January 28, 2010
Erika B. of Caledonia, MI uses ShopWithScrip SCRIPWARE to run a growing scrip program. Here's how Erika saves time with this powerful scrip management tool.
When Erika B. of Emmons Lake Elementary School in Caledonia, Michigan took over her scrip program three years ago, she didn’t know what she was getting into. As coordinator, she was spending about five hours each week inputting orders, organizing family accounts among several different software programs, running reports, and then distributing scrip to the families.
Emmons Lake Elementary scrip program began in 1999 when they were a new elementary school. There were scrip programs already in place at the elementary schools the families had previously attended, so it was a natural progression to begin one at the new school. At that time, the program phoned in orders to Great Lakes Scrip Center and used a bare bones scrip software program.
Erika became coordinator of Emmons Elementary scrip program shortly after becoming an employee of Great Lakes Scrip Center. She had known about scrip, but didn’t really get involved until she processed customer orders on a daily basis. She began ordering through her school.
Families enter their own orders
online, and Erika simply prints
personalized packing slips
for each family and order.
When Great Lakes Scrip Center launched their ShopWithScrip.com website, Erika knew the scrip management tool would be a huge time-saver for Emmons’ scrip program. ShopWithScrip.com is Great Lakes Scrip Center’s online ordering website that comes with free, basic scrip management software. Families can order their own scrip at their convenience using an organization code given to them by the coordinator. “I like ShopWithScrip because the families place their own orders and there are fewer errors,” Erika says. “For some families, I put their orders in for them.” From the beginning of her tenure, Erika used ShopWithScrip and has been a catalyst for getting her scrip families to place their orders on the website.
ShopWithScrip software is free
to GLSC customers, and the
more powerful SCRIPWARE
option is just $9.95 per month.
“When it’s time, I submit the paid orders as one combined order to Great Lakes Scrip Center,” Erika continued. “The previous coordinator had to combine all the family orders first, before submitting one large order for the whole school. This led to a lot of mistakes. Now, all orders are entered individually and the software does the work of combining them.”
Another feature of ShopWithScrip that Erika likes is that she can get sales and rebate information by family or by organization, and print this information in a variety of formats. All order processing at GLSC, whether online or phone, are stored in the same database. That is how the ShopWithScrip software is able to keep track of all historical family orders.
In the summer of 2009, Great Lakes Scrip Center launched their scrip management software, SCRIPWARE. It was designed to be an extension of the basic ShopWithScrip software and is available for a modest monthly subscription. Because it is an extension, it too is integrated with all the ordering databases.
Erika offered to be a test program for SCRIPWARE when it first came out. She was excited about what it could do and wanted to try it. She was eager to try anything that would cut down her time spent coordinating all the scrip orders. She hit the ground running and hasn’t looked back since.
According to Erika, scrip at
Emmons Lake Elementary is a
team effort. "I'm behind the
scenes, my team members are the
face of our scrip program."
- Because SCRIPWARE lets you set up rebate transfers in just about any way you need, Erika’s time doing paperwork has been whittled down to thirty minutes. She no longer has to keep track of all her family rebate designations (lunch money account, field trip account, etc.) in separate software programs.
- Unlike other scrip management software, SCRIPWARE is interactive with ShopWithScrip. Whatever is ordered on ShopWithScrip is tracked on SCRIPWARE. There is no need to enter information into two or more separate programs. “I love that SCRIPWARE is interactive with ShopWithScrip. The only additional thing I have to enter into SCRIPWARE is how the families want their rebate broken down. I didn’t have that before.”
SCRIPWARE keeps track of on-hand inventory levels for you and alerts you when it is time to reorder. “It’s great that it will automatically reorder the items that I have sold every week,” says Erika. “I can see where this feature would be great for organiazations that keep a lot of inventory on hand. We only keep about $2000 in inventory. It’s not a lot, but it’s enough,” says Erika. “We carry gas, groceries, a couple fast food restaurants, Kohl’s and Visa.”
- SCRIPWARE keeps track of all orders and all the different accounts that families want their rebates going to. At Emmons Elementary, 50% of the scrip rebate goes toward funding the school library and 50% goes to the families. The families then can designate how they want their portion of the rebate split. Previously, these numbers were recorded in several different programs. “Before, I had to transfer data from several different spreadsheets onto one so that I could present it to the school. Now, with SCRIPWARE, I just have to tell it to print. I LOVE that!”
- Scrip families can access their individual accounts and see how their rebate earnings are reducing hot lunch, or paying for field trips. Erika no longer has to keep track of this for them and send out regular emails. “When the families log into their ShopWithScrip account, they can see how much they have earned, so no more emails.”
- “There is so much I don’t have to do anymore,” Erika said. “It used to take me about five hours each week to keep track of all the orders and data. Now I spend about half an hour. My kids really appreciate the extra ‘Mom Time’.”
“My suggestion would be to get help,” Erika advises. “The more people you have helping in the whole process, the better, because then no one person gets stressed out from having to do it all.”
It was when she became a full-time employee at Great Lakes Scrip Center that she decided she needed additional help from her scrip team. While she did the ordering and reports, she had others at the school to check the order when it came in and distribute to the families. “I couldn’t manage the scrip program at Emmons Elementary without my team. They are wonderful,” says Erika. “I handle the business end of things. They are the faces of our scrip program. They are the ones that interact with all our scrip families. I have great people working with me.”