Pulse Dashboard Reporting Software for Macola
441 Vine Street | Suite 4100 | Cincinnati, OH 45202 | voice: 513.723.8091 | fax: 513.723.8093
PULSE DASHBOARD is revolutionary
software that lets you leverage your Macola system in a
new way—with real-time display of vital business
metrics, and detailed analysis with the click of a
mouse. You will be able to track critical factors for
your business, on-screen and real-time. Modules
include:
- General features
- Executive
- Inventory
- Customer
Service / Shipping
- Purchasing
- ABC Inventory
Class Generator
- Financial Control
- Sales and
Marketing
Over the past decade, the
Leahy Consulting team developed over 4,000 custom
Crystal reports and numerous custom programming
utilities to assist customers to make better decisions.
Your Macola database stores all the raw data, but some
critical information is not provided by the standard
software. Our vision has been to combine many of our
custom reports and utilities into a single product to
provide real-time, company-wide information and allow
users to easily generate custom reports. The Pulse
Dashboard Reporting software is the result of our
vision.
We started PULSE in 2005 with Excel-based historical
reporting software. By adding several new features such
as Items Causing Backorders & Shortages; Inventory
Turns, On-Time Shipping, Vendor Delivery Performance,
etc., the software now provides needed information to
pro-actively manage your company a tough economy.
PULSE Dashboard adds value to your Macola investment:
- Manage with real-time data, on-screen, company-wide,
all the time
- Inconsistencies between reports from different
departments are eliminated
- Important metrics not found in standard Macola
- One-click drill-down to view details & One-click
report writer generates custom reports
- Export all graphs, charts and reports to
Excel/printer/PDF/e-mail
- Installation & training in an afternoon
PULSE offers One-click drill-down
Pulse offers ‘One-click drill-down’ on any screen or graph to view supporting details. The ‘One-click custom report writer’ allows each user to quickly add or remove columns, change sorting and export the results to Excel/printer/PDF/e-mail in seconds. Anyone in your company can now generate custom views.

PULSE
offers a custom report writer and column chooser
PULSE allows you to choose just the drill-down and
report columns you want to see. Sort it and group then
as needed. And, it remembers the columns you chose when
you open that screen again. Choose from a long list of
available data fields.

PULSE
allows you to export any screen or graph to Excel
All of the PULSE screens and graphs can be exported to
Excel. Additionally, they can be printed, e-mailed or
saved in a PDF format.
PULSE allows you to enlarge
any graph for better viewing

The Executive module offers:
- Customer bookings and shipments tracking for this year vs. last year vs. budget
- Sales margin tracking
- Orders to be shipped by the end of the month to maximize revenue
- Aging of A/R, A/P and purchase orders
- Key balance sheet accounts monitoring
- General ledger accounts for vendors, department, employees and expense monitoring
- Custom Tabs allow you to view the performance of key customers, customer types, items, product categories, shipping locations, sales persons, sales territories and outside agents.

PULSE tracks sales & bookings by day/month vs. last year vs. budget

PULSE
focuses your attention on orders to be shipped to
maximize sales
To maximize your sales each month, it is important to
know the status of each unshipped order. PULSE allows
you to better focus on each category of unshipped
orders. For example, someone can be assigned to research
why some orders were not shipped on time.
PULSE tracks sales &
bookings by day/month vs. last year vs. budget

PULSE Executive module offers Custom Tabs
In addition to the summary screen, you can create custom tabs to display the performance of selected customers, customer types, product categories, locations, sales persons, sales territories, etc.
PULSE allows you to monitor orders booked & shipped real-time during the day
The
Inventory module gives you information you have not seen
before:
-
Inventory Turns
Graph and Details – Each night, PULSE analyzes all of
your inventory transactions and calculates 12-month
trailing inventory turns for each item.
-
Inventory Exceptions – PULSE shows you important
exception conditions.
-
Inventory Aging – For the first time, you can see what
inventory is not being used.
-
Stock Status Report – This shows dollars by location by
inventory class.
-
Inventory Status – For the first time, you can browse
your inventory looking for exception conditions. In
addition to the browse screen, you can look at the
status of any item. PULSE shows you key information on
each item along with a month-by-month grid of activity
and turns.
-
Reorder Advice Report
- Physical Inventory – This sub-module will assist you with taking a more accurate cycle count or physical inventory. First, it displays items with the greatest variance over the past three inventories. For items being counted, it allows you to sort by quantity variance or dollar variance to pinpoint possible incorrect counts. No longer will you need to print the lengthy standard Macola variance reports.

