Running a business is like a box of chocolates... you don't always know what you're going to get. Our team has grown in size from 14 to 40. Each person brings unique gifts to our business that have lasting effects on the shape of our app and company culture. We now have a CFO. Someone whose sole responsibility is to make sure that we handle our income and expenses wisely and diligently. We have a full time graphic designer! It's hard to imagine that a software company could have ever gotten by without this. But, when you're bootstrapped, sometimes you just make do with the skills that you have on hand. We have a CTO! Someone who's been able to reshape our dev team and process into something that will continue to scale. We added a dev-ops employee, which in dev terminology means deploying faster and improved developer productivity. And my brother is here who within his first week is already handling client phone calls and shows such an amazing level of dedication that our entire team can feel.
Perseverance is the name of the business game. We know nothing worthwhile is easy, otherwise everyone would win, right? One of our biggest challenges this year was found looking inward. As individuals we were called to ask ourselves if we're making the most of our careers and daily efforts. As a company we've been hunting down data on different parts of our processes that could be better. Things can always be better, but sometimes that key factor appears to be a mystery or is just plain invisible. Knowing what you can change and what you have to accept is another difficult area. We've added in more health checks in the form of questionnaires. After big events like sales or new quarters, we've been polling our staff for what they felt was going well and what they felt could be better. It's been such a year of growth for us and we look forward to building on top of our successes, but also the lessons learned in the failures and shortcomings.
We've launched a bunch of amazing features this year. We've also focused ourselves on reducing errors and issues for existing and new customers so that everything can run as flawlessly within our business AND yours. We've also restructured things internally and grown our team and process in key areas. We’re propping ourselves with the amazing employees we can find as well as defining best practices so that we can scale things safely and securely. Once a team has been established on the inside, the sky is the limit for what that team will be able to accomplish. Every year we become sturdier, more efficient, and more productive.
Here's to 2019! And cheers to what is going to come in 2020! We're so glad to have you along for the ride.
Time Mapping on Forms
This is completely separate to the scheduler and just a simple date question you add on the form. By mapping it to the job start or end date, it will have an option for the client to pick a time. It does not block that time out for others (use the scheduler if you want it to do that). So if you just needed a simple way to ask a client for a date and time and have it map, here you are!
More info on this release here.
New Hire
When we say we are a family oriented business, we mean it. We were so happy to welcome Melissa, my sister-in-law to the team. She heads up a pretty busy section of Dubsado, account migration and forms. Her job here at Dubsado is to transfer over our customers information from their old CRM and put it into Dubsado. Second part, is our free form migration. If any of our users have a template outside of Dubsado, Melissa and her team recreate those forms within Dubsado. Both these services are free to our users! Pretty cool, huh?
We call her Carol here at the office. We were extremely excited to have Carol part of the Dubsado team to help complete our flow for new feature planning. She has played a vital role in pretty much all new features and a few other AWESOME things we have planned for 2020. Not only is she the easiest and fun person to work with, she has an amazing eye for design.
Approve before sending
This was an exciting one. With this release, you can approve actions before they send to your clients. Approving before sending allows you to edit any items in that action before it sends via workflow. If all looks well you can approve it. If you don't approve right away, when it comes time for that action to trigger, you will receive an email alert reminding you to approve that action.
More info on this release here.
Workflow triggering another workflow
On this release, we added the action of a workflow triggering another workflow. This allows you to add an action in workflow A to trigger workflow B on that project.
More info on this release here.
Copy canned emails
We got lots of requests to make canned emails in the TEMPLATES >> CANNED EMAILS area copyable. So that is just what we did. Easily clone an email and work off that copy!
Update packages in proposals
Updating a package in TEMPLATES >> PACKAGES will give you the option to update proposals that this package is tied to. Makes it easy to quickly update your pricing without going into the form itself.
More info on this release here.
Monthly scheduler view
This was another heavily requested feature since the launch of our scheduler in 2018. This release added the ability to choose between a weekly view of your scheduler or a monthly view.
More info on this release here.
Rearranging forms in a project
Within a project, this update allows you to rearrange how the forms are loaded in the FORMS section of that project and within the client portal.
More info on this release here.
New Hire
Duncan is a forward thinker. He is always sharing new ideas with the team. Not just programming related, but in creative, marketing, security, structure, etc... he is good at pretty much everything he touches. We are so thankful to have him part of the team. He has been a great help in so many ways to Dubsado!
