Added in Light Blue 5.5
Online contract signing
When a client decides to book a shoot, you want to make sure that confirming their booking is as simple as possible. It needs to be really easy for your client to sign your contract and pay a booking fee, so they don't hold up your business by taking ages to email or post things back to you. And, of course, you don't want to spend more time than you have to on boring admin tasks! Our new online contract signing service makes the whole process of confirming a booking really simple.
Our great new online contract signing features are included in a subscription to our online services, which starts at just £7.50 + VAT per month. As well as contract signing, the online services mean you can hook up your web contact forms to Light Blue, sync data between devices (Mac, PC, iPhone and iPad) and get all the updates we release in future for free!
Want to know more?
Visit our website to find out more about our new online contract signing service, including how to set it up and start sending electronic contracts to your clients today.
Other new features added in Light Blue 5.5
- We've added an 'Import Price List from CSV File...' command to the Records menu.
- We've added a 'Reprint Invoice' button to invoiced Sale records, to make it clearer that you can reprint an existing invoice.
- We've added a 'Contact Source Analysis' report that will be particularly useful to MPA Cherubs partners.
- When printing a Shoot record, each linked Contact's primary address is included.
- Printing a Contact record now includes the contact picture.
- You can now create a linked Purchase record directly from the Linked Records panel on a Shoot record.
- When importing Contact records from a CSV file, you can now re-use an existing Source.
- The built-in calendar and date picker can now use any day as the first day of the week, rather than just Monday or Sunday.
- You can now export a Contact's primary URL.
- When using the contextual menu in a record's Activity panel, only the options that are relevant to the specific type of record that you clicked on are shown.
- We've added 'first reference' preferences for the Quote, Purchase and Transaction sections. These work in much the same way as the 'first invoice number' preference, and are especially helpful for anyone who wants Light Blue's reference number to carry on from those that they used in a previous system.
- You can now specify whether you want to use miles or kilometres when you're recording and reporting on mileage.
- We've added preferences that allow you to choose whether to include the notes field when printing Shoot, Quote or Sale records.
- We've added a default Purchase category preference.
- You can now specify a default Quote 'balance due' workflow.
Bugs fixed in Light Blue 5.5
- When linking a company to a Quote, Sale or Purchase record, the company's name is now used more helpfully in lists and reports.
- On Windows, the quick search dialog now triggers its query when you press the Enter or Return keys.
- When linking an existing Contact to a Shoot, the search dialog now displays company names properly.
- If Light Blue encounters any problems while upgrading your database when you install a new version, it now gives you more helpful error messages.
- When there are clashing events in the built-in calendar, they're now sorted so that confirmed events come before enquiries.
- Fixed a problem where importing emails from Outlook could cause an unexpected quit.
- In some cases, if you go to another record when you have unsaved changes in the current record, the changes would be saved and the right record details would be loaded, but the wrong record would be selected in the list.
- Fixed a problem where using the 'next appointment' mail-merge tags from a Sale record could use the wrong Appointment record.
- When editing items on a Quote, Sale or Purchase record, the description field now resizes correctly when you add additional lines of text.
- Fixed a problem where the cash-based Income & Expenditure report could double-count purchases that included both capital and non-capital items.
- Fixed a problem when using the 'All Records' option in the Inventory report where using a two-digit year in your operating system date format could cause a problem.
- The Income Forecast report now groups records together by the month of the quote balance due field, not the quote date field.
Light Blue 5.1 is here!
Light Blue 5.1 is a substantial update, and we’ve a lot of work into making the app more efficient and responsive. This is especially true for the Windows version of Light Blue, where we’ve made big changes to the way that information is loaded and displayed to improve its speed and efficiency. We've also added new features and fixed some minor bugs, as described below.
New features
- Light Blue 5.1 is now compatible with Developer Preview 6 of Mac OS X Yosemite.
- Added an option to show or hide undated tasks from the Task Manager.
- There's now the option (in the cog menu on the task manager) to display just the first outstanding task for each linked record.
- Purchase totals in the Linked Records panel now display the total rather than the allocated amount.
