If you have customers, you really should have a good customer management system in place. With Pearl, any member of your staff with suitable permissions is able to access the latest communication, financial and order history for any contact within seconds.

Pearl stores all your contacts (customers, suppliers, staff etc) in one database which is linked with the rest of the system. There are a large number of default fields for each contact, and you can add an unlimited number of custom fields as well (Contacts->Custom fields). To find a contact, type part of the contact name, company name or email address in the contacts quick search box at the top of the screen. This will take you to the CRM screen and display all contacts that match your search results. To go directly to the CRM screen just click Contacts from the main menu. You can also use the grey search box at the top of the CRM screen to show a specific selection of contacts.

From the CRM screen you can edit contacts (click on the name), move and organise contacts, create mail merges, add notes to a contact (click the notes icon ), send an SMS, create a new order or quote, view financial history and so on. To see the options for each contact, hover over the "menu" link at the right of the page.

Contacts can be assigned to groups (see the coloured boxes at the left of the CRM screen, edit these in Contacts -> Groups) and/or set a status (under the Contact Info tab when editing a contact). Both groups and statuses are fully customisable.

Contacts can be set to a certain price lists, which will define the prices they see when logged into the website and the prices of products when creating a manual sales order.

Demo: Create a contact now; we'll use this contact to show you some of the power of Pearl later:

1. Click Contacts->Create new from the main menu.
2. In the Contact info tab, enter some details for an imaginary contact.
3. Enter your personal mobile phone number so you can test the SMS mail merge function later (it's free for the demo).
4. Enter an email address that you can check to see the emails that Pearl is sending.
5. The Custom fields tab is used for any extra information you might want to store for this contact. You can set up custom fields using Contacts->Custom fields.
6. In the Group tab, choose a group.
7. The Financial tab allows you to store information that will be used when entering accounts transactions for this contact, for credit control and so on.
8. Any notes added to a customer are displayed in the notes tab, along with any messages. You can use the memo field to enter any text information that you would like to be able to view/edit in the future
9. You can attach a file to the contact if you like, such as a spreadsheet or PDF file.
10. The Password tab allows you control over user passwords.
11. Save your contact

You're now taken back to the Contacts / CRM screen.

1. Click the notes icon to open the note screen for the contact. Add notes and save- you'll see these next time you visit the CRM screen.
2. Click the green arrow to open the side menu (left hand side of the screen). All the contact groups can be seen.
3. Click the group you save the contact in and all contacts in the group will be shown.
4. Select (tick) the contact that you have just created. The side menu will open again and using the box entitled "with selected", you can do a number of things such as moving the contact to a new group, changing some of the contact information or send them a mailmerge

Call Manager 

Pearl has a tool to enable you to track the time you spend on the phone to clients. Wherever you see the blue telephone call manager icon , click it to open a window showing the contact details, latest notes and a call timer. Each call is tracked and can be used for reporting later.

Demo:

1. Search for a contact using the contacts quick search box
2. Click the call manager icon 
3. Choose outgoing, and enter some notes.
4. Click the 'follow-up' tab.
5. Choose a follow-up date (tomorrow), time and title.
6. Save and close

Click Contacts->Call reports from the main menu to see a list of recent calls. The follow up will have created a task in your task list which we will have a look at later.