This is going to fix a ton of problems for people
wilkinscpa@aol.com 
Overall Rating:
 
[06/03/2006]  First of all, I couldn't believe the $19.95 price. I've spent more than that on lunch, so I had to give it a try. I thought there must be a gimmick or feature limitation, but to my surprise, DuoShare was honest, straightforward, and extremely helpful. For years I have kept my mailing addresses in a spreadsheet separate from QuickBooks. I never get around to updating the QuickBooks data with changes I have made to the spreadsheet. I also don't always remember to update my spreadsheet with changes I have made in QuickBooks. By using the DuoShare Address Quality Integrator designed for use with QuickBooks, I discovered I had a ton of address errors I didn't even know I had. The first synchronization took a long time so I would do this either at night or on the weekend. I made the mistake of installing on a Monday morning and it started synchronizing immediately, but I called and DuoShare said I could just cancel the sync and do it later. DuoShare fixed most of the problems automatically but I had a few I had to research on my own. They offered to fix my remaining addresses by hand for $1 per address but I was too cheap to let them do that. Most of my addresses in QuickBooks are accurate and up-to-date with the exception of some old customer accounts that I don't really care about. I was also able to upload my spreadsheet data to the DuoShare website (for an additional charge) along with a marketing list I purchased, then merge those lists with the QuickBooks lists, remove duplicates, do the presorting and other things the Post Office needs so I could get the postage discount. The hardest thing I did was the mail merge with Microsoft Word and Excel so that I could print my addresses directly on my mail piece. I called DuoShare at least 8 times so I know they were tired of hearing from me but they were really helpful. They even asked me to fax in an example of my letter in the envelope so they could check it to make sure I wouldn't have problems at the Post Office. The learning curve I went through with mail merge should be worth it because I won't have to pay my printer anymore to send out things I can do myself, and I can get it done when I need it done. Some of the concepts were hard to understand but I don't know if it was just me having to learn or if they could make it easier. I think the USPS regulations are so complex that it's hard to make it really simple, but DuoShare helped me understand what I needed to do to get the mailing done. My second mailing was a snap since I had already set up my mail merge, so I think the first mailing is the hardest because there is so much to set up and understand. My return mail has dropped to just a handful of mail, and DuoShare is researching those for me. My employees like the interactive address validation because it fixes the addresses when they are keying. They like being able to enter just the numbers and consonants of the address which saves them keystrokes and DuoShare fills in the rest. Half the time we are on the phone with the customer so if the address is bad they can clarify the address right then. We found that many of our customers who are businesses were leaving out their suite number. They are surprised when we tell them that their address has suites 100-400 and so they must be in a suite. I think we act like a bigger business than we are with this new tool and I think it will have a lasting impact on our customers. I asked them if they could print the barcodes directly on my checks and invoices and print them in the presorted order and they said they were working with Intuit to solve that problem in a future release. They referred me to Gary at fabsoft.com for a possible immediate solution. I haven't had time to run that down yet.
 
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