- When importing to update a record in the inbox, we now display the values to be imported when you're choosing what to import.
- When the task manager is grouped by linked record, we no longer hide the links which take you to that record.
- We've reverted some changes to printing which were causing unacceptable perfomance issues. Text in PDFs is no longer selectable.
- Members of the MPA's Cherubs scheme can now import contacts from one of their monthly data files using a convenient shortcut that we've added to the Records menu.
- You can now send timestamps to the Light Blue API, which makes it easier to link services like Google Calendar to your Light Blue account via Zapier (e.g. so that you can create new records in Light Blue when an event is added to Google Calendar).
- You can now get directions to any address in Light Blue by using the cog menu attached to that address. You can get directions from either Google Maps, or Apple's Maps app (if you're using Mac OS X Mavericks or later).
- Light Blue's built-in calendar now highlights the selected day, and is more predictable when switching between Month, Week and Day views.
- If you're subscribed to our online services but haven't switched them on within Light Blue, we now remind you to switch them on. We also notify you if you've changed your username or password but haven't remembered to update them in the app
- We've made it easier to move your Light Blue data to a new computer.
- Anyone who prefers double-clicking to ‘open' items can now set up Light Blue to require a double-click to switch between sections or pick a record. This can be turned on in the ‘General Prefs' section of Light Blue's Preferences window.
- When you're importing contacts from a CSV file, you can now import into the Contact Reference field.
- You can now export contact tags when you're exporting contact records.
- French addresses are now formatted correctly.
- When you're sending emails to contacts from a shoot record, we're being more sensible about offering you the choice between using that contact's email address, or the head of their group's email address.
- The task manager now displays due and completed dates as "Yesterday", "Today" and "Tomorrow" to make it easier to use when grouping tasks by another other than due date.
- The Inbox now displays a summary of the records that emails are linked to, to make it easier to see which emails have been linked to which contacts or shoots.
- The ShootContacts, ShootRequests and ShootSchedule tags can now be used on templates from the Quotes and Sales sections as well as from the Shoots section.
- You can now append "ZeroBlank" to a mail-merge tag if you want to hide it from a template when the relevant field is zero.
- When you're importing pictures into a shoot, we've made it more obvious whether you've chosen to organise your pictures in a single folder, or using separate sub-folders for your processed and unprocessed images. You can also change that setting for each shoot.
- When a Quote has been fully invoiced, we now ask you to confirm if you really want to create new Sale records from it.
Bug fixes
- The section and quick query list could fail to draw sometimes on Windows.
- The sale item picture selection dialog could fail to close on Windows.
- Sale item picture thumbnails could fail to load.
- A spurious 'invalid login' error could appear after data sync.
- Sometimes, in Light Blue, it's possible to enter events which end before they start. We now publish those to iCal or Google Calendar as full-day events, with a note of what's happened.
- Importing a Company from the Mac's Contacts application, when the company had at least one address, would make a spurious extra address.
- Fixed a database error when clicking the 'Unallocated' link for transactions for a Contact.
- The day of the week for the end date was incorrect when listing all sessions.
- When printing shoot details, we now list all session details in full.
- Printing an outgoing transaction would print the Amount column as zero.
- Printing the list view to email as PDF would send it to the printer.
- Added a Zapier action for our API.
- Removed a spurious <span> tag from the Management Information report.
- Fixed problems when syncing, generating web galleries, adding contact addresses, renaming files.
- branding graphics could overlay addresses on invoices.
- Fixed some minor visual glitches caused by the changes we made to the Windows version of Light Blue in 5.1.
- Increased the amount of time that data sync will wait to receive a reply from our servers, to improve its compatibility with slow internet connections when transferring lots of data.
- A further change to the quick search box to make it function correctly on the Home screen and Calendar.
- Workflows with appointments which had appointment types could have extra blank tasks added.
- Keys sent to the API are no longer required to be case sensitive.
- Text in the setup wizard had a nasty background.
- Two of the magnifying glasses on the Home screen on Windows weren't properly positioned.
- The Unpaid total for Sales could appear over the Paid total if, when it was told to become visible, it was scrolled off the edge of the screen.
