Reinaldokool Loc: San Rafael, CA

This is really good advice. Open Office is excellent. Using the Calc section to keep track of fixed information in a spreadsheet is a good choice. It also provides you with an MS Word compatible word processor and a lot more.

I keep all my contacts in Google Contacts and my calendar in Google Calendar. That means I can call those up from my smartphone, tablet or any of my computers.

Quicken is fine for your personal financial info, but you might find you can track each order/customer better with Calc, you can find templates to let you create invoices semi-automatically and then dump the final numbers into Quicken. But, depending on how well you want to track things, it would also let you track your costs and them match them with income from each job. Not necessary with just a few jobs, but if you grow, you will need to know what jobs actually produce a profit and which don't. Also what the costs are for each. Calc can help you do that. (Quickbooks would do all of this, but it is expensive and takes a lot of larnin'.

jeep_daddy Loc: Prescott AZ

Quickbooks Pro? It can keep track of anything business related.

Bobspez Loc: Southern NJ, USA

Even though I keep my financial records on a spreadsheet, so I can record and project my finances from year to year, I keep many other types of records in a bound notebook like this.
http://www.staples.com/Staples-reg-Composition-Notebook-College-Ruled-9-3-4-x-7-1-2-Blue/product_962513
Depending on the type and frequency of entering data, a bound notebook may be all that is needed.

Bob

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Several people here have mentioned using a spreadsheet for this purpose. Please think this through with eyes wide open.

Spreadsheets were designed for calculations. While they can import and create data tables (rows of records and columns of fields in each record), they primarily were designed for financial and scientific calculations, charting and graphing summaries, etc.

Spreadsheets are not *relational*. You cannot (easily) relate information in multiple tables (Customers in one table, Products in another, Orders in another, and Order Items in another... ad infinitum). This makes it difficult to manage intelligence about your customers, orders, buying habits, trends, etc.

If you need to make the same base of data available in a multitude of ways (reports, letters, single records, labels, web pages, etc.) then you NEED a database. If you need to ask questions such as, "What are my most popular products sold to customer 'X' between January 2014 and January 2017?", you should ask that in a database solution. If you need to pull related data from several different sources, you need a database.

If all you need is a simple list manager, a spreadsheet will do. Thankfully, when you get stumped and outgrow it, you can import your data into a database and harness some actual data management tools.

stonecherub Loc: Tucson, AZ

If you are going to do digital asset management, get a relational database manager. I use Mario Westphall's IMatch (version six dot something or other). Go to https://www.photools.com (yes, it is "s") and look at it. It's less than $150 and worth every penny. A spreadsheet will not show you GPS locations on Google Earth or to estimate a geolocation for a scanned slide. This an order of magnitude (maybe two) better than Adobe Bridge.

Like anything good, it requires study but once you set up a workflow, it's a ganga!

ecblackiii Loc: Maryland

Burkphoto, I appreciate your comments since I, too, know what a relational database can do. However, I have found that the Excel software in Microsoft Office is nearly as powerful as a relational database and much simpler to use. Consequently, I have used Excel workbooks for projects as large as developing detailed forecasts of thousands of decades-long program budget lines. That spreadsheet used formulas (that I tailored from the many types of functions available) embedded in calculation tables to generate, and aggregate several different ways, ten-year forecasts for nearly 4,000 rows with 30 years of past data for each line item. The spreadsheet performed nearly 50 million calculations for each forecast generated. I've also used spreadsheets for managing a homeowners association financial accounts, which was a fairly sizable project as well, but not nearly the effort involved in the forecasting project. We considered going to a relational database (or other financial software like Quicken for the HOA) but for most of the people I worked with, that would have just been too hard to learn and operate. From the original question, I think that the simplicity of a spreadsheet and the cost of relational database purchase and learning could be an issue for the questioner as well.

NorCal Bohemian

I, too, used ACT! for many years. They advertise themselves as the #1 Customer and Contact manager. If that's still true, I don't know today - but they at least were the best CRM (Contact Relations Management) software available. A CRM is a database, but with an interface that is aimed at keeping track of customers and your interactions with them.

ACT! has had a few different owners over the years. Sage was their previous owner - they are now owned by Swiftpage ACT! LLC out of Denver. They were originally owned by Symantec - which is where I started with them.
ACT! Pro sells for $239.99 for a license - while ACT! Premium sells for $500 for a license - or $25 month.

One very important fact to know about them - is that they are a Windows only software program. About 4 years ago I switched from Windows to Mac - and losing ACT! was the biggest drawback, for me, to the switch. Yes, I could either partition my hard drive or run Windows in virtual machine - but I wanted to simplify my life - not add to the complexity. I switched to FileMaker Pro. It's not a CRM - and though it has many advantages over ACT! - such as storing images along with your contact files - it does not start out with simple CRM functionality. There is available a Studio Management Software program called Studio Suite Xi - that uses FileMaker Pro as it's base. They offer a Solo perpetual license for $400 - you need to purchase FileMaker separately. I haven't used it, and so can't offer a review - but am considering it for the future. It is a product of AlterMedia out of Burbank, California.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

If you use the right relational database, you can do it inexpensively and make everything totally brainless and secure for users at all levels of an organization. At the photo company I worked for, we used FileMaker Pro, networked to up to 50 users across a WAN with four LANs in the four labs we had at the start of the project. I wrote solutions that were used in each lab to produce products from scanned film and digital images coming from 325 client stores in malls. We took point-of-sale information from the stores, married it with a scanned or digital images, and drove Kodak DP2 lab software to create customized holiday greeting cards using three mini-labs per lab in two labs, and two in the other two labs. They ran mostly non-stop from Halloween to New Years. The system handled log-ins, routing, scanning, color correction, printing, shipping, and billing. The system paid for itself with sales of about 40,000 cards (about 800 orders). We produced about 110,000 orders of 50 cards each in that time frame for five years. Yes, this was a commercial setting, but the cost was insignificant to the profit. The project began with the idea of using a spreadsheet... until we all thought it through! I was drafted...

