Farmers WIFE is a software application designed with the needs of the post production, production, broadcast,
rental and other media sectors in mind. Initially conceived and developed by creative and business minded professionals from the media industry,
Farmers WIFE has matured into a multi-business management tool, carefully developed to address the challenging issues facing cost-conscious
companies in the media industry. Farmers WIFE has the added advantage that it runs on both PC, Mac and now also Linux platforms
simultaneously, satisfying the hardware configuration of most modern facilities.
Minimal Technical Requirements (PDF file)
In addition the External Access, Media modules can be added on to Farmers WIFE to provide enterprise level functionality.
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Farmers WIFE
Some of the key business problem areas that Farmers WIFE addresses include Scheduling, Project Management and Contact Administration. In Farmers WIFE resources can be carefully planned and traced, providing greater accountability and ensuring optimum use. In this way your organisation can make greater returns on its investments, whilst reducing the need for paperwork and minimising bureaucracy.
Farmers WIFE allows you to manage all aspects of your facility management in real-time through a single database. From planning and bookings, through to resource allocation and actualisation, to project approval and final invoicing, Farmers WIFE centralises all aspects of the workflow management and tracks project evolution with a complete history and audit trail.
 Scheduling
How often have you double booked a room or resource because your bookings chart was out of date?
The powerful Scheduling features lie at the heart of Farmers WIFE and provide an up-to-date view of exactly which resources have been booked, for which jobs and by which people.
Key features:
· Real-time, multi-user, collaborative scheduling and automatic conflict checking
· User configurable ‘Gantt-Chart’ interface
· User definable ‘hot-keys’ for custom object display lists
· Drag-and-drop booking creation and resource selection including across multiple days/weeks
· Colour coded bookings
· Group Booking function to book many objects with a single mouse click
· Priority ‘stack’ system for preliminary (pencil) bookings
· Assign activities to multi-role resources such as ‘Online’, ‘Offline’, ‘Rendering, ‘Conform’
· Optional automatic pop-up booking reminders and email send-out
· ‘One-click’ updating function to time-report bookings
· Deleted booking buffer and restore function
· Booking history log
· Quick link to personal bookings and tasks
· Schedule Reports
· Basic ‘Chat’ feature to communicate with other logged-on Farmers WIFE users.
Click image to get a closer view.
Farmers WIFE scheduling ‘Timeline’ overview with ‘Navigator’ interface in the bottom right corner.
Users can enter bookings directly onto the Farmers WIFE ‘Timeline’.
This ‘drag-and-drop’ functionality
allows users to rapidly add additional objects
and resources to bookings, trim booking duration,
change status and activity and link bookings
to projects. Built in conflict pop-up warnings
show details of any possible conflicts.
Time reporting and updating of bookings is an
easy operation in Farmers WIFE, allowing users
to record their actual time used against booked
time and include any extra costs all on the
fly with a simple mouse click.
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Details of Farmers WIFE ‘Modify
Booking’ window.
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 Project Management
How accurate is the cost management of your projects? Have you gone over your budget without realising it, because you are using more than one data source to manage all the costs of a project? The ‘Project’ features for Farmers WIFE allow you to centralise and track in real-time all project related details from client information, budget breakdown, resource usage, running costs, quotation preparation and history, bookings and work orders, to associated media and digital assets.
Key Features:
· Integrated ‘Quotation Manager’ for storage and retrieval of quotation history
· Comprehensive summary of all project
related bookings, materials, services, expenses,
work orders and media orders
· Ability to define local and global
budgets and edit line-item information
· Facility to build project rate cards
and apply them with a single mouse click
· Ability to split large projects for
on-going invoicing
· Container feature to group multiple
projects together
· Create Work Orders directly from within
the Project
· Integrated file manager to centralise
project related clips, files and digital assets
for collaborative working groups
· Supports a range of project-related
reports
· Template-based project data export
wizard
· Advanced search function and barcode
based project retrieval
· Direct FTP/HTTP project access (using
the ‘External Access Module’)
· Individually definable project permissions
Click image to get a closer view.
Details of Farmers WIFE ‘Project’ window.
The intuitive ‘Project’ interface allows you to view the progress of a project and track its running costs. Additional costs can be added at any stage, giving you a current breakdown of project evolution. Long term projects can be split for ongoing invoicing and containers allow multiple projects to be grouped together and viewed as a single entity.
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 Contact Database
The ‘Contact Database’ provides a single reference for all your contact information. Clients, external suppliers, freelancers and other contact information can be defined and retrieved rapidly and used throughout Farmers WIFE. Depending on your needs, you can easily add ‘Custom Fields’ to store more information in the ‘Contact Database’. Through colour coding your clients, you can enhance the overview of your projects with a glance at the display.
Key features:
· Contact Import wizard for rapid import of data from existing contact databases
· Ability to record custom information for contacts
· ‘Related’ fields allow the auto-population of company information to multiple contacts within the company
· Quick link to email client
· Integrated file manager to allow linking of digital assets to contacts (such as show reels)
· The ‘Resource’ contact type allows external resources to be scheduled on the Farmers WIFE timeline
· Client colour definition
· Ability to define rate cards (including multiple) for clients and to apply them to client projects
· Customisable history action list ensures all correspondence with contacts is maintained
· Associate digital assets (such as audio clip or voice over) to a contact
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Details of Farmers WIFE ‘Contacts’ window.
