Managing Documents

Managing Documents

Chronicle serves as your filing cabinet, keeping all documents related to a job: estimates, letters, photos, Excel spreadsheets, or whatever else you might happen to have.  Managing your documents with Chronicle saves you time and makes your work easier in a number of ways.

Greater security

When you're dealing with paper documents, there's always the danger of documents or even whole folders getting lost. Once your documents are in Chronicle, however, the job file can go out the door without your ever having to worry about anything being lost, ever.

In addition, should you ever end up in litigation, having your documents where they can't be lost, and where you can retrieve any document in seconds, is also an important form of protection.

Less paper

Chronicle saves you space; your whole filing cabinet fits in your computer. It also saves you paper: you don't need to print documents for others to have them, even to fax them.

Time savings

By the time you find a job's folder, go to the fax machine, add a cover sheet, send the fax, and then get the file correctly put away, the average fax takes 17 minutes. Using Chronicle, you can fax or email any document without ever leaving your desk. And when an adjustor calls and asks you to resend the report you sent him last Thursday, you can resend documents in seconds.

Chronicle also saves you time by generating forms with job information already on them.

And when a customer calls up for information about a job that was completed months or years ago, instead of taking days to find the right file, you have the information in seconds.

Easier access to job information

With paper files, you need to find the job folder every time you need job information. Many offices end up with multiple files for the same job, so you not only need to head down the hall to find the job file, you have to also hope that you find the right job folder. If the folder you need is on someone's desk, or if you're following up on something from your home office, you just may not be able to get the information at all. With Chronicle, on the other hand, you can access the information from anywhere, and multiple people can look at the job folder at once.

Better management

Chronicle improves your management in a few ways. The Chronicle journal tells you exactly when the document was sent and to whom; when an adjustor or customer says that you didn't send a document you were supposed to, you now have a record and can reply: "The document was faxed on 10:10 last Thursday, but I can send it again if you'd like." And if a customer refuses to pay and you need to take legal action, the complete record that Chronicle provides is very strong documentation of everything that you have done.

In addition, with a paper file (especially when there's more than one for the same job), it isn't always clear what's in it and what has been left out. With Chronicle, you can identify which documents are required for a particular type of job so you know if you are missing any documents for a job. Chronicle lets you easily find jobs that are missing documents. This is sometimes important in knowing whether it's time to invoice the job.