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The Organized Wedding Consultant Online Help: Working with Vendors

Views Discussed: Listing, Comparison (under Vendor Index); Vendor List, Vendor Comparison (under Budget & Vendors)

The guiding principle that the software follows in working with vendors is to help you reuse as much information as possible with as little typing as possible.

The place to get started with vendors is the "Listing" in the "Vendor Index", near the bottom of the left-hand menu. This area is where you'll set up all the vendors that you do business with. There's a lot of information the software can track for each vendor, all the way from basic contact info to a detailed cost list, but if you already have your vendor list stored in some way on your computer, you probably won't have to type a lot of it in. Once you're in the "Listing" of the "Vendor Index", just click the "Import" button on the right-hand side. The software can read a wide variety of address book formats, from ACT Files to Palm address books to Excel spreadsheets and more, so the odds are good that your current address book of vendors can be imported directly into the program. If you have lots of vendors, you might want to break them into separate address books -- one for each budget category -- before you import them, and then run the import process once per address book. You can tell the software to put all of the vendors from a particular import into a particular category, so if you have hundreds (or thousands) of vendors, breaking up your address book before you import it is the quickest way to get your vendors into the right categories.

After you've imported your vendors into the Vendor Index, you can easily use them for individual clients. Click "Budget & Vendors" in the left-hand menu, then click "Vendor List" beneath it. This area shows you the vendor list for the client you're currently working with. Click "Copy a Vendor from the Vendor Index" on the right, and choose a vendor to copy into the client's list. You don't need to decide right now which vendors are perfect for the client; just go ahead and have the software copy over all the vendors you want to consider.

Once you've copied over the vendors you think might be suitable for the client, you can start evaluating options. Double-click each vendor in the client's vendor list, and click the "Costs" tab (visible at the top of the window) to see the cost list for that vendor. Adjust the cost list to reflect what the client wants: delete unnecessary services, adjust the number of items needed, etc. When you're done, the "Total Cost" (visible near the top of the page) should be a good approximation of what the vendor will charge.

When you're done adjusting the cost lists, click "Vendor Comparison" in the left-hand menu. Select whichever category of vendors you'd like to compare (in the box at the top of the window), and this area will show you a straightforward, thorough comparison of all the vendors in that category -- not only costs, but also any non-cost factors (called features) that you consider relevant, like cancellation times and previous quality of service. (What goes in the list of features is up to you, as described below.) To narrow the field of vendors to compare, click "Pick Vendors to Compare" at the bottom of the window and start excluding any vendors that aren't quite right.

When you've made some decisions, go back to the "Vendor List" (in the left-hand menu) and double-click each of the vendors you've evaluated. You'll see there's a checkbox called "Include this vendor in the budget" on the first page for each vendor. Uncheck this box for any vendors you've decided against, and your choices will be automatically reflected in the budget. There's an even easier way to perform this step from within the budget instead of from within the vendor list, but that's covered in the separate help article "Working with Budgets."

Tip: You can edit the information for vendors in two different sections. The "Budget & Vendors" section is intended primarily for customizing the vendor information for a particular client, so any changes you make to the Cost Lists, Payments, etc. will affect only the current client. However, some types of vendor information, such as the address and phone number, is automatically updated in the Vendor Index if you change it in Budget & Vendors, and vice versa. (The items that are automatically updated like this are indicated by a green background when you edit a vendor). The "Vendor Index" section is the best place to set up your vendors, and to change any costs or features that affect more than one client. When you change a vendor's Cost List, Payment List, etc. (any item that doesn't have a green background) from within the Vendor Index, the program will use changed information any time you add the vendor to a client, but it will not change existing vendor information you've already set up for clients.

Cost Lists

Each vendor has an associated cost list. To see the cost list for a vendor in the Vendor Index, click "Listing", double-click the vendor in the list, and then click the "Costs" tab at the top of the window.

Note: You can also see the cost list for a vendor as you've set it up for a particular client: click "Budget & Vendors", then click "Vendor List". Double-click the vendor in the list, then click the "Costs" tab at the top of the window. However, any changes you make while in the "Budget & Vendors" section affect only the current client, not any future clients.

