eSignature functionality is here! We’re delighted to announce this much requested feature as an integrated part of our SQLWorks platform:

eSignature allows a SQLWorks user to generate a single-use URL for a PDF report format (such as a contract, letter or order template) to send to an external signatory. The signatory can access the PDF through their web browser – signing a (touchscreen compatible) signature field that is then merged onto their paperwork in the correct place.

Each signed document is then automatically saved back into your main SQLWorks database, allowing you to integrate this critical step into workflows, projects, and your other business operations.

 

 

Signatures can be an essential CRM checkpoint, and can be used as evidence that a customer has approved a purchase, agreed to the next stage of a bigger project, or consented to important terms & conditions.

To confirm identity, signatories can be verified with pre-saved security questions, can be given time-limits to sign, and can be required to sign multiple times within the same document before submission is allowed.

Most importantly, SQLWorks eSignature functionality does not require expensive ‘per-signature’ costs as is the case for many well-known competitors – or any special prerequisite software for the signatory – and can be integrated with a wide range of SQLWorks other functions.

 

 

We expect this tool will evolve as SQLWorks companies find new and exciting uses for online signature technology – using the power of integrated software to make the approval process easier and more efficient.

For business software advice and expertise, please contact our team today.

SQLWorks Document management has reached the next level, enabling tagging of engineering documents and automated printing alongside Works Orders.

As shown in our Introduction to Document Management, many types of files can be added and stored within SQLWorks, linked to other data, downloaded or referenced whenever required. Our development team have also enabled tagging of specific files as ‘engineering’ documents so they can be automatically transferred through to production.

Saving a .jpeg or .pdf to a stock item’s document tab is a simple drag-and-drop process, supported by tagging with the engineering tag. When a Works order is created for that Bill of Materials, those supporting documents can be pulled through for printing automatically.

This is especially useful for assembly instructions, photographs, blueprints and similar that help guide during the production process.

Setting specific criteria in ‘Accounts preferences’ and ‘Document Analysis’ which can be found on the Navbar, allows a specific ‘tag’ such as one named Engineering, to be selected when saving a document on a stock item. Tagged documents appear in the ‘Documents List’ in the top right of the Works Order automatically, and when printing or previewing your Works Order SQLWorks finds the associated document and asks you to confirm whether you would like to print the engineering documents.

 

This feature is especially useful if you have drawings, assembly instructions or diagrams for example, that need to accompany the Works order when sent to the shopfloor/workshop for the build process.

If you would like to find out more about how SQLWorks can make the Manufacturing processes more efficient and less time consuming, please get in touch with our SQLWorks team via email [email protected] or call 01271 441570.

As long as your cloud app on your PC/Mac is able to sync to the cloud, SQLWorks will be able to make most up-to-date version of your synced files available for drag and drop.

Phone logs

If your business fields a lot of phone calls, accurate record keeping is an important part of your interactions with customers. SQLWorks includes a Phone Logs tool to keep track of calls, to manage workloads, and to produce valuable insights from this data.

The Phone Log itself can be found in the Navbar under CRM (1), and opens a table showing all recent phone logs to your business, who called, and other information. SQLWorks does not record audio from phone calls (unless uploaded), but creates a convenient admin trail for tracing calls and the work that was associated to them.

Pressing ‘F6’ at any time in SQLWorks opens the window to create a new phone log (2), and this can be launched quickly during/after a call. Choosing a company from your company’s list opens its lists of contacts, and the user can either select a known contact (automatically entering all their details) or right click on the contact list to add a new caller’s details.

Below this are fields for giving the detail from the call to a SQLWorks user within your company (e.g.: for assigning a new task) and you can choose a user/group to email with the call detail.

On the right hand side of the new call log window are tabs to simultaneously create new tasks, project links or sales leads using the data from the new phone log (3.) Each tab automatically copies across the data from the phone log, and provides the extra fields needed to also create these new entries, for example: task priority or lead conversion chance.

