Free FileMaker Solution: Business Productivity Kit

Aside from the templates built in FileMaker Pro that you can use for your business, the FileMaker Trial site also lets you download several free solutions that you can use. One of them is the FileMaker "Business Productivity Kit."

Version 3.0, with features highlighting the new capabilities of FileMaker Pro 11, was launched last year and adds a host of new functions to the Invoices solution discussed in the previous post.

Aside from combining the Contact, Inventory, and Purchase Order (called Sales Orders in this solution) templates built-in FileMaker, the Business Productivity Kit (or BPK) features a Main Menu to navigate the different sections of the solution, and includes the Event Management and Email Campaign Management templates as well, making the solution suitable for tracking projects and sending out mailing lists to your customers.

The BPK already contains a couple of sample records for each of the sections so you can see how the information fits together and have an idea of what you can do with the solution. Of course, you can delete all the records if you wish to start from scratch.

The Project Management feature makes use of the existing contacts you have entered into the contacts section of the database and lets you assign tasks to them. All tasks are part of the projects and from this section you can see the overall project status as well as the individual deadlines. Don't expect MS Project style Gantt charts and resource allocations though, but with the flexibility of FileMaker, anyone with enough knowledge can customize the solution to their liking.

The Email Campaign section of the BPK also garners a look as this offers functionality to mailing list software normally available through list servers or Yahoo Groups. This also uses the email information you entered in the Contacts section of the database so you can send your whole customer base newsletters including attachments with one click. You'll also be able to define email templates so each message is customized for the client, with their name appearing instead of "Dear Sir" for example. You can define groups such as "Current Customers", "Dormant Customers" so certain messages are only received by whichever group you select.

Finally, the BPK solution is unlocked, which means that you have full access to how the solution works, define additional fields, layouts, and scripts to your liking, and essentially customize it for your own business.

The BPK is available as a free download from the FileMaker Trial website; you'll have to fill in a form with your information, but you can download a whole lot of other stuff as well. Enjoy!