because your current spreadsheets have everything you need
You are already an expert at how to run your business. You routinely set up paper-based or spreadsheet-based forms and reports. You only need an easier way to harness your knowledge.
Sumer allows anyone to build a complete business management system using only skills familiar from basic spreadsheets.
No software vendors, no salespeople, no modules, no cost to add new users.
Sumer is a better alternative to a modular system
Whatever you are using now—from refrigerator magnets to computer apps—you have a system. It's probably a good one because you have a going concern.
That means you already know how to sell something to a customer, remove the item from your inventory, post the money received to the sales journal. The problem is getting your computer to do it.
You could buy into a subscription-based modular business suite promising future up-sales with expensive add-ons and user fees. And yet these programs, including modules you can add later, ONLY DO EXACTLY WHAT YOU ARE ALREADY DOING. You are locked into a long-term commitment in which you trust your software provider to decide what it will cost you to access your own data.
Or you can do it yourself at a fraction of the cost. It is possible—Sumer has done it—to build a much simpler system which fully links all your business functions into a seamless whole without the IT hype.
Big Tech could have done it 20 years ago, but they didn't. Subscriptions and modules have been far more profitable.
Who needs Sumer?
Sumer is designed for most Small and Medium Enterprises and Organizations (SMEOs).
SMEOs have special needs:
- no specialized IT staff or outsized IT expenses,
- flexibility to meet changing demands without seeking out entirely new software or expensive modules,
- an intuitive software interface so managers can devote time to business rather than mastering complex technology.
Keeping it simple
Sumer is designed to be:
- free of jargon,
- free to download,
- free to add users,
- simple to use,
- offering open-source templates,
- requiring no knowledge of IT,
- with data in the cloud based only on data storage fees,
- and with a platform encouraging peer-to-peer sharing in the medium and small enterprise and organization communities.
Why buy modules if templates are free?
Here is a basic form showing a price list for a simple cafe. Pressing 'F2' brings up the Setup Parameters spreadsheet behind it.
Column names are across the top, parameters down the left side. You probably recognize most of them.
Add new columns—anything you want—with the 'AddColumn' button. Add a 'DataType', 'Width', 'Alignment'. Columns can be set to 'AllowEdit' or 'Hide' or 'Optional'. They can be given 'Filters' or formulas with 'Expression'.
The ItemNames, Prices, MenuCategories or whatever data you placed in this price list can later be recalled and used automatically in sales entry forms and reports.
Other more complex forms have more parameters as shown later in the website, but all work about the same way, and all are easy.
Hundreds of templates like this are already available in the Library so you can pull them into your business and customize them however you like.