Getting started Guide

Aaron Aldrich Updated by Aaron Aldrich

Welcome to shopVOX!

We have put this guide together to assist you with the basics of getting your account setup.  This article is a road map that will help explain what needs to be setup.   Keep in mind these article links don’t have to necessarily be done in order.  You can skip around to different areas if you want to.  We do recommend getting the accounting details done early on, as the tax rates are required for adding customers.

We also have other resources as well to assist you in setting up and learning shopVOX.   There are the shopVOX University courses that are self-paced which include video instruction.  There is also the Guide Me section within the application on upper right that will walk you through some of the basic functions of shopVOX.

How to use this guide

This guide is broken up into five main sections.  Each section has links to articles that will explain the details. We recommend reading through all the content on this article before clicking through to links. By doing this, it will give you an understanding of everything and where you might want to start. Not everyone uses shopVOX the same way.

The five main sections are –

  • Basic setup details – entering your company information
  • Integrate Accounting software – choose how you will link to your accounting software
  • Customizing your account – areas you can modify to match your process
  • Pricing Overview – learn the basics of pricing and how to create or replicate your pricing structure.
  • Production management - Workflow templates and Job board basics

Basic setup details

This section will cover the basic account settings you need to enter.

Account settings - This article covers what is on the Settings page. This is where your company information is added, like Logo, address, phone, terms & conditions details, etc. Account Settings for your Pro account

Roles - What are they? A role is a Users level of access or permissions and not to be confused with an employee-s job duties. It is recommended that a User only have one role selected. User Roles and Permissions Explained

Adding Users - At first you might want to hold off on adding User until you get things in place. Your key team players that may be assisting with your account setup should be added sooner than later. Refer to this article to understand the two types of Users you can add. User types in shopVOX

SMTP settings - Each user should be setup with their SMTP settings. This will make sure your email communications are routed from your email server and help prevent them from dropping into your customers spam or junk folders. How to configure the SMTP settings for your email

Notifications - There are several options for getting notified from your shopVOX account. You will want to adjust what alerts you receive. Keep in mind, you want to be strategic about what notifications you receive. Your inbox can quickly become inundated with emails from your account. Notifications: Keep your entire team up to date

Importing your Customer base - You may have 100's or 1000's of customers in your current system and wondering, 'What is the quickest way to get all this information into shopVOX?' We can import them for you or you can do it yourself! How to import your customers and contacts from a spreadsheet

Integrate Accounting software & Payment processing

Do you currently have accounting software to manage your business?  If so, we have options to integrate with a few.  If you do not currently have a preference, we recommend one of the Quickbooks options and use the Quickbooks articles to get this setup. 

Accounting software setup

Transaction Numbers

You probably are using a numbering system for your accounting to keep track of invoices and accounts receivables. The default in your new shopVOX account is 1000 for all transactions. This can be changed to start where your current system left off! Transaction Number Sequencing

Payment processing

If you would like to receive payments online or you already do this with Quickbooks and would like to link it up, we have a way to do that. If you don't currently have a system, we would recommend the Authorize.net option as this is recognized by most Credit card merchants as a reliable, safe system to capture customer payments.

Authorized.net & Quickbooks Online payments

Square credit card processing

Customizing your account

This section covers areas of the program you will want to review and update to match your process and how you interact with your customers

Email Document templates - There are several sample templates already created in your account. Review them and edit them as you see fit. These are a great time saver that are used to when sending Quotes, Proofs and Invoices to customers! They are standard form emails that you can customize to match your current process and email standards.

Custom notes - there are several ways to add notes to your customers and transactions. This article covers your options as well as create quick default ones. These will allow you to create an electronic paper trail as well as have short-cut phrases to add to the bottom of PDFs you email to customers. All of which save time as well as having a detailed history of conversations with customers.

Sales Goals - set targets for your company and sales reps to track progress in the Business Intelligence dashboard.

Pricing Overview

We strongly recommend you refer to the courses in our shopVOX University to get a good understanding of Products and the different ways to setup your pricing. We have developed three main pricing courses.

  • Mastering the art of Pricing - overview of our pricing engine
  • Vinyl sign and large format Guide - for the sign industry
  • Apparel decoration guide - for the Apparel industry.

If you have a business not necessarily related to either of these two, but you still have a custom pricing process; we would recommend the Mastering Pricing course and the Vinyl sign and large format Guide.

If you would like to continue reading articles about pricing, here is a collection that will go over the basics. There are also some scenarios and examples you can review in this list.

Start with these first three articles

What are pricing types? This is the foundation of the different ways to build a Product

shopVOX Pricing templates Overview of the pricing engine and the break down of the parts of a pricing template

Creating your first product

Basic pricing templates

As outlined in the article above about Pricing templates, Basic pricing templates are used for formula based pricing. In manufacturing there are a lot of variables that go into a Product. How you currently price may be replicated with this pricing type.

Pricing Scenarios: Banners - this example is focused on a sign industry product, but it is a simple product that explains how this type of pricing works.

How to Price Banners - this article has instructional videos explaining how a Product is built.

Grid Pricing

Think of grid pricing as a spreadsheet of fixed costs & prices that would be selected based on a couple of variables.

Building Products using Grid Pricing - A step-by-step tutorial

Examples of Grid Pricing Products - various grid product layouts

Product: Yard Signs using Grid Pricing - learn how this product is built from scratch.

Product: Business Cards using Grid Pricing - another step by step guide using Business cards as an example.

Apparel pricing

This is unique to the Apparel industry for screen printing shirts, embroidery, direct to garment, heat press and any other apparel decorating pricing. Setting up your apparel pricing involves choosing which catalogs you use or creating a custom catalog and then creating variant pricing for the decoration.

First step - setup your catalogs.

This article will help explain the first part of the process. Blank Apparel - Integrated Supplier Catalogs

Custom catalogs - Importing custom catalogs for apparel from other suppliers

Second step - setup the decoration charges

Adding your own Variants for Embroidery and Screen Printing - this article explains how to setup the pricing details for locations/colors/stitch count pricing grids you are familiar with.

This next article is a walk through using a finished Apparel product

Apparel Decoration Order Guide - this is a walk through of the process of taking an order for an apparel product.

Production management

One of the key elements of shopVOX is the ability to keep all our your orders organized. This section reviews what production management is and what you can do to customize it to match your processes.

Workflow templates - understand how these templates can replicate your production process and how it can be tracked on the job board.

Job board basics - this guide reviews the different areas of the job board and its functions

Online proofing - this is an overview of the proofing system that has revolutionized the design to customer approval process for many of our customers.

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