I use SM to keep track of my consulting business. Most of my business is with large banks where I support either a department, or team. Each of the members can assign me a project. My problem comes in when one of these contacts either moves to another company, or other job within the organization. When I update my contact info in OSX Contacts, the new info appears in the contact info for SM. For auditing purposes I need to generate reports during the course of the year that contain historical as well as current work. So far the only way it seems I can keep my historical reports accurate is to make a completely new entry in OSX Contacts for client contacts who change jobs. That seems cumbersome. Is there a better solution?
Date
Votes
1 comment
-
Rob Sherrard - Imageer It won't help with your Mac OSX contacts synchronization - I'm a Windows user and don't sync outside of Studiometry, but I have a somewhat similar client situation.
Many of my clients are real estate agents who are supervised by a brokerage but are actually independent contractors who are billed individually. Their billing address is at the brokerage but the broker is not responsible for payment of services which the agent has contracted with me. Agents sometimes change the brokerage with which they are affiliated, and so the address information needs to change to the new brokerage, but I still need to maintain continuity for work done for the agent at either brokerage.
My solution is as follows.
Each agent is entered into Studiometry as a client called Last Name, First Name so they show up in the Client navigation pane alphabetically by last name. I created a Custom Field in the Contacts editor called CompanyName. When I enter the agent's contact information, the brokerage name goes into the CompanyName field.
Invoices are addressed to <!--ClientContactName-->, <!--Contact-CompanyName-->, <!--ClientAddress1-->, <!--ClientCity-->, <!--ClientState-->, <!--ClientZip--> so the agent is shown "care of" the brokerage name at the address shown for the contact.
If the agent changes brokerages, I create a new contact under their Last, Name, First Name client identification. This new contact has the same agent name, but a new CompanyName and new address information to match the new brokerage. For the first invoice created at the new brokerage, you have to select the new contact to grab the new information. After that, Studiometry defaults to the last contact used and the correct address is picked automatically. Historical records from before the brokerage change will still have the old brokerage name and address information attached to them.
For non-agent clients, the client name is entered the more traditional way so the Company's name shows up alphabetically in the client navigation pane, but the CompanyName field is still populated with the company name so the same invoice template can be used for either type of client.
Please sign in to leave a comment.