The purpose of Karmak Compass is to keep all our customers informed of current activities within the Karmak family. This newsletter is designed for both technical and non-technical readers. 

What and when?

Watch for upcoming information on Karmak's Fall Conference for all Karmak business system users. We're working to bring you new classes and roundtables to put more technology at your fingertips. This year, you'll find more activities and presentations to help you run your business operations more effectively.

If you haven't attended a Karmak conference recently, you won't want to miss this one, the week of October 17 at the St. Louis City Center Hotel and Suites in St. Louis.

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  Training: Karmak Legend^® - INFO 5^® - Director Series

New offerings through Karmak Legend Training Center
Whether you are an experienced user looking for ways to increase your efficiency on the Legend system or a new user who needs to get up to speed quickly, you’ll benefit from our intensive classroom training and convenient online Webinars. Our latest schedule includes 8 new Webinars in Accounting, Parts, and Service programs, in addition to a new Warehouse Management workshop held at the Karmak Training Center in Carlinville, Illinois. Visit our Training Center website for the current schedule and registration information. Out of the office during scheduled Webinars? Not a problem. Give us a call at 1-800-252-7625 and we will schedule one at a time convenient for you.

INFO 5 Version 7.2 Pre-Update Webinar training
In order to inform clients of the changes made in the most recent INFO 5 release, Version 7.2, Karmak is continuing the Pre-Update Webinar training sessions. These sessions are designed to allow you an opportunity to get acquainted with the enhancements included in this release. Each Webinar session lasts approximately 2 hours, which includes time for you to ask questions concerning the release. All INFO 5 clients are highly encouraged to sign up and attend one or more sessions. You can have multiple attendees at the Webinar session.

To sign up for any of the scheduled sessions, log on to Karmak's Customer Confidential website. Once there, click INFO 5 Updates, and then select Release 7.1A, which will direct you to both the schedule of Webinar training sessions and allow you to sign up for any of the sessions. Currently, we have the following Webinar sessions scheduled: 

To receive your Customer Confidential user name and password, please contact the INFO 5 Application Support Department at or 800-865-8991.

Director Series training
For ProfitMaker^® customers, Director Series Upgrade Webinars are available via the Internet. Call the Director Series Help Desk at 1-866-452-7625 to schedule a WebEx Upgrade Training date after Director Series has been installed on your server. 

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Truck industry events

Karmak represented at The Work Truck Show

The Indiana Convention Center and RCA Dome was home to the 41st annual NTEA (The Work Truck Show) March 2 - 4. Karmak was represented in Booth #5500 by Eastern Area Manager Jeff Eudy and Great Lakes Regional Manager Mike Schien. Primarily highlighting Class 1 through Class 8 trucks, trailers, and equipment in North America, NTEA was attended by over 7,000 distributors, service shop representatives, dealers, and fleets.

Karmak emphasized the Director Series, which was also highlighted in the New Product Spotlights at NTEA. For more information on NTEA, call 800-441-NTEA, visit www.ntea.com or email . For more information on Karmak's Director Series, visit www.karmak.com.

Look for Karmak at these upcoming events:

• TRALA / NationaLease Executive Conference - April 6-9 - Tucson, AZ 
• American Truck Dealers Convention - April 9-11 - Orlando FL
• International Truck and Engine - April 10-12 -Las Vegas, NV 

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What's new at Karmak?

• Karmak Service Management software effectively manages service operations
• Karmak tracks critical metrics with Real-Time Performance Monitor software
• Karmak releases Sales Management Version 1.4
• New Cumulative PTF CD available for INFO 5
• Karmak names Western Area Manager

Karmak Service Management software effectively manages service operations

Karmak announces its plan to release new software that manages service operations. ProfitMaster^® Service Management is scalable to manage one facility or hundreds of facilities. To optimize efficiency, Service Management integrates with ProfitMaster Sales Management for total unit tracking from sales to service.

From the quote to the invoice, Service Management can be tailored to meet every service operation need, maximizing effectiveness and increasing profitability. Designed to improve service at every level, Service Management improves productivity, helps control costs, and improves customer service. The fully Windows-based Service Management module integrates with the user’s existing Karmak parts inventory, lease/rental, and accounting systems. To maintain customer vehicles more efficiently than ever before, customer information and service history are stored and can be accessed on demand.

