News

New Feature Reduces Paperwork and Increases Visibility into Large Commercial Jobs

YARDLEY, PA, March 26, 2008 -- Activant Solutions Inc. today announced the release of Activant Eclipse™ Job Management, a Web-based add-on module. The new application helps electrical distributors manage all aspects of large commercial lighting and switchgear projects.

Eclipse Job Management consolidates the management of bill of materials, bids, purchase orders, change orders, returns, engineering fees, customer bill, and vendor invoice reconciliation all on one easy-to-use Web application with the ability to review the real-time status of their jobs. Throughout the process, the system automatically archives job-related documents, including quotes, purchase orders, and change orders for internal reference and quick retrieval. As a result, distributors will be able to greatly increase productivity, reduce paperwork, and gain visibility into unbilled funds thereby increasing profitability. Plus, the offering maintains a real-time connection with Activant Eclipse, so information is up-to-date in real time and searching for jobs, customers, vendors and products is seamless.

"One of the most critical issues electrical distributors face is staying on top of the mass of data and documents associated with managing large commercial jobs. Because of the complexity, crucial information is often buried deep in giant job folders, in file cabinets, or inaccessible, resulting in unbilled funds left on the table," said Mark Artim, product manager at Activant®. "Using the latest Web technology, we've created an offering that gives distributors end-to-end visibility into their jobs so nothing slips through the cracks and they never have to under-bill a project again."

Eclipse Job Management uses XML, J2EE, SOAP and AJAX technologies, and runs on commonly used Web browsers so users can easily navigate through each stage of a project.

End-to-End Job Management

Eclipse Job Management takes the complexity out of managing the bidding process. Distributors can quickly create jobs, compile the bill of materials, and manage multiple contractors and vendors bidding on the job during the request for quotes (RFQ) process. Once the job is awarded, the user can select the final vendor pricing and update the job's bill of materials.

During the job, the system enables the distributor to release material subsequently by direct shipment from their vendors or ship from stock to take advantage of rebates (SPAs). In addition, users can easily create and manage change orders, track approvals, and handle returns, linking them to original shipments.

Billing Management

Job Management provides powerful tools to give distributors increased visibility into the profitability of their jobs. With line-level percentage-to-completion and dollar amount ledger cards, as well as job and vendor ledger summaries, distributors will easily be able to identify funds that previously often go unbilled.

The system also allows distributors to bill contractors proportionately based on the vendors' invoice amounts for lot priced items or as a unit price. And, because the system maintains a real-time connection with Eclipse, contractor billing and vendor payable activities can be completed from either the Job Management system or the ERP software.

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