Letters, faxes, emails, telephone calls and notes can all be recorded against the customer. Letters faxes and emails are all kept within the database, so there is no need to save documents to a server location. Create your own templates for letters, emails and faxes and insert custom text and paragraphs.

Emails are both sent and received by BusinessMan, with filtering to ensure only those that relate to your customers or suppliers are kept in the system. You need never miss an important email from your customer again, as the source email address is examined by the system and the incoming mail placed against the customer and in a common area, where it can be easily seen and processed by anyone, not just the addressee. So if someone is away on holiday, or off sick, you still receive the email.

• Document Management – You may have important documents relating to the customer. These documents can be simply managed within the database. The file location on the server is automatically created by BusinessMan and the file uploaded at the push of a button. The user needs to have no networking knowledge to do this.
• Easy Find – It’s extremely simple to find customers without creating complex queries. Just enter the “find” mode and enter what you’re searching for in any of the relevant data fields.
• Contact reminders – The system can remind you when you are due to call a customer, so you don’t miss that important sales call.
• Create as many contacts against each customer as you want, each of them with as many different addresses as you want, but at all times remaining linked to the main customer record. Ideal where you deal with companies that have many locations both nationally and internationally.
• BusinessMan has Google Maps integrated to allow you to instantly locate your customer based on their post code. You can also print out directions from your chosen location to your customer destination.
• Quotations are created from the customer contact, so the contact information is entered on the quote as soon as it is created. You can view the quotes by company contact or by customer as a whole, as you can with all communications.
• You can make a telephone call from the system just by pressing a button on the contact screen, if you have a suitable telephone system. We can also adapt the system to use Skype if required.
• All customer information is easy to hand, with an extremely easy to use graphical interface, which has been developed with the experience of many years.

The system has a logical flow, with a quotation created for the customer, from the customer. Building a quotation is simple yet comprehensive, with the ability to select line items from stock, and / or create a fully text orientated quote. You may even insert an image in the quote if required.

Full costs are recorded in the quote, including the costs of line items and miscellaneous costs for labour, transport or anything else you wish to take into account. The quote also shows the margin calculations as a percentage.

Once the quotation is accepted, a sales order is created, where the control of the sale is executed. From the Sales Order, order acknowledgements for the customer, internal work orders, purchase orders, invoices, and delivery notes are managed.

Suppliers are also managed within the BusinessMan system. In a layout which is similarly presented to the customer interface, suppliers, supplier contacts, communications and Purchase Orders may be created and controlled. The same theme is maintained throughout the system, to ensure users quickly become familiar and to ensure productivity is maximised.

You can create purchase orders simply from the supplier contact interface, in a similar way to creating a quote in the customer interface. You can order items from the stock system, using the manufacturers or suppliers part number.

You can view a history of all the purchases that have taken place from that supplier, so you can compare prices. You can easily search the suppliers to find out where you have made a purchase if you need to.

Purchase orders can be processed and payments made against them or disputed as necessary. Split payments may be made against the purchase order, so if for example, you have a contractor for three months and a purchase order has been raised for the total amount, the payments can be phased over a three month period.

BusinessMan contains a detailed stock system, where you can enter all the items you need for quotations, invoices and purchase orders.

Invoicing is simple, with the information from the Sale Order being automatically transferred to the invoice at the push of a button. Blank invoices can also be created directly from the customer if you need to bypass the SOP system. Invoices can be sent directly to the customer by email as a PDF.

Customer statements are easily produced from the customer part of the Financials area. Payments can be made from the customer, which may help to indicate the status of the customer account. Split payments may be entered against each customer if required. Invoice data can be exported for use within an accounting system. Invoices can be modified right up until they are exported to the accounting system. Sales reports are simple to produce and you can choose to represent those figures with a colourful chart.

BusinessMan contains a comprehensive marketing system which allows you to create marketing campaigns. Prospective customer data from mailing lists can also be imported into the marketing area. Google Maps is integrated within the prospecting system for location information and directions.

When a campaign is created, the recipient can be from the prospecting data or from existing customer contacts, or from both. Mailing, email or telephone campaigns can be created, with HTML mail and letters created and sent from within the system or the data collated and exported for external mailing campaigns or email campaigns.

Campaign data is recorded against each recipient so you can see what campaigns they have participated in. When a recipient responds positively to the campaign, this can be recorded simply by selecting a tick next to the recipient in the list.

Campaigns can be analysed for responsiveness and a graphical representation produced to find out which campaigns have been successful.

BusinessMan has a comprehensive Human Resources section, where staff data can be recorded. Staff attendance, sickness, qualifications, annual reviews and personal data including next of kin may be stored in this section.

If required, company forms such as holiday requests could be stored against this section.

A full featured Resource Scheduler is also part of the BusinessMan system. Resources are created within resource categories, such as sales staff, admin staff, engineers, vehicles, meeting rooms, projectors, etc.

Multiple resources from any resource category may be scheduled on any appointments. Scheduler checks to ensure the resource is available before allowing the resource to be added to a schedule. It will NOT allow conflicting schedules to occur. At a glance, it is possible to view the disposition of any resource within the company, thus making the most efficient use of time and saving money.

Scheduler for Windows does not need to have the FileMaker client loaded to run. All it needs is IP connectivity to the server. Thus, it is possible to run Scheduler over a WAN or a VPN with ease.

A Scheduler license is provided with each BusinessMan license, although they do not need to be installed on the same PCs.

There is a graphical scheduler and diary system included within BusinessMan that reflects any changes made either way, from Scheduler for Windows or from Within FileMaker.

Last but certainly not least, BusinessMan has a comprehensive user security system. The granularity of which allows as many permutations of security groups to be created as needed by the system administrator to ensure you give the correct privileges to each user.