Tuner software?

[Warren Fisher]

Glenn,

I use Quickbooks Pro, to keep track of all my financial end, and print
out estimates and mail in invoices.  You can have as many categories as
you like.  Also it will keep track of your sales taxes by city,county 
and state, then  automatically figure the amount of taxable income to
report and how much tax to pay.  The beautiful part about this program
is that once you have a customer in there, the details each new
transaction will be filled in by the software!  Usually the first 3
letters of the last name is enough to find it for you.  It will fill in
the rest of the full name, the amount of the last transaction (which you
can change if this one is different), the tax category (tuning, gr.
sales, moving,etc.) the date of this transaction and any memo notes from
the last one.

On invoicing, you build a file of codes for various repairs and tuning,
and use the same descriptions for both invoicing and estimates.  When
you type in the (3-5) code characters the program fills in the
description, price, tax category and totals everything at the bottom of
the page.  The only other thing you have to do is enter the quantity of
each item you are selling. It takes me about five minutes to generate a
ten item estimate or invoice complete with grand total and tax included.
Each person has their own sales tax code determined by where they live.

For keeping track of customers, I use a Personal Information Manager
software like SideKick for Windows or Lotus Organizer as a schedule,
label generator and customer database.  You search on the date last
tuned to find out who to contact, then print mailing labels or call the
the ones it finds.

The problem with one program that does everything is that quite often it
isn't as convenient as commercial programs that have been developed
specifically for one use, simply because there is not as much a market
for it. 

The programs above probably will probably not talk to each other, but
they do their own things superbly!

Hope this helps,

Warren


Glenn wrote:
> 
> What is a good tuner program to catalog clients, remind me when tunings are
> due, then tally everything for tax time?
> 
> Does anyone have an Excel or other spreadsheet doing this?  Care to share
> the file (without your data, of course!!)
> 
> Glenn.

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Warren D. Fisher
fish@communique.net
Registered Piano Technician
Piano Technicians Guild
New Orleans Chapter 701