• You can now mark a proposal that has incomplete additional stages (e.g. booking form, scheduling calendar, contract, or booking fee) as checked.
• When you edit the body of an email template, it now checks for scheduled workflow messages more reliably.
• Made links applied to text in the HTML editor clearer by applying an underline to them.
• The system requirements check now correctly blocks versions of Windows older than Windows 10.
• Fixed a bug in our Windows app where the detail view records list scrollbar didn’t accept clicks.
• Fixed a bug where the “tidy outstanding items” window could appear when a shoot’s status is changed to “confirmed” or “completed”.
• Fixed a bug on Windows where an email signature could be inserted below quoted text, instead of above it.
• Fixed a crash that could occur on macOS when linking a picture to a sale item.

We’ve been testing the current versions of our macOS and iOS apps on the prerelease versions of macOS 26 and iOS 26 and haven’t found any issues. However, please read on for our usual health warning about the dangers of installing a major operating system update as soon as it’s available!

Health warning

As with all major operating system updates, it is a very sensible idea to be cautious about updating your computers until Apple have had a chance to fix some of the bugs that will inevitably be present in macOS 26. Although our testing of Light Blue 2025.1 on macOS Tahoe has been positive, there is every chance that Apple could change something that breaks compatibility or that we’ve missed something because we can’t test every conceivable combination of devices and settings.

If you rely on Light Blue to run your business, we would therefore recommend holding off from updating your operating system as soon as macOS 26 is available. At the very least, if you really really want to update on day one, make sure that you have at least one computer on the ‘old’ operating system until you’ve had a chance to test that all of the features that you depend on are fully functional.

Also, please note that our testing has been has been focused on the latest version of our desktop app. All of our subscribers have access to Light Blue 2025.1, and if you’re using an older version of our desktop app then please update to the latest version to ensure that you’re able to take advantage of all of the new features and bug fixes that we’ve been adding. You can update the desktop app by using the ‘Check for updates’ command (in the ‘Light Blue’ menu if you’re on a Mac, or in the ‘Help’ menu if you’re using it on Windows).

Everything You Need to Book Clients, in One Easy Proposal

Light Blue’s proposals let clients build their own quote by selecting a package and optional add-ons, creating a more interactive booking experience.

This makes it easier to upsell additional products and services while giving clients more flexibility in choosing what’s right for them.

Proposals streamline the quoting and booking process, allowing you to combine contracts, forms, payments, and scheduling into one seamless workflow.

And much more…

Our updates always include lots of improvements, and you can discover them in the Light Blue 2025.1 release notes.

Free upgrade for subscribers

Light Blue 2025.1 is a free upgrade for all of our subscribers. We’ve loved seeing how our prerelease testers have been using the new features, and we’re keen to see what you do with it!

Proposals

Light Blue’s new proposals feature lets clients build their own quote by selecting a package and optional add-ons, creating a more interactive booking experience. This makes it easier to upsell additional products and services while giving clients more flexibility in choosing what’s right for them.

By including customisable image, video, and text blocks, proposals also give you the flexibility to showcase your work and sell your services to clients. You can keep a proposal simple or create a booking experience that feels more like a brochure that presents your unique talents.

Proposals streamline the quoting and booking process, allowing you to combine contracts, forms, payments, and scheduling into one seamless workflow. They’re perfect for wedding and commercial photographers and filmmakers, and many other types of photographer and professional creative will appreciate how they can use proposals to showcase their work and sell their services.

Improved HTML editor

The HTML editor that powers our emails and proposals has been updated to a new editor that offers new formatting options and improved performance.

Other changes

Client portal

• You can now increase the maximum width of your client portal pages to 1200px, up from the previous maximum of 800px. To do this, go to the client portal branding section of your account on our website and look for the “Maximum Width” heading. Existing client portal brands default to the old maximum width of 800px to avoid any layout issues that could occur with graphics you designed for that size.
• Added Spanish as a new built-in translation for client portal pages. We now have translations for French, German, Italian, and Spanish.
• Our API now includes ContactTag and ShootTag parameters that allow you to add tags to contacts and shoots as part of an API request.
• You can now add hidden shoot and contact tag fields to forms. Shoots and contacts created or updated by the form will have those tags added to them.
• If a paragraph in a proposal, quote, or sale item begins with a bullet point, the online version of it is now formatted with proper bullet points (i.e. an HTML unordered list).
• If your client portal group box colour options match the form background colour, the padding for group boxes is set to zero.
• Downloading a calendar feed used to block availability in scheduling calendars can now follow redirects.

Home screen

• The “Current Events” widget on the Home screen now has an option to not include time off.
• Added an option to sort the Enquiries widget on the Home screen by enquiry date, instead of the event start date.

Calendar

• When double-clicking an appointment on the Home screen or Calendar, Light Blue now defaults to highlighting that appointment in the linked record’s Activity panel instead of opening the appointment in its own window. You can hold down the Option / Alt key to make it open in a window.

Inbox & Outbox

• You can now block the import of emails and text messages from particular email addresses or phone numbers by using the “Edit Block List…” option from the Housekeeping menu.
• Improved performance of loading large numbers of items into the Inbox and Outbox.
• In the Inbox, the “Mark As Read” button is now available when you select multiple incoming data items.

