New Year Resolutions

So it's that time of year again, where we carry the guilt of our Christmas indulgences but look forward to a bigger better new year and start our list of New Year resolutions. As most people, my resolution is to hit the gym and lose a few pounds... ahhhh that new year gym rush... that will soon dwindle back down to just the diehards! Anyway... how about we hear some of your resolutions? Learn a new Batch function in BookMan, get more familiar with Global Search, or simply change your BookMan browse colors to match your New Years mood. Big or small, BookMan or non BookMan we'd like you to share =)

Check Your Mail...

The 2010 BookMan calendars have been sent...

Contact Tech Support if you don't receive your copy.

Happy New Year!

Directory Resources-BookMan will be closed for the Christmas holiday

at 12:00 Thursday December 24th and re-open on Monday December 28th.

We will also be closed for New Year's day Friday January 1st.

Free Holiday Music Album on iTunes

Apple's offering a free holiday album on iTunes!

Here's the link

Short-Cut Challenge by MaryAnn

How many times a day do you have to go to the Batch menu and select Global Search/Change?

Well it's time to STOP doing that and learn the super easy short-cut. The short-cut to bring up the Global Search/Change window is command (apple)+b. This week I am giving you the challenge to learn this short-cut. Challenge all of your co-workers to learn it too! Good luck!

Batch Menu's by Nicole

Most of you are probably aware of the Batchmenu options but I thought I'd highlight a few of them just to let you know that there are ways in which your live can be made easier. If you're in the Contractsbrowse there is the option toAdd Additional Charge to Marked Contracts. You could use this function to add excessive proof charges for multiple customers at once, or say you've received multiple NSF checks, instead of going into the contracts one by one, you can mark them and then add the fee all at once. Under Listingsbrowse you can Make Duplicate Listings from marked records and under Leads you canAdd Comment to Marked Leads. If you have a minute or two go ahead and look at these menu features... you'll be surprised at what's available!

Backgrounds by Jamie

Edit Report Backgrounds

You can upload backgrounds into your database so that everyone who logs into BookMan can have the background or get the updated background.

When creating the artwork you will need to name it correctly and save it as a PDF. This is something the Tech Support reps at BookMan can do for you (no charge).

To upload the artwork go to the Admin menu and select Edit Report Backgrounds.

You will get the window below:

Use the “+” to add a background or “‐“ to remove/delete a background.

***Note that the backgrounds are updated at login. So when you load new background you will need to quit out of BookMan and log back in to get the prompt to update.

Once you have the updated background you can test the report/statement, etc. by printing to PDF to proof the print placement of the background. Use the backgrounds to spruce up your reports and make them look more professional.

You can have separate pdf backgrounds for each company on your statements. So lets say you publish books under 3 different names. You can have each of the 3 sets of statements print out with their respective logo & info (once you set it up‐BookMan will do all the rest of the work for you). They will print out in sets so all of company ABC will print first so you can stuff them in ABC logo envelopes, then DEF company, etc.

10.3 support - By Chris

Fello Mac Nostalga-ists, (nerds)

Do you remember the first time you checked out Apple's Font Book application? Or the 1st time you hooked up an iChat Video Conference test chat? Well guess what??? Chances are that you did that a very long time ago, 6 years ago to be exact!!! The Mac OS has come a long way since then. OS X 10.3 was released in 2003!

On that note I want to go over the same thing Nicole mentioned in her last post, BookMan's recommended minimum OS is now 10.4.7. If you have a computer that shipped with 10.3.9 it might be time to start looking into a replacement for that too. Computers don't last forever sadly!

We just want to make sure everyone's aware of this supported O.S. change so you can plan your 2010 budgets accordingly!


Have a good week! - Chris

1st Annual Cookie/Treat Exchange...by MaryAnn

It's December (crazy!) which means it's time to start your holiday baking. To help you come up with a yummy new recipe (probably more to help me but you'll benefit too!), we are going to have a cookie/treat exchange. I wish we could do this in person so we could sample everyone's treats. Since that isn't possible, we are going to do a little recipe swap through this blog.

Here's what we need you to do:

1st: Tell your co-workers about our blog. The more recipes we get the better.

2nd: Enter your recipe in the comment section of this post or if your recipe is super long email it to maryann@drbookman.com.

3rd: Let us know what recipes you try and how you like them

Here is my favorite holiday cookie recipe for Homemade Oreo's! They are super easy and super good.

