ECi M1™ Business Management Software

ECi M1 Features

ECi M1 software can help you reduce operational costs, improve productivity and increase profitability by:

• Simplifying the process of planning your production jobs
• Identifying shop floor capacity problems at a glance
• Reducing on hand inventory, boosting cash flow and improving on-time deliveries
• Providing an efficient method of collecting and controlling all labour records

ECi M1 also has a vast array of features to increase your efficiency:

Contact Management

• Document specific contact details for all customers and suppliers, including email and internet addresses
• Manage multiple related locations and individual contacts
• Create tasks and appointments by contact
• View product availability by quantity on hand, in production and on order for a selected part
• Link finance companies and/or resellers to a customer

Order Management

• Track all details and transactions relating to a specific order
• Create jobs for make-to-order items
• Improve on-time delivery performance by managing sales orders
• View multiple orders at once to plan production demands more efficiently
• Manage blanket orders by creating multiple releases for order details
• Automatically create backorders when partially completed orders are shipped
• E-mail order acknowledgements directly to customers

Job Management

• Automatically updates job costs with every job transaction
• Update raw material demands automatically with each job
• Compare estimated job costs to the actual costs as the job progress
• Manage complex production jobs with multi-level bills-of-materials

Inventory Management

• Control raw materials, finished goods and sub-assemblies
• Ensure accurate stock records through automatic allocations, stock receipts and issues
• Obtain accurate stock valuations
• View future demands on your inventory
• Track standard, average and last costs for all parts
• View the method of manufacturing for any part

Purchasing Management

• Purchase raw materials directly to the job
• Raise purchase orders for subcontract operations in a job
• Create manual purchase orders for miscellaneous items such as office supplies and services
• Add unplanned purchases directly to the job
• Track all outstanding orders, including backorders
• Measure and monitor delivery performance of suppliers

Shipping Management

• Ship goods to a customer from either a job or an order
• Ship goods directly from work in progress
• Print shipping and packing labels when you process a customer's shipment
• Create shipments for miscellaneous items
• Add freight charges when you create a shipment
• Monitor your on-time delivery performance to your customers
• Report on all shipments due for delivery on a specified date

Labor Management

• Collect and control employees' labor hours
• Define shifts with start and end times, grace periods, and payroll information
• Record critical information relating to each employee
• Track employees to see who has clocked in
• View the jobs currently in operation on the shop floor without physically visiting the factory
• Integrates with ECi M1's payroll module for a complete payroll function
• Verifies accuracy of timecards prior to payroll processing

Scheduling

• Control the shop floor with backwards and forwards scheduling of individual or multiple jobs
• View available capacity to overload situations for each work centre or department
• Reschedule multiple jobs with a single screen
• Define a work centre by its crew size, number of machines, etc.
• Provide a detailed Planned Material Requirements report
• Automatically schedule all assemblies within a job to come together for final assembly

Quality/Warranty Management

• Enter nonconformances to manage, control and analyse rework and scrap
• Manage the inspection process
• Quarantine parts under inspection
• Ensure recovery of costs on nonconforming material
• Process return authorisations and claims from customers
• Create, track, follow-up, verify and sign off on corrective and preventative actions
• Determine whether a claim is covered under warranty

System Security

• Control user access to company information
• View a complete audit trail of changes
• View the change type, date, user and view details of what changed
• Specify the report and component security

Free Unlimited View Only Users

ECi M1's view only feature allows you to have users who can view, print and export data for free. You only pay for the users who actually create transactions in the system, not for those who just review information.

Learn More

To learn more about our software or schedule a demo please fill in the form on the right of this page.

Additional Features

ECi M1 can be further customised to fit your unique business needs with the addition of specific modules.