Shoots

• When you delete a session from a shoot, you are now shown the same scheduled activity tidying window that appears when you cancel a shoot. This makes it easy to cancel any outstanding tasks, messages, etc, that were based on that session’s date.
• In Detail view in the Shoots section, using the records list contextual menu to change a shoot’s status (e.g. confirming an enquiry) now updates the shoot’s icon in the list.
• When exporting records, shoot tags and contact tags are now separated by commas instead of semicolons.

Contacts

• The “Links” section in the Contacts section now shows an “Open URL” button when you hover your mouse over any of the contact’s links.
• When exporting records, shoot tags and contact tags are now separated by commas instead of semicolons.
• Fixed an error when trying to query for contacts using both “Contact” and “Linked Contact” fields.

Sales & Purchases

• Added an optional “Dispatch Date” field to the Sales section. You can show this field by going into the “Finances” section of the Preferences window, going to the “Sales Options” tab, and ticking the “Show Dispatch Date” checkbox.
• Fixed a bug where ampersands in invoice number prefixes were not displayed on the Sale detail panel.
• Improved the tab order within the sale item editing window.
• Fixed a bug where the “Issue Refund” button doesn’t appear in the Sales section when the sale was duplicated from a sale that’s been credited.
• Fixed a crash that could occur when duplicating a Purchase record that has a blank invoice date.

Templates & Mail-Merge

• Templates in the Settings window no longer have their own export buttons: you should use the Records -> Export -> Setup command to export templates.
• You can now export and import email signatures.
• On an email template, the “update the scheduled workflow messages that use this template” link now only appears if there are scheduled emails that use this template and have a different subject or body. i.e. it only appears when clicking it will do something useful.
• You can now use sale mail-merge tags (e.g. %InvoiceURL%) in proposal confirmation emails. This allows you to do things like include a link to the invoice generated by a proposal in the confirmation email.
• Date mail-merge tags can now use the DayName formatting option to give you the day of the week. e.g. %ShootStartDateDayName% for a shoot that begins on 01/01/2025 would return “Wednesday”.

Miscellaneous changes

• Added an option for combobox fields to not show your most used values at the top of the dropdown menu.
• When moving a record to the Trash, you will only need to confim this once. Previously, in some cases you needed to confirm this twice. We’ve now combined those warnings into a single confirmation dialog.
• Added a Housekeeping command to delete attachments from old emails sent from Light Blue. This allows you to reclaim disk space.
• Added an option to not save and sync mail-merge templates used for “printing”, to save disk space.
• Improved performance when working with dates and times by cacheing your current timezone.
• Clicking in the blank space below the list of records in Detail view no longer deselects the current record.
• When you open a Note from the Activity panel, the window opens at the same size that you last opened it at.
• When typing in a date field that expects a future date, the year is now limited to 5 years in the future to resolve an issues where a year in the far future could be autocompleted.
• When a prerelease version of Light Blue has expired, the button to download the latest version now works as expected.
• On macOS, the Window menu now includes the latest macOS window positioning options.

• When you use the “Move Found Records To The Trash…” command, the progress bar now updates as records are deleted.
• The product code field is now wider in price lists, quotes, and sales.
• The “Tidy Popup Menus” housekeeping command now allows you to tidy values that you’ve previously used for contact method labels, i.e. the labels applied to email addresses, phone numbers, and URLs on your Contact records.
• Fixed a bug where emptying the Trash in one device could fail to sync that change to other devices.

• Added “Last 18 months” and “Last 24 months” time period options to charts.
• Added a “Next Payment Amount” column to the Aged Debts report.
• Added a grand totals row to the Aged Debts report.
• Added new ContactTag and ShootTag API parameters.
• You can now reassign a selection of multiple tasks to a different member of staff from the Activity panel.
• Added a “Download File…” contextual menu option to email template and email attachment lists.
• When you create an appointment from the Calendar section, a “Cancel” button is displayed instead of the “Next” and “Previous” buttons.
• Importing a ProSelect order that’s been marked as paid in ProSelect now sets the payment method for those payments in Light Blue.
• Tasks published from Light Blue to the macOS Reminders app now create all-day reminders, instead of reminders scheduled for 09:00.
• If you’ve set up a member of staff to have access to charts and reports, but not the Quotes, Sales, Purchases, and Payments sections, they no longer have access to charts or reports that show any financial information.
• On Windows, opening the discount dialog from the Sales and Quotes section now sets the focus to the discount percentage field.
• When creating email from the Activity tab, quotes, sales, purchases, and payments now use the linked contact’s email address.
• Duplicating a quote that isn’t using tax-inclusive pricing and has a custom booking fee now duplicates that booking fee’s tax as expected.
• Contract confirmation email attachments now show the expected filename when displayed in our desktop and mobile apps.
• Fixed a bug where the “Upload File…” and “Download File…” contextual menu commands in the Document Templates section of the Preferences window were confused.
• Fixed a bug where the “Find Duplicate Contacts” command does not close its progress bar when there are no duplicate contacts.
• Fixed a bug where the floating version of the SMS window doesn’t show the phone number selection menu for workflow messages.

We’ve been testing the current versions of our macOS and iOS apps on the prerelease versions of macOS 15 and iOS 18 and haven’t found any issues. However, please read on for our usual health warning about the dangers of installing a major operating system update as soon as it’s available!

Health warning

As with all major operating system updates, it is a very sensible idea to be cautious about updating your computers until Apple have had a chance to fix some of the bugs that will inevitably be present in macOS Sequoia. Although our testing of Light Blue 2024.1.1 on macOS Sequoia has been positive, there is every chance that Apple could change something that breaks compatibility or that we’ve missed something because we can’t test every conceivable combination of devices and settings.

