A Contact Manager is a software program that enables users to store and locate contact information, tag contacts easily, create call list, create campaigns, create tasks, share documents, etc.

It also provides advanced reporting capabilities and empowers various taskforce members to have access to the same "contacts" database. This Contact Management module tracks all the data and communication activities related to the contacts. 

Why Contact Manager?

A Contact Manager is an ideal solution for small businesses for their teams to easily manage their contacts and help them with day-to-day activities. However, many businesses, especially small and medium-sized, have a hard time finding contact management software that is efficient and assimilates with their system.

Contacts are the link that connects your business to more sales. Like every other business tool, a contact manager was established to make life easier. When it comes to making sales, a contact manager is a crucial aspect as everything starts with a contact. Therefore, it is up to small and medium businesses to seek after contact management applications such as OfficeClip.

Hosted or Installed Contact Manager

The decision of whether to host your Contact Management software on your individual servers or the cloud is vital. There are advantages and disadvantages of both systems, from security to control and ease of use. 

With the hosted option, your contact management system can be up and running immediately. Moreover, all of your contact information and the power to change that information will be readily available from any computer, and all you need is an internet connection. 

With the installed option, you install the same software on your own server or private cloud. All data stays within your control, and you can schedule your own backup and redundancies. The installed version of the software is also charged one time, and there is no per-month fee.

Contact Manager Vs. CRM?

The major difference between a contact management software and CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system is that a contact management software plays a primary role in managing and tracking a customer, vendor and company's information and communication.

A CRM software, on the other hand, provides more advanced functionality fashioned to sustain the sales process, prospective clients, and sales lead, including all sales representatives' activities with some marketing performance.

Contact Management systems enable small businesses to track all communication with customers and vendors. It also associates sales report information while checking for orders and sales history information. Contact managers provide the primary contact information and additional contact information.

A CRM system is specifically used for businesses that have long or complex sales cycles that require continuous interaction of the customer, with planned follow-up dates and detailed communication records.

Contact Manager vs OfficeClip

There are so many ways to contact clients these days. Good contact management software can ease this process and incorporate all your conversations on one platform. Here are four other contact managers:

1. Insightly

Insightly focuses on business relationships, and helps in discovering ranking in corporations, and build relationship maps which assist in increasing sales using tools such as automated lead management and automatic tracked emails.

2. Maximizer

Maximizer's features are composed of a shared address book that can carry out searches by a case number, company affiliation and still save them. It easily processes automation, multi-level security for ranking access to data, while incorporating a mobile-savvy calendar. The data entry can also be clarified with form field validation that can describe which fields are mandatory, and check for duplicate entries.

3. Nutshell

This software can manage contacts and conversations, track leads, automate the sales processes, and track it all with easily understandable performance reports.

4. Zoho CRM

CRM is a more complex system, however, Zoho is worth mentioning because of its cutting-edge digital assistant feature that incorporates Zia Voice as a chatbot that can be queried for any desired info.

5. OfficeClip

OfficeClip is a web-based software application that provides an integrated solution that properly manages your contacts, customers, projects, and employees. OfficeClip facilitates efficient tracking and sharing of information in your corporation.

Important Features of Free OfficeClip Contact Manager

Some of the features of OfficeClip Contact Manager include:

•  Search and Filters – You can easily find a contact from a database using the Search option. The user can search for contacts using various fields like tags, city, country, first name, email, currency type, etc. For a more complex search, filters can be used which will help you to create a tailored view that focuses on the details one is interested in.

•  Drip Marketing – This is direct marketing that lures customers by sending marketing information to prospects at regular intervals, hence, encouraging engagement with your contacts and building a relationship.

• Invoices – This invoice feature has different templates such as service invoice, standard invoice, professional invoice, quotes, and estimates. The invoice can be customized to suit the client's preference, and also edit new terms as per the transaction. As a business contact manager, it allows customers to make online payments.

• Smartphone Access – This enables employees to have real-time access to all the vital information through their smartphones so that customers can get the best service with better communication, faster access, and the latest updates concerning their projects.

• Synchronization – If you store your contacts and appointments using Google or Outlook, OfficeClip synchronizes with these applications. It synchronized with:

• OfficeClip Contacts
• Contact Related Notes (can be found in the contact description field)
• Contact Related Events
• Contact Related Tasks
• OfficeClip Calendar of Events - Non-Contact Related
• OfficeClip Notes - Non-Contact Related

What exactly is permission-based email marketing?

