Updates to Clients

The last few updates have seen some new features related to clients. The first now allows you to see additional information about a client when you are adding them to a session. The second will help you find that one specific client according to their phone number.

Do you have two clients with the same name or even close to the same name? That can make it really hard to assign them a session. So we have added an icon in the "Search for Customers" that you can click. When you click the icon you will see additional information like home, cell, and work phone, email, address, and notes. Hopefully this will prevent you from using the good old guess and check method.

The second updated related to clients is in the search field at the bottom of the client/prospective client list. Using the search field at the bottom of the client list has just become a little more powerful. You can now search for clients by phone number. If you have "All Fields" selected from the search box then it will include the home, cell, and work phone of your clients in the search. Or you can now select the home, cell, or work phone numbers to search in specifically. Hopefully this will help you find that one specific client even more quickly.

Quickly Adding Expenses

Have you ever need to quickly add an expense to your books? Well now you can. We have added a button to the Quick Tasks Window that shows up on the left of the Basic and Professional Suites labeled "New Expense". This will allow you to quickly and easily add a new expense to the system. Although this is something very small, we hope that it will help to increase your studio's efficiency.

StudioCloud, It's just that Easy

Quickly Find Client's Order Status

Are you tired of searching through a long list of invoices or a pile of paperwork to determine what the status is of your client's order when they call up on the phone? Well now you don't have to. The update last night included a new column in the Customer History section of the Basic and Professional Suites that will allow you to quickly check the status of the order.

To use this new feature log in to the Basic or Professional Suite, open a client, click on the tab labeled "Customer History" and look for an icon that looks like:

Import/Export Clients

Last night's update brought the latest changes to the Address Book in the Basic and Professional Suite. Previously you have only been able to import clients into the Basic/Professional Suite. With the update you can now import both clients and prospective clients. You can also export your client list including clients, archived clients, and prospective clients.

If you need more advanced exporting then you should try out the StudioCloud CRM. That will allow you to filter clients according to other information such as organizations, dates, etc.... before you export them.

StudioCloud, It's just that Easy

Last Week's Updates

At the end of last week the StudioCloud development team made some updates that we just wanted to let you know about. The first update was to the login process. The development team has sped up the login in process considerable.

The second update was in the Bookkeeping section of the Basic and Professional Suites. If you go to the tab labeled "Accounts" in the Bookkeeping section and edit or create a new account you can now add a starting balance for that account. Currently all of your accounts will have a starting balance of zero but if you add in a starting balance then the account balance will be calculated based on that starting balance.

The last change was in the Search functionality of the Client section of the Basic and Professional Suite. Last week we added in the ability to assign "tags" to customers to help track additional information. Now in the search box on the bottom of the client and prospective client lists you can search for tags that have been assigned to customers. This is one way of finding your customers even more quickly.

StudioCloud, It's just that Easy

StudioCloud On-Location is Now Available

The StudioCloud development team has been hard at work and has just released the much anticipated StudioCloud On-Location into open Beta.

StudioCloud On-Location automatically detects whether or not you have an internet connection and, if you don't, it will automatically save your changes to your computer until you have an internet connection. This allows you to continue to operate if your internet goes down. In addition, you can also go to events where there isn't an internet connection, such as a school or wedding, and add prospective customers or create new invoices.

StudioCloud On-Location has a new sync page which will show you a table of everything you have done while offline. When you get an internet connection just go to the sync page and click on the sync button and it will sync everything up with your Basic/Professional Suite.

Note: StudioCloud On-Location is still in beta which means that the program might still have some unknown bugs in it. We recommend doing a trial run of using the On-Location without an internet connection before going to an event to confirm that it worked as expected.

StudioCloud. It’s just that easy

Track More Customer Information

Last night's update included more client information updates. You can now save different types of dates that you want to track. By default we have entered Anniversary, Birthday, and Graduation as dates for your to track. You can edit or delete those default date types and add your own by going to the Clients section of the Basic and Professional Suite and then clicking on the tab labeled "Settings".

Next to the "Date Types" tab is the new "Tags" tab. The tags tab allows you to add tags that will help you quickly find customers for marketing campaigns. For example, you might have a tag for "Newborn pictures" or something similar.

