Billing Software/Business Software/Offsite Backup

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mkrenk

Member
We are a growing electrical contractor with three locations and approximately 20 employees currently. We specialize in industrial electrical. We do everything from 7 digit projects to $60 service calls. Much of our work is on the service side. One location has every employee reporting to that shop daily. The other two don't necessarily have employees starting or ending their day at a shop.

We have been trying to figure out how to proceed with a computer system that would help us manage the business. (Note, we are currently using Quickbooks) Some of the desires are:

Payroll (automated vs handwritten sheets would be nice) A way to code hours to specific jobs would be nice. NOTE-We have negotiated rates for specific customers.
Importing material lists from our vendors by PO, to creating a customer invoice from this PO (Note, we have negotiated margins per customer)
PO creation and tracking
Ability to reconcile vendor invoices to materials billed
Ability for multiple users at multiple locations to be able to view customer accounts, and input invoices at a minimum
Some means of offsite data backup
Some means to translate what our field employees are recording as material used, to an invoice via an employee in the future that may not know much about electrical work or materials.


I guess what I am looking for are people that are in a similar situation as us, and what they are using and how it is working for them. I know that we have material that we are using that is not getting billed out. I suspect it may be in the 6 digit range per year, upper 5 digit range for sure. Right now we have Quickbooks running on one PC with no offsite backup which is a disaster waiting to happen. We can't afford to do nothing.



OFFSITE BACKUP-
What are others using for offsite backup? I hear ads all the time for the Mosy's and Carbonite's of the world....but I am not sure that is what we want. I would like to do this on all of our PC's. I would also like to establish a server that we can store project files on unless there is a "cloud" version that is good.

What we need more than anything is a good IT person to help with this, instead of me.

This is my first post. I have been watching and learning for some time. There is sound advice on this forum. Thank you all in advance!
 

LEO2854

Esteemed Member
Location
Ma
We are a growing electrical contractor with three locations and approximately 20 employees currently. We specialize in industrial electrical. We do everything from 7 digit projects to $60 service calls. Much of our work is on the service side. One location has every employee reporting to that shop daily. The other two don't necessarily have employees starting or ending their day at a shop.

We have been trying to figure out how to proceed with a computer system that would help us manage the business. (Note, we are currently using Quickbooks) Some of the desires are:

Payroll (automated vs handwritten sheets would be nice) A way to code hours to specific jobs would be nice. NOTE-We have negotiated rates for specific customers.
Importing material lists from our vendors by PO, to creating a customer invoice from this PO (Note, we have negotiated margins per customer)
PO creation and tracking
Ability to reconcile vendor invoices to materials billed
Ability for multiple users at multiple locations to be able to view customer accounts, and input invoices at a minimum
Some means of offsite data backup
Some means to translate what our field employees are recording as material used, to an invoice via an employee in the future that may not know much about electrical work or materials.


I guess what I am looking for are people that are in a similar situation as us, and what they are using and how it is working for them. I know that we have material that we are using that is not getting billed out. I suspect it may be in the 6 digit range per year, upper 5 digit range for sure. Right now we have Quickbooks running on one PC with no offsite backup which is a disaster waiting to happen. We can't afford to do nothing.



OFFSITE BACKUP-
What are others using for offsite backup? I hear ads all the time for the Mosy's and Carbonite's of the world....but I am not sure that is what we want. I would like to do this on all of our PC's. I would also like to establish a server that we can store project files on unless there is a "cloud" version that is good.

What we need more than anything is a good IT person to help with this, instead of me.

This is my first post. I have been watching and learning for some time. There is sound advice on this forum. Thank you all in advance!


Hello Welcome to the forum..:)

I use this for my business , if your doing all service work it's a great system , it generates a stock list for each job,and keeps a record of it all.:thumbsup:
 

Fulthrotl

~Autocorrect is My Worst Enema.~
I guess what I am looking for are people that are in a similar situation as us, and what they are using and how it is working for them. I know that we have material that we are using that is not getting billed out. I suspect it may be in the 6 digit range per year, upper 5 digit range for sure. Right now we have Quickbooks running on one PC with no offsite backup which is a disaster waiting to happen. We can't afford to do nothing.

OFFSITE BACKUP-
What are others using for offsite backup? I hear ads all the time for the Mosy's and Carbonite's of the world....but I am not sure that is what we want. I would like to do this on all of our PC's. I would also like to establish a server that we can store project files on unless there is a "cloud" version that is good.

