Presidents Day Product Release!

02/17/2019 / by John Cline

HAPPY PRESIDENTS DAY!

It’s been Cold Cold Cold since our January Product Update, but it’s about to get Hot Hot Hot! The February Product Update is scheduled for 10pm Central Time Tonight (February 18, 2019)!

We never stop thinking about how to make the product better. And a little cold can’t slow us down. So, while you’ve been signing up new clients fulfilling their new year’s resolutions… we have been designing, coding, and testing a few new updates. Now, we do have a few big things in the hopper, but we always try to keep moving so this release includes a bunch of smaller changes. We think many of you will find these useful and we’re knocking a few items off the Feature Upvote list. Enjoy!

CUSTOMERS

Let’s start with a series of updates in the Customers section. You spend a lot of time here and have suggested many ideas. We also get requests to make changes to customer accounts on a regular basis. We are happy to do it, but also realize you would prefer to have the ability to do these things on your own and not wait for us.

Edit Next Charge Date

If you sell recurring packages, you know how this works. Customer buys a recurring package and get charged immediately. If it’s monthly, they will be charged again after 30 Days and then again every 30 Days… without exception… unless canceled. Now, you have the flexibility to edit that charge date. Let’s say a customer goes on vacation and you want to “put them on hold” while they are away. Well, it’s not exactly hold, but you can now move the charge date out by a week or 2 or whatever period you want. Once it starts charging again, it will resume it’s normal frequency (i.e. 1 month after the last charge).

Turn Off Notifications to a Client Account

This has been a long time coming. I know it has frustrated some for a while (and it’s totally understandable) that you cannot control the notification settings for a client account; especially when that client has NOT created a Fitli account. We are not completely solving for this here, but we are giving you another option. You can now turn off all notifications to a client’s account. You can do this permanently or temporarily. Just keep in mind that they will not receive ANYTHING… including purchase confirmations (i.e. receipts), booking confirmations, cancellation notifications, session reminders, or any ad hoc messages you may send. The power is in your hands.

Format and User Experience Updates

One thing we are NOT… is satisfied with what we have done before. Every decision we made in the past was influenced by priority, budget, and who knows what may have been going on at the time. So, there are always opportunities to improve. When we get a chance to make something better, we take it. In this case, it was pretty clear that we could make a fairly minor change and make a pretty nice improvement to the appearance of the Edit Customer Profile section.

In the old version, if no data existed for a customer yet, all you would see is the empty ‘Account Balance’ section. If you have Relationships turned on, you’d also see the Relationships section (and a useful ‘+Add Relationship link). Then, when you add data, you’d start seeing some of the other sections pop up. In this change, we’re going for more is better.

You will see all available sections whether there is data yet or not. You will also have an actionable link within each. Finally, all sections will also allow you to include (or view) expired or historical data.

CALENDAR / SCHEDULING

Most of the changes this time around are related to the Calendar and Scheduling in particular. With this set of changes, the Block Time functionality will become much more powerful. We are also making some significant changes to the Session Profile (for both Classes and Appointments). These include several requests that we have had from many of you.

Block Time Updates

With a couple additional fields, we have significantly improved the potential for Block Time. Simply put, you can now edit the title and add a description on any of your block times. That title shows up on the calendar view so you know what it is without clicking in. We’re still working out a few visual tweaks, but wanted to get the functionality out there now. We can’t wait to see how you use this.

Session Profile Updates

This is a fairly hefty set of changes to the Session Profile. The Session Profile is what we call the pop up screen you see when you click on a class or appointment from the calendar. Let’s walk though all the updates. The number below will correspond to the image included.

Session Description – You can now edit and customize the product description for each session. It will, initially, populate from the product, but once you save a change, it will be independently editable and visible to clients.
Session Notes – Add any notes of comments unique to that specific class. Only visible to business and professionals.
Client Notes – You will now see an icon that opens up client notes. These are the same notes viewable now in the client profile. If notes exist, the icon will be dark. If notes are empty, the icon will be light. Any changes you make here, will be reflected in the Customer Profile.
Birthdays – Now, if a client has a birthday within 30 days either direction from the current date, the birthday cake icon will appear next to their name. If you hover over the icon, it will tell you the exact day of their birthday. As of now, we’ve only added this in the Session Profile, but will do the same in the Customer List.
Help – In order to declutter and make space for new functionality, we have moved the contextual help. It no longer appears directly on the screen. If you need help on this page, just click on the question mark (?) next to the screen title (Session Profile in this case). We will start doing similar changes around the site over time.
Button/Link changes – As you have seen in other areas, we have removed the outdated grey buttons and replaced with simple blue text representing a link or action.

Note that we had to make some space on this page so we removed the Logo/Contact info section from the business pop up view as this was only displaying the logo and contact info to yourself and didn’t actually serve a function. Clients will still see your logo and contact info on their view.

LOG IN

Just a minor tweak here to help you and your clients get logged in. Every once in a while, somebody forgets their password. It happens. There is a reset password option which can be accessed via the question mark (?) in the password field. But, many people miss it. So, to make it more obvious, we are adding a ‘reset password’ link in failed login the error message. Hopefully, nobody will miss it now. 🙂

Add additional Reset Password Link

We are just trying to make it easier to get logged in.

REPORTING

Another minor change here. We had previously added an ‘Action By’ column on the Bookings report and, subsequently, realize this would also be very useful on the Sales report. So there you go.

Add ‘Action By’ Column in Sales Report

Now you know who processed a sale; you, your client, or one of the professionals. You already had this info for the Booking report. Unfortunately, it’s a new field in the database, so it will only be populated from the go live date.

ADMIN

The Admin section does not get as much focus since you don’t tend to change much in there once you’re up and running. However, we have had a few requests for relatively minor changes.

Policies – Expand Units to include Minutes, Hours, and Days

Previously, you could only set a policy window in hours. Now, you can set minutes, hours, or days.

Tags: action by, birthdays, block time, calendar, client notes, customer profile, fitli product, log in, next charge date, notes, notifications, product updates, reporting enhancements, reset password, sales report, scheduling, session notes, session profile, user experience