If you rely on Light Blue to run your business, we would therefore recommend holding off from updating your operating system as soon as macOS Sequoia is available. At the very least, if you really really want to update on day one, make sure that you have at least one computer on the ‘old’ operating system until you’ve had a chance to test that all of the features that you depend on are fully functional.

Also, please note that our testing has been has been focussed on the latest version of our desktop app. The vast majority of our subscribers are already using Light Blue 2024.1.1, and if you’re using an older version of our desktop app then please update to the latest version to ensure that you’re able to take advantage of all of the new features and bug fixes that we’ve been adding. You can update the desktop app by using the ‘Check for updates’ command (in the ‘Light Blue’ menu if you’re on a Mac, or in the ‘Help’ menu if you’re using it on Windows).

• In List view, “number” and “count” columns now include group and grand totals.
• Added a new housekeeping tool that allows you to update all shoot folder paths that begin in a specified way. e.g. if you’ve moved your image storage to a new external drive or server, you can update all of the shoots that are linked to folders on the original location to point to the new one.
• The GotPhoto import window now lets you choose a payment method to apply to any imported GotPhoto orders that do not specify a payment method, instead of using your default incoming payment method.
• Imported GotPhoto orders now include the “Order No.” column as a reference linked to the sale.
• On Windows, we’ve added a message that warns you that you should restart your PC after a database upgrade.
• You’re now warned if the content of an email couldn’t be saved while you’re composing it.
• Fixed a bug where the Inbox badge count could be too high because it was double-counting some forms from online bookings.
• Fixed a bug where the “Notes” field in Resources preferences is overlapped by Google Calendar blocking explanation when you haven’t linked a Google account.
• Fixed an issue where the shoot title for non-wedding shoots isn’t automatically updated when contact name is updated.
• Fixed a bug that could cause the shoot “Date Confirmed”, “Date Completed”, and “Date Cancelled” columns to not be set for shoots that have gone through lots of status changes.
• Fixed a bug that could cause a crash when loading the Inbox if it contains items linked to an appointment that has a start time but no end time.
• Fixed a bug where importing multiple sales from the Inbox could link some sales to the wrong contact.
• Fixed a crash that could occur when editing tax rates.
• Fixed a crash that could occur when using the contextual menu for a contact method.

• We’re now handling a change in 12-hour time formatting in macOS 14 Sonoma that could interfere with autocompleting times.
• You can now import multiple sales from the Inbox in a batch by using Shift-click on Command/Control-click to select several sales before clicking the “Import” button.
• You can now open “failed to send” emails from the Outbox and send them via a different email account, e.g. using the Light Blue email servers instead of one of your own email accounts.
• Our HTML editor now allows mailto: and tel: URLs to be added.
• Added a “Check Server Connection Before Trying to Sync” preference. We’re also providing more information in the “Background Activity” window if your internet connection appears to not be working.
• Importing a form that’s been submitted for a shoot that’s been deleted is now treated as if you’re importing a form that’s not linked to anything.
• On Windows, we now default to ignoring your display’s scale factor when printing.
• Added a “Reset” button to the template translation editing dialog, to clear any customised translation and revert it to the default value.
• In the custom report dialog, changed the wording from “quick or saved query” to “quick query”.
• Changed the wording of the “Set Opt-In” button in “Set Mailing List Opt-In For Contacts From CSV” dialog to “Change Opt-In Status”.
• In the “Revenue By Product” report, the “Product Code” column is now only be shown if if “Show Product Code” option is checked.
• Fixed a bug that caused the query for potential duplicate contacts when you’re previewing incoming data to be case-sensitive.
• Fixed a bug where drag-reordering contact methods in contact add dialog appears to not work.
• Fixed a bug where querying on a time field and setting the operator to “Is Blank” or “Is Not Blank” wasn’t hiding the value field and the query couldn’t be run.
• Fixed a bug where the query dialog’s advanced mode’s closing bracket could disappear when clicked on to activate them.
• Fixed a bug where the printed version of quotes weren’t using the “Quote/Sale Notes Label” from template translations.
• Fixed a bug where the last row of the CSV file could be ignored when using “Set Mailing List Opt-In For Contacts From CSV” housekeeping tool.
• Fixed a bug where the address label popup arrows don’t appear in contact add dialog when adding a contact to a shoot.
• Fixed a bug where mail-merging a centrally aligned %InvoiceURL% tag in an email template changed it to left-aligned.
• Fixed a bug where merging duplicate contacts from a shoot could cause the sort order of the preserved contact to change unexpectedly.
• Fixed a bug where checking the “preview mail-merge tags” checkbox while editing contract text opens blank pages in your default browser.

Over the next few weeks, Apple are going to be releasing major upgrades to macOS and iOS. iOS 17 is going to be released on 18 September. macOS 14 Sonoma is being released on 26 September.

We’ve been testing the current versions of our macOS and iOS apps on the prerelease versions of macOS 14 and iOS 17 and haven’t found any major issues. We’ll be releasing an update to our desktop app very soon that fixes the only minor issue we’ve found. However, please read on for our usual health warning about the dangers of installing a major operating system update as soon as it’s available!