Once you have added types of dates and tags that you want to keep track of you can add that information to your clients and prospective clients in the Basic and Professional Suite.

StudioCloud, It's just that Easy

Tracking Relationships

Last night's update included the ability to track relationships between people in your client list. In the Clients section on the Settings tab you can enter the types of relationships that you track in your studio. Then when you create a new client or update an existing one you can add relationships for that client. Whether it is a grandparent, spouse, child, or even a pet you will be able to track those types of relationships.

The relationships tracking will be used for creating marketing campaigns in an upcoming update to the CRM. Check back here for the latest updates.

Printing Your Tax ID Number

Because StudioCloud is an internationally used program we have tried to make sure that we are meeting our customers' needs around the world. Many countries require that the printed invoice include the business's tax identification number and, as such, we have now made it possible to include your business's tax id on your invoices in the Basic and Professional Suite as well.

To setup your tax id login to your StudioCloud account and go to Point of Sale. Click on the Settings tab and look in the section labeled "Tax Options". On the bottom left of that section you can save what you want to be printed on the invoice and select whether or not you want it included on your invoices. For example, if you are in Canada you might enter something like "GST #" and then your number or if you are in England it might be something like "VAT #" and your number.

If the "Show Tax ID on Invoice" checkbox is selected then this number will be included on all invoices just below your Studio's information.

StudioCloud, It's just that Easy

Sending Email Reminders

A new feature was added some time ago but we forgot to blog about it. Many of you have expressed to us the need to send appointment reminders for appointments other than sessions. So several weeks ago the developers made that request a reality. You can now have appointment reminders sent for any type of calendar event.

StudioCloud, It's just that Easy

Keep Track of Your Referrals

Have you ever wanted to be able to keep track of where your customer's are coming from? Maybe you want to offer referral rewards to existing customers or you need to know whether or not a marketing campaign is working for you studio? Well now you can do it all right inside of StudioCloud. Last night's update included a referral field in the create/edit client and prospective client. Simply click the button labeled "Update Referral" and you will see three options to choose from:

1. Client was referred by another customer


2. Client was referred by a marketing campaign


3. Client was referred by something or someone else

The first two options allow you to select a client or marketing campaign from your lists. The last option gives you a blank text field to type anything you want.

You can set up marketing campaigns in the just released Customer Relationship Manager (CRM). To learn how to use the CRM we encourage you to watch the video tutorial that will step you through the current functionality of the CRM and how to use it. Don't forget to setup your email accounts so you can use the email marketing that is built in to the CRM.

Check back soon for reports that will give you an idea of where your customers are coming from.

StudioCloud, It's just that Easy

More Website Integration

The development team has brought even more integration to your studio's website. Our last post (http://blog.studiocloud.com/2008/05/integrate-studiocloud-into-your-website.html) was about the new feature of embedding the StudioCloud Update Information Module into your website. Well now you can embed the Contact Us Module as well. The Contact Us Module is similar to a typical contact us form that is fairly common on most websites. However, not only does it send you an email with the message in it, but it also stores the message in your Basic/Professional Suite.

But wait there's more. When someone submits a message through the Contact Us Module, StudioCloud tries to match and associate the message to one of your existing customers. And if it can't find the email anywhere in your customer list, then StudioCloud automatically creates a new "Prospective Customer" and associates the message with that new prospective customer. We hope that this will help your studio run even more efficiency.

But if that is not enough for you, then there is more. You can now embed the StudioCloud Online Gallery into your studio's website. That way your customers come to your website and never leave. As far as they can tell you just have a fantastic, professional looking online gallery. Just one more thing to help build your studio and make it more of a success than it already is.

We do have several articles in our support section on these topics:
StudioCloud Update Information Module
StudioCloud Contact Us Module
StudioCloud Online Gallery

Integrate StudioCloud into your website

Have you ever wanted your clients to be able update their contact information through your website? Wouldn't it be even better if those changes would go straight into your StudioCloud account? What if you could allow your customers to see the status of an order?

Well now you can! Our development team has been hard at work creating new ways to integrate with your website and make your life simpler. You can now include a StudioCloud component on your website that will allow your customers to login view and update their personal information. If you choose they can even view the status of any orders they have made with you.

