FFL Software Question

[michaelpelosillc]

Hello All,
I recently had my initial inspection for my FFL 07 application. One of the aspects brought up was electronic record keeping and how it's more efficient, but that there are numerous vendors. I was curious if any FFLs reading this may have any preferred vendors/software applications that is an all-in-one solution that is also friendly to manufacturers. Many software apps claim to be "ATF complaint" but, for me at least, there isn't a way of verifying that.

Seems like FastBound is a popular choice, but they also do the most marketing.

Thanks in advance

-Mike

 

[groundscrapers]

fastbound or orchid e bound seem to be the go to. Depending on how much you do for transfers excel can work fine too.

 

[chris_1001]

I’m thinking as a buyer, I prefer that dealers use paper forms. No need to make the ATF’s job easier at any point to get this info into their database’s

 

[Steve_P]

I use orchid as a manufacturer.
Works well for what I need, however I have no idea on the e4473 side of things as we don't deal with the public.
Price is good & support has been helpful the few times i've needed it.

 

[DarthRevan]

Excel works well enough if you make the time to set it up.
Just need to self audit frequently to avoid fat fingering.

 

[paul73]

was electronic record keeping

ffl or not - does not matter. check out quickbooks, as i bet all you want is an electronic general ledger.
and if you have anyone who can lend a school or college email to you - it will be free.

 

[42!]

ffl or not - does not matter. check out quickbooks, as i bet all you want is an electronic general ledger.
and if you have anyone who can lend a school or college email to you - it will be free.

except he's talking about an FFL's bound book. Which is not a financial ledger. Its a record of gun coming into and going out of the business with specific information about the gun and it acquisition/disposition, formatted and including what the ATF wants tracked. And that doesn't include financial information.

If you tried to use Quickbooks, if you even could, you'd have to make every gun a separate inventory item, every source a vendor, and every disposition a "customer" and would have to make up some kind of financial structure to enter. I doubt the ATF would find this acceptable.

 

[drgrant]

Excel works well enough if you make the time to set it up.
Just need to self audit frequently to avoid fat fingering.

There's no way in hell that I would ever use that for electronic BB especially not when stuff like fastbound costs basically nothing and has built-in auditing features.... Also FB renders a nice output PDF BB for audits etc.

 

[michaelpelosillc]

except he's talking about an FFL's bound book. Which is not a financial ledger. Its a record of gun coming into and going out of the business with specific information about the gun and it acquisition/disposition, formatted and including what the ATF wants tracked. And that doesn't include financial information.

If you tried to use Quickbooks, if you even could, you'd have to make every gun a separate inventory item, every source a vendor, and every disposition a "customer" and would have to make up some kind of financial structure to enter. I doubt the ATF would find this acceptable.

Yes. The IOI mentioned Excel as essentially the bottom end of what could be used so as long as you trust yourself and can stay up to date with any and all changes. He stressed a readable format more than anything, but every conversion you have to make risks a data loss. From what I've seen, having an electronic system makes things easier for compliance, and you can backup the data to an on-premise location in case the application isn't working.

I think they should probably develop some standards for vendors or develop an internal system over time. Wading through vendors and hoping they do the job on their end isn't a great feeling.

 

[michaelpelosillc]

There's no way in hell that I would ever use that for electronic BB especially not when stuff like fastbound costs basically nothing and has built-in auditing features.... Also FB renders a nice output PDF BB for audits etc.

The readability factor (output) was stressed heavily in the conversation about e-record keeping. The inspector just stressed that the software companies don't have any accountability if they don't keep compliant...yet the BATFE seems to also be pushing electronic records.

 

[42!]

The readability factor (output) was stressed heavily in the conversation about e-record keeping. The inspector just stressed that the software companies don't have any accountability if they don't keep compliant...yet the BATFE seems to also be pushing electronic records.

they push electronic records because at some point they will make a rule requiring a direct link to those records

 

[drgrant]

I think they should probably develop some standards for vendors or develop an internal system over time. Wading through vendors and hoping they do the job on their end isn't a great feeling.

Stuff like Fastbound and AIM etc is very heavily used though and has lots of user feedback, etc. Thousands of users of either. There are shitloads of features in those packages that prevent common mistakes, or misdirections etc. I used AIM for a good 2+ years and while lots of features are annoying, it stopped a lot of us from doing dumb things and saved us a lot of trouble down the road. There is no way I would use an electronic BB that didnt have input validation/sanity checks. Basically if I was doing "excel" id be like f*** that, I'm just doing paper at that point.

 

[drgrant]

they push electronic records because at some point they will make a rule requiring a direct link to those records

IMHO ATF pushes electronic records because it likely leads to a huge reduction in mistakes, transcription errors, etc. The amount of times a human actually has to type in a serial number etc manually is small to nonexistent in an environment with a barcode scanner, tags, etc.

 

[michaelpelosillc]

IMHO ATF pushes electronic records because it likely leads to a huge reduction in mistakes, transcription errors, etc. The amount of times a human actually has to type in a serial number etc manually is small to nonexistent in an environment with a barcode scanner, tags, etc.

Yes. In some ways, the ATF record keeping procedures are very archaic. And because of that, there are numerous ways to screw up. At least that was my view after a 90 minute review of 30+ years of firearms laws, standards, and best practices before signing on the line that you understand all of it.

 

[OnTheRoad]

We used to have FFL Boss and the brain trust in Corporate went to Orchid a while back. VERY high volume store. Orchid (on the 4473 side) could use improvement, the customer interface is clunky and they never quite get it right when adding new features. For example the 21.n.1 and 2; it gives a yes/no/NA or they can leave it blank when it would be much easier to just blank out the entire question if the customer indicates they are a US citizen. If someone answers a question "wrong" in section B, the error message continues to appear on the employee side of thee transaction and half the time we need to log out/back in to Orchid in order to complete a subsequent transaction. There was also some sort of glitch on the inventory end as well; AFT was in doing a shakedown inspection and there were about a half dozen items that were most definitely entered that were still there, just the serial numbers disappeared...

That said, it would be a thousand times worse if we were doing paper forms. AFT has a hard-on for legibility all of a sudden, to the point where they are dinging us for customer signatures that are not legible, even though the scribble matches the ID exactly. They want a cursive first name and a cursive last name that actually look like words. I can't tell you how many customers have argued, "But this is my signature!" - AFT don't care and we need to keep our lights on and pay the bills, so just play their stupid games.

Make no doubt about it, they are out to add to their scalp collection.