Established in 1959, Prince William Marine sells Sea Ray and Baja boats and occupies 17 contiguous acres of waterfront property with approximately 250 dry stack slips and 350 wet slips, a swimming pool, newly renovated bath houses, a banquet facilit and a restaurant. Prince William Marine has a won a number of distinguished accolades in the marine industry:
- First Sea Ray Ambassador Dealership
- #5 Dealership in the Boating Industry’s top 100 Dealers of 2005
- 2003 top ten sales worldwide
- 1999 over 10,000,000 in sales,
Prince William Marine is proud to be ranked #5 in the Boating Industry Top 100 in 2005. This ranking was based on best practices and the ways in which dealers earned revenue and profitability more so than volume of business transacted. It was about professionalism, overall approach to conducting business, including everything from employee development to CSI strategies and marketing efforts. As stated by Boating Industry;
“These dealers apply the Golden Rule to their customer relations policies instead of blaming their suppliers for their shortcomings. They market the boating lifestyle, as opposed to a shell of fiberglass or a sheet of riveted aluminum with an engine strapped on the back.”
Boating Industry
The Prince William Profit Centers
Prince William has 5 profit centers: new boat sales, used boat sales, parts, service and marina (storage, ship store and soon to be food/beverage). The sales department which includes F&I is located in the showroom employing 6 salesmen, sales manager, F&I manager, tag/title clerk, and a receptionist. They maintain a large inventory of about 100 boats offering a full line of Sea Rays and Bajas. They also carry a large inventory of used boats.
DockMaster and its Use Across the Prince William Profit Centers
Dockmaster was acquired by Prince William in the 1st quarter of 1999. Since they are a full service marina they utilize Dockmaster at full capacity. The sales module is first used to enter all new, used and brokerage inventory to include all serial numbers as well as floorplaning the inventory. They create a contract from a hand written proposal created by the salesman, input the boat purchased, trade in and customer information. The contract is used to calculate the finance amount and payments for the customer. The contract is then used to create the Rigging ticket for the service department to prepare the boat for delivery. Finally the contract is then used for printing all of the bank and tag/title/extended warranty paper work that is needed for closing. After the paper work is finalized the contract is closed and a full customer is created.
Each customer that has a slip at Prince William is set up in the DockMaster VisualMarina® system. This system graphically depicts both their wet slips and boatel (dry stack facility). Service work orders are created as needed for all work to be done on customer boats. They use the service module to do many things:
- Create work order tickets (requests)
- Process special order requests
- Create sublet purchase orders for outside vendors working on a boat
The work order tickets are created for Retail, Warranty, Rigging and Internal jobs / tasks. They have a warranty department that processes all warranty claims using the warranty maintenance forms, a warranty reconciliation report, and parts tracking report. Prince William uses every aspect of the service module that is applicable to a marine dealer. Since they do not build boats or do custom re-fits, some of the boatyard features naturally would not be utilized.
Prince William uses the operation codes in DockMaster Service. These outline the tasks to be completed or that have been completed on a work order. Such tasks would include, haul out, bottom wash, bottom paint, repair windlass, etc. They create several service reports to track things like open work orders, efficiency of their technicians and a labor report by tech for breakdown of their pay structure. They use a custom report developed by DockMaster Software to determine technician efficiency and to process commissions. Finally they bill and close the work orders in DockMaster.
The Inventory Control module is used very effectively by their Service and Parts departments. DockMaster allows you to load vendor parts catalogs from a multitude of manufacturers and distributors. Prince William loads a large amount of parts/prices in DockMaster for up to date price and part number accuracy. They use the Inventory Control module to create purchase orders and then receive all of their parts into their parts department. Furthermore they use the fuel maintenance component to manage fuel sales at their fuel docks. They run various reports in their parts department to maintain stock levels and they conduct a physical inventory once a year using DockMaster. They also found that the use of the parts kits is very helpful for winterization items and coast guard kits.
The FicheMaster® electronic parts catalog system is used to access parts breakdowns for all of their Mercury parts. The detail is great on the view because it will show them what they have in inventory for a particular item and the stockroom location of the item. VisualMarina is used to get a quick visual snapshot of the marina and to see the locations of the boats as well as important information about the boat and customer.
The Point-of-Sale system is used for all the counter purchases as well as for receiving payments on account. They provide customer accounts for all of their slip holders and allow them to pay monthly. All the billing and processing is done thru DockMaster. DockMaster has a credit card “Autopay” feature as well that allows them to invoice and charge monthly storage customers all in one sitting.
DockMaster Accounting and Reporting
Dockmaster allows Prince William to report on each individual profit center as if they were their own business; thus reporting a profit/loss for each department at the end of each month. This enables the managers of each department to monitor their profit center and control expenses. Their chart of accounts is detailed such that each expense can be scrutinized and classified to the appropriate department. Each department functions individually from an accounting stand point but Dockmaster allows the profit centers to integrate graciously.
Prince William is required to participate in a “performance group” as part of their Ambassador status. This group is a collection of Sea Ray dealers where monthly figures are compiled in a composite and compared to each other. The DockMaster accounting system is able to generate consolidated reports to allow their dealership to participate in this composite. The ability to generate financial statements for management is very useful.
Conclusion
“DockMaster provides well rounded marina software system, which through the years has enabled us to conduct all of our business using the system. Their support and training team has always been there for us which is critical when rolling out a system across the entire enterprise.”
Michele Ayers
F&I Manager
Prince William Marine.