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I’m thinking of getting a software program to auto book calls and produce invoices, have any of you guys got any info on any type in paticular thats a good one, needs to be easy to use ( coz it’s me !!! ), I seem to be spending far to much time sorting bits of paper about, any advice would be appreciated.
regards
Dave
Re: Automated call/invoice software
Dave, didn’t you keep a copy of the call system from your previous “employers” ?
It will do a lot of the daily things you need until something better (which won’t be too hard ;)) comes along.
Dave.
PS, check you’re PM’s 😉
We’ve been plugging along with good old Lotus Organiser for years for call booking and customer records; the wife uses a self designed template system for billing; we get paid, so it must work. I can get Mrs Penguin to tell you more if required.
Regards,
Penguin.Were it involves Lotus or Lotus Notes especially I’d rather boil my head in oil and be flayed alive thank you very much. It must be the most hateful software ever created by man, not that I’m in any way biased. 😉
For those that can unravel the mysteries of it it seems fine, for the rest of us mortals, steer clear. 😆
But hey, if it works for you…
K.
Ta K,
Mrs P says it’s simpler than Excel or Access – intuitive is what she actually said. Mind you my involvement with the computer starts and ends with talking to you guys, so what do I know?Penguin.
Penguin45 wrote:Mind you my involvement with the computer starts and ends with talking to you guys, so what do I know?
Which is why I always say that any system should be able to be picked up by anyone within 5 minutes for basic use, if not the software designer wasted his time. I have told many a development company that over the years. 😉
K.
K,
It’s taken me HOURS to get on with this ….. It doesn’t help that I can’t trype for cofee! Mind you, 17 years ago we were doing the Comet ordering on telex around the world, Oh what fun we had. One typo resulted in 2500 gray door frames arriving from Samsung (Air freight – it was all falling down around us) for the Proline 1010 m/wave; instead of white ones! We found a local car body shop and sorted the problem!!!!! I didn’t quite get sacked …..Regards,
Penguin.Software is a really hard thing to get right TBH as it tries to be all things to all people and like operating some systems, some are loved by some whilst others hated. I’ve long since given up trying to explain what makes a product right or wrong, call it the “X Factor” or whatever it’s just that some are right and some are wrong.
For call logging it has to be fast, flow well and intuative to use, correcting the operator if major blunders have been made. I have the perfect system, th eproblem is it’s in my head and not being a code monkey I can’t get it written without spending obsene amounts of cash. 🙁
However, I am still looking for the solution that will do or that can be worked with to mold it into what is required for the independent repairers.
K.
Yes and no, we have tested some and they are not suitable IMO or Dave’s. Many seem to be a slightly customised version of call logging for the plumbing industry or something like that meaning that they are too cumbersome for our industry where, speed is of the essence when taking calls. Many are fine if you have a database of all your customers, but most of us will not have that and even with that, they still are not too great to use.
I have a meeting at the end of the month with a software house that looks set to be very promising, more news when I have it.
K.
kwatt wrote:Dave & I are evaluating some stuff, stay tuned and we’ll get back to you on it. 😉
I have been testing some today (yes I know it’s a bank holiday 🙄 ).
Some have good features, some have useless features, some are web based some are local databases.
Does anyone have any good ideas or thoughts on what they would like to see as part of any software solution. i.e. engineers diary for one, although most have this already in some format.
If you post up what you would like, I can feed it back to the people who write this stuff and hopefully between us we can come up with a solution that suits everybody.
Dave.
Re: Automated call/invoice software
1) a quick and efficient way of booking the call in the first place, cutomers dont like to be treated like a multi-national call centre when booking a service call with the small shop down the road.
2) receptionist need to see a complete list of calls already booked for a certain day so we can offer an appointment accordingly.
3) automatic notes for a returning customer to which we can add any problems we may have associated wtih them in the past eg. bad payers, washing machine covered in chinchila shit etc.
4)flexibility. Customers are always changing their appointment at the last moment, this must not become a major hassle to do so.
5) a print out of all jobs for a certain engineer on one sheet so he/she can see all his jobs on one sheet.
6) I think a stand alone call booking system would suit us better than the all singing all dancing all invoicing, accounting, email sending ones that are around right now.
7) maybe to work on something a bit cheaper than ms Access which they all seem to use right now.
Geoff Roland who is on this site did have something on offer a few years ago, maybe he would like to add something here.
Mark.Just to let you all know that this isn’t dead, in fact it’s far from dead!
I’ve been working on this for a while now and there is something in the offing but, due to the commercial nature of it and NDAs etc. I can’t say too much for now. I will have news on this soon, hopefully before the next UKW meet and it is good, trust me.
To let you understand, doing a deal with this kind of stuff even for a few people, with a software house is not what I’d call a two minute job and it’s also got to be right first time or as near as dammit.
Bear with me for a bit please, it is in hand and will be pretty damned impressive I think. 😉
K.
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