Product Reviews

When it comes to managing the business end of a creative agency, do you trust off-the-shelf software or build your own? Co.efficient is a pricey but customisable client-server program that mixes both approaches. Built on a FileMaker Pro database engine, it's ready to handle business tasks from job estimating to project scheduling from the start and can be configured to individual needs.

Co.efficient revolves around the concept of jobs. When you create a new job you select its title and the client from a pop-up list prepopulated with details entered in Co.efficient's contacts screen. You can input client details as well as account handlers, basic brief, next action and order status in the same screen.

From this point you can create one of two types of estimate. In an internal estimate planner you enter a detailed analysis of proposed time to be spent on a job, mark-up applied and budgeted expenses. A summary of these costs can be imported - seamlessly, if slowly - into a more presentable estimate that can be sent to the prospective client. The original planner is kept for audit purposes.

Co.efficient's different functions work together smoothly. For example, tasks listed in the 'time spent' section of the estimate planner are tracked through to a tasks screen where you can specify their duration. In turn, this information is shared in a workloads screen that lists your allocated tasks and, if you have sufficient privileges, those of your employees.

In all areas data entry is refreshingly easy and quick. For instance, in the timesheets screen you apply time to a job by selecting it from a pull-down list of job numbers. The job title and client are automatically entered for you.

The flaw in many job management applications is that you often need to transfer figures that you have

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dutifully entered into a separate accounting application to handle the financial side of things. Not here. Co.efficient includes sales and purchase ledgers to track purchases and final invoices recorded in the program. It's hardly feature-laden: you can't generate a profit-and-loss account or balance sheet, and reporting features are limited. But simple tasks such as VAT returns can be completed inside Co.efficient and its cost analysis functions are undeniably useful. You can view budgeted profit margin by comparing figures from the estimate planner to the actual sales-ledger numbers. An add-on we didn't test lets you export data directly to programs such as MYOB Accounting.

Co.efficient is more than job-tracking and costing software though. For managers, it can double as a basic human resources application - it stores employee records such as holiday entitlement and salary details. It's also a workmanlike tool for managing meetings and things to do. Under its diary menu, you can view upcoming get-togethers for yourself and other network users in a familiar calendar format.

While in general not as versatile as iCal or Entourage, it does have two advantages: the automatic creation of an agenda, with basic information automatically filled in, when you create a meeting - and the ability to add scheduled meeting time to a time sheet through a single-button click.

For all the program's strengths two elements limit its appeal. The first is its price. At more than £6000 to cover a five-person design team, Co.efficient can hardly be described as a budget purchase. In fairness though, this price includes copies of FileMaker Pro, while cheaper, timesheet-only versions of the software are available too.

The other drawback - aside from occasional inscrutable error messages encountered when we entered data in the wrong field order - is that, compared to other Mac time-management or accounting applications, Co.efficient doesn't offer much Mac OS X integration. Contacts don't link with Address Book and the things to do and diary functions aren't iCal compatible. But there is compensation - as a FileMaker application Co.efficient is platform agnostic, which means that at least you can export all data in tab-delimited format.

If you can live with this caveat and can swallow the up-front cost, Co.efficient is an efficient way to organise the business side of your creative work.