ez-framer vs Lifesaver help.

Sarah Winchester

CGF, Certified Grumble Framer
Joined
Nov 6, 2004
Posts
186
Loc
Michigan
I've used Ezframer since I've been in business, so I'm really used to it. Two months ago I took advantage of that free Lifesaver offer and installed it on one of my computers. There's still alot to learn and I'm not saying EzFramer is perfect. But there are two things I can do with Ezframer that I can't figure out with Lifesaver. I've emailed them, but no response.
1. I want to print an invoice or work order with the retail prices broken down by item.
2. I want to print a work order with my costs.

I can do both of these with EZframer. I like the copy with my costs so I can make sure everything is correct. Can I do this with Lifesaver??
 
Hi Sarah

Congratulations on the business decision. Most likely, these are things intentionally omitted - at the strong request of framers.

1) From the customer's copy because thats not something we really want to itemize. It will likely encourage haggling and delay. It is broken down on the employee's screen, however, should there be any questions.

2) Wholesale costs are left off the workorder copy that goes to the back room, because most framer's don't want their staff to have access to these figures. Shipping, discounts, and how you buy (length, box, chop, joined, etc) may cause such a figure to be wrong. These can also be looked up on the ticket screen, providing you have lifesaver configured to permit the viewing of the price database. If properly set up with markup formulas which reflect your local market's value, you can be confident that the price will be correct 101% of the time. As changes come through from the manufacturers, you'll see the prices automatically adjust the very same day in your POS. (after a one click update, based on the parameters you defined) Naturally, this requires tweaking/review once in a while.

That's just my personal opinion, which I hope you don't mind.
If enough people desire such a feature and contact them, they will likely consider it as an option. They're extremely receptive to feedback and suggestions.

If you run into any roadblocks or questions, stop by the live chat any time. Several of us there run LifeSaver, SpecialtySoft, and FrameReady - and will be glad to help! Each company also has an official toll free # for support.

Best regards,
Mike
 
EZ framer gives the option of print the detail or leaving it off of the customer's invoice.

You basically have about 4 choices:
1)Retail itemized
2)Retail totals only
3)Work order itemized retail prices
4)Work order itemized cost prices.

I use 2 and 3.
 
Is there a way to print the wholesale cost for an entire order in Lifesaver i.e. some type of report? I have not been able to figure out how to do this and it drives me crazy not knowing the difference between my cost and the customer price.
 
Here's my Lifesaver wish list:
(and maybe you can do some of these, but I can't figure it out)

1) on the order screen, you should be able to choose length, chop or join.

2) If you are framing more than one piece the same, you should be able to put in a multiplier such as 2, 3, 4 etc instead of entering the piece 2, 3 or 4 times

3)on the order screen, you should be able to click on a number (ie other) and see what makes up that number

4) on a quick sale, the shop copy does not list what was sold and it should. I shouldn't have to stop and write down the item.

5) It would be nice if all receipts were the same size.

receipt = full sheet
final pickup receipt = 1/2 sheet
quick sale = 3/4 sheet
workorder = 3/4 sheet


In the interest of branding, I would like every piece of paper coming out of my shop to look the same. Which brings me to logo.....

6) is there any way to put our logo on. I was told yes in Atlanta, when I called to see how I was told no.

7) I would like to see the work order broken down by components. We charged for xx dollars for Mat 1; charged xx dollars for mat 2 etc.

8) I would like to print out a work schedule (everything that needs to be done) not just one day.
 
Send your wish list to Mike Labbe...


You can do multiples of the same frame or mat on the bottom right of the screen ( tickets window) it says... [Qty and a box [ ] is there ].

We just purchased a dandy little printer (Star TSP 700 series) that works with latest version LS quicksale now. It prints out in just a second or so...as in FAST.

The small ticket that has everything listed ....like [ 2 earrings, 1 photo frame, 1 mug , ect] on customers receipt and ours.The ticket is about 3 1/4 inch wide I believe. Very nice for all those little quicksales.

WE have our logo not sure why you can't. It has been there for years.

A few answers for you hope it helps.
 
Some great ideas. I'll collect and pass them along if you wish, or you are free to send them directly.

Some already exist:

1) on the order screen, you should be able to choose length, chop or join.
Chop and Length pricing can be selected on the fly. You can even have a combination of each in a single order. Box and Join are not currently supported, but shops that use Join are able to do so by changing the markup formula.

How it works: On the ticket screen, you'll see places for up to 5 mouldings/fillets. By clicking on the moulding # ie "1:", you'll see it toggle between Chop and Length price. The "1:" will change to "C:" (chop) or "L:"(length), depending on your choice.

