Advice needed.

[Ender666666]

My father-in-law is starting his own plumbing, heating and air repair/installation business. I am trying to help him find software to make his life alot easier, but am very unfamilliar with this field.

His goal is to be able to carry a laptop with him that will hold his pricelists on parts, be able to generate invoices on the spot and keep track of both customer and financial data.

Now he is not the most tech savvy person in the world. The interface needs to be as user friendly as possible, preferably with top notch customer support just incase he hits any snags and needs to yell at someone 😉

His needs are as follow:

-Invoicing
-Database of customers as well as parts, costs, suppliers, and stock levels
-Accounting interface to help generate reports and keep sales taxes etc straight
-Ease of use (I Can't stress this enough)
-Windows XP compatable
-Software must be self sufficient (not need a dedicated internet connection
-Software must be relatively inexpensive

If anyone can offer any advice, it would be greatly appreciated.

 

[BlueWeasel]

Quickbooks?

 

[Ender666666]

Is quickbooks an American or Canadian app?

 

[BlueWeasel]

Pretty sure it's an American application originally, but you should have no problem finding it in Canada.

 

[Fern]

Originally posted by: BlueWeasel
Quickbooks?

:thumbsup:

I'm a CPA, most of my small biz clients use it. It's the most user freindly, and widely used software around. Still, better to get someone to set it up for him and give him a little training.

Fern

 

[Cheetah8799]

I don't have any suggestions other than Quickbooks, but I would also highly suggest some sort of automated backup system. If he is going to be hauling this laptop to job sites, it will probably see some damage in the future. Would be really bad if he lost all his data because the laptop was dropped or something...

 

[pontifex]

the maintenance dept here where i work got this program called maintenance coordinator by simplicity software. it seems to do some of the stuff you mentioned but not sure it does everything. i haven't actually used it myself. i forget what they paid for it too.

worth checking out anyway.