Q What currencies does Amphis - Customer support ?

A Amphis - Customer has been designed to support whatever currency your PC regional settings are configured to use. So, for example, it supports dollars $, euros €, pounds sterling £ etc, and if your regional settings are set to use eg dollars, then Amphis - Customer will use dollars.

When you enter your business name as part of the Setup it will show you the current regional settings for your PC so you can check that the currency is set correctly.

It will also show you the regional language setting though this is only used to suggest the appropriate sales taxes and to set the appropriate date format.

You may notice that some of the screen shots use different currencies and date formats depending on the configuration of the PC they were generated from.

Q My accountant needs my records in Sage. Can I export Amphis Customer records in Sage format ?

A Yes, in v2.4 due to be released 16th October 2008 you will be able to export Amphis Customer records in Sage format .csv files which you can then import into Sage.

Q How can I re-download an old version of Amphis - Customer ?

A You can click on the following links to download earlier versions of Amphis - Customer.

Amphis Customer v1.0

Amphis Customer v1.1.2

Amphis Customer v1.1.6

Amphis Customer v2.0.4

Q How do I get my license string ?

A First you need to click on the Buy Now image on the Amphis Customer homepage and purchase a license.

Then click on the Get License String button on the Amphis Customer evaluation form to send us an email containing your serial number.



Then we will return your license string to you.

To register the license, click Register License, enter the license string and click Register.

Q How can I purchase multiple licenses so I can share customer data across multiple PCs ?

A Click on the Buy Now image on the Amphis Customer homepage and then click on the underlined Amphis - Customer product name.



This will show you the available options eg for purchasing 3 licenses or 5 licenses.

Q Can I import contacts into Amphis - Customer from Microsoft Outlook ?

A Yes, you can import contacts into Amphis - Customer from Microsoft Outlook. Select the Customer->Import Contacts From Outlook menu and follow the instructions.



If you follow the instructions, you will export the contacts from Outlook to a Microsoft Excel (.xls) file eg contacts.xls and then import the contacts into Amphis - Customer from the .xls file.

Q Can I import customers into Amphis - Customer from a spreadsheet ?

A Yes, you can easily import customers into Amphis - Customer from a spreadsheet. From version v2.2, Amphis Customer can import customers from Excel spreadsheet .xls files or Comma Separated .csv files.

Select the Customer->Import Customers From Spreadsheet menu and follow the instructions.



It doesn't matter what column names you have used in the spreadsheet, you can select which spreadsheet columns map to the database fields. You can also map any additional columns in your spreadsheet to Custom fields in Amphis Customer so that they appear on the Custom tab.



You don't need to have all the columns in the spreadsheet, you just need a company name or last or first name to identify the customer.

Q Can I drag and drop emails from Outlook into Amphis - Customer ?

A Yes, you can drag and drop an email from Outlook onto the main Amphis Customer form and it will automatically display the corresponding customer details with the email added to the customer history. If there is no matching customer record you will be prompted to enter a few details for the new customer record to be created.

You can also drag and drop emails from Outlook onto the Customer History tab of Amphis Customer.

If you send emails or reply to emails within Amphis Customer they are automatically added to the Customer History.

Q Can I mail merge to print a standard letter for all my customers or a selected group of customers ?

A Yes, from the Mail Merge menu option you can select a group of customers and a document to generate. At the click of a button you can mail merge and print the document for each customer in the selected group. You can also print the address labels.

You can add customers to groups manually, or you can use pre-defined groups eg All Customers, Paying Customers, Top 100 Spenders etc. From some of the built-in reports eg Customers with a Specific Status you can also add all the customers to a group. This means you can assign customers a user-defined Customer Status and then add all customers with that status to a group. Effectively this means you can mail merge for a particular customer status as well as being able to mail merge to all customers within a group.

To create a document to mail merge, select the Tools->Maintain Templates menu option. The Mail Merge uses the first template in the list for each Document Type. To add a new document to the Mail Merge list, click Create New Document Type... to create a new type eg Special Offer. Then select the new type from the dropdown list. This will create a Word document template.doc. Click Edit Template to edit the template.

Now when you select the Groups->Mail Merge menu option the new Special Offer document type is listed. If you mail merge using Special Offer it will use the template.doc file you just edited.

