Our fearless and inestimable CEO and founder Sean McLaughlin gave a talk at the annual Association of Equipment Dealers' (AED) conference in Orlando, FL two weeks ago. Sean gave the talk under the dual position as owner of a 5 location equipment dealer (Craig Taylor Equipment aka CTE) as well as the CEO of a quickly growing software company (Flyntlok!). He focused his speech on the value of technology and the critical role it can play within a dealership.
The main premise is that modern technology is not just a recruiting tool, but it is also pivotal for employee retention. Anyone reading these Release Notes knows the pain and difficulty of finding and retaining employees. Highly motivated staff members want to work with and use modern tools. Old technology is rarely fun or cool. Imagine trying to recruit an employee and showing them a green-screen DMS that was first built 15 years before they were even born vs using a system that allows speech to text for recording complaints/causes/corrections. Further, when you onboard new staff members, you can get them up and running much faster if your dealership adopts modern platforms. Does it suck swapping out old systems? Absolutely! But if you embrace the suck, you'll get to the other side and you'll see a step function in the growth potential of your dealership.
Sean illustrated the direct effects of technology by using his own dealership as a prime example. When he first purchased CTE it was doing $19mln a year, but ten years later it grew to $104mln. Yes, the Flyntlok DMS allowed for a much more efficient dealership with better management of inventory, service, and sales, but he also adopted numerous other best-of-breed technologies that could scale with his business from QuickBooks Online (and later Sage Intacct) to Shopify to SurveyMonkey and Twilio. There was a direct correlation to the adoption of technology to the massive growth of the dealership.
Sean talked about Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs (yeah, remember, he's still a Harvard nerd) and how people are always trying to sell you stuff at the top of the pyramid ("self-fulfillment needs") instead of selling you the core things you need to keep your business running ("basic needs"). Modern cloud based software systems, alongside Artificial Intelligence, are an entirely new evolution of the species. Those who adopt technology will thrive; those who don't will struggle to survive.
Opportunity
Salespeople viewing their list of machines on the mobile view requested the ability to filter out machines that are On Order, like how you can filter Sold machines.
Solution
There is a new checkbox on the Mobile Machine Searcher that allows you to filter out machines that are On Order.
Opportunity
Salespeople have asked to see a Machine’s “Minimum List Price” in the detailed financial view on the Invoice page, as this will make it easier to calculate discounts when quoting or selling a Machine.
Solution
You can now find any Machine’s “Minimum List Price” in the detailed financial view on Machine Dashboard.
Opportunity
Managers requested the ability to streamline their management of similar Models.
Solution
Users can now duplicate a Model from the Model editor page. To do this while creating or editing a Model, click on the "Save & Create Duplicate" button:
This will save your current edits and then create a new Model with all fields duplicated. Note: The newly created Model's name will have the word "COPY" appended to it to prevent duplicate naming.
Opportunity
Service Managers using the Work Order Scheduler would like to be able to view a Work Order’s age on the “card” in the Work Order list.
Solution
The age (in days) is now presented on the Work Order “card” in the list of Work Orders, and the created date can be viewed by hovering over the age.
Opportunity
Service Managers requested that $0 customer Invoices be automatically processed when invoicing a Work Order to a regular Customer and separately to a Warranty Customer.
Solution
$0 Customer Invoices will now automatically be processed (moved to Delivered status) when Invoicing a Work Order to a Customer and Warranty Customer Separately.
Opportunity
Service Managers mentioned that it was inefficient (and potentially paper-wasting) to print multiple Pick Lists for a single Work Order that contained multiple Internal Parts Order invoices.
Solution
We have added a printable Work Order Pick List in full-page and thermal paper formats. You can access these from the Actions drop-down on Work Order Dashboard:
Parts are grouped by Job:
Opportunity
When a Purchaser is submitting a Purchase Order to an external vendor, they generally only care about the total quantity of an Item to order, regardless of the store's own specific allocations. They requested a way to view Part Purchase Orders by total quantity per Item to streamline their ordering and reduce errors.
Solution
We have added a new toggle to view consolidated quantities on our Part Purchase Order page:
Opportunity
Purchasers requested an enhancement to streamline their Model creation workflows while creating a Machine Purchase Order.
Solution
When creating a new Model from the Machine Purchase Order page, clicking on the "Advanced" section will reveal additional fields to apply to the new Model.
Opportunity
Managers requested additional controls around their Users' ability to Reverse a Sales Order.
Solution
Administrators can access a new permission called “Reverse Sales Order” via the Wrench icon -> Users -> Access Control, under the Point of Sale category. This will keep any user without the permission from reversing of non-Internal Sales Orders.
