We worked with a company which creates "Insertion Orders" using Excel spreadsheets. All work is done manually - whether it's modifying dates, phone numbers, contacts, or dates of the Insertion Orders into newspapers. There is no tracking mechanism or easy way to create multiple Insertion Orders for a particular Division of the company. It currently takes hours to create Insertion Orders for one Division.

Also, there is no way to create reports to show management profit per Division by a specific date range - and to provide reports to customer in a timely fashion.

MTS created a custom Filemaker Pro 8 database for this ad agency that places Insertion Orders for newspapers around the country. We replaced the thousands of Excel documents into one cohesive Filemaker Pro database - which allowed for easy creation of Insertion Orders and timely reports.

With the new Filemaker Pro database, the users can create Insertion Orders based on a date range (2 month period), with just one click of a button. Reports will now be up-to-date and accurate for management purposes. The need to re-enter data has been eliminated, so accurate data is ensured for all Insertion Orders.

A change in an Ad Size or Due Date will update the database automatically, but will not change data that has already been created.

The time savings for creation of Insertion Orders was reduced from about 2 hours per Division to about 10 minutes per Division. Plus, the ability to have management reports (where there were none previously), makes this database a great solution.

A large company has a photo studio that needs to track estimates and invoices. Currently, all of this, including how many photos are taken at each photo shoot, is kept in many large Excel spreadsheets. Reporting is hard and cumbersome. They need a better solution

We created a Filemaker Pro database that tracks these photo shoot counts, the estimates and then invoices. Reports are created from this data to provide management with detailed and up-to-date reports, so they can make better, more informed decisions.

The database is just about complete - the reports provide up to the minute information on Actual Costs (Invoices) and Forecasted Dollars (Estimates).

This has really helped the management team determine when & where to spend the money allocated for photo shoots.