The Sage Group plc (London: SGE.L), the parent company of Best Software, supports 3.6 million customers worldwide and has revenue of approximately $890 million. As such, its mission is to be the leading supplier of business management software solutions, and related products and services, to the small and medium-sized business community worldwide. In addition to the Sage brand, the Sage Group encompasses a portfolio of market leading brands including Best Software, SalesLogix, ACT!, Ciel, Peachtree, Abra, FAS and MIP amongst others.

For over 25 years, Best Software has led the way in developing and supporting easy-to-use, scalable and customizable applications and automated business management solutions. Best Software, with revenue of more than $409 million, offers leading business management products and services that give more than 1.7 million small and mid-sized customers in North America the insight for success throughout the life of their business. (Best Software primarily targets small to mid-sized companies with 25 or fewer employees, up to 500 or more employees and $5 million - $100 million in revenue.) With a wide range of front office and back office solutions, including accounting, human resources, payroll, fixed asset management, customer relationship management, and e-commerce software. Best Software offers award-winning products and services that have revolutionized the way small and mid-sized companies do business in today's marketplace. With the support of its parent company, Best Software desires to continue this history of leadership, with innovative offerings that expand to accommodate the changing needs of today's growing businesses.

Best Software encompasses the following divisions and brands, organized by market, customer size and distribution channel: Small Business Division; Contact Management Solutions - ACT!; Accounting Solutions - Peachtree, DacEasy and Timeslips Mid-Market Division; Accounting Solutions - MAS 90, MAS 200, MAS 500, BusinessWorks Gold, Platinum for Windows by Best; Nonprofit Solutions - MIP, Millennium, Paradigm, GT Pro, Rainbow; CRM Solutions - SalesLogix; Specialized Business Solutions - FAS, Abra, Carpe Diem, CPASoftware, TimeSheet Professional, Best Software Accountants Network (BSAN)

Best Software Small Business Division identifies itself as "Insights for the Life of Your Business." Every day, hundreds of thousands of small businesses rely on solutions from this Division to help them manage their companies and achieve their goals. By helping them manage essential tasks, which include accounting, contact management, and time & billing, the products available can play vital roles in assisting customers across a wide variety of industries. Some of the powerful business management solutions available are: ACT! (contact management); Peachtree and DacEasy (accounting), and Timeslips (time & billing). Many of the products integrate with other Best Software solutions to help customers save time and increase efficiency. For instance, many Peachtree accounting solutions integrate with both ACT! and Timeslips solutions. And, both ACT! and Timeslips integrate with other accounting packages. This integration can help reduce duplicate data entry and allow the user to focus on other business tasks, therby increasing productivity, while saving time and money.

As Best Software Small Business Division customers can grow over time. They can easily migrate to more powerful solutions from the Best Software Mid-Market Division, with assistance from dedicated Migration specialists. That eases the upward transition and helps ensure that customers continue to get insights for the life of their business.

ACT! Summary View

• ACT! 6.0 for 2004 - Every contact detail, instantly! When ordered in North America, ACT! now includes synchronization software for Palm OS and Pocket PC handhelds and ACT! for Palm OS for a limited time (a $79.95 value). Note: ACT! 6.0 for 2004 is not intended to be an upgrade for current ACT! 6.0 users. Although it ships with updated packaging and ACT! 6.03, no changes have been made to core product features.
• ACT! for Web - Instantly access every contact detail over the web.
• ACT! for Palm OS - First-ever, complete contact management system designed specifically for Palm OS handhelds.
• ACT! Link for Pocket PC - First-ever, complete contact management system designed specifically for Pocket PC handhelds.
• ACT! Deduplication Wizard - Eliminate duplicate records in your database.
• ACT! add-ons and solutions - Enhance, expand, conquer. Products and services designed to amplify your experience with ACT!.
• Accounting Integration - Share information between ACT! and your accounting software. Note: ACT! Accessories are products designed to amplify your experience with ACT!. Many ACT! Accessories are developed by third-party developers. Technical support for these third-party products is provided only by the Software Publisher. As a convenience, please see the product page for some of these products, pricing, and the technical support phone number to call, if needed.

ACT! 6.0 for 2004, Features & Benefits

Instantly recall every contact detail! ACT! organizes all your customer information in one place to give you instant access to every detail of every relationship. You'll be able to find anyone or any detail in seconds, including names, phone numbers, addresses, notes from previous conversations, upcoming appointment details, call histories, a list of follow-up activities, and much more, for any contact you choose! With ACT! Link for Pocket PC and ACT! for Palm OS now included, you can access your data in the office or on the go.

ACT! even manages your sales pipeline with forecasting tools and built-in reports. It also allows you to safely share complete customer information with your workgroup. It even works with Outlook, handhelds (both Palm OS and Pocket PC), and paper planners to propel any business to a whole new level.

