BookMine is the complete, multi-user, Windows-based, Inventory management system designed for Booksellers and Book Distributors. It was developed and tested in close consultation with several large bookshops and has been deployed for over 8 years in bookshops all over Australia and parts of the USA.
Designed and tested on Windows BookMine integrates every aspect of your business into a single point of access, automatically recording and providing access to every snippet of information needed to operate your business at maximum efficiency. The virus proof, multi-user email is tightly integrated with your Customers/Suppliers and Inventory records, enabling you to manage large, targeted marketing campaigns securely. Sending thousands of emails (solicited) to YOUR customers including listings of specific inventory items is only a few mouse-clicks away. Processing the replies is even easier, and there is no possibility of anyone accidentally opening dangerous attachments, no matter how inexperienced they are or how your operating system is configured. This package is ideal for booksellers and distributors who want to do more with their investment..
From Point of Sale to direct marketing. BookMine is the complete enterprise solution for your book business.
It includes: Full Point of Sale and direct marketing/dispatching interfaces; requests/on hold handling; suppliers/ordering, customer awards, integrated secure multi-user email, document management, customer and item discounts (bulk updateable), Website integration, one-click search/import from Global Books In Print and Bookdata and much more. And all your data is available via the powerful information management engine that enables you to improve your services and returns from your customers. Runs on any Win98/WinNT/Win2000/XP standalone or networked system.
Here are a few features from BookMine :
Point of Sale and Direct Marketing interfaces - BookMine is equipped with both Point Of Sales (POS) and Catalogue/Direct marketing interfaces which enable you to collect, analyse and reuse sales and customer information to improve your sales and service.
The Point Of Sale (POS) interface is intuitive and easy to learn using the extensive onscreen tool tips and online help which is never more than a press of the F1 away. Extensive hotkeys for most functions means you almost never have to use the mouse. Designed for use on Touch Screens where available. The Point Of Sale can be optionally integrated with almost any existing cash drawer, docket printer and barcode reader, giving you maximum flexibility. Every transaction is optionally linked to an operator code and to the customer's central record. Valuable sales histories accumulate as a result of processing sales. New customers records can be created and their sales histories viewed. Your customer awards program can be fully administered from the POS. All information collected at the POS is available for immediate analysis and use in the direct marketing interface, a password controlled click away at any time. Process multiple sales in parallel on a single workstation by just staring a new sale (you are warned if existing sales are open). Items are added via barcode scan, inventory search or via optionally visible, customisable department buttons. Department Buttons can be added/modified at any time to suit your operation and inventory mix.
Functions available at the Point Of Sale Terminal:
Processing Sales - Add item by scanning EAN/ISBN (BookMine is fully 13-Digit ISBN compliant), by programmable department buttons or by full inventory lookup. Optionally link sales to customers either at time of sale or after sale has completed. All the standard facilities for selling at a POS are available. Invoice and item level discounts can be applied at any time. All major functions are Hot keyed so that processing can proceed without the use of a mouse. The layout is suitable for use on Touch screens.
Miscellaneous functions - Process laybys, special orders, distribution list management, customer returns, deposits and more.
Full customer lookup - Display the full transaction history for any customer using the standard search interface. Optionally locate customer by scanning a customer membership card. Examine past sales history, items bought, items on order, on hold, outstanding customer rewards and much more. Administer the distribution lists the customer belongs to. Add/Remove them from selected lists.
Full inventory lookup from POS - Display the details of any item in the database using the intuitive search facilities. Search by scanning or entering the EAN/ISBN or on any field to find specific items or groups of items. Turn every member of staff into an instant expert by providing them with the information they need where they need it. If the item does not exist in your records fold the search over to Nielsen BookFind CD™ or BookFind Online™. Import the search result into your core database records, including images, at the press of a button. Lookup the current price and availability on Titlepage. Place the item on order for the customer. Show full supply conditions from multiple suppliers and supply history. Ensure your customers never leave your store without getting the full picture, no matter which member of staff deals with them, from the seasoned manager to the new part-timer.
Direct Marketing Interface:
Targeted marketing campaigns - BookMine provides numerous features that enable you to manage large targeted, hardcopy and email based marketing campaigns as an integral part of your daily inventory and customer maintenance. These include the secure, integrated email, powerful distribution list handling, catalogue production, contact alert recording, requests handling and auto allocation of incoming items to fill customer special orders. Discounts can be specified on a per customer basis and/or per item basis. These can be updated using bulk updating, selecting lists of customers who are to get discounts on lists of specific items.
The Mail order sales interface presents a richer set of functions than the POS interface for dealing with sales. It also enables you to compose invoices, process payments, print parcel labels, print full or docket style invoices, or just send them in a formatted email. Typically this interface is used to process mail order sales which have been generated as a result of the direct marketing campaigns carried out by you using BookMine .
