The Attivo Blog

A common question or problem that many of us face as teenagers is how to fit in or be accepted by the "in" crowd?  One way to achieve acceptance into any group is to provide value or increase the status of the social circle you are trying to enter.  (You can also try being yourself but for the purpose of my blog lets stick with my first suggestion) Over the past few months, I have written several articles about the "Fab Five" of manufacturing applications that integrate with QuickBooks and I have to admit that when I began writing about the "Fab Five," I was unaware of the value that FishBowl's Inventory Control Solution could provide to the group.  So now that I am introducing FishBowl to the "Fab Five," what can FishBowl offer? FishBowl's Inventory Control Solution, offered by The Attivo Group, provides QuickBooks users with an affordable solution that solves many of the problems that only expensive solutions solved in the past.  These problems include better order management, inventory control, warehouse management and manufacturing.  Not only this but FishBowl is known for its ease of use and has great online documentation that is available for its users. A good rule of thumb is never invite somebody into a crowd if you don't think they will get along with everybody.  With FishBowl's strong inventory control, integration with QuickBooks, affordability and ease of use, I have full confidence the "Fab Five" and FishBowl will get along just fine!

What the economic melt down has meant to business consulting and software sales

The majority of our clients have been predominantly smaller mid-market sized companies, typically privately owned, with revenues in the $5-100 million range.  They have been absolutely frozen in place since about October of 2008.  Unable to make any decision whatsoever, they have stopped all spending on marketing, certifications, automation or any kind of improvement initiatives of any kind for their business.  Six months have now passed.  Still no signs of life.  You can probably guess what happened to the business software projects that we were supposed to work on with them.  Forget new system implementations.  The few projects on the street have had so many vultures flying around them that they are hardly worth chasing.  Not a very healthy situation at all. We've made a few very important shifts in our business model that have really helped a lot.  Here's a few: But here's the key - smaller, bite-sized projects.  Instead of $50-150,000 projects, we're working on $5-25,000 projects.  And they are coming from the $1-10 million revenue sized companies.  Not the mid market.  (Still no signs of life there - they still have their hands in their pockets holding onto their wallets). Service industries have less complex system requirements than manufacturers, but they have needs nonetheless.  We are working on some very interesting projects with service companies, and have gained instant entry into the market with the addition of Will Breiholz as our new Vice President of Business Development.   Will is a 12 year veteran of the Intuit Marketplace, and brought along plenty of knowledge and contacts with him. Will most recently served as General Manager for BQE Software, the developer of the popular BillQuick Software.  BillQuick is a professional services time and billing system, that is used by architects, engineers, attorneys and others that need to track their time and bill customers against projects or contracts.  We're implementing tier-two sized ERP offerings such as Exact MAX, Exact JobBOSS, MYSis and Fishbowl that are designed to integrate with QuickBooks for the accounting needs.  This saves clients a significant amount of money, since most can get away with basic accounting, but still need the functionality of bigger systems for their operations management.  This makes a lot of business sense to me.   Not only that, Eunice, the 40-year veteran bookkeeper, does not have to give up her QuickBooks system and learn a new system (which would have killed the deal, by the way).   I don't want to go too far out on a limb with this, but I see this as a real growth market for us. I welcome any and all comments on how you have changed your business in these tumultuous times - we could all use some good hints on how to stay alive!

With the Advanced User Permissions in QuickBooks Enterprise Suite Version 9.0,  you can control your employee’s access to only the information and activities they need to do their jobs, without exposing your data to accidental or intentional misuse.  QBES 9.0 allows you to configure access control over 115 individual reports, bank accounts, lists and activities.   The system comes with 13 Predefined User Roles to make new user set-up fast and easy. Each predefined role template comes with a complete set of permissions designed for that role. You can copy and edit each role template and assign any role to any user instantly, or apply multiple roles to a single user.  Predefined roles include: Accountant, Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Banking, Finance, Full Access, Inventory, Payroll Manager, Payroll Processor, Purchasing, Sales, Time Tracking, and View-only.  Check out the full description of the security capabilities in QuickBooks Enterprise Suite. My CPA constantly complained about how easy it was to change data from a prior year, for which a tax return had already been filed.  Problem solved.  And in the off-the-shelf versions of QuickBooks, such as QuickBooks Pro and QuickBooks Premier, user security over data is very limited.  Also solved in QBES. Upgrading to QuickBooks Enterprise Suite is very easy, and provides the accounting and security control that most companies really need.  As a business owner I am very impressed with the new security functions in QuickBooks Enterprise Suite Version 9.0, and  I like that I do not have to worry about my company’s data being misused.