Looking for a Clarity software alternative?

[John Hulin]

Hi Vince

We use quotewerks here find it suits our needs brilliantly

John

[David Hammond]

As a clarity user, I suspect they may have shown you EVERYTHING.

However, it’s modular, so you can pick and choose which bits you want. For us it’s just two calc wizards, and the accounts link. The more modules the more expensive it gets.

I have looked at ShopVox, and believe James @ group101 uses this.

[Andy Thorne]

We use Clarity Vince but only for preparing quotes (which then turn into your job sheet etc) and for cost analysis. We don’t use it for estimating as we have our own spreadsheets I made up which are more tailored to us. But it is a good program and seems to be almost the industry standard one now too.

[Ewan Chrystal]

I use Quickbooks. While its not tailored to the sign industry it does everything i need and probably a lot more if i was to input all the data. I use it for quotes, invoicing etc, it also links to my bank account, does my vat returns etc

[Kevin Mahoney]

Hi everyone. I’ve always struggled with quoting as once you’ve calculated the materials required for a job, you really have no idea how long it’s likely to take. It’s always going to be your best guess which never allows for error ( head crash, phone ringing or walk ins interrupting you) so over a couple of days I’ve built an excel spreadsheet & loaded it with every media we use, every rigid sheet & brand I could think of, added my mark up, calculated my hourly rates for design, fitting & also fabricating time. I’ve added sundries such as phone calls, post it notes & print outs ( I put a tenner on every job now to cover bits & pieces that I always ignored before but have to be paid for ) & what I have now is pretty much dead on & takes seconds to work out my costs. I even do it on a big screen in reception in front of my clients & everyone so far has commented how little we charge for our service after material costs are taken into account. If you quote someone £100, I swear they think you put that straight in your pocket! Anyway, I then save the quote as quote number (leaving the master one untouched) use invoice 2 go to type quote & job done. Loving the simplicity & no monthly cost for quote software. Don’t think it’s perfect but better than guessing

[Denise Goodfellow]

We spoke to a customer the other day, he specialised in writing this kind of software.
He said There are templates that can be adapted to suit your needs, he mentioned from £500

Have only the modules you need, add to later, start with just the quoting side at first if you want.

One off payment, monthly option plan

He does a 60 min sit down and maps out everything on paper first free of charge.

Got an appointment in 2 weeks

Sorry forgot the company’s name, I’ll find it out if anyone is interested

[David Hammond]

One of the main advantages we’ve found is that clarity will make customer folders, and job folders for each quotation in each customers folder, inside that we automatically get an Artwork, Proof, Print File & Documents folder.

Having paper records with colour swatches etc, along with a database full it’s a doodle to find artwork from 3 years ago, all the customer details are in one place.

As for the quoting it’s only as good as the data you put it, and there’s still an element of guess work, and occasionally it does get it wrong.

[Phill Fenton]

I’m with Kevin on this one. Spreadsheets were invented precisely for this purpose. Spend a few hours learning to set up an excel spreadsheet and you can quickly and easily put your own together

[Unknown Member]

I’ve said it before and I will say it again….

SHOPVOX for me all the way!!

Great software with everything you could possible need.

[Vince Francis]

Thank you everyone for your responses, I now have a few ideas of what to look at

[Haylee Jane Benton]

ShopVOX is a good alternative. I used Clarity for many years in a few sign companies- now I have ended up working for ShopVOX as I loved it so much 🙂