As Tire Power users, we all have done it.  We need to enter a customer transaction, only to not be able to find the customer’s name.  We think they are in there, but why can’t we find their name?  Is the name in the database misspelled, an extra space inserted, or does it have an extra letter which is making the search not work correctly?  This can be frustrating and a little embarrassing, especially if the customer is right in front of you.  Over the years I have heard and seen some pretty good tips to help you find that customer, such as using a phone number look up, or first name look up, but one of the most underused and powerful searches you can use to find an elusive customer in your database is the % sign lookup.

Let’s say I am in Front Counter searching for the customer, ‘Weaver Autobody’.  The quickest way to search is to enter in “weav” in the ‘Last Name’ field.  In this case, I do get some results, just not the one I need.  I am fairly certain the customer is in there, so how can I find them?

Next time, try this.  In the ‘Last Name’ field, in front of your search criteria, enter in a ‘%’ sign like this, “%weav”.  This tells the software to search the database for customers with the letters “weav” in sequence anywhere in their name and display them.

In this case we find the results we need.  Notice we returned results of any last name/company name which has the letters “weav” in sequence.  As it turns out in our scenario, someone accidentally inserted the letter ‘Q’ in front of “Weaver”, probably because ‘q’ and ‘w’ are next to each other on the keyboard, making the search not work like it should.  By using the ‘%’ sign, we told the software to locate any name with the proper sequence of letters, and we got the result we needed.  Give this tip a try the next time you need to find a customer so you too can make the most of your Tire Power software.  Stay tuned for more tips.