Note: As with all Permissions on this page, when changing it, the Users must log out and back in for it to take effect.
Opportunity
Managers requested a quicker way to identify Cost of Sale Work Orders associated with a Machine Sale. Previously, the only way to know was to manually review associated Work Orders on the Machine Dashboard and look for Work Orders that had the appropriate Customer assigned to it.
Solution
When creating a Work Order from the original Machine sale, it will now be visible in the "Related Transactions" pop up at the bottom of the Point of Sale screen.
Opportunity
Salespeople requested a way to know if they or anyone in their company had previously sent a Review Request to a customer. They did not want to unintentionally send multiple requests to a long-term Customer.
Solution
When sending a Review Request, users can now see if a Request had been previously sent to a specific email or phone number. When viewing or adding an email address or phone number, an indicator will appear, and hovering over it will reveal the date that a Request was last sent:
Opportunity
Managers requested a way to identify inactive customers when using the Quick Searcher. They were having a difficult time finding customers when there were inactive customers that matched their search, as there was no way to tell the active customers from the inactive ones.
Solution
Inactive customers now have a red indication clearly showing their inactive status, just like parts.
Complaint: Rental Clerks complained to Wayne that from Machine Dashboard, when renting a Machine that had Suggested Items configured, they were not being prompted to select those Items.
Correction: Fixed.
Complaint: Salespeople reported that when swapping out a Machine on a Sales Order, the swapped-out Machine sometimes remained in Sold status.
Correction: This happened on an invoice that was past “Draft” status. Fixed.
Complaint: Salespeople reported that Will Call Labels on Item Receiving Vouchers sometimes didn’t display the full Customer name and Sales Order reference.
Correction: This was occurring on labels with longer names. Fixed.
Complaint: Rental Clerks complained that on the New Rental page, when switching between List and Timeline views, sometimes the availability information on Models or Machines would appear inconsistent between the two views.
Correction: Fixed.
Complaint: Managers mentioned that they were able to unintentionally create Models with the same name and Vendor, causing confusion around reporting and searching.
Correction: Updated the Model editor page to prevent creating or editing Model names that match an existing name on the same Vendor.
Complaint: Salespeople reported that they would receive an error due to phone number formatting when navigating to a new Lead that was created from the Customer dashboard.
Correction: Fixed.
Complaint: Salespeople mentioned that the searcher on the All Leads page would sometimes display an error.
Correction: Fixed.
Complaint: Purchasers noted that on Part Purchase Orders, the warning for Vendor minimum order amount was always visible, even if the order was over the minimum amount.
Correction: Fixed. This warning should now only show when the Purchase Order's total falls below the Vendor minimum.
Complaint: Service Managers reported that sorting by priority on the Work Orders Service Scheduler did not sort the list of Work Orders properly.
Correction: Fixed.
Complaint: Sales Managers reported that orders coming from Shopify into Flyntlok were being discounted if the order was for an existing Flyntlok customer that had discounts.
Correction: Fixed. Customer discounts will be ignored to ensure the invoice total lines up with what came from Shopify.
Complaint: Parts Managers reported that Part Purchase Orders were not always being closed when all parts were received.
Correction: Fixed.
Complaint: Parts Managers reported that Quantity On Hand was not being adjusted on Parts substituted on Part Purchase Orders.
Correction: QOH was being updated, but we needed to do a forced-refresh of the page to show the updated value.
Complaint: Managers noted that when adjusting the MSRP of an Item, the Vendor default markup was not being applied to List Price.
Correction: Fixed. This only affected locations that were not using Price Matrix calculations.
Complaint: Rental Clerks complained that on the New Rental page Timeline view, Machines with an "On Contract" Conflict were being displayed as Available.
Correction: Fixed. "On Contract" Conflicts should now correctly show the orange-colored indicator as shown here:
Complaint: Fleet Managers with the Samsara integration mentioned that their Machines were not being updated with hours or mileage data from Samsara.
Correction: Fixed.
Complaint: Part Receivers reported that the Part Receiving Voucher would appear to have no parts data initially, then the table’s lines would load.
Correction: Fixed.
Complaint: Parts Receivers reported that, when adding fees to Vouchers, they had to click into the Action field before being able to type when they didn’t need to before.
Correction: The cursor now automatically appears in the field when you add a new fee.
Complaint: Parts Managers reported that superseding Parts on Part Purchase Orders would sometimes fail without indicating why.
Correction: Fixed.
Complaint: Service Managers reported that parts from Invoices that had been unlinked from Work Orders would still appear on Estimates generated later.
Correction: Fixed.
