Clean It Up
UK Window Cleaning Forum => Window Cleaning Forum => Topic started by: G & M on February 19, 2007, 12:14:12 pm
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Which is the best software package for w/c ? Thinking of biting the bullet and getting something. I know George is very popular but is it the easiest one to use with the best selection of options? Michael
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You lot are helpful... ::)
For my bit...use a pen and book.
Options are unlimited then.
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I use software for window cleaners i got of off ebay £15 . its fairly good,works for me..
check out ebay Item number: 150092493261
Cheers Darren
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Which is the best software package for w/c ? Thinking of biting the bullet and getting something. I know George is very popular but is it the easiest one to use with the best selection of options? Michael
I set up spreadsheet and database in MSWorks.
It's usually free (as MSWorks often comes with a computer), you can chop and change the options to suit yourself, BUT it is probably the most complicated way to do things.
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thanks guys have to give it some thought. Michael
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I use my Brain ;D
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I use George and wouldnt be without it! does all my accounts.
www.georgesystems.co.uk for £50.00 ONE TIME FEE! and suppport its great!
Dave
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george for me too!!
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George all the way with Pocket George, never did it by pen, and would be horrified to spend time behind the PC doing the books for an hour or so....terrible.
Not to mention tax things, this just prints out all your earnings, and expenses, you name it George can do it. There are some things that still need to be implemented, but this is fantastic.
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we use AvailSuite,
really easy in use, does scheduling, customer inventory & service management. Invoicing and reporting. that is what we use in it.
i forgot about excel and paper work.
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You could try this
http://www.windowcleaningresources.co.uk/html/round_tracker_.html
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You could try this
http://www.windowcleaningresources.co.uk/html/round_tracker_.html
Hi John,
do you use it?how is it?
on screenshots it looks like a big excel file with lots of cells ???
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I dont use it but am thinking about it
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I would recommend George.
A good package that will suffice for Invoice/Statement/Analysis figures etc.
Backup is excellent and for the money is great value.
A rival software package was made available about 6 months past and as it was more expensive I am rather surprised that no member has mentioned it.
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yeah, did not believe my eyes when i saw its price
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hmm i read several threads, mostly guys use George, why is it so popular?
when we were searching for a software, I made a small market research, do you know what i got? the price says a lot about the product's quality.
however demands and expectations differ...
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Get George............. it's free to try for up to 60 days. ;)
oh, and it's good
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Hi Eli
I think you have misunderstood the prices - there are 3 types of software out there and the price reflects their abilties.
At the bottom of the market at £10 to £20 are the spreadsheets. Spreadsheets are designed to analyse data, not store it. They are ok in the short term.
At around £50 are the Window Cleaning systems - databases designed to run a Window Cleaning round.
Above that are the "Service Industry" systems. They are not designed for a particular type of business but they can handle the needs of a larger business. If you are a small business you have to learn to ignore the features you've have paid for but don't need.
George is popular because it only does what you need. It gives you 3 months free use so you can see if it suits you, it's regularly updated - free - it has a free Palm module that lets you work without paper or (much) typing, it has an Internet backup system that's been a life saver for a lot of users (nobody else offers that), and support is free - even if you haven't registered.
Download the free 3 month trial - if you don't like it, buy something else...
Paul
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Thanks Paul,
now i see why it is so popular, the trial period of 60 days is great, but what confuses me is that all one's business data will be stored somewhere in the Internet on the server.
what if a server crashes? or some hacker cracks it and takes all business data, the customers' info and what is more dangerous credit cards numbers and invoices..ooh
do you guys rely on the Internet so much to keep your data there?
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Hi Eli
Use of the Internet Backup system is optional. You don't have to use it - but you should.
The data is encoded in a proprietary format so it can't be read by anyone but us.
The file names are numeric and we are the only ones who know which number belongs to which user.
The data is downloaded regularly from the server to this office and copied to several PCs. It's also regularly dumped to CD and stored offsite.
It's about as safe as it can be...
Paul
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Paul, can you explain in simple terms how the system works and what happens when you get rained off or have a sick day does the system re-jig your forward load automatically or do you have to reschedule everything by hand? I like the palm idea but am not particularly brilliant on a pc. Does the pocket version get downloaded to your pc then transferred to a palm and can all the alterations be done solely on the palm or do you always have to use both pc and palm to update jobs and information?
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yeah, storing data on CDs is an old proved way to keep it. I do it once in two weeks and back up my data every week.
anyway, your employees have an access to the info on the server
Paul, do you have any non-disclosure agreements for your customers?
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Hi
You could reschedue you Jobs if you wanted to but most users don't bother. The overdue Jobs come out at the top of your WorkList with the date you should have done them. That's actually more useful than changing the due date because you know how overdue they are.
The real data is on your PC and a subset is transferred to the Palm. It's really a "smart" worklist. You can change the due date, done date and price (as a one off or permanently) on the Palm but you have to use the PC to set up the Jobs in the first place.
At the end of the day you plug the Palm into the PC, press the HotSync button and all your completed Job & Debt info is transferred to the PC, the Debts are processed, the Jobs rescheduled and the new schedule and debts are transferred back to the Palm. It takes about 30 seconds...
Paul
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Hi Eli
Nobody has ever asked for a non disclosure agreement - they know we won't give their info to anybody else - it would hardly be in our interest to do that.
