Act!

ACT! The world's best selling contact manager with over 4 million users allows you to organise all your customer information in one place so every detail of every relationship is at your fingertips. Used by small office/home office as well as small and medium businesses to track calls, meetings and to-do items and managing all aspects of the marketing and sales process.

A range of 3 ACT! products is available in the UK

ACT! for Line 50
ACT! incorporating an interface into Sage Line 50 Accounts so that selected financial information and business operations such as sales order processing can be accessed directly from ACT.


ACT! for Line 100
ACT! incorporating an interface into Sage Line 100 Accounts so that selected financial information can be accessed directly from ACT.
 

Features & Benefits

ACT! Never forget Anything or Anybody

	Efficient target marketing improves lead generation
	Analysis and management of the sales process ensuring valuable time and resources are not wasted
	More accurate sales forecasting facilitating better planning for the business as a whole

ACT! will improve existing customer service, loyalty and revenues

	All sales, marketing, service data is available on one integrated system
	Improve the accuracy of your customer service
	All outbound communication can be targeted and managed professionally
	Data on customer trends can be analysed quickly and efficiently for use in future business planning
	ACT! for Line 50 and Line 100 accounts delivers key account data to your customer facing staff

ACT!

	Inexpensive, easy to use and intuitive
	Tried & trusted by over 4 million customers
	Can be customised to the way your business works
	Can be used away from the office
	Stop double entries of contacts when integrating with Line 50 and Line 100 accounts.

Specifications

Ready to use contact database
The QuickStart Wizard guides you through the initial creation and configuration of your contact database. With its predefined fields and built-in layouts, the database is ready to go, right out of the box. As a result, you can immediately begin recording calls, meetings, to-dos, correspondence, email, faxes, and other activities.

Easy entry of contact information
If you have existing contact information stored in another application, the Import Wizard guides you through every step of importing it into the database. In ACT! for Line 50 and ACT! for Line 100 a special Wizard is also available specifically to import data from the accounting system. It's also easy to enter new contact information. ACT! automatically memorises each new entry and adds it to the appropriate drop down list, such as a list of company names, for easy retrieval.

ACT! incorporates SideACT! where you can enter information without launching the full software product. Using this facility you can quickly make a note of calls and to-dos, keep track of the details, then transfer them later into the main ACT! database.

Fast, easy access to contact information
You can quickly find the information you need on any individual contact. Just type the first few letters of the contact's name, company name, phone number, or any column by which the contact list is sorted. ACT! immediately takes you directly to the contact you want. You can also use a keyword. search to look through the entire database, including notes and details, to find the information you need. You can use filters to limit your search to specific information such as sales opportunities, notes and history, or activities.

Integration with Sage Accounting Software
ACT! products are available to integrate with Sage Line 50 Version 8 and above and Sage Line 100 V7.2 and above. This integration provides the small business with an integrated front office and back office system designed, developed and supported by Sage and its reseller community.

ACT! integrated with Line 50 and Line 100 includes an accounting menu and an accounting tab for displaying relevant data in the contact record.
When integrating the two software packages data can be initially transferred from the existing sales ledger records to populate the ACT! database. Data synchronization options are then made available to determine the ongoing nature and flow of the data between the two applications. As a result selected financial data can be displayed in the contact record within ACT!. This can include credit limit, sales to date and outstanding debt information as well as trading terms and discounts available to that particular customer. An additional tab also displays transactional information such as invoices associated with the contact. In this case invoice numbers, details and amounts are displayed as well as information relating to the amounts paid against the invoice. Also included in ACT! for Line 50 are new tabs that open "stock lookup", "account lookup", "quotations","Sales and Purchase Order Processing" in Line 50 Finacial Controller.

Effective management by group or account
You can use the account management feature to group contacts by certain criteria for more efficient management. The group membership rules allow you to assign contacts to groups automatically based on a defined set of rules. For example, a sales manager can use rules to group leads by region, or a small business owner can use rules to group suppliers and business partners. The group membership rules Wizard makes it easy to set up rules.

You can also manage contacts by account, pulling up and viewing in one place all contacts and activities related to a particular account. You can also create subgroups within an account to organise the data in a way that reflects the organisational structure of the account. For example, you can group contacts within the same account by department or function. That way you can effectively manage accounts that have multiple contacts.

