Sales System Templates

Testimonials > Sales Systems

The two individuals below are the owner-operators of very complex, multi-file Sales Systems. Ric was doing about $160k in annual sales and Kristian was doing about $350k in annual sales. They were both trying to use Intuit's Quickbooks for invoicing, bookkeeping, payment processing and much more with stressful, costly and lackluster results. Neither could actually get the reports they needed due to standard small business complexity on the Managerial/Cost Accounting side of their business that Quickboks simply can not handle well. In both cases, the final solutions for them does things one could never do in Quickbooks.

The information below is half testimonial and half case study. These two are great users of their systems but these systems are large, complex and not easy to describe succintly, thus our support with the prose.

We initially were not planning on publishing sales systems on this website, but we realized learning about Sales Systems and Bookkeeping Systems simultaneously has the greatest educational benefits. It's the handoff between systems, or actually the lack there of, that is so clarifying for all.

Together, Sales Systems and Bookkeeping Systems give a better picture of a healthy accounting system. When presented as two separate systems with no data exchange, as should be the case for most Small Businesses, they expose a clearer delineation between between Managerial/Cost Accounting and Tax/Financial Accounting that is otherwise far more fuzzy in Quickbooks or other solutions where the functionality is all mixed together in a single interface.

In November 2021 we started publishing introductory, single file, stand-alone Sales System Templates for Education and Business Use. These are slimmed down versions of far more complex, multi-file, modular systems that were prototyped and Beta Tested in 2016 and 2020 with Ric, Kristian and a few others. Once we get testimonials for the smaller, stand alone systems, we'll add those testimonials and separate them from these more complex ones. The complex systems these two individuals use are not currently public, but photos of them are. We expect to share those complex modular systems templates via this website or another as time, interest, and aptitude progresses.

Ric Valentine, Owner, Ric Valentine Acupuncture
Monterey and Prunedale CA www.ricvalentineacupuncture.com

I am an Acupuncturist and Clinical Nutrition Practitioner. I currently see 25 to 40 patients a week, and I do an additional 10 to 25 transactions a week in product sales. Some of those are walk in sales. Others are call in with drop ship requirements. Some were insurance patients which is a separate problem unto itself. Thus, my “Point of Sale” Transactions range from 35 to 65 transactions a week.

In 2015 I was attempting to use Quickbooks as 1) my customer database 2) my vendor database 3) my products database for over 400 items 4) my service offering database 5) my Point of Sale System for retail check out and call in order processing 6) my Invoicing system for after the fact billing, my payments journal 7) my accounts receivable and 8) my credit card processing system and 9) my Bookkeeping System.

It was simply awful. It was far too unwieldy for me, and it seemed too unwieldy for advanced and "professional" service providers I attempted to hire as well. No one could provide me with proper pointers to a better system other than a fully manual one, which truly might have been a better option.

With Quickbooks, the entire check out process could take as much as 15 to 20 minutes if anything went wrong technologically or via user error. As a late comer to technology, I was constantly messing it up to the point where I could not finish the check out process properly myself, and that is a really dis-empowering feeling.

When people weren’t ready to pay for services or were only able to pay partial for one reason or another, in theory it had a way to manage that, but it was beyond me and my office support to get those processes right regularly. Then when the clients paid off the balance of a partially paid invoice, properly closing out open invoices, if in fact they had been created properly, was complex.

But what about Insurance Clients? How on earth was I supposed to handle them? These are people I served who wanted a receipt, but I wouldn’t be able to tell them what the cost of their visit was nor how much they owed for 3 to 6 weeks? I needed to take a copay, allocate that to an invoice without a known amount, get partial or full reimbursement for balances due and bill for any partial amounts not reimbursed?

What about my “production report”? How was I supposed to figure out what kind of week i had financially or operationally, when most folks paid, some folks didn’t and others were on insurance?

The entire suite of ZAP Accounting Software offerrings was actually initially built just for my needs in 2016, so in that regard, I am Special !

Customer Database - It is in a stand alone google sheet file with lookup and query functionality along with some supplemental technology for managing infrequent bulk emailing. My customers are also entered and stored separately in my Google Contacts. I found no way to keep a single customer database. If I used a professional package for bulk emailing, I would need a third customer database there to manage it properly.
Products/Services Database - It is in a stand along google sheet file with lookup and query functionality
Point of Sale System - It is a google sheet file that has real time connections to my Customer Database file and my Products Database file. They are linked together for full relational database functionality on a spreadsheet platform.
Invoicing System for regular sales - It is part and parcel of my “Point of Sale” system. It is the same system
Accounts Receivable System - It is in my “Point of Sale” google sheet. I use a simple "Bar Tab/Bar Bill" system. While entering amounts due on the invoice to close them out for production tracking purposes, I add the amounts due to a separate data table for tracking. The trick here is I don't ever go back and close out my invoices. The are falsely closed out with amounts due noted at time of creation. The amount due is a presumed sale for production purposes, and I only track my receiveables in my Bar Bill system.
Production Reports - It is in my “Point of Sale” Google sheet. We modified the system so we could allocate an arbitrary/estimated amount for insurance fees on initial invoices to allow me to track my production in an easy way.
Credit Card Processing - via Square and/or other third party systems not connected to any of my software, just like many Pizza Parlors.
Insurance Related Billing - The billing records are created in a stand alone google sheet file. The billing would ideally come from that file but the integration is overly complex, so we just submit billing using an industry software solution, but we do all subsequent recording and invoicing from the google sheet file. It has a way to print invoices for mailing and/or emailing. It has built in Accounts Recievable and Aging reports as well. We can handle copays, but for us few insurance companies reimbursed full amounts, so we typically just collected copays at time of final billing. The copay process may have been originally thought to have been a benefit, but as implemented it's often times added complexity and confusion if the insurance carrier doesn't pay the full balance due.
Bookkeeping - It is in a separate Google Sheet template NOT connected to any of my other templates, because it has no need being connected and that keeps things far simpler. I am far closer to "audit ready" given my bookkeeping system is generally aligned with how an auditor would review my transaction history and that's been a great stress reducer.
Vendor Database - I use my Google Contacts for my vendors. I also maintain a separate google sheet with a list of some vendors that I want to see in that format.

