Fred's Flowers
A high volume-shop who left extremely expensive top-of-the-line wire service POS system for FloristWare. They saved a lot of money and frustration.
Fred's Flowers was using a POS system from one of the major wire services when they first called FloristWare. It was the top-of-the-line offering from that wire service, is considered by many to be the greatest floral POS system of all time and came with a starting price of $35,000.
However, this florist just didn't get it. They found the system very difficult to use. It was also more expensive than they thought, because in addition to the huge up-front investment there were significant ongoing costs. Some of the costs were hidden - this system forced her to process credit cards through the wire service at a rate that was much higher than she could have obtained elsewhere.
She decided enough was enough. She walked away from her enormous investment because she realized that there was no point throwing good money after bad, and that with FloristWare she could have a system that she liked for less than what she was paying in ongoing fees for a system she had already "bought".
How did it work out? We'll let her tell you:
So Sincerely,
Hi Mark,Just wanted you to know how awesome I think FloristWare is...
We (all of us here at Fred's Flowers) have been on the XXXX computer system from XXXXXXX for the last hundred years. Well, not really but it seems like it! When I decided to get a new system and go "another route," I was met with a little hostility from employees, and I was personally scared of the change.
At first, nobody would use the new "colorful" system because "it takes too long," and "the customer had an account on XXXX," and "I was scared to use it, 'cause I don't feel comfortable with it (this was me)," etc... Well, when I finally got the courage to say "No More XXXX," and made all of us use FloristWare, we have LOVED it - especially me!
I love how the accounts are set up, I loved how fast and easy it is to send out statements - about 5 minutes to print the end of month statements on FloristWare, compared to 45 minutes on the XXXX. And our customers really like the new easier to read and decipher statements. The invoice options are awesome too - we can print them now (to mail or manually fax) and eventually when I get everything in order we can use the ever-so-nifty fax or e-mail options from FloristWare. Yeah!
Now that I have grown courage, I can take an order in record time and the younger employees can take them faster! I love how the orders print, I love how the cards print - ours our a lovely lavender color with purple lettering and our logo - they are awesome and quick.
Bookkeeping is a breeze! Even I can print reports and look at all sorts of great bookkeeping things, if I feel like it.
I love to print out the list of pending orders - it keeps me on top of the day or the next week, whatever, it's great! We like the delivery system, and are still trying to get the knack of it. Hopefully we can get a few things changed so we can love it also.
End of day reports and cash register reconciliation is the most fabulous thing ever!On XXXX it took someone about 20 minutes to input all the info into the computer and run the 30 pages of reports and wait forever for the credit cards to capture - a real drag! Now, all that same info is on two sheets of paper and it takes about half a second to print it and make sure all the money matches up. This make me smile every day!
If anyone ever wants to know about FloristWare - send them to me I'll convince them how awesome it is!
Barb Watson
Owner, Fred's Flowers
