Method Community

 Hi.. I am new to Methods and it looks like a great product but I am a little confused about the diff. versions.

Starter Edition:

1. For the starter edition .. how many users do you get for the basic price of $25?

2. For the starter edition are all the methodsAPIs available to communicate to methods with?

3, Can you create 3rd Party Portals with the starter edition?

Full Blown Edition:

1. How many users do you get for this version of $65?

2. I noticed when I created a new user I was asked if this user was one that would be counted toward a paid lic. What is the difference between a user that is paid(has a licenses) and one that you don't check the box for.

3. When I created a new 3rd party portal I first created a table for username/pw/emailaddress. Is there a limit as to the number of users I can add for 3rd party portals. I'm confused as to the diff. beween the users I add for a portal and ones that need licenses for?

Thanks

 Hey Keith,

Welcome to Method Keith, I hope your finding your way around the website ok. We have a lot of information on our forums and within our blogs.

To answer your questions,

Starter Edition

1, For any edition of method the starting price includes 1 Admin user.

2, API's will work with Method as long as you have the screens the API is communicating with. IE, Outlook API will not work unless you have the CRM edition of Method.

3, The Customer Portal is a part of our Method CRM Edition. This is not accessible from the Starter Edition.

Full Blown Edition

1, Same with the Starter Edition and CRM Edition, all versions come with 1 Admin user.

2, You can create a user that doesn’t go against your paid users. This is so you can assign work to those users without having to have them as a paid user. For instance on the Invoice screen you can assign reps, reps can be users. But maybe that rep doesn’t sign into Method.

3, Your Portal Users are billed based upon amount of time spent in the Portal. Portal users do not sign in the same way. A regular User is billed a set amount. The Customer Portal is used for quick viewing of but not limited to; Company File information, Recent Transactions, and Account information. A regular user is someone that would be in the system more frequently making changes or imputing data.

I hope this sheds some light for you.

Ok.. that helps.. not sure I fully understand this reply for a question. Does this mean you bill for any time in a 3rd party portal. if so can you give me an idea of how much and when is this billed. Thanks

Reply was: Your Portal Users are billed based upon amount of time spent in the Portal. Portal users do not sign in the same way. A regular User is billed a set amount. The Customer Portal is used for quick viewing of but not limited to; Company File information, Recent Transactions, and Account information. A regular user is someone that would be in the system more frequently making changes or imputing data.

Hey Keith,

First I'd like to clear up something, The Customer Portal does come with the Starter Edition.

Ok, so to break down the 3rd Party Portal. When a User logs into the portal, they are billed 15 cents per 5 minutes. The portal is a great way for your clients to be able to log in and check on Company Account information. To give you an idea ill set out an example.

Say you had 100 Customers log into the Portal for 5 minutes once a month. So they can check on account balances before writing a cheque to you, this would cost you $15.00

In the situation where someone logs into the Portal then walks away from the PC. We have setup a timer that will freeze after 5 minutes of no activity. Once the User returns and clicks on a Field or Button, the timer will start again.

The cost for this will appear on your monthly statements. Please Contact your Business Consultant to get the exact billing date.

I hope this helps you understand the Customer Portal more.

OK.. i think that answers my question...I was getting portal users mixed up with the paid users. Let see if i get this correct...In an example if I have a Starter edition there is just one user that can logon and is paid for, but I can have x number of portal users viewing their account and this is billed based on the rate you said. The reason that was confusing is that if you look at the Iframe html generated by methods, there is a parameter for user name, so it looks to me this is just a vendor/customer I had setup to beable to view his qb data.

This sound correct?

Hey Keith,

I think you understand it now.