All these different files sound like a lot because it is a lot. As a Small Business, we often times have almost the same level of data management overhead of larger companies, and that makes being a Small Business owner quite a challenge.

It takes a lot to actually put together a holistic digital system for a business. It requires far more than any single software vendor can provide properly, especially when most of the software vendors for small business only really care about getting your credit card processing business for easy residual income for themselves.

To provide me with the experience of a "software suite", we use 1) the bookmark bar in the Chrome Browser and 2) a tab set management app to quickly access and manage all the files as if they were part of a single software interface. We also have built a google site that I can use as a home page for my system, although the bookmark bar, the tab set app and my very organized google drive are my preferred methods for system navigation.

I’ve never seen modular commercial software for much larger companies personally, but I’m told the data architecture for what I have most mimics those.

Given my experience, I can understand why the big companies would do things in a modular way as we have. Once this got setup I could see how it was customizable and scalable in ways that I could never envision with Quickbooks or on my own.

Without seeing the ZAP Sales Systems and the ZAP Bookkeeping System in concert with each other but not connected, it might be hard to “imagine” what or how they go together so well.

Once you’ve seen them working together, and once you’ve spent even a small time with them, the chances of you ever selecting another option are extremely slim.

While you will likely incurr initial setup costs if you can't do all of this yourself with written instructions (and few will be able to do that), the ongoing subscritpion cost of zero, the customization capabilities and the application privacy are impossible to beat.

Please see my review for the bookkeeping template on that bookkeeping template review page.

I hope this information helps you with some of the clarity I wish I had gotten in the 1990's. My life is different today than it was prior to 2015 when we started putting all of this in place. I truly can't imagine what life would be like today had I been told about the use of networked spreadsheets in the 1990s as I was Coming of Age with my own Small Business Practice.

Ric Valentine, LAc
Licensed Acupuncturist and Clinical Nutrition Expert
Professional Bartender, Exceptional Cook and Story Teller

Kristian Crump, Owner, Dusk Industries Lighting and Design
Monterey CA

I am an electrical contractor.

I needed a customer database and a way to manage properties and/or projects separately for each of my customers. I needed a system for giving my customers an estimate as well as an invoicing system to get them their cumulative billing in a timely manner.

I needed complex journalling systems for time and materials for job cost accounting given I do a fair amount of higher end work on a time and materials basis. I needed a system with a complex sales tax tracking functionality because I have to collect based on resale amounts on products per county. I needed an Accounts Receivable system with a payments journal so I can keep track of invoices that have been paid, and ones that are still outstanding.

I started my business on Quickbooks. It had 80% of what I needed, in theory, but I never felt I had control of my data or processes due to the highly rigid and un-user friendly nature of that software there was a lack of digital journaling I needed which they did not support.

Everyone that I know in business uses Quickbooks, and no one I know knew how to use it well nor how it all worked. It was as if we were all locked in the same trap with no way to escape.

After a side by side trial between Quickbooks and the custom invoicing solution built for me with ZAP Invoicing technology, it was a no brainer. The level I can track a single client with multiple jobs or projects was amazing; something that was not possible with QB.

Cloud based spreadsheets meant I didn't need to continuously back up my data with fears of losing a previous version. Being able to access my sales system from anywhere without paying a monthly fee for access is a game changer.

I can easily send out professional looking estimates and invoices and keep track of payments without the hiccups that were common in QB and their systems. I can assure you, the systems I have now for digital journalling for time and materials are not found in any commercial software solution. They are customized perfectly for me.

I am thoroughly glad that I switched from Quickbooks to ZAP technology. I immediately noticed an increase in my financial awareness and understanding while at the same time noting a dramatic decrease in my stress levels around my billing and accounts receivable processes.

FREE FOR LIFE for this type of customizable solution has no equal. Spend some time and some money to get it going if you can't get it all configured on your own in a way that is custom for you. Then enjoy it.

Please see my review for the bookkeeping template on a separate testimonials page.

Kristian Crump
Managing Member, Dusk Industries and Lighting Design LLC
Distinguished Toastmaster