Please help narrow down my list of CRM and paperless receipt options

[computertech775]

One of my goals this year is to switch from hand-written paper carbonless work order/receipts to a cloud-based CRM solution where I can email the receipt to a client, or print it out on their printer.

I'm a "one-man army" where I service about 100 residential clients per month - all service is done on-site and remote. I don't have a shop. I collect payment at the time of service, so I don't need an invoicing system. I just want to be able to email and optionally print a receipt for the customer stating what the problem was, and what I did to fix it. I'd like to be able to track, report and search sales figures by date, customer, and job type.

I've spent the past few weeks searching and researching CRM solution providers. Some key features that are important to me:

• Mobile friendly - input tickets, notes, and capture customer signature on my iPhone 6 or iPad
• Sync contacts/calendar with MS Exchange Online
• Customizable check-boxes of tasks performed which would be shown on customer receipt (Removed adware, removed malware, installed updates, deleted temp files, defragmented hard drive, etc.)
  
• Customizable check-boxes of tools ran and kept in private job notes (MBAM, TDSS Killer, Adwcleaner, etc.)
  
• Private customer notes field (how I solved a rare or complex issue).
  
• Globally searchable (find all work orders that contain the term "user profile service failed" in any input field)
  
• Track sales totals by date, customer, job type (Month of March, Sally Smith, virus removal, printer setup, tutoring, new computer setup, won’t boot, etc.)

Five solutions I've narrowed it down to are listed below. However I'm not sure if each one has the 7 key features listed above:

• Repair Shopr (though I'm about 25 tickets per month over their "One Man Army" pricing)
• CommitCRM
  
• PC Repair Tracker
• Zoho Support/CRM
• Vtiger

I'm interested in other techs experiences with the solutions I've listed. Or if there's one that I have overlooked, please let me know. I didn't list Mhelpdesk because one of my vendors uses them and I don't like their lack of ticket sorting and search options. Also I've heard they have problems with tickets entered on a mobile device not transferring/syncing properly. Additionally they seem to be more ticket system focused where an asset is checked in and out of various levels of service, which is something I don't need since most of my jobs are completed in about an hour.

TIA.

 

[mrapoc]

Its not perfect and I am still looking and thinking but for what it does and the cost I use pcrt for everything apart from invoicing. I then use quickfile for invoicing and payments etc.

Quickfile is free ! All paperless. Integrates with Google calendar. Which I need to investigate syncing with my outlook calender. People can pay online using gocardless or PayPal and a few other choices.

Check it out. It synchronises with my bank feed too. Pcrt I'm sure you are aware of what it does. Main thing is the customisation you can do. Repairshopr looks beautiful but I couldn't bring myself to spend a monthly fee at this point in time. Maybe that will change

 

[4ycr]

I have tried Vtiger but it needed too much configuration to get it to work they way I wanted and I didn't have the knowledge of PHP so I left that.
PC repair tracker was good but my business changed so I no longer use it. It was simple to set up and get going but I never used the bar code printing.
Not used repair shop so can't help with that one
Commit CRM. I have tried a couple of times, I set it up with web access from my computer and was able to update tickets onsite and then save a PDF on their computer but could have easily printed it. It was slow as it was using my internet upload but it did work well but I didn't like the idea of paying for each module and my (home at the time) broadband being responsible for it's uptime.

Try Capsule CRM it was not exactly what I needed but it did work for a little while for me, in the end I went with Autotask as this delivered what I needed for a few clients in the way of reporting and time tracking for block hours.

 

[Kitten Kong]

I find that PCRT does everything that I need it for.

And fits at least 6/7 of your requirements.

 

[acscva]

I went through this same process of testing a lot of different applications over the past year. I was using mhelpdesk for 2 years but it wasn't cutting it for the CRM and other functionality that I wanted. I tried everything that you had listed along with several others. I ended up going live with RepairShopr on January 1st. I must say it has really helped me run my business better and am almost 100% paperless. I am testing RepairTechSolutions to use instead of D7 as I find it much easier to use and also integrates the reports back to RepairShopr very easily. Also have GFI Max RMM integrated has saved a lot of time not having to switch back and forth for asset/inventory management.

