Large Show Workflows
Hello,
I have been browsing the forum for a week or two now looking for info to help us with our larger projects. We have been on Flex since 2017 and this has been a constant issue, and have tried many workarounds but it's still causing us trouble.
So our large shows involve multiple stages or rooms, many complex with lots of kit booked for each one. Originally the thought was to use subtotals to break out each room and section. This works very well on the sales side of things but is an unmitigated disaster on the shop side. When we generate a pull sheet these subtotals carry over, but we cant choose what order to prep them on. I have a crew pulling Stage 1 and another crew pulling stage 2, but when they scan items on the pull sheet it fills them in order on the list and not based on what subtotal they are working on. This would mean crews pulling a subtotal may see something another shop crew filled and assume they dont need to pull it.
I put in a request to Flex a few years back to have functionality to select a subtotal on the scan screen, and only scan items into that subtotal. Never heard anything back on that and assume that functionality will not be added.
To work around this, we started doing Event Folders and creating a different quote for every stage/room. This helped our organization, and the shop liked this. However, it was a problem for billing. I just finished a large convention that had 8 quotes associated with it, but the client expected a single invoice for the project. So what I end up doing now is either creating a dummy invoice, and once it's paid run the individual invoice workflows and delete the dummy invoice, or just create all the invoices and make a dummy invoice in MS word. This has not been a huge deal but as we are growing and gaining more office staff and trying to do better on the accounting/Quickbooks side we really need an easy/turnkey solution to have single invoices for large projects that accurately push info to QBO.
I have seen multiple posts on the forum here about adding a single event invoice and being able to schedule incremental invoices from that, but again no sign that functionality is coming.
So now what I have been doing is going back to the single quote (at least for the not super large projects), and doing partial pull sheets. So I generate a pull sheet, and select each group of subtotals and create a partial pull sheet. Only problem is that I feel like this function is either not complete or not fully functional. There is nothing in the online resources that even references it.
The problems I run into with it are that it does not delete the items from the original pull sheet, that needs to be done manually. And it breaks all links to the quote, which logs double for availability. This still also requires a ton of manual office work to get ready for the shop. Having a pull sheet function similar to this but allowed us to pull just sections of a quote onto separate pull sheets would be a huge help, but I have my doubts even if I requested that it would go anywhere.
So really, the point of my post is to see if anyone (Flex staff or otherwise) has a solution for us. To recap, we need the ability to propose and plan large conventions and shows that involve multiple rooms and stages organized on the billing for the client. Have a single invoice that our sales team can send the clients and be broken down into deposit schedules, while retaining links to the original equipment/GL codes for our accountants. And lastly be friendly for the shop crew to be able to prep and scan these multiple stages and rooms concurrently, paperless, and without creating duplicate availability issues.
Cheers,
Evan
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Hi Evan,
Sorry to hear you're struggling with this. It's a pretty common issue in my experience.
Here at Square Wave, we have spent a lot of time discussing these issues (and others like them) and developing solutions to address them. For example, we love using Event Folders and multiple child Quotes to organize jobs, for a variety of reasons. Our Smart Proposal and Smart Invoicing reports have then been developed to make it more straightforward to quote and invoice a whole job as one. We also have some other report-based and procedural solutions that can help in this area.
Reach out to hello@squarewave.com.au to book an introductory chat if you'd like to hear more - we'd love to hear from you!
Cheers,
Bigs
Square Wave - Endorsed Flex Consultant
www.squarewave.com.au -
Partial pull sheets seem to work ok for us as long as 1) you make sure that every single item on the original pull sheet ends up on a partial pull sheet, and 2) you don't make changes to any of the pull sheets once the partials are created.
We leave all the items on the original pull sheet to ensure links are pushed downstream to the partials and nothing breaks.
My wish list for partial pull sheets would be a way to process return scans to the original (or master pullsheet/manifest). Returning non serialized items on a large show is a challenge for us when using partial pull sheets. -
We use partials a bunch but definitely not perfect. If you leave the items on the original pull sheet does it not hit you twice on availability, since thats acting as a new document with no links?
When it comes to non serialized items we have pretty much given up on that. When we first got Flex a while ago we had many but it became impossible to properly keep track. Now anything that matters is serialized (including cable, rigging, etc) and if its not serialized we don't care about proper inventory control on it. Our shop uses free scan in to return everything since we are in a small shop and sometimes have multiple shows returning at a time.
What would be an awesome feature request is if there was a way to generate pull sheets based on subtotals instead of the whole document. or even include the ability to add "sections" to a quote separate from subtotals. That way you have have separate rooms, stages, venues, etc. on the same quote with multiple subtotals (LX, audio, video) but when you generate equipment lists it breaks it down by section.
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if you are still trying to figure this out, reach out to me as we have a process setup in Flex that works for us. k.larson@powerpluspro.com
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