What to Budget for when you Upgrade

A quick word before you look at the numbers. The prices below are for a brand new and empty copy of Studio Manager 9 only. They do not include the cost of upgrading your copy or copies of FileMaker Pro to FM9. They do not include the cost of extra help you may need to import your data or transfer your customizations into Studio Manager 9. We don't bundle these optional services because some of our customers have their own in-house or local expertise to handle the importing and customization themselves.

See below the price tables for a lot of good information on upgrading including a description of the upgrader guide that we have written to help you along your way.

Upgrade Pricing Varies Depending on your Current Version

If you are upgrading from Studio Manager 4, prices are higher than if you upgrade from version 7. If you have 8, you'll pay even less. If you've purchased after August 31st, 2007, the price is even lower.

Our thinking is (1) users with earlier versions have gotten more years of value out of the product they purchased and (2) the increase in features and value going from a much earlier version to Studio Manager 9 is greater than it is for someone who has recently purchased Studio Manager 8.

Upgrade Pricing for Studio Manager 9 until May 31, 2008

If you don't see your user count in this list, drop us an email at janet (at) tokerud (dot) com and/or call 415 789-5219 and we will give you a quote.

What does Upgrading Entail?

We give you a checklist. When you upgrade a customizable product like Studio Manager, you get the full new product and then need to (1) import your data into it and (2) re-do any customizations you may have made in the past that you think are worth adding.

Upgrades from Studio Manager 7-8 to 9

Easy Upgrades. When you go from Studio Manager 7 or 8 to 9, the field names match. Importing just takes a couple hours. You do need to do a few more things:

• Set all the auto-number fields like estimate numbers and invoice numbers so that they start where your old version of Studio Manager leaves off.
• Copy and paste your pop-down lists if you have changed the generic versions.
• Double check and compare various totals to make sure they match your old numbers.
• If you've made a lot of neat customizations, maybe some special reports, you'll need to create new layouts and copy and paste from your old file to get them back.
• if you've done some extra scripting, you will need to copy those scripts over and make sure they tie in with current layout names and such.

We have a 2 page guide to the import process that walks you through.

Feel free to call or email if you have any concerns about this. We are here to help. Keep reading, the next section applies to you too.

Upgrading from Studio Manager 4 or 3 to 9

When you upgrade, we include two good things: (1) a file by file guide/checklist to walk you through importing and (2) import scripts. You basically run the scripts one at a time for each file and the script sets you up with the fields matching and you just need to make exceptions if you've made changes in the fields.

You Could be Dancing. This is repetitive work and takes a few hours but is not hard to do. You could watch a DVD while data is importing and pause it while you check the data briefly and then start the next import. Typically an upgrade is done at night or on the weekend, so you'll probably be all alone. Put on some good iTunes and you'll be fine. Dancing while data is importing could be fun. Just remember to check off your checklist to keep on track. (Please note: If you are upgrading from SM7 or 8, everything gets much faster and easier.)

We Offer Upgrade Services. If you have less time than money at the moment or you just don't like this kind of thing, we can do your upgrade for you. Our average upgrade charge is about $800. A major advantage of our upgrades is that we check your files and data as we go along and fix what we can or flag it for you to fix. It's a kind of data quality audit. The cost for upgrading depends on two things (1) how much data you have - bigger firms with years of data take longer than small firms with only a year of data and (2) do you want us to re-do some of your customizing.

Or, you can start from scratch with 9. Enter your new clients, set-up or import your billing codes and enter your current jobs. The advantage here is threefold: (1) You know you haven't imported in old bad data, (2) your getting a full archive out of it, so you've got tiny files that run really fast and (3) you save a bunch of time/hassle/money by not having to import the data. You still would want to make customizations like the most common -- make the generic invoice look sharp. But then, that's what you are best at and most comfortable with.

Re-doing your Customizations is Easier than Ever with Filemaker 9

You can:

We recommend that, when you upgrade, you take the opportunity to review your customizations and implement them better based on your experience using them and based on the latest features in FileMaker 9. Having to re-do software is often the best thing you can do because you get to take a fresh start at it based on what you've learned in the meantime. It's hard to know ahead of time how well the best laid plans will work in real life. Upgrade time is when you get to take another shot at it.

