Creating and Tracking Multiple New Items For Each Contact in ACT 6.0.

[kevin.smith@carlisl…]

I have a small Property & Casualty insurance agency that uses ACT 6.0.  I mainly write personal lines with some commerical lines and have a need to track many, many policies per customer.  I may have dozens of policies per customer, once I include cancelled policies, renewals, rewritten policies,  policies from previous agents,etc.

I have customized ACT 6.0 to have custom field for up to 6 policies, but I have to delete out old information from the older policies if  want to track the current stuff.    I have also thought about creating many more fields for additional policies, but do not want to "unnormalize" things more than they already are. 

I would love to be able to enter in many policies, and also many claims, vehicles, addresses, family members, etc., and all their associated information, without having to to create a limited number of custom fields.   Any options for ACT 6.0.  

The sales opputunities are great, but I do not use them, since they do not have a way to customize or add add'l fields to the sales oppurtuniy to track policies and other info.

Also, I have purchased ACT 2009 some time ago and just never have spent the time to convert this property and migrate to the newer ACT 2009.

I did see that this has got a place for an unlimited number of additional people  with addresses for each contact.   If something similar to this can be done for other fields in ACT 2009, it may be worth it for me to just go ahead and convert.  

Any ideas?  

[Roy_Laudenslager]

You need to update to ACT! 2010 for several reasons. The opportunities in ACT! 2010 have their own layout  an you have the ability to design it the way you want. ACT! 2010 also has relationships capability so that you can link contacts together, for example, each member of a family can have their own contact record but they would be linked as a family using the relationships. However what you really need is ACT! 2010 with an add-on the makes it easy to add custom tables to the ACT! program. That way you can have a one-to-may table for listing policies with as many lline items (policies) as you need. You could even have separate tables for different types of policies. 

Please check your private messages, upper right corner of the screen.

[kevin.smith@carlisl…]

ACT 2009 will not do the things you are talking about?    What are the downfalls of upgrading from ACT 6.0 to ACT 2009 and not ACT 2010?

[Roy_Laudenslager]

Of the three things I listed, relationships and the ability to add custom tables are available in ACT! 2009. The customization of the opportunities is very limited in ACT! 2009 being limited to a set of user fields. The opportunity layout couldn't be changed.

However, there is another thing to consider. I don't know if the ACT! 2009 you bought was the standard or the premium version of the ACT! program but I suspect that it is the standard version. The standard version has some feature limitations and for your application I would strongly suggest that you use the premium version of the ACT! program. Conversion of your ACT! 6 database to either ACT! 2009 or 2010 should not be a problem though making sure the ACT! 6 database was cleaned and maintenance done before conversion would be important.

[ruggb]

this is what I would do.

Create an Excel file with everything you need. Copy those files with the filename = client name To a specific folder for these files. Attach the file to the proper ACT record.

Simply lookup client in ACT, open attachment and enter/modify data.

Use ACT record for all other data on client.