Product Descriptions

by BirchStreet Systems

These Product Descriptions (‘Product Descriptions’) are incorporated into the Agreement and/or Order Form executed between the Customer and BirchStreet, effective as of the Order Form Date. The Product Description serves definitional and illustrative purposes only, and the Customer is entitled solely to the services detailed in the applicable Order Form.

BirchStreet Products

BirchStreet product descriptions and features are as follows:

eProcurement

The following elements are contained and may be available in BirchStreet’s eProcurement module:

  • Online Purchase Orders – All purchase orders in BirchStreet are generated electronically through a secured internet “Marketplace”.
  • Online Requisitions – Requisitions, from one Customer location to another, are generated electronically for approvals, connection to inventory levels and financial controls.
  • Shopping Cart – A place where users can shop for orders, place their orders into a shopping cart, and upon checkout, the System will create purchase orders by supplier.
  • Online Request for Quote – Enterprise Procurement’s Request for Quotation (RFQ) module contains three components: RFQ, RFQ Response, and RFQ Selection. The Buyer creates an RFQ by providing information about the item for which they are requesting a price and sends it to one or more Suppliers with a submission deadline. Upon email notification, the Supplier uses the RFQ Response screen to provide pricing information and a quote expiration date. Based upon this information, after the submission deadline or when the Buyer is notified that all Suppliers have responded, the Buyer uses the RFQ Dashboard to review the Supplier submissions.
  • Online Receiving – The Online Receiving feature is designed to document the receiving process including the receipt and distribution of purchased items. Receiving personnel can make line-item adjustments to a receiving record tied to the purchase order without overwriting the original purchase order. If the purchase order is tied to inventory, the System will increase the on-hand quantity for the given inventory location.
  • Online Catalogs – eProcurement allows for the storage of Online Catalog content from multiple sources and the ability to search, review and select items available in the private marketplace. The System allows users to view product descriptions, pricing, specifications, and images.
  • Supplier-on-the-Fly – This feature allows users to input basic profile information for suppliers. Supplier-on-the-Fly purchase orders are sent via fax or email. BirchStreet reserves the option of invoicing Customer any expenses incurred in the transmission of purchase orders via fax.
  • Checkbook Drilldown and Budget Impact – This budgeting tools permits the real-time tracking and analysis of a given purchase against a General Ledger account or Project budget code. Access to real-time budget impact analysis is available throughout the buying and approval process. The budgeting feature allows for allocation within a line item to multiple departments, General Ledger accounts and budget periods. Allocations can be saved for re-use as preset allocations or entered individually. Manual budget adjustment transactions are also available.
  • Approval Workflow (Advanced or On-the-Fly) – Approval Workflow routing enables the System to be configurable for an organization’s approval processes. Routing may be required based upon a user’s position ID, spend thresholds, departments or General Ledger accounts. Manual approval routing where the user selects the next approver for the purchase order is also available. The history of a purchase order and its approval process provides an audit trail reducing the chance of unauthorized purchases.
  • Analytics / Built-In Reporting – The application provides sophisticated reporting features for use in monitoring all purchasing transactions. The data is updated live from transactional data and allows for standard aggregated reporting as well as ad hoc information down to the item level.

Additional Fees may apply for the following functionality:

  • Punchout Interfaces – Provides the ability to access a supplier e-commerce website but purchase through BirchStreet. This feature is cXML punchout compliant.
  • Punchout Suppliers – eProcurement allows the ability to integrate with supplier websites for online ordering. This seamless integration will create a purchase order in BirchStreet to continue with the ordering process. BirchStreet reserves the option of invoicing customer any expenses incurred in integration related activities.
  • Adopted Suppliers – The supplier catalogs are hosted in BirchStreet by the supplier. The supplier maintains their catalog and updates products and pricing.
  • Budget/Forecast Integration
  • GL Master Integration
  • Vendor Integration
  • User Integration
  • Purchase Order Integration
  • Receiving Record Integration
  • Single Sign-On Integration
  • Supplier Portal – Ability to self-register suppliers and maintain catalogs in the System. It also provides the ability to receive and respond to RFQ’s and Purchase Orders.
  • Report Center – Provides the ability to configure reports based on Module that can be used by the customer.