Inventory Records Management - Store unlimited text to describe entries. Numerous self-generating drop-down selection lists help you and your staff to maintain consistency in entries. Associate images with Inventory items for including in your Web catalogues (see below). Add/Remove items to your online inventory at the click of a button. View online status, catalogue history, backorder status, invoicing history at the click of a button. Colour coded buttons alert you to significant entries. Automatic checks for records matching new entries prevents inadvertent duplicate records. Toggle between Detailed and Summary views of Inventory and Customer records.
Full Customer/Contact
relationship management. Store unlimited contact phone numbers, email addresses,
shipping addresses, Web addresses for each contact (can be Customers, Suppliers
or organisations). Unlimited contact information
can be stored with each record. Current financial status (Credits/Debts)
displayed and updated as you scroll between records. Colour coded buttons
alert you and your staff to specific conditions. View all interactions
(appointments, invoices, requests/backorders, distribution list memberships,
for any person at the click of a button. Automatic checks for records matching
new entries prevents inadvertent duplicate records. Merge facility allows
you to consolidate customer's details from several records into a single
record. All Australian postcodes and states auto inserted on selection
of the locality from a drop down box to aid data entry. Generate new domestic
and international entries as you go. Numerous self-generating drop down
lists aid you in categorising your customers so that you can market directly
to them. Link any file to any contact record for easy storage
and retrieval.
Full Supply Chain management. Specify as many suppliers per item as is required to fully record the options available for sourcing. Specify one supply as the primary that is used unless otherwise specified. Suspend suppliers as needed. Specify default supply conditions for each supplier such as the discount, minimum order value or quantity, currency and currency value, returns conditions, and many other properties. Supply conditions are automatically inherited by new items from the default conditions specified for the supplier. Item supply conditions can be changed on an item by item basis.
Intuitive Search facilities allows you to retrieve records using the smallest snippets of information from any field. Rapidly find customers, inventory items, catalogue items and emails using any bit of information from any combination of fields, in any location within the fields. Find your top customers based on sales. Find all customers of a given type or types who have specified interests etc, etc. Thousands of other search combinations means your imagination is the only factor limiting how you view your records. You will never lose a record again.
Secure multi-user Email
Integrated Email facilities - BookMine 's powerful integrated email facilities gives you enterprise wide access to every message that was ever sent or received (unless you deleted it, of course) on multiple workstations. And all this is provided without you having to purchase and install NT/Win2000 Server and MSExchange Server. It runs on any MS Windows peer to peer network. The intuitive interface enables you to view emails by date, subject, content, recipient and numerous other views. Never wonder where an email has been stored again.
Every email to and from BookMine is automatically associated with the corresponding contact record in BookMine . As you download from the Internet BookMine links incoming emails with existing contact records automatically. Over time, a full history of interaction with all your customers is generated. All outgoing emails are sent directly from customer records. If you have 50,000 contact records, you implicitly have 50,000 folders which auto arrange emails for you as you need them i.e. linked to the person they refer to. You can also set up as many generic folders as you wish such as In progress, on hold etc.
Virus Protection from email attachments is built in. BookMine enables you and you staff to do the right thing every time without having to think about it. BookMine enables you to view attachments safely, invoking the corresponding application at the click of a button. BookMine will never allow anyone to open potentially dangerous attachments directly. It directs the user how to deal with the situation. This is particularly important when you are dealing with thousands of emails from many different sources, many who may be unwittingly sending you dangerous attachments.
Direct marketing from your Contact and Inventory records - Powerful integrated distribution list handling enables you to send targeted emails to thousands of your customers at the click of a button. Include record listing or catalogues in the body of the email or as attachments. This is the most cost-effective way for any business to keep in contact with their customers. Your lists are built up by adding contact records to them over time as you interact with your customers during day to day sales. This enables you to target your best customers with special offers, etc at almost no cost to you.
Send printed offers to customers directly from their record, including catalogues or single items along with standard messages you specify. Print envelopes, customized with your logos and contact details to send the offer letters in.
Update all your Online Bookstores (ABE, Alibris, Amazon.com,Bibliocity, Bibliofind and others) in one simple operation. Add new online bookstores as they come online)
Rapidly learn how to harness all the power of BookMine from the extensive context sensitive help, always at your fingertips (simply press F1 on from any form) and from on screen tooltips(see below). Staff training can be done on the job, while they carry out useful tasks.
Learn as you go along, at your own pace. All commands are visible on the desktop. No searching through hidden, multi level menus for commands and options.
Extensive Tool tips let you know what any command will do when the cursor lingers on a field or button. (Can be enabled/disabled as you become more familiar with the program.)
Extensive data validation prevents errors creeping into your valuable contact and inventory records.
