Office Tools Professional 2009

Office Tools Pro (OTP) distinguishes itself in this market by offering an integrated solution that includes document storage, contact management, time tracking, billing, project tracking and more.

Core Functionality

OTP is designed as an all-in-one solution, providing direct integration with the applications listed above, and they are all accessible from a single screen. The document storage component organizes documents by client, filename, year, project, category and assigned staff. The files are stored as native Windows Explorer files with OTP serving as a front-end file management application. The current version does not offer a print driver, but there will be one in the next release. 4

Integration

As described above, the integration within the OTP applications is second to none. In addition, the client list can be synchronized with Lacerate, QuickBooks and Outlook. Integration with MS Office is facilitated by launching the application from within OTP and defining the file indexing metadata at the time the document is created. You can send a PDF file directly to OTP from within Acrobat by launching a dialogue window to enter the index values. The same applies to MS Office applications as an alternative to the method described previously.

E-mail is directly integrated into the OTP interface. Files can be emailed individually or in bulk. Incoming e-mails are moved into the DM via drag and drop, or from the “Send To” button. You can scan documents in TIFF format directly with a TWAIN-compliant scanner. 4

Advanced Functionality

With all of the integrated applications, OTP is one of the strongest solutions in this lineup in terms of reporting capabilities. DMS reports are available by staff, client, in summary or detail, and a series of filters including delivery location, project, category and file type can be applied.

Archiving of documents is accommodated by tagging files or categories with an archive date. The archive documents function lets you pick a filter for files, including a creation date range. The selected files can be moved to an alternate storage device. 4.25

Summary & Pricing

If you’re looking for a complete, easy-to-use practice management solution that includes an integrated document storage application, Office Tools Pro is a good choice. Pricing is $500 for a single user; a five-user system is $1,500 and $4,000 for 20 users. The optional portal module is priced starting at $300 per year for 5GB of storage.

2010 Overall Rating 4