We're a small office - what's a good platform to use for shared checklists?

February 22, 2011 11:44 AM

We're a small office - what's a good platform to use for shared checklists?

We're a small office, and for the most part, we rely on shouting "hey you, we have a new customer" to start the new-customer check-in process. Since we're starting to see a real increase in volume, I want to make sure nothing falls through the cracks, so I'm coming to the green to ask for recommendations to do this electronically.

Since we use google-apps for our email, calendars, I figured there'd be a way to do it through google groups, but haven't really found anything yet. Basically I want to have a set checklist that, every time anyone gets a new customer, I pop their name in, and when everyone looks at the group, it shows the progress through the list. (It'd have items like "Create Invoice - John", "Process Payment - Jen", etc, and people'd check off when they'd completed that particular step. Extra points if I could print off a summary - "invoiced, not paid", etc)

Thanks!

posted by Seeba to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

You don't need a checklist. You need a CRM system, which is what you're describing, whether you know it or not.

I recommend Highrise.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 11:47 AM on February 22, 2011 [1 favorite]

Alternately, if you're up for wrangling it, something like RT (request tracker) can track workflow.
posted by rmd1023 at 11:49 AM on February 22, 2011

I recently read about Taskforce, which acts as a plugin to Gmail, basically, and allows assigning tasks to others. (I have no direct experience with it). Pretty vanilla, and probably without the auditing features you are looking for.

I assume you are a Google Apps users, not plain gmail? If so, also check out the Google Apps Marketplace for tools that can integrate with your Google suite of services. (e.g. "Task Management")
posted by misterbrandt at 11:59 AM on February 22, 2011

Zoho Project would probably work too.
posted by COD at 12:19 PM on February 22, 2011

I mean, the simplest solution that I could see would be to create a spreadsheet in Google Docs. There could be a row for each person, and a column for each thing that needs to be done. Enter an X in each place where the invoice has been created or the payment has been processed for each customer. When that entry is finished, hide the row, so you still have the data but don't have to look at it since it's irrelevant.
posted by Night_owl at 12:35 PM on February 22, 2011 [2 favorites]

You could also consider something for tracking like Basecamp, Assembla or Jira. These are all stand-alone Websites, no software required.

Basecamp will let you set up a recurring set of tasks, so you could generate a set program for each new customer.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 10:14 PM on February 23, 2011