New Hire
Goncalo is our afternoon and evening chat support agent. This gives him the opportunity to surf all morning and then come help our Dubsado users later in the day. What the life, huh? Always willing to help, great problem solver and super meticulous. We sure love having him here!
Custom time increments on scheduler
Time increments are how your availability is displayed. It has nothing to do with the length or duration of the appointment times, just how it would be displayed for the client to book. For example, if I have set for the time increment to be 15mins. The times would display at 9:00, 9:15, 9:30, etc...
With this update... instead of the past set increments of 15, 30 and 60 mins, you have the ability to have the scheduler display the times in increments from 5 mins - 120 mins.
More info on this release here.
Public proposals
This is the ability to embed your proposals on your website. Have clients pick packages, sign the contract and pay the invoice all without leaving your site. This functions similar to our lead capture forms you are used to. You can add a default workflow to it as well. Alternatively, if you didn't want to embed, you can use a public link to the proposal, and like a lead capture form, this one link can be used over and over again.
More info on this release here.
Square auto payments on recurring invoices
Before this option was only limited to Stripe. We are excited that Square is an option as well. This feature is only available on recurring invoices.
More info on this release here.
Multiple links in an email
Before, if you had multiple forms that you wanted to send in an email...you couldn't since that form link smart field only picked the form you actually clicked send on. This feature allows you to add multiple forms, appointment schedulers, invoices, contracts, sub-agreements...all in one email.
More info on this release here.
Canned email UI update with reply canned messages
This update moved where canned emails were located so that they can be used when replying to a customer within conversation mode of Dubsado.
More info on this release here.
Relative expiration dates on forms
With this update, all forms, except lead capture forms, can have an expiration date set with the ability to add reminders to send to clients. Once a form is expired, the client cannot fill out the form anymore and it is locked until unexpired. Takes but just a few seconds to set up.
More info on this release here.
New Hire
Before Dubsado, Curtis was a Kindergarten teacher's aid. Needless-to-say, Curtis is full of life, jokes, and is fun to be around. He handles the super early morning shift (4am -12pm) with Eddie. This gives him time to hit the gym... I think multiple times a day... This guy is a body builder. We are a pretty active office, but I mean, who can compete with that?
New Hire
Tatianna handles our evening / late night shift (4pm - 12am). When she walks into the office happiness fills the air. She has the most vibrant and caring personalities of anyone you'll ever meet. So thankful she found her way to Dubsado!
Eddie handles the morning crew with Curtis. It takes a lot of dedication to wake up that early every single day, but Eddie does it with a positive and forward thinking attitude. When not looking for the best breakfast burrito place in Los Angeles for lunch he is furthering his education by attending a coding bootcamp after work! We are so happy to have him part of the team.
Project reporting phase 1
What is project reporting? The ability to categorize and track where projects came from based on sources you have set up. This will allow you to effectively see where most of your business is coming from and where others might be dropping off. Project reporting will be a valuable insight into your business to analyze its strength and weaknesses. This release was a basic release with Phase 2 to follow shortly.
More info on this release here.
Project reporting phase 2
With this feature launch a new charts page was added. This will allow you to see how many of what type of inquiry are done within the X amount date range.
More info on this release here.
New Hire
It is funny how life lines up people up at the most perfect times. Annika was a Dubsado user before she worked here. She came to a few Dubsado in person events, but always stayed in contact with us just because she was an avid Dubsado user. One day she reached out to see if we were hiring...and we were! Next thing we know, she is on our Account Solutions team and leading up one of our biggest Education projects to date (we cannot wait to spill the details on this later). She is such a kind and gentle spirit, and can put together PJ brainstorming parties like no other. We are so happy to have her here!
Job name change to projects
Just continuing with making vocabulary more cohesive and changed "jobs" to projects.
Canned email search bar
We have updated the canned email search bar to only search the email subject and title. It will no longer search the wording the body of the email anymore. This is so you can have more precise and clean searches.
Reordering of the scheduler templates
This updated allowed you to rearrange the order of your scheduler templates by clicking and dragging them around.
View full title of scheduler
We have added the ability on the SCHEDULER >> TEMPLATES page to see the full title of the scheduler if it is cut off. Simply hover over the scheduler title to see more.
Incoming email update
Emails, prior to this update, were only brought into Dubsado if they were sent through a project. With this update, as long as the client is in your address book any email from them will now be forwarded to Dubsado.
