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W07VH5 |
I've been using Gopher for 10 years now. They updated 2 years ago and kept updates coming and then they disappeared. They still have an active online service where I can see my schedule and input payments but I can't raise customer service. They only have an email address, no phone number. Questions go unanswered, issues are no longer resolved. So, I suppose this will be my last season using Gopher. I'm looking for a program that allows me to schedule jobs at variable intervals, mark jobs completed, inserts completed jobs for the month into an invoice, emails or prints invoices and tracks payments. Printing customer labels for mailings would be great, too.This message has been edited. Last edited by: mark123, | ||
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Member |
What kind of business are you in? ------------------ Eddie Our Founding Fathers were men who understood that the right thing is not necessarily the written thing. -kkina | |||
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| W07VH5 |
Lawn fertilizing and mowing. | |||
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| Just because you can, doesn't mean you should |
I would separate the accounting part from the scheduling. That's so specific and specialized that it limits your options to almost nothing. ___________________________ Avoid buying ChiCom/CCP products whenever possible. | |||
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Optimistic Cynic |
For creating detailed invoices and tracking payments I use and can recommend a macOS program called "Totals." I use an older version, not the version currently in the App Store that has gotten relatively expensive ($150). When I was doing the scheduling for a commercial grounds keeping contractor I used a spreadsheet to do so (one sheet per customer, and a roll-up consolidation sheet). I would generally prepare the schedule for the entire season in February. By doing this we were able to provide each customer with their schedule for the season (amended for rain dates as necessary). This also allowed us to forecast labor requirements and revenues, schedule bulk purchases of materials, and provide foremen/crew leads with daily schedules and job sheets (on paper) that went to accounting for billing and time-keeping purposes at the end of each day. The guys liked this a lot better than punching a time clock, and they especially liked knowing what was expected of them, and having a paper record in their own hand of what they accomplished, it also reduced the the number of labor disputes considerably. If I were doing this today, I would probably try to do something similar with a cell phone app or a web app that could be updated from a cell phone. | |||
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| W07VH5 |
I see an app in the app store called Totals for 99¢ but it doesn't look like what your talking about. I don't think a spreadsheet is going to work for me. | |||
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| W07VH5 |
We're not talking about accounting. | |||
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אַרְיֵה |
If you do that, you could use Google calendar (free) for scheduling, and Medlin Accounting, not free but very low cost and very high quality, for invoicing and bookkeeping. Medlin has a module for invoicing and receivables, it's free to try, and $65.00 if you decide to stay with it. I use Medlin's payroll module for my employees; it is great, WAY lower cost than the QuickBooks payroll that I used to use, and if you ever have a question, Medlin's response to email is on par with Top Gun Supply -- very responsive, and personal response. You probably don't need payroll, I was using this example to state how good they are. הרחפת שלי מלאה בצלופחים | |||
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| W07VH5 |
I don't think I'm explaining what I need. My current process is scheduling for the year in February. This fills the calendar. I print a daily worksheet and mark time in/time out. When I get home if all jobs are completed for the day, I click one button and I'm done with paperwork. At month end I click one button to generate invoices from completed jobs, email invoices are sent, paper invoices are printed. Credit and check payments are input into Gopher and Quicken and automatically taken from the appropriate invoice. This gives me 3 places to input payments on case of as dispute. Mileage and business expenses are tracked in Quicken Home & Business. I guess I just can't imagine doing hours of paperwork each night. | |||
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Be prepared for loud noise and recoil |
I use Billings Pro. Not free, but reasonable. I recall you being computer savvy, and would think you could customize it pretty easily. Also, it's cloud based and iOS compatible, so you can easily keep track of times in and out. Billings Pro “Crisis is the rallying cry of the tyrant.” – James Madison "Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with others." - Robert Louis Stevenson | |||
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Member |
May be too far out of your budget for it, but we use FieldPoint (Canada-based) for our field scheduling. Very easy to use on the back-end & has a mobile app, if you want to flag the jobs done as you go through the day. Allows for pretty limitless scheduling timetables (weekly, daily, monthly, quarterly, etc). We have a few hundred users in it, so on our end it's not cheap. Not entirely sure if they have a cloud based solution, as ours is server installed on-prem. They do have a billing function built-in, but we aren't utilizing that as it all runs through our accounting system. Email in my profile if you want a contact over there. The Enemy's gate is down. | |||
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| W07VH5 |
thanks. I'll look into this. | |||
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| W07VH5 |
I'll check it out. | |||
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