When new phone logs are saved, they are logged to the phone log table itself, and under each specific company’s Phone Logs tab in the company’s list. If used, the task, project and lead tables also receive the new entries.

SQLWorks phone log is an immensely versatile tool, which forms the backbone of a structured help desk or office environment – helping to keep track of call volumes, agent workloads and customer interaction. The phone log itself can be exported with timestamped entries for further analysis of busy periods or repeat customers, and by clicking ‘Reports’ users can produce reports on number of calls received from a list of companies.

The new phone log screen (remember: press F6!) can be customised extensively by the SQLWorks team to record information commonly taken over the phone from enquiries to your business, and to help you populate the task list, advance projects or manage sales leads elsewhere in SQLWorks more carefully.

For CRM support and advice, contact the SQLWorks team today.

sales leads

Need to manage a sales leads pipeline for your business? SQLWorks CRM includes a comprehensive sales leads module which can help you manage your customer outreach.

Leads can be accessed within the CRM section of the main navbar (1.) and will load a table of leads with multiple coloured panels representing your sales stages (2.)

You can double click on a lead to open it, reorder your leads by clicking the column headers or click the ‘Q1’ ‘Q2’ ‘Q3 ‘Q4’ buttons along the top toolbar to filter by financial quarter.

Once a lead has been opened, you can record common sales qualification data including priority level, log a lead source, assign categorisation and note the contact details of your contact in the top half of the edit Lead window (3.) You can also give each lead speculative value, profit and conversion chance, and set a follow up date for further action which can display in the SQLWorks diary. In the lower panel (4) are your normal SQLWorks CRM tools – you can link phone logs, emails, tasks and drag in documents to be saved against your lead, and save a record of actions performed to progress the lead with a time/date.

By clicking the [+] button above the lead stages you can unlock each new lead stage – moving your lead down the sales pipeline.

As leads move through your pipeline, your brightly coloured lead stages in the main screen (2) display how many leads are active at that stage, what the total value of these are in turnover, and the total likely profit (calculated by multiplying each lead’s percentage by it’s turnover value and adding the sum of that stages leads these together.) You can load the leads active at any single stage by clicking on that stage, and the stages themselves can be set to match your own sales pipeline. ‘Receipted’ and ‘Lost’ sales leads will always default their quantity to 100% of value converted or lost, and will move a lead to ‘Closed.’ By clicking the ‘Load Open’ button in the top toolbar you can filter your list to exclude these closed leads, and just work on those that are active.

If you need a quick way to record new enquiries over the phone, you can create a new lead when making a new phone log by clicking the ‘leads’ tab in the new phone log screen. To save time, the details of your new lead will be automatically populated from those you recorded in the phone log.

Your leads are kept isolated from your main companies list to prevent bigger sales departments with large numbers of cold contacts swamping your SQLWorks Sales Ledger with non-customers.

At any time however, (for example when a Lead becomes a customer) you can click the ‘Conversion Tab’ in the lower half of the edit lead window to automatically save the company details gathered by your Sales agent as a new company in your main SQLWorks companies list.

In this way SQLWorks makes it simple to log new leads, record progress in detail between multiple sales staff, and estimate future conversion rates.

For CRM guidance and help: contact us today.

EurOmnis

Our SQLWorks team recently exhibited at the 2016 EuroOmnis developers conference in Tuscany, Italy – joining Omnis developers conference from more than a dozen countries around the globe.

EurOmnis is an annual educational event designed to bring Omnis programmers together to share knowledge and to showcase the very latest in software development.

“Lineal have been part of, and latterly helped organise, this international conference of Omnis developers since 1999” explained Managing Director Mike Matthews. “As a member of the Omnis developers group (ODEV), our SQLWorks Business Management Software undergoes an ongoing process of learning and development – and we’re always looking at what features future versions of SQLWorks will need to stay at the forefront.”