PULSE tracks Inventory
Turns
The purpose of increasing inventory turns is to reduce
holding costs and overall inventory. Turns are an
indication of the movement of your inventory. A item
that turns over once a year will have higher holding
costs versus turning more frequently. Turns are
calculated by dividing usage over 3, 6, 9, or 12 months
by the average on-hand inventory during the same time
period. View turns for purchased items, manufactured
items or both.

This screen allows you to track the performance of individual inventory items
PULSE Inventory Status profiles each item including a grid of monthly activity
Sort or filter on each column and re-arrange the columns as needed.

Drill-down from the above screen or manually key in the item number. You will see key data on each item, PLUS an easy-to-read grid showing the end-of month on-hand quantity, receipts, usage, transfers and inventory turns fo each of the past 12 months. If needed, you can view detail transactions for a data range.

PULSE tracks Exception Conditions
Drill-down to view or print the details of important exception conditions.

PULSE tracks Inventory Aging as well as a Stock Status report by ABC class
Being able to track slow moving inventory is critical to successfully managing your inventory. PULSE also gives you a recap of the status of your inventory by location.
PULSE assists you to take
more accurate Cycle and Physical Inventories
-
Your ability to quickly count
your inventory and reconcile those counts is critical to
your operation. PULSE assists in several ways:
-
Identify items that have caused the greatest quantity
and dollar variances over the past few years.
-
During your physical counting, it pinpoints items to
possibly be recounted due to excessive quantity or
dollar variances. This eliminates printing the
lengthy standard Macola variance reports.
-
What is the total dollar
variance for each un-posted batch? – up to now, you had
to run the standard Macola pre-post report to know what
dollar variance will be posted. Now, you can view
it real-time as tags are keyed or scanned.

CUSTOMER SERVICE / SHIPPING MODULE
The Customer Service / Shipping
module offers:
-
On-time Shipping – A graph along with a detailed chart
and drill-down
-
Items Causing Shortages – This revolutionary screen
time-phases your customer orders versus pending
replenish production or purchase orders. It
displays customer orders that cannot be shipped by the
customer’s requested ship date.
-
Top Credit Memo Customers and Items – For the first
time, you can now see the customers and inventory items
that generate the most credit memos.
-
All of the screens and charts from the Executive module
for tracking bookings, shipments and gross margin with
comparisons to the prior year and budget.

PULSE measures On-time Shipping
All graphs and charts offer full drill-down for further analysis, printing, exporting to excel or e-mailing.

PULSE pinpoints Inventory Items
Causing Shipping Shortages
This
unique screen is an ‘MRP system’ just for customer
orders that need to be shipped. For example, you
may want to review items scheduled to ship over the next
14 days for which you do not have sufficient on-hand
quantitites nor a production order or purchase order
that will replenish your inventory to meet the
customer’s requested delivery date.

By drilling-down
on an item, you will see a time-phased list of customer
orders along with associated replenishment production
orders or purchase orders. The result is an
effective way to manage customer order shortages.

PULSE tracks credit memos by
customer and inventory item

The Purchasing module gives you
information you have not seen before:
-
Vendor Performance
– View late delivery and inspection statistics.
-
Reorder Advice Report
– Customize you own reorder advice report.
-
Purchase Orders Scheduled to
be Received – Conveniently view all
items scheduled to be received.
-
Aging of Open Purchase Orders
– P/O aging is part of your overall
cash flow analysis.
-
Purchase Order Exceptions
– PULSE shows you important exception conditions.
-
Items Received over the past X
days – Conveniently view all items that
have been received.
-
Top Vendors –
View this year or last year payments by vendor.