Health warning

As with all major operating system updates, it is a very sensible idea to be cautious about updating your computers until Apple have had a chance to fix some of the bugs that will inevitably be present in macOS Sonoma. Although our testing of Light Blue 2023.1.1 on macOS Sonoma has been positive, there is every chance that Apple could change something that breaks compatibility or that we’ve missed something because we can’t test every conceivable combination of devices and settings.

If you rely on Light Blue to run your business, we would therefore recommend holding off from updating your operating system as soon as macOS Sonoma is available. At the very least, if you really really want to update on day one, make sure that you have at least one computer on the ‘old’ operating system until you’ve had a chance to test that all of the features that you depend on are fully functional.

Also, please note that our testing has been has been focussed on the latest version of our desktop app. The vast majority of our subscribers are already using Light Blue 2023.1, and if you’re using an older version of our desktop app then please update to the latest version to ensure that you’re able to take advantage of all of the new features and bug fixes that we’ve been adding. You can update the desktop app by using the ‘Check for updates’ command (in the ‘Light Blue’ menu if you’re on a Mac, or in the ‘Help’ menu if you’re using it on Windows).

We’ve been testing Light Blue 2022.2 (which is being released in the next few days) with the macOS Ventura betas and it mostly works well. However, there’s a bug in macOS Ventura that affects publishing contacts from Light Blue to the macOS Contacts app: if you’re using that feature, please don’t install macOS Ventura until we have a fix for it. There’s been a bit of confusion between “contacts” and “contRacts”: Light Blue’s online contracts are working well, it’s publishing client contact details to the Contacts app that’s affected by Apple’s bug.

Please read on for our usual health warning about the dangers of installing a major operating system update as soon as it’s available!

Health warning

As with all major operating system updates, it is a very sensible idea to be cautious about updating your computers until Apple have had a chance to fix some of the bugs that will inevitably be present in macOS Ventura. Although our testing of Light Blue 2022.2 on macOS Ventura has mostly been positive, there is every chance that Apple could change something that breaks compatibility or that we’ve missed something because we can’t test every conceivable combination of devices and settings.

If you rely on Light Blue to run your business, we would therefore recommend holding off from updating your operating system as soon as macOS Ventura is available. At the very least, if you really really want to update on day one, make sure that you have at least one computer on the ‘old’ operating system until you’ve had a chance to test that all of the features that you depend on are fully functional.

Also, please note that our testing has been has been focussed on the latest version of our desktop app. The vast majority of our customers are already using Light Blue 2022.2 or 2022.1, and if you’re using an older version of our desktop app then please update to the latest version to ensure that you’re able to take advantage of all of the new features and bug fixes that we’ve been adding. You can update the desktop app by using the ‘Check for updates’ command (in the ‘Light Blue’ menu if you’re on a Mac, or in the ‘Help’ menu if you’re using it on Windows).

• You can now import GotPhoto orders into Light Blue as sales, using the GotPhoto orders export CSV format. You’ll find the “Import GotPhoto Orders CSV” command in the Records menu and Light Blue will offer to set up one of your shoot custom text fields to store the GotPhoto job ID and automatically link all of the orders for a particular GotPhoto job to the correct Light Blue shoot.
• Added an “Open URL In Browser” button to our HTML editor’s link dialog, to allow you to test the URL.
• Made the member of staff linked to a mileage claim available in the query window.
• Fixed a bug where the Preferences window could show a grey bar at the top on macOS 12.
• Fixed a bug that could cause the quick sale window to default to the wrong tax rate.
• Fixed a bug that could show options that don’t apply to the selected type of report when changing the “basis” option.
• Fixed a bug where converting a workflow message to a normal message for an appointment that’s also linked to a shoot could use the shoot’s details instead of the appointment’s details for %EventX% mail-merge tags.
• Fixed a bug where Sale “next payment due date” and “next payment amount” values could be incorrect if the payment schedule due dates have been manually edited.
• Fixed a bug where clicking the “Export Template” button in “Email Templates” section of Preferences window doesn’t save changes to the body of the email.
• Fixed a bug where the cash basis version of the tax report can fail to show the tax amount for some individual payments.
• Fixed a bug where importing sales from a CSV file and using the “Tax name” column would not save the that tax name and would instead show it as “Custom”.
• Fixed a crash that could occur when editing a form that has a contact roles control that doesn’t specify any roles.
• Fixed a crash that could occur when editing a quote with a percentage booking fee when using a space as your thousands separator.

Setting up our online scheduling tool is quick and easy, and you can choose which types of shoot or appointment are available online. Your availability is updated in real-time as you (and your clients!) schedule events in your diary, and it’s easy for you to set up regular availability as well as ad-hoc availability for specific types of event.

Our new online scheduling features also give you options to include a customised booking form, contract, and booking fee when a client is scheduling a shoot, making the online booking process easier than ever. It’s also tightly integrated with Light Blue’s automation tools, so the reminder emails, text messages, and tasks from your workflows help you to deliver great a great service for your clients.

Read on for a summary of the other new features and changes included in Light Blue 2022.1…

Operating system changes

• Added a 64-bit version of our Windows app. From 2022.1 onwards, using the “check for updates” command from the 32-bit version of our Windows app on a 64-bit version of Windows will offer to download either the 64-bit or 32-bit versions. Once you’ve upgraded to the 64-bit version, you’ll always be given the 64-bit version.
• The macOS version of Light Blue is now a Universal binary, adding native support for Apple Silicon-based Macs.
• The Windows version of our desktop app now reports its bitness and the macOS version reports its CPU architecture in the About dialog.
• Worked around a change in macOS 12 Monterey that could cause a grey stripe to appear at the top of the main window.
• On macOS, changed the ID that the app uses to identify itself to our servers to allow it to be more easily used from multiple macOS user accounts.