Meet your sales goals with confidence using the built-in forecasting tools and customizable reports. Create and send personalized mail-merged letters, faxes and e-mail with a few clicks. You can also print address books and calendars to over 20 popular paper planner formats, including, Day-Timer, Day Runner, Deluxe, and others. It integrates with Microsoft Outlook e-mail, calendar, and contacts; and can synchronize with Palm OS and Pocket PC handhelds.

More Salient Features & Benefits

• Comes with an easy to use, full-featured database with over 70 pre-defined fields or add fields to meet your specific needs.
• Includes unlimited date-stamped and time-stamped notes for each contact to keep track of important conversations, commitments, and meeting notes.
• Tracks completed activities for each relationship for a full record of meetings held, letters sent, e-mails sent and received, calls completed, and more.
• Comes with standard reports for phone lists, activity report, relationship histories, sales summaries and more or customize the reports to meet your specific needs.
• Attach, view, and edit important files (price lists, memos, letters, presentations, contracts, pictures and so on) from within ACT! for instant access to important documents.
• Includes an e-mail client that can work with Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express, Eudora, Internet Mail and Lotus Notes so you can create, send and track e-mails to and from your contacts.
• Choose to attach the message to the contact's record and create a history item noting when the e-mail was sent and what its contents were.
• Automatically add new entries to drop-down lists in your most commonly used fields then select an entry from the list for fast, more accurate data entry.
• Attach web pages complete with graphics to any contact for easy access at anytime - even if the web page has been changed or removed from the Internet, you'll have it in captured ACT!.
• View and print your schedule by day, week or month.
• Set alarms to be reminded of important events.
• Monitor alarms in up to three databases - even when ACT! isn't running.
• Schedule recurring events for daily activities, weekly meetings, and other repetitive events in one easy step.
• Avoid scheduling conflict with automatic calendar notifications.
• Calendar Pop-ups make it easy to view activity details instantly. Get a bird's eye view of everything on your plate using the built-in Task List where you can filter calls, meetings, and to-do items by priority, date range, or user - complete with Totals for each type of activity.
• Assign priorities and view by importance for quick organization.
• Set up an Activity Series to automate prospecting, follow-up and sales activities.
• Rollover incomplete activities daily so nothing falls through the cracks.
• Save time using pre-formatted templates for e-mails, letters, memos, and faxes.
• Customize the professional HTML graphical e-mail templates to start e-mail marketing to your customers and prospects today!
• Add graphics and use any font to create your own great looking letters and e-mails.
• Includes a built-in spell checker for letter-perfect documents.
• Attach your contact information to each e-mail so your recipients can automatically add your information to their Outlook or ACT! database.
• Work with Microsoft Word 2000/2002(XP) or use the built in ACT! word processor.
• Choose one of the 8 pre-formatted sales reports or create your own to analyze your sales pipeline, sales by customer, sales by account manager, sales totals and more.
• Track opportunities through the sales cycle with the graphical sales pipeline report.
• Quickly create and print a sales graph, showing your open, won, or lost sales for any time frame you choose.
• Multi-user and network ready right out of the box so your entire team can get up and running without additional software.
• Share databases over a network or synchronize remote workers via e-mail so everyone has the most up to date contact information.
• Includes built-in record locking and password protection for easy and safe sharing of data.
• Share calendars for easy lookup of free and busy times - includes private and public activity types to filter what is displayed to others.
• Manage groups of contacts by interest, company, account, project, and more.
• Create subgroups based on organization structure, location, function, or any way you choose.
• Synchronize your ACT! calendar with an Outlook calendar whenever you choose to keep ACT! and Outlook users up to date for each when scheduling in mixed environments.
• Seamlessly Integrates with Microsoft Outlook À__À Imports Contacts directly from Outlook 2000/2002(XP) so there's no need to re-enter your contact information if it's currently in Outlook.
• Synchronizes your Outlook calendar with ACT! so you can view activities scheduled in Outlook from ACT! and optionally set reminders to sync your ACT! calendar with Outlook whenever you choose so Outlook users will have your current schedule information.
• Integrates with Outlook e-mail so you can access your Outlook Inbox and other folders from within ACT! to keep track of e-mails sent and received for every ACT! contact.
• Use your ACT! database as an address book to send e-mails from Outlook to ACT! contacts, create history for those messages, and attach received mail in Outlook to any ACT! contact.
• Synchronizes your ACT! calendar, contact, and to-do information along with notes and history items to any Palm Powered handheld including Palm, Handspring, Kyocera, Sony, and more. Contacts and events added to your Palm are synchronized back to ACT!. Choose from various options to customize the sync so you get just the information you want on your Palm.
• Print daily, weekly, and monthly calendars as well as a variety of address book formats.
• Integrates with Microsoft Word 2000/2002(XP) to allow one-click creation of mail-merge letters, faxes, and more. Also works with WinFAX 9.0 or later.
• Allows sharing on information between ACT! and popular accounting programs. Linking software is available separately for: QuickBooks Pro/Premier 2002; MAS 90/200; Peachtree Accounting for Windows 2002/2003 À__À Link calendar events to contact records automatically for instant access to every detail.
• Store searchable date-stamped and time-stamped notes for every contact in Notes/History.
• Display calls, meetings, and to-do items associated with every contact in the Activities tab.
• Track and prioritize upcoming calls, meetings, and to-do items, then filter by task, priority, and date range.
• Log a history of completed calls, meetings, to-do items, and e-mail for every contact.
• Create phone lists, completed activity reports, sales summaries, and other reports.
• Attach letters, e-mail, proposals, and other files directly to contact records.
• Surf the Web from within ACT!, even attach graphical Web pages to any contact record.
• Manage contacts individually or in a Group for account-based activities.
• Share ACT! databases via a network and allow remote users to synchronize with central database via e-mail.

