Getting The Most From Your Collect! Demonstration

If you haven't already installed Collect!, please see Install Collect! For The First Time. You'll need to install the program before you can proceed.

Help Components

Collect! comes with comprehensive tools to assist your evaluation and to shorten your learning time. These include popup help, hyper-linked online help, the Collect! Users' Community, and Collect! Users' Guides. Any documents from these sources can be printed for your convenience.

If you leave your cursor sitting on a field for a short time, a blue box will appear. This information describes the field for you. The popup help appears throughout the system and can greatly assist you. Popup help can be disabled once you have a solid understanding of the program.

Debtor Information Screen With Popup Help

These is also an extensive "How To" section in the help documentation that is designed especially for new users. You may want to have a look at those topics first.

As mentioned above, Collect! Users' Guides are available in the Help documentation. You may want to print only the sections that you need. To access the guides, look at the top of any help page and find the CONTENTS button. Click this button to go to the Help Contents. Descriptions of the available guides may be found on the Help Contents page.

Anywhere in the system, you can hit the F1 function key on your keyboard to get detailed information for the current form that is displayed. You can also access this help by selecting HELP from the top menu bar in Collect! this will give you a list of choices.

• Select CONTENTS to view the Help Contents page.
• Select QUICK USER'S GUIDE to open the guide.
• Select HOW TO to display an alphabetical list of all the "How To" topics.
• Select KEYBOARD TIPS to view a table of shortcut keys.
• Select INDEX to view a comprehensive alphabetical index of all available topics.

Getting To Work

Collect! is activated by the START button. The information that flashes on the screen sets up the available portion of the system, according to the user access rights. For your demonstration, we have given you access to all areas, so that you can have a good look at Collect! For now, you don't need an ID code or password. Later, when you are fully operational, you will set up proper operator ID's with appropriate access to the system. There is a section on operator setup in the system overviews.

Welcome Screen

You are currently set to go into the Collect! Demonstration (DEMODB) database. What you do there will have no impact on any other aspect of Collect!, so don't be afraid to experiment. The other database choices are Master (MASTERDB), where you will store your accounts, and Client Prospecting (PROSDB), where you can handle prospective client information. Click the START button now.

Main Menu

Here you will see the Main Menu. Notice the labels, menus and icons at the top of the screen. Most of the choices in these menus are also available in the six menu boxes in the lower left hand of the screen. The labels on the buttons are intuitive. When you select each, you will find the steps to guide you. The MONTH END button takes you to all the steps necessary to perform a typical collection agency month end. DAILY ADMINISTRATION includes all the day-to-day administrative functions. You will also find the button for the TUTORIALS on this menu.

The QUICK SEARCH section will enable you to quickly search for accounts in your database. The choices behave the same as the Browse menu, Find By choices with fewer clicks!

Start by selecting the WORK IN PROGRESS button. This is a typical daily work queue. The upper portion of the screen depicts a variety of tallies for task types and selections of the type of follow ups. Each line item is a summary of a follow-up on a particular account.

Work In Progress To Do List

Click your mouse on one of the lines. This action will take you directly to the Debtor Information Screen.

Debtor Information Screen

Once you feel ready, try setting up Collect! to meet your needs. This is an extremely flexible system. You don't have to change the way you conduct business, rather Collect! will change to suit your needs. During your initial setup process, we recommend that you keep things simple until you are comfortable with the system. You'll find Collect! will meet the challenges you set for it.

Please spend some time navigating through Collect! and reading the popup boxes. Click buttons and pull-down menus. Pressing F1 when a menu is displayed will give you details of the menu's choices and links to additional information. Take a good look around. Don't worry about making mistakes. This is your demo and is easily re-installed.

Viewing The Tutorials

Now that you've had an opportunity to move around in Collect!, we recommend that you review the FLASH format Tutorial videos to begin using Collect! step by step. From the Main Menu, select TUTORIALS. This button will open an HTML page with a brief description of each available video. Select the PLAY TUTORIALS link to view the videos. You will need the latest Adobe Flash Player available for download from the Tutorials page. You will also need a sound card in your computer to listen to the Tutorials.

Using Help Pages

Our online Help can be your best friend while learning and using Collect!. The best way to get started is from the Help Contents page. Please take advantage of this information in your evaluation of the system.

Help Contents

You're Ready To Go

You have online HTML help, popup Help and user-friendly documentation. System tutorials and many letter and report samples are also available at our web site, www.collect.org.

Collect! is fully functional and will run for 30 days with no further licensing. If you need help, please call. We sincerely hope you enjoy your demonstration and evaluation of Collect! We look forward to working with you.

Comtech Systems Inc.