If you just want to create the document for one or a few customers, you can go to the Customer History tab for each customer, select the document type and click Create Document. This creates the document and adds it to the customer history. If there is more than one template for a Document Type you can select which template to use.

Q How can I customize Amphis - Customer to store some data specific to my business ?

A You can specify what fields to display and store on the Custom tab in the customer details page. Go to Options->Custom Fields and you can specify what to call the Custom tab, whether or not to display it, and the names of the fields you want to store. For each of the customizable fields you can specify whether to display it or not. Here is an example. (In v2 there are now more than 30 customizable fields).



When you display the Custom tab, it displays as follows. The tab name has changed to Personal. The title on the Personal tab is now Personal Data. The fields that were ticked are all displayed with the labels specified.

Q How can I add my company logo and address etc to the documents created ?

A The templates are Word documents and you can change the wording and the font etc to suit your requirements.

You can create new templates and edit existing templates from the Tools->Maintain Templates menu option.

Also, wherever you generate a document from a template you will see two buttons like this.



There is a short video example here (the example is a UK example but it works exactly the same for all currencies)

If you click Edit Template, the template will be opened in Word so that you can edit it eg



There are special tags which are replaced with the specific customer details when a document is created, but there are also free text areas which you can customize as you please. Anything that isn't within special tags can be edited. For example you can change "We look forward to hearing from you".

If you don't want to display something that is generated by the special tags you can just delete the special tag. For example, if you don't want to display the customer id you can simply delete the customer id tag and the text that goes with it, and the customer id will not be displayed on documents generated from that template.

If you click Restore Original, the original template is restored.

Itemised Quote and Invoice templates also contain a table that is used to generate the price details specific to the quote or invoice. The right hand column of the table is fixed width as it will be used to display the price. You can customize the table to your requirements but it will need to contain 2 rows and the same number of columns as the original table, and we recommend making the last column fixed width so the price doesn't get wrapped.

Q I want to change the wording of the documents generated - how can I edit the templates ?

A The templates are Word documents and you can change the wording and the font etc to suit your requirements.

You can create new templates and edit existing templates from the Tools->Maintain Templates menu option.

Also, wherever you generate a document from a template you will see two buttons like this.



There is a short video example here (the example is a UK example but it works exactly the same for all currencies)

If you click Edit Template, the template will be opened in Word so that you can edit it eg



There are special tags which are replaced with the specific customer details when a document is created, but there are also free text areas which you can customize as you please. Anything that isn't within special tags can be edited. For example you can change "We look forward to hearing from you".

If you don't want to display something that is generated by the special tags you can just delete the special tag. For example, if you don't want to display the customer id you can simply delete the customer id tag and the text that goes with it, and the customer id will not be displayed on documents generated from that template.

If you click Restore Original, the original template is restored.

Itemised Quote and Invoice templates also contain a table that is used to generate the price details specific to the quote or invoice. The right hand column of the table is fixed width as it will be used to display the price. You can customize the table to your requirements but it will need to contain 2 rows and the same number of columns as the original table, and we recommend making the last column fixed width so the price doesn't get wrapped.

Q What additional fields can I add to the templates ?

A The following special tags can be added to the templates :-



         customer id: <!customerid!>

         title: <!title!>

         name: <!name!>

         company name: <!companyname!>

         position: <!position!>

         address: <!address!>

         address: <!addressconcat!> (this is the address all on one line)

         deliveryaddress: <!deliveryaddressconcat!> (this is the delivery address all on one line)

         documentid: <!documentid!>

         lastname: <!lastname!>

         firstname: <!firstname!>

         home telephone: <!hometel!>

         work telephone: <!worktel!>

         personal mobile/cell: <!mobiletelpersonal!>

         work mobile/cell: <!mobiletelwork!>

(you can change the text to the left of the special tags, but the text within the tags cannot be changed)



You can also add the custom fields to the templates eg



         Alarm Type: <!custom1!>

         Alarm Make: <!custom2!>

         Alarm Model: <!custom3!>

         When fitted: <!custom4!>

         etc

Of course, the text you display can be whatever is relevant to the custom fields you created specific to your business.

Q How can I create custom reports ?

A Amphis Customer comes with a number of built-in reports but you can also define your own reports.

