Using Opportunities in Other Ways

This week I worked with an accounting firm that wanted to track how they handled documents sent to them by their clients. They weren’t actively using the Opportunities feature, so I helped them to rework (and re-program) that feature in ACT! to meet their needs. As each document comes in the door, it’s arrival is entered into ACT! as an Opportunity… tracking the type of document, indicating what forms or letters must be completed on the client’s behalf, what accountant in the firm is responsible for the completion, and what stage the document is currently in. When the document/form is returned to the client, the opportunity is closed. Now they can use the Opportunity List view to actively track the status of all their in-house projects by staff member. The Days Open feature can also help them track the average turn-over rate for all their work by firm employee.

Organization and Goals

While writing/updating the Official ACT QuickStudy Guide for Sage, I keep an elaborate spreadsheet tracking how many hours I have spent on the project, how many pages have been reviewed, how many days until identified deadlines, how many pages/day I have to complete to make my deadlines, and more.

Since ACT! 2008 is Vista compliant, I am also reshooting all of the screen captures and making notations in the book about differences between the current Microsoft world and the new one (Vista and Office 2007). My college-aged son is helping me with the screen captures. Some of his comments about working 8 to 5 versus project work have made me realize how important it is to have goals and methods of tracking our progress. It is what keeps us … sane. It helps us to know if we really are ahead of the game or struggling to keep up.

Impossible goals are what makes life interesting, and sometimes challenging, and many times fun. It’s the organization that makes getting there manageable

ACT! and Wikipedia

OK, so I got distracted from writing the ACT! QuickStudy Guide today while I was looking up a definition in Wikipedia. I noticed that there was not an entry for ACT!. Oh my gosh! How many times is there a subject that hasn’t been started in this Internet encyclopedia? So I took some time out to learn how to create an entry, looked up similar entries for topic ideas, wrote and formatted my entry, checked and footnoted some of the facts, and finally just submitted (because I need to get back to my real business).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACT%21

What a rush!

ACT! QuickStudy Guide

Been away from the Blog lately as I am revising the “Official ACT! GuickStudy Guide” once again in preparation for the release of ACT 2008 (version 8). Each year I alternately look forward to and dread writing and updating the manual. It is fun to see all of the features planned for the new release. However, the time frame I have available to write the book (from the time that it works until the time Sage wants to ship the software to distribution) is very short and it requires that I isolate myself from my clients to review and update the almost 600 pages of the book. (Yes, I know the name is QuickStudy…but I didn’t pick that one. The concept is that none of the sections is dependent on any other section, so you can start in the book wherever you like.)

However, I know the time spent is worth it to my clients as it makes me know more about the software than almost anyone out there. Since the product will ship late summer 2007, and I have been working with it since April of this year, I also have a head start on all of the idiosyncracies. Hopefully I am catching any new bugs associated with the new release. The ACT! programmers are always so great to work with and have been quick to fix any problems that I have found in the alpha and beta builds. I really am impressed with the ACT! development team that they have right now.