Deduplication & merging records

• Potential duplicate contacts are now highlighted on contact records and in the “Linked Records” tab on shoots. Clicking on the warning brings up a shortcut to merge that contact with one of the potential duplicates.
• When reviewing an online booking, you’re now warned if the main contact for the booking looks like a duplicate of an existing contact in your database.
• The “Merge Records” command now lists contacts with the same name or email address when you invoke it from a contact record.
• When merging records, the contact, shoot, quote, sale, purchase, and payment notes fields are now combined rather than asking you to select one version or the other to keep.

Inbox

• When you view an online booking from the Inbox, its now kept as part of the selection if you’re using the “pending items & unread messages” filter.
• Added a “Mark As Read” contextual menu command for incoming data in the Inbox, so you can mark it as dealt with and remove it from your list of pending items without importing it.
• Double-clicking a linked record from the email dialog now navigates to that linked record in the main window.

Client portal

• Invalid fields in forms are now highlighted more prominently, and clicking the submit button when it’s not activated triggers validation to show you which fields need to be filled in correctly before it can be submitted.
• Added an option to form templates to not include a CAPTCHA when they’re being used as a contact form. If you choose not to include a CAPTCHA on a contact form, the form will not send an email to the supplied email address when it’s filled in because that prevents it being of any use to spammers.
• The “Activity” tab’s contextual menus now include “Extend Expiry Date…”, “Cancel Contract…”, and “Open Contract PDF” commands for contracts. These commands are the same as the matching commands that are available in the contract dialog.
• The shoot detail panel and appointment dialog now show when the record was created by an online booking, and include an options menu that allow you to open or copy the URL for the booking confirmation and management page.
• Added an option to require at least one contact in “contact roles” and “other contacts” sections on forms.
• Added an option to customise the “add person” and “add another person” button labels in the “contact roles” and “other contacts” sections on forms.
• Fixed a bug where paragraph text fields in online forms would add extra line breaks to the content sent to Light Blue.

Mail-merge

• Added %EventTypeName% and %BookingManagementURL% mail-merge tags.
• You can now add a “:URLOnly” suffix to a URL mail-merge tag, which when used in an HTML email will be converted into the URL without the surrounding <a> element necessary to make it a clickable link. e.g. %BookingManagementURL:URLOnly%.

Preferences

• You can now merge price lists and shoot types in the Preferences window.
• Reorganised the “External Programs” section of the Preferences window and added help links.
• Added links to help for creating and using workflows to the places where workflows are set up and used.
• Email and text message templates that have been used in scheduled workflow messages now include a button that you can use to update those scheduled messages to use the latest version of the template. This allows you to make changes to your message templates and easily apply those changes to all of the messages that have already been scheduled as part of your workflows.
• The “Appointment Types” section of the Preferences window now includes a workflow visualiser, just like the one included in the “Shoot Types” section.
• Added a “before/after key date” popup menu when editing workflow steps, to make the offsets easier to understand
• Added a “Warn When Moving Events Via Calendar” setting to the Preferences window. This will make the desktop app show a confirmation dialog whenever you move events by dragging and dropping in Light Blue’s built-in calendar.
• Shoot types and appointment types now show which scheduling calendars they’re used in, and also contain a button to create a new scheduling calendar for them.
• Improved performance of editing long contracts on Windows.
• Reduced the minimum height of the Preferences window by 40px.

Miscellaneous

• Added an “Import Sales From CSV” command to the Records menu.
• Added an “Issue Refund” button to Payment records that have an unallocated amount of more than zero. This creates a negative payment that represents the refund and a zero-value invoice that both the original and refund payments are allocated to so that they end up with an unallocated amount of zero.
• When selecting a text message template, the record selection dialog now shows a preview of the message template as well as its name.
• You can now hide your custom quick queries from Light Blue’s main sections. This allows you to create quick queries for use in Home screen widgets without cluttering up your list of quick queries in the main sections.
• You can now build queries that use the email status field (e.g. you can query for records that are scheduled to send an email).
• The desktop app no longer automatically scans all of the document files and templates that it manages for changes when you launch the app. If you want it to do this (i.e. because you regularly edit Light Blue documents while the app is closed) then there’s an option for this in the Preferences window.
• When the “Prices Include Tax” preference is not ticked, the “Linked Records” tab now shows both the net and tax inclusive totals for linked quotes, sales, and purchases.
• When you edit the date or time of a cancelled appointment, you’re now warned that the appointment has been cancelled and asked if you want to change it back to “confirmed”.
• Housekeeping commands are now restricted to full access users, apart from the ones used for marking sales and purchases as paid or cash & cheques as paid in.
• Added the shoot contact Role field to the “Tidy Popup Menus” housekeeping command.
• Added a “Primary Contact Notes” field to the Shoots section, which can be used in queries, reports, and data exports.
• You can now build queries for purchases using their linked shoots in the query criteria.
• Shortened the title of appointments published to third-party calendars: removed the “Appt: ” prefix and no longer appending the appointment type if it’s already included in the title.
• “County” fields in forms are now labelled as “Province” if your localisation is set to Canadian English.
• Fixed a bug that could cause the shoot detail view event clashing loader thread to not be closed properly.
• Fixed a bug where linking an appointment to a different record wouldn’t move any scheduled emails for that appointment to the new record.
• Fixed a database error that occurs when trying to use the “on a Sunday” option for date fields in the query dialog.
• Fixed a bug where the “Create Sale” popup menu on quotes could show the undiscounted net sum instead of the discounted net sum.
• Fixed a bug where deleting an appointment didn’t delete the emails and text messages from its workflows.
• Fixed a bug on macOS where a text area could appear to include some content from the last record selected.
• Fixed a bug where workflow types could be blank when downloading data onto a new device.
• Fixed a bug when creating a credit note for an invoice with more than 1,000.00 outstanding when using European currency formatting.
• Fixed a bug that caused schedule steps with a start time of 00:00 to not show the time in the “Schedule” tab of a shoot.

