I have been put in charge of putting together a client database for my current employer, a small finance-related business. Other than working with basic client lists in Excel, I have no meaningful experience with any other database software so I would greatly appreciate any feedback you are able to provide. I am currently downloading the trial version of FileMaker Pro, which seems to be very popular among both Mac and PC users. This alone puts FMP at the top of my list since I will most likely be working on both platforms. Thanks is advance for the help.
I would be shocked if you can’t do this with Access. Seriously, if you have fewer than say, 10000 clients, MS Office will almost definitely be sufficient. You just need to read about ActiveX and how to query the database from different computers.
Filemaker Pro is substantially easier than MS Access. I don’t think FMP is a relational database, although it’s been around for ages, so maybe they enabled some kind of relational capabilities in the interim. Knowing how to do MS Access is potentially a useful resume skill, but FMP may well do the trick for you quickly, especially if it’s mostly a contacts database. If you are going to be tracking a whole bunch of invoices and conversations with clients, then you may want to go the relational database route.
We just got Splendid CRM…the version we have is completely free and it at least is already a CRM so has most of the features you’re probably looking for. I have to get into it this summer to figure everything out, but you should look into it considering it is low risk $ wise.
Thanks for the input! I will look into all of your recommendations.