Hey Guys,
Save yourself a ton of time and $100 and check out MagicBase. I've used other expensive database programs before, and the problem with them is that you have to program and set-up EVERYTHING. MagicBase is made for magicians, it has all of the fields, customer lists, reminder tabs that I need- all set already. And, get this, it also has a place for me to keep a list of all my tricks, and to plan a show. It's not perfect, but its the only thing that I'll need for long time... That's my 2 cents worth...

I just got ACT and I have set up my databse to really work well for me and the way I track my shows through the many sales stages. I have to say I LOVE it. No other word then LOVE. It does everything I need it to and more. I am very pleased with it and thank all of you who have given me advice and told me so much about the program.

It was one of my 2004 goals and I am happy to say I am already set up and using it. I can also do mail merges with it and have used it to enter all my fairs and festival leads that I have been doing this month. Thanks again.

Kyle

By the sound of it, I do everything with Microsoft Works that ACT does. It sounds like a great program, but awful pricey for the same features Works has. I've never used ACT, so maybe it has a lot more features, but it doesn't really sound like it. Though it does sound like it's all a lot more integrated as far as the reminders and such, but then again all that can even be setup in something as simple as Works Calendar.

Just my .02 worth.

Yours In The Art,
Aedryan
http://www.methyus.com
http://www.strangehappenings.methyus.com
"Strange Happenings Ghost And Hauntings Research Society"

Kyle,

I've been using ACT for a number of years and it is truly powerful. You can customize the layout to meet your needs.

Here's a tip for you will find in Volume One of Success In Magic under the contracts section. In the ID field I create a unique ID number for each booking based upon the date of the gig. Starting with the year, then the month, then the date. For example, a booking on February 25, 2004 would be numbered 040225. "O4" is the year, "02" the month "25" the date. If I have two bookings on the same day, then I just add a letter to the end - an "a" or "b".

Furthermore I often name attached correspondence files similarly, so a contract would be "040225con", and invoice "040225inv".

By labeling the booking in this manner I can do a quick lookup of all the gigs in a certain month, or year, by just typing in a portion of the ID number in the ID lookup field.

I was talking with an ACT "expert" once and he recommended not using the ID field for this type of labeling and instead creating a new field. I can't remember his reasoning. There are user defined fields you could adapt for this purpose, but I have never encountered any problems over the years so I still use it this way.

Good luck.

Magically yours,
Jim Snack

If you have Microsoft Office, it is set up to share information among the various applications, including Outlook, Word, Access, and Excel.

My wife runs her own business with a customer/prospect Access database of about 700 people. Needless to say, it is a real pain trying to keep her mailing list and Outlook Contacts lists synchronized and up-to-date. Being her "Office Manager" (a non-paying position), I was trying to figure out a simple way to get her Access database into Outlook without having to verify and/or re-type every entry.

As it turns out, Outlook will import information from Office (and other) applications into the Contacts list fairly easily using the "Import and Export" command in the File menu and assigning the different fields to similar Outlook fields. Once the data is in Outlook, you can create distribution lists of various customers, depending on what you want to do with them - newsletters, show information, etc. You can then create a document and e-mail it to the distribution list using the "Send To" command under the Office application's File menu.

If the "Import and Export" command doesn't seem to be available, you probably just need to install the add-in from your original Microsoft Office CD-ROM.

It's not nearly as complicated as I am making it sound, and you might save a couple hundred dollars in the process. There are a lot of features in Microsoft Office that a lot of folks either ignore or don't know about.

I hope this helps.

Amos McCormick

Jim:

Thanks. I like that idea a lot. That makes it a lot easier to do a look-up for a particular day, week or month of the year and do it with ease. Great idea.

Kyle

Hi there,
Steven my uncle is a certified ACT! consultant in Dublin Ohio, right by you. If any of you have any questions or would like to further you ACT! knowledge, you cant beat their ACT! workshops. His web site is http://www.syman.com
Good Luck,
Beau

As usual Jim nailed it on the head! Act is customizable while providing 80% of useful information organization needed by most businesspeople. Yes, Works and Office 2000 has more powerful individual features, if you learn how to use them all together. ACT can also be integrated in applications, but provides a large base of useful features on its own.

Act is a contact management program, hence it has all of the useful features to keep in contact with your customers. While providing several unique and customizable entry "fields" that can be used to segment target markets and organize customer types, i.e. prospect, interested, buyer, advocate, partner. As far as using the ID field for booking IDs instead of customer IDs, ACT allows the flexibility to do both. Some people use customer IDs to identify customer categories while a custom field may be designed to detail the booking information further.
Another program used by large sales companies is GoldMine, also expensive but designed to provide organized access to your client information, and usable by multiple salespeople with or without on-line access.
Dedicated contact management software is expensive because it works, and pays for itself if used to its full potential. A product like Magicbase is designed specifically for a certain industry, like Magicians and could include unique features, but usually anything can be added to ACT.

Warning!

People who use Outlook express for their database of customer must back up their data and keep it up to date.

Every Outlook update has distroyed the imformation in Outlook and it was lost forever. This includes Outlook Express which is needed to run Outlook. Outlook Express is updated when new versions of internet explorer is updated.

Just wanted to make those using Outlook to be aware of this flaw in updating.

I have been using ACT for about 3 months now and I absolutely love it. It taook a while to devise the set up and the custom fields that work best for me, but it has been worth the effort.

It keeps me organized and the reminders of what to make calls or when to send out thank yous has been a gold mine to me. Everything is at my fingertips at all times and I instantly know every little detail about every client and prospect.

I will continue to use this program and I recommend it to anyone.

Kyle

I enter customer info into MS Excel

Then use MS Word Mail Merge.

That's the way I do it too.