One of the greatest needs a Sales or Marketing Professional needs from GoldMine is the ability to produce a quote for our customers. Sadly this is where we quickly learn that GoldMine just doesn't provide that functionality. Yes you can use the complete a sale dialog, and it's o.k. for a single item, but not for multi item, discount, shipping, or terms functionality.

What a relief it is to find a real gem of a Goldmine add on called QuoteWerks from Aspire Technologies, Inc. located in Orlando, Florida. We here at Sales Automation Group  have been using John Lewe's powerful quoting application (formerly known as Quote Pro) for a year. Available in a network version this tool quickly becomes your right hand man. Installation of the product is relatively quick and easy, and the new version has much improved the procedure. 

Once installed on our server, we added QuoteWerks to our Goldmine menu by a simple user.ini change. The first thing you will need to do is enter information about your company, address phone and the like. Next it is time to add items to your product database. This is an Access Mdb file and is located in the QuoteWerks directory. If you carry a lot of items there is a handy import wizard that makes it a snap to get to work. An accountant I am not so I really appreciated the ease of use that QuoteWerks provided in adding items to our product database. One feature that is really useful is the ability to code a GoldMine field for discount purposes and QuoteWerks will automatically adjust the price. 
Go configure!

An extremely powerful tool in QuoteWerks is the ability to configure and bundle products. This is really necessary when you sell a suite of components or services in an inclusive package. By using a flow chart interface you can quickly connect items together. We think the configuration is extremely well thought out and provides more than adequate performance for even the most demanding user.

Product bundling has been vastly improved in QuoteWerks. Now all I need to do is use convenient drop down lists to add items to my bundle. I like bundles, and it makes creating a quote a fast bulletproof procedure. If your company bundles goods or services (Yes, we use QuoteWerks for our GoldMine consulting business) this is a great way to save time and avoid omitting items unintentionally.

The folks at Creative must of heard me cuss when it came time to customize the appearance of my quotes. That was one of my beefs with Quote Pro. But now with the layout designer, I have regained my Angelic disposition! It's fast and easy to give your quote the appearance you want with this handy tool. 

We have frequently found ourselves faxing our quotes or invoices to our customers. Using my favorite fax app FaxRush, and it works well. But there are times where email is better and faster way to do it and Creative has added this capability as well.

Management Time!

A new feature in the software is the inclusion of management reports. How many open quotes do I have? Or what are my salesmen's commissions are. Before it was almost impossible to track. These reports are a welcome and much needed improvement.

Turning quotes into GOLD!!!

Once I complete my quote and make a sale I can have QuoteWerks update my completed sale in the contacts record. I can create a sale profile, and the quote becomes a linked document (sync-able). I never loose them, and by installing a copy of QuoteWerks on my laptop I can create quotes, and sync them back to the office when on the road. This works out great when using GoldMine's sales analysis tools. 

Accounting (Yechhh!!)

Well all good things have there dark side, and sales has it's own. How to get that invoice into QuickBooks? Creative has made available, an optional linker to QuickBooks and Peachtree. It takes a little reading, and coaxing but the results are huge gains in productivity. By opening your quote/invoice and pressing a button you create a native .iif file that QuickBooks can read. This will update your customer list with an invoice. The .iif file is overwritten or appended upon your instructions. Be careful though as it became a tug of war with my lovely wife (and bookkeeper) as we were initially overwriting each others invoices. A couple of well made threats made by her and I quickly learned to append my invoices!

Can QuoteWerks help your business? Absolutely, it is a sound investment and my do it yourselfer marketers will find you can spend more time closing sales, than trying to make GoldMine into a quoting system. But hey try it yourself at: Our Online Store  

FYI: 

Sales Automation Group offers QuoteWerks and complete line of 3rd party GoldMine products, Computer Based Training for GoldMine & Crystal Reports, And FaxRush. We also offer MCSE & Microsoft, Novell, and Cisco training. For more information click here:
http://www.salesautomationgroup.com