- Deleting a record which had been scrolled could leave the scroll bar 'stuck' until relaunch.
- Incoming data with a start time but no end time wouldn't set the end time.
- The quick search box was losing its focus when the query was run.
- Events that clashed in the Day or Week view of our calendar could be positioned incorrectly in some unusual circumstances.
- Dragging files into the Activity panel now works on Windows as well as Mac OS X.
- When entering dates into Light Blue, we're now being stricter about not letting you type unlikely years to avoid typos from scheduling something in the wrong century.
- It's now possible to reset the password for a member of staff if you don't have an active subscription to our online services.
- When creating emails in Apple's Mail app, any images included in your default email signature are now preserved.
- Importing emails from Outlook could occasionally import the wrong attachments.
- When attaching or removing extra screens to your computer, it was possible for Light Blue's main window to get stuck in an odd position until you trashed your Light Blue preferences file.
- When printing an invoice addressed to a company, the company name could appear twice.
- On Windows, it wasn't possible to print multiple copies of the same record.
- When creating a Sale record from a Quote, it's no longer possible for the invoice date to be set to a future date.
- Linking a different Shoot to a Sale or Quote record would sometimes fail to update the totals on that Shoot.
- Some of the web gallery templates provided with Light Blue weren't working properly on Internet Explorer 11.
- The Unpaid total field on Sale records could sometimes appear in the wrong place.
- Some rare crashes have been fixed when: importing emails from Outlook, generating a web gallery, printing when your page setup details have been corrupted, publishing to contacts, reordering rows in the contact import dialog.
Light Blue 5 is here!
Light Blue 5 brings a host of new features to our award-winning business management software for photographers, making your admin easier and helping you run a busy and successful photography business. To find out what's new in Light Blue 5, read on!
Contact grouping
- This makes it really easy to deal with groups of people on their shoots (e.g. family or corporate photographers). You can specify one Contact as head of the group (ie the one you want to communicate with), and then other Contacts as group members.
- When you're working with Contact records – for example, sending emails, mail merging, exporting, printing labels and so on – you can choose to use either information from the Contact you're on, or information form the head of their group. That means, for example, that you can have a child as the primary contact for a shoot, but use their parent's information when you're sending letters or emails to them.
- For more info, see the Contact Grouping video tutorial.
Contact tagging
- Contact tagging lets you manually tag individual contacts and quickly pull them out of your database.
- Tags are great for keeping track of things like categorising leads you've received according to the types of shoot they're likely to be interested in (e.g. you could create tags for 'newborns', 'seniors', etc).
- They're also brilliant for keeping track of which promotions you've included contacts in (e.g. '2014 New Year promo', '2014 summer promo').
- You'll find them in the right-hand column of a Contact record.
The inbox
- A hub for your incoming information, the inbox lets you import emails from Mail on a Mac and Outlook on Windows.
- It's searchable, and really easy to convert an email into a new enquiry.
- You can also link your website's contact form directly to your Light Blue account, or put up a form requesting information about a wedding so that you clients can fill it in directly rather than posting you a piece of paper.
- We've created a plugin for WordPress that works with Gravity Forms and is really easy to use, or (for the techies!) you can write your own connection to our API using your favourite scripting language. Find out more about that on our API page.
Custom Reports
- Light Blue's List View is a great way of generating your own reports, but up to now you've had to recreate them every time you need to run one. Now, using the new Custom Reports, found in the Reports menu, you can save the columns and queries which go with them, to make it really easy to bring up your favourite reports on how your business is doing.
- We've provided some examples of custom reports to show you what's possible and to get you going!
And there's more!
Edit Sales after you've invoiced them
In Light Blue 4, once you'd created an invoice, it couldn't be edited. Sometimes, however, you need to make a change to one you've already sent; in Light Blue 5, you can now edit invoices once they've been created, which gives you the flexibility to deal with customers changing their minds.
