Features

Software Design

ProFrame is a desktop software product designed for wholesalers and distributors of picture frame moulding, glass, mat board, foam board, art supplies and framer equipment. With over twenty years in development, it's a proven software solution that improves productivity and streamlines the entire process from order entry to delivery.

Accounting Design

Work Order / Sales Order
Accounts Receivable
Purchase Order
Inventory Control

Key Features

Catalog System, drives inventory, maintenance, reporting, global pricing and drives an optional online website order system.
Highly Detailed Discounting System, from single customers to global discounting.
ReportEASY and ExportEASY Utility, custom report writer and export utility.
Website Online Order System. (optional)
tOne Plus for T1 networks. (multiple sites, optional)
Remote Site Utility, manage AR on non T1 multiple sites.
Custom Frame Projects, unlike most wholesale systems.
e-mail, you can e-mail directly from within ProFrame.
Customizable features and add-ons (hourly rate)

Other Features

Multi-User platform. (network compatible)
Multi-Company, 01 to 99 companies.
Un-Limited customer billing accounts with un-limited ship-to accounts.
Customizable UPS Zone table.
Customizable United Inches Chart and Widths table.
Customizable Chop Matrix table for our Canadian users.
Customizable Sales Call Profile System.
Username and Password Security System.
Global On Sale and Price Change Utilities.
US or Canada Sales Tax Mode.
Print Chop Labels (Zebra LP2844 Direct Thermal Printer)
Print Shipping Labels (Zebra LP2844 Direct Thermal Printer)
Print Item Labels (Laser Printer)
Customizable Work Order forms (Laser Printer)
Customizable Invoice forms (Laser Printer)
Customizable Statement form (Laser Printer)
Customizable Purchase Order forms (Laser Printer)
Customizable Report forms (Laser Printer)
Mailing Labels and over 20 standard accounting reports, most reports can be exported into many popular file formats. Including Excel.
Add-On items to existing work orders.
Work Order and Invoice Print Copies Control.
Global Discounting Profile Control.
Connect to any Database from within other applications such as Excel using ODBC or OLE DB Provider connections. (OLE DB recommended)
User control on Purging History Files.
Credit Card Encryption.
Sales Commission Based On Catalog.
Pop-Up Code File, assign item pop-ups for order entry.
Custom Frame Projects, multiple custom frames per work order.
In-House Projects, allows for bill-of-material into finished products.
Kits, able to setup Kit Items.

Type of Items and Products

This software can handle all types of products across the wholesale frame and moulding industry. That's because this product was developed and designed for wholesalers and distributors not retailers. We do not try to compete with retail software. Such as SpecialtySoft, LifeSaver or FullCalc. We specialize in the wholesaler side of this industry, although we have recently added a new Custom Frame Project feature similar to the retail side that's not found in very many wholesale systems. For the most part our software concentrates on helping you supply material in bulk to retailers.

Moulding

Wood and metal moulding products can be stocked and sold in many different ways like Length, Chop, Join, Box or Split Box. With ProFrame you can create complete custom frames or sell in bulk. Global discounting can be setup for moulding products with one level per unit-of-measure.

Glass, Mats, Foam Board, Ready Mades etc...

Unit type items can be handled in Units, Box and Alternate Pricing.

As you can see from this screen shot, any unit type item can be setup with the standard unit price and up to three alternate prices and a Square Footage option for mat boards and glass. Any Unit type item can be globally discounted using up to four quantity break levels, including alternates.

Catalog System Catalog

The Catalog Design is based on two levels, Group and Category. Each item is assigned to a Catalog. Each item is also assigned a Vendor that plays an important role of this design. So one could say it's actually a three level catalog system. This catalog design was one of the first phases of development of this product over twenty years ago. It worked then and it still works today with very few changes.

Example:

400 - Moulding
- Sub 401 - Wood
- Sub 402 - Metal
500 - Glass
- Sub 501 - Bevel
- Sub 502 - Non-Bevel

400401, Moulding,Wood
400402, Moulding,Metal
500501, Glass,Bevel
500502, Glass,Non-Bevel

Sample from Inventory Maintenance Screen

The idea is to be able to control global pricing, discounting and reporting using this catalog system at any level through out ProFrame. Years ago in its conception, the thought of a online website order system was not a factor, but in recent years it has become an important competitive edge. The amazing thing about our catalog design is; not only will it control global pricing and discounting as designed, it works perfectly to control and maintain a website catalog order system.

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Website Online Catalog Order System (optional) web

We can develop and deploy a website online order system that is database driven by the ProFrame Inventory Catalog System. By using the same catalog structure of ProFrame based on three levels, Vendor, Group and Category to drive the website, makes it very easy to maintain and control. The website is a registration password protected site, the catalog main page is the ProFrame catalog Groups. The next page is Vendors and the 3rd is Items. Depending on the group, this last page will have filter options like color, category, sizes etc.. From here items can be added to the shopping cart process. It can handle thumbnail images and larger images for the detail item page. It has an online Administration Utility that allows the processing of orders and maintenance of user accounts. It includes a custom program that runs in ProFrame to build the website catalog file, that file is then converted to an MS Access Database to then be up-loaded to your website. This process can be automated so you can totally manage your own site. This includes the wording and descriptions of Catalog Links.
Click here for Screen Shots of a website...