Ingredients:

*Devils Food Cake Mix

*2 eggs

*1/2 cup oil

Mix all ingredients together. Bake at 350 for 8-10 minutes. Do not over bake! Cool completely. Once the cookies have cooled, frost them with vanilla frosting (I just buy frosting from the store.)

Happy Baking!

Update Your OS

Doesn't it always seem that as soon as you update any one of your electronics a newer update becomes available? You go back and forth deciding if it's worth it because for the most part you can get along without it. Well this seems to be the case with many BookMan users and unfortunately the day has come where it is strongly suggested to update your OS to at least 10.4.7 Over the past month or so we've gotten a lot of calls about BookMan freezing or getting kicked out unexpectedly along with numerous other problems and every time we've narrowed it down to the OS. If you are using anything under 10.4.7 you can now expect to run into some of these problems and the only solution is to update. Think of it this way... you'll have less headache in the long run and complete uninterrupted access to all of BookMan's wonderful features!

Last Menu by Jamie

Have you ever been just working away, then distracted and then have tried to go back to what you were doing only to forget what you have already done?

With the Last menu option in BookMan you can now retrace up to the last 20 things that you worked on. For example, if you were working in leads, BookMan will show you the L# you were on as well as the Area, Packet # & Name of the lead. If you visited the contracts browse, BookMan will show you the C#, the Book the contract is keyed into and the Published Name.
Using this option is definitely easier than rifling through a bunch of scrap paper notes, stacks of paper on your desk or having to rely on memory.

I lost my marks! Aargh!

Have you ever felt this way? Carefully crafting a marked record set over the course of hours or days and then something happens and your marked record set is... gone!

Well, we can't always save you from that, but things may be better than you realize.

Some time ago we quietly updated the marks menu to allow for saving and retrieving additional marked record sets. At that time we also added the following feature to the marks menu:

This option will restore the last marked record set BookMan knows about since marks have changed. For example, if you had a bunch of marked contracts and accidentally ran "Convert Marks to it's book" and really meant to do "convert marks to it's listings", you can choose the restore last marks option and get your contract marks back! Enjoy!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Have a fantastic Thanksgiving! Don't forget our office is closed Thursday and Friday for the holiday. Happy eating!

Milestones by Jame

Have you set your milestones lately?

There are two milestones that you really should pay attention to once in awhile... Stop Billing & Stop Commissions. If you have some older books in your system that you aren't billing anymore and you no longer are paying commission on, you really should mark your completion dates. If you mark these two milestones as "complete" your Statement Prep and your Commission Report will run much, much faster. ;)

A season for giving thanks, by Melissa

Next Thursday is Thanksgiving day here in the U.S. of A. It is one of my favorite holidays. Who doesn't like a holiday focused on being grateful for the blessings in your life and really good food?

A few things that I am grateful for this season (the frivolous and the serious):

- I feel as though it's probably a given, but I'm grateful for an amazing family and fabulous friends.

- A great job. Having a job in and of itself. It's really nice to work for a company where you enjoy the people you work with and for. Where everyone cares about the work they do, and where the owner cares about his employees, customers, and product.

- Tickets to the Elton John/Billy Joel concert tomorrow night! WOOT! *super excited*

And last, but not least, I have a love in my heart for In 'n' Out Burger. I realize it's just a burger, fries, and shake. There may be nothing spectacular about it, but I think it is so so tasty. Today a new location opened in Orem, UT.

Just 5 minutes away from the office!!! :) Can life get any better?? I submit that it cannot!

We may or may not have gone there for lunch today.....

What are you thankful for?

So over the past few weeks I've had the same call about being able to send a reminder to customers that have fallen behind on their payments before they actually get sent to collections. Each time I've recommended the Billing Reminder report and each time that the customer viewed it and realized what it did they were amazed and completely unaware that it even existed. This report is not only used to remind customers of past due balances, it can also be used to remind your customers that if they pay in full they will receive a cash discount. This is a creative little way to get your accounts PIF (always nice right?) and your customers are more likely to do it because they are also benefitting! Basically this is a very simple way of getting the money owed to you other than sending statements or having to pay a percentage to a collection agency. There are background images required to utilize this report but we can help you get that set up at no charge, just call one of your BookMan tech support reps and we'll be happy to assist you =)

Marking Unsold Contracts

One of the questions we often get asked is if there is a way to mark the contracts in a book that haven't been sold yet. In the past we would have walked you through running a Global search to mark all of the unsold contracts. Recently we added an option to the Sold/Not Sold So Far report to make this process easier. You now have the option on that report to Mark Contracts. So next time you need to mark the unsold contracts, try running the Not Sold So Far report and selecting the Mark Contracts option.

