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CMAssistant

CMAssistant is the premier distribution and circulation management software for alternative newsweeklies and other bulk distribution publications. CMAssistant has been in use across North America since 1999. The current version is 6.5 (December 2009) but CMAssistant 7 will be released sometime this winter. You can get a preview of CMAssistant 7 here.

NOTE: The following screen shots are somewhat out of date as of early 2010. We're leaving them in place for now—but the final release will look somewhat different.

Here are a couple quick shots from the current beta (testing) version of CMAssistant 7. This shot shows a single drop's recent history, with circulation stats. Note the shading to indicate where the weekly drop went up or down (yellow = down, green = up).

Here's a screen shot showing how you can get quick route circulation totals right on screen while editing deliveries. (NOTE: This feature requires FileMaker Pro 10, and if you have FileMaker 10, then this feature is working already in CMAssistant 6.3, as you can see in the screen shot.)

What's new in CMAssistant 6.5? Or, why upgrade?

Some of CMAssistant 7's features have been appearing in the last couple of versions of CMAssistant, which have been released to a handful of our licensees. If you are eager to get in on the ground floor with CMAssistant 7, you should contact us now and upgrade to the current version without delay.

If you are an existing user of CMAssistant 6, 6.1 or 6.2, here are some of the reasons you should upgrade:

1. The "recent waste analysis" (RWA) feature now runs automatically when you create an issue. You can turn it off if you like, but why would you? Don't you want to know where you're losing 50% of your papers each week? The RWA feature is similar to the analysis part of the old "smart adjust" feature in the kinds of information it provides: recent waste as a percentage, plus info about how many weeks have had zero returns. However, the RWA is easier to use and it is integrated into CMAssistant in a way that smart adjust never was. NOTE: RWA doesn't provide automatic or batch processing of changes, although you can still use smart adjust for that if you like.
2. When you're looking at deliveries (which is most of the time) CMAssistant now highlights delivery amounts that have changed since the previous issue, so you can see at a glance what's going on with your system.
3. Important changes to the user interface in CMAssistant 6.3 make CMAssistant much easier to learn and much easier for experienced users to move around and do the things they need to do. This means less time in front of the computer, and better results. Gone is the need to bounce around between three areas of the database, and many different tabs. Most of what you will do in CMAssistant is now done in a single tab - the Delivs area. For more info about some of these changes, be sure to click here.
4. Online help has been updated and extended, so more of your questions can be answered right inside CMAssistant.
5. The "calc totals" button in Delivs now shows much more info than it used to.
6. It's much easier to find anything in CMAssistant now. In Delivs - where you'll spend most of your time - you can find most of the record sets that you want with a single click, including current issues, routes, recent drop history, all deliveries made on a particular date.
7. Entering returns is faster than before.
8. More reports and better options, especially in the master & route sheets setup screen.
9. CMAssistant only requires FileMaker Pro 9, but it has been tested in the latest version of FileMaker Pro (version 10) and it runs better than ever. By upgrading CMAssistant, you keep up with the march of technology and reduce the risk of discovering that one day, you can't open your database because you upgraded something else and broke FileMaker Pro.
10. Scores of other smaller improvements and fixes have been made to CMAssistant that make it more useful as well as more usable.

We'll throw in an eleventh reason to upgrade: Upgrading to the latest version of CMAssistant means that you are on the same page we are, so we can provide you with the best and quickest support whenever you have a question or an issue.

Related pages:

CMAssistant sales