FAQ

Total ETO was created by engineers specifically for the custom design manufacturer. If your company manufactures products usually with a new design or a customized version of something you’ve done before, our Engineer To Order enterprise and material resource planning software is for you.

Benefits to you:

• Easy to use as Total ETO’s workflow mimics the custom manufacturing process, providing a better ‘fit’.
• Modules and features within the ERP have been specifically designed for the Engineer To Order manufacturer.

Total ETO, an ERP for custom manufacturing, uses open database technology and supports the latest Windows Operating Systems. Our Engineer To Order (ETO) material resource planning software uses a combination of Microsoft Office, Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft .NET, SAP Crystal Reports, and React. All these technologies are industry-proven, robust, and heavily supported.

Benefits to you:

• Assurance that your ERP/MRP and database are recognized throughout the custom manufacturing market space and will be supported for many years.
• More longevity in your investment as current MS technologies are more likely to be supported on future versions.
• Better value for your investment as new features from Microsoft will be added to your annual upgrades.

Total ETO has a logical graphical user interface that mimics the business flow of a typical Engineer To Order organization. As an ETO ERP, commonly accessed areas like sales, engineering, and manufacturing are easily accessible from a main menu, with quick access to all reports and separate administrative functions to fine-tune your setup.

Benefits to you:

• Staff is more effective when the workflow is logical, easy to follow, and mimics current procedures.
• Drastically reduce user training time with an intuitive interface that is easy to learn.
• A Totally Better user experience that holistically improves accuracy and efficiency, with a natural flow of screens and data.

As a flexible ERP business system, Total ETO offers two distinctive styles of showing data within the system; “forms”, and “grids”. The forms are structured in a methodical, intuitive way, allowing you to see relevant data quickly and easily. Grids offer additional features, including dynamic sorting, filtering, grouping, re-arranging, hiding of columns, and resizing.

Benefits to you:

• Improved staff experience with adjustable grids that allow great flexibility.
• The ability to resize allows full utilization of screen valuable real estate.
• Hiding and rearranging columns allows staff to maximize their screen in a manner that makes sense to them.

Total ETO provides a top-level project and job structure, allowing typical orders (projects) containing deliverables and services (jobs) to be properly arranged, grouped and tracked. Our Engineer To Order software also allows jobs to be arranged hierarchically for easier tracking of job costs, providing costing reports at all levels within the hierarchy.

Benefits to you:

• With this material requirements planning software, management can be more efficient with better access to costs and reporting.
• Better control over complex machinery as it can be divided up into smaller easier to manage sections via projects, job hierarchies, and even at the assembly level.
• Greater flexibility in all areas, including but not limited to estimating, design, manufacturing, procurement, and costing.

Total ETO provides a separate engineering screen to manage entire projects and individual jobs. A bill of materials (BOM) can be built in a hierarchy rather than a flat BOM and is displayed in a flexible graphical user interface. By displaying the BOM visually, designers have greater flexibility to break down assemblies and more easily manage changes to an assembly quantity or parts within the assembly.

Benefits to you:

• Total ETO was built by engineers for engineers and understands your need for a structured BOM and Totally Better BOM management.
• Fewer setbacks as engineers can logically break up complex machinery into a series of nested sub-assemblies.
• Designers and engineers are more efficient as a structured BOM provides them with a quick and organized means of finding materials and managing change requirements.

Total ETO allows engineers to release their BOM to procurement throughout the design process. Initially ordering long lead items and then eventually determining the overall BOM requirements, engineering can release individual items, entire assemblies, or completed BOMs to procurement once those items have been approved for purchase.

Benefits to you:

• Purchasing can start sourcing supplies ahead of time instead of waiting till the whole project design is complete.
• Designers have unparalleled control over the release of BOM items and assemblies to purchasing with Total ETO’s unique “hold and release” system.
• Color-coded visual “tagging” gives the designers the ability to pre-release data with confidence, and purchasing can then issue a PO.