Easy appointment re-scheduling
Prior to this update, reschedules had to be done via the confirmation email on the client’s end. Now if the you or your client cannot make the appointment, you can simply can select the appointment on the calendar or from within the project and reschedule.
More info on this release here.
Added workflow options for the appointment scheduler action
The added options on the SEND APPOINTMENT SCHEDULER action in workflow now allow you to apply the scheduler to the portal and send an email, apply to portal only, or apply to project only. This feature is just like the forms and contracts have in workflows as well.
More info on this release here.
Project activity tracker phase 1
This was phase 1 of our Project Activity Tracker feature. The goal with activity tracker is to give you more insight to the "history" on your account. With this feature, you will be able to see what a user or workflow does on a project. This release tracked any changes or updates on tags, project statuses, notes, project title, and project date.
Coupon codes and percentage discounts
This release came with percentage based discounts that can be applied manually or via coupon code. Added coupon codes for packages (invoices), schedulers, and proposal templates for a fixed or percentage amount off.
More info on this release here.
New Hire
Adam is my brother-in-law (I told you...family). He worked at Dubsado in its VERY early stages, but we are just thrilled to have him back with us as our CTO. Leading up our dev team is such an important task, but he is literally the most perfect person for the job. Patient, kind hearted and an extremely dedicated, Adam is pushing the dev side of Dubsado forward with such grace.
New Hire
It was an exciting time to bring on a CFO to Dubsado. Finally, someone looking at the finance side other than me or Jake. Jake and I went to high school with Rafael (we actually went to high school with a lot of the people that work at Dubsado). Smart, thorough and super calm no matter what situation he is placed in. When he isn't working on Dubsado's projections, he is planning awesome webinar content for our users (special bookkeeping webinars coming soon!) and winning at our office dodgeball games. We are lucky to have him part of our Dubsado family.
Bulk actions
This update makes it so certain actions can be performed to multiple items at once. The following actions can be performed in bulk: archive a project, unarchive a project, delete project, and change project status.
Default sorting for projects page
This feature allows users to choose how their projects are organized by default on their projects page. Head to Projects>>Customize page to see those customizations under the Columns area.
Walkthrough tours
We added with this an extra tool to quickly learn how to use Dubsado on some basic functions. There are six tours new users can go through that each focus on a key area of Dubsado that they are interested. You can access the tour from anytime through the Help Button in the top right corner.
More info on this release here.
Scheduler Groups
Scheduler Groups are a group of Appointment Schedulers that can be sent to your client all at once. This feature functions like a landing page for your schedulers. You are in control with how you group them!
More info on this release here.
Recurring invoice auto-pay notification
No more missing any failed payments on recurring invoices! With this update, when a client's invoice auto payment fails, you will get a dashboard notification and email of the failed invoice.
More info on this release here.
New Hire
The other Adam. This Adam is my brother. I grew up with my parents running their own business, eventually me and my brothers worked there too so working with family is not something abnormal for us. Adam is an old soul, well beyond his years. So I was absolutely thrilled to hear he wanted to be part of the Dubsado team. The care he takes with each customer is only a part of what makes him amazing here. We all love him here!
Oh p.s. we did a vlog on our two Adams here.
Activity tracker phase 2
Phase 1 was released in June 2019 only tracking a few things, but this update tracks pretty much all actions taken on a project.
More info on this release here.
Added Zapier action and triggers
We released 3 new zaps. One of them an action zap that can bring leads into Dubsado from an outside source.
More info on this release here.
And our most common question, "but when will you have an app?" In time my friends, in time. We have plans for an app! But we have lots that we would like to do before that happens and, of course, further grow our team for it as well. For now, our mobile version can be used and bookmarked for easy access on your phone.
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We keep a public list of a few of the larger things that we will be adding to Dubsado. You can view that list here. But that is only a few of the things we have planned. If we put everything, that list would be a mile long.
You can subscribe to our Release Notes and be the first to know when the next new feature or update happens within Dubsado.
If you're just coming here to catch up on all the goodness, that's perfect. We did lots this year and we are always here to help you.
If you need the how-to on a feature in Dubsado, check out our help center.
If you need a walkthrough of Dubsado, check out our upcoming webinars.
If you need an account strategy call to get the most out of your Dubsado account, sign up for a free call with our Account Solutions team here.
And of course, our customer support team is around almost 24 hours a day to help you. Just chat us (using the chat icon on the bottom right of your Dubsado screen) or email hello@dubsado.com.
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