Bookkeeping Programs

[Cy Shuster]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Farrell
To: Pianotech
Sent: Friday, July 15, 2005 11:11 AM
Subject: Re: Bookkeeping Programs


>Do you give your customers a receipt? If so, how & what kind?

More redundancy... I use a two-part carbonless service record & invoice, and 
leave them a copy.  I wind up calculating tax and stuff by hand.  For the 
money received (or amount invoiced), I'm pretty primitive: I log the date 
and amount in a simple text file, and then update it into Quickbooks at home 
(every week or so).

>I know the functions/features of Quickbooks are quite extensive. My guess 
>is that we would only use the basics. >Would something like Quicken Home & 
>Business have all the functionality the piano technician might need?

I don't know that much about the different flavors, but Intuit has a good 
guide to help you pick (their sales people are good, too).
http://tinyurl.com/b7kz4

For example, it depends on whether you only buy custom-ordered parts (like 
me, mostly a tuner; I buy Dampp-Chasers only as needed), or whether you have 
parts in inventory.

>FWIW, I have been using PTBiz for years. I like it - I don't love it - but 
>it does what I need it to. The one BIG thing I >don't like about it is that 
>I can't run it on a PDA-type computer like a Palm Pilot or whatever it is 
>they have now.

A Palm runs the Palm OS, is generally less powerful, smaller, easy to use, 
and has a long battery life.

A Pocket PC (iPaq, Dell Axim, etc.) runs Windows, is more powerful, larger, 
and runs out quickly.

I have one of each: the Palm is in my pocket at *all* times, which is what 
makes it so useful.  The iPaq is in my toolcase, and I only use it for 
TuneLab.  But that's just me.

>Are there places for recording stuff for calling for next appointment? 
>Piano type, model, serial number, etc.?

Yes and no.  I just use the Note field, which is free-form text like 
Notepad.  I structure it like this:

Directions:
I-77 NORTH to ....

Piano:
Baldwin Studio, 1990, #123123123.

Referral:
xxxx

7/1/05: Called me for service.  Made appt. for 7/7.

7/7/05: P/r from -50 cents.


>Can you search the database?

Yes.

>Can it do things like give you weekly list of calls for appointments that 
>need to be made? This is critical for me because I have a group of clients 
>that wish for me to call them at their regular intervals to schedule the 
>next service appointment.

It's not that fancy, but you can make it work.  You can set up To-Do items 
with a Date Due, and have them show up on your calendar a week ahead of 
time.

The biggest benefit of the Palm, with its small size and long battery life, 
is that it's good for portable data entry: it can live in your pocket, and 
it has a pretty big capacity.  You can even get a folding keyboard for it! 
But as a contact manager in general, it's pretty simple.  You can buy many 
third-party applications to add on, though, including general purpose 
databases where you could have all the custom fields you want and so forth.
http://www.palm.com/us/software/

--Cy--