We don't have a CRM module for FinFolio, mainly because we went down that path at Techfi and it was a money-losing distraction. After I sold Techfi, Advent rolled the CRM into the main Portfolio 2000 application and I think it was a good decision. There are many good CRM providers  out there so with FinFolio we're focusing on integration with them, rather than rebuilding something that already exists.

However, FinFolio has several CRM-like features and at least a few users are using it as their main tracking database for client/account contact information. My favorite of these CRM-like features is the Note taking capability. You can take notes on any major FinFolio object, including Households, Clients, Accounts, Models and Fee Schedules.

Usually when you take notes on something in software, you have to open an item and go to the Notes tab before you can either see existing notes or enter new Notes. I've always found that limiting and it used to be one of my pet peeves with Outlook (but they fixed it in 2010). To avoid this in FinFolio, we implemented Notes in a tool window that sits beneath your main screen.

Putting the Notes beneath the main screen lets us display notes on main lists, edit screens or within wizards. You can open a list of clients/accounts/etc., open the notes window, and quickly walk through a group of clients to see who has been calling and what the open issues may be.

Editing or adding new notes is very easy -- just click in a note and the free-form Note immediately displays edit fields for each of the component parts. You have a dropdown for a note category, so you can group together Trading notes or those from Client Meetings. You can change the color and weighting of individual words, and the editor has a spell-checker that underlines misspelled words in red, just like Microsoft Word. Just right-click on a misspelled word and you can select the correct spelling from a list.

You can pin notes, making sure they don't get lost in the clutter. For example, if you have an important note about trading restrictions, you can pin that note and it will always show at the top of the note window for that account.

If you open a client or household, you can select "View Related Items" in the Notes tool bar. This will load all notes for any related portfolios, accounts, or anything else in the tree for the parent item.

Perhaps the best part about having the Notes in a tool window is that you can close the notes  when you're working on something else, freeing up valuable screen real estate.