“The best businesses are always looking to the latest technology for an extra edge, so both our team and SQLWorks software need to be just as agile.”

Attendees enjoyed classes, discussions and more surrounding the latest advances in Omnis software development, including javascript web tools, responsive graphs and visualisation aids, and Omnis development for portable devices such as smartphones and tablets.

Representatives from Omnis were also present, to host seminars informing and updating attendees on the platform’s latest news, as well as explore likely developments in the near future and gather feedback.

The conference also gives developers a chance to showcase what they have been working on to other developers, drawing on software projects undertaken across countless industries and sectors.

To learn more about SQLWorks: contact us today.

importing –

If you’re new to SQLWorks, importing your existing data to SQLWorks can seem daunting. Fear not! We’ve prepared this handy guide to make this process easier.

Decisions about your data are yours – but at any stage, you can ask the SQLWorks Team for help.

 

About Your Data

Data imported into SQLWorks is categorised in two types: Static and Transactional.

Static data is fixed lists of ‘things’ – including companies, contacts, address, your stock list, warehouses and more. Transactional data includes list of transactions, stock movements and financial ledger entries like orders, invoices, credit notes and more. Static data must be imported first, followed by transactional data.

 

Finding Your Data

Both your static and transactional data comes from whichever system(s) you use currently – this could mean importing from a number of sources, including:

• An old software program (e.g.: Sage)
• A patchwork of spreadsheets (e.g.: Microsoft Excel)
• A legacy database program or file (odbc compatible)
• Nowhere (because you’re a new or paper-based company)
• Some combination of the above

It’s up to you what data you place in SQLWorks, however whilst some data is almost always needed SQLWorks (even if entered new), other data is optional. As a rule, names, codes, accounting and VAT entries will need to be imported, but the optional parts of how your business model works (e.g.: records of quotes, or past stock movements) are optional.

 

How To Import:

All data for importing into SQLWorks needs to be given to the SQLWorks team in one of two formats:

• An agreed file format exported from another software (e.g.: Sage export file)
• A comma or tab delimited spreadsheet, .CSV or .TXT file. (e.g.: If using Excel, it is helpful to save the files as a .CSV in the ‘save as’ menu)

If you provide data to the SQLWorks team in spreadsheets (or .CSV/.TXT files) these will need column headings grouping certain types of the data together. For example, in a stock list, all your stock codes need to be in the same column, under an identifiable heading such as ‘Stock Code.’ The SQLWorks team can help you with this stage if you get stuck.

Depending on what SQLWorks modules you will be using, you will need to import files for the following data (see table below). Compulsory data within these are marked – for example: every Company imported must have a name.

 

	SQLWorks Core	CRM	ACCOUNTS	STOCK
Static	Companies Name Company Code   Contacts Name   Addresses Line 1		Sales Accounts Name Company Code Purchase Accounts Name Company Code Nominal Codes Name Nominal Code
Transactional			Outstanding Sales Orders Company code   Outstanding Purchase Orders Company code   Outstanding Sales Invoices Company code Date Amount VAT   Outstanding Purchase Invoices Company Date Amount VAT   Bank Rec   1 Bank Account Name, Acc & Sort Codes   1 Petty Cash Account Link to Bank Account
Optional Static		Sales Leads   Projects Project Code	Nominal Departments Name Department Code   Nominal Analysis Codes Name Analysis Code   Nominal Subheadings Name   Budgets Amount	Warehouses Name Number   Stock List Stock Item Name Stock Code Sale Price Purchase Cost Current Stock Quantity   Warehouse Bins Number
Optional Transactional		Tasks   Phone Logs   Actions   Emails	Historic Sales Quotes Company Date   Historic Purchase Quotes Company Date   Historic Sales Orders Company Date   Historic Purchase Orders Company Date   Historic Sales Invoices / Receipts / Credit Notes Company Date Amount VAT   Historic Purchase Invoices / Payments / Credit Notes Company Date Amount VAT   Purchase Invoices (Historic)	Stock Movements Stock Code Date

 

 

email marketing

If you have SQLWorks linked to your email account, SQLWorks can be used for email marketing and mailshots, bulk sending emails with custom designs.

