Office Tracker 6.5 &#151 Organizing SMBs Everywhere

Keeping an office organized and on schedule &#151 as any small business owner will tell you &#151 can be a daunting task. Depending on the nature of your business, you have to track appointments, service calls, meetings, vendors, clients, employees, resources, vacations and more. Office Tracker, a software application from the Austin, Texas-based Milum Corporation, was designed to take the complexity out of scheduling.

According to Kelly Hayes, president of the Milum Corp, the recently released version, Office Tracker 6.5, also includes a contact management component that dovetails with the scheduling capability.

“Office Tracker 6.5 combines the best of Office Tracker with contact management,” said Hayes. “You can quickly update scheduled appointments with customer contacts by dragging and dropping a contact’s name onto the time of the scheduled meeting. The software automatically fills in the information, which decreases the human error element of data entry.”

A Simple Goal
The company says the software is simple to use, and that you can reduce the time you spend scheduling meetings by up to 90 percent. “We tried to make it easy so that the people working in the front-end office can learn to use it very quickly,” said Hayes. “You don’t need an IT manager to install the software,” she continued. “Even the server side is easy to set up.” Hayes says the product’s target audience is companies with 20 or more employees, but that the also serve companies with fewer employees.

You can use Office Tracker 6.5 in three ways. The traditional client/server setup where the software is installed on a server and employees access the program through their PCs. Web-based: buying the optional Web Viewer add-on works in concert with the client/server. The viewer lets you give employees access schedules through a browser — read-only access, you can’t schedule over a browser.

The third way to use the software is on a Palm device. According to the company, you can synchronize the Office Tracker schedules and take them on the road.

Features
Office Tracker 6.5 offers a number of features designed to make scheduling more efficient.

  • Two-Click Scheduling — Scan calendar for an open time and click on it. Type in the meeting and click OK. You’re done. For scheduling appointments, drag and drop the name to the time slot and the contact info fills in automatically
  • Side-by-Side Schedules — Employees can share side-by-side schedules for all appointments, rooms, meetings, equipment, vehicles, resources and projects
  • Customizable Fields &#151 You can record contact information in up to 10 additional fields that you can customize depending on the type of business you’re in. A medical office, for example, might add fields for patient numbers or insurance information.

  • Reminders — Automate recurring events, schedule alert reminders, and attach notes
  • Fast Find — Search by any type of meeting info — date, location, people attending — and the program finds all matching events

Who Benefits?



Office Tracker 6.5

The View From Here: Adding people to your schedule view is a matter of a few quick clicks in Office Tracker 6.5.

Kelly Hayes says any number of businesses can benefit from using Office Tracker 6.5. Here’s a sample: medical services, recreation facilities, non-profit agencies, service industries such as contractors, plumbers, landscape and tree services, schools and universities, religious groups, CPA firms, law offices, heating and cooling companies, and travel agencies.

Hayes lists numerous benefits to using the software, including:

  • Reduce time spent on scheduling
  • Increase professionalism
  • Decrease human error
  • Export schedule data into reports for analysis
  • Improve office communication
  • Automatic backups

Availability and Pricing
Office Tracker 6.5 is available now on the company Web site.

  • Single User &#151 $595
  • 5 Users &#151 $999
  • 25 Users &#151 $2,395
  • Web Viewer Option &#151 $695
  • OT Palm Option &#151 $495

Lauren Simonds is the managing editor of SmallBusinessComputing.com

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