Where Encore Gets Its Mojo

Where Encore Gets Its Mojo

An Executive Summary for those of us who don’t use Encore every day

07/29/14

Contents

What is a Quote? 3

How do I Find the Correct Quote? 5

What is a Lot and where does it come from? 7

Pick a room, any room. Or pick more! 10

Now that you have room – what should it look like? 13

A Quote is Simple: Then – we complicate the dickens out of it! 17

Marketing the Option Package to the Customer 17

Option Package Types: Installation, Vendor Items, Hardware and Room Upgrades 18

Room Upgrades 18

Not Every Option Package is Available to Every Room 23

Why Does Hardware Have to be so Hard? 24

Just Like the French, May We Offer You Something off The A La Carte Menu? 26

The Quote is Not Enough – May I Have More? 28

So – where do the Parts come from??? 30

Quoting Per House Charges – It’s not a Part, Just a Charge 32

If these are quoted, why do I need to do all this extra work???? 33

Taxes - The government needs their bit too 33

Installation – it’s hard work to build a kitchen 33

Vendor Items – we can’t make everything! 33

Finally – the designer is your friend! 34

It’s as Simple as That! 34

Contact us! 35

Team Members: 35

Location Contacts: 35

What is a Quote?

Simply, it is an agreement between a Builder and Timberlake to purchase a defined list of cabinets and parts at a set price.

The “Printed Quote” refers to the Excel produced in Quest III. The “Quote” refers to the file created in Quest III which is copied in to Encore.

Figure 1 - Rooms and Styles of the Printed Quote

In Figure 1 above, the rooms are listed across the top of the Excel worksheet and the styles are listed down the side. To find a price for a room in a specific style, go to the cell where the two intersect. For example, a STD KIT UPG in the 3rd Upg style will be column E row 24: $4,164.00.

If we look at the quote, we will see the STD KIT 36 is only available in the Base group. And, the other two kitchens are not available in the base group. Exclusions such as this can be set up in Quest.

How do we know which style is in which group? This quote was printed with the styles summarized. Some quotes will display all the available styles. When the styles are summarized, the listing of which styles are in each group is near the bottom of the page. See Figure 2 below.

Figure 2 - Summarize Styles in the Printed Quote

Finally, we offer option packages and other additions available for purchase for each room. These are listed under each room (if available for the room). In Figure 3 below, we see the available packages and the price for each room. Positive “+” amounts would be added to the purchase order amount and negative amounts “()” would be subtracted from the purchase order. For example, if hardware was purchased for SOL styles in the STD KIT 36, it would add $75.00 to the purchase for the lot.

Put this altogether and we have the printed Excel Quote – the agreement between the Builder and Timberlake. The printed Quote documents what we communicated to the builder and is stored in Maestro.

Figure 3 - Option Packages of the Printed Quote

It’s pretty simple – A quote is an offer of “Rooms” in different “Styles” and available add-on “Options” for a specific “Plan” (created once, processed hundreds of times).

How do I Find the Correct Quote?

Figure 4 - Maestro Tree in Quest

There are two key attributes of a quote which aid you in selecting the correct quote for the Lot you are processing. First of all, the quote must be valid for the date of the Purchase Order (or the current date if you do not have a Purchase Order). In Figure 4 above, there are two quotes on the Maestro Tree in Quest – Encore Test Revision 0 and Encore Test Revision 1.

As quotes are revised, the designer will save the quote with a new revision number. If the Quote Contract Date is the same, always select the largest revision of the quote.

The other attribute you need to pay attention to is the Quote Contract Date. In Figure 4 above, one of the quotes is not valid until August 1, 2014. If a Lot was being processed prior to the date, you would not want to select the quote that is not yet valid.

There is a tool in Encore to prevent you from selecting a quote that is not yet valid. Before selecting the Lot and Collecting the Order Documents, key in the Purchase Order date (and check the box as well). As you can see in Figure 5 below, once you select the Lot and navigate to the quotes, only quotes valid on the Purchase Order date entered and prior will be available for collection.

Figure 5- Maestro Tree in Encore

The best practice for designers is to notate the quote name, revision number, and contract date on the layouts. When viewing the layouts you can be assured the layouts do indeed match the quotes (and therefor the parts in the quest file are the correct parts).

What is a Lot and where does it come from?

The “Maestro Tree” used in Encore (see Figure 5) and in Quest (see Figure 4) is the same information found in Maestro (see Figure 6). The tree is made up of Builders, Subdivisions, Plans and Lots.

Figure 6- Maestro Tree in Maestro

When you select a Lot in Encore to process, the key information for the Lot is copied into the Encore file. For example, the address, Builder name, Subdivision name, Lot name, Plan name (if the Plan is linked in Maestro). The Lot from Maestro (Figure 7) and the Start Page in Encore (Figure 8) are below to demonstrate where the information in Encore is coming from in Maestro for the Lot.

In this example, the Plan (Starlet) was linked to the Lot. The address lines were filled in with non-address data for an example.

In Encore, you can accept the default address coming in from Maestro, or you can key another address. Later, the Order Analyst must key in an address and then select between what was just keyed and what the OP keyed.

The address is really important – this is where the cabinets and parts will be delivered! Getting this correct is the very first step to managing the On Time Complete and Service Trips Per Install company metrics.

