The best user configurable dbase I have seen for our use is something called Commence. You can get a single user copy for about 40 USD, and it can do whatever your little heart desires... but you have to be able to drive the sucker... ie you have to be able to do dbase application <<programming>>... which really is not so much hard as it is time consuming. My set up keeps track of appointments, Customer information, and Bills such that at any time I can see all relevant information for any customer from any view. If I am in my calander... I can simply click on the custormer for any given time and date and acess all bills, all appointment history, and any and all personal information I have on the customer. You can set it up to track just about whatever you want, however you want. The thing also takes care of writting my bills, keeps track of whoes over due and not, figures in VAT (a kind of sales tax) and can very easily export all relavant information to a tax program. It aslo functions fully as an email program editor, and can interface with palm pilots and similar devices, and MS Outlook problem free. Greg Newell wrote: > Listees, > My efforts to find the Holy Grail of Piano Tuners Business > software goes on! I have just received and spent a little time with > Intuit's Customer Manager and found it NOT to be what they claim on the phone. > First, as a stand alone program it is nothing more than a P.I.M. > not containing any provisions for invoices or any other financial > tabulations. This is disappointing as I specifically asked if it would > print invoices and the salesperson said that it would. Seems that the > direct linking with Quickbooks is more than optional, it's necessary! There > are no provisions for tracking service histories excepting as is related to > appointments kept, i.e. it does not track what you did on an invoice unless > you make notes about the appointment separately. Secondly, while it allows > for the setup and naming of other fields in the database it does not offer > a format which would be useful. Attempting to track pianos will not link > those pianos with the customers they belong to. > Overall it seems that Intuit is simply out for more revenue on > this one. I believe that Quickbooks itself will do almost everything that > this offering does already. I thought that this offering would be the cat's > meow for this tuner but I think I'll be shying away from this one. I'll let > you know if my opinion changes. For now at least, I'm glad it was a free trial. > > Greg Newell > Greg's piano Forté > mailto:gnewell@ameritech.net > > _______________________________________________ > pianotech list info: https://www.moypiano.com/resources/#archives -- Richard Brekne RPT, N.P.T.F. UiB, Bergen, Norway mailto:rbrekne@broadpark.no http://home.broadpark.no/~rbrekne/ricmain.html http://www.hf.uib.no/grieg/personer/cv_RB.html
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