The company I'm at right now wants to create a system that merges three area of information:

1. Financial information (invoices, purchase orders, packing slips, checks)
2. Marketing information (CRM-type information, type of customers, frequency of contacts, scheduled callbacks)
3. Operational information (how custom products are made, in what quantities, due dates for jobs)

What we have now is no CRM (we've tried, but there's so much double-entry, and we're a small company, that is simply does not pay), we used QuickBooks for financial information, and for operational information we use Q&A 4.0.

So my question is, can Sesame be used to create a system that somewhat approximates what QuickBooks does (not that we ever used all its features anyway)? To be honest I'm very impressed with what Sesame can do so far.

Hammer wrote on Mar 5^th, 2008 at 6:14pm:


Where can I see some of those kinds of apps? One of the things my boss loves about QuickBook is that he can see a breakdown of where our sales are coming from, by accounts -- i.e., an account for stocks flags, another account for custom sewn flags, etc. -- can that sort of information be transferred to Quickbooks? What about purchase orders?

Search for IIF in the QuickBooks Help section.  The import/export files in QuickBooks use filename.iif convention.

I have a number of accounts where we import/export data with QuickBooks.  It is usually not a problem with lists, like Accounts, Customers, Vendors, Part Numbers, etc.  But there are some limitations with transactions.  But most Purchase Orders, Sales Orders, Invoices and details can usually be transferred, you just may need to use some of the custom fields in QuickBooks.  Some things may work best exported from QuickBooks to a spreadsheet, then exported from there to import into Sesame.

You will find that the file formats are very unique, not like most other formats you may be accustomed to.  Here is a sample of an Invoice file from yesterday being imported into QuickBooks:
Quote:

The fields, position, etc. are not standard, they need to be made specifically for your application needs.  Many more can be included, rearranged, etc.

Acebanner wrote on Mar 6^th, 2008 at 8:22pm:

Yep. 

Acebanner,

Check out the may 2006 Inside Sesame article Push-Button Exports. This may also help automate part of the process.

Good Luck and Keep us posted on your progress.

To AceBanner:

I have developed a system that may be of interest to you ... a medium/high end Order Entry, Inventory, PO, Invoicing, Open Item A/R, Cash Receipts, A/P, Payroll, Bank Accounts etc. through Financial Statements & Tax Reports; also included are Marketing (customer contact) and Collection Modules; Bar Code entry & printing is available.

The system has been utilized in its entirety since January, 2000, in the Q&A(4.0) version for diverse businesses ranging from a picture frame manufacturer/wholesaler to Natural Gas well production.  Various Foundry operations have used the Production/Order Entry/Billing modules (then interfaced with accounting software) since 1989.

The Sesame version is close to completion, and is NOT a translated Q&A product.  Some applications have been developed (in no particular order) to accommodate current client requirements, such as Invoicing to take advantage of Sesame's email capabilities.

email: budrhines@gmail.com for further information.

Bud Rhines

johnbits wrote on Mar 8^th, 2008 at 1:37am:

Hello John.

Unless it has changed recently, they have never exported transactions in IIF formats, only exports lists.

This is from QuickBooks 2005 Help:
Quote:


But is does allow Import of transactions.  I did provide an example of an import file in an earlier post.  Again, from QuickBooks Help:
Quote:


And importing IIF files does have some potential issues where existing information may be overwritten or not accepted, so it may be necessary to preload some records.  The Keys in Sesame must be exactly the same as the Keys in QuickBooks.  QuickBooks does have some limitations that Sesame does not, so I have found it easier to maintain many of the Key values in QBooks, export them to Sesame for lookup lists in combo boxes.  Sesame has much stronger reporting tools so all the details are maintained in Sesame, and summary transaction info is passed back to Qbooks.  Qbooks had no type of macros/programming, but Sesame allows any type of automation you can program.  You can't even do a Mass Update in Qbooks, but you can that in Sesame and send the results back.

Qbooks allows all types of errors to wrong accounts, using wrong customers, vendors, etc. because you cannot program any type of data validation, so do all that work in Sesame to force data integrity.  Run audit reports in Sesame looking for invalid entries in QuickBooks.   For instance, you may want a memo field in Qbooks transaction to always be filled in, with a certain data format, maybe a date-CustID-Invoice reference.  Easy to do that incorrectly in Qbooks, or even leave the field blank.  But you can run reports daily in Sesame on the Qbooks data and ID those transactions that do not meet your specs.  Can get them corrected as soon as the reports are run.  Because this is an import/export process, it is not real time, and lends itself to batch processing.  The frequency depends on your needs and the working environment.  I have most imports/exports/reports run in the evening just after backups are done.