How to better organize your business or
Don’t worry, you aren’t the only one who uses spreadsheets and databases… I promise
by A-Ti of Valcyn
So, you have your tailoring business and are known throughout the planet as a great tailor, and you’ve even been getting a few requests for something that looks like the outfit you made for Niedre. But there’s a problem, you can’t remember what you made for Niedre and they aren’t online so you can’t even ask them what they’re wearing. What do you do?
Well, if you’re organized, you go to your records and look up the customer’s orders and hope that while for business purposes, it would be nice if there were lots of items in that list, you only have to narrow it down from two or three outfits. The problem is that even if you are organized, there’s always seems to be a flaw in the careful system you set up. I’ve been through several all ready and am only just now content with my organization.
Records
There are three types of records you will want to keep track of, a price list and inventory sheet, sales, and customer histories. You know those grocery store savings cards that all the supermarkets use? Well it’s a way to keep track of customer purchases. Same with department stores and clothing chains, and small boutiques. Everyone has a different system in place but they all keep track of purchases and trends.
Why keep track of inventory? Well one reason is to see what is selling and when it sells, another reason is so restocking your vendor can be done as quickly and efficiently as possible. I also tend to forget that I have my Master Tailor tag up and get random tells when out exploring, I can easily check my inventory sheet and tell interested customers that I should have an item on my vendor that might fill their needs.
Pen & Paper
When I first started out, I had a notebook. I would carefully write down everything that I sold and compare it with another carefully written down inventory list every day. It took forever and I hadn’t even reached the third levels of the different tiers, I think I was at Tailoring 1, Field 2 and Formal 2. There isn’t that much out there and I still spent more time than I cared on keeping track of sales.
Pen and paper will work, but you need to plan ahead for business growth, if that’s your eventual goal. I recommend three notebooks. One for inventory and a price list, one for sales (typically vendor sales) and yet another for customers. I still hold on to a notebook that I use for quick notes here and there, but you can see just how cumbersome hard copies can be, especially after you reach Master Tailor.
In your notes, you’ll want to write down the date of the sale, the item, the color, the amount you sold it for, and the customer and where or how you sold it, which shop or vendor or was it walk-in or an order. I strongly recommend using a numbering system for your colors, as it will make it easier to remember just what light blue color you used with those comfortable pants. When just starting out, this is easy to do in a notebook or a pad of paper, but after about 2 weeks you will want to scream out in defeat. You won’t be able to read your handwriting or a page will get torn or worse, you’ll spill your Mountain Dew all over it.
The Digital Tailor
If my lack of support for the pen and paper system isn’t enough to jump into keeping your records stored on your computer, then this little gift from the gods might push you over the edge. This tool will extract your emails and install them into various types of databases or spreadsheets. You don’t even have to do much work. Now, I don’t use this, because I use my laptop for my records, but I have only heard good things about this program. It’s ideal for large volume vendors.
Ok, so you’ve decided to be a truly modern tailor and keep track of everything on your computer, but how do you do it? What program do you use? Well I’ve done them all, or at least most of them, and have come up with a few that I really like and few that I can’t stand. Currently I have Filemaker, MSMoney, Access, Excel, and BS/1 Small Business on my system. The downside of all of these is that you will have to manually enter in everything at one point or another, and it’s not a walk in the park. (I recommend doing it while you are watching West Wing or Smallville. < --- Splintt’s and my Wednesday night.)
There are pros and cons to each system and I haven’t found that “ideal” system where I can just sit back and let it do everything for me, but by combining a few of the above programs your system will be pretty streamlined.
Filemaker
Is basically a glorified Access or MSDatabase. It has a bit more in the way of tools, but more rigid once you get the database set up. Overall, it’s nothing more than a pretty Access. If you want you can add images, so you can have a catalog available, but I just couldn’t justify creating a price list with an image catalog offline when I’m at the point where I can determine just which skirt or jacket someone is looking for by their less than accurate descriptions. If you all ready have Filemaker on your system, or use it for work and really like it, but all means, go ahead and use it, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to get it.
