Clients & Profits Featurecast

The creative brief explains to the client the agency’s creative process for a particular job. It's a worksheet that creatives and account service can use to define the job’s creative, production, and strategic goals. It provides focus and direction for those managing and working on the job. It can be used to document the strategic, creative steps the agency will perform to design and produce the work.

Proposals are mini-estimates that provide a preview of a job for a client. It lets you provide a clear, concise proposal of the work you are offering without opening an actual job ticket. They are a starting place to organize important details before the client starts the work. Proposals can be added when pitching an idea to a client (or prospective client, too). Once your bid is accepted, they can be easily converted into job tickets. With a creative brief, cost, and start and due dates, you can pinpoint exactly what resources are needed to get the job done.

The My Jobs window lets you see all of the jobs on which you’re one of the traffic assignments (e.g., creative director, project manager, copywriter, etc.) or the job's AE. It also includes jobs for which you are the account executive (i.e., the AE/Team field). Compared to the lookup list, the My Jobs windows only shows your jobs. It works like the jobs Lookup List, except that it filters out jobs that you're not a part of.

The C&P Media Link is a fast, easy-to-use interface between popular media buying systems and your Clients & Profits database. It imports broadcast orders exported from Strata, SmartPlus, and Tapscan. These station orders are imported directly into Clients & Profits, just as if you'd typed them in yourself. No rekeying is necessary.

The built-in Clients & Profits X Customize Reports window lets users modify every existing report in Clients & Profits X. Changing report templates using the Customize Reports option permanently changes the report's parameters in your copy of Clients & Profits X. The report templates that you change will only affect your copy of Clients & Profits X. If other users of the program wish to use these customized reports, these same changes will need to be made to each copy of Clients & Profits X that needs it.

Today we're discussing how shops with in-house output, duplication, and production equipment can set up a price list for every kind of internal charge they’d bill to a client. The Internal Charge Items table keeps a detailed listing of items and their prices, which are then used for expense tracking. Charges for internal items can be charged to any job and task, including quantities, which then appear on job cost reports -- and eventually on the client invoice.

The Expense Reports lets you find and review daily expense reports entered by the company’s employees. The window lets you see your own expense reports as well as those entered by other staff members. For each daily expense report you’ll see its expense entries, including category, job, task, cost amount, and description.

Any bank account can be quickly reconciled with your monthly bank statement using the Reconciliation function. Clients & Profits X reconciles bank accounts separately, so you’ll enter one account’s balance at a time.

There are several calendars available in Clients & Profits. Whether you're using the personal calendar to stay up to date with your To Do List, or the media calendar to current on spot buys and materials due, there's a calendar in Clients & Profits that's right for you.

Donna Lynn Johnson from Crystal Brook Consulting joins Clients & Profits trainer Cindy Westen to continue their discussion on the importance of the billing process. They suggest users set up different ways of billing, and other tips that help you smooth out your billing processes.