Welcome to QuoteMaker Pro 2.4
Copyright ) 1997 By Steven Weintraut
ZacWare
EMail: zacware@earthlink.net
http://home.earthlink.net/~zacware/

Special Introductory Price: $89.95!!!!!!
PURCHASE THIS SOFTWARE ONLINE NOW!
http://www.unboxed.com/

Please read the enclosed HTML format "documentation" files using your favorite web browser.

What is QuoteMaker? If you have any interest in sales automation, then QuoteMaker deserves some serious attention. Version 2.X was inspired mainly by the fact that up until now, a newton was too much of an island. Shrink wrapped software, like older versions of QuoteMaker, were designed with a single user in mind. As such, using most newton software in a group environment was not really practical. Even for a single user, data transfer from another system was not very easy either. In addition to the many cool new single user features added to the QuoteMaker 2.X series, we've also added some very sophisticated group-oriented, and communciation-oriented features. Normally, these type of features were the type of thing you would only find in an expensive custom-written application. With 2.X we are trying to blur the line between shrink wrapped software and custom solutions. By combining the power of QuoteMaker, and third party software like Landware's XPORT and Claris' FileMaker Pro, you can now email price updates to an entire sales force, or have finished quotes automatically sent to the central office. Granted, 2.X is still in a beta mode, and some refinement needs to be done to the docs and the communications methods, but with a little sweat equity on the user's part, the capabilities of a very powerful sales automation solution can be had for quotemaker's small $89.95 per user price tag!

Version History:

2.4 - Put finishing touches on email based transmission of quotes and reception of updated price information. Added new preference as to whether data transmitted by quotemaker is sent as a file attachment or as body text (file attachments are more reliable, if you insist on using body text make sure your EnRoute mail settings are set to send body text in MIME format rather than 7 bit ASCII). Also made cosmetic changes to Product Search Screen to make better use of screen image area in landscape mode on 2000 or on older Newton's or eMates.

2.1b2 - (addendum) - Right after I posted 2.1b, I realized that I forget to make some changes to the readme file you are now reading. EVERYTHING ELSE IS THE SAME.

2.1b - Preview Release. Users of 2.0b need to note that the filemaker price manager template has changed in the format in which it creates files for importing into the newton so you MUST use this new filemaker template with 2.1 in order to successfully import data!!!!!

2.0b - Preview Release - TONS and TONS of new features over 1.51. Read below for more details, or refer to the documentation in HTML format included with this archive.

1.51 is the current shipping version. 2.1 is being released as a beta release. The price of the software for new users will increase from $59.95 to $89.95. Upgrades are free for all registered users.

2.1b is a MAJOR Release. Lots and lots of new features. Every effort has been made to ensure the integrity of the software but it is possible we may have missed something. So be careful!!!!! This is a BETA release, so there may also be lots and lots of bugs! PLEASE, PLEASE, if you are a current QuoteMaker user, and you decide to try out this beta software, back up your newton immediately using the Newton Connection Utilities. You might also want to print out any important quotes, and/or backup your newton to a storage card as well. IF YOU ARE USING THE CURRENT VERSION OF QUOTEMAKER AS A CRITICAL PART OF YOUR BUSINESS, YOU SHOULD NOT BE BETA TESTING THIS SOFTWARE! Note: Tech Support is available via email only!

Things to notice that are new/improved, and/or things to look out for.
* New Full Screen support for Newton 2000
* Support for Voice Recording on the Newton 2000
* Automatic EMailing of finished quotes
* Cool new way to import Data using FileMaker Pro via EMAil
* Lots of New Preferences
* Automatic Updating of Price Files
* Filing Support for Price Files to move them between internal and external storage.
* Check Calculations of Margins/Totals/Subtotals/Profits for Accuracy
* Lots and lots of other new features and enhancements
* I only have a Newton 2000, so please let me know if any weird problems occur on older Newtons

List of Files Included with this ReadMe file.....
================================================
sprdsht.cwk - ClarisWorks Spreadsheet Template
README.TXT - What you are reading right now
SampData.pkg - Sample data file
QMPro20b.pkg - The actual QuoteMaker Software
archiver.fm - FileMaker Database Used to Archive QuoteMaker Data
pricemgr.fm - FileMaker Database for Managing Price Files using a Mac or PC
HTMLDOCS - Preliminary Documentation Folder. Open "toc.html" with your web browser