Accounts Payable Automation

The following elements are contained and may be available in BirchStreet’s AP Automation module:

  • Invoice Capture – Invoice information is captured by several methods:
    • Paper Quick Entry Screen – The ability to manually enter an invoice directly into the System.
    • Receive with Invoice – Provides the ability to capture all invoice information at the time of recording the product receipt.    
  • Three-Way Auto-Matching – This feature compares the purchase order, receiving events and the invoice to determine the correct payment amount based on matching rules so that users only deal with the exceptions.
  • Non-PO Invoice Workflow – For invoices that were not originally generated with a purchase order, those invoices can be entered into the AP module.
  • AP Invoice Administrative Menu – There is an administrative menu dashboard for ease of use.
  • Credit Memo Functionality – Credit memos can be produced or used within the System.
  • Invoice Approvals – Routing of non-PO Invoices, PO Invoice exceptions, and Credit Memos through optional approvals.

Additional Fees may apply for the following functionality:

  • Electronic Invoice – Supplier Invoice Interface – Electronic Data Interchange can be used to transmit a document/invoice from a supplier through BirchStreet.
  • OCR Scanning Interface – Optical Character Recognition (OCR) system scans paper invoices, parses the data elements and populates the BirchStreet AP Invoice database tables.
  • AP Integration – AP integration interfaces with third-party ERP/accounting systems will streamline AP processing. The following are typical integrations used between third-party systems and BirchStreet.
    • Vendor Integration
    • Payment Voucher Integration
    • Payment Integration
    • Journal Entries Integration
    • General Ledger Integration
    • Invoice Image Integration
    • Fintech Integration
  • Invoice Management Services (“IMS”) –This service allows the customer to scan invoices and send invoices to a dedicated email repository for BirchStreet IMS team to input them directly into the System.
  • Supplier Portal – Ability to flip PO’s into Invoices, and create non-PO Invoices and credit memos.

BirchStreet Inventory Management with AccuBar

The following elements are contained and may be available in BirchStreet’s Inventory Management with AccuBar module:

  • True Item Master to house all inventory and non-inventory items.
  • Perpetual inventory
  • Centralized count management
  • Requisition Lists and Storeroom Requisitions
  • Replenishment PO’s and planned purchases
  • Multiple Costing Methods
  • Reports: Inventory Valuation, Profit Watch Reports, Event and Banquet Reports
  • Simplified setup via handheld barcode scanning and printing

Additional Fees may apply for the following functionality:

  • Patented Hand-held functionality (receiving, transfers, line on the bottle counting)

Warehouse Dashboard – Receiving, stocking, fulfillment, transfers, deliveries, shipments in one optimized dashboard that can be viewed on a tablet. This feature allows for tracking of movement of items going to and from the warehouses or storerooms in the organization.

  • Label Printing – Receiving and Fulfillment labels to help tracking of goods via thermal transfer labeling.
  • Inventory Integrations – Inventory integration interfaces with third-party ERP/accounting systems that streamline Inventory processing. The following are typical integrations used between third-party systems and BirchStreet:
    • Standard inbound POS Integration to decrement inventory
    • Custom outbound POS Integration to create items in the POS System if BirchStreet is the system of record
    • Inventory Journal Integration – Complete summary of inventory movements to report or transmit to an SFTP site
    • HotSOS Integration

Retail Management

The following elements are contained and may be available in BirchStreet’s Retail Management System Module:

  • Retail Item Creation and Management – Allows for the creation of retail items with permutations that are required based on specified attributes
    • The user can create one item in the System and the feature will allow the System to create the same item in all different sizes, colors and additional attributes that are configured.
  • Selling Price Matrix – BirchStreet’s selling price matrix functionality helps to easily calculate what price to sell the item at by setting a markup percentage or amount and rounds it to the nearest .99 or .98 and then derives if the user wants to sell the item at an incremental decremental price based on the cost at which the property purchased the item at.
  • Tag / Barcode Printing – Retailers have the ability to print their own barcodes with information such as Part # & Description, Item Price, Item Barcode, and Supplier SKU

