Can anyone share their ideas on how they organize their custmer list? I want to have a way to know who has a birthday/anniversary/occasion coming up and be able to organize it, so i can kind of "expect" when i'm going to hear from the customers. I recently bought a little folder and was organizing my customers by name, in alpha order and then writing out the cakes they ordered. That doesnt really help me to know when to "expect" or "guesstimate" the # of cakes i'll have per week/month...

I don't know if im explaining myself properly, but if anyone knows what i mean, please share your ideas...

thanks

carmela

Carmela what type of word processor programs do you have on your computer? You could create a spreadsheet with customer names, phone numbers & birth dates & other special occassion dates that you know about.

Off hand I can't think of a way beyond that to organize your dates if they have birthdays & anniversaries unless you made seperate charts for the different occassions, which depending on how many customers you have could work for you.

Good luck!!

I have microsoft word and excel...but I want something sort of organized by month...maybe i'll just separate all my clients by what month they have an occasion...


anyone else have any ideas?

If you have a calendar program, you could log each of your customer's events. With the events noted on your calendar, the calendar progam might have a "notify" option that you could set several days in advance so that you could contact your customers.

I know emails like Yahoo have calendar options that allow you to set reminders for things (ie. bday on the 11/17, get a reminder email on 11/01)
Not sure how it would work out for storing the rest of your info, but maybe you could *code* clients to shorten what you type & just use the email addy for calendar reminders. Or even utilize the address book (has lines for email, snail mail, phone #'s etc.)
Good Luck

You can make an excel spreadsheet and sort by the month rather than the name.

Do you have MS access? It has a calendar function of some sort. I really don't know how it works. I just did a search and it did have information about using a calendar within the program.

both are great ideas. i guess it really just depends how computer savvy a person is.

thanks everyone..i thought about jekizer's idea and that's probably the easiest...just create a new form for every month and sort by day...

sounds like fun

thanks again everyone!

In excel, you can select the column that has your dates in it, then go to Format and choose "Conditional Formatting". Change the option for "If cell value is" to "between". Then type in the first date of the month and the last date of the month. Then change the format to red or whatever color you prefer. And click ok. At the beginning of each month, you can go in the same way and change your dates for that month. This way, you just have a list of your customers' names in one column, in the next column you have their dates, and in the third column you have what each day is for, for example: birthday, anniversary, etc. Then when you open your spreadsheet each week, at a glance you can see that the ones in red will be due that month. You can do it only a weekly or even daily basis if you want. All you would have to do is change the dates in the Conditional Formatting to the specific dates you choose.

It sounds complicated, but it's really easy. It's the way I do my customers.

wow...thanks so much for all the detail...you guys are all so very helpful!

I LOVE CC!!!!

FOR THE TECHNICALLY CHALLENGED:

Not having very many cake orders, I do mine by hand. I have a 12 month expand-a-file and when I get an order, the order sheet goes in the appropriate month. When I get around to actually having been baking for a year, I'll just go back to August and see who's coming up.

I read in a general marketing book about how it was a good business practice to send birthday & anniversary cards to previous clients, just to keep the business in mind and create goodwill. Even if you know the birthday month and not the date, it works.

So the Excel system is great, or even a set of 12 folders organized by each month if you prefer a more hands-on system--look ahead to the February folder the last week in January--then you could send cards out that last week.

I have my info on an Excel spreadsheet, but I admit I use it mostly for contact information than upcoming events--this is a great thread to see how other people manage this.

I use microsoft outlook email program, and when you add an address, you can add any other information you need. Very simple, and when you want to send out an email to your customers, all you have to do is send to all and your all set!