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Butch Evans and Jeremy Davis are getting me set up with Freeside
(partly because quickbooks did the same thing to me). I am not using
it yet, but I sure do like that for X per hour I can say, "Hey Jeremy,
make freeside do this, and he says ok". Brian Mark Nash wrote: Marlon, I looked at Intrameta and PowerCode and chose PowerCode for bang for buck. You really should look at them. It has its faults, but it's like a drug that we can't do without. It handles alot for us.Do a demo one day and check it out. Mark Nash UnwiredWest 78 Centennial Loop, Suite E Eugene, OR 97401 http://www.unwiredwest.com 541-998-5555 541-998-5599 fax ----- Original Message ----- From: "Marlon K. Schafer" <o...@odessaoffice.com> To: "WISPA General List" <wireless@wispa.org> Sent: Saturday, March 21, 2009 8:12 AM Subject: Re: [WISPA] ISP billing/management software.http://intrameta.com/ They are a vendor member and good guys. I've talked to them (David Wilson got us hooked up) quite a bit. It sounds like they have a nice system. But the costs are higher than I can justify at this point and last I talked to them they didn't have a billing mechanism in place. marlon ----- Original Message ----- From: "Charles Wu" <c...@cticonnect.com> To: "WISPA General List" <wireless@wispa.org> Sent: Saturday, March 21, 2009 7:58 AM Subject: Re: [WISPA] ISP billing/management software.Hi Marlon, In no particular order, here's a list of some of the more popular ISP/WISP billing packages that we see in the market Platypus/Tucows PowerCode Rodopi BillMax Freeside Emerald / IEA Software Every package has their strengths and weaknesses -- ultimately, it comes down to personal preference and business processes to see what's a best fit Whatever it is that you end up with...be sure to check out ip pay (www.ippay.com) for your back-end payments =) -Charles P.S. -- in all seriousness -- QuickBooks does a really good job of hosing merchants (especially ISPs) on their payment processing -- we actually just helped another ISP/WISP pay for a new billing system with the $400 / month we were saving when they switched from QuickBooks Merchant Services to IP Pay -----Original Message----- From: wireless-boun...@wispa.org [mailto:wireless-boun...@wispa.org] On Behalf Of Marlon K. Schafer Sent: Saturday, March 21, 2009 9:52 AM To: WISPA General List Cc: memb...@wispa.org; Odessa Office 509-982-2181 Subject: [WISPA] ISP billing/management software. Hi All, I just got a notice that Quickbooks is going to REQUIRE an upgrade in order to continue to keep sending out bills via email. And we have all of 1 month or so to get it done.... I HATE Intuit and would like to replace them. Here's the work flow in our office. New customer calls in. Fill out signup sheet with all needed customer data. Assign static ip to customer. Enter customer billing info into Quickbooks. Enter all customer data into Access. Enter customer username and pass into RADIUS. Enter customer email account(s) data into email server. Enter customer data into Postini (if they purchase the filtering). Type customer signup sheet info into word doc and store in customer folder. Generate installation work order. Fill out check list showing what steps have been completed. This has worked nicely in the past and "only" takes about 30 minutes to accomplish. But now we're growing too fast and have gotten too big to maintain this. Between tech support calls etc. the office manager is having to bring in extra help. It's only a day per week and it's good for there to be two people there at least part of the time. No one should work alone all of the time. Plus, if she wants to take some time off she will have someone trained in the basics so we'll likely need to keep some extra help around no matter what. This mechanism also gives us a lot of double checks, redundant data points etc. With Access and Quickbooks we can run a very nice mix of reports etc. We do NOT have a customer trouble ticket mechanism other than the file on them. We don't track customers on a per call basis. That's not too bad because we're still small enough that we can normally remember problem customers. This would probably be a good time to change everything though. In my perfect world, I'd have a billing system (that handles all of the taxes for different communities etc.), trouble ticketing, auto server configuration AND deconfig. I'd want good reporting capabilities. I've looked at some of the commercial systems out there, but at $1 or more per month per sub for a full blown system I'd rather keep putting that money into the local labor pool. Freeside looks pretty good but I don't do programming or server admin work in-house. I don't mind hiring someone to set it all up etc. and to take care of the server. But it has to be an affordable solution too. What are people using? Do you like it? If you had it to do all over again, what would you do? Vendors please feel free to hit me up. marlon 509.988.0260 Or talk to Apryl in the office 509.982.2181, she'll know more about what she does day in and day out. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WISPA Wants You! 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