SHARE YOUR IDEAS

I agree with this but would take it much further.

Just as you can delete and add fields in the Contact detail via Design Layout, I would like it very much if fields in Opportunities could be edited as well - default ones deleted, new ones added. 

My organization uses ACT pretty differently than most I think -- we use NONE of the financial functions and it would be great to be able to just delete those fields.

I recognize there is some risk b/c users could break the canned reports.... but the increased flexibility would be great.

Ditto with the canned filters.  Would LOVE to be able to pick which ones appear. 

For sales organizations Gross Profit and Commission, both calculated fields, are the most common requests, followed by additional fields to record extra information about that specific sale.

I also work with training companies, who wish to use the opportunity area to record details of courses attended, so the product name = course name. They don't  need quantity because it is always one. Again they often require more than eight additional fields to record other information about the course.

The other item that comes up quite often is the desire to record a relationship between an opportunity and an intermediary or agent who may or may not receive a commission on the booking / sale.

Jeff

Formatting-wise, I would delete the Forecast box and in its place put the following fields

1) Stage (these are very basic sales stages - we use this field for reporting to management and to our clients)

2) "Date of State Change" (we currently use "Estimated Close Date" for this purpose because it is in the header and handy and we don't have any other use for it;  I would create a new field for this data if I could) (this field is also reported)

3) "Internal Sales Stage"  (we currently use a user field for this data; we use this field to track marketing efforts (like follow ups, on  a more fine-grained level)

4) Edit date 

5) We use two other user fields to associate People with an opportunity; 

5a) one of them is essentially the manager of the Record Manager

5b) the other is a person's name from the part of our organization that generates products and identifies the source of the product; 

WIth regard to  5b, we would have loved to have done more with the Products module, but:

a) you can't customize fields there; and

b) we heard that ACT slows down a lot if you get "lots" of Products, and we have 4000.

So we just use the "opportunity name" field to identify the product. 

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We had to go through some fuss -- a custom built addin --- to export data from the Opportunity fields we need to report into a text file that could then be imported into another database, where it is merged with other data and reported out.   That custom-built addon has given us lots of trouble and it would be great if ACT had better tools for exporting data from selected Opportunity fields!

I agree with Jeff, that you should be able to:

Change the column headers in the Opportunities - Products and Services Tab, either to add or remove columns or just to make the headers more meaningful to their business.

After speaking with tech support, I have verified that you can neither edit nor add the columns in the products and services tab.  If we all sold the same products, this would be a non - issue, but naturally, we don't.  As a result, the entire opportunities section is not useful for quote generation or lead tracking for my company.  Part of the reason we upgraded to 2010 was based on the information on these forums that we'd be able to get full use of the program.  I'm very disappointed that we cannot. 

In 2010 you do have some flexibility. You can Edit the names and even add fields from Tools > Define Fields > Products. You then decide what is displayed and in what order for the Add/Edit Product window in Opportunities from the Display Fields button.

Jeff