To save yourself work, set up cost lists in the Vendor Index to be as reusable as possible. If you describe as many of the vendor's services as you can in terms of cost per item, then all you'll need to do when you copy the vendor to a particular client is delete the unnecessary items and adjust the quantities for the others. This procedure works not only for things that are obviously appropriate (like renting chairs, where there's a cost per chair), but also for things like costs per hour for limousine companies. For the description of the item, enter something like this: "12-passenger limousine (cost per hour)". If you go ahead and add everything the vendor can possibly provide -- including taxes, tips, and discounts that might not even be applicable -- then when you copy the vendor to a particular client's list, adjusting the list will mostly be a matter of deleting inappropriate items and adjusting quantities, and you can make it accurate very quickly. (Percent-based items like taxes and tips adjust themselves automatically as you change other items in the list.)

Feature Lists

"Features" are anything other than costs that you might want to compare side-by-side in the comparison view. Good examples are "years of experience" or "days in advance for cancellation" -- these things don't add to the cost, as such, but they're useful to see in the comparison. Every vendor has a feature list. You can get to it by double-clicking a vendor in the "Listing" view of "Vendor Index" (or in the "Vendor List" view of "Budget & Vendors"), then clicking the "Features" tab at the top of the window. You can use the "Add Feature" button (to the right of the feature list) to add anything you want to the list of features for the vendor.

Once you've created a feature list you like for a particular type of vendor, you can copy that feature list (or any part of it) to other vendors within the same budget category. Edit the vendor for whom you want to add the feature list, click the "Features" tab, then click the button labeled "Copy Feature(s) from other Vendor(s)". Copying the features to all the vendors in the category makes it faster and easier to compare them.

Payment Lists

Along with costs and features, you can also add a schedule of payments for each vendor. Unlike costs and features, though, the place to add payments isn't the Vendor Index but in the particular client's vendor list. To get to the schedule of payments for a given vendor, double-click a vendor in the "Vendor List" (under "Budget & Vendors" in the left-hand menu). Any payments you enter for the individual vendors are automatically arranged into a unified schedule called "Payments", under "Budget & Vendors" in the left-hand menu. This feature is discussed further in the help article "Working with Budgets".

Note: The payments only appear in the "Payments" view if you include the vendor in the client's budget. See "Working with Budgets" for more information.

Comparisons

You can name the items in the cost lists anything you want, and the same goes for features. However, in order for the comparison view to correctly line up the items you want to compare, you need to call the same item, service, or feature by the same name in each of your vendors. In other words, if you call an item "white plastic folding chairs" in one vendor and "folding chairs, white plastic" in a different vendor, the comparison view won't be able to figure out that those items are really the same thing, and it won't know to show them on the same line of the comparison. So, for the comparison view to work properly, you'll want to be consistent about what you call your costs and features.

Fortunately, once you're aware of this issue it's really very easy: the costs and features lists are stored in each vendor (you get to these lists by double-clicking a vendor in either of two views: "Listing" under "Vendor Index" or "Vendor List" under "Budget & Vendors", then clicking the tabs labeled "Costs" or "Features") and next to these lists are buttons called "Copy Item(s) from Other Vendors" and "Copy Feature(s) from Other Vendors". Click these buttons, and you can both quickly see what you called particular things in other vendors and automatically copy them into the vendor you're working with. Using this system allows the comparison view to line things up properly and saves you a lot of typing, so this technique is definitely good to know.

Business Envelopes

When you're editing a vendor (click either "Listing" under "Vendor Index" or "Vendor List" under "Budget & Vendors", then double-click the vendor you'd like to work with), there's a button labeled "Printing" in the lower right of the window. This button makes it easy to print (or preview) a business envelope addressed to the vendor. The return address is filled in with the company information that you enter in "My Company", under "Professional Setup" in the left-hand menu. The delivery address comes from the name of the vendor's primary contact person, plus the vendor's address.

Note: If you have not included a title (like "Mr." or "Ms.") with the contact person's name, the program will guess at the appropriate title -- and sometimes it will guess wrong. Use print preview before you actually print envelopes addressed to your vendors, and if the program guesses the contact person's title incorrectly, it's easy to fix: simply add their correct title to the box labeled "Primary contact person".