It means getting permission before adding contacts to an email list. It is the act of getting consent from a subscriber to send them email marketing campaigns. Businesses that get it right and build permission-based email lists enjoy high open and click-through rates. These campaign emails help them in getting a significant level of sales and revenue from their email marketing initiatives.

Usually, an email or campaign email sent without the customer's permission is considered as spam.

Rules for permission-based email marketing:

• Get permission: Set an opt-in option in your marketing software, so when the customer signs in using a web form, the customer will receive an opt-in confirmation email. Allowing this opt-in confirmation will help you to be sure that the customer actually wants to hear from you.

•  Plan: It is essential to communicate with your customers on a regular basis. Send the campaign emails at regular intervals and track the campaigns to analyze the results. It will give an idea about how many campaigns were delivered, how many people clicked etc.

• Never buy or rent a list: Subscribers want to receive email from those companies they have subscribed to, not an unknown third party.

• Give the people an option to opt-out: Instead of sending emails to people who don't want them and end up marking them as spam, allow them a way out so you can remove them from your list. The link for opt-out should be easy to find because interests may change over time. 

Permission may ensure your Contacts are getting what they receive and it is a profitable strategy which will pay for itself.

So one of the significant advantages of permission-based marketing is that advertisers can concentrate their efforts on those prospects that are most likely to turn into buyers. When a customer selects themselves by asking for more information, it shows that they have a genuine interest in what the business is offering. These customers are more likely to purchase and to spend more money when they do so.

Benefits of Permission-based email marketing:

• It creates less spam risk.
• It strengthens the brand.
• It will give a better return on investment from your email campaigns.
• Campaign emails give better engagement results.

Photo Courtesy: Irene Vodka Creative Common Attribution

To efficiently run a business, I have often used freelancers to provide quality work at affordable pricing. Based on my experience I have written this article with the hope it will help my fellow small business owners and managers.

Below are seven checkboxes you should make sure to cross during your search for the right freelancers.

ADVANTAGE OF FREELANCERS, ISSUES WITH THEM!

Like everything in life, there are two sides to the freelancing coin, and it is essential to be well aware of the possible issues that come with hiring a freelancer, as well as the goodies they bring to the table.

 Freelancers are quite easy to manage, thanks to their flexible and independent nature. But this also makes it challenging to plan and project the allocation of work accurately. Freelance services are also cost-effective, especially if more work opportunities can be guaranteed. But most often, freelancers can choose to go after a better-paying client if the opportunity comes their way.

 The skills brought to the table by freelancers are mostly quite exceptional, but there may be a slight variance in the style of one freelancer to another, and if not checked may affect the image of your business. The best solution is here is to create unique brand guidelines (Content guidelines, design guidelines, etc.) that would guide freelancers to produce a uniform styled result for your business.

 OUTSOURCE, NOT OUT-TASK

 Finding the right person to do your work is often time-consuming, and having to do it many times creates a drain on your company's valuable resources.

 Thinking your work as a series of individual tasks and assigning them to different freelancers over time is called out-tasking. Whereas, outsourcing is finding the right set of freelancers and use them over and over again.

 So, how do you know if you found the right freelancer in the first place?  In the initial phase, you can give a small task to many freelancers and monitor their quality of work and their attitudes and judge if you can work with them. Once you zero down to one or two freelancers, you create a permanent relationship with them. It will also have an added advantage that you become a long term customer of the freelancer, and they will be willing to work on your terms.

 CLEARLY STATE YOUR REQUIREMENTS

 While working with freelancers, you will often find that the result is not quite you expected in the first place.

 It is always important to clearly express what you need to whomever you are looking to hire. Take your time and do your research on what you think you need, and check out some samples to be sure you are on the right path. Then take your time to describe what you need, what you expect, and what purpose you hope it to serve your business.

 Be sure that the freelancer also understands what it is that you are asking for, before going into an agreement with them. It is essential, for both your sake and the sake of the freelancer that you both are on the same page, before sealing the agreement.

 EVALUATING A FREELANCER

 There are 2 phases involved in the process of assessing freelancers before contacting them. We could describe it as the final shortlisting process, and it includes;

 Review their past jobs and projects which are similar to the service you need from them. You could also go through the feedback of their previous clients (depending on how you meet the freelancer). These will give you a general overview of what to expect from each freelancer. 