Notes:
When using the FileMaker Template for managing Price Files, the file that it creates can be imported into the Newton using version 2.0 of the XPORT utility by landware. You must have XPORT version 2.0 or else this feature will not work. If you have XPORT 2.0, you can also email the datafile to your newton and it will be automatically imported. The import data must be the body text of the email, and not an attachment to the email. VERY IMPORTANT. For QuoteMaker to automatically process the email, the subject of the email MUST BE "!@#$QMPRO" (without the quotes of course)

If you go into the "Storage Folder" of the Newton's Extras Drawer after running QuoteMaker Pro 2.1b and click on one of the price files you have created, you can now move all entires to and from the internal and external stores. Also note that you should use QuoteMaker's soup editor to delete price files rather than scrubbing them out in the extras drawer or else the icon for the price file will remain even though the data will be erased.....

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Wordy and Techy Discussion of QuoteMaker's "evolving" communications issues
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The 2.X series of QuoteMaker has the powerful ability to automatically receive price updates or send finished quotes via email or via a direct network connection. It does this by leverging the power of three other software packages:
* EnRoute: The built-in email client for the MP2000
* FileMaker Pro: An excellent, inexpensive, and powerful cross platform relational database program for Mac and Windows systems
* XPORT: The ultimate desktop connectivity software for the Newton. Published by LandWare (www.landware.com). This last item causes some people concern. Sometimes I am asked "How come I didn't write my own connectivity utility". The simple reason is that such a task is a lot of work, and doing so would just be trying to reinvent the functionality of an already existing program. Imagine if every developer wrote their own connectivity software. The user could wind up with a dozen different programs on their hard drive that essentially do the same thing. Instead, it's better to embrace a quality program such as XPORT, and hopefully encourage other developers to do the same. It's a great product, and I highly doubt I could ever match it's stability and ease of use. Plus, if I did manage to write my own, I would have to charge more for my software. So why not just charge less for my software and let users buy XPORT, which they can use for tons of other tasks as well!

The other issue about connectivity is that in 2.1b, it works, but it is not anywhere near as elegant I would like it. (that will change). The problem is that after repeated tries, I have not been able to get ANY developer support from the people who make the newton's built-in email client. This has been a very very aggravating issue for me, and has delayed this release of quotemaker for some time. I am now simply making do with what info I do have available. Perhaps there is a reason they have not responded, but if there is I would like to know! Note. The EnRoute developer is a third party company, so it's NOT Apple's (Newton Inc's) fault. So don't blame Apple. Nevertheless, I had to make some last minute changes to how I did things with email communication. Originally, I wanted to send data back and forth as file attachments. This would ensure the data would stay intact. For the time being, until I can get some tech support on the nature of the built-in newton email software, I am sending the data as the body text of the email message. This creates some potential problems. I've "worked around" some of these, but it is not elegant, and I like things being elegant. The good news is that there are several companies working on much better replacements for the newton's built-in email client, and they have all been very helpful. As soon as their products are released I may adopt one or all of their protocols for sending data. In the mean time, you CAN do it, just look out for some of the following issues.....

Ironically, QuoteMaker only supports EnRoute at the moment (I'm waiting for the others to ship). So we just have to make do with what we have available right now. If anyone knows how to get someone at EnRoute to respond, please let me know!!!!!!

Sending data.......
FileMaker has these things called repeating fields. The control code used in formatting repeating fields sometimes gets nuked by some internet mail software. One (only one) of the formats available for sending data in quotemaker uses this control code, so you may have a problem if you use this particular format and your email software doesn't like the control codes in the body text of the message. The only way to find out is to try! The format in question is the FileMaker Archiver format, which creates data suitable for import by the FileMaker Archiver Template included with QuoteMaker. Data in this format has a "start here" and "end here" marker in it so you can copy and paste the important data out of your email software and into a plain text file suitable for import by filemaker. An AppleScript could easily look for these tags and extract the info automatically on the desktop end.

Line lengths can also mess up data in the body text of a message. To make sure they don't, set your "Text Encoding" preferences in EnRoute to always use MIME format.

If you want to send a price file to a newton or group of newton's via email, the subject of the message must be "!@#$QMPRO" for the newton to automatically process the file.

If you want to enable the newton to automatically send and receive, you must also setup a automated connection schedule using the EnRoute email preferences screen.

