Tools For The Business

HepaCore

While starting my company two years ago, I did most of my back-office from excel or accesss database. Customer tracking, invoicing, service requests....As we all know, building your own spreadsheets can get large and colorful.

Now, with tools springing up everywhere on the web - some even for free- I was wondering how many other small-midsized companies out there still depend on such messy tools as microsoft office.

What tools have you created off-the-cuff (one of a kind) to help drive your back-office.

MattCoops

we still use Microsoft Access 2003 for our bookkeeping and invoicing.
we even still keep a written ledger of expenses and income

theres nothing wrong with Microsoft Office at all

we use Word on the daily

Excel we use for things like advertising statistics, and call volume reports. And I keep an updated price list on Excel spreadsheet that I bring to our estimates. Punch in the quantity and badaboom batta bang.

The Office suite is such a powerful tool.

and now Microsoft has a program called Small Business Accounting, which is quite resourceful. You can even easily load your Quickbooks data to it.

Microsoft is King!

__________________
Matt with Cupan Custom Tile & Paint of Lowell, Massachusetts
Design and installation of ceramic tile and natural stone for floor, wall, and countertops
(978) 601-8774 | cupantile@gmail.com | view tile pictures and more

Mike Finley

I have to agree with Matt, I haven't found anything on the web or anywhere else, especially for free that is worth a damn compared to Office. Now there are some things that can help you, but I certainly wouldn't compare them as Office being 'messy'. It's more of the foundation or base just like quick books is for accounting.

Excel is incredibly powerful if you know how to use the more powerful features. We have an estimating program created with it that is pretty incredible in what it can do.

ultimatetouch

care to elaborrate on the this Mike, I am about to put togather pricing in excell and could use some tips.

__________________
Ultimatetouch
Illinois Remodeling Company, Kitchen Remodeling Chicago, Room Additions Illinois

Mike Finley

Hard to walk you through it, because that is just the thing that makes Office so powerful, that you can create something so specific that it works exactly for you, but might not be worth a damn for anybody else.

But the basic ideas for making Excel very powerful as an estimating tool is that you can create your data on a separate work sheet and have excel pull data off that sheet based on what you want to do.

For instance you can do a drop down menu on your main sheet that is populated with information pulled from your data sheet, say for example a sink - drop in, undermount, then pull up more data defined by the original data, lets say you select "drop in" sink, you can then have it populate another cell with specific choices "Elkay white", Elkay cream, Kohler 2309, Kohler oval, Kohler round, and based on which one you pick then drop in your cost, then have your mark-up already there and calculate that for a final cost. Then you can choose installation, I mean it goes on and on and on.

I'm even working on it then creating another worksheet formated in a specific way that will compile every material selected and then even decide where I'm getting it from and use that as part of the process of setting up the job. I can look at it and see what we have, what needs to be ordered, how long it takes, etc...

That's just the tip of the ice berg. I working on integrating all this so it even creates a gant type chart to schedule everything, including subs and inspections.

Here's a little screen shot of one section:

MattCoops

again,

Excel, and all the rest of the Microsoft Office suite, ROCKS

__________________
Matt with Cupan Custom Tile & Paint of Lowell, Massachusetts
Design and installation of ceramic tile and natural stone for floor, wall, and countertops
(978) 601-8774 | cupantile@gmail.com | view tile pictures and more