QuickBooks: Customer Manager - New Version

List Price: $79.95

Features:

• Customer information system for small businesses
• 1-click access to customer data and project management tools
• Respond quickly and accurately to customer needs
• Integrates with QuickBooks and Microsoft Outlook
• Easy to set up, learn, and use; FAQs on every screen

Customer Reviews:

It worked for us [Posted on 2004-06-21]
We are using Customer Manager, to build out customer database. We all submit customer contacts names, titles, phone numbers, and e-mail address. We have not experienced any of the bugs the other have mentioned. One thing is Intuit provides automatic update to the software in the same fashion as it does for Quickbooks. Meaning, as corrections are made you get them uploaded.

I periodically take my copy of the database file, and update our Quickbooks file.

Like Quickbooks only 5 users can share one database "file". But Unlike Quicbooks, the database file called the "depot.file" is a community file which each user syncs and updates to in order to get the other community memember additions; one at a time.

You can also use Customer Manager to set-up To-do's and set assignments and for other users. It track of open and closed jobs, set deadlines, provide alerts etc.

You can customize the data your keep by adding fields to track customer by.

You can also group what you are managing, just not customers. You can group by customer, vendor, supplier, employee, etc.

For the price it worth exploring.

Horrible ... don't waste your money [Posted on 2005-05-20]
[...]
But the really major problem is that it now hoses my computer any time I launch the software. I have uninstalled and reinstalled. The problem gets worse and worse. At this point, I have not used Customer Manager in over a month because of the lock-ups, yet I still have data tied up in there that I can't even get to. I've tried three times just today to launch Customer Manager to get ONE customer record I need, and I've had to power down my computer just to get out of the lock up. It is a horrible program. I can't believe Quickbooks would put their name on something this bad.

And wouldn't it figure that my problems started approximately 75 days after I bought it, just outside the 60-day money back guarantee offer from Quickbooks.

Don't Buy This Product [Posted on 2005-08-31]
Have used this product for over a year now and it is absolutely the worst program I have ever used. Very slow to load, at least 1-2 minutes. Offers lot's of different options, which could be useful, if it didn't take so long to get to the information. The word Bug is not strong enough for this program. All form and no function. After I bought the program and tried to load it in another computer, the disk indicates it was a trail version...another 2 hours on the phone with customer service. Intuit definitely lost it on this one.

STAY AWAY. They seem to have shipped without testing [Posted on 2005-12-09]
Yikes! I'm a lover of Intuit's other software, so was exceited to use this program. I've been using the product for about 4 days and have already run across 3 HUGE errors--the product experienced a write error to my database file and locked me out of the entire program! That's right, I tried to re-launch the program and it gave a cryptic Java error message and dumped out.

Ok, so that's a hard issue. But they didn't even catch the small ones...try to delete more then one customer group at a time, and it only deletes the first one. The most basic of testing would have caught this...

I'm a software developer, for whatever that's worth, so I know not to come down too hard to early on new products. But this one's insane. I'm going to try and get my money back.

Two stars with potential [Posted on 2006-01-10]
I think QuickBooks is one of the great software programs ever. So I was anxious to get QBCM. The idea is awesome -- a good potential solution to a small business's needs -- but so far the execution of QBCM is damned poor. Here are some of the major problems we experience:
1.QBCM won't properly process appointments made on the Outlook calendar while in QBCM (spent an hour on telephone with CS on this one and they couldn't solve it and decided it was a problem with my system) Means that we can not sync appointments to PDAs (a huge problem in my business).
2. Memory hog. I have a 1 GB of RAM on each of my machines and do not use graphics programs or video programs. Still get memory warnings when using QBCM. No other program I use does this!(Oh well, maybe this means it's time for me to get dual core processors :)
3. Slow. QBCM is oh so slow at startup and sync. And I run 3.06 GH machines.
4. About one of three times we try to sync to the sync depot we are frozen out for one reason or another. On some of the machines, this means the machine must be restarted. In others it just seems to be an error. A real pain.
5. Program is quirky and sometimes freezes up for no discernable reason.

My employees hate this program but I am trying to hold out until the new version comes out. If the new version solves these problems then I will go back to being a believer in Intuit. Otherwise....I'm going to seriously fight them for a refund for all five copies I bought. Count on it!

One more thing. Someone mentioned to me that based on the new $79.00 pricing, Intuit must be aware of the problems. Reminding me that you get what you pay for.

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