G Brown Loc: Sunny Bognor Regis West Sussex UK

I think LibreOffice is the updated OpenOffice now. We have used excel for our business for 16 years. Quickbooks is difficult to change once you have 'set it up'. Also so much is automated that trying to check data input errors gets frustrating. It comes with 'cheque writer' and stocks and shareware (?) With a spreadsheet you can Paste special cells to auto update on a different sheet. In that way for example your income and expenses can be shown as separate spreadsheets that auto matches your balance sheet. You can pick and choose cells 'That You Need' once or multiple times. One change can update everything so finding errors is so easy. A spreadsheet is probably universally used. If you need to send info to any officialdom they will probably expect it in a excell type format. As such there is plenty of help out there ! LibreOffice opens and saves as Excel.

JohnFrim Loc: Somewhere in the Great White North.

I have to agree that a spreadsheet is primarily for calculations and a database is for... well... database things. Both types of software can be used interchangeably for some applications, but they generally suck at their secondary use. That is to say, a spreadsheet makes a lousy database, and a database makes a lousy spreadsheet calculator.

Like Burk, I used FileMaker Pro to do some amazing database things. I found it very intuitive, and I had my database up and running in no time. I then tried switching over to MS Access because it was available on every computer in our organization. I don't consider myself stupid (PhD degree; aced my computer science courses; ran labs in digital electronics at university), and I wrote many computer programs in my career, but try as I may I could not wrap my head around Access; I just found the whole interface clunky. FileMaker Pro costs a few dollars, but some of the database applications developed using the software and that are available for sale will go for tens of thousands of dollars. That tells me that this is a powerful tool.

BebuLamar

But any way the OP didn't post a follow up saying what kind of information he needs. So really it's hard to recommend anything.

stonecherub Loc: Tucson, AZ

"I'd like a saw, please.

"Chain, table, or diamond?"

Filemaker, Access, etc., are relational database makers. They will do what you need (if you need a database). If you want to manage your digital images, you can learn how to use any of the database managers, plan your database and then write the code. Easy, and your wife will always know where to find you.

Or, you can download a trial copy of IDimager, learn some basic processes, and start managing your images (or PDFs, or WAV files). It is an astounding program that will do everything except write your text. I couldn't do scientific photography without it.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

FileMaker's been very powerful and *easy to use* for around three decades.

I, too, have found Access to be a clunky dog. What you save on not buying FileMaker is WASTED in labor hours to try to do similar things in Access.

I took many a seminar and training course to learn Access, back when I led an IT development project. But to do real work with it, you need Visual Basic, which is a beast if you are not a programmer, or if you have lots of other priorities. We had three programmers working in Access for 18 months to develop a solution that ultimately failed. I duplicated most of it two years later in FileMaker Pro, and it was used for five years.

Developing databases was a small part of my job as a product development manager, a digital products (production) manager, and as a training program developer. I worked 50 to 65 hour weeks, anyway. Access was untenable. I needed something I could use intuitively, something that would give my VP any kind of report he could dream up, and something that was easily networkable, scalable, and reliable. FileMaker Pro did that well.

To be fair, our IT department developed all sorts of Visual Basic apps using Access database tables. We ran much of the lab with them.

Yes, spreadsheets are awful for database management, and databases are awful for what a spreadsheet does best.

Use the right tool for the job! It saves time, and time is money.

stonecherub Loc: Tucson, AZ

Here's the original question from GENorkus" "What is a good and easy computerized program of offering to keep track of things that is on the cheep? At my last place of employment they had one I loved but I found out the price of it was around $20,000 and that was about 15 years ago. (A little high in my book.)"

He needs a digital asset manager (DAM) which is, of necessity, a relational database. The 20K DAM he remembers was called something like "Compass." I remember the name began with "C." Adobe has been messing around with Bridge for many years and I think it's part of Lightroom which i have ignored because IMatch is better.

About 5 years ago, a Dutchman named Hert invented IDImager, which was pretty good and getting better. Around the same time, Mario Westphal wrote IMatch. Each of them was around 50 bucks and I did buy both, finding IDI to be better for my purposes. Mario kept plugging and came up with version 5 of IMatch about three years ago.

IMatch has all the features necessary to run a photo business or a laboratory and it only costs $110 (while the Euro is down). Mario and friends have done a magnificent job. If you have digital images to manage, this is the best tool you can get. You are very likely to not need all of its features.

Cdouthitt Loc: Traverse City, MI

I use filemaker for the majority of my databases at work.

Totally custom, and very powerful. I'm amazed at the things we have programmed it to do for site work.