What we need more than anything is a good IT person to help with this, instead of me.

i moved everything to apple and OSX two years ago, and find it a much better solution for me.

having stuff in the "cloud" is all well and good until something goes poopie, and your data is
in tallahassee somewhere, and you can't run your biz until it gets downloaded.

the thing about OSX that i like is that with a $30 program, you can effortlessly clone a mirror
of your servers boot drive that you can plug into a USB port, and boot from, and continue working.

so, if you have a catastrophic hard drive failure, or the entire server is stolen, you can plug that
boot drive into a workstation, boot from it, and be up and running in about 5 minutes.

OSX also has an integrated backup feature that does hourly backups, and you can roll any file,
or the entire OS backwards to any point you want to.

a 3 TB backup device with a blinding fast WIFI is $400, takes 5 minutes to set up, and solves
your onsite backup issues. if you were to use a dropbox account, put your key files on that,
the dropbox essentially mirrors the files in the dropbox folder on your local machine.

and time capsule backs those up hourly. so your key files are on your local machine, your clone
drive, time capsule, and dropbox.

cost for all of that is $100 for a dropbox account, depending on size, $400 for a time capsule,
and $150 for an external 2 TB USB 3.0 drive for the clone.

and i'm sure the PC world has something similar, except for the effortless cloning of the boot drive.
good luck with whatever solution you devise.
 

mkrenk

Member
Thanks for the information so far!

Thanks for the information so far!

I like the responses I see and the detail given.

I should also say that we do specialize in industrial, but we also have a big base of agricultural customers, everything from farmers to the terminal elevators, feedmills, feedlots, etc. The latter we consider "industrial". We do very little residential.

We are all PC's at this point.

Thanks again :)
 

Ragin Cajun

Senior Member
Location
Upstate S.C.
In my engineering business I have the following:

Raid 1, mirrored hard drives (2)

Carbonite

Five external HD's that I rotate weekly. I make a full image backup each time - data, programs, system files - EVERYTHING. Also create a new "rescue CD" wach backup.


I have had Raid 1 on the last three or four computers. Saved my bacon twice!!!!! Didn't loose anything.

On the main computer I have already swapped one out one of the original HD's with a new HD as the machine is over two years old. Just put the new HD in and they automatically mirrored. Sweet. I put in what is called an "enterprise" HD, much higher quality and higher MTBF. Also have a second HD on hand - just in case! HD's are cheap compared to potential down time if you have to wait for a replacement drive. Loss of cad files would close down my business!!

The external HD's have come in handy when I had a software burp. Win 7's "restore point" has also come in handy. Make a restore point BEFORE you load new software, you never know when the install will crash. It WILL happen!

A HD or SW failure is only a matter of a short time away.

If necessary I can get a HD of alll my Carbonite data next day air. I tried to download a huge 8 gig data file once, timed out. Fortunately I was able to get it off the latest external HD backup. Not Carbonite's fault, way too huge a filr to try to download!

You're not paronoid when they are REALLY out to get you!

RC
 

Fulthrotl

~Autocorrect is My Worst Enema.~
In my engineering business I have the following:

Raid 1, mirrored hard drives (2)

Carbonite

Five external HD's that I rotate weekly. I make a full image backup each time - data, programs, system files - EVERYTHING. Also create a new "rescue CD" wach backup.


I have had Raid 1 on the last three or four computers. Saved my bacon twice!!!!! Didn't loose anything.

On the main computer I have already swapped one out one of the original HD's with a new HD as the machine is over two years old. Just put the new HD in and they automatically mirrored. Sweet. I put in what is called an "enterprise" HD, much higher quality and higher MTBF. Also have a second HD on hand - just in case! HD's are cheap compared to potential down time if you have to wait for a replacement drive. Loss of cad files would close down my business!!

The external HD's have come in handy when I had a software burp. Win 7's "restore point" has also come in handy. Make a restore point BEFORE you load new software, you never know when the install will crash. It WILL happen!

A HD or SW failure is only a matter of a short time away.

If necessary I can get a HD of alll my Carbonite data next day air. I tried to download a huge 8 gig data file once, timed out. Fortunately I was able to get it off the latest external HD backup. Not Carbonite's fault, way too huge a filr to try to download!

You're not paronoid when they are REALLY out to get you!

RC

+1 on all of that... add a fast net connection, and you are good to go. in my part of the
country, verizon fios is the flavor of koolaid offered... i've got a 75MB feed, so anything
i had to get could be had shortly.
 
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