 Analyze the freelancer to be sure if they do the job or if they are simply middlemen. While some individuals would like to speak with the worker directly, some individuals wouldn't mind working with an intermediary, if it doesn't affect the quality of the delivery.

 FINDING FREELANCERS

 The process of finding freelancers has been made easy. Freelancers are individuals like us, and they are mainly present on networking websites.

 Freelancers are very much present on social networks like Facebook, Craigslist, Twitter, LinkedIn, and more. These types of websites allow you to build a personal rapport with whomever you may hire.

 There are also platforms that are specifically built to serve as a marketplace for freelancers and those who need their service, to meet. These platforms have provided the necessary features you may need from the phase of finding a freelancer, to the point of payment and execution. Some common examples of these types of websites include; Fiverr.com, Upwork.com, Toptal.com,  Guru.com, Freelancer.com, and more.

 TRACKING FREELANCER PRODUCTIVITY

It will also come in handy if you could find time to learn more about the tools used to track the productivity of freelancers. Tools such as Everhour, TimeCamp, or OfficeClip Free Time Tracking Software can be used to monitor timely productivity of freelancers, providing you with useful insight on where to put more effort and where everything is efficient.

Hiring freelancers is the new norm, and getting it right holds so many possibilities.

Photo Courtesy: Infozuba In Creative Common Attribution

What is Customer Retention?

Customer Retention is the ability of an organization or business to retain customers by providing them good services, managing the quality of the products sold and quickly satisfy customer issues.

Company revenue increases by bringing new customers, but it is even more critical to preserve the existing customers. It often costs much more to acquire a new customer than to keep them.

Benefits of Customer Retention

1. Creating a good relationship with customers is cheaper than spending time and money on marketing.

2. Loyal customers create word-of-mouth referrals personally or via social networks.

3. Happy customers are more likely to buy more products from your company. It is easier to upsell them compared to approaching a new company with whom you do not have a relationship with.

Tools that can Improve Customer Retention

1. A Contact Manager or CRM can help keep track of all your customers and separate them from your other leads. It can also track the communication between you and your customers via direct messages or social networks.

2. A Campaign or newsletter creation software can automate sending periodic information to your customers. It helps to keep in touch with your customers periodically by sending them important news or advancements in your area of expertise.

3. A tool to track customer issues and their resolution can also be immensely helpful in answering customer queries on time. You can also create in-house metrics to find out how your service professionals are supporting your customers.

4. A survey software to get periodic customer feedback.

Photo Courtesy: David Seibold Creative Common Attribution

Welcome to our first major release of 2019. This release provides you with new enhancements and lots of fixes. 

See the complete Release Notes

Upload and Download Folders

In addition to files, you can now upload and download folders in the Document Management application.

Introducing Drop Site

 Imagine you want a simple way for your customers to upload documents to your OfficeClip. They click on a link and can upload documents for you. 

Settings Screen Enhancements

Few of our users complained that our settings feature is spread out across various screens and it gets difficult to navigate through many functions. We have now consolidated everything in one place so that administrators and users alike can navigate better.

Reject Comments in Time Off

Comments can now be entered when a time Off requested is rejected by the approver.

More Skins

The skin selection screen has become better with the introduction of three new skins and a better UI.

In addition to these enhancements, we have fixed many issues. For a complete release notes click here.

Over the years we have seen Google shelves products that creates good following but does not make enough money for them. I liked Google Reader, Google Talk and when Google shelved Notebook and wanted people to switch to Keep, I instead opted for another product.

Today Google announced that they are shelving the consumer version of Google+ because of compromised private profiles of many users. Also they reasoned that people do not spend enough time on average accessing it. Less time also means less ad revenue for Google. Instead of fixing the security issues they opted for closing the product altogether.  

Many other big developers like Microsoft keeps products for a long time even after they stopped development on it and then merge them to more popular products, like Hotmail to Live and MSN to Bing. 

This practice of google will make consumers more suspicious to adopt new products from them for the pain of leaving them when they started liking and getting used to them.

We made many user interface changes in this release and also added some new features.

Changes to the OfficeClip UI and Skins

The entire OfficeClip UI has been modified to make it more usable and modern. All the icon images have been replaced by the font icons. Spacing has been increased between various UI elements. In addition, the OfficeClip interface has been made responsive. This means that it can be used in the modern mobile devices as is.

