by Susan Clark on May 22, 2012
Is quoting giving your company headaches?
- Does it seem like quotes take too much time to generate?
- Could you easily pull up a list of all outstanding quotes?
- Does your sales team remember to follow up on those quotes they spent so much time on?
- If someone is out of the office, could anyone on your staff find and review a specific quote with a customer?
- Would you like more control of the quotes coming out of your office?
If you are using the Opportunity feature in ACT!, you could generate a basic quote from the current opportunity. (Click the “Create Quote” icon or the hyperlink under Related Tasks at the left.)
But if your needs are even a little more elaborate, you might consider looking at QuoteWerks. Quoting has become a much easier task since we set up QuoteWerks in our own company. It is one of the most flexible and powerful products we have worked with in quite some time.
There are too many features to relay here, but these are my favorite:
- Quotes are saved to the Documents tab and synced to the master (and all remote users).
- When saving a quote, I am prompted to schedule a followup call and create a new opportunity.
- All current product pricing (including any volume discounts) is easily accessible by all team members.
- All of our quotes look the same, no matter who created them.
- If we include an add-on in the quote, the associated product slick explaining it’s advantages, is automatically included with the quote.
- Since many of our quotes have the same items, we have pre-prepared bundled line items that are easily inserted into any quote.
- When emailing, the quote is automatically converted to a .pdf file and attached to the email.
- When the deal closes, the quote can be sent to QuickBooks or Peachtree for generating an invoice…without re-entering the data.
If you would like a demo of QuoteWerks to see how it could improve your processes and close rate…give us a call. 713-661-5093
by Susan Clark on May 8, 2012
Understanding how to better use list views can make a big difference in your productivity and using ACT!. Take the Task List view for example.
Whenever I set up ACT! for a client, one of the things I might do is customize the column display. It is easy to do (and the process works for any list view, such as the Notes or History tab or the Group List view).
- Right-click the column headers and select Customize Columns.
- Select an available field from the list at the lift and double-click it to move it to the right, so that it will display in list view. Use the Move Up or Move Down buttons to rearrange the columns.
- In the Task List view, I like to add the Company name and the Phone number to the view.
- I usually also remove the Priority list (double-click the field at the right to move it to the left), since all of my activities seem to be High Priority.
- If you are monitoring other user’s activities, you might also want to add the Scheduled For field to the right, so that you can group the planned activities by Record Manager.
- You can also filter the Task List view.
My days are mostly scheduled with appointments, so I use the Calendar view to see what I need to do and the Task List view to see what I am behind on. For example, at the top of the view, you can filter the list by date to display “Today”, “Today and Future”, “Tomorrow”, or any of several other time periods. However, my favorite filter is “Past”. Be leaving the Task List view on Past, I can easily switch between the Calendar view to see what I am working on today and the Task List view to see what I am behind on.
- There are other filters at the top of the Task List view as well. You can filter by activity “Types:” (only display your calls) or you can filter by Record Manager using the “Select Users” button (if you are a manager and checking on your staff’s activities). You could also filter the list by assigned “Priorities:” if you like, only displaying your High priority items for the day.
- Finally, once your columns are in place and your filters are in effect, you can click on any column header to sort the list. This feature is great for grouping your like activities by “Regarding” or by Activity type, etc. Click on the Date column to return the list to it’s default display.
p.s. If you are using these instructions to filter the Notes or History tab viewa, don’t forget to change the filters back to all. We get a couple of calls a year where someone keeps inputting a note and when they return to the contact the note had disappeared. It’s because they have the Dates: filter set to Past and so the note won’t display until tomorrow. Easily remedied by changing the Dates: filter back to All Dates. Then they only have to remove the duplicate notes they entered trying to get the note to stick.
Don't forget to change the Dates: filter back to "All Dates"
by Susan Clark on April 17, 2012
Are you dealing with clients in different time zones and having trouble keeping track of the time difference?
In my Windows System Tray at the lower-right, when I click the date, this is what pops up on my laptop. One clock showing the time in Houston (Central) and two other clocks letting me know what time it is in other cities where I am setting up meetings with clients.
It is easy to setup.
Click on the System Tray date/time at the lower-right of your computer screen (see graphic above).- Click the “Change date and time settings…” link.
- Click the “Additional Clocks” tab.
- Put a check mark in the “Show this clock” option.
- Select a city or time zone from the drop down.
- “Enter a display name:” for the clock.
- Repeat steps 4-6 for a third clock.
- Click OK.
Voila. Not an ACT! tip (I know), but I loved this one.
by Susan Clark on April 11, 2012
If your company uses QuickBooks, there is an ACT! add-on that you should definitely consider. (It remains one of my favorite add-ons for ACT!)
- My QuickBooks Sales Tab in Sage ACT! – Click for a larger view.
It is an application that runs on one computer that also has access to QuickBooks. Every night it collects data from your QuickBooks company file and imports the data into your ACT! database that displays on a tab that looks like the one here. With just a single license of the product (about $159 at this time) , you can give your team access to really important information about your customers. Or, you can restrict who can see what data by field… or by contact, if you like.
But there are quite a few amazing reasons to consider this product…
- What if you could create a new contact in QB with 2 clicks?
I love that this product eliminates duplicate data entry AND that the company names in ACT! match the company names in QuickBooks.
- Did you ever want to see financial data for a specific customer, but did not have access to your QuickBooks company file?
I work from my laptop most of the time and don’t have access to our company QB. However, now when I am on a contact record, I can look at my QB tab inside of ACT! and see if they have any past due balances, the last time they paid, their last invoice date, their YTD sales and a lot of other pieces of information. (See the graphic above. I can also see their past 4 years of history, but I cut that out to make the graphic readable.)
- Would it help your sales team to know what YTD sales are for their accounts… and also see corresponding sales for the prior years…without having access to QuickBooks?
Now you don’t have to give your staff access to QuickBooks. They can look up account status for themselves.
- What if you could easily create a lookup/group in ACT! of inactive customers…those that have $0 sales for the current year but had more than $5,000 sales last year (or whatever numbers you want to use)?
Wouldn’t it be great for your sales team to have a group like that?
- Would it help to know that a customer has a 60-day past due balance or that their average days to pay was 90 days?
Would that affect your next quote?
- Speaking of quoting, what if you could quickly look up in ACT!, what a client paid for a specific item in the past?
If you buy additional licenses for specific team members, two more tabs are added to the ACT! view that allow you to see a summary of all past invoices, as well as a list of all items purchased and what they paid for specific items… without having to find that information in QuickBooks.
- Want to see purchase orders issued for a specific client?
In addition to Invoices, you can also see Purchase Orders and their status inside the ACT! record.
Really, if you use QuickBooks and ACT!, you should definitely look at this add-on. Give us a call (713-661-5095) if you want to know more or buy here.
This is the 10th edition that I have written detailing everything you need to know about how to use the latest version of ACT! to boost your productivity and help you get the most our of your new Sage ACT! 2012 software purchase. 
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