Hi All, I just got a notice that Quickbooks is going to REQUIRE an upgrade in order to continue to keep sending out bills via email. And we have all of 1 month or so to get it done.... I HATE Intuit and would like to replace them.
Here's the work flow in our office. New customer calls in. Fill out signup sheet with all needed customer data. Assign static ip to customer. Enter customer billing info into Quickbooks. Enter all customer data into Access. Enter customer username and pass into RADIUS. Enter customer email account(s) data into email server. Enter customer data into Postini (if they purchase the filtering). Type customer signup sheet info into word doc and store in customer folder. Generate installation work order. Fill out check list showing what steps have been completed. This has worked nicely in the past and "only" takes about 30 minutes to accomplish. But now we're growing too fast and have gotten too big to maintain this. Between tech support calls etc. the office manager is having to bring in extra help. It's only a day per week and it's good for there to be two people there at least part of the time. No one should work alone all of the time. Plus, if she wants to take some time off she will have someone trained in the basics so we'll likely need to keep some extra help around no matter what. This mechanism also gives us a lot of double checks, redundant data points etc. With Access and Quickbooks we can run a very nice mix of reports etc. We do NOT have a customer trouble ticket mechanism other than the file on them. We don't track customers on a per call basis. That's not too bad because we're still small enough that we can normally remember problem customers. This would probably be a good time to change everything though. In my perfect world, I'd have a billing system (that handles all of the taxes for different communities etc.), trouble ticketing, auto server configuration AND deconfig. I'd want good reporting capabilities. I've looked at some of the commercial systems out there, but at $1 or more per month per sub for a full blown system I'd rather keep putting that money into the local labor pool. Freeside looks pretty good but I don't do programming or server admin work in-house. I don't mind hiring someone to set it all up etc. and to take care of the server. But it has to be an affordable solution too. What are people using? Do you like it? If you had it to do all over again, what would you do? Vendors please feel free to hit me up. marlon 509.988.0260 Or talk to Apryl in the office 509.982.2181, she'll know more about what she does day in and day out. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WISPA Wants You! Join today! http://signup.wispa.org/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WISPA Wireless List: [email protected] Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
