The Edge is a fully integrated Business Management solution designed for today's organizations. Although it can be used by organizations in any industry, it has been developed and refined to meet the unique challenges of the Ag-Retailer. Some of these unique challenges are:

PREPAYMENTS

The prepayment component of The Edge has been designed to be powerful yet flexible and simple to use.

From the invoice, we take a deposit and note specific products and prices as 'prepaid'. Later, these products are picked up and charged accordingly using the prepaid pricing. You can limit your customer's purchase of a given product by his total amount of prepayment deposit, or you can limit his purchase by a specific amount of that product (i.e. The customer may prepay $10,000 but you want him to have $6,000 of one product and $4,000 of another). If a prepayment purchase is attempted for more than what is remaining, the purchase price will be 'split'. The remainder of the purchase will be suggested at current price. It is very clear on the invoice that your customer has run out of prepayment and is now back to 'charge price'.

The Edge keeps an incredibly up-to-date record of your customers' purchases in season. Directly from within an invoice, you can inquire on your customers' current prepayment status. You are able to see how each customer has used his prepayment thus far and how much is remaining for each product.

There are powerful prepayment reports that show your original 'prepayment plan' based on customer prepayments as well as in season reports available showing you what the current prepayment outstanding amounts are. You can see how much of each prepaid product is yet to be picked up. Note that the system is very flexible. If a customer changes his mind as to what product he would like to purchase using prepayment funds, you can easily override the original plan and allocate the dollars to different products, choosing prepayment or current pricing in each case.

BLENDING

Blending is an important part of any Ag-Retail business that handles fertilizer. Therefore, The Edge has a comprehensive blending system that is integrated into the business management system to assist you in offering your customers unparalleled fertilizer blending. Easy to use yet extremely powerful, the blending module is the heart of The Edge system.

It has been designed to offer powerful blending capabilities in an easy-to-use way:

For example, when a blend is used on an invoice, all of the appropriate inventory entries are posted when the invoice is filed. This integration gives you an up-to-date view of your business no matter when you run your system reports. This also allows you to offer your customers the most accurate and current information about their accounts when they ask. No more wading through reams of paper to reconcile your customers' accounts. That saves you and your customers time and effort.

One of the challenges of the Ag-Retail Industry is inventory control. You need the ability to record inventory received without knowing its cost. In a lot of cases you are selling the product before knowing its final cost. You have products that can be received and sold in different unit measurements. You may have more than one location and need to transfer inventory back and forth.

We have several features included in 'The Edge' to address your inventory challenges.

You can enter inventory receipts without knowing the cost; the system will use an estimated cost until you receive the invoice from your supplier. Once you know your costs, The Edge can 'recost' your inventory using the up-to-date information. This allows you to obtain more accurate margins per product. This feature is especially handy to run after you have received your product rebates. Freight charges can be included as part of the product cost as well. 

The inventory module tracks multiple locations. This can include sprayers as an inventory location if desired. There is a feature for transferring inventory from one location to another. A 'location transfer' document can be produced showing the product being transferred along with any applicable dangerous goods information and warehouse numbers. At any time you can see the inventory balances of any of your locations or of the company as a whole. The system will allow you to sell into the negative, as well (i.e. sell product you haven't entered into the computer yet).

There is a detailed audit trail available of all inventory 'ins' and 'outs'. You have the ability to 'hone in' on the original transaction that caused a change in inventory levels for any product. You can see everything that has affected your inventory. Note that this level of detail is not lost after one month or one year. It is available for years and years due to The Edge's ultra efficient method of storing your data.

MANUFACTURING

There is also a manufacturing subsystem included in The Edge. It was originally intended for the manufacturing of bagged fertilizer but has since been used for farm equipment, lumber kits,  and other manufactured goods. The system utilizes 'raw products' and 'materials' that are put together to create a 'finished good' that is sold like any other. The system tracks the inventory levels and margins of both the raw products and the finished goods.

LOADOUT TICKETS

Loadout tickets, sometimes referred to as bills of lading, can be issued to each customer for products that have been taken and will be invoiced at a later date. What this means is that no retail price is assigned at the time that your customer picks up the product. However, your inventory is depleted immediately and the system knows that the customer needs to be billed for this product at some time. Loadout tickets are very useful for situations where you don't want to make an invoice for every pickup, or you don't know what the final retail price will be, or the staff that are recording the product going out aren't aware of retail pricing.

Our customers who use the loadout tickets find them to be a huge time saver! They also have more control over what is being taken by their customers. The inventory is taken care of and The Edge reminds them that the customer needs to be billed at a later date.

A powerful feature with loadout tickets is the product unit conversion feature. This is the ability to show a product going out in one measurement but billed on the invoice in a different measurement. This was originally designed for NH3 being delivered in gallons or pounds, and being billed in tons. This feature can also be used for multiple levels of pricing. You may have a product go out in tons and want to bill as 'full service tons', or 'tons delivered', etc. This feature is another huge time saver for those who use it.