Figure 7 - The Lot in Maestro

Figure 8 - The Lot in Encore

Pick a room, any room. Or pick more!

Keep in mind, a quote is an offer of “Rooms” in different “Styles” and available add-on “Options” for a specific “Plan” (created once, processed hundreds of times).

Let’s look at the Rooms in the Quote.

Figure 9 – Rooms in the Quest Quote

The rooms in the above quote (Figure 9) are: STD KIT UPG, GMT KIT UPG, Clean and Green, LAUNDRY, MASTER BATH, OPT MASTER BATH, BATH 2. These rooms are named well enough that you can figure out if the room is a Kitchen, Laundry or Bath. But we don’t require the names to be this descriptive. In Quest, the designer sets a room type to assist us.

Figure 10 - Room in Quest

Although there are six different categories for room types (Kitchen, Bath, Laundry, Kitchen Option, Bath Option, Other), there are only three room areas in Encore (Kitchen, Baths, Other Rooms). In Encore, we combine the Laundry and Other into the one category for Other.

Now, let’s compare the rooms in the quote (Figure 9) to the room selection in Encore.

Figure 11- Room Selection in Encore

As you can see, the room titled “Clean and Green” is not visible on the Room Selection. But if we open the View Kitchen/Bath Options, we can see the room.

Figure 12 - Room Selection in Encore / Optional Rooms

The rooms of type Kitchen Option and Bath Option may be selected during the Addendum step in Encore. The difference between a Room option and an Option Package is the Room Option, such as the Clean and Green, is an option available for the specific plan but the price varies by the style where as an Option Package is a set price.

The difference between a room of type Kitchen and of type Kitchen Option is that the parts for the Kitchen Option are to be ordered together with the Kitchen parts. Also, the parts list for the Kitchen Option may include additions as well as subtraction of parts. If not processed with the main Kitchen, the parts will not be subtracted from the Kitchen automatically and the Order Processor will need to track back into the Kitchen to manually delete the parts no longer needed.

Only room options of type Kitchen Option will be available in the Addendum Step when processing a room of type Kitchen. Only rooms of type Bath Option will be available when processing a room of type Bath.

We will revisit the Clean and Green when we get to the Addendum Step.

Now that you have room – what should it look like?

Keep in mind, a quote is an offer of “Rooms” in different “Styles” and available add-on “Options” for a specific “Plan” (created once, processed hundreds of times).

Let’s talk about how Styles set up in Quest, how they are selected, how they are bucketed, how they are upgraded and how they are tricked (calling an SOL cabinet an FOL cabinet!!!). Figure 15 below is the Style Selection in Quest.

The first item of note is the Styles in Quest do not go out to the “color”. You do not see Tahoe Maple Honey, for example. Because Tahoe Maple is offered, the customer can select Tahoe Maple Cognac, Tahoe Maple Espresso, Tahoe Maple Honey, Tahoe Maple Natural or Tahoe Maple Spice. In Encore, all colors will be available for selection. Even though there is a StyleID (e.g. Y3S), this does not mean only Y3S is available for the style. In order to price out a cabinet, the system needs a specific style and not a series.

Let’s look back at the printed quote and the Groups listed: Base, 1st Upg, 2nd Upg, 3rd Upg and 4th Upg. Now looking at Figure 13, you can see where the groups are listed in the Style Selection.

Figure 13 - Rooms and Styles of the Printed Quote

The “Groups” are sometimes referred to as “Buckets” because the prices are “bucketed” – all styles in the group are the same price. One of the styles is selected as a Price Leader (see the check box in the Price Leader column in Figure 14 below).

The Factor column lists the customer’s factor for each style. This is not carried over to Encore. It is used to calculate the totals for each room based on multiplying the list price by the factor.

Figure 14 - Style Selection in Quest

The Construction Upgrade column allows us to upgrade all parts for a specific style. In the 4th Upg group above (Figure 14), the Cumberland Cherry style is a Portfolio Style but the other two styles in the group (Rushmore Maple and Scottsdale Cherry) are Portfolio Select. Keep in mind, the group is being sold to the builder as one bucket. It is best to have all the items in the bucket have the same properties. For this reason, the dovetail drawer construction upgrade (see Figure 15) is added to Cumberland Cherry in the Style Selection. Each and every part sold in Cumberland Cherry will have the upgrade and it will be passed into Encore.

The last column, Gets Hardware, is how we “trick the system”. Again, the bucket for 4th Upg needs to have the same properties. If hardware is included for FOL styles only, it must be included for all styles in the bucket. We trick the system by checking the Gets Hardware box. We’ll see in Encore where the FOL Hardware Option is included and cannot be un-checked for this SOL. It gets confusing – but if you look at all the styles in the bucket (in Encore Style Selection, Figure 16 below), and most are FOL, you’ll understand why an SOL style sometimes acts like it is an FOL style.

We are going to look at the same quote again. This time we are going to look at which styles are available for which rooms.

Figure 16 - Rooms and Styles of the Printed Quote

Notice the standard kitchen is only available in the base style with the upgrade and gourmet kitchens are not available in the base style. In the Encore Style Selection (Figure 17 below) you will see the selected room (GMT KIT UPG), the Base style has no styles listed whereas the other groups list all the styles and colors available.