Important Apple Update! By Chris

One week ago Apple released 10.6.2. This update has one very important Rosetta fix for users of Filemaker 8, Microsoft Office 2004, or any other older PPC application that may have caused you to automatically logout of your user. If you're on OS X 10.6 update asap!

Santa Claus is comming to town soon...(by Jamie)

Ok, I am a shopper... I know you all think that BookMan is my LIFE. But, while I do love BookMan, my second love is shopping. I thought I would pass along some fun web sites and ideas for Christmas. The earlier you get your shopping done the more thoughtful you can be about your gift and the more relaxed your Christmas will be. Come on its a WIN WIN!

1. For that grandparent that has EVERYTHING. I say get them a snuggie. No I am not kidding. They are amazing and grandparents are always cold. They will love that you gave them hands-free warmth. I'm getting one for the grandparents in my family this year.

https://www.getsnuggie.com/flare/next?tag=os|sm|go|tm

Corn bags are so great too. I got my grandma one last year and she still tells me how much she loves it!!

http://www.corn-bags.com/


2. For your better half. I'm talking about the special lady in your life. I have LOTS of suggestions here (hint hint Carson if you are reading).

The first on my list would be Sephora. This web site has EVERY THING she will love. The great thing is you can get a gift certificate and let them choose. The best gift on this entire site (in my opinion) is the Fragrance Sampler, 12 samples of great fragrances along with a voucher for a full sized bottle of any one of the samples.

http://sephora.com/

LUSH. This store has amazing bath bombs. I love them. Every single one of them smell so great and make your skin soft as EVER. You can't go wrong.

http://www.lushusa.com/shop

Who doesn't love jewelry?

http://www.theprettypeacock.com/categories/see-everything.html?limit=all


3. For the person who is hard to buy for these are some great sites to check out.

http://www.uncommongoods.com/

http://www.vat19.com/


4. And most importantly.... for the geek in your life:

http://www.thinkgeek.com/?source=google_branded&cpg=ogb1

A Recipe, A Website and Some Bling! by MaryAnn

This weekend Jamie and I went to a local boutique called Bijou Market. We found some great stuff! A local bakery called the Sweet Tooth Fairy (http://www.thesweettoothfairy.com/) was there sampling their amazing Cake Bites (also called Cake Balls). I immediately fell in love with them. If you ever come to town you need to try them. If you won't be coming to town anytime soon, you have two great options. The Sweet Tooth Fairy delivers. Go to their website listed above and check it out. If you don't want to spend the money on shipping, here is a link to a similar recipe. I have never tried this recipe but it seems pretty easy. http://allrecipes.com/recipe/cake-balls/detail.aspx

We also found some fantastic homemade jewelry made by Tom Jewelry Design. Check out her website (http://www.etsy.com/shop/tomdesign). She sold out of everything this weekend at the boutique so bookmark her page and check back in a few days to see her fun jewelry. She had rings (my new ring is pictured), earrings and necklaces in tons of fun bright colors and designs. Jamie and I may or may not have been involved in her selling out of all her jewelry.

This week I was also introduced to a fun new website by my friend Clayton. Check it out at http://springwise.com/weekly/2009-11-05.htm. Springwise is a cool website about new business ideas spotted around the world. There are some very clever and creative ideas.

Nicoles Stress Reliever

I know I'm not the only one who has stressful days... so just for a little bit of humor and fun take a minute or two to Yearbook Yourself at www.yearbookyourself.com. This website has images of clothing trends, hairstyle trends & other high school related things starting from the 1950's until 2000 that you can post your own picture to. All you have to do is find a picture of yourself and and place it. It even allows for you to tilt, crop and zoom so you can make the picture as authentic as possible. Go ahead and give it a try and the first 5 people who are brave enough to send their yearbook picture to one of our BookMan tech support reps will get a BookMan trinket!

Programmer

Uh oh, the programmers can post too!

BookMan... what you may not know!

There are some great new features now available in BookMan version 2.8.

I am going to tell you tell you my 3 favorites:

1. You can now tell why a contract isn't paying commission! We added a new "commission status" to the contract menu that makes it so easy to tell why its not paying (or if its ready to pay).

2. Another great addition is the User Activity Report. This report is a good way to see how your contract entry keyers are doing. How many contracts they key & the accuracy of the contracts keyed. You can run this for your part time employees and your full time employees.