Complaint: Shopify Managers reported that they were unable to see information about Shopify-linked parts in Flyntlok.
Correction: Fixed. Shopify made unannounced changes to their integration that Flyntlok was not made aware of until it was too late. Sometimes we just gotta roll with the punches.
Complaint: Inventory Managers noted that when removing an Item from a Sales Order that was linked to a Purchase Order, the Purchase Order’s page would not show that the Item had been unlinked.
Correction: Fixed.
Complaint: Salespeople mentioned that when searching for a Machine, searching by using words in the Machine's description would return inconsistent results.
Correction: Fixed. Now when you search for a Machine, Flyntlok will once again partially match your search term against words in the Machine's description.
Complaint: Service Managers reported they were unable to link a Sales Order back to a Work Order after it was unlinked.
Correction: Fixed.
Complaint: Part Receivers reported they were receiving an unintelligible error if they received an item at zero quantity.
Correction: Fixed. The error now explains that you cannot receive zero quantity of an item.
January 15th, 2025 Release Notes
Learn More at Flyntlok Dealer Management System
Check out our Flyntlok YouTube channel for more highlights of the application!
If you are an old-school user of Internet Explorer still, please note that Flyntlok will no longer support that browser (which was end-of-lifed by Microsoft in June, 2022). If you use Flyntlok with IE, you need to switch to Chrome, Firefox, or Edge.
Opportunity
Salespeople have requested a streamlined way to register newly sold Stihl Machines.
Solution
Flyntlok now has a new page for viewing Stihl Machines and their registration status. If a Machine has not been registered and is still eligible for registration, you can open the Register Stihl Machine form from this page to quickly register that Machine.
This is our first pass on this page and in a few weeks you'll get the ability to register these in bulk. Help further shape its future by letting us know if you have any feedback.
N.B. Please note that we are still backfilling registration data for your existing Stihl Machines.
Opportunity
Just because a salesperson isn’t at their computer doesn’t mean they aren’t actively selling! Salespeople expressed the need for the ability to create CRM Leads through our Mobile site, enabling them to capture vital customer and potential sales information efficiently while away from their desktops. ABC: Always Be Closing!
Solution
Users can now create CRM Leads directly on their Mobile! This new feature can be accessed by tapping on “New Lead”, located in the updated mobile layout, which now includes a dedicated CRM section.
Additionally, users can create new leads directly from the Mobile Machine Dashboard via the Actions dropdown:
Opportunity
Salespeople managing their SMS conversations requested the ability to hide conversations where the recipient opted out of receiving text messages.
Solution
Conversations where the recipient opted out of receiving text messages will now be filtered from the SMS conversation list by default. If you still wish to view those conversations, a new filter has been added to the SMS Inbox to show conversations with recipients that have opted out.
Opportunity
Managers reported that Users would frequently create duplicate Customers when building new Rental Contracts and Work Orders.
Solution
When creating a Customer from the New Rental and New Work Order pages, existing Customers sharing a similar name with the new Customer will appear under the Name field. Selecting a possible duplicate will set it as the Customer on the Work Order or Rental Contract.
Opportunity
Managers requested the ability to load additional conversations in their SMS Inbox after they had scrolled to the bottom.
Solution
Added infinite scrolling to the SMS Inbox conversation list. Scrolling to the bottom of the list will load more conversations that fit the current filter set. Additionally, conversations with recent messages will now automatically move to the top of the list without needing to reload the page.
Opportunity
Flyntlok customers using Sage Intacct have requested Inventory reports for their company similar to Flyntlok’s existing Inventory reports for QuickBooks Online.
Solution
You can now opt in to receive two of Flyntlok’s nightly Inventory reports – an Inventory valuation and an Inventory reconciliation report – now with account data from Sage Intacct. Reach out to your friendly Flyntlok Consultant if you are interested in receiving these reports.
Opportunity
Managers have requested the ability to embed a QR code onto printed pick lists. This enhancement would allow staff to quickly access Sales Orders by simply scanning the code, streamlining the workflow and reducing manual entry.
Solution
We have introduced an option to include a QR code on the pick list PDF.
To enable this feature, navigate to Flyntlok Settings and check the box labeled “Show QR Code on Pick List PDF”.
Opportunity
Accountants requested that Shopify gift cards post to their own payment type in Flyntlok.
Solution
Added integration with Shopify to post gift cards to a specific payment type. If you would like to set up this integration, please contact your friendly Flyntlok Consultant and they will be happy to help.
Opportunity
Service Managers requested an option to select the “Allow Inventory Restock on WO Parts” box by default when generating a return Invoice.
