Task schedulers that mesh with Simply Accounting -- recommendations??

[Matt Shepherd]

Hi all,

My name's Matt Shepherd, and I work for a translation and
English-language services company in Sherbrooke, Quebec. We've been
growing recently and now have five employees.

At the moment, we have over a hundred clients. A typical day can see
up to twenty small jobs passing through the office. Until now, we've
been using a logsheet system I created in Microsoft Access to manage
our workload.

The thing is, our accounting person has to copy all of our logging
information (time worked on documents, word counts, per-word rate
(which varies), job details, etc.) onto every bill she makes in SA.
It's an incredible time-sink.

I'm wondering if anyone could recommend some sort of task-management
software that meshes with SA seamlessly. The ideal would be software
that tracks the following elements:

Job name
Date due
Client name
Contact name
Who did the work
Word/hour count
Rate per word/hour
Delivery Date
Details

and can automatically convert that information into a bill, preferably
with just the push of a button.

SUPER ideally this would be information that all computers in the
office could access, but having the added efficiency of an accounting
program/scheduler is worth losing that feature.

I've tried researching various scheduler programs, but they mostly
seem geared towards large jobs/many departments, not small jobs/lots
per day. And our accounting person doesn't want to switch from SA (the
move from MYOB was hard enough), so SA integration is essential.

Suggestions welcome!

Thanks!

 

[Mark B]

You could try Task Manager 2005 at www.orbisoft.com

Here's a press release on it:

Orbisoft Releases Task Manager 2005™ Task / Project Management
Software

Seattle, Washington -- September 25, 2004 -- Somewhere placed between
Microsoft's Outlook® task manager and Microsoft Project®, Orbisoft's
Task Manager 2005™ seeks to enable managers to better take control of
tasks, jobs and projects that their teams are working on.

Taking a different approach to traditional task management, Orbisoft
says they have heeded calls from middle management users, saying the
product is more in-line with mainstream realties of workplace
environments:

"Managers typically have a need to monitor a high volume of
homogeneous tasks rather than a lesser number of single, complex
projects. Our market research indicated that many users were averse to
use more complex project management software for this type of task and
job tracking -- one of the main reasons cited was that the time taken
to enter and maintain data simply exceeded the benefits of having it."

"What we found was that users wanted a high volume, low maintenance
system that was relatively easy for their team members to use. With
this in mind Orbisoft's development team focused on making a product
with the deliberate software design goal of keeping user data-entry
and maintenance time at a minimum. At the same time power-users who
wanted sub-task functionality weren't isolated -- Task Manager 2005
does allow for up to four nested levels of task grouping."

The Task Manager 2005 software package can be used personally or in a
multi-user team environment.

"Task Manager 2005 is generally a good tool for clustered managers
each managing say between 5 and 100 people. With each team member
having a generous handful of individual or shared tasks, or client
jobs, those couple of hundred of tasks or jobs necessitate a good
overall monitoring system. Add more managers and their respective team
members, tasks numbering into the thousands, and a good system is
crucial, especially to avoid missed deadlines with customers, other
internal departments and other management interests."

The Task Manager 2005 software program has many power features you'd
expect from modern software, and many features relate directly to the
design focus mentioned: quick data entry templates and task close out
screens, intelligent field defaults, automated email reminders,
customizable database fields, reporting, task charting, security,
automated task scheduling, and even synchronization with Microsoft
Outlook® tasks if you so desire.

While Task Manager 2005 has a Windows XP look about it, it will
operate on all Microsoft Windows desktop platforms from Windows 98 to
XP Home and XP Professional.

Orbisoft offers Task Manager 2005 as a free 45-day trial
(www.orbisoft.com/download/ ). Multi-user pricing begins at $379 USD.

For more information on Task Manager 2005, visit www.orbisoft.com

 

[Matt Shepherd]

You could try Task Manager 2005 at www.orbisoft.com

I'll give it a poke and see how it works. I really want something that
integrates with SA, though -- some sort of pushbutton "create an invoice in
SA from this scheduling program" software.

To be honest, I'm surprised it hasn't been made yet.

Cottage industry!

- Matt

 

[Chris Gunn]

I'll give it a poke and see how it works. I really want something that
integrates with SA, though -- some sort of pushbutton "create an invoice in
SA from this scheduling program" software.

To be honest, I'm surprised it hasn't been made yet.

Howdy,

Drop by http://www.authord.com/SW/index.html and try out Schedule Wizard.

Using its simple scripting language, you can teach it to open virtually any
program and do all of the key strokes to perform virtually any task. You
can generate a canned invoice with one script, then E-Mail a copy with
another. It can also import and type external files into a program.

It does reminders and a bunch of other stuff as well.

Thanks, Chris www.bizynet.com and www.bizycart.com
BIZynet Coordinator (e-mail address removed) - (850) 936-1234
Moderator of biz.ecommerce, biz.general, biz.marketplace.discussion,
biz.marketplace.web-design, biz.marketplace.international & others

 

[namrata10]

I suggest Saviom employee scheduling software can be useful.

 

[akhtar24]

Integration with SA - import data Sales Invoice, TimeSlip etc

Hi Matt,
We are Sage Partners, and specialize in data integration of Sage50 (Canadian/US), Simply Accounting data, integration and import of different sources - Access, excel, csv, text into Accounting software. Installation and support is our business.

Please let me know if you would like to avail our utility program/services, as we would be happy to assist you.

Thanks,

Akhtar Rawasia

Business Innovation Technologies Inc.


businnovatech.com

swagsys.com - Data Import from Any Source – Sage 50 Canadian Edition(Sage Simply Accounting), QuickBooks, Sage Accpac, Sage 50 US Edition(Sage Peachtree)

bithelp.ca Contact for Technical Support, Sage 50 Canadian Edition Software Training Questions

(905) 944-8900