Intuit's Customer Manager review

[Greg Newell]

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