Development & History

My name is James Leichter. With more than a 20 year background in the contracting industry I'm probably a lot like many folks. My first job was with an HVAC, electrical, and plumbing company. I was a helper making $5.00 per hour. I later learned the art of service, repair, and installation.

I have been self employed since 1986. As an owner I became very interested in technology including cool tools and powerful computers. In my businesses, we used PeachTree® and later QuickBooks®. I really liked both programs but I especially liked QuickBooks®. I just wished that it could do a little more. We felt Quickbooks® would be totally awesome if it could just include a powerful dispatch & scheduling board, easily track service history on customer equipment, track serial numbers, and track inventory by truck.

In 2000, we set out to create the ultimate accounting and dispatching software program for contractors. Our hope was to create a program like QuickBooks® with a dozen or more "must have" features for service related industries.

We knew in order to create ultimate accounting software for contractors, we were going to have to find people that could not only program computers, but people who also understood the rigors of running service calls for a living. So I assembled a team of smart people that included a QuickBooks® expert, master mechanic, electrical engineer, refrigeration specialist, and others. All of whom had one thing in common; they were highly skilled computer programmers.

Total Secrecy

Total Office Manager® was created in total secrecy. Why? Software companies often make the mistake of announcing the development of a key program and are quick to set a date of completion. In fact, many companies borrow a lot of money to develop the software. Soon, the entire future of the company is riding on the on-time completion of the software. This forces many to rush the project. Compromises are made. Shortcuts are taken, and the product is released with known bugs and serious problems. The pressure of meeting deadlines can be enormous. We chose not to talk about Total Office Manager and not to set a release date.

Our company, Aptora, didn't fall prey to this common mistake. I can sincerely tell you that I did not once go to bed knowing that my development team had to make a compromise. We borrowed no money, set no public completion dates, and we kept our mouths shut! This allowed us to take our time and make Total Office Manager as good as we could reasonably make it.

Patterned After QuickBooks®

The first step was to design what we call the accounting engine. This is the main "foundation" of Total Office Manager. The accounting engine is where all of the data flows through and it's absolutely vital to get it right. Knowing this is where many other specialized contracting software programs have failed, we decided to emulate a proven winner; QuickBooks®. We wanted users of Quickbooks® to be able to use Total Office Manager right away, so we designed Total Office Manager with many of the best and easiest to use features included in Quickbooks®. If you know how to enter an invoice, enter a bill, write a check, or add an adjusting journal entry, you already know how to do those things in Total Office Manager. Our thought was this; why reinvent the accounting wheel when Quickbooks® seems to already have it right?

Once the important accounting engine was completed, we supercharged it. We added all of the things we wished our copy of Quickbooks® had including employee tool tracking, serialized inventory, multi-warehouse inventory, detailed repair history by model number, asset tracking, depreciation, amortization, powerful security, detailed audit trail, and more.

Now it was time to add the really fun things to Total Office Manager. This included a custom dispatch board. It allows you to easily schedule work and move those work orders around however you want to. This flexible electronic schedule board tightly integrates Total Office Manager's work orders, phone messaging, caller ID, service agreements, customer equipment, detailed repair history, and geographical mapping and directions (with MS MapPoint®).

More than three years and many thousands of labor hours later, Total Office Manager is ready to improve your life.

It Takes One To Know One

Have you ever heard the old saying "It takes one to know one?" Well that saying's old because it's true. How can any company create great software when they know nothing about the contracting business? They can't!

I don't know of a more qualified and unique team of software programmers and designers than ours.

I can't begin to tell you about all of the other "little" things that were incorporated into Total Office Manager. Things that are hard to describe in writing; things that you wouldn't want to live without; things that only another contractor would know you must have. And that's what separates Total Office Manager from the others. It's a program written and supported by contractors for contractors.