Be the guru. Be the one who brings technological innovation to the small business operator who is neck deep in trying to run his company, manage his employees, and survive in the midst of a severe economic crunch. Forget expensive, complicated (never-to-be-used) solutions that only reinforce the stereotype of software being a waste of time and money and consultants being too expensive and out of touch with life in the trenches.
The solution has to be inexpensive, hugely practical, and very easy to use. And it has to deliver a lot of value - tangible, bottom-line type value.
If you have not seen Qvinci yet, read this independent review by Wayne Kawamoto for Small Business Computing.
[Your clients will appreciate your bringing Qvinci to their attention. We have some gurus who are forecasting a 25% or better increase in consulting business from deploying Qvinci to their client bases. They also believe that Qvinci will help them pull in new clients, in some cases dramatically so.]
Wayne Kawamoto
When you want to view your business from every conceivable angle Qvinci Software's set of powerful tools lets evaluate your business in just about every way possible.
Something of a cross between a data aggregator that culls and combines data and a charting and data visualization program, Qvinci seamlessly mines data from QuickBooks and Excel, processes it, and displays the results in charts that depict financial and operational data and trends. Going a step further, the program offers projection tools to analyze historical business trends and apply them to the future, as well as performance and early warning indicators.
At its most basic level, Qvinci provides a dashboard to help you oversee various aspects of your business. Of course, QuickBooks offers its own means to monitor business trends and present you with alerts, but Qvinci offers far more flexibility to combine and display data in a way that may potentially make more sense to you.
Qvinci easily handles key parameters that would be cumbersome to monitor in QuickBooks. These include average aging, average accounts receivables and accounts payable, and break-even points.
Say Goodbye to Import/Export
Exporting financial and accounting data from QuickBooks into Microsoft Excel for further analysis is nothing new. But the export and import process requires that your evaluation only cover a specific moment — a snapshot in time. This may be fine when analyzing what occurred over a previous quarter or other financial period, but when you want to evaluate a different period or incorporate new data, you unfortunately have to repeat the export and import process.
On the other hand, Qvinci refers directly to the latest data in QuickBooks and constantly updates its charts so that as your business data changes, Qvinci's charts alter themselves accordingly. The integration between Qvinci and Quickbooks is seamless, and there's no clumsy exporting or importing.
Qvinci incorporates QuickBooks and Excel data, but not into the same charts. At press time, the company said that it was working to add this at a later date.
Triggers
Qvinci also offers a powerful tool called a "trigger" that lets you set targets or thresholds for any financial data in a QuickBooks file. You can use triggers to depict targets (high points that you wish to hit) as well as thresholds (low points that you don't wish to fall below).
If it looks like your business won't meet a target or will descend to a threshold, the parameter appears in a different color on your dashboard. Green means OK, while red alerts you to potential problems.
Qvinci displays attractive graphs that you can easily customize. The program depicts financial ratios in a particularly intuitive visual dial format. And if you want to view the underlying Quickbooks data that makes up a graph — for example, the transactions that make up a period's worth of averaged accounts receivables — you can right-click the graph and choose the Drill-down option.
All data appears in a completely customizable dashboard. You control the parameters that appear: charts, triggers, data, and more, as well as where they appear. The program gives you control over the number and size of panes to depict data.
Creating Charts
Building a chart is easy. You first select a location for a chart on a page and click the Place Here icon. Qvinci automatically opens the report generator and lets you choose the type of report (bar, pie, line, torus, etc.) and set the range (monthly, calendar year, etc). From here, you can select the items that you wish to monitor (for example, total income or expense).
After building a chart you can easily customize the header, legend, colors, labels, and more as well as move, rotate, or zoom into your chart. If you want, you can click a Jump Start button that creates a pre-designed dashboard that serves the most common charts and graphs.
Getting Started
The program is straight-forward to install. When you first run Qvinci, it automatically connects to QuickBooks and links with its data file.
The program comes in three flavors. Qvinci OneTouch is designed for businesses with one to three employees. Qvinci Standard provides extra tools beyond those in OneTouch such as the capability to analyze accounts receivables and payables by client and vendor, as well as valuations. It also offers breakeven analysis, drill down capabilities, triggers, and additional ratios.
Qvinci Pro lets you merge multiple Excel files as well as automatically refresh data in charts, and also offers additional ratios and valuations.
In all, if QuickBooks can't quite display or depict your business data the way you want, Qvinci probably can. The program lets you follow just about any business trend you can think of as it happens. If you'd like to take Qvinci for a test run, the company offers a seven-day free trial evaluation for its top-of-the-line Pro version.
Qvinci runs on Windows 2000, XP, and Vista but does not run under Linux or other Unix flavors or Macintosh. Qvinci works with QuickBooks 2003 and higher (including QuickBooks 2009), is compatible with all QuickBooks Premier Editions, and supports U.S., Canadian, English, Australian, and New Zealand versions. Qvinci currently does not support QuickBooks Point of Sale or QuickBooks Online.
Qvinci is sold on a monthly subscription basis that includes all updates and support. Qvinci OneTouch costs $9.99 per month, Qvinci Standard costs $19.99 per month, and Qvinci Pro will set you back $29.99 per month.
Wayne Kawamoto has written more than 800 articles, columns and reviews about computers, new technologies, the Internet and small businesses. Wayne has also published three books about upgrading PCs, building office networks and troubleshooting notebook computers.
Adapted from Small Business Computing
Link: http://www.winplanet.com/article/4520-.htm
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