Will Filemaker Be Right For Me?

[nyguy]

I apologise if this is not the topic my post belongs too, but I couldn't find a specific location for my question.

I am about to purchase Filemaker as a solution to my small business. I'm not a great computer person (love my computer, just don't have in depht knowledge). I'm trying to setup a database for customer database, where I will schedule services, generate work orders and billing.

Since I provide services, the same customer may have multiple locations where the work is done, specific scheduling and so on. At the end of the day I should be able to close the invoice by filling which products I used, concentration rate, areas applied, etc. This is an area where I hope that automation will come handy to speed up the process. For example, if a specific product I used is in liquid form, as soon as I type it's number, I want fields to fill the name, it's undiluted rate, Oz., etc.

Should it work? Thank you and I apologize if the post is a little too long.

[mr_vodka]

Hi Nyguy.

Yes you can do all of that. Although FileMaker is toted as easy to learn, you will find that you will still need to put in a lot of hours to create your application properly. There are lots of posts on here regarding some good sources to help you learn about relational databases and FileMaker in general. I would start off by reading the white paper that is refered to in my signature file.

Another option may be to purchase an existing Invoicing creating in FileMaker that someone else created.

[nyguy]

Thank you very much for your reply. I researched and even demo some invoicing softwares out there and none of them could fill my particular needs, except for some that would cost over 2 k. I don't mind spending the appropriate time researching and putting it together myself. What attracted me was the possibility to customize to my needs as well as implementing a few gizmos and gadgets as the needs arise.

Thank you again.