New Videos Posted

Our team has been hard at work adding new video content to our YouTube channel ( http://youtube.com/studiocloud )  We are trying to create very short and specific informative videos.  The first two new videos are on creating and editing clients.  Please watch the blog or subscribe to the YouTube channel to keep up on the latest videos. 

Links to the videos are below.

Creating a New Client - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-MyaKUUzT4

Editing a Client - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqLLTA4ZtsY

StudioCloud Helping To Streamline Processes

The purpose of StudioCloud software is to make running your studio as easy as possible. So the development team has recently added some new features to StudioCloud Desktop to help you streamline your processes.

First, when you are creating or editing a client you can quickly create a new session or invoice for that client. There are two new buttons at the bottom of the form labeled "Create Session" and "Create Invoice" that should help stream line this process. In addition, a similar "Create Session" button has also been added to the form for creating and editing your a prospective client.

Second, when you are creating or editing a session you can now edit the client information just by clicking the edit icon. Any changes you make will be updated in that session and all other sessions. In addition, you have always had the ability to create a new invoice based on a session that you are creating. With the most recent updates the new invoice will actually popup so that you can edit it after the session is saved. This will allow you to add and down payments or session fees right then and there.

Finally, when creating or editing an invoice you can edit the client information. There is now a button just to the right of the "Select Customer" field. When clicked it will open up a window to edit that clients information.

StudioCloud hopes that these changes will make you and your employees just a little bit faster. That way you can spend more time doing what you love.

StudioCloud. It’s just that easy

StudioCloud Desktop Updates

We’ve done a lot of improvements to StudioCloud Desktop with this new update and we want to make sure you know about them. Below is a list of the changes that have been made in the latest StudioCloud Desktop update.

1. We have improved the agenda widget on the overview page. We renamed agenda to “Time Sensitive Items” and added in leads, orders, and a tasks tab to the widget. Only items with a pickup date are shown in the tabs.

2. You can now change the agenda day to view the events for any day.

3. Leads/Prospective Customers now have an event type and estimated date field to help you manage your leads better.

4. Workflow has been substantially improved. Previously the product pipelines and order pipelines were created and managed on the same page. That was confusing. As such the product pipelines is now available on the Products page under Point of Sale. The Workflow page still contains the order pipelines. We have also added in a service pipeline as well on the Services Page page under Point of Sale.

5. We have also added in a default pipeline checkbox to both the product pipelines and order pipelines. If an order default pipeline checkbox is selected any order that doesn't have a pipeline assigned to it will automatically be assigned the default pipeline. Likewise for product pipelines. This should speed up the workflow process.

6. We have renamed Task Lists to Categories and added in an individual task view on the Tasks page under Workflow. The individual task view allows you to see all of your tasks and filter them by categories.

7. We added a New Task button to the quick task window.

8. We also added in a Import from ICS (calendars) button on the Agenda Page under Calendar. This will import calendar appointments from third party calendars.

9. We added in a Last Modified By and Last Modified Date column under the View Columns button under invoices. These columns show who last edited the invoice and when it was last edited.

10. We added in a Select a Date Range to the Print Time Card Report for those studios who want to see all of the time card entries for a given time period outside of the Pay Periods Range.

StudioCloud. It’s just that easy

Tip of the Week -Tags

This week’s Tip of the Week has to do with Client Tags. Client Tags are an important part of creating profitable marketing campaigns. Tags allow you to create marketing campaigns that focus on specific types of clients. Every client might seem different but many of them have similarities that you can use to create that perfect marketing campaign. For example, similarities such as interests, hobbies, events, lifestyle, estimated income level, employment, etc. can all be used to identify which customers a specific marketing campaign would appeal to the most.

StudioCloud provides you with intuitive, easy to use, tagging functionality that enables you to create that perfect marketing campaign for your clients. Tags also help you to effectively organize your clients to create an even more efficient studio.

To get more information regarding how to setup and use tags refer to the link below:

http://app1.studiocloud.com/support/index.php?/category/135/0/10/

StudioCloud, It’s just that easy.

More Flexibility To Your Calendar

Have you ever made a prospective customer a client on accident? Saturday nights update gives you an easy way to convert those clients back to prospective customers. To make the change go to the clients name and click on the Convert to Prospective Customer in the bottom left corner.

This weekend’s update also gives your calendar even more flexibility by allowing you to add new calendar types. This new feature allows you to customize types of appointments without distorting the reporting functions that StudioCloud offers. To add this flexibility to your calendar click on the Calendar Types Offered By Studio, on the bottom right there is an Add New Calendar Type button that will allow you to customize your appointments.

StudioCloud, It's just that Easy

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 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

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.

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

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

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!

Update to the Address Book

After our recent change to the address book that removed notes from the clients section we received feedback from some of you that you really needed the notes field for sorting and finding specific information. So the developers put their heads together and came up with a solution that they believe will work for everyone.

The first change is that the notes field has been added back into the clients section of the Basic/Professional Suite. However, rather than showing you the entire notes section, which was very long for some studios and made the clients table unusable, it only shows you approximately the first 50 characters. This allows you to see some of the information, sort the table by the notes field, and view the full notes field by clicking on the magnifying glass.

The second addition is an update to the search functionality in the clients section. Previously when you typed anything into the search field below the table it would search a variety of the client information. But it wasn't clear what part of a clients information was matching your search. As a result, the developers updated the search section. They have added in a drop-down box that has various options in it including All Fields, First Name, Last Name, Business, Email, and Notes. When you select one of these options you are specifically searching through that field of your clients information. We hope this will help all of you get more out of the clients section and to be able to use it more efficiently.

StudioCloud, It's Just That Easy!

Small Changes to Address Book

It has been brought to our attention that many StudioCloud users are storing large amounts of information in the notes section for their clients. This can result in each row in the client list taking up a lot of space and making it difficult to find the client they are looking for. As a result, the developers have moved the notes section into a popup. Now in the third column from the left there is a little magnifying class. When you click that magnifying glass it will popup the notes for that customer.

View Your Contacts Anytime, Anywhere

The StudioCloud Mobile development team is at it again. Just a few days ago I wrote about the extended abilities of the calendar in the StudioCloud Mobile interface. Well last night the developers released the latest installment of StudioCloud Mobile, the address book. You can now access your StudioCloud address book anytime, anywhere through the StudioCloud Mobile interface. Once you have logged in to StudioCloud Mobile, the link, that was previously labeled "Coming Soon", is now active. When you click on the link it gives you a break down of your address book according to the first letter in your contact's last name. You can click on any of the characters to find the contact you are looking for and view all of the information you have saved in StudioCloud.



StudioCloud, It's Just That Easy!

Export Contacts

At this time you can export your contacts for mailers, etc by using the Offline Reader. You can export in either CSV or XML. In the future you will be able to use StudioCloud CRM for doing targeted marketing mailer and email campaigns.