Some of the built-in reports include :-

         Customers with outstanding invoices

         Overdue accounts

         Monthly sales totals

         Quotes created in the last 30 days

         Invoices created in the last 30 days

         Appointments in the last 30 days

         Site visits in the last 30 days

         Appointments due in the next 7 days

         Tasks due in the next 7 days

         etc

We welcome any suggestions for reports we could add to the list.

We realise that businesses often need their own specific reports and so from v2.3 you can now specify your own reports.

This is quite an advanced topic and requires an understanding of the database tables involved. Often the easiest way to understand this is to use examples and so we have listed below some example reports. Some of these are included in Amphis Customer. Others are just examples you may be able to tailor for your own use.

If there is a particular report you require, please click here to email customer support. We can supply you (for free) with the SQL commands you need to create the custom report.

To create a custom report you just need to access Reports->Custom Report Builder and then click Create New Report. This creates a new report with some example SQL commands. You can replace the SQL commands with any of the examples below and click Save to add the report to your copy of Amphis Customer. The report will then appear on the Reports->My Custom Reports menu.

In the examples below, the titles are in bold. Everything else is the SQL commands you need to run the report.

Quotes Created in the Last 30 Days select displayid as CustomerId, CompanyName as [Company Name], LastName as [Last Name],FirstName as [First Name], DocumentNumber as [Quote Id], left(displaydate,10) as [Created Date], descr as Description, Total FROM customer c INNER JOIN history h ON c.customerid=h.customerid WHERE what='quote' AND h.displaydate > DATE()-30 ORDER BY displaydate

Customer Telephone Numbers select displayid as CustomerId, CompanyName as [Company Name], ct.lookupvalue as [Title], LastName as [Last Name],FirstName as [First Name], worktel as [Work Tel], hometel as [Home Tel], mobiletelwork as [Work Mobile/Cell], mobiletelpersonal as [Personal Mobile/Cell] from customer c INNER JOIN lookup_contacttitle ct on c.titleId = ct.lookupkey

Customers in Group 'group1' select displayid as CustomerId, CompanyName as [Company Name], LastName as [Last name],FirstName as [First Name] from customer c , groupcustomer gc , [group] g where c.customerid=gc.customerid and g.id=gc.groupid and g.groupname='group1'

Invoices Created in the Last 7 Days select displayid as CustomerId, CompanyName as [Company Name], LastName as [Last Name],FirstName as [First Name], DocumentNumber as [Invoice Id], left(displaydate,10) as [Created Date], descr as Description, Total FROM customer c INNER JOIN history h ON c.customerid=h.customerid WHERE what='invoice' AND h.displaydate > DATE()-7 ORDER BY displaydate

All Customers With Status 'Sales Lead' select displayid as CustomerId, CompanyName as [Company Name], LastName as [Last name],FirstName as [First Name], worktel as [Work Telephone], emailwork as Email from customer c inner join lookup_customerstatus s on c.customerstatusid = s.lookupkey where s.lookupvalue='sales lead'

Q How can I change the wording of the email templates ?

A You can create new email templates and edit existing email templates from the Tools->Maintain Templates menu option. Just select the Email or Email Reply document type to see the available email templates.

Q Can I change where the document and templates are stored ?

A Yes, you can change where the documents, templates, reports and exports are stored by updating the file

    Amphis Customer.exe.config

in C:\Program Files\Amphis Software\Amphis Customer v2.4 (or whichever version you are using)

the values for templatesFolder etc are blank by default but if you enter something like c:\templates and move the templates to the c:\templates folder then it will look in the c:\templates folder. You will need to restart the application for the change to take effect.

Q How can I create a new history entry type eg Conference Call ?

A You can create a new history entry type from the Tools-> Maintain Templates menu. JUst click Create New History Entry Type and enter a name. When you go to the Customer History tab for a customer you will be able to create a history entry of the new type you have created.

Q How can I create a new document type eg Special Offer ?

A You can create a new document type from the Tools-> Maintain Templates menu. Just click Create New Document Type and enter a name for the new type. Then select the new type from the dropdown list and you will see that a template called template.doc has been created for you. Select the template and click Edit Template to edit the new template in Word to add the wording, fonts, headers and footers etc.

Q How can I make the addresses print more centrally on the labels ?

A If your addresses are printing not quite centrally on the labels, you can adjust the top and left margins. To do this you need to create a custom label in Microsoft Word and then use that label in Amphis - Customer.