PULSE measures Vendor Performance

PULSE offers a Purchasing Reorder Advice Report
PULSE allows you to customize your reorder advice report to meet your unique needs. You can choose what columns of data to display as well as the selection criteria. Sort or filter on each column and re-arrange the columns as needed.

PULSE Ages Your Open Purchase
Orders and Displays Scheduled Receipts
The
aging of open purchase orders greatly impacts your cash
flow. PULSE also gives you a convenient way to
pinpoint past-due shipments as well as shipments
scheduled to be received over the next X days.
PULSE gives you an up-to-date view of your top vendors

PULSE tracks exception conditions

PULSE gives you a snapshot of what
has been received over the past X days

This utility will allow you to very
quickly and accurately set the proper ABC class for each
of your purchased and/or manufactured items. ABC
classes are typically calculated separately for
purchased items versus manufactured items.
How
does this utility work?
-
The program relies on total
dollar usage for the past twelve months for each item.
This information is stored in the PULSE Dashboard table
called ‘Final Results’. Usage is defined as being
a customer sale or return, or a manufacturing order
component issue (a backflushed item).
-
It reads each record in your
item/location file, obtains the dollar usage from the
Final Results table, computes the new class based on the
calculation method chosen (see explanation of methods
below), and displays the results.
-
There are separate columns to
display the current ABC class and the suggested class.
Items that require a new class are bolded.
-
If you do not agree with any of
the suggested changes, you can change them.
-
When you have finished your
review, you press the ‘update’ button to update the ABC
codes in your item/location file.
Choose the
method for calculating ABC class codes
-
By items within each location –
Let’s say you have three warehouse locations and you
want separate ABC classes for each location. For
example, based on dollar usage, item #123 may be an ‘A’
item in one location and a ‘B’ item in another location.
-
By item – This method gives each
item the same class, regardless of its warehouse
location. The program adds up the past 12
months of dollar usage for each item, regardless of its
location. In this case, time #123 will be an ‘A’ class
in all locations.
Running
the PULSE Inventory ABC Class Generator
It
is easy and fast:
-
Select either purchased or manufactured items.
-
In
the upper left corner of the screen, click on the
‘Generate Data’ button.

The program reads all records in
your Macola item/location file, calculates the
recommended ABC class, and displays the results on the
screen. In the sample screen below, we have
applied a filter to view only the ‘GER’ location.
Items that require a class change are bolded. In
the ‘New Class’ column, the program allows you to
override the suggested class code. The program
also tells you the number of items that need changing.
Note that the columns can be re-sequenced, sorted and
filtered. Additionally, the entire results can be
printed or exported to Excel.
When finished,
press the ‘Update Visible Items’ button. ‘Visible’
indicates that it will only update the filtered items
that are displayed on the screen. For example, if
you applied a filter to display only the ‘GER’ location,
only those items will be updated.

PULSE Financial Control gives you
capabilities not available elsewhere
-
Your Financial Control
administrator can quickly and easily choose the groups
of accounts to track
-
Graphs show month-by-month actual
vs. budget vs. last year
-
Drill-down into any group of
accounts or individual accounts to view more details
-
The PULSE Column Chooser allows
you to select just the columns you want to display
-
Sort on any column and/or filter
on any column
-
All graphs and charts can be
exported to Excel or PDF, printed or e-mailed.
The following sample screen
displays your month-by-month (actual vs. budget vs. last
year) performance in both a graph and chart format.
You can track any expense, income or balance sheet
accounts. Additionally, you may have a need to
focus on certain problem areas (ex. roof repairs, travel
expenses, etc.).

