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The Organized Wedding Consultant Online Help: Working with Business Documents

Views discussed: Business Docs, Business Doc Types (under Professional Setup)

Note: Before you start using business documents, go to the "My Company" view, under "Professional Setup" in the left-hand menu. "My Company" is where you fill in your company name and address, which, of course, appear in a lot of documents. After you fill in the name and contact information for your business you're ready to get started with business documents, so click "Business Docs" in the left-hand menu.

When you click "Add a New Letter or Contract" in the upper right of the "Business Docs" view, you choose what kind of document you want to create -- and then the document appears, with the relevant information about both your company and your client's plans already in place. Once the document appears, you can change it any way you'd like.

If you haven't yet provided some of the information that the document normally contains, the software will either skip it (for things that are optional) or give you a message like "<<missing information: client's address>>" (for things that are really important). If the document is missing some information, you can either fill in the blanks yourself or you can cancel the document and go elsewhere in the program to enter the information. If you go elsewhere in the program and enter the information, the program will be able to use that information in any new business documents that you create.

Be aware, though, that changing information in other parts of the program will have no effect on documents you've already created -- once the documents are created, they're just regular documents. All the "magic" happens when the software first creates them.

There are two wonderful things about this system:

1. You don't have to retype a bunch of stuff you've already typed into the program before, every time you create a business letter, contract, or report. If you've already entered the information in the program, it will fill in all the blanks for you.
2. You can change the forms that serve as the basis for your business documents! You can create your own contracts, standard letters, and reports that will automatically fill themselves in whenever you create that type of document. To find out how this feature works, go to "Business Doc Types" (under "Professional Setup" in the left-hand menu) and double-click any of the items in the list (except for "Blank Document"). In the window that appears next, click the big "Tips and Help" button in the upper right.

Margins and Layout

There are some aspects of your documents (like margins, headers, and footers) that aren't controlled by the text of the document. To get to these settings, double-click a document in your list, then click "Layout" in the menu at the top of the document window.

Client Grand Summary

Strictly speaking, the "Client Grand Summary" is a report, not a letter or contract, but the software creates it in the same way it creates other business documents. This document gives you what it says: a grand summary of all the people, services, schedules, and vendors involved in a client's plans. It won't look terribly impressive if you create one when you're early in the planning for a particular client, but by the time you need this kind of summary, it's quite a document.

Where the Information Comes From

To see a list of all the kinds of information that the software can include in a document for you, and where you enter that information in the software, click "Add a New Letter or Contract" (in the upper right of the "Business Docs" area), and select "Where do I fill in missing information?" from the list. The software will tell you what information it already knows, what information it lacks, and where to go to record the missing information.

Other Reports

Although there are a few reports -- like the "Client Grand Summary" -- included with business documents, "Business Docs" isn't the usual way you create reports. For a description of how to print things out in the rest of the program, go to "Standard Reports", under "Professional Setup" in the left-hand menu.