The software I reviewed came on a single CD which contained "ACT! 6.0; ACT! Link for Pocket PC; ACT! Link 2.0 for Palm OS; Product Documantation; User Guides." As expected, it did the "auto run" feature when loaded in the CD drive and was easy to navigate during the installation, and view phases. If you like "Hard Copies" you can print the Documantation and User Guides, but I didn't find it necessary.

Get Your Copy

Why take anyone's word on how good ACT! is when you can find out for yourself? Select Your Delivery Method: Downloadable (27.3 MB file; No CD or documentation is provided with the downloadable product. Online manuals are not included in this file to minimize the time required for the download.); Physical Shipment $229.95 ($20 off the suggested retail price). [Note: Look for local discounts. In Mar '04, Office Depot had the following ad for ACT! 6.0 for 2004: "$229.95 © $80 Upgrade Mail©in Rebate © $50 Mail©in Rebate © $20 Instant Savings = &79.95] For a limited time, Net Prospector for ACT! (a powerful Internet search utility available for business or personal use; $99.95 value) will be included for FREE with your purchase of ACT! 6.0 for 2004! Surveys tens of thousands of sites based on criteria you input and condenses the result into a database targeted to your business or personal needs. Imports the results directly into ACT!. Great for capturing new leads!

Download, or request by mail, a free 30-day trial. The ACT! 30-Day Trial is a full-featured version. Remember, when you wish to buy ACT! 6.0, it includes a 30-day money-back guarantee.

1. Downloads available: English, German, and Dutch - Version 6.0; Spanish and Portuguese - Version 5.0.
2. CD by mail (North America Only), English - Version 6.0 for 2004 (includes trial of ACT! for Palm OS).
3. CD by mail (Asia Pacific), English - Version 6.0 (includes trial of ACT! for Palm OS).

System Requirements

133 MHz processor or higher; Windows 98/Me/NT/2000/XP (Note: ACT! Link for Pocket PC does not work with NT); Minimum 60 MB of free hard disk space; 64 MB of memory or higher; VGA or higher monitor resolution; CD-ROM drive; MS Internet Explorer 5.5/6.0; Windows-compatible modem required for auto-dialing or modem-based synchronization; MS TAPI-enabled phone hardware and caller ID support required to auto-find contacts. In addition, ACT! works with these popular products: MS Outlook 2000/2002 (XP) MS and Outlook Express 5.5/6.0; Lotus Notes 5.0.; Eudora 5.2; Word 2000/2002 (XP); Excel 2000/2002 (XP); MS MapPoint 2002; Adobe Acrobat Reader; WinFax PRO 9.0/10.0; Novell Netware 3.12 through 5.0; MS Networks; Palm handhelds running Palm OS 3.5 or later; Pocket PCs running Windows CE/Pocket PC 3.0 or later; Pocket PC/Pocket PC 2002; (Note: Additional memory msy be required to integrate ACT! with one or more of these products.)

ACT! works with these popular products: Outlook 2000/2002 (XP) and Outlook Express 5.5/6.0; Lotus Notes 5.0; Eudora 5.2; MS Word 2000/2002 (XP); MS Excel 2000/2002 (XP); MS MapPoint 2002; Adobe Acrobat Reader; WinFax PRO 9.0/10.0; Novell Netware 3.12©5.0; MS Networks; Palm handhelds running Palm OS 3.5 or later; Pocket PCs running Windows CE/Pocket PC 3.0 or later; Pocket PC/Pocket PC 2002.

For more information, please visit one of the Web sites: Bestsoftware or Act.com, or you may call (866) 308-BEST. You may also contact the ACT! offices: ACT! and SalesLogix, 8800 N. Gainey Center Drive, Suite 200, Scottsdale, AZ 85258 USA; PH: 480-368-3700.