Financial Management

Accounts Payable

• Process creditor invoices and payments
• Match a creditors invoice with the purchase order and its receipt
• Simplify tax reporting on acquisitions with multiple tax codes
• Choose from manual checks, system generated checks or EFT payments
• Submit regular payments automatically without entering invoices
• View all transaction history for any supplier
• Create credit memos quickly and easily for invoices previously posted

Accounts Receivable

• Generate invoices from packing slips, eliminating data re-entry errors
• Print, fax or e-mail invoices directly to customers
• Pay sales commissions at the time of invoicing or upon receipt of payment
• View all transaction history for any customer
• Allocate customer payments to open invoices including partial payments
• Process cash, check, direct deposit and credit card receipts
• Post miscellaneous cash receipts directly to a GL account, bypassing the debtors ledger
• Adjust invoices leaving a full audit trail
• Monitor current status of the customer's account

General Ledger (including Fixed Assets Register)

• Maintain budgets for any account and year to improve financial analysis
• Post transactions into prior and future periods
• Create recurring entries for regular, fixed amount journals
• Manage multiple companies within the same system
• Update your general ledger and bank reconciliation when the payroll session posts
• Create transactions which can be automatically reversed in the next period
• Review transactions created in Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable modules
• Manage and reconcile your bank accounts
• Track of all your assets from initial purchase right through to disposition

Payroll

• Define the rules for individuals or groups of employees
• Set up an unlimited number of rates such as standard time, sick, annual leave, vacation, overtime, etc.
• Store and manage Federal, FICA, State, local or other taxes
• Calculate leave accruals
• Manage employee deductions
• Provide direct deposit

Multi-Currency Management

• Define foreign currencies and their exchange rates relative to your home currency
• Maintain exchange rates through the use of effective dates
• Make deposits, payments and reconcile bank accounts in the foreign currency
• Produce quotes and invoices for your customers in their own currency
• Manage international purchases

Sales Management

Estimating & Quoting

• Respond quickly to requests for quotes
• Provide quotations containing multiple items with multiple price breaks per item
• Control the markups and margins for materials, subcontracting, labor and overhead
• Review the cost for each subassembly, materials, subcontracting, labor and overhead
• Email, fax or print a professional looking quotation directly from your computer
• Enter miscellaneous costs per item and price break
• Include commissions for the sales staff in the quote

Point of Sale (POS) for Manufacturers

• Sell your stocked items in an over-the-counter environment
• Process spare parts orders
• Create cash, check, credit card or even charge account transactions
• Process phone orders
• Print, fax or email an order acknowledgement, packing slip and invoice
• Maintain employee access to create an audit trail of point-of-sale activity
• Reconcile transactions

Shop Floor Data Collection

Unlimited Shop Floor Entry (Data Collection)

• Provide accurate job costing
• Prioritise jobs using real time information
• Accurately collect employee hours for payroll
• Shop Floor Entry also runs on a Symbol PPT8800 series PDA for staff

Web Presence

WebGear Customer Web Interface for ECi M1

• Offer your customers a full online web store for self-service sales
• Reduce routine repetitive phone calls from customers
• Increase sales and revenue
• Customise the appearance of your WebGear site to match your existing website
• No duplicate entry required - web orders are automatically created in ECi M1

Relationship Management

Call Management

• Record communications with prospects, customers and suppliers including sent and received emails
• Set call types to record pre-sales activity, support questions or quality assurance tracking
• Log time spent on each call and analyse the total call times for each prospect and customer
• Assign a call to specific representatives
• Prioritise calls to identify contacts requiring close attention
• View warranties and maintenance contracts
• Create a library of commonly asked questions including details on the problem, the resolution and workarounds

Lead Management

• Document all activities in the pre-sales process
• Create and analyse marketing programs to determine the most effective marketing strategies
• Create leads for all product and service inquiries
• Record the expected close date and potential revenue each lead should generate
• Use the shortcuts to quickly create a quote or an order
• Track the reasons why leads are closing
• Assign competitors to leads and track their activities, pricing, strategies, products, etc.