Enhanced preventive maintenance scheduling capabilities allow easy tracking of in-house units, fleets, and general customer vehicles based on multiple schedule types, including meter reading, days in use, or on a calendar date basis. And, it tracks the maintenance of major components or separate units attached to the truck or trailer, such as a refrigeration unit. Grace periods may also be used to easily work around customer schedules to minimize downtime on the unit. Continued>

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Karmak tracks critical metrics with 
Real-time Performance Monitor software

Karmak recently introduced its Real-time Performance Monitor (RPM), a software solution that provides users with a visual representation of business data. The initial release of RPM will be a web-based application to support service departments using Karmak service management systems, but future releases will interface with the full ProfitMaster^® series of modules.

With RPM, users can create multiple customized visual displays in order to view only the information that is important to them. Columns can be arranged and sorted in any manner, and users can define how often they want their displays to be refreshed. And, display colors can be changed based on thresholds defined by each user. For instance, if a shop supervisor wants to track only repair orders that are waiting for parts, he can create a display that will show those repair orders in red. Or, if he wants to track jobs that are running over the expected hours, he can display those in yellow. All displays can be linked to provide drill-down capabilities.

With real-time updates, the RPM database is immediately updated as soon as an entry is made in the Karmak business system. This includes activities such as opening, closing, updating or invoicing repair orders; clocking on and off of technicians; and parts that are backordered or backordered parts that are filled. By providing real-time data, RPM leads to more satisfied customers because users are informed when problems arise.

Using flexible, color-coded displays, the user will know in a single glance if the service department is running smoothly. And, for quick access to problem areas, the Windows-based RPM software allows the user to rearrange and sort data at any time. Whether it’s a summary of the number of open repair orders or the details of every repair order, the flexibility of RPM enables the user to access all the information needed in exactly the way they want to see it. 

For more on Real-time Performance Monitor, contact your Karmak regional manager, or call 800-622-6311.

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Karmak releases Sales Management Version 1.4

Karmak is pleased to announce that the Sales Management V1.4 release is now available to all users. This release is another result of the feedback Karmak has received from you.

With the new V1.4 release, we have included new features to help improve your sales system.

• Posting Flooring Payment/Payoff
  This feature allows you to post flooring payments (curtailments) and payoff to the General Ledger on the business system. This feature will save you time, since you no longer have to make a separate accounting entry on the business system.
• Mass Local Purchase Order Creation
  Based on user feedback, we have incorporated the ability to mass create an LPO for a group of units to be used in situations where a fleet customer purchases a large group of identical units. The need to create identical LPOs on each unit (in many cases several LPOs per unit) was a very time-consuming task prior to this enhancement. Mass LPO Creation: Unit Select (SMU1510), Mass LPO Creation: LPO Search (SMU1515), Mass LPO Creation: LPO Maintenance (SMU1520), and Mass LPO Creation (SMU1525) now accommodate this enhancement.
• Unit Maintenance (SMU9000) – Occurrences Tab
  This is a new tab that appears between the Attachments and Selling tabs. You can use the Occurrences tab to display all occurrences of a VIN/serial number. You can select a unit occurrence from the data grid, and then display the details of the occurrence by selecting the View Occurrence hyperlink, which displays the details of the selected unit occurrence in View Inactive Unit Occurrence (SVN94610).

Please contact ProfitMaster Services at to schedule a convenient time to load this update.

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All INFO 5 clients who are currently running Release 7.1A can request the latest 7.1A Update Cumulative PTF CD. The Cumulative PTF CD contains program modifications designed to benefit your business and make your system even more efficient. It's important to load this update to Release 7.1A and take advantage of updated functionality. Below are some highlights of the 7.1A PTF update. Refer to the INFO 5 Cumulative PTF link that can be found at Karmak's Customer Confidential website for details on requesting the CD. At this website you can also download the manual which will provide detailed instructions on installing the PTF and information for all changes. Continued>

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  About Karmak Compass

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