Asset Management for The Digital Artist.

Asset Management can mean different things. In every instance, it refers to the collection and organization of data about the things an organization or individual owns. To an accountant, this data is used to manage the financial aspects of ownership- taxes, cost of ownership, etc. In essence, everything having to do with MONEY.

To the digital artist, asset management refers to the organization of the ever growing library of fonts, images, reference pictures we depend on creatively. The building blocks of our ARTWORK.

MONEY.
I use Quickbooks Pro 6.0 for Mac to manage my accounts. It is an older version of the Intuit Software available today but the reviews of the latest release- QuickBooks Pro 2007 for Mac- all agree that the software still remains big, cumbersome, and just plain dull. I suppose that is why it has been such a great success with accountants. The invoices are ugly, the GUI confusing. As of last spring, Intuit stopped offering support for my version of Quickbooks. I guess I will be looking for a new accounting software soon. For now, I use it cause I own it. Doesn’t mean I like it much.

To maintain an image consistent with an artist, I use Billings by Marketcircle. It comes with a built-in WYSIWYG Invoice Editor and a beautiful selection of templates (http://www.billings2.com/gallery/) you can use as the basis for your design. Or you can start from scratch. It can also track your time, expenses and automatically number your invoices, and email them to your clients. 

For a screenshot tour, visit their website. The website, like the software,  is elegant, simple and straightforward. You can give Billings a 21 day free trial or purchase it from the website for $59.

Because The company got greedy with their licensing, financial institutions rarely offer Quickbook files for download. Some offer WebConnect but I cannot figure out how to make that work. The thought of importing CSVs or a tab delimited file into Quickbooks make my blood roil. Luckily there is a lovely little app called SimplyConvert™ IIF Converter from Borderland Consulting Inc. This utility allows you to convert basic Quicken QIF and tab delimited files into Quickbooks IIF files.

Borderland’s website provides a 5-transaction test drive of SimplyConvert™ IIF Converter. If TIME = MONEY then the purchase price of $34.99 is the most cost effective way to enter these rogue transactions.

I use Paypal as part of my business routine. Electronic money is fast, cheap to process, and I don’t have to consent to any snooping into my personal life for credit card processing. The catch is that Paypal’s statement downloads can be tricky business when imported into Quickbooks. Until now, I have been entering those transactions in by hand. Did I mention my typing sucks?

I recently found a couple of options I am willing to try.

Big Red Consulting has a Windoze only PayPal to QuickBooks Converter  for $69 and a free trial. Since I have my nephew’s Dell sitting around, I will give this one a try.
 

The second option is much more expensive. Simple Business Systems  has an online subscription-based Paypal to Quickbooks import tool called SimplePort: PP/QBPro . It would probably be the better solution if I was making a LOT of money through Paypal. They do offer a 15 Day free trial limited to Paypal transactions within the 2 months of the activation date.The company offers tiered pricing: PP/QBPro Lite (limited to 100 transactions): $9.95/mo; Pro Subscription with unlimited transactions : $19.95/mo; and a yearly subscription is $179.95.

As of last spring, Intuit has stopped offering support for my version of Quickbooks. I guess I will shopping for a new accounting software soon. MYOB’s First Edge and MoneyWorks Express both look like a good options.

 

ARTWORK
I like to think that Heinlein was right when he said that “Progress is made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things”. I can embrace the notion of progress as a disguise for my own laziness.

I own over 30,000 royalty free digital files that i have been archiving with Extensis Portfolio 8.1.  I cannot exploit Extensis’ features for cataloguing these digital files. Entering keywords gives me chills. Adobe Bridge and Lightroom all offer similar set-ups. I just cannot see myself using these apps.

Enter iPhoto Buddy. Free Asset Management For The Truly Lazy. I create an iPhoto Library for each classification. Iphoto Buddy allows me to quickly launch each library to search for inspiration. I also create a library for each job to store all the images and versions of the project someplace off my desktop. When I want to work on any project, I can retrieve those images by dragging them out of iPhoto into a folder on my desktop. At the end of the day, I drag them all back.

 

Using iPhoto also allows me to access the SSP plugin that batch-exports and creates the XML file I need for my  SlideShowPro for Flash projects.

For online image management and publishing, I use SlideShowPro Director  to manage all the images that will be included in Flash Based slideshows. Batch uploading, automatic XML files, and easy group collaboration. Clients can now add their own images to the slideshows on their websites with almost no input from me.

I still use Portfolio to the digital files iPhoto can’t handle. That includes vector files, fonts, video, pdfs among others.

Font management is handled by Font Explorer, a free app by Linotype. Did I mention the FREE part? Again, I can sort my fonts into folders that are defined by inspiration or usage.  I include many fonts in more than one folder and I can also turn all the fonts in a folder on and off as needed.

 

Picking the perfect font  got easier once I ran across  FontDoc by Allen Smith. The developer describes it as "a very simple program which shows you all of the fonts on your system using any text and any size you choose".

One of my clients is a stock photographer. Well, I can’t call him much of a client since I talked myself out of most of the job. He wanted to put his photographs for sale online. I suggested that he consider posting a portfolio instead and use ProStockMaster by David Mail to post his images with microstock sites like Dreamstime and Shutterstock. I made less money but he was very happy with the results. Call it Creative Karma points or an Artist’s Mitzvah.

I can be just as lazy when it comes to my own portfolio. I use DropImageURL by LimitPoint to create "tear sheets" of my web projects. It captures and scales a whole webpage into a single jpg or tiff. Did I mention its FREE?

FREE is good. Especially when it works as well as the expensive bloated software available. Being a freelance designer trying to run a business for profit is hard enough without having to master some complicated software that is peripheral to the design process.