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A small manual
Frequently asked questions
SETTINGS0.1. Start with customizing
It's a good idea to start with personalising your Cobalt account. Not only enter your currency, but also customize the different types/categories and upload a header and footer to go with your invoices. Thinking about the right contact and price types can save you a lot of time.
PROJECTS1.1. What is "Stock Related"?
- Stock related: All physical products e.g. dvds, t-shirts, ventilators, books,... You can enter the amount of copies produced at 'Invoices Out>print-run'. If you do not enter the print-run with stock related projects you'll have a negative stock at the reports page.
- Not stock related: all goods or services that do not have a (limited) stock like e-books, mp3s or services on hourly basis. For these products Cobalt will not calculate stock.
1.2. How to use Price Unit?
You can define your own price categories at the settings page. Most often the unit will be in hours or product(box).
Eg if you create a website for a client: the meetings, the development and the design will need their own prices.
If you sell concert tickets for a show you'll have presales, full prices, 18-, and other special discounts.
1.3. Can i use the project info i entered in Cobalt somewhere else?
You can export your products data to an xml format. Click on "Goods > Export project xml-list". You can find the xml-content in your personal folder. This means you can use the content of your Cobalt-releases on your own website. Ask a developer in your neighbourhood to do this for you. An API and more export options are things for the (near) Cobalt future.
1.5. What is "Active"?
At the moment this field is only used in the drop down's and in the xml file. If you have hundreds of projects it's handy not to have them all in your project selector dropdown.
CONTACTS2.6. How to export (some of) my contacts
You can export your contacts by first doing a search and then select the export button. eg you want to do a press mailing? Select the press filter and click Search. A link "export this list" appears. Copy & paste the comma seperated data (CSV) in a text file and import it in excel or any other application you want.
INVOICES OUT3.1. What's the difference between invoices, orders and consignments?
It all has to do with the physical place of the products
- An invoice is easy. It means your client bought goods or services and they have been delivered.
- An order means a client informed and/or wants specific products or services but they haven't been sold yet. You're free to use order invoices as draft or offer invoices
- Consignment stock is stock legally owned by one party, but held by another. A consignment deal is common in the distribution world and most often the publisher is informed on a monthly or bi-monthly basis of what is sold in the warehouse. The consignment invoices at Cobalt work as delivery notes. Every time you send a package to any of your client, add a consignment. If your clients informs you about sales, make an invoice and put the consignment link on yes (otherwise Cobalt will think you'll deliver the releases again and count twice).
INVOICES IN4.1. What are type costs ?
It's a good idea to create categories of expensives you use. How much do you pay for marketing, how much did the printing costed you? Accountancy is all about this :)
PAYMENTSWhat's the idea behind entering payments there?
Use the payments tab to enter your bank or visa transfers. That way you can make links to your invoices and expenses and see what missing payments or invoices there are.
REPORTS6.1. How can i see a detailed overview of my sales?
If you click on a project in the Sales Statistics you get an overview page of the project you selected. You can go deeper in many ways: a detailed report of the sales and expensives, a focus what you sold to who during a certain year etc...
more coming soon here.
SETTINGS7.1. What are all those types and preferences?
- Contact types: if you want to attach a categorie to a company or person
- Price types: if you need to be able to choose between prices per unit while invoicing
- Invoice-in types: categories for the expenses you make
- Vat: taxes for your invoices
- Payment type: how you pay companies and how they pay you. if you have several bank accounts split them up so it's clear for you
ADMIN8.1. I can't see the admin tab.
Only the master log-in, the user who created the Cobalt account, can see the admin tab. That's also the only person that can manage the users for that account.
8.2. What happens when i delete a user ?
The user will be banned but all the information he created stays in the system. -
Support
Feel free to ask us questions, give us feature requests, let us know if something's not working correctly, or browse through our faq . If have immediate needs you maybe want to get in touch directly at desk@cobaltapp.comCobalt Hosted by
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