On the Envelopes and Labels form in Microsoft Word (this is where you would normally print labels from Microsoft Word), click Options, select your label type and then click New Label.... This creates a new custom label.

On the Label Details form you can now edit the Top margin and Side margin. If your addresses appear too far to the left and too high on the label, increase the Top margin and Side margin. Change the label name to something like "My Label".

Now you just need to add the new label name to the "custom.txt" file in the Amphis - Customer installation folder which by default is "C:\Program Files\Amphis Software\Amphis Customer".

Now if you go to the Label Defaults form, you can choose the Label product Custom and then select your custom label My Label from the list to use your new custom label.

If the address still doesn't appear as you want it, you can edit your custom label again in Microsoft Word until you are happy with it.

Q Which files should I backup ?

A It is important that you backup at least the customer database, templates and customer files at least once per day, and store the backup somewhere safe away from your computer, preferably in a different building.

Otherwise if your computer is stolen or a virus formats your hard disk you will lose your customer data.

The customer database is the file customer.mdb

To find where the files are stored, use the Tools->Folders menu eg Tools->Folders->View Documents folder will show you where the Documents are stored. Tools->Folders->View Templates folder will show you where the Templates are stored etc

By default the customer.mdb file is in the folder above the "documents" subfolder. On Windows XP this will be

   C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Amphis Customer

On Windows Vista this will be

   C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Amphis Customer

You may also want to backup any reports you have exported to the "reports" subfolder and any data you have exported to the "exports" subfolder.

In version 2.0 and earlier, these files were stored in C:\Program Files\Amphis Software\Amphis Customer but this is not compatible with Windows Vista and so the files are now stored in User folders.

Q How can I upgrade from v2.0 to v2.2 ?

A To upgrade from v2.0 to v2.2, you need to first of all ensure you have a backup of all the files under c:\program files\amphis software

Then install v2.2 from our web site.

In version 2.0 and earlier, the customer database and document and template files were stored in C:\Program Files\Amphis Software\Amphis Customer but this is not compatible with Windows Vista and so the files are now stored in User folders.

To find where the files are stored in v2.2, use the Tools->Folders menu eg Tools->Folders->View Documents folder will show you where the Documents are stored. Tools->Folders->View Templates folder will show you where the Templates are stored etc

By default the customer.mdb file is in the folder above the "documents" subfolder. On Windows XP this will be

   C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Amphis Customer

On Windows Vista this will be

   C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Amphis Customer

To migrate your existing database and files from v2.0 to v2.2 you just need to replace the v2.2 customer.mdb with your existing v2.0 customer.mdb and copy all the files from your v2.0 documents, templates, exports, and reports folders to the v2.2 folders.

Q How can I share customer details across multiple PCs ?

A To share customer details across multiple PCs, first install Amphis - Customer on all the PCs you need to access the database from.

You need to decide where you are going to store the database and other files that are going to be shared eg the document templates and the customer documents. This needs to be on a central server that all the PCs can access and you need to share a folder on the server so that the client PCs can access it. In the example below the server is called myServer and the folder that has been created is called public. The public folder has been shared so that it can be accessed from the client PCs as \\myServer\public



To share a folder on the server, right-click on it and select Sharing and Security... Click the Share this folder option and click Maximum allowed. Click the Permissions button to check the access permissions. By default users probably only have Read access which is not sufficient so you need to give users Change (Update) access.



You will need to check that the client PCs can update files in the public folder. You could create a simple text file test.txt in the public folder and check that all the client PCs can edit the file in notepad and save the changes in the public folder on the server.

Copy the database customer.mdb from one of the PCs where you installed Amphis - Customer to the public share eg \\myServer\public

On each PC you need to update the Amphis Customer.exe.config file (in c:\program files\amphis software\amphis customer v2.1) so that the connection string points to that central server eg

Data Source=\\myServer\public\customer.mdb

You will also need to copy the templates, documents, exports, and reports folders to the central server from one of the PCs, and update the Amphis Customer.exe.config file on each PC so that the entries point to that central server eg

key="templatesFolder" value="\\myServer\public\templates"

key="documentsFolder" value="\\myServer\public\documents"

key="reportsFolder" value="\\myServer\public\reports"

key="exportsFolder" value="\\myServer\public\exports"

Here is an example .config file set to use the database and folders on the \\myServer\public share



Check that if you browse to the public folder eg \\myServer\public from each of the PCs, that you can see the database and folders like this.



