1:  I had a Gateway but now I use a Dell.  Both have been fine, but I treat them like they are made of glass.

2:  We use E-fax but it is kinda pricey and some clients appear to have trouble sending to it.  We try to encourage clients to e-mail orders to us and we still use an old-school fax in the office.  We are looking for another solution too.

3:  We had the exact same problem.  We looked at 4 line phone systems, but oppted for a different solution.  The phone company offeres a weird roll over service that will work with a normal phone.  We have two lines coming in with call waiting on the second line.  It's hard to understand but it works well and allows us to have up to 3 calls (one on hold) on the line at the same time.  Not a solution that will work forever, but it sounds like our companies are about the same size and this has worked for us for the last couple years.

4.  We tried using Quickbooks but it seemed limiting.  This was several years ago and Quickbooks may be a better solution by now.  We hired a friend who designed an amazingly flexible and reletively inexpensive (less than $10,000) web based system for us that he named ICTRS (Internal Customer Transaction and Reporting System).  He sat with us in the office and designed it based on what we do.  We still use Quickbooks for accounting, but we use ICTRS for invoicing and reporting to our clients.  Again, not a perfect solution but we have yet to outgrow it.  I will check with him and see if it is alright to put up his contact info.

Good questions - and good luck1

to post a reply: login - or - register