Numerous user generated drop down selection lists help you and your staff to standardize the entries for keywords, publishers, places, addresses, user interests, user types, catalogue sections, departments and many, many more. Type once, entries auto complete from then on. Automatically validates entries. Allowed value lists grow if a match is not found and you agree to create a new one.
Extensive invoicing/receipt handling capabilities. Printed Invoices/Receipts are customizable, each optionally printed with (i) a large Parcel label (ii) a Credit Card slip, and (iii) a hard copy summary report (quarter page). All printed output displays your custom logos and contact details. Everything is provided to dispatch orders rapidly and efficiently.
BookMine is fully equipped to handle GST (Australian tax) and can be customised (by you, the user) to handle any Federal or state Tax that prevails in your locality.
Catalogue/List production is intuitive and rapid. Create a view of all books conforming to some criteria, add them all or single items to a catalogue, output the catalogue in any format desired.
Use any of the numerous standard output formats included with BookMine to produce professional looking catalogues in Word for Windows, plain text or HTML format. Design your own output formats as the need arises.
Output any catalogue/list directly to Word for Windows, in the font and size you choose, optionally organized into sections, ordered as you specify, with section headings included. A list of contents is also included specifying entry number ranges for each section. All ready for sending to the printer. No more fiddling around required.
Web site integration
BookMine is tightly integrated with the Internet, enabling you to update your BolfInfo Web Site at the click of a button. Changes are recorded as you go about your daily tasks, adding new items to your records and removing ones that you no longer wish to supply. These changes are sent to your web site and reflected immediately. All it takes is a click of a button as an few minutes to upload. Multiple images per item and bibliographic information are sent online and ready for buying using our secure shopping facilities. This is an optional extra which can be added on at any time.
Transform any catalogue/list into multi page Web documents in seconds, with the look and feel you specify, all ready to upload to your web site. Links to images and the images themselves are all output into a single folder hierarchy. You just have to copy the top level folder to your site.
Web site integration - upload your records to Froogle/Google for visibility on the most used search engine in the world. Upload your records to ABE, Bibliofind. Alibris and many other online bookstores that can help you improve your visibility and sales.
Design a look and feel for all your Web output via the intuitive Webpage design interface. Specify once, use again and again for years to come.
Associate full images and thumbnail sketches with your Stock records which can be optionally included with your Web catalogues. Links are inserted to the image from records, with alternate text and the optional thumbnail sketch acting as the link. All automatic.
Equip your Web site with a Shopping Cart (optional component) which enables visitors to buy items securely online. Click here to see an example of records output from BookMine in shopping cart mode. Use the Catalogues/Lists link to view the Shopping Cart style records.
Design Customized Reports. Design your own output formats using the intuitive design interface. Specify which fields to output, the order they are to appear in and how they are formatted. Include standard text between any field if desired.
Customized Stationery. Never have to buy customized stationery again. BookMine produces it all for you. As you need it. As you like it, with your logos. Just select the logos using the file selection dialog and they are included in all future output.
Create customer distribution lists to target specific groups of customers. Send emails to everyone in a list. Include a standard message with the email. Include a catalogue with the email. All from within BookMine . Print envelopes or labels for all members of a distribution list.
Customer Request and On Hold handling are processed as an integral part of invoicing, receiving goods and cataloguing.
Integrated Purchase Ordering system (optional) means that any contact in your records can be a supplier. Email purchase orders directly from BookMine to suppliers. A full record is kept linked to the suppliers record. You Can also print orders for sending via standard mail. As deliveries are made record the actual cost the items are landed at in local or foreign currency. Multiple delivery records per item. Use the system wide intuitive search to find items in any purchase order. Set alerts for low stock levels.
Equip your Website with a full secure, e-commerce style Shopping Cart, updated directly from your Catalogues and Inventory (optional component) with your standard look and feel. No changes needed after outputting.
Review all overdue invoices. Send 1st, 2nd or 3rd statements with standard text for each one, for any overdue invoice, automatically included. Keeps track of statements as they are sent.
Export all your Invoice/Receipts data to Excel at the click of a button to carry out financial modeling or for importing into your favourite financial management program such as MYOB or Quick Books.
Access your data from multiple computers across a network (optional component)
All your data is password protected and secure so that sensitive information is safe from unauthorized access
Data Import from Bibliographic databases
BookMine can import bibliographic records from several bibliographic databases including BookFind CD, BookFind Online and TitlePage at the click of a button. Images are also imported from BookFind Online and Titlepage. When your rep visits with new titles you can import the BISAC listing into a holding queue and decide which items you are interested in. Bookmine will then import the titles you are interested in and augment the records from either BookFind CD, BookFind Online, importing images where available. A standard access license is required from Nielsen BookData to use this facility. Once the items are imported you can then go down the queue and place an order for any item imported. A pending purchase order is raised which can be emailed directly to the supplier or printed and sent by mail or fax. It is as simple as that.