In Simple Accounting, an activity describes an event or a task carried out by an Employee, which is linked to a Contact. Indirectly then, each Activity may be linked to a Customer and a Vendor. An Activity may also be linked to a Transaction of some kind.
These attributes make Activities very powerful tools. You will use them for Contact Management, but also to help you manage complex Sales Orders, where it is important to document phone calls, neetings, faxes and e-mails which occur during the life cycle of the transaction.
Activities do not exist by themselves. Every activity is created in one of the following screens:
An activity always has a date, so it is always accessible by clicking on the [View Daily Notes & Activities] button for that day in the Calendar. This lets you see what you have done, and have scheduled to do on any given day. If it has a Follow Up Date, it will also appear in the Follow Up Tab of the Calendar or in your Business Reminders for the Follow Up day.
ASSIGNED VS UNASSIGNED
If an activity is associated with a contact then you can also view it in the Contacts browse. In fact, whenever you enter an activity from the Contacts browse, it is automatically assigned to the selected contact. This makes it easy to manage all your activities for a particular contact. (Also, since each contact can in-turn be linked to a customer or vendor, you can also view all the activities for all the contacts assigned to a customer or vendor.)
However, if you enter the Activity through the Calendar, you do not have to assign it to a Contact. An Activity which is not assigned to a Contact will appear in the Calendar, but nowhere in the Contacts Browse.
Any time you enter an Activity through the Sales Order Browse, it will also be viewable through the Contact linked with the Customer on the Sales Order.
SCHEDULED VS UNSCHEDULED
An activity may be either scheduled or unscheduled. The difference is simply that a scheduled activity has a CONTACT TIME and an unscheduled activity does not. Scheduled activities appear chronologically in the middle of the printed daily calendar, while unscheduled activities appear in order of priority at the bottom.
Unscheduled activities (activities without a CONTACT TIME which are marked as Incomplete automatically roll over to the next days calendar if you have AUTOMATIC ROLLOVER enabled in Setup User Options.
Special Buttons
Clone] |
[This key lets you clone an activity, in other words, make a copy of the currently selected activity, including notes. The cloned record START DATE and START TIME are updated, however, to the current date. You can then go and edit the cloned record. This can be useful when you have completed or scheduled a new activity that is very similar to a previously completed one. |
[Mail]  |
Sends the contents of the activity to your e-mail program via the Windows Messaging system. Your e-mail program must be MAPI compatible for this to function.
Windows includes a MAPI compatible e-mail messaging system that can be used for in-office and Internet e-mail directly from Simple Accounting. See your Windows Help Messaging System for complete information. |
[Fax]  |
This button calls up your faxing program to send the contents of your notes to the selected contact.
To schedule a fax to transmit at a later time, simply enter the date and time you wish to transmit in the CONTACT DATE and CONTACT TIME fields. Since the fax job is submitted to the fax queue when you press the [Fax] button, so long as your faxing program is active at the scheduled time, the fax will be sent, even if Simple Accounting is not running. |
| [Print] | Prints the contents of the current activity as a single page report. |
| [Import] | Import an ASCII text file (TXT) into the NOTES field for this activity. |
Fields
| ACTIVITY TYPE | Select from a browse box of Activity Types to assign this activity. The default is the Default Activity Type set in User Options.
If the selected Activity Type is linked to a Script, then the text from that script will automatically be pasted into the activitys Note Taker field. This can be extremely helpful in creating form letters. |
| CONTACT DATE | When did this activity occur? You can use the Calendar to drag and drop the date into this field. The default is the current date. |
| CONTACT TIME | Enter the time the event has taken place, or is scheduled to begin, in 24:00 format. You can use the StopWatch to drag-and-drop the time into this field. The default is the time the activity window was first opened.
Leaving this field blank moves the activity to the lower half To Do List portion of the Daily Calendar. |
| ORDER ID | Use this field to link this activity to a Sales Order, Vendor Bill, or Purchase Order This allows you to track all conversations, problems and resolutions for any sales order. |
| ORGANIZATION
SUBJECT |
If the activity was entered from the Contacts Browse, these fields are automatically taken from the selected Contact. If entered from the Calendar, you may use the Lookup button to select an Organization and Contact. You may also leave the Organization blank for your personal activities or for activities that do not relate to any organization in particular.
Enter a subject or topic for reference in the browse up to 30 Characters in length. This field defaults to the Description of the selected Activity Type. |
| ATTACHMENT | Enter the path for a single file to be sent as an attachment on an e-mail. |
| NOTES | Enter up to 4096 characters (about one full single-spaced page) of free-form text detailing this meeting or activity. The default text is taken from the selected Script of the Activity Type. |
| COMPLETED? | Check this box if the activity is complete. You can see at a glance which activities are incomplete on the activities browse in either FILES|Contacts or Daily Notes & Activities. You can also choose to print only incomplete activities on your Daily Calendar and Weekly Calendar. If you have the box ROLLOVER INCOMPLETE ACTIVITIES? checked in SETUP|User Options The prior days incomplete activities will automatically be pushed forward to the current date at start up. |
| FOLLOW UP? | Check this box if this activity requires a follow-up date. You will then use the following two fields to establish the date and time at which the follow-up needs to occur. |
| FOLLOW UP DATE (Optional) | Enter the next date you wish to contact this person or the completion date for this activity. If you enter a date in this field, the activity will appear on this date in your Calendar and in your Business Reminders. |
| FOLLOW UP TIME (Optional) | Enter the time of day for your follow up. You must enter a valid time in this field if you entered a FOLLOW UP DATE for this activity. The activity will then appear in your Calendar on the Follow Up Date at the proper time of day. |
| PRIORITY (0-3) | Assign this activity record a Priority Code to help determine this activity’s level of importance in your schedule. Enter (1) for urgent activities and (3) for less urgent tasks. |
| AMOUNT | This field allows you to enter a numeric or dollar value to this activity. This can then be used to track expenses, or billings in many service and professional applications. It is also used to store the length of activities in the case of phone calls and meetings. |
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