Going Paperless, Contact Mgmt Software

[equinecpa]

I'm going to move further towards the paperless frontier this upcoming tax season. I plan on acquiring the Fujitsu Scansnap scanner which I believe comes bundled with Adobe Acrobat.

I realized today that I could probably stand to have a better contact management program. I save copies of emails sent/received manually to individual client folders in my documents. It would be nice to have something that automated that function. Does Act do this? If not what other software might streamline this area? I'd like something where at a glance I could see appointments, schedules, contact information, emails etc.

Thanks

Carolyn

[Holland]

Time & Chaos

I'm going to move further towards the paperless frontier this upcoming tax season. I plan on acquiring the Fujitsu Scansnap scanner which I believe comes bundled with Adobe Acrobat.

I realized today that I could probably stand to have a better contact management program. I save copies of emails sent/received manually to individual client folders in my documents. It would be nice to have something that automated that function. Does Act do this? If not what other software might streamline this area? I'd like something where at a glance I could see appointments, schedules, contact information, emails etc.

Thanks

Carolyn

I have used ACT! for three years, but have now abandoned it due to bug and service issues. I have went to Time & Chaos, which in the past few months has proven to be much better for our networked offices & smart phones.

I do not have any suggestion for your email problem.

[outwest]

Second the above..

Time and Chaos now goes as !ntellect from these guys: www.chaossoftware.com. I can't say enough about this product. It's the heartbeat of my office.

Here is the sweet thing: It has a integrated email program. Every email TO or FROM a client gets automatically linked to the client.

Client calls, while doing the "how's it going", I click on the name, switch to the appointment tabs. I see what we last talked about and my comments in the notes column. "How's the hernia coming?". "Good. Remember the that lease I wanted you to look at?" Open up the last appointment, click on the files tab and open the PDF of the lease right there. " Yeah, that one from slick willy?" etc.

This is so slick and so cheap, you gotta try it.

Doug

[dsi]

Wow. Doug, that's awsome software for only $60. I'm going to download it and try it.

[equinecpa]

I downloaded it and must admit it looks interesting but...I don't think it quite has all the capabilities I'm looking for. I really am looking for something where I can archive email, client pdf files etc. and be able at a glance pick a contact and see files/contacts etc.

[outwest]

How to do it...

Set up a contact then check out the other tabs..

For instance the files tab is a great place to drag a shortcut to the folder where you store that stuff. Then you can type a few letters of the name, open the contact, click on files tab, click to the folder, and there is all the stuff.

And the emails are on the email tab automatically tied to the contact. Unless I'm misunderstanding you, this seems to be exactly what you want.

Oh, yeah. You can have additional file links within each task or appointment. So, for instance if I'm working on a project, I can link the excel worksheet, the engagement letter, the report and even the quickbooks file right to the task. So all I have to do is reopen the task, a couple more clicks and all the working files are open right there.

[equinecpa]

Hmmm...I'll play with it some more then.

Do you have to manually create all the links? Can you link to a folder? I just tried and it looked like I had to link each file individually -that's too time consuming. It works great for the email part..

[outwest]

Here's the trick..

Open explorer with the folder displayed then drag the folder to the file shortcut tab. Would be nice if it worked within the file shortcuts window directly.