Additional Fees may apply for the following functionality:

  • Retail Integrations – Retail integration interfaces with third-party ERP/accounting systems streamlining the Inventory process. The following are typical integrations used between third-party systems and BirchStreet:
    • Standard inbound POS Integration to decrement inventory
    • Custom outbound POS Integration to create items in the POS System if BirchStreet is the system of record
    • Future Sales Effective Date Integration

Recipe Management System Module

The following elements are contained and may be available in BirchStreet’s Recipe System Management module:

  • Recipe Management – This feature can be used to organize and publish recipes.
  • Online Ingredient Library – This robust ingredient library is connected to nutritional data and used for all recipes. New ingredients can be added at any time.
  • Supplier Managed Nutrition – This functionality provides suppliers the ability to manage allergens and intolerances for global regions where required for regulatory purposes
  • Recipe Creation – This feature leverages the Item Master and eProcurement systems to add items to a recipe from searching a catalog, existing order guides, inventory or by free form entry of ingredients.
  • Nutrition Calculation – BirchStreet is based on and linked to the United States Food & Drug Association for accurate nutrition calculation including yield/conversion factors and pre-determined allergen & intolerance reporting. Can be integrated with additional nutritional files and databases as well as individual nutritional ingredients can be added by a user.
  • Allergens & Intolerances – In addition to automated reporting from the built-in nutritional library, users can report desired allergens, intolerances and dietary attributes for any recipe. Nutritional alerts are available to notify when changes to a recipe or supplier product affect previously verified allergen values.
  • Dish and Menu Setup – Instructions, including text, video and images of food preparation can be added to a recipe which can include sub recipes. Recipes can be created and categorized for banquets, buffets and standard dishes sold on a menu.
  • What If Analysis – This feature allows the user to model theoretical pricing, products and margins in a working environment.
  • Recipe Scaling – This feature has the ability to view cost and margins on large or small orders and recipe planning.
  • Publish & Share Recipes – Recipes can be managed, published and shared over multiple properties.
  • Recipe Pad (for tablets or PCs) – A Recipe repository designed for mobile applications with view only access that still allows printing, scaling, costing, nutritional reporting and viewing of recipes in standard, step-by-step and video format.
  • Recipe Costing – Through eProcurement, the system can link supplier catalogs for recipe costing that updates automatically in real time. Recipe costs update based on ingredient purchases, receiving events, inventory transactions and scheduled reporting is available to alert you to changes in cost.
  • Recipe to Requisition to Inventory – When used with Item Master, the System can requisition products based on recipes scaled to desired number of servings.
  • Production Planning –Creates a finished goods part number based on a recipe’s components and value. Those finished goods can be requisitioned and transferred with the option to automatically decrement raw ingredients from inventory whenever a finished good is produced.
  • Production Reporting – System may generate reporting of products from inventory through finished goods movement.
  • Integration with suppliers – Utilizing eProcurement, Customers can connect directly with suppliers for costs, allergens and more product info.

Additional Fees may apply for the following functionality:

  • Yield Test Management – Beyond the built-in standard USDA yields, Yield Test Management will enable users to conduct yield tests to determine true yield and cost of products fabricated in house. Yield testing leads to yield production where the System decrements a source product and increments all products and byproducts yielded from the source product with appropriate value.
  • Menu Engineering – An additional feature of Recipe to POS integration, Menu Engineering provides a dashboard to view and compare menu items profitability vs popularity to help determine which dishes deserve to be staple menu items vs dishes that might be better as rotational menu items.
  • Recipe Management Integrations – Recipe Management integration interfaces with third-party ERP/accounting systems will streamline Inventory processing. The following are typical integrations used between third-party systems and BirchStreet:
    • Standard POS integration for cost control – Recipes can be integrated into eProcurement for theoretical food cost reporting. Changes to a menu items sales price in POS terminal can automatically update related recipes in the Recipe module as well.
    • Custom outbound POS Integration to create recipe items in the POS System if BirchStreet is the system of record
    • POS integration to Inventory – This integration can automatically create requisitions to replenish sold and recorded products from the POS. Recipes may also be integrated with Inventory and a POS system to report on theoretical vs actual food costs.