How to Use the Company and Client CRM Database - (2024)

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In this video we're going to show you how to use the Company Data and Client Data CRM database that's built into the Proposal Pack Wizard. That is good for storing information about people in your company, clients, or areas that you want to use to preload your projects with more efficiently so you don't have to retype the same information multiple times. So every time you go and create a document project and you are picking your chapters and so on.

You can fill in the Company Data and Client Data screens. Now that where the Wizard has set up whatever information you entered in the initial setup screen will be your default Company Data. So if you set up these values in the initial setup screen it'll be populated here.

Now you can edit these using Edit Tag Labels and Defaults. That will edit what the Wizard database has for its defaults for every future project for your Company Data. Now this drop down here we've set up multiple records in the Company Data database and we'll show you where that is in the Preferences in a moment.

And that lets you have multiple preset lists of information that you can load in. So say in this example you know if you have multiple people in your company who may be writing proposals you can set them each up in the database and have their name, address, title and so on be automatically populated when you select them from the drop–down for each project. Same thing with the Client Data.

Now normally the Client Data database will not be automatically populated, there'll be some defaults here you can set in the Preferences. Now we've set a few records in the Client Database and this is for say if you have multiple regions or cities, counties or so on. States that you want to set up with pre–loaded information so you don't have to retype things like the city name, state, zip code, the default area codes and so on.

You can see how as we select these records it will just load whatever we put into the database. Now this is also good for say if you have clients that you're going to create multiple documents for. Maybe you do lots of projects for a particular client and you just want to preload their information in the database, that works as well.

Now every time we create a new Document Project and create a document that client information gets saved into the database. You can select it from this drop–down for a future project. So say, for example, we'll fill this in for a fictional client.

Okay, so we've filled out a fictional client here for this bit of our project. I'll save that. Generated a little document for this client.

Now this isn't really important for the purposes of the demo but you'll see how that clients name and address is put into the document in various places like the Cover Letter, the Title Page and the Back Page and so on. So this is where our Company Data goes into. Usually on the Title Page is where our Company Data and Client Data names and addresses, titles go.

Whatever we put into the Client Data project name will go here. If we in the future come back create new projects and we need to create a new document for the same client you'll see that client is already in the database. We can select it and load it.

Now I'll show you where in the Wizard you actually set all of this up and configure the settings. So as you're saving projects and creating projects that's when the Wizard is adding new records into the database for you. And in the Wizard Preferences down here is where you can configure things.

Update the records and so on. Just come to the Data and Display tab. Click the first button here at Company and Client Database and you'll have all the options you need to get in and configure all the individual records.

Using these manage buttons and you can configure how the records are used by default up here. So say if you want to speed up your data entry a little bit and automatically have every single project preloaded with a certain set of data you just pick the record you want. So say if Joel in this case is the person who going to be writing the bulk of the proposals.

You want to just default them. You just select their record and you don't have to then select it from every single project you create. Same thing for the Client Database.

You probably wouldn't be selecting a specific client as your default but what if you set up some records here for local areas that you do most your business you want to just preload data from. If most of your work is from one particular city you can just pick one of your records to preload a little bit of data from for every future project. And you'll see these are based off what we call the nicknames.

That's the most common way you're going to use the Populate From in the Client Database. Now you can turn off these databases as well if you don't want them to show up in the project screen. If you want to only show nicknames, which are basically the only way nicknames get created is if you manually add a nickname, so that way for example if you're creating lots of projects.

If you don't want to see that whole list of clients from the drop–down in the Client Data screen every time, you only want to see the ones that you've set specific nicknames for you can check this box here. That just helps you tailor what you see on the project screens. Now to edit individual records.

So to manage your databases, add records, update, delete and so on just click these buttons. So we start off with a blank screen we can just type anything we want in here and add a new record. Or we can pick one that we've already pre created.

We can make an update, we can change settings and then click the update. We can remove one of these records and so on. The nicknames will start out being blank so if we want to set a the nickname database for individual people or areas, locations and so on you can set nicknames.

Once you've set a nickname the nickname is what will display in the drop–down list. If you do not set a nickname it will use the first name, last name, company. Now the databases also work off of first name, last name, company name as the unique identifiers.

A combination of those three you know it's a unique record so it won't add it to the database again if you're creating a new project with the same first name, last name, company name. The same thing over here, we want to manage the Client Database it's exactly the same screen just a different list of records. You can see that Bellevue, Redmond, Seattle.

These are locations we've set up with just a small amount of information. It is to preload new records from and we see we've set a nickname since we're not using the first name, and last name, and company name. So you either have to have a nickname set or first name, last name, company.

Whatever you type in is what's going to get loaded in but there's a couple special strings. DEFAULT just the word DEFAULT that will make the Wizard ignore that field for the record and it will retain whatever the default is at the highest level of the Preferences settings for your tags. So for example that's a good way to prevent this database from overwriting something you have at the higher level in the Wizards company database.

And you can also use the word BLANK for example. And that will cause the Wizard to completely remove the tags in the database replace it with a completely blank string. So say if you really never use Address #2, Address #3 and you don't want to have to manually remove the Address #2, Address #3 tags from the final created proposal you can just put the word BLANK in here.

And that will basically remove it completely from the assembled proposals. Now the high–level defaults are stored in the Data and Display tab in the Edit Mail Merge Fields. So you'll see the defaults over here.

This is where we store in the Wizard those values you entered in the very first setup screen when you first ran the Wizard and it asked you some questions to answer. It asks you to give your name and address information. That's where all of that information was so that way you you can edit that stuff you entered in initially when you first set up the Wizard by going into into the Company 1 and Company 2 tabs here.

And you can also add defaults for all of the contract, company tags, custom tags and so on if you want to set your own defaults. So what we mentioned earlier in that CRM database where you can put the word DEFAULT that will make the Wizard retain whatever defaults you would put in this Preferences screen over here. So that gives you a lot of options for how to configure the databases for how you best want to work.

So that is how you use the Company and Client CRM database. I will illustrate a couple of those custom settings. Now that we have a little extra data in here we're just going to Data and Display > Edit Company and Client Database.

So let's say we want Joel to always be the person whose record gets used in new projects and for the client database we want to hide all the individual client records and only show the nicknames. So we'll just check that. So we've made two customizations here.

Now when we add a new project go to the Company Data you'll see Joel's record was automatically loaded. And we can override that by clicking the drop down. And for the Client Data we only see the nicknamed records so as we add more and more projects (10, 20, 100 projects) that list is only going to show the nicknamed ones and won't get cluttered up with all of our individual records.

Now say if you do have out of your many, many records for your clients a handful that you want to be able to select from to reload because you know you're going to be creating multiple documents for them. Just go find those records in the database and in the Preferences add a nickname for them. And then only those ones will show up.

If you want everything to show up just don't check the nicknames checkbox. So that is how you use the Company and Client CRM Database in the Wizard.