Note that services, like spraying or soil testing, can be used on loadout tickets as well. You are not restricted to using only inventory items. Of course you can also create custom blends on the fly or pull in blends from your customers' blend history.

If you choose to have The Edge print out your loadout tickets, any applicable dangerous goods information will appear on the form.

WORK ORDERS

Another function in The Edge solution is the ability to use work orders to assist you in serving your customers better. Work orders are used to place an order for the expected delivery of a product or service. This feature is extremely useful for committing inventory or scheduling services. Your inventory reports will show you how much product you have on hand as well as the committed amounts. This is very useful for special order items, or volatile products like seed where you don’t want to be short of product but you don’t want to stock too much either. It is also handy for scheduling labour and chemicals for your sprayer.

You can also lock in prices if you like. Used in this way, the work order feature becomes an excellent quotation tool in situations where prices vary. The work order can be set up as an estimate (an open work order), or you can set the work order to be based on actual product amounts. When a work order is set up to use actual values, this means that when the inventory is taken, the work order is automatically closed, and any special prices on the work order will only be available to the customer if you manually extend them by starting another work order.

INVOICING

The invoicing process is the heart of the accounts receivable module. It is an extremely powerful yet simple one-step process. Once a customer is invoiced, your inventory, accounts receivable, prepayments, sales history, and general ledger are all updated instantly, in real time. There is no 'batch process', or 'end of month' summarizing to be done. Everything that deals with a customer's account (except interest charges) is handled here. Combine returns with purchases, accept payments, do cash sales, charge sales, prepaid sales, etc., all on one invoice. Invoicing in The Edge was designed to be powerful and simple for you, and still easily understood by your customers.

A major feature included in invoicing is the use of 'loadout tickets', or bills of lading. Loadout tickets can be grouped together on an invoice. These tickets can be combined to show a total amount taken, or the tickets can be itemized a line at a time on the invoice. Depending on how the ticket was originally entered, the invoice can automatically convert the units taken into the 'bill as' amount (i.e. convert all the gallons taken into lbs). It's a real time saver plus you get the other benefits from using loadout tickets.

Other features with invoicing include:

• Creating new customers and products 'on the fly', right from the invoice entry screen
• Setting up and claiming early payment discounts
• Using user defined sales taxes (including taxes with 'tax on tax')
• Viewing cost inquiries including last price paid, margin, and markup for each product
• Creating new custom blends on the fly or pulling in blends from the customer's blend history
• Changing an invoice after it's been filed (restrictions can apply - intended to correct mistakes more quickly than by making more invoices)

SUPPLIER RECONCILIATIONS

Along with the excellent inventory activity audit available, we have included features that help with supplier reconciliations. You can see how much product has been received per supplier and how much is remaining to be invoiced. You can follow what the original cost of the product was as well as any price adjustments that followed. The system allows for supplier 'rebills' and black box rebates, and has built-in features that check for and warn you of double-billing.

SALES HISTORY

Another powerful feature of The Edge is its ability to record sales history. You are able to see 'who bought what' for any range of dates. If a supplier of yours wants a list of who purchased a certain amount of their product, the system will allow you to get the information. If your customer wants a summary of everything he's purchased over the last season, or the last ten seasons, The Edge will get you what you need. This information is available any time and can be kept on the system for years without adversely affecting performance.

GENERAL LEDGER / FINANCIAL

The Edge features a financial system that allows you to continue with your day to day operations without worrying about closing periods or fiscal year ends. Back dating is not a problem through the course of normal business. We have designed the system to be flexible and easy to use.

Financial statements can be produced at any time and they reflect the business as of 'right now'. There is no summarizing or monthly batching that needs to be done to make the general ledger current.

The Edge includes a budgeting module as part of the general ledger.

Standard reports include the balance sheet, income statements (comparative, as well as branch profit and loss statements), trial balance, and the chart of accounts. There are also some excellent auditing reports that can show every posting made in detail. Inquiring on the general ledger will also allow you to drill down to the source document that initiated a posting, because everything in The Edge is fully integrated in real time.

ACCOUNTS PAYABLE

Besides the features mentioned that allow you to receive inventory without a cost, supplier reconciliation tools, and supplier rebills, the accounts payable module contains more 'standard' features.

The Edge gives you the option of recording manual cheques, creating computer generated cheques, or both. You can view a supplier's account and drill down to the source document that affected the account. Useful reports include supplier statements and the aged supplier balances report.

PAYROLL

The Edge features an optional payroll module. This package is fully integrated with the general ledger. Other features include time entry, payroll calculation, payroll history, detailed reports, accruals, records of employment, advance pay and recovery, cheque printing (including detailed pay stubs), and T4's (Canadian version). New features are continuously being added to the payroll module. There are normally two upgrades per year in accordance with federal payroll calculation or rate changes.