Solution
Added a setting under Sales called “Allow Inventory Restock Parts by Default.” Enabling this setting will select the checkbox automatically.
Opportunity
Service Managers requested the ability to select the “Upsell Job” slider by default when a Technician adds a new Job to a Work Order.
Solution
Added a setting under Service called “Technicians Automatically Upsell Jobs”. Enabling this setting will select the slider automatically when a User with the Technician role is creating a Job.
Opportunity
Sales Managers requested an option to select the “Make Public” box by default when uploading an image on a Machine.
Solution
Added a setting under Company called “Make Uploaded Images Public by Default.” Enabling this setting will select the checkbox automatically.
Opportunity
Rental Managers reported frequently entering the incorrect end date when creating Invoices for Rental Contracts in advance.
Solution
When creating an Invoice for an open Rental Contract before the Contract’s estimated end date, Flyntlok now assumes you want to end the billing period on the Contract’s estimated end date. You can still freely change the billing period’s end date before creating the Invoice.
Complaint: Sales Managers reported that the “Multi Pay” option on the Customer dashboard was sometimes incorrectly creating refunds for split Invoices.
Correction: Fixed. Multi Pay will now correctly take into account the Item costs on split Invoices.
Complaint: Parts Managers mentioned that even though they had an Item linked to Shopify, the "In Shopify" badge on the Flyntlok Item Dashboard would sometimes incorrectly display that the Item was not linked.
Correction: Fixed.
Complaint: Purchasers and Receiving Clerks reported that when substituting an Item on a Purchase Order for another Item that had a Core, the Core Item was not being included on the PO.
Correction: Fixed. Items configured with Cores should now be attached when substituting in or out.
Complaint: Service Writers reported that on Work Orders, when the option to notify Customers by SMS is enabled, the option to notify the Customer when changing statuses was not checked.
Correction: Fixed.
Complaint: Searching for a Contact to send a Work Order Estimate would only show a list of phone numbers, not the Contact’s name.
Correction: Fixed. Additionally, the pop-up to send a Work Order Estimate via SMS now automatically pulls in Contacts linked to the Customer on the Work Order as default options.
Complaint: Parts Managers noticed that updating an Item’s Department or Division would not update the Item’s list price properly based on the appropriate pricing matrix.
Correction: Fixed.
Complaint: Service Managers noticed tax calculations were off on Work Orders where customers had rejected quotes for parts.
Correction: Fixed. The tax calculation has been updated to ignore parts on rejected part requests.
Complaint: Salespeople noticed that sometimes sending a “Text To Pay” on an Invoice would silently fail to send a text message to the customer.
Correction: Fixed. In the future, if a text message fails to be sent, Flyntlok will pop up an error message to let you know.
Complaint: Managers reported that applying a filter to the Expected Revenue column on the Leads grid was not correctly excluding values.
Correction: Fixed.
Complaint: Rental Clerks reported that they were unable to collect a signature using their Credit Card Machines.
Correction: Fixed.
Complaint: Service Managers noted that sometimes when editing the Complaint, Cause, or Correction on a Work Order’s Job, pressing Cancel would still save the edits.
Correction: Fixed. There was some auto-saving going on that we addressed.
Complaint: Salespersons mentioned that on Point of Sale, they were sometimes unable to edit the Inbound Shipping price.
Correction: Fixed.
Complaint: Inventory Managers reported that they were able to cancel a Parts Receiving Voucher while their location had an Inventory Sprint in progress. This action should have been prevented.
Correction: Fixed.
Complaint: Technicians mentioned that when looking up Alternates for Items on Work Order Dashboard, the quantity on hand was not showing.
Correction: Fixed.
Complaint: Inventory Managers noted that they were able to continue to receive parts on a Voucher when the Voucher was closed. The user had a tab open with the Voucher in an “Open” status, but it was closed on another tab or device.
Correction: Fixed. We check the status of the Voucher before allowing a user to save edits to make sure it’s in a valid state.
Complaint: Service Managers reported that Jobs created from the New Work Order page would not have any tag number.
Correction: Fixed. Jobs added on a New Work Order will now be set to the Work Order’s Tag Number.
Complaint: Salespeople reported that Invoice payment lines sometimes displayed the incorrect date that the payment was processed.
Correction: Fixed.
Complaint: Managers reported that searching “w?” with a Work Order Tag Number was returning many unrelated results.
Correction: Fixed. Work Order Tag Numbers now search using an exact match on the searchbar input.
October 23rd, 2024 Release Notes
Learn More at Flyntlok Dealer Management System
Check out our Flyntlok YouTube channel for more highlights of the application!