Access or Excel
These are two very different programs, Access is a database, and Excel is spreadsheet. While spreadsheets are nice, databases are definitely more helpful in organizing your business. The program I linked to in the beginning of this article can be used with both I believe. I happen to be partial to Access and so that’s what I use. It’s easier to make a mistake with Excel, but access can be intimidating if you aren’t used to it. Either way, enter about 10 records into both programs and play around with them, see which one you prefer and think you will get the most use out of.On Access, I have the following fields, Date, Customer, Item, Color (1 and 2), Amount, location, and Account. The last field is explained more in the next paragraphs. This is what I get in my emails from my vendors and it serves my purposes. Because I use a number system for my colors, it’s easy to see which colors are selling consistently and which “outfits” people lean towards.Bio-Accentuated clothing is handled much differently. Since I wanted to be able to track enhancements and since I prefer my databases to be clean, I keep an in depth separate inventory for bio-accentuated clothing including stats, colors, enhancements, date I created it and date it was put on the vendor and then the date it sold. I also maintain a separate database of customer sales for enhanced clothing, but this is primarily because I split all sales with Splintt 50-50 and it’s less of a headache to have more files with less info than one with all of the information.
MSMoney
I use Money as a way to track sales. I can pull up reports based upon customers, items, dates whatever. There’s no easy way to enter in the info, but by hand, and you’ll have to get rid of half the categories that are defaults, but to be honest with you, I have no idea how I ever tracked sales without it. I can see exactly how much I dropping into my factories and extractors and how my sales look after I drop some items on the bazaar. It doesn’t really matter which accounting program you use, but once you get started you’ll wonder why you didn’t do it easier. Did I tell you that I couldn’t live without it? With MSMoney, I have one file for A-Ti Designs, one for Bio-Accents (bio-accentuated clothing), one for Splintt, and one for customers. These are three separate files and don’t tie into one another, which means a lot more work for me, but I really wouldn’t have it any other way. Each week I pull out a report from Access of records that I haven’t yet entered into Money and while watching Smallville dutifully plug them in Money. (I have a field on Access just for this, once I print up the report I put an x in the field.)Now, within A-Ti Designs, I have several accounts set up. Bazaar sales, Expenses, and each Vendor. I split them up even further by creating a new account each month, but that’s just one of those things I did as a personal preference, it’s really not necessary, not when you can pull up reports so quickly and easily.I have it set up so that the Payee line or from field is the item that sold, the category is literally the category the item falls into (I can pull up jackets and see just which jackets are selling), and the memo field is where I put the customer. I do not add colors to this account, this is purely for a financial purpose and I see no real reason to make even more work. Plus, I want my reports to be clean and easy to read at a glance, in order to do that effectively the least amount of info I have the better off I am, besides, that’s what my database is for, tracking trends.My customer file is set up similarly, but I have more info in this file. The payee line is for the category, i.e dress, bodysuit, wearable container. I use the same categories that the game uses, even if they aren’t very logical. I put the customer in the category line (yes, a lot more work as you have to add new customers as a income category, but I found myself much happier with the reports, plus I can pull up a single report for one customer very easily and it’s easy to read a customer’s purchase history), and in the memo line is where I actually put the item, the colors and the enhancements if any. Anyone who buys something from one of my vendors goes into my customer file, so Splintt’s sales and Bio-Accents sales also get added to this overly large file. On the subject of Bio-Accents, I have the account set up differently from the others, the payee field is where I enter the customer’s name, the category is the type of enhancement, and the memo field is the item. Because I want to track enhancements more than clothing or customers this format seems to work very well for me. Once again, I keep each month in a separate account on the same file, but that’s a personal preference.
BS/1 Small Business
Is a small program I found on the web published by Davis. I found it a few days ago and have been fooling around with it since then. It’s an all in one program designed for small to medium sized businesses, and eliminates the need for so many different programs. I can keep track of inventory, sales, customers, and track trends, but I haven’t fully decided if it’s worth it or not. It’s nice and easy to use and once you enter something in, you don’t have to enter something in again, it’s just the setting up that takes forever and a day. I like the invoice system as that I can actually see a customer’s history at a glance, but it’s geared towards real businesses and therefore has a few more bells and whistles than I really need. I will let you know what I decide though.
You don’t have to admit to anyone that you keep records and I won’t tell anyone. It will make your life so much easier and will be very beneficial to your business, but just like tailoring, no matter what system you set up you’ll have to spend some time setting it up. But next time a customer walks in and wants an outfit just like Niedre’s, you’ll know which outfit they’re talking about or at least will have a better idea of which outfit they are talking about.