To use this components follow the instructions on our support page http://studiocloud.com/support/?View=entry&EntryID=60

Send Custom Emails

Do you want your emails to your clients to have a little bit more personalized feel? Well now you can! The development team recently implemented the ability to use your own email address to send emails to customers. This includes sending invoices, reminders, and Online Gallery invitations. We believe that this will decrease the probability that emails will be marked as spam or glanced over. For instructions on setting up your own email accounts see our support article at http://studiocloud.com/support/?View=entry&EntryID=61

You can use your own emails to send reminders, email customers directly from StudioCloud Basic and Professional Suites, send invoices, and even more features will be available in the upcoming CRM.

Advanced Task List

For quite some time we have had a much more advanced task system in the Workflow Manager. However, we realized that this same advanced system should also be included in the Basic and Professional Suites. So last night's update included the more advanced task system. You can now set due dates and mark task lists and tasks as completed in the Basic and Professional Suite.

Email From StudioCloud

Have you ever been looking at your client list and realize that you need to email one of your clients about his/her upcoming session, balance due, or pictures? Now you can email them directly from the Basic/Professional Suite directly from your own personal email address.

Last night's update included the ability to add one or more email accounts to the Basic/Professional Suite so that all email correspondence are from you and not from StudioCloud. You can currently add email accounts that require a secure (encrypted) connection and then click a button in the "Edit Client" window that allows you to email customers directly. Soon the ability to add email accounts that use non-secure connections will be available as well.

StudioCloud, It's just that Easy

Update to Calendar Export

Not to long ago we gave you the ability to export your StudioCloud calendar to iCal and Outlook (http://blog.studiocloud.com/2008/05/export-your-calendar-to-ical-and.html). However, many of you found that the times you were seeing in Outlook did not match the times you were seeing in the Basic or Professional Suite. Our developers have been working hard to resolve this issue and they finally tracked it down to a problem with the way Outlook handles the time zones. They worked even harder to figure out a work around for this issue and that was included in last night's update. We recommend that everyone refresh their calendar and see if that resolves the time difference between Outlook and the Basic/Professional Suite calendar. If it is still not resolved you may need to delete the internet calendar and then re-subscribe to it following the steps in the original blog post (http://blog.studiocloud.com/2008/05/export-your-calendar-to-ical-and.html).

If after tonight's update, there is still a discrepancy in the two calendar times then please check that your computer's time zone and daylight savings settings are set correctly. You can always contact us as well and we will see what we can do to resolve the problem.

Complete Your Invoices

Last nights update included a new feature that will allow you to more efficiently view and sort your invoices. Once an invoice has been fulfilled you simply click the checkbox on that row to mark it complete. By default only invoices that have not been marked complete are visible. So once you mark an invoice complete it will no longer be visible in the Point of Sale section. However, if you need to find that invoice you can click the checkbox on the bottom left of the Invoices tab to "Show Completed Invoices".


This feature should make it much easier to work with your most current invoices.


StudioCloud, It's Just That Easy!

Quickly Switch Taxes

A while back we upgraded the invoicing system to include multiple additive taxes. We received lots of great feedback and realized that there was one more thing missing for many studios, the ability to quickly switch between different taxes. Last nights update added in what we are calling "Tax Profiles". Tax profiles allow you to create different profiles for your different tax situations. For example, you may have profiles for "Local Tax", "Out of State Tax", or "International Tax". Then once you are creating or editing an invoice you can quickly populate the the necessary taxes using a drop-down box. We believe that this will help you become even more efficient.


To begin using tax profiles, go to the Point of Sale section of the Basic/Professional Suite and select the tab labeled "Settings". Your current tax settings will remain your "Default Tax Profile". Then in the table next to the tax options you can setup as many tax profiles as you will need.


In case you are wondering, the Workflow Pipelines that used to be on the "Settings" tab has moved to the tab labeled "Workflow".


StudioCloud, It's Just That Easy!

Tracking Prospective Clients

Last night's update provided an additional client list to keep track of your "Prospective Clients". You can add/edit/delete prospective clients from your list and easily convert them to regular clients. Keeping your clients and prospective clients separate will keep your client list from getting disorganized.

Separating prospective clients from clients will also come in handy when preparing marketing campaigns in the upcoming CRM. That way you can easily target your marketing specifically to potential customers.

StudioCloud, It's Just That Easy!