Synchronise Emails, Contacts, Tasks and Meetings directly with Outlook, Microsoft Exchange or Office365. Workbooks provides two different options for customers:
 

• The Workbooks Outlook Connector (WOC)
  This is a plug-in for Microsoft Outlook on Windows and supports all recent versions of Outlook. The connector allows you to decide which items should be synchronised with Workbooks. 
   
• The Workbooks Exchange Server Sync (WESS)
  This is a cloud based service that connects Workbooks directly to Exchange or Office385 without the requirements for any plugs-in

Build advanced Reports and Dashboards with our easy to use reporting tools. Out of the box, Workbooks provides a range of pre-built Reports and Dashboards that you can use and modify; or you can build your own. 

Key features include:

• Powerful reporting engine, which allows you to easily build detailed reports and summary views
• Colour coding so you can visually identify and highlight key metrics
• Set Targets and automatically track your achievements 
• Build multiple views onto the same report, allowing you to easily ‘slice and dice’ your data
• Charting tools includ pie, line, and dial charts
• Bring multiple reports and charts together to build Dashboards
• Share and publish reports and Dashboards so everyone has the right information at their fingertips
• Schedule reports to be delivered via email automatically
• Connect your reports to TV screens around your office, using our automation engine

The platform is pre-built with all the CRM record types that you will need. Our CRM Edition includes:

• Organisation, People and Sales Leads 
• Activities including Meetings and Tasks
• Emails, which can be sent from Workbooks or synchronised from Outlook or Gmail
• Email templates 
• Marketing Campaigns, Mailshots and Mailing Lists
• Products, including pricing schemes for both customers and suppliers
• Opportunity and Quotation records

The Workbooks Business Edition includes all the record types in the CRM Edition plus:

• Customer Orders
• Supplier Purchase Orders
• Invoices and Credit Notes

In addition, you can purchase Customer Contracts as a separate module. 

Workbooks provides a rich environment to track relationships. You can track your organisations relationships with others, e.g. customers, suppliers, partners, members. You can also track third-party relationships e.g. this Person is the legal advisor to this Organisation.

Relationships can be defined between:

• People and Organisations - employee, previously employed by, accountant, etc
• People and People – family member, husband/wife, etc
• Organisations and Organisations – Subsidiary, Parent Company, Group Company, etc
• Other records in Workbooks – e.g. ‘Consultant on an Opportunity’ or ‘Agent on a Contract’ 

Workbooks provides a list of predefined relationships, which you can extend and customise.

Workbooks provides a Web desktop client for desktop/laptop users . The web desktop is designed to look like a familiar desktop environment, allowing users to create shortcuts and pin records in.

You can control the layouts of records independently on each type of device, customising your mobile deployment with just the information you need on the go, whether you are using a mobile or a tablet.
 

Configure which currencies you want to use within the Workbooks UI. You can define exchange rates and exchange rate periods. Workbooks has the concept of a ‘Home’ currency and a ‘Document’ currency. The Home currency is your global consolidation currency so you can report across CRM in a single currency. The Document currency is the currency of the specific record. All records which support line items, like Opportunities and Invoices have a Document currency and a Home currency. 

Workbooks is also available in different languages. Out of the box we provide support for English, American English, French, German and Spanish. Our platform however supports any language and customers are able to tailor their own translations, including fields names and pick list values. Users can define their currency and language preferences so that teams around the world are able to work in their local currency and language. 

All customers can have up to five different database environments within their Workbooks account at no additional charge. This enables clients to have a ‘production’ environment and additional training and development environments. We provide tools to enable you to copy databases, including configuration and control parameters. 

Create professional output documents directly from Workbooks in PDF, HTML or directly in Google Docs. Workbooks support output documents on the majority of records in Workbooks; the most commonly used ones are: Quotes, Orders and Invoices.

Our PDF generation engine allows you to embed logic into the document creation and merge content from Workbooks with external content such as image files held on websites. 

Common examples include:

• Merge product Images onto a quotation record
• Create Orders including standard terms and conditions
• Embed logic to hide individual line item pricing
• Group product pricing together into sub totals based on category

Control which users can access information based on security rules. Workbooks has layered tools to enable you to create the right balance between easy access and solid security. Workbooks Capabilities control which users can access certain elements of the platform and Security Permissions control which records can be edited or viewed.

