Record All Business Transactions

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Managing a business, large or small, has never been easy without the help of the computer. In fact, I can't conceive that a manager can handle the company affairs without using a computer. The machine will practically do half the job or even more, provided it has all the data to work with and the person handling it knows exactly what to do.

There is a myriad of softwares dedicated to keeping the home incomes and spendings and there are also applications specially designed for helping keeping good tabs on what is going on with your business. The latter category is a bit more expensive and has all sorts of complicated options and fields that require a little time and even professional help to get a good grip on them.

SoftBooking was specially created for handling small to medium businesses and does not require certifications of any sort in order to use it. The "teacher" is the 168 page user manual that explains all the aspects and all the options available. Judging by the information in the application, it is basically designed for beauty salons, but you can go ahead and adapt it to a similar line of work as everybody works with customers and products (be they services) and there is definitely at least one employee involved.

The price is $1000. From where I stand it seems much, but if your company is successful and finance handling is where it limps, then I guess the price tag would seem quite appealing. However, you get to test the full featured program first for a period of 30 days. The trial has no other limitations except for the habitual 30 days.

I tried the trial first as I considered that there is more than enough time to properly test the application. Immediately after installing the program (and the necessary Microsoft Office Runtime Access) I was delivered the 30 day trial reminder. Unfortunately, the software crashed a few seconds after beginning the testing and when I revived it, it said that my trial period had expired. I resumed the testing session as soon as the publisher sent me the activation code (my e-mail was answered in the shortest time possible and the PR contact assured me that the engineers will take a look at the problem).

At a first glance, SoftBooking is simply baffling: both in what concerns the looks and the number of features available. I have to say that I was not expecting this kind of interface for a financial software. Usually they are poor, looking a gain in functionality and usability. SoftBooking looks absolutely stunning and it is a pleasure to start working with it.

Multiple users are supported and they can be given permissions to handling only certain parts of the applications (bookings, customer files, products, treatments, staff files, suppliers, ordering, reports and confirmations). Each employee can be assigned a different password to login into the software.

Whenever a client benefits from your services/products you have to go to Walk-in menu in the top right hand corner of the main application window. A payment entry form will open and you can enter the transaction details right there (payment method (cash, check, credit card), name of the product and price (by simply adding it from the product list) and client details).

Every customer has a file of his/her own which contains essential details like telephone number, address, date of birth, treatment history, contraindications, treatment plan, etc. Every new client can be inserted in the database and all the discounts and spendings on products and treatments are also stored in here.

Storing bookings in the database can be a little difficult as not everything works as it should. During the first testing of the application, I was not able to open the booking form for a future day but if I selected a day in the past, the new screen opened with no problem (but the booking could not be saved to database). After a reinstall of the application, things got better a little and I could create a new booking for a client provided that the date was the next day of the current date.

Selecting a date further than this resulted in no timetable to put it in and double clicking in the blank window caused the program to crash.

For faster access to the staff's personal files, it is enough to click on the name of the employee in the Booking Data View and the desired window will pop up. This file contains details on the therapist and provided you have access, you can add more information. The fields available here include address, telephone, date of birth, employment date, job type (therapist or receptionist), working timetable from Monday to Sunday, holidays available per year, total of sickness days, skills (you can modify them as you want and all of them should be recorded), employer's records on the person and SoftBooking administering permissions.

Types of treatment can also be modified by the administrator. The default database provided by the application contains a number of 53 treatments. These can be either active or inactive and the database sheet includes details like duration of the treatment, discount offered, product type, price and some notes if it is the case. Modifying any of these details is possible by double clicking on the respective treatment.

Reports area gives you fast insight on most matters of interest: bookings (cancellation by customers/staff), customers (birthdays, highest spend, last sales date, product sales, treatment sales, etc.), products (profits by name/percent/value/stock take), sales (by date, at the end of the day, by product, therapist, treatment, end of month, etc.), staff, suppliers, treatments and vouchers. This is where the truth about your business lies. Every recorded transaction can be found by simple choosing the report category and the adequate report. It seems that the interface has not been properly checked as "category" is misspelled in both Reports area and in the Options section of the application.

For a better handling, the developer chose to give a familiar look for the Options of the software. The resemblance with Windows XP's Control Panel is striking. The sections available in here cover everything from adding information about the salon business, making the settings for printing receipts, adding groups of products and treatments, setting the customer card, adding or removing rooms of the salon, defining the commission structure, SMS text messaging (via Skype) and data importing.

In Client Card Setting there is an option called Crystal Healing. In order to enable that tab, you must provide a password. I tried all the possibilities and every time my password was rejected. Looking in the manual for a hint on the feature ended nowhere. There was no information on such a feature. This may as well be a slip of the user's guide or of the developer.

What would be a database without the possibility of making backups? SoftBooking does not leave this to chance and provides the user the necessary means for such an operation. The moment the application installs on your computer there will be three additional icons on your desktop: the software launcher, database utility and the PDF help file. Database Utility is the one dealing with preserving your data. It is very easy to use and it takes very little to complete the operation (it mainly depends on the number of details available). The backup file will be saved at user's choice and it'll be a MS Access format.

The user will be prompted for backing up the database at closing the software as well. As it is a corporate product and designed for everyday use in a salon business, it is obvious that the closing will be done at the end of the day.

Despite the fact that the review is lengthy enough, I could not comprise every bit of detail in here and tried to highlight the most important features of the application. Order details for instance are also available and this section works hand in hand with the Supplier database. I just brought this up because I noticed a spelling mistake in here ("ComanyName").

The Good

SoftBooking is extremely well intended and looks like no other similar application. It covers all the aspects I can think of when it comes to a beauty salon business. You can even set charges in case customers do not show up or cancel the appointment.

A Confirmations window displays all the customers that have kept their appointments and additional details like price, treatment description, etc.

At the end of the day, you can see the balance between the amount of money in the cash drawer and the amount counted by SoftBooking.

The Bad

The application still has some issues to be fixed and most of them are mentioned in the review. But the one that I failed to notice until the end is that there are two currencies available: $US and Sterling Pounds. I thought there would be some kind of conversion made, but unfortunately, the End of Day Sales reported the cash in $US although the client payment was transacted in Sterling Pounds. Futile to say that the value was the same.

The Truth

It requires MS Access Runtime and the effort to create the databases and the links between them must be appreciated. However, a company could not rely on SoftBooking as it is highly unstable and that is detrimental to both the customers and the developing company.

Crashes come out of nowhere. One moment the client payment sheet is working, the next it crashes. As I said before, the intentions are good, but there are issues to take care of.

It has reached only version 1.1.8, so there is still time for the software to grow into a reliable application.

Here are some snapshots of the application in action:

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user interface 5
features 5
ease of use 3
pricing / value 4


final rating 3
Editor's review
good
 
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