If you wanted one I'm sure we could come up with something...
Paul
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So my next question anybody - can you suggest a good value/robust palm that will run George?
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i use an old palm tungsten t2 but with the constant use he screen is now u/s
so i have upgraded to a t5
take a look on ebay there is loads to choose from
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would this1 do the job? http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ih=007&sspagename=STRK%3AMEWA%3AIT&viewitem=&item=170105192866&rd=1&rd=1
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Is there any software out there for the pda?
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yeah ................ George. ;)
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would this1 do the job? http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ih=007&sspagename=STRK%3AMEWA%3AIT&viewitem=&item=170105192866&rd=1&rd=1
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I've just downloaded George and begun to enter some account details.
My very humblest and groveling apologies for wondering about doing it myself in Excel. With the use of colour and various reports etc this is fantastic. Maybe I could have done it in excel but to do it this well I would have had to have been at it full time for months.
My verdict after 25 minutes of use. Brilliant!
If I part with £50 will I get future updates?
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Hi
You certainly will - and 6 months Internet Backup - and PocketGeorge...
Paul
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Can you get George for Apple Mac OSX or is it only for PC's?
Is there any window cleaning programs for the Mac?
Simon.
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would this1 do the job? http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ih=007&sspagename=STRK%3AMEWA%3AIT&viewitem=&item=170105192866&rd=1&rd=1
George can you please confirm the above
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Can you get George for Apple Mac OSX or is it only for PC's?
Is there any window cleaning programs for the Mac?
Simon.
Is there any programs at all for the Mac? ;D
Christ you lot complicate things for the sake of it. ::)
I know my round in my head.
I write down what I've done in a book for reference, but there's certainly no need for any more than that.
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;Dfor what i notice from previous posts you also had the same ideia about the WFP ;D and look at you know ::) ;D lol :)
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;Dfor what i notice from previous posts you also had the same ideia about the WFP ;D and look at you know ::) ;D lol :)
Yeah, having a nightmare like I thought... ::)
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lol just bare in mind that if the human was not always striving for something more , we all would sill be running around with just a bush leaf as wardroup, and we would not need a window cleaner, just for the pure fact that we would not have any windows to clean ;D ;D ;D :)
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Can you get George for Apple Mac OSX or is it only for PC's?
Is there any window cleaning programs for the Mac?
Simon.
Is there any programs at all for the Mac? ;D
Christ you lot complicate things for the sake of it. ::)
I know my round in my head.
I write down what I've done in a book for reference, but there's certainly no need for any more than that.
Ha ha. Trust you Squeaky. We've just done with the WFP vs. trad and now we are evolving onto Windows vs. Mac. ;D
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Hi Huge
Yes- that would be fine.
Paul
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Can you get George for Apple Mac OSX or is it only for PC's?
Is there any window cleaning programs for the Mac?
Simon.
Hi Simon
No - George won't run on the Mac - nor will any other WC programs I know of.
For the price of a Mac you can buy a real computer...
Paul
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Sorry George I'm never going back to a real computer. I have 2 pc's in the house and 1 mac, the pc's never get used as the mac is many times better than the other 2 real computers. I guess I'll just have to wait for the software companies to start giving more choice.
Simon.
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Hi Simon
You might have a long wait - Macs are only a tiny percentage of the market so it's not really cost effective to develop for them - unless it's something very general like a word processor or spreadsheet...
They are great for graphic design and suchlike but they have very little specialist software for smaller markets.
Paul
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You wouldn't accept my msn premium address.
Anyway what's bothering me now is if i've tapped in the wrong product registration because there was no way to go back and check.If I pay and I have got it wrong can it be sorted out later, assuming my personal details etc marry up?
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Hi
Don't worry about it - lots of people do that - I will sort it out.
The company that collects our credit card payments don't accept some eMail hosts - it's a fraud prevention thing...
Paul
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Paid, but I put george systems not river thingy. If it turns out it's not taken i'll have to do it again.
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Hi
We don't hear about it until it's all finalised.
They are a very large company and very reliable so you will hear from us or them before too long...
Paul
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Paul,
Would george operate on OS Garnet 5.4 please ?
Thanks,
Sarah
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Hi Sarah
Yes...
Paul
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Getting on okay Very pleased so far, but how do I print out todays, or tomorrows work?
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Hi
Click the "Print a Work List" button at the bottom of the Jobs screen.
Paul
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George is a great bit of software. I'd freely recommend.
Also Window Cleaner Professional
Both are good. Window cleaner pro is a bit more fiddly
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Can you get George for Apple Mac OSX or is it only for PC's?
Is there any window cleaning programs for the Mac?
Simon.
Is there any programs at all for the Mac? ;D
Christ you lot complicate things for the sake of it. ::)
I know my round in my head.
I write down what I've done in a book for reference, but there's certainly no need for any more than that.
Thats all well and good until you have more customers than you can remember Squeaky!
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I'm sold on this software now, only problem is i use Macs. Looks like i'll have to resort to buying a cheap windows laptop and pda
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Looks like the need to produce this software on Macs is growing then.
Parallels is good if you have an intel based mac.
Simon.
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Yeah i do have parallel, i've just downloaded George onto it. Good bit of kit