CleverClients 3.1

CleverClients is software for  small businesses that need to manage clients and the appointments they make for the services  you provide.

The software is suitable for businesses whose clients come to their premises (such as mechanics workshops, psychology practices, hairdressing salons and educational providers), and for businesses whose staff go to client's premises (such as plumbers, cleaners and pest exterminators). The list of potential business types is long!

• You can record clients and their appointments, and, optionally, organisations, associates and referrers.
• Diaries can be defined for members of staff.
• SMS and Email reminders can be sent to clients and daily task lists to staff.
• Letters, invoices, receipts etc can be generated using templates.
• Reports and plots of your business activities can be displayed.

The software is configurable to suit your businesses (e.g. for the services provided and the fees charged). Several example businesses are provided that you can investigate to see how CleverClients can meet your needs.

Features

Clients and Appointments

The most basic operations within the system are recording clients and their appointments in your database.

When you do this, you can do many things to help you manage your business:

• Send SMS reminders (many of our clients fail to attend)
• Quickly find how many appointments are left in a referral
• Generate standard letters
• Send bulk bill claims to MEDICARE
• Display reports of appoinments, income etc

When you start the system the main screen appears.
The left side of the screen shows your clients and their appointments (with the latest on the top) as a “tree”. You can expand and contract the tree and select clients and appointments in a similar way as how you use Windows Explorer.

The definition of the selected client appears in the right pane with any selected appointment below it.

Definition of clients, appointments etc is done by typing into the appropriate fields and clicking a button to insert into or change values in the database

Staff Diaries

A diary typically shows the appointments for one member of staff, and there must be at least one diary.

A sole operator business will probably have just one diary that shows the appointments made ( for times the owner will visit clients or when they will come to the office).

There are many reasons why there would be more than one diary, and some are:

• A sole operator may work at more than one office on different days of the week and have a diary for each location.
• A business may have several staff, each of whom has a diary.
• A business may operate an answering service for tradesmen, and have a diary for each of them to schedule their work.
• A business may have teams of workers and have a diary for each team (and can move workers between teams as Diaries are defined using the diary tab.

Organisations

Organisations pay you for services, such as writing reports or seeing clients. For example:

• Insurance companies
• Solicitors
• Government departments
• The courts

When organisations are defined they appear in the pulldown on the client pane so they can be referenced by clients. You can also record a claim number against the client.

Referrers

Doctors and other persons who refer clients to you are defined in the “Referer” tab and are defined in a similar way to clients and appointments.

When referrers are defined they appear in the pulldown on the client pane so they can be referenced by clients, and also in the tree.

Associates

You can record other people with whom you have a relationship. For example people you go to for advice.

An associate can be recorded against a client. For example their parole officer or who you referred them on to.

Filtering Clients for Processing

The tree on the left side usually displays a subset of your appointments; typically just the past month.
This has the effect of making the tree much smaller and makes it easier to select appointments and clients.

A major reason for filtering is that it defines the data to be processed.

• For example, you may wish to display your income when you are doing your Tax return. In that case you set the time range to the financial year, filter, and then display the report.
• For example, you may wish to display clients who have not paid. In that case you filter on appointment status.

You can specify the appointments to be displayed and processed by setting values in the Filter panel at the top of the window and clicking the filter button.

Templates

You can generate invoices, receipts, quotes, letters, anything in your word processor by selecting the relevant appointment  in the tree and then selecting a type of document from the Templates menu.

The documents are actually generated using template files in Microsoft rich text format which contain know text strings that are replaced by values from the selected client, appointment, service or referrer.

You should be able to use a variety of word processors such as Microsoft Word and OpenOffice. On Windows you can use the WordPad application and on Mac OS the standard editor, so you do not need a word processor.

Reports

The CleverClients system can generate several reports. The process is:

• Filter to get the data that you wish to report on.
• Select a report from the report menu.
• The report will be displayed in the Report tabbed pane.
• Select the “Word” item from the Report menu if you wish to load it into your word processor (and hence into another report).

Client Histograms

Histograms can be produced in much the same way as reports i.e. filter to display the appointments and services you are interested in and then select a type of histogram from the Plots menu.

Plots Of Client Data

Plots can be produced in much the same way as reports i.e. filter to display the appointments and services you are interested in and then select a type of diagram from the Plots menu.

Mail and SMS

You can configure CleverClients to use your Email account to send mail. Of course you can also set up a special address for the purpose e.g. GMail.

The SMS facility is provided by a 3rd party provider that you have to arrange. You need to set up the account using the CleverClients Email address.

Mail and SMS are used in CleverClients for reminding clients and sending daily client lists.

You can send mail or SMS messages to a selected client or to all clients (after filtering).

There is also a menu option that enables you to type in a message (max 160 characters) and send it.

Reminding Clients

Clients often do not show up for their appointments or are not at home when your staff member calls, so you can send everyone a reminder, usually the night before. The system will automatically remind the clients via SMS if they have a mobile phone number, and fall back to any entered Email address if they don’t.

Daily Client List

You can configure CleverClients to SMS and / or mail staff a list of their day's clients the night before.