In a fragile economy, like we face today, keeping track of expenses takes on more importance.  Everyone is looking for ways to lower their daily, monthly and yearly expenses.  There are many different ways to handle expenses for sales reps.  Some owners pay a monthly allowance, some pay for individual expenses.  Whichever is right for you, MRSWARE provides an integrated module to record and track expenses - Expense Reports.


Sales reps can enter their expenses, linking the expense to a marketing campaign and/or a company or contact.  Once entered they submit their sales expenses on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.  Once submitted, the person in charge of approving expenses has the opportunity to approve, reject, or ask for more information on individual expenses.  Once an expense report is approved, the expense is paid and marked as paid in the system.  

Managers can track expenses by Type, by Sales Rep, by Category, by Dollar amount, by Payment type, by Date, by Campaign, or by Contact.  Reports can be run by Category or by User, to give to accountants or financial advisers.

By bringing expenses into your CRM system, owners and managers can add expense information to their overall data when tracking the profitability of their marketing campaigns or customers.  

Many of you receive reports from your manufacturers in a .pdf format.  As you know this format does not allow you to manipulate the data, thereby rendering the report useless for you in getting your numbers into MRSware.  

There are software applications available to you that convert .pdf files to Excel or Word files. 

Once you have converted your .pdf file to Excel, you can save your reports to .csv files, then import your sales & commission data into MRSware by using the Invoice Import Wizard, saving you time. 

To find what's available, I googled .pdf converters - the link is provided below:

.pdf converters

Some of the links say "free" but they may be limiting the amount of conversions you can do or they may be offering free trials of their software, so please read carefully before you download anything. 

We are not recommending a specific application, but I do know some of your fellow MRSware Users use .pdf converters.

​Please feel free to add the name of a .pdf converter you have used successfully and what the cost of the software is.  

In my last post, MRSWARE's Opportunity Tracking was shown to be a versatile tool used by sales reps and managers for new leads and business opportunities.  We also have some customers using Opportunity Tracking to keep track of their bids.

Leads and bids are essentially different animals.  Leads are all about the sales process and efforts - qualification, presentation, specification, follow up, quotation, commitment.  Bids are all about meeting the specs and being the lowest bidder.  As a result leads and bids are tracked differently in Opportunity Tracking. 

Bids are a one time opportunity with specific products that have to meet certain specifications - product, packaging and shipping.  There's not a lot of selling taking place for a bid.  A municipality or state or school or hospital puts together a list of products that it needs and waits for the prices to come in.  Other than creating specifications that may limit your competitors, for the most part the lowest bid wins.  And while it's good to know what phase the bid is in, the close reasons are the most important - why you won or lost the bid.  Once the bid is awarded the sales person has to wait until the next bid opportunity arises to get the business.


When tracking bids, management can sort and filter by the type, by manufacturer, by dollar volume, by competitor, by close date, and by close reason.  This allows them to see and share results and trends with their manufacturers and customers.