3. My third pick is the ability to sort your marks. All of you are hopefully already enjoying the "Show Marked Records Only" option.... but NOW you can sort your marks too!!! The new sort feature works in all the browse windows.

Fridays with Chris - TGIF

Mac / PC News:

So Microsoft released Windows 7 in October... It's faster, more stable and MS rewrote all the stuff people were hating in Vista. I have one PC and one Mac at home. Of course I upgraded my PC ASAP, to be rid of Vista forever! This is MS's best modern operating system to date for sure. But Microsoft still has a lot of room for improvement in ease of use & just overall understanding of the end user. And I really don't like paying MS $100+ for a OS release that just fixes everyone's complaints with with the last version. (Eric would like me to remind everyone that Snow Leopard is $29!) Everyone seems to have their own take on Mac vs. PC. Use whatever OS you like, but for me OS X is still the best choice for everything but computer games. Hopefully more and more casual computer users will continue to migrate to Macs, and those users will be happy they switched! Snow Leopard keeps adding to the speed and refinement of OS X, keeping the Mac one step ahead of Microsoft and their Windows 7 release (Vista Service Pack 1).

Checkout the new iMacs! These new models, announced in October, are Apple's best value if you need a Mac with a lot of CPU power. I'm not a huge fan of the new keyboard (no number pad!? what were you thinking Apple?) or the new magic mouse. But those can be replaced for cheap. :)

Favorite Utah Celeb:

BookMan would like to give props to their favorite local celebrity, Gary Coleman! Keep on, keepin' on Gary....

Nice Things To Know, by Melissa

At Work:

Don't like going back and forth between your mouse and keyboard?  Navigate between browse windows by using short keys.  Under the file menu, each browse window has a letter next to it.

Hold down the Option(Alt) and Command(apple) keys and then the letter corresponding with the browse window and BookMan will open or jump to that browse window.

For your entertainment:

I love live performance in most of it's forms.  :)  Last night's live performance of choice was a musical comedy murder mystery called Curtains.  If you happen to be in the Salt Lake area between now and November 21st.  I highly recommend it.  Lots of laughs.  Good times. 

MaryAnn's Favorite Things!

Favorite BookMan Shortcut:
Clearing Marks in BookMan












Are you tired of going to the Marks menu every time you need to clear your marks? Quit going to the Marks menu and learn the short cut! The short cut is option+command (apple)+semi colon (;). Try it right now....seriously...hurry before you forget...


Favorite Cooking Website:
www.topsecretrecipes.com/
Check out this website for recipes from your favorite restaurants. This week's secret recipe is the Soup Nazi's Mexican Chicken Chili. The secret recipes are only free for a limited amount of time so check it out soon.

Favorite Youtube Video:


This video is old so you have probably seen it, but who doesn't need a good laugh on a Wednesday. Poor lady!

Favorite Cupcake Store:












sprinkles.com

I am normally not a cupcake fan BUT, I am in love with these cupcakes! If you have a store near you, you need to go eat one for me! The frosting is amazing!!! Try the Black and White or Vanilla Milk Chocolate or....

Favorite Blog I Follow:

nieniedialogues.com/

Amazing blog about a lady who survived a plane crash. She was on Oprah recently. Read her post from the past year to get her full story.

Favorite BookMan Customer:

To be decided....chocolate might make you my favorite...hint hint!

What are your favorite things? Leave us a comment.

Happy Halloween

Something COOL for YOU:

REDUCE YOUR BOOKMAN PREMIUM SUPPORT COST FOREVER!!

Give us a referral (name, phone number, company name) AND assist us in signing a new client whether on the phone or meeting in person and receive UP TO 1/3 OFF* of your monthly premium support PERMANENTLY.* YES, we're serious. This is a fantastic opportunity to reduce your payables. Don't miss out!

The person in your company who refers will also receive an iPod Touch as our 'Thank You!'.

Send referrals to lee@drbookman.com or to darin@drbookman.com or give us a call at 877.266.5626.

*The percentage of incentive depends on how much you're assisting in the signing, the size of the business and the continuation of business with the new customer.

We are really excited to start our official BookMan blog!!!

Each week we will feature something new about BookMan that you may not know. Here you will will not only get cool tips and tricks but, keep up-to-date on all of the new features!

Along the way, we will have some fun contests, pictures, and overall give you a fun way to get to know each and every one of our employees.

(Not only that but, we will have some fun non-work related things as well.)

Feel free to share your feedback!!!