Engineer To Order companies know their BOM needs to be fluid; otherwise, you end up with an unforgiving bottleneck between engineering and procurement in almost every project. In Total ETO, your BOM is never locked down. Total ETO allows engineers to change and release their BOM as needed, even items they’ve previously released. This includes changes to previously released parts, assemblies, and even the entire BOM. Total ETO will communicate any material changes to procurement for you.

Benefits to you:

• Total ETO suits your business processes instead of you trying to adjust your business to suit your ERP.
• Engineering maintains total control of their BOM, even if items have been procured.
• Engineers can release assemblies or individual items more quickly since Total ETO will handle over or under-procured items.
• Totally Better inventory management as procurement is immediately notified of items that need their attention. This allows extra time to resolve issues quickly, saving you money on unnecessary materials or extra shipments.

Yes, of course we do! Since we’re partners with Dassault and Autodesk, Total ETO provides integrated 3D CAD linking within SolidWorks and Inventor, embedding our controls in their CAD systems, allowing designers to easily push BOM information to Total ETO. That’s why many Custom Machine Builders refer to Total ETO as “the SolidWorks ERP” or “the Inventor ERP”

For other CAD systems, our BOM Import tool can quickly import a BOM file exported from applications such as SolidWorks Electrical, E-Plan, and Solid Edge, among many others, eliminating double entry, and possible data entry mistakes.

Benefits to you:

• It’s not just BOM management software, designers can view and edit the BOM in one central location, giving complete control of the BOM’s development.
• Staff gains flexibility, power, and versatility in creating, modifying, and controlling the flow of information to and from purchasing.
• By integrating your BOM with your 3D CAD, we eliminate duplicate data entry from your ETO projects and speed up the engineering process.

Total ETO doesn’t just integrate with accounting, we are official partners with QuickBooks and Sage. Such seamless integration makes your ERP and your accounting software feel like one.  Your accounting data is automatically exported into QuickBooks to pay bills, collect receivables, and produce financial reports.

Total ETO also offers integration to many other accounting platforms, including Sage 300 and 50, XERO, as well as linking to outside payroll service providers such as ADP.

Benefits to you:

• Use the best accounting systems available, and save time by not having to learn a new accounting system.
• Fewer mistakes as your accounting staff continues to use a familiar program.
• You don’t need to choose between methods of revenue recognition or job-costing vs project-costing. Total ETO allows for both, which staff always appreciate.

Total ETO provides a separate procurement screen that lists all the parts required by engineering BOMs, shop requisitions, and parts and service orders. This allows your purchasing staff to see the entire demand for any given part, as well as giving them the tools to group and arrange the parts in any order they need. There are many “automation tools” in the application to assist purchasing agents with creating requests for quotes (RFQs), purchase orders (POs), inventory pulls, and other everyday tasks, minimizing their efforts and maximizing their results.

Benefits to you:

• Engineers are free to design and not be burdened by procurement.
• Purchasing has better control over issuing RFQs, POs, and reserving inventory.
• Less downtime from waiting for parts increases throughput and profit without having to add purchasing staff.

Total ETO allows your buyers to buy material directly to a job as any true Engineer To Order ERP system should allow. You can also use any available inventory first if you choose to.

Benefits to you:

• No extra steps or need to change your business processes. This is an ERP software solution designed to meet your specific needs and match your unique workflow.
• Purchasing has better control over required materials.

With ETO projects, managers need to be able to see real-time job costing and labor hours to effectively manage their jobs and address any potential issues. Total ETO provides practical real-time job costing on many screens and reports, all showing the up-to-the-minute committed costs and labor totals for any project or job.

Benefits to you:

• Management will always have up-to-date real-time costs to compare vs estimate.
• This knowledge ensures that management can react quickly if a project cost goes off course.
• Project visibility is improved by this ETO software, so no one is surprised by unexpected increases in project costs.

Total ETO provides a separate expediting screen allowing procurement to keep track of all items that have been ordered, but not yet received. In addition to tracking POs that haven’t been received, Total ETO also allows users to track supplier performance, identify delays before they become serious, and ensure that all required items are appropriately received by their promised delivery date.