Receiving data....
Things got messy here. FileMaker likes to create files which are tab delimited between fields, and return delimited between records. The problem is once again that certain email packages limit line lengths to a certain number of characters, and insert carriage returns into the message to handle lines that are too long. To work around this, I had to add an additional ASCII 14 to the end of every line, so QuoteMaker would know where the real end of the record was. If I could send the data as an email attachment, this would not be an issue. In any case, IT WORKS. Just make sure you only put the contents of the file created by the FileMaker Price Manager Template in the body of the message, nothing else! Try it, it's really kind of cool. NOTE: Some email clients don't like the ascii 14 control character, so the text may look weird on screen, but should transmit OK.........

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OLD RELEASE NOTES........
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NOTE: BOTH 1.40 and 1.51 added MAJOR features. Please check the list of changes for both to see lots of cool new stuff!!!!!!

Version 1.51 - Changes since 1.41
NOTE: See v1.40 changes for many new features too!!!!
a) New preference allows hiding of line item prices in Line Item Overview
b) New preference allows default new item margin to be "LIST" instead of none
c) Enhanced all print formats to wrap long descriptions onto multiple lines
d) Added ability to attach notes to individual products
e) Filemaker template updated to support new downloadable fields
f) When you create a new item, it now becomes the current found item in the search list so you can verify it's data more easily
g) Lots of other things!!!!

Version 1.42 - Changes since 1.41
a) Fixed cosmetic bug in Product Search Screen
b) Reduced residual heap consumption (actually done in 1.41)

Version 1.41 - Changes since 1.40
a) Fixed bugs discovered during testing of 1.40 related to individual sell prices

Version 1.40 - Changes since 1.06
a) New - Protected Mode Option: In the preferences of QuoteMaker you can now select Normal or Protected Mode. In protected mode, the cost is no longer displayed in the product search view, and most editing dialogs are disabled. The purpose of this mode is to allow users to work on quotes interactively with their clients, with reduced concern for profit disclosure
b) Summary Bar: At the bottom of the line items screen is a summary bar. If shipping or taxes apply to the quote this bar will contain modified grand total information. Otherwise, the bar remains blank
c) Enhanced Print Formats: Previous print formats only allowed a single line for each item. Now, all prints formats are now designed to attempt to expand the height of a line item in order to fit as much as the description as possible.
d) A bug was fixed where deleting the last item in a quote generated an error
e) The Product Search screen now displays selling price along with cost and retail
f) The filemaker template and X-PORT import filter have been modified to support the importing of a margin and/or selling price. The selling price is listed last in the record export order so that a imported sell price always overrides a margin during data import. This way, a price such as 19.95 can be accurately imported into the newton rather than having a computed margin generate a rounding error and make the sell price, say $19.96
g) New fields for firstname, lastname etc have been added to the account info screen. 
h) A new button "Add to Names" has been added to the account info view which will create a NEW name card based on the information entered into the current Quote.

Version 1.06 - Changes since 1.05:
a) Fixed a bug which caused the distributor and manufacturer part #'s not to be saved properly
b) Fixed another cosmetic bug that displayed the distributor field next to the manufacturer "label" and vice versa

Version 1.05 - Changes since 1.02:
a) Another bug fix!!!! v1.02 allowed you to save sell/price and margin to an individual product, but another bug prevented that data from being carried over into a quote. This problem should be solved with this version....
b) COOL NEW FEATURE!!!!!! If you add a "!*!b" or a "!*!i" at the front of a description of a product, it will appear BOLD or ITALIC in the "Product Search" screen listing. You can also use this to place "dummy" entries in a price file to act as "headers" for groups of products or to add a note item below a group of products.....

Version 1.02 - Changes since v1.01:
a) items now properly save individual margin and sell price to price list
b) fixed a bug which would display the wrong info for the currently selected item
c) fixed a bug which would not properly update category margins

Version 1.01 - Changes since v1.0:
a) made minor changes to this readme file
b) fixed a bug where you could not change the title of a quote

Version 1.0 - First public release

You can purchase this software online using the Software UnBoxed website..... http://www.unboxed.com/

Once you purchase the software, please email me your user name as it appears in the Owner Info of your newton device. I will email you a registration code as soon as I receive payment confirmation from the Software Unboxed distribution center.

NOTE: This software is FULLY FUNCTIONAL except that it will expire 45 days after installation or 90 launches of the program, whichever comes first. I made the trial period extra long so there is plenty of time for you to get your registration code before the software expires.

OK...Let's go!!!!!

QuoteMaker has been designed from the ground up to be a valuable tool for anyone who regularly needs to generate sales quotes and proposals. It has also been designed to let the newton do as much of the work as possible. There are a lot of features to the software, and there are a lot more we plan to add (we would have added them all but we had to release a version at some point!)