You will need to purchase a separate license for each PC that you use to connect to the central database. You can purchase three licenses for 50% more than the price of one.

You can set up all the client PCs you need as part of the 30 day evaluation.

Note that for more than 10 client PCs we recommend using the free version of SQL Server 2005 (called SQL Server 2005 Express Edition) which you can install from here (we recommend installing the SQL Server 2005 Express Edition (36.5Mb) and the SQL Server Management Studio Express (43.1Mb) )

Also if you have less than 10 client PCs but you experience any performance or network problems then we recommend that you upgrade to SQL Server 2005 Express Edition.

By default, Amphis Customer uses a Microsoft Access database (customer.mdb) but the Microsoft Access technology is not recommended for more than about 12 users, and it is recommended that SQL Server is used instead.

You would need to install SQL Server 2005 Express Edition on the server eg myServer.

Using Access 2007, you can use a wizard to upgrade the customer.mdb file to a SQL Server database and just change the .config files on the client PCs to point to SQL Server instead of the customer.mdb file (see the next FAQ entry on how to do this)

The Amphis Customer license fee includes using SQL Server instead of Microsoft Access.

Please contact customer support if you need help using Amphis - Customer with multiple PCs.

Q Can I use SQL Server to store the customer data ?

A Yes, Amphis - Customer can be used with SQL Server. You need to edit the Amphis Customer.exe.config file to specify the connection string for the SQL Server database. An example SQL Server connection string is given in the Amphis Customer.exe.config file (commented out) and you need to set useSQLServer to true.

Provider=SQLNCLI;Server=.\SQLEXPRESS;Database=customer;Trusted_Connection=yes

You can use the Access 2007 facility to upgrade your Access DB to SQL Server.



Please contact customer support if you need help using Amphis - Customer with SQL Server.

Q I have created an invoice for a customer but I don't think it is ever going to be paid. How can I indicate that in Amphis - Customer ?

A You can mark an invoice as a bad debt by clicking on the Customer Account tab, selecting the invoice and clicking Mark as Bad Debt.



Also, if you have received some of the money for an invoice but there is still some outstanding, you will be prompted when you create the receipt to specify whether you still expect to receive the amount still owing or whether it should be marked as a bad debt.

Q How can I change the default wording of the email when I click Email Attached File to send invoices to customers ?

A The default wording comes from the file emailbody.htm which is in the folder above the Documents folder.



You can edit this file in notepad eg to add your company address and logo etc

Here is an example updated file



which creates emails which look like this

Q Can I use Amphis Customer to keep track of invoices from Suppliers ?

A When you create a customer you can set the customer status to Supplier to indicate that they are a supplier rather than a customer. Then from Reports->Customers with a Specific Status you can easily view all the suppliers.

We suggest that on the Tools->Maintain Templates form, you create a new History Entry Type called Supplier Invoice. Then whenever you receive an invoice from a supplier, create a Supplier Invoice history entry type and enter the details eg price and what the invoice is for.

Then, when you pay the invoice you could just add "- PAID" to the history entry to indicate that the invoice has been paid.



Then from Reports->View Customer History, you can view all Supplier Invoices for a given date range.



and easily see the invoices that have not been paid.



You could even create a custom report that shows all supplier invoices that don't include the word PAID.

select CompanyName, Date, Descr as Invoice from history h, customer c where c.customerid = h.customerid and what="supplier invoice" and descr NOT like '%paid%'

Microsoft .Net Framework

Amphis - Customer requires the Microsoft .Net Framework v2.0 to be installed. This comes with Microsoft Windows Vista but if you use Microsoft Windows XP or an older version of Windows, you might not already have it installed. You can install it from here.

On that web page, just click on the Download button (see screenshot below), then click Save and save the download to your hard disk. Then click Open Folder and double-click on the file dotnetfx.exe to install the software.

 

---

Microsoft Windows Installer

If you see a message that says you need to install a newer version of the Microsoft Windows Installer, you can install it from here.

On that web page, just click Continue (see screenshot below)

 

and then when the button changes to this

 

scroll down until you see these 3 Download buttons

 

and click on the third Download button to download the Windows Installer .exe file.

Then click Save and save the download to your hard disk. Then click Open Folder and double-click on the WindowssInstaller .exe file to install the software.

Microsoft Jet Engine