Benefits to you:

• Totally Better inventory control! Purchasing can efficiently place and track orders ensuring materials are received on time.
• Staff has the ability to identify potential delivery problems with a central screen displaying all information on open purchase orders.
• The ability to easily track materials allows purchasing to expedite open orders.

We understand that there are many internal, and external documents that can be attributed to just one project, and they can be stored in different network locations. Total ETO allows users to create links to any document related to a project, job, and even a part.

Benefits to you:

• Management can return to any project or job in the past to evaluate quotes versus costs.
• Quick access to this information is invaluable for sales when creating estimates for similar jobs in the future.
• Improved communication and efficiency.

ETO manufacturers thrive with full project visibility. Total ETO provides users with more than 200 reports, all accessible from the report center, or from within the various modules themselves. Additionally, custom reports can be developed using Crystal Reports, and can be integrated right within Total ETO itself. This is a business information system designed to meet your custom manufacturing needs while providing management with real-time information.

Benefits to you:

• Management has rapid access to all reports for timely information on projects.
• Staff can quickly find and run necessary reports without having to learn how to navigate the system.
• Mor efficient manufacturing. Daily report access ensures that you are on top of any issues within a project.

Total ETO provides many powerful search wizards to find all types of historical data. From sales estimates created years ago to part purchase history, all historical data is easily searched, accessed, and utilized when needed.

Benefits to you:

• The ability to access material and labor costs is essential to estimating when quoting new jobs.
• When engineering can access previously designed BOMs, they reduce their efforts for new jobs.
• Manufacturing can use past job commentaries to highlight production opportunities.
• Management can use past history to reduce the risk in setting selling prices and target margins.

Total ETO’s non-conformance (NC) system allows users to raise NCs from several different areas within the system and allows users to track various causes of the issue, such as defective parts, drawing or design errors, and manufacturing errors. Non-conformances are attached to jobs and can have both labor and material costs associated with them. Coupled with powerful searches and powerful reporting, our Engineer To Order software solution provides the ability to identify the causes of non-conformances and allows users to prevent them from occurring on similar future projects.

Benefits to you:

• A simple system for small and medium Custom Machine Builders to deal with the complexity of non-conformances.
• Knowing how to avoid certain errors in the future will affect your company’s bottom line and improve product quality.

Total ETO provides a self-subscribing email notification system. This allows users to subscribe themselves to a host of notifications of important changes, such as a project creation, or a part being received. Total ETO’s notification system can even send emails to non-licensed users, ensuring relevant information is passed on as quickly as possible.

Benefits to you:

• Better project control with proactive management notifications.
• Non Total ETO users can receive important notifications without actively having to log onto the system.
• Receive critical notifications remotely via electronic devices.

There are times when your customer will request changes to an order after work has started on it (and occasionally after the design has been issued to purchasing and manufacturing), which affects design time and purchasing efforts. Other times, manufacturing often identifies areas where the design needs to be changed, requiring engineering to modify drawings and the BOM, while purchasing is left to change purchase orders.

These common issues are easily resolved with Total ETO’s change order features. Change orders assist you in estimating the new labor and material requirements for the new scope of work, optionally adjusting the job’s sales price, and involving other users in the process, ensuring they’re updated, and kept in the loop.

Benefits to you:

• It’s much easier to keep your clients happy.
• Your staff won’t lose valuable time and resources.
• Change requests won’t have such a substantial impact on your bottom line when dealt with in time.

A big challenge for Engineer To Order manufacturers is having materials ready for when manufacturing needs them. Total ETO simplifies the staging of materials for production. Receiving can quickly view purchase orders, log received parts, produce quality inspection reports, or initiate non-conformance reports.

As items are received or issued from allocated inventory, purchasing is instantly updated on the status of materials by job. Total ETO includes real-time tracking and managing of your inventory, including work in progress (WIP), so materials are available when needed.

Benefits to you:

• Purchasing can source materials and issue POs quickly.
• Materials are available when Manufacturing needs them.
• There is no costly delay in the project.