Accessed within SQLWorks CRM, users can create a new email campaign by making a new mailshot project, and create multiple mass emails within a campaign.

Right clicking in the main list and selecting ‘New Mailshot’ will open a new email creation window, where users can give the mailshot a unique name, choose an email from address, subject line, and ‘drag-and-drop’ in attachments.

The list of intended recipients can be chosen from the ‘Client Lists’ dropdown, selecting from one of your custom client lists, which you can build from your saved SQLWorks CRM contacts.

For the design of an email, you can choose from a wide range of tools from within the formatting pallet on the right of the main email editing window – get creative with different fonts and text sizes, colours, bulletpoints and alignment, insert images, tables and more!

You can format elements by highlighting them and clicking the format buttons, and confine the margins of your email by setting these measurements in the ‘Document’ tab.

For tidy formatting, we recommend creating a borderless table in which to align all the elements of your email marketing email – to ensure any custom designs are displayed consistently in the inboxes of recipients.

SQLWorks database tags can be input into the main email body so that each email contains mail merged custom data from elsewhere in your contact directory. This can be used for targeting with ‘informal’ detail (e.g.: a first name – ‘Dear John’) and a “fall-through” function which pulls in substitute data as a ‘formal’ backup (e.g.: surnames – ‘Dear Mr Smith’) where the main data is unavailable. These functions can be customised by our SQLWorks team, to email your contacts using any piece of data from your SQLWorks CRM, Accounts or Stock Control data.

SQLWorks allows you to preview each version of a mailmerged email to check for errors by clicking the ‘Prev’ / ‘Next’ buttons, and ensure each email is correctly personalised. Using the spellcheck function, and undo/redo buttons, email marketeers can also avoid any errors being broadcast to a wide audience.

If you wish to remove all formatting, and send your email as a ‘plain text’ email to improve chances of deliverability, simply tick the ‘Send as Plain Text’ checkbox at the top of the Mailshot window. Using the ‘Show Plain Text’ checkbox, you can also check how this email is likely to be seen by email inbox previews.

Deploying these tools, you can field imaginative, targeted and ongoing email campaigns, linking all the intelligence of your SQLWorks data together with your marketing.

 

For expert CRM tools, contact us about SQLWorks today:

task prioritisation

SQLWorks’ task list can prioritise your tasks in order of important with a simple colour-coding system: here’s how to use this.

When creating or editing a task, you can choose a priority level from the ‘Priority’ dropdown menu, which by default contains 3 levels. After saving the task with a task prioritisation:

All ‘Normal’ Tasks go in the main (grey) default task window. You can use the main task list as a to-do list for today’s tasks, filtering the list, sending reminders and closing jobs as they are completed. Your SQLWorks admin can also be given control over closing tasks, and recording the time taken to finish each job.

All ‘Low’ priority Tasks go to the green task panel on the left hand side – you can use this to hold tasks that are not important, or have no imminent deadlines.

All ‘High’ priority tasks go to the red task panel on the left hand side – you should reserve this list for only the most urgent tasks. When a new task enters this list, SQLWorks will also email the person who this task is assigned to, letting them know they have a very urgent task to complete.

The yellow task panel is an especially useful area, reserved for ‘Future‘ tasks that are dated ahead of time. You can do this by post-dating the ‘Open Date’ on a task before saving it. Your future tasks will remain in the yellow list until the ‘Open Date’ (and time) passes – at which point your task will be moved by SQLWorks to your main grey list to be worked on.

This is a handy tool for keeping tomorrow’s work clear from today’s to-do list, and populating tomorrow’s to-do list automatically when tomorrow arrives.

For a professional CRM solution on either Windows or Mac, contact us today.