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 Sync
Use the ‘Sync’ module to exchange (i.e. synchronise) data from Farmers WIFE with e.g. MS Outlook ® (or similar products installed on your computer) back and forth. This way you only have to keep one database manually up to date and automatically sync e.g. ‘Contacts’, ‘Events’ and ‘Todos’ with your locally installed e-mail/organiser application.
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 Invoice Manager
The Invoice Manager is a complete invoicing solution within Farmers WIFE and consists of two elements: the ‘Invoice Creator’ and ‘Invoice Manager’. The Invoice Manager gives you a rapid overview of which projects are available for invoicing and allows you to design and to automatically create invoices for single or multiple projects with a single mouse click.
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Details of Farmers WIFE ‘Invoice Creator’ window.
Prepayments, credit notes and part invoicing are handled by the ‘Invoice Manager’, keeping you on track of the financial status of your projects.
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Details of Farmers WIFE ‘Invoice Manager ’ window.
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Details of using Farmers WIFE ‘Print Designer’ window to adapt the printing layout of an invoice.
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 External Access
The feature-rich ‘External Access Module’
provides a platform for users, clients and ad-hoc
contacts to access Farmers WIFE through a standard
web browser. You can share ‘Project’
information, browse the ‘Media Library’,
view media, create and view bookings giving
you the functionality of Farmers WIFE from any
computer with an installed web browser.
Key features:
· Secure (incl. 128-bit SSL) access to Farmers WIFE via your web browser
· 3 tiers of access: User, Client and Contact
· Customisable HTML interface that can be branded to reflect your company’s corporate identity
· Direct access to ‘Bookings’, ‘Projects’, ‘Media Libraries’ and ‘Media Order’ tools
· Includes streaming media capabilities and file management tools
· Online time reporting for freelancers
The’ External Access Module’ enables you to offer a new and unique revenue-generating service to your customers allowing them to log on to Farmers WIFE via the Internet using a standard web-browser, view their bookings and ongoing project costs and review and approve work in progress at any time of the day.
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Details of Farmers WIFE ‘External Access’ using MS Internet Explorer ®.
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Media Manager
 Media Library
The ‘Media Library’ – part of Farmers WIFE add-on Media Manager - simplifies the often complex and unorganised aspects of media library management. It allows the definition of multiple libraries and the cataloguing of an unlimited number of media and associated entries (clips) as well as for tapes, the automatic generation of tape labels and built in barcode support.
Key features:
· Built-in ‘Import Wizard’ allows rapid import of media data from existing systems
· ‘Advanced Search’ feature for rapid search and retrieval (including ‘wild card’ searches)
· User definable ‘Custom Fields’ on the entry level for the library, tapes and media
· Supports ‘time code’, ‘duration’ and a variety of ‘format’ types
· Ability to associate video and audio clips to tapes and tape entries
· Ability to create and access any file structure
· Built in clip viewer including custom proxy creation
· Barcode check-in, check-out and retrieval
· Integrated tape ‘Label Designer’ for automatic multiple label creation
· Seamless integration with ‘Media Order’ and ‘External Access Module’ to provide online browse and media order platform
· Complete tape history and built-in audit trail
You can record the complete media details, including time code information and format type as well as cataloguing the medias entries and associating clips.
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Details of a new media entry for the ‘Media Library’.
The powerful search tool allows multiple users to search the ‘Media Library’ on a range of fields including tape or clip content.
Media locations can be defined and in the case of tapes, tape details can be retrieved with the single swipe of a barcode reader.
The innovative ‘Label Designer’ allows you to:
· Design tape labels and create templates for single and multiple creation
· Create barcodes for your tapes
· Print labels
 Media Order
The ‘Media Order’ module works in tandem with the Media Library, providing you with the ability to compile and create ·basket based· orders of media from material within the Media libraries.
Key features:
· Compile duplication orders
of material in your Media libraries.
· Container or clip based
· Track, maintain and manage the status
of your orders
· Dynamic cost analyses
· Track costs and stock usage
· View and print reports including duplication
orders
When used in conjunction with the ‘External Access Module’, the ‘Media Order’ module becomes a powerful online media browse and request tool allowing clients to compile requests online.
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View and change details through
the ‘Modify Media Order’ window.
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Rough layout for ‘Multi
Label Printing‘.
Example of a standard tape
content list to be printed for a ‘Media
Order’.
 Dispatch
The ‘Dispatch’ module of Farmers WIFE ‘Media Manager’ is designed to streamline the movement of tapes, objects and other assets within your company. The ‘Dispatch’ module allows you to create your own dispatch labels for objects. Client and courier information, which is retained in the ‘Contact’ database of Farmers WIFE, can be “tagged” to dispatch items with a simple mouse click. Dispatch notes can also be easily created and the cost of the whole operation can be added to a ‘Project’ if desired. Contents of a tape or a description of the objects being dispatched can additionally be attached to the dispatch note.
Details of the ‘Dispatch’ window, part of the ‘Media Manager’ for Farmers WIFE.
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