2) If you are framing more than one piece the same, you should be able to put in a multiplier such as 2, 3, 4 etc instead of entering the piece 2, 3 or 4 times
It's in there. At the bottom right corner of the ticket screen, you'll see a field that says "QTY: 1" You can change that to any number up to 999, and it will behave accordingly.

4) on a quick sale, the shop copy does not list what was sold and it should. I shouldn't have to stop and write down the item.
Be sure that "quicksale copies" field is set to "2" in the configure screen, so it will print one for your records. There was a small issue regarding the second copy printing, which is fixed in the next version, but that only affected folks that use high speed receipt (3 1/8" wide) printers.

5) It would be nice if all receipts were the same size.
receipt = full sheet
final pickup receipt = 1/2 sheet
quick sale = 3/4 sheet
workorder = 3/4 sheet
Some of these can be defined in the CONFIGURE screen. Better yet, I highly recommend the high speed receipt printers. They'll print customer and store copies, accept payment slips, and quicksales in a uniform size. They cost less to run and there's no warmup time. Many come with an auto-cutter. The Star 600 and 700 series are great models. We're using a Star TSP743 with the autocutter (USB interface), and love it. If you opt for the integrated credit processing service unveiled in Vegas,(as we did) you'll definately want one of these. The full page workorder and daily closing reports still print on the laser.

6) is there any way to put our logo on. I was told yes in Atlanta, when I called to see how I was told no.
The legacy version has logo with address and phone #, the TV version has company name with address and phone #. This is something you may want to ask the folks at LS directly, to see if they may change in the future.

8) I would like to print out a work schedule (everything that needs to be done) not just one day.
This is also available in the ticket screen. Around the scheduling calendar, you'll see some buttons: "Print weekly to do" (lets you pick the week), "Print monthly to do" (for the month displayed), and "Production Log".

The remaining questions I will pass on to LifeSaver, because I don't know the answers. I have been collecting suggestions from folks, and creating ideas, that have been passed along and well received. You can be assured that they will see everyone's suggestions, and give them serious consideration. You may want to contact them privately/directly as well.

Best regards,
Mike

[ 02-03-2006, 07:47 PM: Message edited by: Mike Labbe @ GTP ]
 
Judy

You type faster than me. Sorry for duplicating your answers!

Mike
 
The reason we purchased FrameReady was because we wanted to manage our business the way we wanted and didn't want some programer telling us how to run the business. Because FrameReady is written as a overlay on FileMaker Pro--you are able to get any report you want or need by just designing the report form and telling the program what information to report. If you want information from your POS program, then the program should give you that information in the form you want.
Maybe the old saying hold true today--"Things you get for nothing are sometimes worth the same amount."

I also enjoy reading how some POS programer with limited or no actual framing experance can tell framers with years of actual experance how framing should be done.
 
Originally posted by Starving Artist:
Maybe the old saying hold true today--"Things you get for nothing are sometimes worth the same amount."

I also enjoy reading how some POS programer with limited or no actual framing experance can tell framers with years of actual experance how framing should be done.
This is getting very old.

There I said it.

I have a request for the programmers of the grumble. Can I block anonymous users that do nothing but b***h?

Carry on.
 
I think that Lifesaver is now dealing with a whole new group of framers: those who have switched to Lifesaver from another POS program. The first batch of people they sold to had never had any other program, and thus accepted relatively easily what they were given. Now they have a whole bunch of us going "but my other program did _____" and being disappointed when LS doesn't do the same thing. They must be tearing their hair out, because they cannot bring LS to be UberLS in the blink of an eye. It is going to be interesting to see how this all shakes out...
 
It would seem that if "my other program did this or that" why did one choose to switch to LifeSaver?? The overwhelming consensus of opinion has alway been "Try out the demos FIRST to see what it is you are getting." Doesn't anyone follow the advice that is given?

Instead of "jumping ship" with something that works for you but lacks a few bells and whistles, why not contact the company and see what can be done to add those items into the update program?? Or don't these other programs offers periodic updates? I would think that the maintenance program that you pay for would include a few updates as the programmers listen to their users and tweak the program.

Jay,

You have to simply ignore "Starving Artist". He does the same thing on the FrameReady users forum and hardly ever gets any response from it. He targets me quite often but I really feel pity for him rather than irritation. It is sad that somebody has that much negative stored up in their brain.

Framerguy
 
Wow - you guys are a great help.
quantity - I overlooked
found the production log -(small print, these old eyes didn't spot it)
found where to change chop or length on the fly
THANKS!
.....but don't know what I'm doing on the quick sale that only the amount is showing up.
....and I'll call again about putting our logo on the receipts. Maybe the third time is a charm.

And one more thing that I want to make sure is real clear- I mean nothing derogatory about Lifesaver. It was strictly a wish list.
 
