Clarity & Estimate Software, Advice Please?

[David Lowery]

You don’t bloody want much do you 😕

[Phill Fenton]

I use Sage instant accounting which does a lot of what you are asking

With Sage you can create a customer database simply by creating an account for all your customers (even those that do not actually have accounts with you but pay up front or on completion) The accounts allow you to access to each customers trading history. The latest version also allows you to generate quotations (though I still prefer to use templates set up in Word) . The only thing the accounts package will not allow you to access direct is individual job information and artwork. However, I store all my customer artwork and job information (Including quotes) in date order as follows. Each year I start a new directory (e.g 2007) and each month I start a new sub-directory (e.g 2007/February) and within that directory I create sub directories for each customer (e.g 2007/February/JoeBloggs) that have any transaction with us during the month of February 2007. In later months and years I can cross reference my customers account history with actual artwork created and saved at the time the work was done. I have had this system in place for almost 11 years now and can quickly find customer files/quotes and artwork that were done all the way back to May 1996.

Its also easy to backup all work as I only need to back up the current months files as all previous months have already been backed up

Works for me – might sound complicated but isn’t at all really (If I can figure it out anyone can :-?)

[Chris Dowd]

We have Estimate, however, been too busy to set it up and get it running (I know, poor excuse but it’s true!).

From what I have seen of Estimate, I believe it does most of what you are looking for.

Talk to Shane, he’s a big user of Estimate from what I remember.

Chris.

[Peter Normington]

Rob, you also need to integrate the software with your accounts procedure, otherwise you will still have headaches, No point in having all the info, if you dont know if they have paid or not?
Maybe better for you to have a bespoke installation, using any good accounting software, it is really a matter of tailoring it to your needs. It doesn’t have to be sign dedicated, Just set up by an expert, who can define your needs.

Peter

[Martin Pearson]

Robert I used Quickbooks Pro which will do most of what you have asked for, it will do estimating and invoicing, the customer database can be used to search in all sorts of ways for customer history. It can be used for stock control, job tracking and job costing and profitability, VAT and Tax returns, sales & marketing and a lot of other stuff as well but it won’t make the coffee !!. Of course you don’t have to use all those fetures but they are there if you want them, oh and it does payroll as well. Might be worth a look.

[Robert Lambie]

Peter, your correct mate… im just not very good at explaning things i dont think. :lol1:

I do know it is probably allot to ask as an all in one package but it would be “what I think” is a complete solution to my ideas about how things should work in our place. (i could be being unrealistic, but thought ide ask if these two softwares offered this sorta thing)
Just now there is just far too much paperwork being passed around.
The existing setup does work well enough and has for years, but its old hat and a couple of breaks in the chain and a job may not be accounted for… which could be costly of course.
We do have a similar type system for filing our artwork/jobs to you phill, so I can see where you’re coming from. That said, ours is only based on actual jobs/artwork/signlab files etc

We have allot of regular customers. They call asking for repeats of jobs done months prior. This means the girls must going into our hard copy filing for the paperwork, get the info, the prices tagged on the paperwork for the job in question. From here an order is placed and the vinyl cutting department look at their paperwork and basically “recall” the file archived on our server. So you go from old school, to modern day…

I just want to streamline the whole system so we can cut down on the legwork and paperwork.

[David Rowland]

Rob, doing something like this at the moment… we looked well into Clarity but a few niggles in it caused us not to go with it, mainly down to how it handle measurements and pricing…. although a lot of the software did work well and as I come from a programming background, the software was written very well.
I am now making our own, storing quotes, credit control, etc. but currently have most of our own formulas in a spread sheet that all the staff use to help them calculate prices.

[Geraint Rhys Williams]

Just wanted to have my two pennies worth on this one!

I have lots of experience of all sorts of estimating packages, all of which promise the earth. All of my experience of such packages has been within ‘smaller’ industries.

In my own experience, all of my best estimating programmes have been ‘fudged’ together by me, and only using excel as a very sophisticated calculator!!!

I havent seen the estimating package you refer to, but I would suggest having a good go at say excel and maybe access (for a database), and see what you can get these to do for you. Depending on how good you are with excel, you may be surprised how powerfull this is.

In my last job, the company bought a package which had to be tweeked to holly hell to suit the industry (road markings) and the package itself was clearly an excel spreadsheet which had been re-packaged with visual basic.

I dont know you level of experience on excel Robert, but give it a try if I were you, its a powerfull tool!

Regards

Rhys

[Robert Lambie]

thanks for the feedback dave..
martin… we actually use quickbooks pro just now. seems to work very well for the accounts/invoicing like you say.
having just put two new additional computers in the office area, i wanted to get one of them working along side an existing one for invoicing etc…
there was more to this than i thought though… cost us an extra £350 just to have the computer sitting next to our current one have a license to "operate on a network". we could have just run things as normal but we have started someone to come in 3 days a week to do our books etc… so it seemed daft to do this and have her share one of the other two girls computer. so in comes the new computer and as i said, still wouldnt work as we needed a network license.
i am guessing to put another two computers on this network it will be pretty costly… never mind a further 3 that would need to only be able to access the supplier and customer database.

that said, i will have a look and maybe call them tomorrow for some advice.

[Robert Lambie]

Ryhs…
ill be honest mate, i wouldnt know where to start on excel… i can open files in it but never ventured further. for such a popular software, it sounds daft i know… 😀

chris, shanes probably just getting out of bed now… ill see what he says too… thanks. :lol1:

[David Rowland]

well rob, im expecting you lot are on a peer-to-peer network in some way, without a big fat server with logon prompts etc.

Quickbooks is what I am programming.. however it isn’t easy, a lot of work indeed, but more of a challenge in spare time.

The licensing for quickbooks would cost about £300 ish, cant remember exactly…. The small print will say this tho…. 5 (computers can have quickbooks but only 2 computers can use it at the same company file at the same time.

edit: also when you get your clarity price, carefully think it thru and test the software… you know how to contact me mate.

[Robert Lambie]

Thanks dave, ill keep you posted… 😀

[Duncan Wilkie]

We’ve used Estimate for several years. We generate about 35 estimates a week. About 25 of them are converted to orders, then invoiced all with just the original information entered in the quote. Finished jobs and old quotes are archived for future retrieval. We have two licenses, so we can run the program simultaneously on two computers and share data over the network. We have the module to link with Quickbooks, but haven’t integrated it yet.
We’ve found training new people to use it is pretty simple.
The program is rock solid… no troubles. Mark and Jonathan provide excellent support on the phone and on line.
The program is sold in modules, so if you don’t do screen printing for instance, you don’t have to buy it.
Be sure to get the management module.
Give’r a whirl Robert!

[Graeme Harrold]

Rob,

All of what you want can be done in MS Access however it will cost. You can create a complete bespoke package that will track orders, estimates, invoicing, suppliers and customer records. In addition you can tag each record with an art file. Too good to be true…….Kind of.
Apart from paying someone to create the database, you will have to tie down quite rigidly the data set requirements form the outset and hope you get a good designer to produce a user friendly front end. In addition you will have to pay the license fee for Access for each computer again raising the cost.

I currently (half heartedly) use Sage for invoicing, estimates, job costing (profit/loss) and stock control. Just coming to my first year end and reproducing it all on a couple of Excel spreadsheets to remove all the posting errors Ive made with Sage. Too much to do and not enough time to learn!!