Efficient calendar and task management
You can easily schedule contact appointments and tasks. Use a simple click of the mouse to bring up a schedule dialog box and enter the time, date, priority and any other information you want to record. Then, with another mouse click you can view the activity on your calendar. You can look at your tasks in a variety of ways. ACT! has three calendar views: daily, weekly, and monthly. You can also look at your tasks in a list view, and organise tasks by date, type, or priority. ACT! keeps you informed with on-screen reminders, so you'll never forget an important appointment, phone call, or to-do.

ACT! helps you save time by automating the scheduling of frequently occurring multi-step processes, such as a sales process. You simply define the activity series by specifying the sequence and timing of tasks, and save the definition. You can then easily schedule all the activities in the series with a single action. ACT! automatically populates your calendar with all the activities based on the start date or end date you specify for the series. So nothing falls through the cracks.

Comprehensive sales process management
ACT! has redefined Contact Management with the addition of sales process management tools that help sales professionals turn prospects into customers. The system includes sales methodology and tips from the highly respected Dale Carnegie Training® Sales Advantage course that guides sales representatives through the phases of developing long-term, profitable relationships with customers. Combining the proven Dale Carnegie sales methodology with the powerful Contact Management software enables professional sales people to build winning, profitable, and ongoing relationships with customers.

Easy communication with contacts
ACT! includes instant letters, memos, and faxes that you can use to communicate with your contacts. Simply select one of the ready-to-use document templates and print or email it. Or you can fax it using integrated links to WinFax PRO® or Microsoft Fax®. Creating customised original documents is a snap using Microsoft Word® or the built in word processor. It's as simple as writing the letter template and selecting the contact fields to be merged. Then using the Mail Merge feature, one click sends these personalised letters, faxes, or email messages to the selected contacts. ACT! automatically records all communications it sends in the contact's history so you can easily review it later. You can also attach all communications directly to the contact record so you can retrieve them instantly when you need them. ACT! also allows you to send visual rich HTML emails.

Comprehensive reporting capability
ACT! includes a number of ready-to-use report formats, such as task lists and telephone directories, to help you organise your day. You can also create business reports that summarise such important items as contact history and contact activities, and you can generate informative and great-looking sales reports. ACT! includes several predefined reports that can be used "as is "or customised to meet your specific needs.

Team Co-ordination
You can share contact databases with your co-workers or team members over the network to coordinate your activities. ACT! shields your information with three levels of access security to protect it from unauthorised access. You can send contact information to co-workers via email, and you can synchronize your contact database with others, even with mobile users.

Fully customisable
You can tailor ACT! to match the way you conduct business. You can customise the database, adding fields for those specific items you want to track and organise the data in the way that is most efficient for you. You can customise screen layouts to create the look-and-feel you want, ranging from simply adding your corporate logo to the background of all views, to custom tailoring every view individually. You can customise the icon bar and menus for maximum efficiency. And you can create macros to automate repetitive tasks and save time.

ACT! and Outlook working together
ACT! provides seamless integration with Microsoft Outlook calendars. You can view activities that have been scheduled in Outlook from within ACT! and vice versa. This allows you to use Outlook for e-mail and scheduling of some activities, and use ACT! as your Contact Manager. For example, while at a customer's site, you may wish to schedule a follow up meeting in ACT!. When you return to the office, you can update your Outlook calendar directly from the contact manager with a simple mouse click. You can then use Outlook to generate an email meeting notice to inform the meeting attendees of the meeting time and place.

As another example of combining ACT! and Outlook, your company may use Outlook for e-mail and scheduling, but the sales department has standardised on ACT!. Now both groups can use the application that works best for their needs and still share calendars.

SONAL COMPUTERS are well placed to offer a suitable Sage solution from the budget cost Instant  range to the fully integrated, feature rich Line100, which is capable of extensive amendments. All products are supported by Sonal Computers, equally well versed in discussing accounting matters or computer systems.

Sonal Computers are able to offer the following services : Supply Sage software, installation and configuration,  On-site training to suit your particular requirements, Additional support to that offered by Sagecover ( telephone hotline ), Assistance with Report formats and Report Generator, Help with upgrades, Review of use of the software, Day to day input of data and documents (book-keeping on Sage), Sage Payroll - either as a bureau service or at the clients' premises, Add-on packages to Sage.