Discounting System Discount

By using the Catalog System you can discount products using the On Sale System (Global Level) or the Customer Discount Table (Individual Level) or the Item Level or the Quantity Type Discount level. The Discount Priority during order entry is OnSale, Customer, Item, Type. For example you could setup custom discounts for a certain customer for Vendor (ABC), Catalog Group (Moulding).. or Catalog (Moulding,Wood). The system has a Copy Discount Utility that allows you to setup standard discount structures and assign customers using the "Class" field to easily keep them up-to-date in a global fashion.

In the past twenty years, we've learn a few things about the wholesale side of this industry. If we've learned one thing; discounting is very important and complex. So from the beginning our design techniques has focused on the management of these complex discounting structures. We believe this is one of the most important features that any wholesale software product could offer.

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ReportEASY & ExportEASY Utility Export

This product is developed with Microsoft Visual FoxPro 9 and can share it's data by allowing you to export data out into many different formats. Including Excel, ASCII Text, Lotus, VisiCalc and many others. Our customers find this utility very useful to export inventory information into Excel for easy distribution to any of the retail software product vendors. This allows our customers full control over what information is exported. You can also create custom reports with this utility. This feature does require some basic understanding of FoxPro commands and functions to filter the data. All these basic commands are covered in the Export section of the Reference Guide that will help you to quickly become an expert.
Click here for screen shots of ExportEASY...

Concerned about Visual FoxPro? Click here...

ODBC & OLE DB Provider Connections

Because this product is developed using Microsoft Visual FoxPro 9, it's databases can easily be connected to using Microsoft ODBC drivers or OLE DB Provider drivers. We recommend OLE DB Provider since Microsoft has discontinued the FoxPro ODBC drivers in the latest version.

Remote Site Utility tOne

This utility allows you to setup a Host site to control inventory items, accounts receivables and purchase orders while allowing each Remote site to run and operate independently. It does this by transferring files via pcAnywhere on a nightly bases. Each site will be able to run a Auxiliary Inventory Utility of each sites inventory. Files that are transferred our optional. This feature is optional for those who do not have a T1 (tire 1) network connection.

tOne Plus Add-On (optional)

For those who have a T1 (tire 1) network, we have a different type of Remote interface system with many options called tOne Plus. This product allows you to setup ProFrame to run on a T1 network across multiple warehouses in real time. The customer files and accounts receivables are hosted from the host site. All remote sites will run ProFrame locally and will operate independently while maintaining its own inventory, work orders etc... The control is handle from host site so the control over shared data is in your hands. It involves a t1Remote Sync program that can be setup to run in the background updating to and from host site.

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Custom Frame Projects CustFrm

Up to this point; our product has always focused on selling items in a wholesale environment and it still does. For example: you may sell 50 feet of ABC moulding, 2 boxes of glass and 22 mats and some supplies. You may sell chops, joins, box moulding and equipment etc.. etc.. etc... The idea of Custom Frame Jobs has never been a key feature for users of this software product. Custom Frames has always been the key feature of every retail software product on the market. But now, with more and more wholesalers and wholesale/retail type companies doing complete custom frame jobs, our product can now handle custom frames. We are still focused on the wholesale environment and nothing has changed about the order entry features of ProFrame. We just simply added this feature so a custom frame item will trigger a new order entry screen that tabs each component type. This allows for multiple frame jobs per work order. Because of the design of ProFrame, you could sell that 50 feet of ABC moulding and 2 boxes of glass with 3 custom frames all on the same work order (invoice).

e-mail Directly from Within ProFrame email

This new feature has been a long time coming, it will allow users to email several types of email directly from within ProFrame. Each billing account and ship to accounts can be setup with an email address with several options for email automation. It can handle most all email features like sending attachments, multiple recipients, To, Cc and Bcc types and Text or HTML code. Setup default email subjects and body for each type email. The email types are:

General - opens email client.
Quote - send a RTF attachment
Invoice - send a RTF attachment
Statements - send a RTF attachment
Aging - send a RTF attachment
AR-History - send a RTF attachment
Payment - send a RTF attachment
Purchase Order - send a RTF attachment
email Mass Mailings (newsletter, attachments etc..)

Side Note

Our product is over twenty years old and many new features and enhancements have been incorporated into is design over the years. Each new feature came as requests from our customers. Rather than customizing each one for that particular customer, we have always tried to incorporate that change into the product as a new feature. Sometimes the request is so custom that it makes better sense to offer it as an optional add on. These add on programs are installed and executed from a special Custom Reports Menu. This allows all our customers to keep themselves up-to-date with the latest version without affecting any custom programs. We never include the report forms, work order, invoice or statement forms with updates because these forms are all customizable.