Product and Supply Chain Management

Advanced Bill of Materials

• Control revisions
• Create engineering change requests
• Assign and track serial numbers to ensure traceability
• Roll up costs, labor, material and overhead costs

Advanced Inventory Management

• Create and manage independent warehouses
• Allow inter-company purchasing
• Consolidate financials for multiple locations
• Move inventory between locations using warehouse transfers
• View the quantity on hand by warehouse and bin for materials and parts
• Cross reference part numbers used by customers to the part number used by suppliers
• View alternative parts during inventory shortages or when cost effective options are required

Product Configurator

• Configure products to your customer's exact needs without maintaining extensive Bill of Materials records

Project Management

• Link pertinent information and documents between modules
• View and track progress and activity
• Manage all related documents for a specific project
• Track stages of progress through quick view pie charts, bar graphs and calendars

Purchasing Request for Quote (RFQ)

• Request pricing on both raw materials and outside services
• Pull all or selected parts or services from a quote or a job into an RFQ
• Copy the contents of one RFQ into a new RFQ
• Create purchase orders from the contents of an RFQ
• Generate RFQs for parts that are not set up in your Part Master
• Maintain history of completed RFQs

Additional Tools

Document Management

• Control external documents related to quotes, parts, jobs and purchase orders
• Link documents in many file formats to records for quick viewing

ECi M1 Calculators

• Estimate cycle times and material usage
• Review and adjust calculations at any time

Learn More

To learn more about our software or schedule a demo please fill in the form on the right of this page.

Innovative Solutions

Innovative Integration

Developed for Microsoft SQL Server, ECi M1 runs on Windows XP/7/2003/2008. This makes it easy to learn, run and maintain, making it the most cost-effective solution.

M1 offers Integration with your familiar everyday email and document tools

• Microsoft Word®
• Microsoft Outlook®
• Microsoft MapPoint®
• Google Maps®

State-of-the-art navigation methods allow users to quickly find what they are looking for

Innovative Features & Design

The ECi M1 Start Page provides a fully configurable dashboard for each user to monitor the parts of the business that are important to them with real time information. Powerful yet easy to use customisation tools tailor ECi M1 to the needs of the individual users through modifications to grids, forms and reports.

The Mail Merge facility gives the ability to merge ECi M1 fields into any mail merge document. You can send documents to multiple contacts at once, and even include attachments from within any module. Combining this facility with contact groups increases your marketing power by quickly and easily transmitting your advertising material.

Customisation

With ECi M1 you can make the software work for you with customisation to ensure your most unique business processes can be handled. The ECi M1 design studio is a simple and flexible customisation tool. It allows you to add new fields, change any input form, including moving objects around and adding new objects, and view information in different ways through search grids. Additionally, all standard reports can be customised and new reports created using the industry standard Crystal Reports.

Learn More

To learn more about our software or schedule a demo please fill in the form on the right of this page.

Training & Support

Implementation

With ECi's streamlined implementation methodology, ECi M1 can be implemented in half the time and at a fraction of the cost of traditional ERP systems. ECi ECi M1 customers are provided with a fixed quote* for implementation services that details all costs involved from installation to go live. You can expect to “Go Live” within 3-4 months vs. 6-12 months with the competition.

Support

ECi is committed to your success. One of our support teams will be assigned as your dedicated Account Manager. This team is responsible for ensuring your success and helping you maximise your return on investment with ECi M1.

ECi M1 support maintenance includes unlimited telephone and online support, and all software updates. You will also receive a secure login for our online customer website. From here you can; access software updates, view and track calls, view support contracts, log on new calls, view the knowledge base and even purchase and make payments.

Training

Training is a major contributor to the successful implementation and optimisation of your software. We are committed to providing you with the tools and support necessary to ensure your success, including education. You can choose from a full range of classes for on-site training or online classes to learn the various aspects of your system. Our training staff draws upon a wide range of experiences that help tie the classroom to the business world. The quality education you receive provides the opportunity for you to become self-sufficient in the use of your system.

Learn More

To learn more about our software or schedule a demo please fill in the form on the right of this page.

Resources

Watch the Video

To learn more about our software or schedule a demo please fill in the form on the right of this page.

Download a Whitepaper

To see why dealers who constantly review their use of software achieve more than others, please fill in the form to the right of this page to watch the video tour and download the Whitepapers.

Attend a Webcast

Book a place on a ‘webcast’ where we take you through ECi M1 and how it will benefit your organisation, please go to the Webcasts page to book your place.

See what our customers say

Don’t just take our word for it, see what our customers say about their use of ECi M1.

Useful Links

Acsellerate

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