3 Mistakes New Accelo Users Make

Accelo is an intuitive software that’s not only easy-to-use, but also equipped with plenty of how-to articles and tips within the platform designed to help you succeed. In spite of our training, help desk, and the other support we have available, there is a clear problem: people still make simple mistakes that create future headaches. No one likes messing up but mistakes tend to be inevitable, especially when you’re trying to learn a new tool. For many of our new Accelo clients, they often don’t even realize they’ve made a mistake until it’s too late.

To make sure you have the very best chances of succeeding with your new platform, here are three typical traps new clients tend to fall into—and effective tips to help you along the way.

Mistake 1: Importing Data You Do Not Want in your Account

Accelo is designed to be easy-to-use, and because of that, we’ve made it so that you can import all of your data at once. The only issue that we’ve seen with this feature is that many clients do not clean their data before importing all of it into Accelo.

We understand that it’s hard to get super clean data. In fact, most organizations suffer from the all-too-common messy database that no one really owns and no one has taken the time to clean in years. Though this may sound familiar, it’s important to take the time to clean the mess before you import it into Accelo. Importing data that hasn’t been cleaned up will make things much more difficult for you in the long run.

If you realize that you’ve made a mistake and you’ve imported data that you do not want in your account, you have two options:

#1 - You can individually delete a company or contact record

#2 - You can delete a group of companies or contact records (bulk delete)

Expert Tip: Only add the contact email addresses that are relevant to your business. That way your Stream is only filled with the most relevant activities needed to keep you up to date with interactions between your clients and the rest of your team.

Best Practices:

Prior to setting up email integration, you want to make sure you’ve added your client data and contact details into Accelo, since we can only capture emails for contacts that are already added into the platform. If you're not ready to import your contacts yet (or don't need to), you might want to create a couple of companies and contacts instead. See how you can import yours, easily.

Mistake 2: Forgetting to Connect Email

OK, so you’ve imported your contacts, now what? One of the features that new clients tend to fall in love with is Accelo’s ability to automatically capture all of the emails sent and received from each client. In fact, it’s one of our most popular features, and it’s also linked to one of the most commonly made mistakes. As new users, many often forget to integrate their email service provider with Accelo. It’s often assumed that since their company is connected to Google Apps, that it’s also been set up for the whole organization.

Hmm, not quite. Even though Accelo is designed as an intuitive platform, it cannot capture your emails if you do not integrate your inbox with the platform.

Depending on your email service provider, email capture can either be set up for everyone by an administrator, or by individual users. The good news is that you don't need to install any software on your mail servers. Just follow the relevant guide to configure email capture.

Expert Tip: When you integrate with your email, take advantage of Accelo's wizard tool to help keep your contacts and clients clean within your Accelo Account. And don’t forget that each user must individually set up their own personal email integration.

What You Get When You Do It Right:

Correctly integrating your email with Accelo will provide you and your team with the ability to automatically track and share client emails, attachments, appointments, notes and custom fields without changing how you normally use email. By capturing all of your team's relevant business emails, you’re creating a single place to share and collaborate, giving complete visibility into your client-related work and allowing you to always know exactly what’s going on in your organization.

Mistake 3: Forgetting to Customize Rates and Tax Codes

Accelo is a great tool to track your profitability, but it can’t track it for you if it does not know the billable value of the work your team is producing. Forgetting to add your custom rates or forgetting to add your tax codes is another one of the most common mistakes that newbies make, and it can really hinder your ability to get the most out of your platform. If you forget to add your tax code, it will hinder your ability to create an invoice, and you will definitely find yourself with a system error. Adding the correct custom rates and tax codes will ensure you are easily able to bill for the time spent without any major hiccups. Predefined rates can be set up in your Billing & Rates Configuration.

Two Things to Consider When Setting up Staff Rates:

• Rates don’t apply retroactively. Rates can only change for new work logged, and previous work will retain their original rates.

• Objects in Accelo (Projects, Issues, Retainer Period, etc.) can have their own unique rates. Staff rates are only used when they are selected as the rate set to the Object.

Finally, Accelo is quite intuitive and easy to use, but make sure you follow the setup guide we've created to help you succeed. It’s like golf—Accelo gives you the perfect swing for that hole-in-one, but it’s up to you to tee it up for success. When in doubt, don’t forget to reach out—we are always here to help.

Also, please let us know below what other “mistakes” you or your team members might have experienced when you first started using Accelo.