#89: Organize Your Notes

Did you know that you can reorganize your Advisors Assistant Notes easily by moving the Notes within Topics, combining Topics, and even moving Notes and/or Topics from one name in your database to another?  All of this can be done quickly without any need to “copy and paste.”

Notes are highly flexible in Advisors Assistant.  Of course you can take unlimited Notes in your database, and each Note is unlimited in size.  You can also create unlimited Note Topics for each name in the database.  The Note Topics provide you with a way to organize your Notes into categories, and you can name those categories anything you like.  This makes Compliance easier—you can keep your Securities Notes separate from other General or Policy Notes.  Note Topics can be used for almost anything you can think of.  One of our customers told us how she creates a Topic without any actual Notes in it for clients whose names may be difficult to pronounce.  The name of the Topic appears on the main Clear View Screen (View Client With Notes) so you can just name the Topic with the pronunciation of the person’s name (for example, “Name Pronounced ‘SMITH’”) and then you can just click on the Notes Tab and quickly remind yourself of how to say the name correctly.

If you decide that a particular Note needs to be in a different Topic than the one where it was entered, it’s easy to move that Note where it belongs.  You can move one Note at a time to a different Topic, or you can even combine entire Topics.  To move one Note, simply highlight it with your mouse on the View Notes screen, and click the Move Note button at the bottom.  The Note Topics screen will appear, and from there you can select the appropriate Topic to move the Note into—you can even use the “Select the Contact” drop-down field to move the individual Note into a Topic in a different client’s record.  And you can use the Add New Topic button to create an entirely new Note Topic (even on a different name record!) for you to move the individual Note into.  So if you decide that a particular Note in John Smith’s Insurance Note Topic needs to be moved to Sally Smith, but Sally doesn’t have a Topic called Insurance Notes, you can create that Topic in Sally’s record without having to interrupt your process by going to Sally’s record.

If you decide that an entire Topic of Notes can be combined with another Topic, this is also easy.  Let’s say you have two Topics for John Smith, one called Sales Notes and another called Insurance Notes; and you decide that since John is strictly an insurance client, you could move all of his Sales Notes into his Insurance Notes.  Just go into John’s Sales Notes Topic and click the Combine Topics button toward the top of the screen.  This will let you select which Topic you want to combine the Sales Notes into (in this case “Insurance Notes”).  You’ll need to type “CONTINUE” into the appropriate box, and then click OK.  Now you have one Topic called Insurance Notes, and all the Notes from BOTH Topics will be in it, fully sortable by any of the column headings there.

You can also move an entire Topic to another name in your database.  This is especially useful if you have clients who are a married couple, and one of them passes away.  Let’s say Jim Jones is the Head of his Household, and you’re keeping all the Notes for Jim and his wife Sue in Jim’s name record; but then Jim passes away, and Sue is still your client, so you need to move all of Jim’s Notes to Sue’s record.  From Jim’s View Notes screen, simply highlight the Topic you want to move (let’s say you’re moving Jim’s Insurance Notes Topic) and click the Move Note Topic button toward the top of the screen.  Use the “Select the Contact” drop-down to choose Sue Jones, then choose the Topic on Sue’s record where you want to move ALL the Notes in the current Topic.  If Sue doesn’t already have an Insurance Notes Topic, you can use the Add New Topic button to create it on her record (otherwise all the Notes in Jim’s Insurance Notes Topic will be combined into the highlighted Topic on Sue’s record).  Then type “CONTINUE” and click OK to move all the Notes in Jim’s Insurance Notes Topic into the corresponding Topic on Sue’s record.

You can learn more in our Help files, or contact our Tech Support Team with any questions.

http://cloud.climarkftp.com/v8helptopic/index.html?view_notes.htm