The following article is reprinted from the March 2009 Plugged In column of Society of American Florists' (SAF) Floral Management Magazine. SAF's Floral Management is distributed to more than 11,000 SAF members and is the floral industry's premier floral business practices publication.
Automating your wedding and event business can spur revenue growth, expand your ability to take on more clients and increase customer satisfaction. This month, we review how several floral point-of-sale (POS) systems handle weddings.
Inventory Control
Florists using Teleflora's Dove POS can easily configure the system by add- ing an unlimited number of wedding products and organizing them using the "wedding product category." Once entered, the costs and offerings are clearly outlined for bridal consultants, who can then provide a draft order or proposal for brides without revealing price. Dove POS allows you to add and edit items into the draft order without re-keying the basic information already entered. Visit myteleflora.com or call (800) 456-4237.
FloristWare's approach is similar in terms of inventory input and proposal drafting - designers can also make changes to the order throughout the consultation. To streamline delivery on the big day, FloristWare groups wedding arrangements into separate deliveries - church, reception, rehearsal, etc. FloristWare is strong on visual presentation as you can show photographs of suggested pieces throughout the con- sultation. Visit floristware.com or call (888) 531-3012.
McShan Abner Systems extends its wedding system to allow your purchasing, receiving and delivery departments to adapt when handling inventory for special events. When ordering product for weddings, you can specify which vendors to place the order with, how much you need to buy and when the product will be received. You can also use the system to manage inventory and pick-up of rental items. Visit mcshanabnersystems.com or call (866) 941-6522 ext. 201.
Show and Excel
Wedding product photos are used ex- tensively in FTD's Mercury POS. It allows you to show products to prospective clients and upload the photos with product descriptions directly to your FTD Florists
Online Web site. To help control costs, Mercury allows you to enter detailed recipes for each product to prevent over-filling orders. Visit ftdi.com/mercurytechnology/ or call (800) 767-3222.
As its name suggests, VisualTicket manages your wedding functionality using a visual interface called the event worksheet. Prior to the consultation, VisualTicket allows you to show a photo slideshow of your featured wedding arrangements. Then, as you build out the proposal during the consultation, the bride can view the pieces onscreen and walk away with photos of the pieces selected. Visit floralsystems.com or call (866) 797-2428
Follow the Money
SAF's Wedding Flower Calculator - the result of a collaboration of several florists - is a downloadable Excel sheet that shows prospective brides average prices of arrangements with "economy," "popular" or "premium" flowers. Download the calculator at www.safnow. org, plug in your shop's information and flower prices, and post it on your Web site or e-mail it to prospective customers. For more information, call SAF Member Services at (800) 336-4743.
Floral Accounting Systems helps control cost of goods sold using its "arrangement recipe manager," which provides precise recipes of all wedding pieces. Its "event planner" determines the total retail value of the wedding, total wholesale cost and gross profit, based on the costs and retail values of the individual items and arrangement recipes. Visit floralaccountingsystems. com or call (800) 830-6160.
Teleflora's RTI system allows you to manage weddings using the "special events section," which accommodates up to three delivery addresses, manages rental items, prints call tags for drivers to pick up materials after the event and handles complicated billing arrange- ments such as assigning bill amounts to the groom's parents, bride's parents or others. Visit myteleflora.com or call (800) 456-4237.
FlowerSoft's "wedding module" controls costs by maintaining a continual "bill of materials needed" for the wedding as you build the quotation. When the quotation is complete, it can break the cost into specified shares for the groom or bride or equally split the cost between the two. You can also build in the consultation fee, as well as delivery, installation and breakdown charges. Visit flowersoftusa.com or call (917) 647-7676.
We've only skimmed the surface to give you a snapshot of select features of each POS that may help you with your wedding business. Be sure to contact vendors or visit their Web sites to get more detailed information. More information about each floral POS is in a buyer's guide format on Renato's blog: www.renatosogueco.com. Type in "Floral POS."
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