is almost completely booked up, and so we also have another less expensive option, Springhill Suites, which is down the road. QFloors customers have a discounted rate there as well. If you’re interested, please call Irene (ext.112) for more information about booking accommodations there.

Have Questions?

If you have any other questions about the conference, feel free to reach out to irene@qprosoftware.com or chris@qprosoftware.com.

Wow, how time flies when you’re having fun! July has come and gone and now is the time to start thinking about Year End 2023! Can you believe it? We always recommend you go through our End of Period Procedures before the end of the year.

Ideally, you are doing some monthly procedures and closing your journal monthly. You can always run through these short procedures a few times a year, quarterly, halfway through the year, or even at year end. Even if you are not closing monthly, we want you to get to where you are at least closing at the year end.

The important thing to know is there are a few steps that have to be done before the end of the year (the rest can be done after).

See our full instructions on our support website under > Knowledge Base > End of Period Procedures.

I know getting started can be a little overwhelming. The first step you can take is to make sure you are caught up on your job costing. Call our support department for guidance – there are a few things we can spot check for you, and can give you a little homework.

Just know, all of the steps begin with making sure you are caught up on job costing. Catching up on your job costing is the number one, most important step in the process.

Here is what you’ll need to look at:

Sales Screen:

1. InProcess All List – this should be a list of sales that are still currently in process.
2. Make sure there are no payments on Proposals. Once your customer makes a payment, the sale should be turned into an order.
3. Make sure your receivables list is accurate. This should be a list of your completed sales where your customer still owes you money.

Materials Screen:

1. No Bill List – this needs to be a list of materials that you are still waiting on a bill for.

Bills Screen:

1. Current Bills List – should be a list of bills that you currently still owe.

We also have some fun tools to utilize, and always recommend running them before closing the journal or giving your accountant any financial reports. These tools do not change anything or finalize anything; they just run a report so you can see if things are saving correctly or if there are any problems.

Again, our full instructions can be a little daunting at first, but don’t hesitate to reach out to us for help. We can break things down for you, or tell you what steps to take if you find a problem.

This year, we’ve been thrilled to offer several training webinars exclusively for our valued customers. These engaging sessions offer hands-on training, valuable insights, and the latest updates on the software. Keep an eye on your inbox for webinar invites or stay tuned on our QFloors Users Facebook Group page for early announcements. If you haven’t been receiving our emails, refer to my last QNews article here for guidance.

QPro Roundtable: What to Know About QPro in 2023

At the start of the year, Chad Ogden (QFloors CEO) and Licia Bailey (QPro Director of Engineering/Web Services) gave an update on QPro development and the progress that had been made up to that point. A demonstration of recent QPro features followed.

QPay and QFloors 9.050 Updates

Last April, Chad Ogden went into depth about new features in QPay (previously known as QProPay) and QFloors version 9.050. There were a lot of customers who attended, and a lot of Q&A during the webinar. If you view the video on YouTube and click on the description, there is a list of timecodes and chapters to help you navigate to specific topics.

Measure Square – Guest Webinar with Jim Riherd

In our most recent webinar, Chad met with Jim Riherd (VP Operations, Measure Square) to discuss common estimation software misconceptions in the flooring industry, as well as how to utilize QFloors’ estimation software integration to further streamline processes. Again, there were a lot of questions and details covered, so I recommend you view the webinar on YouTube and click on the description to view specific questions and answers.

What’s Next?

Because of how helpful these webinars have proven to be for customers, we will continue to hold webinars on a bimonthly basis. We’re also excited to officially announce that our next webinar will take place on Thursday, August 24, and will feature Chad Ogden talking about using commercial features and processes within QFloors.

Commercial business has become a hot topic as of late, and we want to make sure our customers who are in commercial or who use project management know about specific QFloors features. So be on the lookout for registration details for this extremely useful and informative webinar.

Your Feedback Matters!

We’ve been brainstorming topics for future webinars, and we value your feedback, as it helps us serve you better. If you want to suggest a specific webinar topic for the future, please fill out our webinar feedback form here. We’re eager to hear your ideas and want to continue to provide training material that meets your specific needs.

In Conclusion / Some Final Reminders:

As you join our training webinars, consider following these quick tips for a seamless experience:

• Mute your microphone to avoid distractions.
• Take advantage of the Q&A feature in Zoom Webinars to ask questions — we’re here to help!
• Review this article on Zoom Webinar participant controls and options for familiarity.
• Even if you can’t attend a webinar in real-time, signing up ensures that you’ll receive an email with the recording link 1-2 days after the webinar.
• Bookmark our support site’s webinar page for easy access to webinar and training video recordings.

We’re excited to continue these enriching webinars and look forward to having you join us on the next knowledge-packed session. Together, let’s thrive and grow!

Here at QFloors, we proudly associate with the fcB2B organization, a coalition of manufacturers, contractors, suppliers, distributors, and software vendors within our industry, who are dedicated to helping flooring-related software programs speak seamlessly to each other.

We’ve also been trying to increase our efforts to better serve customers using the B2B functionality in QFloors and in our web-based QPro.

New SFTP migrations:

For those who don’t know, SFTP (Secure File Transfer Protocol) is a security update that uses secure shell encryption to provide a higher level of security for sending and receiving file transfers. As time continues to pass, more vendors are starting to switch to this newly updated SFTP security system.

The current vendors that have migrated or created a new system environment to use SFTP are Mohawk, Happy Floors, Shaw, United Tile, Certified Flooring Distributors, JJ Haines, Surface Art and Emser.

Karndean, Kraus and Dixie are vendors that are in a pending stage of migrating to the SFTP protocol. Going forward we will broadcast future vendors that have been certified using SFTP protocol with QFloors.

New vendors who are fcB2B certified with QFloors:

On our website we have a list of vendors who are currently B2B certified with QFloors. Each vendor has their own individual link, which can provide additional information on how to communicate with them. You can also see the current fcB2B documents that are certified.

We welcome all new vendors who’ve become B2B certified with QFloors, as well as those who have expanded their B2B/EDI presence.

The most recent vendors to be certified are:

• SOCI
• Karndean Design Flooring (SFTP—Live date is September 1, 2023)

Reach out to these vendors today, and request this communication and time-saving function.

The following vendors are in the pre-certification stage with QFloors:

• Benjamin Moore & Co.
• Floor and Decor
• LFishman

Don’t forget to utilize Web Services:

Web Services is continuing to evolve and increase its service in our industry.

Web Services within QFloors is a free service to all current customers. I urge you to get on board, for your own benefit. We have videos, documentation and human resources to help you get started. Additionally, if you want more information and updates when it comes to web services, the fcB2B website is also a good resource.

Don’t wait or worry about implementing all the tremendous benefits of B2B. Here at QFloors, we are ready to help step you through it. Please contact us in regards to any fcB2B questions.

Taking advantage of Web Services can help you save time, lower stress and boost profits. Let us know how we can help you get started.