tracking customer orders for ad specialty distributror

[Abie Ross]

We are an advertising specialty business.
We need to track each job/sale from the initial customer request for an
item, through to delivery of the product.
Including... quotes, art files and artwork design and approval, ordering
from our vendors, ship to info, contact info to final delivery and approval
from customer that job was completed satisfactorily.

Suggestions please for an Excel template?? (Excel 2003)

 

[Anne Troy]

Consider using Access instead, since it's a REAL database, and comes with
several database templates. Try the Time & Billing one.
File-->New-->Templates (on my computer). Abie: You can spend tons of time
and money trying to make Excel do this for you, but it's an intuitive thing
for Access to much better handle something like this.
************
Anne Troy
www.OfficeArticles.com

 

[Abie Ross]

I do not have Access. I will get a trial copy and if it works then great.
Thank you
In my mind( not great when it comes to software)I imaginesd a spreadsheet
tracking the complete process I go through.
Every job i do may be a unique item with a unique imprint. But...every job
needs to go through the same processes. Quoting, samples, art creation,
approval, PO, from client, PO to my manufacturer, art upload, approval, ship
date, delivery, customer receipt of merchandise...
We may have as many as 30 jobs going at any one time- critical is being able
to see each day what needs to be done for each of those unique jobs.

Abie

 

[Anne Troy]

Exactly, Abie. And then you'll want to "not view" the completed ones (means
a new worksheet), and then you'll want to see the status of only those that
were shipped, but payment not received, etc.... Excel may be terrific for
tracking this, but not for tracking its history, which I feel will be
important for you. If you like, I am willing to help you create something in
Excel, but I'd rather not do it going back and forth through the newsgroup.
Feel free to email me.
************
Anne Troy
www.OfficeArticles.com

 

[Tushar Mehta]

I am surprised you don't already have something in place.

In any case, I would strongly recommend you check with others in your
industry to see what they use. Inventing something that typically is
done by multiple systems -- irrespective of whether you do it in XL or
Access -- is not the best use of your time or resources.

Just keep in mind that commercial systems, where the development costs
are amortized over *many* clients, still cost hundreds if not thousands
of dollars.

--
Regards,

Tushar Mehta
www.tushar-mehta.com
Multi-disciplinary business expertise
+ Technology skills
= Optimal solution to your business problem
Recipient Microsoft MVP award 2000-2005