Each customer is supplied with a standard security configuration which meets the needs of most clients. The Advanced Security Extension can also be purchased which provides more granular control.

Streamline common business processes using Workflow tools and the Automation Engine. Workbooks includes a set of useful tools such as queues, activities, views and status fields to build simple Workflows without complex configuration. 

In addition, the Workbooks automation engine allows you to build scripts to support more complex processes. Automations use the Workbooks API and can access all Workbooks records and capabilities of the platform.

Automations run in a restricted environment to ensure security, but do have the capability to connect to other web based applications or MS-SQL or MySQL environments - allowing you to build Workflows not just within Workbooks but across third-party applications. The Automation engine supports processes such as:

• Scheduled Processes
  These automatically run at a pre-set interval (e.g. every minute, hour, every Wednesday at 10am, etc)
   
• Process Buttons
  Processes connected to a specific button on a form
   
• On-Change Processe
  Processes that fire when a record has been updated
   
• Web Processes
  Processes that can be run through a URL

We provide a library of scripts for most common tasks, which you can leverage and adapt, or you can write your own.

The Auditing module tracks every field change, including previous value, new value, date change and who made the change. Auditing takes place on all records and the configuration aspects of Workbooks. You can use this audit information as part of the reporting engine to track changes to records. E.g. report on which opportunities moved from Stage 2 to Stage 3  this week, or which opportunities reduced in value.

Workbooks provides a fully featured RESTFUL API which allows you to programmatically access the Workbooks platform. The API supports all the record types, plus the ability to configure some aspects of the system, such as adding custom fields. We provide wrappers for common development environments including PHP, .NET, Java and Ruby.

Web Processes provides the ability to ‘wrap-up’ a set of business logic with an Automation Script. A Web Process can be written in PHP and hosted within the Workbooks environment and called from a URL. The benefit of a web process is you can define a set of business logic which takes place in Workbooks and invoke that logic with a single call, ideally for website or e-commerce integration. 

As part of our platform we provide a portal framework which allows Workbooks customers to build client portals. The framework includes basic portal functionality, including user management and authentication, this can easily be extended to include a case management portal.

The Email dropbox feature makes it easy to get emails into Workbooks if you are not using the Outlook Connector or Exchange Sync. Once configured you can ‘CC or BCC’ a Workbooks email address and the message you send will be automatically processed by Workbooks and stored against the relevant records. Emails are automatically stored against People records by matching the email addresses on the distribution list to records in Workbooks.

The Email2Case automation can monitor a POP3/IMAP mailbox and automatically create a new case record or update an existing case with a new email. The Email2Case functionality is often used by customer services departments to automatically process enquiries, create cases, assign them to the right teams and provide the customer with a reference number. 
 

Workbooks makes it easy to get your data in and out of Workbooks. We provide a comprehensive import tool, which allows you to upload data from .CSV (Excel) format files. The import engine allows you to create multiple record types at the same time (e.g. People and Organisations or People and Activities) and will automatically spot duplicate records.

You can define import field mappings and reuse these for regular imports. You can even automate an import using the automation engine if you regularly import data from the same source. Once data has been imported, we provide tools to validate it before you accept it into your database and you can also rollback an import if you change your mind. 

We also allow you to easily export your data. We provide a complete database export – which will export your entire database in as a MYSQL database. You can also export any views or reports directly into Excel at a click of a button. 

When creating transaction documents, Workbooks offers you the ability to have different tax schemes in different legal entities. 

If you are invoicing in both the UK and France for example, you need to invoice under UK tax rules and French rules in France. Workbooks makes this easy by allowing you to configure different rules for each legal entity, thus ensuring compliance.  

The Mapping Module of Workbooks allows you to represent any address information you have as a location on a map. Once enabled, the Mapping Module will show you Organisations and People ‘nearby’ the record you a viewing. So if you are off to see a client or prospect you can see who else is in the vicinity.

You can also see reports in ‘map view’, based on the criteria you want. For example you can create a report of customers in a specific vertical industry or who have purchased a specific product) and see them plotted on a map.