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New Feature request

2004-07-22
2004-09-16
  • Nino Capodivento

    Hello to everybody, I have a suggestion for the developers. I found a CRM that has some nice functionalities, why you do not implement something similar ?
    Have a look at http://www.crmbyweb.com/products.htm for further details.
    The main idea is that you can have CRM + SFA + Offers, Order and Ivoicing all together.
    Personally I like that.

    Best Regads
    Nino

     
    • Glenn Powers

      Glenn Powers - 2004-07-22

      XRMS already supports many of these features:

      Sales Force Automation (YES)
             Account Management (YES)
             Calendar/Scheduling (YES, via webcalendar plugin)
             Tasks and Activities (YES)
             Sales Forecast (no?)
             Web Leads Capture (YES, via webform plugin)
             Data Import/Export (YES)
             Reports (YES)

      Customer Care (YES)
             Account Management (YES)
             Service Cases (YES)
             Knowledge Base (plugin in development)
             Customer Self-Service (no)
             Data Import/Export (YES)
             Reports (YES)

      Orders and Invoices (no)

      There has been a lot of interest in extending XRMS to cover accounting, but no one is currently working on that.

      cheers,
      glenn

       
    • Ditto

      Ditto - 2004-08-10

      I've been searching forever for a script that I can use to track my clients/prospects, track the contracts and/or hours I work for them, generate an invoice when the work or billing cycle is done, and provide a link to the client to pay online via credit card.

      I'm looking at this script as a potential match based on what I'm seeing in the list of features posted above.  But the big "hole" in all the scripts I'm reviewing is the lack of ability to set up either recurring cc billing or to generate an online invoice, email it to the client, and enable them to pay online for the services rendered.

      Still... I think I'll download this one and give it a go.  Unfortunately your demo doesn't allow the logins as posted, so I'll just have to install it and demo it for myself.  I'll be interested to see if future development might include payment plugins and/or trouble ticket modules for tech support of my client base.

      :-)

       
      • Brian Peterson

        Brian Peterson - 2004-08-11

        With the exception of invoicing and billing, XRMS should provide most of what you request.

        'trouble tickets' may be represented by 'Support Cases' in XRMS.

        Invoicing is really a General Ledger function, and needs accounting integration to really be complete.  Many people have discussed accounting integration, but nobody has actually committed to doign the work to get it done.

        Regards,

          - Brian

         
        • Kronos003

          Kronos003 - 2004-08-13

          how about SQL Ledger? why not integrate with that - they already have a production product and integration should be much easier than building and maintaining a new module from scratch

           
          • wpennington

            wpennington - 2004-08-13

            Hi Worker Bee,

            SQL-Ledger is clearly another good choice.  With open source software there are many good choices. 

            At this time, this is not a priority for us, and I do not believe that any of the other developers are working on this integration. 

            If this is a business need for you, you may wish to have your developers tie the features you need, and submit patches.  Alternatively, there are several XRMS developers that provide consulting service, and would be happy to create this functionality for you. 

            If it is not a business need for you, then you may want to consider the easiest way for you to create the invoices manually.

            Sincerely,
            Walt Pennington
            atcrm.net

             
    • wpennington

      wpennington - 2004-08-13

      Invoicing and billing for XRMS

      Phpaga (http://www.phpaga.net) is an application that allows you to track consultant time, generate an invoice or a quote for a client.  This application has not been integrated with XRMS, but it should be relatively easy to bring some of phpaga's functionality for use with XRMS for users with that particular need. 

      We previously integrated phpaga with a different open source CRM application.  In the integration, we pushed the company information from the CRM to phpaga. 

      As Nino and Ditto point out, there is likely quite a bit of benefit from putting invoicing and billing with XRMS.  There are at least two users that seek this change, and possibly many others. 
      The current problem is that the development team is busy with many priorities.  This item is not currently a priority for the development team.  Also there does not appear to be anyone with enough business incentive to pay for the customization of this feature. 

      If you should have a strong enough business incentive to customize the feature, please submit a patch as it is likely that there are many other users that can benefit from your development.

      Sincerely,
      Walt Pennington
      atcrm.net

       
    • cpsource

      cpsource - 2004-08-14

      Hey - CRMBYWEB charges, so they can offer more features.

      I've downloaded phpaga and will put it into the xrms tree, just like I did with OWL.

      ...cpsource

       
    • cpsource

      cpsource - 2004-08-14

      I finished the eval of phpaga.

      1. It doesn't use adodb, so it only supports 2 databases, one of which is mysql.

      2. It didn't support php5, I presume because JPGRAPH, one of its components, didn't support it. I went ahead anyway, downloaded V2 of JPGRAPH from CVS, and just patched it as needed to get it up.

      3. It loved to prepare invoices in Italian using the EURO, but not in English using the $.

      4. You could post the cost of a task against a project and then prepare invoices for a company for that project. But it seemed quite limited. For example, you couldn't bill 30 units of labor @ 25/hour directly, and instead, you had to enter 750.

      5. There was no double entry bookkeeping, such as you would need to seperate receivables and payables, nor did the package understand debits and credits.

      6. It will run easily under xrms. It could use the same login trick as I used with OWL, so that usernames/ accounts would be seamless.

      7. Also, you'd want to connect the two company databases.

      ...cpsource

       
      • wpennington

        wpennington - 2004-09-16

        cpsource -

        Is phpaga still in CVS?  We are going to consider adding a few invoicing features.  On a quick pass, we could not find it in CVS.

        Have you found anything for invoicing that may be better?

        Walt

         

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