Plus a free T shirt
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That dog wonât hunt here. You are your company when youâre an owner. Your product was pitched here against rules. I blocked you on Facebook because I limit the type of people I associate with based on their character. I donât understand the little girl comment. Why disparge someone that is not of your race or gender? Iâm not hiding behind any name. Read the forum rules. Quit disrupting this thread please. Feel free to start another if you have a meaningful contribution.
So by what youâre saying I should control things I know nothing of? It really shows your character. You might be a great guy in person but on line you seen like a waste of oxygen
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Can you guys move this over to a different threadâŚruining a good one about Markate
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Iâm trying the 14 day trial and I like the layout and there is definitely less of a learning curve compared to Customer Factor. I have several things I donât like and a lot I do like. One big problem is the sales tax rounds up. NJ sales tax is 6.625% Markate rounds it up to 6.3%. Which will charge my customers more. They said the will consider a future change. There are some things customer factor does better which are pretty important to me. I do like the work orders, in Markate, for employees and the customer service is great. I hate Customer Factorâs customer layout and wish I could switch to Markate but they need to add a few more options for me.
Iâm on CF too and pretty happy with it. I havenât had time to play around with Markate any. Which things do you feel CF does better?
To me the customer factor lay out is easier. I hate having to create a work order to create a task thatâs not a job which in Markate I had to do. To me the customer factor is so much more user friendly
Thanks for letting me know this. I will have to look and see if the review add on was added to mine. Iâve had for several months but if they are including it now, I would like to have that option as well.
This is a long post and I hate to read longs posts so I will make it easy. I listed why I like Customer Factor better than Markate for the guys who are thinking about switching or choosing between the two. Markate seems great but it needs a lot of improvement (in my opinion). Granted Customer Factor is $400 more but it is more advanced and I would say on a different level than Markate. If any of the below is inaccurate please let me and everyone else know.
Customer Factor Estimateâs section it has drop downs for prefilled jobs and job descriptions. Markate has something similar but you are arequired to have a price prefilled. For example if you make a job called House Wash and Driveway and add a description it also makes you put a price. Say $400 for that drop down of House Wash and Driveway. But I do houses and driveways with many different combinations of prices. Customer Factor allows you to have jobs with descriptions but you can add any price you want after you select what job from the drop down.
I put a picture at the bottom of my estimate and invoices which is an award I received and distinguishes me from my competitors. Markate only puts an attachment in estimate so they have to click on it to see the picture.
At the bottom of their e-mails for appointment reminders it says, "Kind Regards, The Markate Team and there is a water mark saying it is powered by Markate. Customer Factor doesnât advertise on my e-mails.
Customer Factor tracks all estimates, invoices and emails sent through Customer Factor to my customers in one spot so you can track what you sent them and when and in what order. In Markate you can see you sent an estimate in the estimate spot and invoice in the invoice spot but there are not dates listed as to when they were sent.
There is no way to separate customers who accepted your estimate and schedule or customers who youâve done work for in the past from people you sent estimates to and have not responded yet. So I have a list of people on one screen titled Customers and I donât know if I worked for them or I sent them an estimate and I am waiting a response. I mentioned this to them and they referred me to the inquires tab. Which just lists leads. Leads could be categorized as people who asked for estimates but you didnât e-mail them the estimate yet. Once you e-mail them the estimate then they go into the Customers Tab/Category.
Customer Factorâs Customer tab list more information on the screen about your customers in addition to all their identifying information is also has jobs completed, lists all e-mails sent and date, and any upcoming jobs.
Markate has âAsk for a Reviewâ e-mail that can be automated to go out certain amount of days. Customer Factor has a more advance version that can go out as a drip. This is new to Customer Factor.
Customer Factor has a more advance E-mail automation and provides numerous ways to customize the e-mails. You can make any e-mail you want have it plug anything you want into it automatically and sent when ever you want.
Markateâs text message feature is built in so. Customer Factorâs Text message feature is through a third party and it sucks setting up.
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I officially signed up a couple of days ago and they charged me for the review add on separate. $60 extra with the yearly payment.
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I edited my post. Itâs not included. The checkout process was strange. It asked me if I wanted any addons, and the review addon was not there. A couple hours later they messaged me for permission to charge my card the $5
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They have 4-5 âadd-onsâ that are $5 each per month. The automated e-mail request for reviews is one of them. I am going to use them as a bridge from my current system (personally designed sql database) until I get to a point where the cost of investment for a more robust application makes sense in terms of ROI.
Markate to me is a simple CRM that is low-cost and as such with any application, their is no golden goose. No one has the perfect system with every feature designed for every application and user at every price level. If their was, then they would be the only company.
What I am looking for if anyone knows of a program, is something that will let me put pictures and notations on a page and then save to jpeg in 8.5 x 11 size for estimates (jpeg just allows for a lot of images to be compressed so that the final file size is still relatively small - PDFâs donât cut it as more than 6-8 pictures and your file size exceeds most server allowed size for attachments). I currently use either Word, Adobe PS or Illustrator but it is just time consuming. Import each picture, size it, add text field. When bidding jobs that I would have 20 or more pictures it can take 1-2 hours. I just want a program that has templates, say choose between 2,4,6,8 pictures per page with fields already in place for short notations under each picture that I can import pictures, it will automatically size and place them into the fields so that if I have 30 pictures it would take 10 minutes to type in notations, save and send. Anyone know of an application that does this?
Adobe acrobat comes to mind. There are non adobe options as well. None are automated with crm. You can get the same or better compression of images within pdf
Thanks. Saved me a bunch of time. Think Iâll stay where Iâm at.
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Me to
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Hey everyone! Thank you for comments ~ some of the feedback I am reading isnât reflecting Markate accurately. I really appreciate both the positive and negative feedback as it helps Markate so much! I would be more than happy to answer any specific questions you have! I appreciate all of you! Have a wonderful day! Julia
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Julia, Been testing it out. One function that appears odd, is in the New Estimate. You start a new estimate. Once you have it done, you have to save it, reopen it and then you can send it. Why not format the code to allow for sending from the New Estimate - Hit send, script runs the save command followed by the send process. I get the having to save it to create the record in the DB that then allows the send to occur but as a user it lacks fluidity in the process.
Also, on the tax - when creating a new estimate is their a setting to default to a defined tax? I sent out a bid yesterday and realized today it had no tax on it. On this note, if a setting can be configured to auto-populate tax (would be best in the item set-up just in case someone has an item that is tax-exempt) also having the option to select a customer to be tax-exempt.
Hopefully I am being clear on my inquiries, If not, e-mail me at mswindle@rarsg.com.
Hello, itâs great to hear from you! When it comes to an estimate - you donât need to save it and then send it. Just select preview and then it will pull up the email to send out to your customer (and will save it too) To set your default tax just go to More---->settings---->Tax Rates and you can set your default tax rate there. If the majority of your customers arenât tax-exempt then I would just adjust it to zero on that estimate/invoice for that specific one and for the rest of them have the default tax amount show up. I think this covered all your questions but you can call me to talk at 480.360.1360 or email me at julia@markate.com and I would be more than happy to answer any additional questions you have. Have a wonderful evening!
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I requested a new feature on the FB page three days ago. Itâs now available in the App Store. Top notch customer service
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OK Julia, I REALLY need my schedule from HCP but cannot figure out how to retrieve it. I have moved everything else.
