Keeping orders in order

With more clients comes more information, graphics, images, logos, usernames, passwords and billing, all of which needs to be kept organised and backed up.

To help both myself and my customers I decided I needed a better system to keep all of this data in order, I had two main issues, first was keeping all of my clients contact details, including domain names and hosting purchased from me, as well as their login details for site administration, webmail and ftp, the second was billing and invoicing clients for any work I have done for them.

The simplest and most effective option I could find was ‘Wallet’, by acrylic, for storing all my clients details in one place, with the added benefit of iPhone syncing, which means I now have access to all of my customers details no matter where I am, if I ever get an email from a client in a panic having misplaced their ftp password whilst I’m perusing the coffee section in the supermarket I can simply copy and paste the required details into an email from my iPhone!

For billing and invoicing I needed an application for tracking time spent working on projects that was simple to use yet flexible enough to accommodate various rates of billing such as flat rate and timed. I initially looked at ‘Billings3′, and whilst it’s a brilliant application I found during my free trial that the interface and features were more complex than I needed, the invoice templating system also seems difficult to use.

It was whilst browsing for alternatives that I found ‘OnTheJob’ by StuntSoftware, it has a beautiful interface and is very easy to use, the invoice templating is a joy to use, just drag and drop required elements onto the page!, ok maybe it lacks the reporting of Billings3 however I don’t think that’s something I’ll need.

All dekoded customers now also benefit from having their project files mirrored and backed up, which means protection from hard drive failure and accidental deletion.

I would also like to take this opportunity to thank all existing dekoded clients for their custom, and if you are reading this and still haven’t decided who to trust with your website needs then I hope this post shows that dekoded treats it’s customers needs and concerns with the priority they deserve, we want to give you a level of service that we can be proud of!