Personal Blog of Mike Bowden

So we recently finished our demo with Kate McLeod over at Streamtime. We’ve very impressed with the way the applications runs, functions and the features that it has. We really haven’t had a chance to go through it as much as Kate did with us during the demo. So when comparing Streamtime with Studiometry I thought they were very similar in features and function, but now I see that Streamtime has FAR FAR more features and functions than Studiometry and is definitely a winner over Studiometry in my book.

Don’t get me wrong, Studiometry is a great application and it has its place, but that place isn’t with us and what we need in our company right now. Streamtime defiantly is however and we’ll be looking into getting a license or two with them in order to expand our company. Streamtime is probably the end all solution for any design, development or IT firm out there that handles large scale projects or on-going clients. The price tag is a bit steep for us right now, but the price does seem to be justified as you are getting a license for the FileMaker Server and getting client applications to connect to that server.

Streamtime Work Flow

Basically the work flow within Streamtime is very similar to how we do things in our company currently. It simply gives us a central location to store all of that data and information. It’s also a central place to retrieve all of that data, run numerous reports and gather any information we’d like out of the application with a few clicks of a mouse.

I’ll list all of the features that we’ll use within Streamtime below. There are more features than what is listed, this is simply what we’ll use and in the order that we’ll use them.

• Contacts
  • Correspondence
  • Notes
  • Maps
  • Directions
  • Active Quotes
  • Active Orders
  • Work in Progress Jobs
  • Invoices
  • Budget
• Job Quoting
  • Tenders & Orders
  • Tasks
  • Quote Notes
• Job Tracking
  • Job Schedule
  • Tasks
  • Task Schedule
  • Task Gantt
  • Projects
• Job Invoicing
  • Job Details
  • Invoice Summary
  • Quote
  • Time & Materials
  • Purchase Orders
• Live Reporting (This is where it gets fun)
  • Client Contact Report
    A report that shows the details of correspondence items which have an active reminder event found within the date range specified.
  • Client Contact History Report
    This report shows the correspondence history for a contact.
  • Sales by Sales Code
    An invoice sales history returning cost price, sell price and gross profit for each Client Manager by Client Sales Code.
  • Sales by Client
    An invoice sales history by client showing Client Manager, total costs, sales and profit.
  • Client Budget by Month or Year
    A summary report of the clients budget screen in Contacts for a specified client by month or year.
  • Quoted vs Actual vs Invoiced
    This report gives the totals from the Job Invoicing Summary Screen listed by Job showing totals for Quotes, Time and Materials plus PO’s and invoices that have been generated against a job over a date range.
  • Quote vs Actual
    Allowing you to compare quoted Time and Materials and Costs to Actuals and see how effectively your staff are quoting and working on jobs.
  • Timesheet Weekly Summary
    This report shows a staff members timesheet for a seven day period from the start date specified.
  • Timesheet Billable vs Non-billable Summary
    This report shows the total hours and percentage spent by each staff member on billable and non-billable work in the date range searched.
  • Company Profitability Report
    This report shows a break-down of the income for each cost matrix CAT.
  • Client Profitability Report
    This report shows a break-down of the income of each Client by cost matrix CAT.
  • All Client Income Report
    Utilize this report for a summarized understanding of what your client returns.

Overview

As you can see from the above, just for the main features we’ll be using in the application, that it has a massive amount of features and functionality. We feel that it will be a perfect fit for our company and will allow us to budget, quote and manage projects much more reliability than we have been before, not to mention we’ll be able to be more accurate with our estimating and quoting in the future. We’ll have access to all previous jobs and be able to go through and copy items and expenses over as needed to new jobs that require the same type or amount of work.

All in all we feel that the application contains everything that we need in one and will make things much easier for us in the long run. Again the price point is a bit steep for some, but there is still a lot that comes with the application to combat the price. Maybe they would be willing to work with us on the price or give us a discount, who knows. Only time will tell.