In addition, a total of 18 different skins has been modified to change the theme associated with those skins. Some of the skins (e,g, Metro Touch) has been optimized to make it work better on touch devices.

In/Out Timesheet

Many of you had requested us to include the ability to add employee check-in and check-out times in the timesheet. In this release, users will be able to add in, out and break times for each day.

In addition to this, these times can be seen in the timesheet preview and in the reports.

Mobile Design Changes

OfficeClip Mobile interfaces for iOS and Android has also gone through many design changes. Google Material Design has been adopted in all the screens. We have also extended the features of the application by adding more screens.

Companies offer paid time leave to employees as part of their benefit. Most of these vacations are given as a credit of time worked. For example, a company can give an employee 12 hours of sick time every month. If the employee does not get sick on a particular month, the leave may get accrued into an account that can be used later. There are various possibilities:

1. Employees accrue PTO that can be cashed out at the end of the year (if not used).

2. Only a certain number of PTOs can be transferred to the next year.

3. If PTO is accrued at the beginning of the month or end of the month. If the employee joins in the middle of the month, it could be prorated.

PTO Accrual Scenarios:

1. John joined the company on Jan 15, 2018, and is allocated 1.5 days of sick leave every month that expires at the end of the year.

If we assume the following:

1. John has not claimed any sick leave so far

2. Leave is accrued at the beginning of every month

3. It is prorated

On July 1, 2018, John will have 0.75 days of leave accrued for January and 1.5 days of leave from February to July totaling 9.75 days (78 hours).

2. Mary gets vacation leave of 2 days every month and only 10 days of such leave can be rolled over to the next year. If we assume that:

1. Mary already had 5 days of vacation rolled over from last year

2. Leave is accrued at the end of the month

3. Mary has already taken 3 days of vacation in this year

On July 1, 2018, Mary will have 5 days from the last year, 2 days for every month from January to June and 3 days subtracted totaling 14 days of vacation accrued.

OfficeClip Time-Off application is available as a hosted (cloud) or a self-installed solution (that can be installed in your private cloud like Amazon AWS). To try out visit the OfficeClip Timesheet product page.

We have a brand new release for you. Here are some of the highlights:

Enhancements:

1. Free OfficeClip for unlimited users and unlimited time
2. SMS using Twilio
3. Expense Templates using Liquid API
4. DCAA password verification

Free OfficeClip

Starting this release we made OfficeClip standard edition free for unlimited users for unlimited time. A list of features and version comparison is available at this web page.

SMS using Twilio

All notifications and messages can now be sent directly to mobile devices via SMS. OfficeClip supports two types of SMS:

1. Email SMS: Use this option when you want to send SMS free of cost using the SMS email address. Most SMS providers provide an email address that can be used to send SMS to a mobile phone. A list some if the SMS providers are given here.
2. Twilio SMS: Twilio is an SMS provider that allows SMS to be sent through their network inexpensively. To use this option you will have to create an account in twilio.com and use the account id and password in OfficeClip.
   

   
   SMS in the Professional and Enterprise Edition of OfficeClip.
   
   

Expense Templates using Liquid API

In this release, we have added liquid templates to the expenses. This will allow administrators to customize the printed expense report for the organization.

The template is designed using the powerful liquid template language.

This feature is only available in the Enterprise Edition of OfficeClip.

DCAA password verification

Many of our customers who are doing government projects, requested that we provide a mechanism to sign the timesheet electronically before being submitted. In this release, we have provided a way to enable this feature in the Profiles menu of Timesheet administration.

This feature is only available in the Enterprise Edition of OfficeClip.

Complete Release Notes

If you have installed OfficeClip on your local server and want to access it from outside your LAN you have the following options:

1. Setup port forwarding on your router to the OfficeClip Server IP address
2. Use the router supported dynamic DNS to automatically forward incoming OfficeClip request the OfficeClip server
3. Use third-party reverse IP services like ngrok to access OfficeClip without doing any change in your router

When you are working on a project inside OfficeClip, and you need to share a document or a folder with your customers you can do it directly from within the OfficeClip Sharing Application.

You can share the documents in two ways:

1. Web Link: In this mode, the system generates an email that contains a link. On clicking, it provides a way to download the document to the user's computer. This form of sharing can be password protected, and you can also put an expiration date.
   