Since most people don't read manuals, we're not going to bore you with a lot of details. But it is very helpful to read this small document as otherwise you will not easily notice some of the programs many features....

Please report any bugs or comments to stevenw9@aol.com

At the very least, *PLEASE* review the following items!!!!!

NOTE: The sampdata.pkg contains some sample data for trying out QuoteMaker quickly. It is a read-only file and the data is randomly generated so it in no way represents real prices or model numbers for any products listed in the file.

********** KEY POINTS ABOUT SOME OF THE ENTRY SCREENS ********** 

% EMail, Faxing, and Printing.....QuoteMaker has 2 sophisticated email formats and 3 printing formats also usable for faxing. The email formats create mail messages that are padded with spaces for easy reading with any monospaced font. The printing formats contain two views suitable for client viewing and another for confidential pricing information.....(beaming is not yet supported)

% Margin calculations.....If the margin field is empty for an item, it uses the margin from the category the item is assigned to. If the category margin is empty, it uses the master margin assigned to the quote....

% POSTIVE margins add to the cost
% NEGATIVE margins subtract from the retail.

% The COST, MARGIN, and RETAIL fields are *hot*. This means that the minute you write something into one, the others are updated......If you try to enter a non-numeric value into one of these fields then QuoteMaker will post an error and then reset the value back to the original.....

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The "line item overview" screen it loaded with clickable and dragable features.
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%	You can move categories and line items to change their order of appearance in the proposal simply by dragging them wherever you want them to be

% By clicking on a line item, a category (in the little "square & dot" icon), or the quote title to change the characteristics of that item

% Categories can be "collapsed" for easier viewing of the entire proposal by clicking ANYWHERE OTHER THAN the "square & dot" icon

% When editing the characteristics of an item, category, or quote, you can easily adjust the profit margin to change the selling price, or adjust the selling price and have the margin computed accordingly. Postive margins add to the cost, negative margins subtract from the retail.

===============================================================
The "product search" screen also has a few notable features......
===============================================================

% Note the "New item" at the top-right of the screen. This is for adding a new item to the current price list

% The bottom of the screen is where you type in a value to search for. Note two unique options: The "Exact" checkbox tells quotemaker to search for matches inside a word (like finding "mac" in supermac) Normally, quotemaker searches at the start of every word in the description, so this option can be very handy, especially when search for a string that may be part of a manufacturer's model #. The "AUTO" checkbox tells quotemaker to start searching every time you finish writing a word in the search string entry field. Normally you have to click the search button to start the query.

% When you select an item from the list of products, a detailed description of the product appears in the center area of the screen. You can use the "Add to Quote" button to assign this item to a category in the quote. If you click anywhere else in this area you will enter the ***"quick edit mode"***. This area is designed to allow you to do a quick selling price/margin calculation for over the phone quotes, or to make changes to existing items in the price list, or to modify the item in some way before adding it to the quote. In this screen, you can either hit the close box to exit, use the "Add to Quote" button to add this item to the quote, or use the "Update Price List" button to save the changes you've made to the product database.

About the Spreadsheet....

Several things to note about the included ClarisWorks spreadsheets are as follows....
% Data that you xport from the newton should be copied to the clipboard of your Mac or PC and then pasted into the upper-left most clear-white cell in the spreadsheet

% The first column in the spreadsheet is for category names. By typing a category name into the first column (all over cells on the same row should be blank) the spreadsheet will generate automatic subtototals at the end of every category....

% Since the software automatically generates subtotals at the bottom of each category, ALWAYS leave a blank row between categories so their is an empty row for the spreadsheet to put the subtotal (if you don't, things will get really messed up)

% The M/A column is for "Margin Adjust"....Positive numbers entered here add to the cost, negative number subtract from the retail. Entering "LIST" carries over the retail price. If no value is entered, the default margin entered at the top of the spreadsheet is used.

% At the far far right of the spreadsheet is a calculated area that is formatted for printing on a 8.5 x 11 piece of paper for customer approval. Select the appropriate range of cells and use the "Set Print Area" to choose the data you want to print. Here is where you will see the subtotals and see why you need to enter category names and leave spaces between categories!!!!!

% In the spreadsheet, limitations of the spreadsheet mean that data entered into the M/A column must be in the decimal form (i.e. 20 percent is entered as 0.20) NOTE....this is not the same the newton, which allows you to enter 20 percent as 20.....