I also use DocuSign for having all of my contracts digitally signed by my customers. I also use Evernote for some document management of all other documents.

I did just signup for their One-Man Army solution as it has been a busy month so far and also like the additional options included. I will be hiring some employees in the future and then will upgrade to the next level for $99/month. If you calculate the time savings it is well worth the subscription price. If you are an ACRBO member you can get the first month free of RepairShopr.

If any questions would be glad to help you or anyone else.

 

[computertech775]

I find that PCRT does everything that I need it for.

And fits at least 6/7 of your requirements.

Which one doesn't PCRT do?

I will take Vtiger off the list. I'm not interested in doing a bunch of programming to make it work for my needs.

I will be getting RepairTechSolutions TechSuite soon, though I haven't used or tried it yet. That integration may help sway my decision.

Thanks for the input so far. Please keep it coming.

 

[HCHTech]

I'm interested in how you make out. I recently converted from paper myself. I'm on Mhelpdesk, and while the things that it does well are a BIG improvement over the way I was doing things before, it has not saved me as much work as I had hoped because of the things it doesn't do - that I was hoping it would. We have 3 employees (1xOffice, 2xFieldTech) that use it, and we process somewhere around 130-150 tickets per month.

Pros:

- It works great in the field for creating invoices on my iPad & emailing them to the customer for my residential clients. I use a separate system for taking credit cards, but it's on the iPad too, so it's not cumbersome (works way better than doing it from my phone)
- For the first time, I have good tracking of "in shop" projects, and a centralized place to make progress notes that anyone on the system can see.
- The integration with Quickbooks does in fact save me time. There are a couple of quirks to watch out for, but mostly it works great and I'm happy
- The integration with Google calendar is great.
- VERY pleasant tech support. They have happy-something in the air system, I swear.

Cons:

- Reporting is limited to the reports that they have included. There is no report-writer functionality, so if they don't already have the ability to sort or summarize on one of the fields they keep, you can't get it.
- Access to historical data from the iPad while in the field is possible but clunky. There were some boneheaded development decisions made here.
- There are several usability issues with the mobile app that work fine in the web interface, but the web interface isn't very usable from the iPad
- There is no integration with Google Contacts. This is critical for us since it serves as our "Caller ID" - we work exclusively from mobile phones. This means we have to continue to enter every new customer twice.
- Getting my historical data into the system had to be done by the company, it couldn't be imported like I did with the customer list. This was arduous and frustrating because they barged ahead without asking me how I wanted it done, and clearly didn't think about the usability side-effects of the way they chose. As a result, they had to do it 2 or 3 times.
- It's not really a CRM system - it's more of an invoicing system for me. For example, you can have the system send you a reminder email that it's time to follow up on a completed job, but it won't generate the email for you.
- Tracking new customers by source is possible, but what you can do is limited. The reporting won't show dollars received by source, only a raw count of customers gained. For referrals, you can't track WHO referred the new customer.
- If more than one person works on a ticket for an in-shop project, I haven't found a way to automate the recording of who entered the update, for example. This might be a picky thing - we are just including initials and date in the text of the note.
- You can't do fillable, signable forms in the system (like pickup / dropoff forms). They worked hard "converting" one of the canned work orders for me, but it just isn't usable. You don't have control over format, and it is just too cumbersome. I'm using a separate PDF app which works, but is cumbersome for it's own reasons. This is something that should be INSIDE of your system.
- For business customers that I only bill at the end of the month, it's not so great. I can track the work, but the invoice-combining thing needs some help. As a result, I still handle these customers invoices entirely within Quickbooks.
- GPS tracking for field techs sounds like a whiz-bang feature, but doesn't work because of limitations of the device you are using. I don't think they thought this one all the way through.

For now, I'm still a fan, it is saving me time, but I need a few months to get over the whole 3-month conversion process before I even start to think about another way.