- "Threadcrapping", defined as posting flames or insulting messages to an ongoing thread, which do not contribute to the discussion.
In any case, we're here to help each other out in the intended friendly spirit of the grumble. "Framers helping framers" If we allow it to become hostile, people will be discouraged from posting.

Thank you in advance
Mike, Co moderator
 
Mike:

I just learned about the chop / length switch!

You 'da man!

Do you know (or any one else) how to handle a situation like the following:

You have a customer who has maybe 20 pieces to frame. You are in the middle of entering the orders and hitting "Repeat".

Another customer walks in with one job and you don't want to keep the new customer waiting. If you press "Hold" at this stage and enter the order for the new customer, can you then pick up where you left and continue with the first customer (the one with multiple orders)???

This is the only annoyance I could find with LifeSaver (assuming the "Hold" option described above will not work as I described.

PS: Can you provide a link about info for the Star receipt printer? Thanks.
 
Framerguy, I agree. I do ignore them most of the time. There has been a couple of specific cases recently and I find Starving Artist to be of the least annoying.

I'm just tired of that attitude in general. There is a section called "warped" where people throw the biggest hissy's over the stupidest things. GO there and cry to your hearts content. But to come to a technical forum with no other reason but to slam one of the fricking sponsors is insane.

Thank you for clearing that up Mike. I agree!

Disclaimer: I don't use LS. I don't like LS. In all likely hood I will never use LS. I don't feel LS is the best product on the market. I just think we can air our problem with things like this in a constructive manner. If you’re incapable then you are to stupid to post.
 
Can you provide a link about info for the Star receipt printer? Thanks.
Standard: 100mm per second, quiet thermal
http://www.posworld.com/star-tsp600-receipt-printer.html
posperipherals_1879_1904083


Premium: 180mm per second, quiet thermal, heavy duty
http://www.posworld.com/star-tsp700-receipt-printer.html
posperipherals_1879_691219


Our shop and Judys both use the TSP743 model in charcoal/black, with USB interface and auto cutter. It has drop in paper loading, and is SUPER fast. It can be networked so multiple computers can share it - if that's what you want to do.

Several other printers/configurations will work, and you may want to check with the vendor directly for recommendations.

As for your other question, I have never tried that particular set of circumstances. I have done what you said with single piece orders, but never with a multi piece. You may want to call and ask, or someone reading this may have a better answer. We obtained another license and installed Lifesaver on our Wizard PC. If someone comes in to make a quick payment, I can apply it on the wizard PC without interupting Andy's use of the main PC. (they are networked to share the same data and printers) This can come in handy for other reasons too, like phone quotes and marking pieces "done" (from the back room).

Mike
 
The star receipt printer looks like an good option.

I'll ask the dumb questions:
I'm assuming it's just a receipt printer - that workorders are still printed out on the laser printer. Is that a correct assumption?

Can you put your logo on the receipt printer?

Paul's right
You 'da man!
 
Maryann:

That should be possible.

In the System Configuration screen, there are 2 printer setups, one for default and one for receipts.

By the way, if you select a receipt printer (in the Cconfigure System screen) without actually having one attached, your LifeSaver will crash later on (happened to me!)

So don't select it unless you actually have a receipt printer.

As for the logo, not really sure. Mike would know better as he has one.
 
I just figure out how to do the chop/lenth thing! That is great. I had no idea that was there!

I love this forum, I can't tell you how much I have learned just by asking and reading other peoples questions!

You guys are great

I'll stop gushing now,
Carry on,

Jennifer
 
Our setup is this: We have 3 Dell computers ( thanks to Mike always telling my about Dell specials! ;) )

We have the LS client software for more than one computer. We have 3 computers networked together.

Dell 1 is the server with LS, Dell 2 has LS in there as well, Dell 1 and 2 are used primarily to do quicksales and except payments and bookeeping. These two computers use the Star receipt printer for receipts. The receipt Star printer does indeed print our LOGO.

Dell 3 across the room has LS too as well as Picture it First software. We take all the pictures with Dell 3 and print out only to the laser printer ( it is set up in configure to do this). So we print out a receipt for the customer on the laser printer with the picture of their project. I want to tell you our customers LOVE having a picture of their project on their receipt. Also it is great to look at a frame order and see what the project is on the ticket screen.
Be patient with LS folks. Many people have purchased the new software and PIF. They have a lot of new bells and whistles to help people with.
 
Interrupting a multi-ticket order: I have done this buy saving as a proposal, giving it a name. Then when ready open the proposal and in that screen you hit the insert button (lower right) and it will open a new ticket window that is attached to the end of the group of tickets. Not simple enough :rolleyes: , but it works.

