If you don't need the full power of Filemaker and aren't up to the task of programming, look into a much easier solution called, "Bento". It's actually made by Filemaker, but it's simple, has a drag and drop interface and plays well with your address book and iCal. It's very inexpensive and it has a free download period so you can try it out. it also integrates with Numbers or Excel. If you're a Mac person, it's nearly perfect! $49 and easy to use!! You can find it here: http://www.filemaker.com/products/bento/overview.html?nav=products-bento Regards, Rob McCall Murrieta, CA On Mar 25, 2009, at 21:21 , pianotech-request at ptg.org wrote: > > If you have some computer knowledge, purchase one of the "Missing > Manuals" by Geoff Coffey and Susan Prosser - published by O'Reilly > Press. Very step-by-step and comes with lots of examples of > invoicing, reporting, promotion e-mails, etc. > > I am about 50% of the way through compiling a pretty exhaustive client > database system in Filemaker. It's on hiatus now, though, as I'm a > student at the Chicago School and focusing on that. This summer I > hope to finish it so that it can be the mainframe for my business. > Filemaker is 100% PC/Mac compatible, too. > > This is very doable. > > Alex > > Alexander Lass > Chicago, IL > > > > On Mar 25, 2009, at 10:29 AM, Daniel Carlton wrote: > >> That makes two of us. :-) >> >> I've downloaded a 30-day trial version of Filemaker 10 to see how >> that might help my business. But it would be more helpful if a good >> programmer could put this all together for us techs. >> >> Just thinking out loud ... are there enough Mac/iPhone techs who >> could join together to hire a programmer to design a program for us? >> Customized to the way we want? 50 techs x $400 each = $20,000. But >> I don't know if that would come close to paying for a project like >> this. I'd be happy to pay the $400 (or more) for a good program. >> >> Anyone with programming experience to provide an educated guess on >> the cost of a project like this? >> >> John I've downloaded Filemaker, too, but from the help file, it >> looked pretty complicated, so I haven't gone any further with it >> yet. I've wondered too getting a developer to write something. >> To be honest with you, I'd probably even pay more than that for a >> good application. >> >> >> Daniel Carlton
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