In a nutshell: There isn't a program that can do everything Quickbooks or Quicken can do + keep your contacts/database/scheduling. I keep them separate and it isn't a big deal. David Ilvedson, RPT Pacifica, CA 94044 Original message From: "John Formsma" To: pianotech at ptg.org Received: 3/3/2009 7:00:08 AM Subject: Re: [pianotech] Database for Piano Business On Tue, Mar 3, 2009 at 8:06 AM, David Love <davidlovepianos at comcast.net> wrote: Access is a database program but Outlook has a "contacts" section that provides a number of different fields (and you can customize it as well) into which you can input and organize customer or "contact" information.. It's evolved into something quite a bit more powerful than just an email program. I keep hearing some of you talk about Outlook (and Time & Chaos). I haven't used either, or tried to use either, for that matter. I understand, and can even visualize how customer data would be managed fairly well by Outlook. My concern about the programs of that type has always been how to do invoicing, and automatically link the invoices to the proper customer. And as an extension of that, how to manage late payments, no payments, monthly income, yearly income, etc. Also, it would seem, from this distance at least, that you would need to enter at least some data twice when you do an invoice. Seems like extra work -- or am I missing something regarding the invoicing? I certainly don't claim to be anything (except maybe lousy) when it comes to bookwork. . Short of hiring a secretary (which I've considered), PTBiz seems to fit most of my needs as a database program. I wish complete data export were possible, so I could migrate to another program. But the thought of having to do all that makes me shudder. :-( -- JF -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech_ptg.org/attachments/20090303/ae3da7b6/attachment.html>
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