You Should Own 1 Copy of FileMaker Pro 9 Advanced

FileMaker 9 Advanced now constitutes a powerful tool for your shop. It only costs $200 extra to get Advanced. Because you more quickly copy and paste fields, scripts and script steps, it will serve you especially well if you've done a fair amount of customizing and now want to reimplement the changes that worked well in Studio Manager 9. You can read more about it at FileMaker's website.

Because it can do some advanced tricks, we think owning a copy of FileMaker Pro Advanced provides you with a sort of insurance policy. Even if you don't use it yourself, you could use it under the telephone or email supervision of Tokerud Consulting or of a local consultant who is not able to come into your office as quick as you need them. It makes our job easier, and you get your needs met faster and more affordably.

Studio Manager Upgrade History

• SM 9.0. You need FileMaker Pro 9 to run Studio Manager 9. SM9 takes advantage of FileMaker Pro 9's great new Conditional Formatting plus adding a range of other smaller features to Studio Manager 8. We now have 4 views of an employees tasks (today, overdue, 3-day and all) plus color coding the tasks via FileMaker 9's conditional formatting. We have a built in clean-up facility for new contacts or editing contacts which will take data copied in from the web or other stylized text and clear the styles, size and color so that FileMaker formatting will apply correctly. You can now click a button to save contacts to the Mac Address Book and create vCards. Check out what is new SM9 with lots of screenshots and more detail on what is included in this upgrade.

• SM 8.0. The biggest improvement by far is the new user interface makeover throughout and the simplification and streamlining that went along with it. There are a great many refinements. We are especially proud of the fuller-featured 4-Week Schedule Reporting capability which will help your scheduling immensely.

• SM 7.5 thru 7.7. See our special pages on new features for 7.5, 7.6 and 7.7. You can link to these pages from the SM News Archives.

• SM 7.0. Mega upgrade! We've updated our whole set of screenshots and descriptions so that they describe our Studio Manager 7.0 product. When we did so, most of what was said was still valid. We've added a report here and there but the bigest improvement is that Studio Manager 7.0 is a single file. It still holds all the different data inside that file as separate tables but the feeling and file management changes much for the better. We increased the screen sizes by 69% across the board. In fact the screen footprint stays constant which is another one of those feeling things that makes a lot of difference. Try the free demo to get the new feeling.

• SM 4.6. You heard it here first. Besides smoothing out a couple rough edges in SM 4.5, we've added new features to the sales and marketing functions in SM 4.5. Also, we added a feature to invoicing - when you make a new invoice for all your unbilled actuals, you have a new choice of expenses only.

• SM 4.5 We made a major upgrade to the marketing and sales support in the contact management portion of Studio Manager. There's a real sales to do list built into this upgrade. More Info 12/18/03.

• SM 4.4 Practice makes perfect. We added more features and capabilities to the security capabilities of Studio Manager based on customer feedback and our own new ideas. More Info 9/30/03.

• SM 4.3 Practice makes perfect. We added more features and capabilities to the security capabilities of Studio Manager based on customer feedback and our own new ideas. More Info 6/17/03.

• SM 4.2 We got into the password and security business with this upgrade. We created three tracking files to help you keep track of who could do what where in Studio Manager. We installed four levels of passwords and groups from the lowliest staff person to the owner and master programmer. More Info 3/25/03.

• SM 4.1. Converted master version to FMP 5 (up till 4.1, we created parallel versions of Studio Manager - one for FM 3/4 and one for FM 5-6. Expanded the billing and markup rates in Studio Manager. We went from 4 hourly rates to 8 and from 2 markup rates to 4. This increase the number of rates gave more flexibility to larger firms and firms that do lots of different things.Used object emboss tool available in FMP5 on objects and eliminated a second offset box graphic to create the effect the hard way - making layout work much easier. 8/1/02.