Shared accounts
You can now share your Light Blue account with other photographers who are using Light Blue. This is particularly useful for photographers who are collaborating with others but want to keep their own business information separate (you can set up a separate Light Blue account for your joint venture, and switch back and forth between the two accounts as necessary) and for anyone who's managing a chain of studios or a franchised business (each separate studio can set up their own Light Blue account, and give 'head office' access to it).
Saving you time
- Appointment Types let you create templates for appointments, making it easier to set up standard appointments. For example, you could set up an appointment type for viewing sessions that allocates a particular member of staff, books a room and blocks out a set amount of time.
- You can now delete more than one entry from linked records, activity, schedule and requests by selecting multiple items before clicking the delete button.
- We've added ‘next' and ‘previous' buttons to several dialogs, such as on Shoot Schedule or Requests, making it faster to jump between long lists of items.
- You can now save field orders when you're performing a data export, so once you've got it set up just the way you like it, it's easy to re-use.
- We've reorganised the Preferences window to make it easier to find what you're looking for.
- Text-based custom fields on Shoots and Contacts can now be set to auto-complete as you're typing, saving time when you're entering data.
Being even more useful
- You can add pictures to Contact records, so you can get a quick reminder of what your clients look like before meeting them again.
- Contact ages are now displayed in months for children under two, to help portrait photographers better prepare for shoots.
- You can now select options for calendar feeds – so you can have one for just your portrait shoots, or one for a particular staff member, for example.
- You don't need to have ‘processed' and ‘unprocessed' subfolders in your Shoot folder any more – instead, you can simply import a single folder of images against a shoot.
- On the Sale screen, we've added a ‘Salesperson' popup that lists the staff you've set up in the Resources section of the Preferences window. This lets you track how each of your salespeople are doing. Of course, we've added a report to show this information, too; that's under Custom Reports in the Reports menu.
- When you're linking pictures to a sale item, you can now choose pictures from any shoot, not just the shoot to which the Sale is linked.
- You can now group shoot requests together, which is invaluable for wedding photographers (eg ‘Formal groups', ‘Detail shots', etc)
- We've really improved the efficiency of the application, so it uses less CPU (and therefore doesn't drain your laptop's battery) when it's idling.
Keep track of time off
It's now really easy to keep track of when people are out of the office, or when equipment or rooms are unavailable, with our new Time Off features. You can block out time from the built-in calendar, with just a double-click on the relevant day, and any sessions or appointments which clash with time off will be shown in red, so you can easily see if you're scheduling something when you're not available.
Calendar & Home screen improvements
- We've made it easy to offer alternative dates for your enquiries by allowing you to add extra sessions to a shoot from our built-in calendar. When you confirm the booking, you'll be asked if you want to confirm just one session or all of them.
- On the Home screen, today's events are highlighted to make them more obvious. If you don't have any events scheduled for today, we indicate where today would be so that you can quickly see which events have already happened and which ones are coming up.
- There's now an indication as to whether events are scrolled out of view in the built-in calendar, so you don't miss anything that's taking place at a different time of day.
- You can now set the built-in calendar to start the week on a Sunday – one for our American friends!
- Our built-in calendar now shows the current time when you're on week or day view, so you know how long you've got left before your next shoot.
Communicating
- Email templates can now use attachments, so it's easier to send brochures and forms out to your customers.
- You can now create emails to a found set of contacts, using your default mail application. (This is intended for when you want to email a few people with things like booking confirmations, etc.; for bulk marketing email we still recommend exporting a set of email addresses from Light Blue for use in a mass-mailing service such as MailChimp.)
Printing
- You can now print envelopes, or print addresses via a Dymo label writer.
- On Mac OS X, we've been able to really improve the quality of printed text. On both Mac OS X and Windows, we've improved the quality of the customisable branding that you can add to our built-in templates.
- You can now print the task manager and calendar, as well as being able to print several records in one go, which is great for when you need to resend several invoices to a customer.
- When you print a price list, we now include your branding; we also ask if you want to hide the cost and profit information – meaning it's much easier to send price lists to your customers.
And much more…
Light Blue 5 is full of minor tweaks that we've made to make it easier for you to manage your business. The full list would be far too boring to detail here: in fact, we'll be pleasantly surprised if you've made it this far.