Stonefield Crystal GoldMine
Features MasterMine Query Reports Report Writer
Report Flexibility
Simple "Line Listing" Reports
Drill-through to GoldMine
Analytical Capability
Speed to First Report
Branch Off Existing Reports
"What-You-See-Is
What-You-Get" Editing
with immediate results
Versatile Summary Reports
Build GoldMine Groups
Data Management Functions
Leverage Excel Knowledge
Optional Data Update
Use MasterMine to meet your reporting needs, easily and efficiently -- but don't stop there! MasterMine gives you SO MUCH MORE than basic reports, you deny yourself a key management tool, and your staff an easy time-saver, every day you do without its management capabilities!
Besides MasterMine, no option including StoneField Query or Crystal Reports, really allows you to do data analysis or data management, which are huge additional benefits of MasterMine. But even considering only reporting, you have these choices:
GoldMine Report Writer: Built into GoldMine, the capabilities of this tool are quite limited. GoldMine pros generally steer
end users away because it requires a great deal of database knowledge and patience.
SQL Reporting Services: A highly technical, "programmer" tool. Users must know the GoldMine data schema
and be quite familiar with Transact-SQL, field expressions, and GoldMine back-end
conventions. Average users cannot be expected to create reports, and typically
hiring professionals to do this is not cost- or time-effective.
Crystal Reports:The industry standard for generic (non-GoldMine-specific) reporting, but not user-
friendly and requires users to have much more technical information and
know-how. Reports take MUCH longer to create, don't integrate with GoldMine, are
inflexible for end-users.
MS Access or Excel:Same limitations as above, plus these are not built to be report-writing solutions, and
so don't even have the usual report-related conveniences built in.
Stonefield Query: A small part of MasterMine's functionality and usefulness, for a higher price. This wizard-driven
report writer, like MasterMine, knows GoldMine's back-end so fieldnames are familiar. Stonefield
claims to provide many of the same benefits as MasterMine but still requires SQL statement
creation for filtering, lots of back-and-forth between the wizard and the final report, and little or no
dynamism within reports. Drillthrough to GoldMine has to be programmed for each field, GoldMine
group building is no better than GoldMine's built-in capability, and end-users in "run-time" mode are
unable to do most functions standard in MasterMine.
MasterMine: Puts information into user's "hands" up front, for easy, WYSIWYG-style drag-and-drop to get final
results. Branch off any report to create new reports immediately. So integrated with GoldMine you
can drill through to "pop" GoldMine records, build GoldMine groups from any segment in the report,
re-shuffle fields, convert tables to graphs, filter on anything graphically (no need for SQL expression
builders) -- all with immediate results. MasterMine is simply easier, faster, better.
"We thoroughly examined our options, comparing price, functionality and user friendliness. We tried demo versions of competitor software (which promised to be extremely user friendly) and found MasterMine to be FAR more powerful and logical to use.
"Also, MasterMine stands behind this Genius Product, and customer service is a priority. Bravo, MasterMine! We are so glad we found you!"
- Amanda Thomas
Puritan Financial Group
"You could easily spend as much as MasterMine costs on a single, customized Crystal Report -- and you still wouldn't have the dynamic capabilities, the drill-down to GoldMine, the ability to make simple modifications, and the general user-friendliness of MasterMine!"
- Eric Turnipseed, The Automation Station
GoldMine dealer, St. Paul MN