   The password is usually not sent in the same email as the link.
   
   
2. Secured Link: In this mode, you first create a login account for your customer. Then you share the document in the same manner as in public sharing, but the customer will have to log in to his/her portal account to see the share.
   
   

We are starting to work on our next release. I have created a roadmap of what will be included in it. Please feel free to vote and add comments on the features you would like to see implemented next.

>> OfficeClip Roadmap

OfficeClip has released a new Sage 50 AddIn that works with the 2018 edition of the software. It can be downloaded from the OfficeClip website.

OfficeClip has also released a new patch that fixes the following items:

1. Documents: When downloading documents, the correct revision was not getting downloaded
2. Campaigns: In Design Mode, sometimes the images from the external sites were triggering exception
3. Timesheet: With custom fields, the column totals were not lining up
4. Time Off: Time Offs showing for people who were not in the Approval Route

This release brings to you more enhancements and bug fixes.

Timesheet Preview Template

The timesheet preview screen shows the entire timesheet on one screen. It is used by some of our customers to keep a paper trail of all the OfficeClip Timesheets.

Many organization likes to format the timesheet the way they were already used to. We have provided a template language so that customers can format the timesheet to their own likes and print them. See a short video below.

Timesheet Custom Fields

You can now add custom fields to the Timesheet. The custom fields can be of type text or list with fixed values. They will appear on each row in the new or edit timesheet screen. The custom fields will appear in the reports and in exports. Currently there is a limit of three custom fields in the timesheet.

To set custom fields go to Timesheet > Admin > Custom Fields

Bug Fixes

We made a lot of fixes in this release too. Here is a list:

1.  Calendar: Calendar > List > Agenda - Unable to view the screen of Agenda   NK1822 (10.x)
2. Calendar: Desktop > Calendar > Import/Export > Google Sync > Tab changes to shared calendar   NK1783 (10.x)
3. Calendar: Calendar > Import/Export > Export calendar events - Open csv, then try to export. The Tab changes to Shared Calendar   NK1824 (10.x)
4. Contacts: After creating a user, it is not creating the password automatically   DK1813 (10.x)
5. Expenses: Expense Detail Missing in Reports   MI1246 (Support tickets)
6. Extranet: Extranet Admin > Insert image is not working   BK1842 (10.x)
7. Invoices: Invoices > Filter - While searching for invoices with Due balance it is showing the quotes and estimates also   DK1820 (10.x)
8. Issue Tracker: Binder name was not showing in the email triggered by rule   RS1250 (10.x)
9. Notes: Desktop > Notebook > Note > Private note is accessible to other users through history   SY1789 (10.x)
10. Notes: Some information is showing up via history that is not supposed to be shown   SD1793 (10.x)
11. Rest-Api: Rest API > Non Admin Tasks - Don't have permission 'Read' at Access Default in Org Settings - Sill able to see all the tasks   NK1806 (10.x)
12. Time Off: Unable to see Time Off approve screen in some situations   SD1846 (10.x)
13. Time Off: HRM > TImeOff > unknown timeoffs added to all Employees   SY1819 (10.x)
14. Timesheet: HRM > Timesheet > When an Admin approved the timesheet with Bulk Approve option, it was not showing in the timesheet history   SG1839 (10.x)

We have just released a new version of OfficeClip 10.5.1.

We made many enhancements and hundreds of bug fixes. Most important enhancements we are releasing are:

1. An Email Tracker that queues and tracks all emails that goes out of OfficeClip
2. In addition to the SOAP API, we have added a REST API module

The video below shows how you can create a contact web-form to capture leads from your website. It also discusses basic customization of the web form to make the look and feel of the form similar to your website.

Today we have released a new patch that solves some of our customer's issues. Following are the changes in this patch:

1. Patch: General: Google Sync was failing in some cases   PE1141 (Support Tickets)
2. Patch: Timesheet: Could see attachments inside Submitted/Approved Timesheet   AC1138 (Support Tickets)
3. Patch: Contacts: Mandatory List Fields were not checked for validation   AC1137 (Support Tickets)
4. Patch: Projects: Unable to scroll the Accounts List screen   AC1136 (Support Tickets)

Today we released a patch for 10.4.27. If fixes one issue:

• Projects > Accounts List - Screen cannot be scrolled down