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Customer Account Software
I started my business in a shop in April this year. I do garment printing, Embroidery and sublimation. I am getting many repeat customers and am having trouble quickly finding the information on their previous orders. At the moment this information is in my general accounts book , for tax purposes and a series of A4 blocks which I first wrote the orders on.
Now after 8 months its getting hard to find the info quickly.
What I want to find is a program so I can control this info easily.
Any Ideas???
Earl -
3 Replies
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I use QuickBooks Pro as it handles customer info, stock control and all of the usual accounts stuff. Dead easy to filter information by customer, items, transaction type etc…………..
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I don’t think you need software, it sounds like a more basic paperwork problem.
The majority of our work is repeat, so we have to be able to retrieve information quickly and accurately. All it takes is a job sheet with all the information on it, made out for each job.
In your filing cabinet have a folder for each of your clients, and put the job sheet for finished work into that. After you’ve invoiced it of course. 😀
Next time that same client comes back it only takes a few seconds to get his folder out, flick through it, and find the job sheet for any previous work.
Then all you have to do is to make out a new job sheet for the new job. You can either transfer the information from the old job sheet to the new or, if it is truly an exact repeat, just photocopy the original and clip it to the new job sheet.
We print our job sheets onto pink paper, and don’t use that colour for anything else. That way we can tell instantly that a bit of paper is for current work, rather than a photocopy of an old one.
In the same way we put yellow paper in our fax machine, use blue for cutting lists, and other colours for other purposes. It speeds up finding paperwork tremendously because if I’m looking for a fax I only need to look for yellow paper and can ignore everything else. Also, by looking across the room I know instantly what a piece of paper is without having to actually go and pick it up and look at it.
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Thanks guys,
I thought of a computer program because these days customers expect us to look to the computer for info. I usually do the design in front of the customer on the computer so I get everything right. Then it goes onto a job sheet with telephone numbers, prices, colours etc.
I hate paperwork but I think you are right John, a better controlled paperwork system would solve my problems. Use this for my bigger orders and for the one offs just ask the customer for their names under which I saved the info on computer. Prices for one offs are always the same so no problems there.
Thanks again
Earl
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