We’ve been testing the current version of Light Blue with the beta versions of these major OS updates and it seems to be working well. However, please read on for our usual health warning about the dangers of installing a major operating system update as soon as it’s available!

Health warning

As with all major operating system updates, it is a very sensible idea to be cautious about updating your computers or mobile devices until Apple and Microsoft have had a chance to fix some of the bugs that will inevitably be present in the next versions of iOS, macOS, and Windows. Although our testing with their betas has been positive so far, there is every chance that Apple or Microsoft could change something that breaks compatibility or that we’ve missed something because we can’t test every conceivable combination of devices and settings.

If you rely on Light Blue to run your business, we would therefore recommend holding off from updating your operating system as soon as the new versions of macOS or Windows are available. At the very least, if you really really want to update on day one, make sure that you have at least one computer on the ‘old’ operating system until you’ve had a chance to test that all of the features that you depend on are fully functional.

Also, please note that our testing has been has been focussed on the latest version of our desktop app. The vast majority of our customers are already using Light Blue 2021.2, and if you’re using older version of our desktop then please update to the latest version to ensure that you’re able to take advantage of all of the new features and bug fixes that we’ve been adding. You can update the desktop app by using the ‘Check for updates’ command (in the ‘Light Blue’ menu if you’re on a Mac, or in the ‘Help’ menu if you’re using it on Windows).

We’ve been testing Light Blue 2020.1 with the macOS Big Sur betas and Light Blue appears to work well with it. However, please read on for our usual health warning about the dangers of installing a major operating system update as soon as it’s available!

Health warning

As with all major operating system updates, it is a very sensible idea to be cautious about updating your computers until Apple have had a chance to fix some of the bugs that will inevitably be present in the first version of macOS Big Sur. Although our testing of Light Blue 2020.1 on macOS Big Sur has been positive so far, there is every chance that Apple could change something that breaks compatibility or that we’ve missed something because we can’t test every conceivable combination of devices and settings.

If you rely on Light Blue to run your business, we would therefore recommend holding off from updating your operating system as soon as macOS Big Sur is available. At the very least, if you really really want to update on day one, make sure that you have at least one computer on the ‘old’ operating system until you’ve had a chance to test that all of the features that you depend on are fully functional.

Also, please note that our testing has been has been focussed on the latest version of our desktop app. The vast majority of our customers are already using Light Blue 2020.1, and if you’re using older version of our desktop then please update to the latest version to ensure that you’re able to take advantage of all of the new features and bug fixes that we’ve been adding. You can update the desktop app by using the ‘Check for updates’ command (in the ‘Light Blue’ menu if you’re on a Mac, or in the ‘Help’ menu if you’re using it on Windows).

Apple have just released this year’s major macOS update, macOS Catalina. Catalina includes some really big changes behind the scenes, including dropping support for 32-bit apps and introducing new security and privacy measures.

We recently released Light Blue 8.2, which is fully compatible with macOS Catalina. You can update to Light Blue 8.2 by using the “Check For Updates” command in Light Blue or by downloading the installer from your Light Blue account.

Mandatory health warning: As with all major operating system updates, it is a very sensible idea to be cautious about updating all of your computers and mobile devices at the same time. If you rely on Light Blue to run your business, we would therefore recommend holding off from updating your operating system as soon as the latest version of macOS comes out. At the very least, if you absolutely must update on day one, make sure that you have at least one computer on the ‘old’ operating system until you’ve had a chance to test that all of the apps that you depend on are fully functional.

Light Blue 8.2 is a free update for all of our subscribers. You can install the update by using the “Check For Updates” command in Light Blue (which is in the Light Blue menu on macOS, or in the Help menu on Windows) or by downloading the installer from your Light Blue account.

macOS Catalina compatibility

This update adds compatibility with macOS Catalina, which is expected to be released in October 2019. Please make sure that you install this update if you’re going to upgrade your Mac to macOS Catalina.

Online contract, forms, and online invoice translations

All of the text in our online contracts, forms, and online invoices can now be translated so that they can be presented in any language! We’ve provided French and German translations as part of Light Blue 8.2, but please get in touch if you’d like to find out more about adding other languages.

Home screen and activity improvements

• Shoots displayed on the Home screen now include their location summary, so you can see where you’re going at a glance.
• The task manager now includes totals next to its group headings.
• The quick query totals for each of Light Blue’s main sections are displayed more quickly when you have large quantities of data.
• Added a preference for displaying the time and date of all items in the Activity panel instead of just the date.

