Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Need software idea for a business

This is topic Need software idea for a business in forum Film-Yak at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Kyle Watkins (Member # 986) on 12-07-2004, 09:05 PM:

I need some sort of software to kept track of customers. I do car alarms and remote start installs. And want to kept all the info on a computer. i need to be able to search from differt fileds, such as car make, model, or what i install in the car. what i have now is all done by paper work.
Any one have a idea.

Posted by Ben Holley (Member # 2247) on 12-07-2004, 09:47 PM:

you probably wouldnt even need to buy any software, just pay some computer science student\rouge programmer to do something simple for you. It sounds like a mock program the keep us doing over and over [sleep]

question, how many clients do u plan on having in your system?

Posted by Michael Schaffer (Member # 1204) on 12-08-2004, 01:21 AM:

It's called Microsoft Excel.

Posted by Dustin Mitchell (Member # 372) on 12-08-2004, 03:27 AM:

Access would probably be more appropriate.

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 12-08-2004, 04:18 AM:

Filemaker would be even better.

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 12-08-2004, 04:35 AM:

From the information you give, any off-the-shelf database package could be configured to store that information and let you search it in the way you describe. You probably wouldn't even need all the features of Access or Filemaker - the database component of MS Works or the spreadsheet component of the totally free Open Office may well be enough. It boils down to what features you need specifically and whether you're prepared to climb up the learning curve of programming the structure yourself. If you're going to pay someone else to do it, I would suggest making a detailed, accurate list of the information you need it to store and how you need to retrieve it. Don't leave out any detail, however trivial, because it'll be a lot more complicated and potentially cost a lot more to add in extra facilities later.

Posted by Chris Medley (Member # 2145) on 12-08-2004, 06:26 AM:

IMHO ACT would be better because you could keep track of your customers and any coresspndance with them, as well as meetings and appointments

Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 12-08-2004, 10:01 AM:

I vote for FileMaker.

It's a bit of an expense at first but it blows M$ access away. Further, it's cross-platform and you can include all kinds of multimedia content if you need to. (e.g.: You can take photographs of your work and store that along with each record.)

You can build a custom interface with it if you want to and you can even publish databases to the internet. (Or your intranet.)

The learning curve is a lot less steep than Access. In just a few days you can be WELL on your way to building a database that you can start using right away.

Yes, I like Open Office too. But the problem I have with it is that, if you have trouble with it, you're pretty much on your own. IF you know enough about computers that you can handle your own tech support or research the internet for it, then I say OK. If you want to be able to rely on the company for at least some small measure of support then go with the commercial product.
The short answer is, "You get what you pay for."

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 12-08-2004, 12:54 PM:

Agreed completely. I've had almost 100% good experiences with Open Office. The one real drawback I've found is that its Powerpoint equivalent is more clunky and less straightforward for editing the content of slides. But even so, it still does the job. And the wordprocessor has a lot of useful features that MS Word doesn't - exporting straight to PDF without the need for Acrobat, for one thing. I've also found it very stable - no unexpected program terminations so far. But as you say, there's no 'phone support service and no 'Open Office for Dummies' type book you can get from your local W.H. Smiths.

But for a fully featured package which has most of the features of MS Office, some which it doesn't, which is almost as easy to use and is totally free, Open Office is still quite an achievement, IMHO.

Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 12-08-2004, 01:08 PM:

what about star office that is what I use still (the os2 version)

Posted by Chase Hanson (Member # 2779) on 12-08-2004, 02:16 PM:

If you want to learn SQL is teh shit.