[Catalyst] RFC: Catalyst based ERP

[David Storrs]

On Oct 29, 2005, at 5:39 PM, Kaare Rasmussen wrote:

> Now I imagine that some (many?) of you are self employed, using all  
> kinds of
> programs to keep track of customers, orders and accounting. I hope  
> for some
> feedback to help design the end user functionality, as specific as  
> possible.

Kaare,

I'm a developer and project manager.  I work on OS X; my contact list  
is stored in Address Book, my client communications are stored in  
Apple Mail, my task list is tracked using a handful of Stickies on  
the Dashboard (don't knock it, it's a lightweight system that works),  
my time is tracked using OfficeTime (which also generates my  
invoices), my cashflow is in QuickBooks...the list goes on and on.


Some things that would be useful to me:

- Better searching through my mail.  The OS X Mail program's  
searching is good enough, but only barely.  I'd like something that  
is as good at reading my mind and retrieving what I'm looking for as  
Google is.  It's just an mbox file, so this is at least possible.

- An up-to-the-minute graph showing revenue earned from each client  
vs time spent on that client, so that I can tell when it's time to  
fire a client.

- Tracking on how long it usually takes a client to pay.

- It would be nice to consolidate the functionality of some of those  
various apps I'm using--if there was an interface for adding 'Todo'  
items that was as easy as jotting a note on a Dashboard Sticky, and  
that would allow me to move the notes around the screen, that would  
be great.  If the notes could include hyperlinks to client  
information, calendars, wiki pages, etc, that would be great.

- A built in wiki which supported ACLs on a per-page level so that I  
could prevent certain users from accessing certain parts of the  
site.  Right now I have a separate wiki for every project so that the  
clients of Project A aren't seeing information about Project B which  
is being done for another client.


That's right off the top of my head.  If I sat down for an hour or  
so, I could generate a list ten times as long.  That should be enough  
to keep you busy, though.

--Dks