Email and text message improvements

• We’ve made it much simpler to include images in your emails and email templates. When you’re adding an image to an email, we can now host that image for you to save you from needing to host the image yourself.
• Improved the performance of our HTML editor when working with large quantities of text.
• The “Insert Link” button in our HTML editor now allows you to add links to images as well as text.
• Removed the ability to add multiple levels of indentation to ordered and unordered lists in emails, because they’re not a standard HTML feature and some email clients (especially Gmail) don’t display them properly.
• When you’re replying to emails where the email address is of the form “Someone’s name <someone@example.com>”, we now strip the name part out automatically. We can also handle email addresses of the form “Someone’s name [mailto:someone@example.com]”
• Added support for GroupHead: prefixes for contact mail-merge tags in workflow emails and text messages.
• Fixed a problem where a manually created text message could be displayed with the wrong time until it’s sent.
• Fixed a bug where the “Insert Link” button in our HTML editor could remove the first letter of the text you’re adding a link to.

Other client portal improvements

• We’ve changed all references to “public forms” to “contact forms” because that’s what most photographers use them for!
• When you receive a new lead from a contact form, we include the name of the lead in the subject line if you have a “main contact” control in your form.
• The receipt email for online invoices now has more sensible headings when the invoice had previously been partially paid.
• Worked around a problem where Gmail could fail to display the button text in our client portal emails in the correct colour.

Other improvements and bug fixes

• When importing a price list from a CSV file, we now automatically handle currency symbols and preserve the order of the items in your price list.
• You can now save and reload import orders when doing a “shoots and contacts” data import.
• When you use the “Mark Founds Shoots As Completed” housekeeping command, you now have an option to change the status of enquiries as well as confirmed shoots.
• The “Add contact” dialog now allows you to set the label for any new addresses that you’re adding.
• The “Save New Product” button in the sale item editing dialog now allows you to save items with a negative or zero price, as well as items with a positive price.
• Our Australian English localisation now refers to “State” instead of “County”.
• The “Update Linked Contact’s Address” command now explains why you can’t update the linked contact’s address when there are no changes to save.
• Fixed a crash that could occur on macOS when creating a reply to an email containing emoji.
• Fixed a bug that could prevent the Contacts, Calendars, or Reminders permission dialogs from being displayed on macOS Mojave or newer.
• Fixed a problem where the records list contextual menu in the Preferences window would never enable any of its items and the “Move Record to Trash” menu item was also disabled.
• Fixed the title of the calendar note dialog on Windows.
• Fixed a bug where background threads the load the contents of the Inbox and Outbox could persist after they’ve finished their job.
• Fixed a problem where the “Skip This Version” button in the Windows version of our autoupdater wouldn’t remember that you’ve skipped that version when you quit and relaunch Light Blue.
• In the background activity window, if you’re doing a large sync and a temporary error turns the sync status text red, it’s now changed back to black as soon as the error is cleared.

iOS 13 is going to be released on 19 September. We have already updated our iOS app to support iOS 13, so please ensure that you use the App Store to update to version 4.6.2 of our app before you update any devices to iOS 13.

macOS Catalina is going to be released in October. We are currently beta testing Light Blue 8.2, which includes an important change that fixes a printing-related problem with macOS Catalina (as well as exciting new features for all of our subscribers!). We will be releasing Light Blue 8.2 before Apple release macOS Catalina, but if you’d like to join our list of beta testers so that you can start using Light Blue 8.2 straight away then get in touch!

Health warning

As with all major operating system updates, it is a very sensible idea to be cautious about updating all of your computers and mobile devices at the same time. Although our testing of Light Blue 8.2 and version 4.6.2 of our iOS app has been positive so far, there is every chance that Apple could change something that breaks compatibility or that we’ve missed something because we can’t test every conceivable combination of devices and settings.

If you rely on Light Blue to run your business, we would therefore recommend holding off from updating your operating system as soon as the latest versions of macOS and iOS come out. At the very least, if you absolutely must update on day one, make sure that you have at least one computer and iOS device on the ‘old’ operating system until you’ve had a chance to test that all of the features that you depend on are fully functional.

Also, please note that our testing has been has been focussed on the latest versions of our desktop and mobile app. The vast majority of our customers are already using Light Blue 8 and version 4 of our iOS app, and if you’re using older version of either the desktop or mobile app then please update to the latest version to ensure that you’re able to take advantage of all of the new features and bug fixes that we’ve been adding. You can update the desktop app by using the ‘Check for updates’ command (in the ‘Light Blue’ menu if you’re on a Mac, or in the ‘Help’ menu if you’re using it on Windows), and you can update the iOS app via the App Store.

With Light Blue, you can run various reports to check your business finances, one very useful one is the ‘Income Forecast’ report. This uses the quotes function in Light Blue so will be really handy for wedding and commercial photographers (who often use quotes when confirming a booking with a client).

To run the report select Reports > ‘Custom Reports’ > ‘Income Forecast’ to create an income forecast. This will bring up all quotes with a status of “Accepted” or “Awaiting Invoicing”.

The information from these searches and reports is displayed in the list view, where you can see all of the records that meet your given criteria. The default view shows a list of all future income due grouped by the date the quote was created.

You may want to preview your projected income from a particular type of work over a given period. In that case, you can use Light Blue’s powerful querying tools to find the information that you need

Maybe there’s a month you’re not very busy with weddings and want to run a portrait promotion to fill the shortfall for that month? Without planning you don’t know where your income gaps are.