How about this situation - you have 4 pieces that all have the same mat/frame combo, but are all different sizes. What about a save/copy/repeat function? Then on the next ticket all you do is alter the size. That would save so much time, you can't imagine how happy that one would make me!
icon21.gif
icon21.gif
 
you'll see some buttons: "Print weekly to do" (lets you pick the week),
Those are not labled - they are the blue boxes on the left side of the calander with 1,2,3,4,5 in them. Just click on the week of the month you want.
 
I'll ask the dumb questions:
I'm assuming it's just a receipt printer - that workorders are still printed out on the laser printer. Is that a correct assumption?

Can you put your logo on the receipt printer?
There are no dumb questions. The high speed printer will print your credit card merchant slips (if you are using the new built in card processing feature), quick sales (both copies, which contain item info), accept payments, and even the initial sales invoices that show the item descriptions, due date, totals, etc. Everything else (daily reports, workorders for the back room, etc) still goes to the laser.

If you have an older copy of lifesaver (before the Tru-Vue Version), then yes the logo will print. The TSP700 series printers claim that they can automatically put a logo or coupon on every slip (completely external to Lifesaver), but I havent experimented with this yet. There's a free program on the Star website that lets you upload your logo right into the brain of the printer, along with what text to look for that will trigger the logo/coupon. I plan to check this out myself eventually, and understand that support for this will be from Star and not LifeSaver.

just figure out how to do the chop/lenth thing! That is great. I had no idea that was there!

I love this forum, I can't tell you how much I have learned just by asking and reading other peoples questions!

You guys are great
There are a LOT of tips, shortcuts, and tricks for each POS system. Perhaps we should consider a new thread to share them? (one for each pos system, to avoid confusion/threadcrapping/non relevant posts with folks defending their brand/investment) If we do so, it should be in the positive spirit of sharing useful ideas, not criticizing each other's brand or bashing vendors. Official tech support and product feature requests would still be sent privately to each vendor, not on the proposed threads.

I could probably contribute several tips for LSS, and im sure others could for SpecialtySoft, FrameReady, and some others that they are familiar with. Those 3 programs probably make up >90% of what folks use, and we have a good mix of folks here that use each product. After all, that's what the grumble is all about. Is there any interest?

Mike
 
There's interest from my end.

There are often so many things in software packages that are great features that are not understood or explained well in a manual.

I'm not one for overmoderation, but keeping the "mine's better" off of each thread would be very productive.
 
Originally posted by Maryann:
There's interest from my end.

There are often so many things in software packages that are great features that are not understood or explained well in a manual.

I'm not one for overmoderation, but keeping the "mine's better" off of each thread would be very productive.
Mike, I agree with Maryann, would find such a topic most useful.
 
We,too, transitioned to Lifesaver recently. Our "old" POS was satisfactory; the service and people were not.

Having said that, we have had nothing but great service from LS. Like Ellen, we had a bunch of the "why can't it do what our old did" questions. I'm sure the techs thought they were dealing with a bunch of third graders, because their answers were way too simplistic. Like MaryAnn, we had a bunch of "Duh" moments

And have to agree with Judy in thanking Mike for his help when we needed to convert our hardware from Dell

There really are several quite good systems out there-see which one works best. Understand that probably none will do everything
 
Betty Newman, Thank you. The info you provided is pretty much what I found.
Mike. Thanks for your insight also.
Framerguy, I'm not sure who your comments are directed to, buuuttttt....I did not 'jump ship'. I downloaded the free Tru-Vue version of Lifesaver to see if I'd like it and be ready if I ever went to the visualization package.
However I'm still using ezFramer and their newest version solves whatever problems I had.
 
If anyone finds out how to put the logo on the Tru-Vue version, please post it here b/c I would love to know. This was one of the first things I asked Lifesaver about and was told it wasn't possible. I find it interesting that it used to be there and has been taken out. Why would Tru-Vue care if the shop puts their logo on the receipts?
 
Originally posted by Lisa A:
If anyone finds out how to put the logo on the Tru-Vue version, please post it here b/c I would love to know. This was one of the first things I asked Lifesaver about and was told it wasn't possible. I find it interesting that it used to be there and has been taken out. Why would Tru-Vue care if the shop puts their logo on the receipts?
Let me add my voice and confirm hereby that I too would like my Logo on the T/V version!!
 
Hi folks,

I passed a link to this thread along to LifeSaver, and they said thanks. They like suggestions.

That being said, I may take our logo off ours.
It doesn't always look great when shrunk down to a small size of 1 inch or less. Our new high speed thermal is only 204dpi, so it's a slight issue.

As promised, i'll start up a new thread so we can share tips and tricks.

Thanks!
Mike
 
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