The PULSE
Financial Control module lets you track actual vs.
budget vs. last year for the entire company

The PULSE Financial Control
module lets you track actual vs. budget vs. last year
for a division or department
Application example: The warehouse
manager’s bonus depends on meeting the budget and
tracking the performance for three groups of accounts:
miscellaneous expenses, other expenses, and wages. In
the sample screens below, you will see how PULSE
displays a graph and chart for each of the three groups
of accounts. In this example, you see the
individual wage accounts.

PULSE Financial Control set-up is quick and easy

PULSE Sales &
Marketing gives you capabilities not available elsewhere
-
The ability to track sales by any
metric (ex. customer, customer type, item number,
product category, product line, salesperson, outside
distributors, territories).
-
The ability to assign a
forecast/budget to any of the sales metrics you are
tracking.
-
Easily and quickly create budgets
or adjust existing budgets at any time.
-
Track sales versus forecast for
MTD, QTD, YTD and prior year.
-
Track sales versus forecast based
on dollars or percentages.
-
Drill-down into any metric to
view open customer orders, booked orders or invoiced
orders.
-
The PULSE Column Chooser allows
you to select just the columns you want to display.
-
Sort and/or filter on any column.
-
All screens can be maximized for
easier viewing.
-
Anything you see on the screen
can be exported to Excel or PDF, printed or e-mailed.
The following
sample screen displays Sales by Customer. In this
example, we have established both a sales and a
margin budget for each customer. By adding the
column called “YTD Sales vs. Budget Variance %” we can
very quickly see how each customer is performing versus
their budget. For example, customer # 1000, the
top customer, is 3% under budget.

The
PULSE Sales & Marketing module lets you track sales
Application example: Your
company sells products in several categories and your
president want to know which product categories
contribute the most gross margin. He wants to use
PULSE for this analysis because he is considering
dropping the products that are poor contributors.
In the sample screen below, we have sorted the list
based on YTD sales dollars.

The
PULSE Sales & Marketing module lets you track
performance versus budget with drill-down
Application example: Your
sales manager is pleased with overall sales results but
she notices that margin percentages are dropping.
As a result, she established bonus for each salesperson
who can meet her margin goals. She wants to use
PULSE to give her the ability to very quickly determine
which salespeople are not meeting their margin goal.
In the sample screen below, the far right column allows
her to see instantly who is meeting their margin goals.

The PULSE Sales & Marketing
module lets you create an unlimited number of sales
charts

The PULSE
Sales & Marketing module lets you create sales budgets
We have included an easy to use, but very powerful budgeting screen. You can prepare your budget in
Excel and import it into PULSE or you can manually key it. During the year or in subsequent years, you can adjust your budget based on a dollar amount or percentage. For example, we want to create a budget based on last year’s sales plus 5% and we want to distribute the new budget among all customers based on their sales from last year. Additionally, we want to distribute our new budget equally each month or distribute it to match our seasonality.

PULSE Sales & Marketing
set-up is quick and easy
It is easy to set up each sales
chart. In our example below, we have set up five
sales charts. You can set up an unlimited number
of charts. For each chart, you select the specific
columns to be included.

| For questions or a demonstration of the Pulse Software, |
| call Terry Lanham in Cincinnati at (513) 723-8091 |
|
In one afternoon, we
can have PULSE installed and running at your
office with your data. On-going
enhancements as well as unlimited set-up,
training and phone support are all included as
part of our annual maintenance. We
encourage your phone calls with suggestions for
making PULSE work better for your organization.
We also offer custom modifications, but if your
suggestions will be applicable to other users,
they are made at no charge.
|
|
©Copyright 2010 Esta
Group/Leahy Consulting, Inc. 441 Vine Street –
suite 4100 Cincinnati, Ohio 45202
Founded in 1981, Leahy
Consulting helps manufacturers and distributors
significantly improve their accounting
information systems and workflow. The
Esta Group is a consortium of authorized Macola
resellers in Ohio, Michigan, Iowa and
California.
Our software is 100% designed and developed in
America. |
| To download our brochure (pdf file), click here |