You can use the query function to search for your expected income over a particular period. In this example we have run a query for quotes where the shoot type is “Weddings” and the start date is “In Next Calendar Year” and the status is “Accepted”. This will show us all next year’s wedding where the client had accepted a quote.

You can adjust the columns within the list view to show whatever you find useful. By going to Window > “Customise List View” and you’ll see this dialog. To view the balance due each month, simply add the “Balance Due”, “Shoot Title” and “To Invoice” fields to the “Columns” section, then make sure they are grouped by “Balance Due Month”.

By using the “To Invoice” column it takes account of the booking fee already paid so this will give you a really clear idea of your monthly wedding income forecast for next year.

How do you use the reports in Light Blue? We’d love to hear how you find Light Blue helps you to keep track of your business!

For the last few years, Apple have been releasing public betas of their major operating system updates in the Summer. Installing these public betas can be risky because they’re likely to contain bugs, and many apps won’t be updated to support major new OS updates until close to the official release date.

We would advise against installing major OS update betas on any device that you rely on to get work done and – even when they’re released to everyone – we always advise customers to be cautious about rushing to update. This year’s public betas seem to be causing problems with a wide range of apps, so we’d recommend staying away from them unless you absolutely have to install them for some reason!

We’re keeping a close eye on macOS Catalina and iOS 13, so expect to hear more about them from us in September.

Light Blue 7 and the latest version of our iOS app appear to work well with Apple’s latest operating systems. However, we can never be entirely sure that Apple won’t change something before the release of either operating system, so please read on for the important health warning…

Health warning

As with all major operating system updates, it is a very sensible idea to be cautious about updating all of your computers and mobile devices at the same time. Although our testing of Light Blue 7 and version 4 of our iOS app has been positive so far, there is every chance that Apple could change something that breaks compatibility or that we’ve missed something because we can’t test every conceivable combination of devices and settings.

If you rely on Light Blue to run your business, we would therefore recommend holding off from updating your operating system as soon as the latest versions of macOS and iOS come out. At the very least, if you absolutely must update on day one, make sure that you have at least one computer and iOS device on the ‘old’ operating system until you’ve had a chance to test that all of the features that you depend on are fully functional.

Also, please note that our testing has been has been focussed on the latest versions of our desktop and mobile app. The vast majority of our customers are already using Light Blue 7.1.3 and version 4.2 of our iOS app, and if you’re using older version of either the desktop or mobile app then please update to the latest version to ensure that you’re able to take advantage of all of the new features and bug fixes that we’ve been adding. You can update the desktop app by using the ‘Check for updates’ command (in the ‘Light Blue’ menu if you’re on a Mac, or in the ‘Help’ menu if you’re using it on Windows), and you can update the iOS app via the App Store.

Light Blue 6 and the latest version of our iOS app appear to work well with Apple’s latest operating systems. However, we can never be entirely sure that Apple won’t change something before the release of either operating system, so please read on for the important health warning…

Health warning

As with all major operating system updates, it is a very sensible idea to be cautious about updating all of your computers and mobile devices at the same time. Although our testing of Light Blue 6 and version 3 of our iOS app has been positive so far, there is every chance that Apple could change something that breaks compatibility or that we’ve missed something because we can’t test every conceivable combination of devices and settings.

If you rely on Light Blue to run your business, we would therefore recommend holding off from updating your operating system as soon as the latest versions of macOS and iOS come out. At the very least, if you absolutely must update on day one, make sure that you have at least one computer and iOS device on the ‘old’ operating system until you’ve had a chance to test that all of the features that you depend on are fully functional.

Also, please note that our testing has been has been focussed on the latest versions of our desktop and mobile app. The vast majority of our customers are already using Light Blue 6.2.3 and version 3.3 of our iOS app, and if you’re using older version of either the desktop or mobile app then please update to the latest version to ensure that you’re able to take advantage of all of the new features and bug fixes that we’ve been adding. You can update the desktop app by using the ‘Check for updates’ command (in the ‘Light Blue’ menu if you’re on a Mac, or in the ‘Help’ menu if you’re using it on Windows), and you can update the iOS app via the App Store.

The good news is that Light Blue 6.1.2 seems to work well with macOS Sierra, and our new iOS app appears to be working well with iOS 10. However, we can never be entirely sure that Apple won’t change something before the release of either operating system, so please read on for the important health warning…

Health warning

As with all major operating system updates, it is a very sensible idea to be cautious about updating all of your computers and mobile devices at the same time. Although our testing of Light Blue 6 and version 3 of our iOS app has been positive so far, there is every chance that Apple could change something that breaks compatibility or that we’ve missed something because we can’t test every conceivable combination of devices and settings.

If you rely on Light Blue to run your business, we would therefore recommend holding off from updating your operating system as soon as the latest versions of macOS and iOS come out. At the very least, if you absolutely must update on day one, make sure that you have at least one computer and iOS device on the ‘old’ operating system until you’ve had a chance to test that all of the features that you depend on are fully functional.

Also, please note that our testing has been has been focussed on the latest versions of our desktop and mobile app. The vast majority of our customers are already using Light Blue 6.1.2 and version 3 of our iOS app, and if you’re using older version of either the desktop or mobile app then please update to the latest version to ensure that you’re able to take advantage of all of the new features and bug fixes that we’ve been adding. You can update the desktop app by using the ‘Check for updates’ command (in the ‘Light Blue’ menu if you’re on a Mac, or in the ‘Help’ menu if you’re using it on Windows), and you can update the iOS app via the App Store.