Ever since we rolled out our new website back in May we've been
looking to put more and more information about our program and our
company where our customers can see it. We want you to get to know us
as well as how the program operates. That entire time we've worked hard
on something behind the scenes and I'm very happy to announce that
we're now ready to unveil our company site on Facebook!
When we
first discussed creating a Facebook page we were hesitant. We have so
much great content on our new web site that there were questions about
whether we could create something for Facebook that could add anything
to what we already had. Once we got started though the answer became
clear - we had a lot to say that didn't lend itself well to showing on a
traditional web page.
Our Timeline page
allowed us to tell the story of our company in a way that a simple web
page could not. You can see the story of our company from its founding
in 1985 to the present day illustrated in pictures. We have our
newsletters, pictures of manuals and other materials from the early days
of the business, as well as pictures of our employees and business
owners that worked with us at our trade shows. They work together to
tell a complete story of our business as it grew from Kent Crabtree
writing a program for his parent's salon in 1985 to the business it is
today.
Our Home Page section
pulls together parts of our current web page like the blogs, the
sign-up for a free trial, and links to our support and sales pages. This
should make it easier for everyone to find exactly what they need. In
addition there is a Training Videos section there where we give the same
type of step-by-step support we offer over the phone to everyone on
Facebook. Our growing list of videos give simple instructions that both
teach new users how to use the program as well as show what each part of
the program can do for you.
I
hope you enjoy our new Facebook page! Give it a look, Like us, and feel
free to leave comments! I'll personally be very active on the site and
look forward to hearing from you there.
Last minute addition: We now have a business twitter account, @spasalonmanager. Feel free to contact us there!
Friday, September 28, 2012
Friday, September 7, 2012
New Email Feature - Email Footer
The Send Email feature of our program has always allowed you to send
links and pictures. With a bit of work outside the program first you
could even send full web pages. What the program lacked though was a way
to automatically include certain links and pictures on every email that
you send out. That's why we've added our newest feature to email - the
Email Footer.
The Email Footer page, which is available under Maintenance -> Internet Marketing, makes it easy to create an attractive email footer. First, we've given you space to type in a slogan, extra information, current specials - whatever text you'd like to add to every outgoing email. Next, we've pulled together a custom set of logos for various social media sites - Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, Yelp, and LinkedIn - as well as logos for your Home Page and Online Booking. These logos are all sized so they can fit together on a single line and link to any of these sites that you use. You enter the address for each desired site and the Spa/Salon Manager takes care of the rest. Finally, we added space for up to three text-based links. These could be links to other partner businesses, your own newsletters hosted on the web, or any other links you'd like included at the end of every email.
With just a few minutes of setup you'll be sending attractive emails that tie your social media presence directly to your emails as well as providing more options and information to your customers. Best of all, this is another free service included to all Cloud and Maintenance Contract customers! As always if you have any questions don't hesitate to contact support.
The Email Footer page, which is available under Maintenance -> Internet Marketing, makes it easy to create an attractive email footer. First, we've given you space to type in a slogan, extra information, current specials - whatever text you'd like to add to every outgoing email. Next, we've pulled together a custom set of logos for various social media sites - Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, Yelp, and LinkedIn - as well as logos for your Home Page and Online Booking. These logos are all sized so they can fit together on a single line and link to any of these sites that you use. You enter the address for each desired site and the Spa/Salon Manager takes care of the rest. Finally, we added space for up to three text-based links. These could be links to other partner businesses, your own newsletters hosted on the web, or any other links you'd like included at the end of every email.
With just a few minutes of setup you'll be sending attractive emails that tie your social media presence directly to your emails as well as providing more options and information to your customers. Best of all, this is another free service included to all Cloud and Maintenance Contract customers! As always if you have any questions don't hesitate to contact support.
Thursday, August 30, 2012
Aveda Master Spreadsheet
Filling out paperwork takes up a lot of time for most businesses.
There are tax forms, employee reviews, accounting information, as well
as information required by various partners and distributors. We're
always looking for ways we can save our customers time in that area.
That's why we're very excited to unveil the Aveda Master Report.
We created the Aveda Master Report to make filling out this important information for Aveda much easier. In the past getting the information on this report required several different reports from our program as well as several different time frames for each one. It also required manually entering this information into Aveda's spreadsheet. With the new Aveda Master Report you just need to select your dates (Aveda requires a full year, 1/1-12/31), click Continue, and wait for the program to generate the data for the Aveda Master spreadsheet. When it's finished generating the data the program will pop up instructions for getting the results to the Aveda Master spreadsheet. Basically this just involves opening the Aveda Master spreadsheet, selecting the Paste Here tab at the start, clicking on the first cell (A1), and clicking Paste. Once you paste the information the Aveda Master spreadsheet will automatically fill in all the information on the DATA Entry Page.
If you don't have the Aveda Master spreadsheet available when generating the report our non-Cloud customers can use the file c:\salon\aveda0.xls on their main computer to do the same steps. Our Cloud customers can email themselves a copy of the file from the Send button under Customer Display by choosing Attach File and selecting aveda0.xls from the file list.
Whatever steps you use, our new Aveda Master Report will save you a ton of time! As always, don't hesitate to contact support with any questions.
We created the Aveda Master Report to make filling out this important information for Aveda much easier. In the past getting the information on this report required several different reports from our program as well as several different time frames for each one. It also required manually entering this information into Aveda's spreadsheet. With the new Aveda Master Report you just need to select your dates (Aveda requires a full year, 1/1-12/31), click Continue, and wait for the program to generate the data for the Aveda Master spreadsheet. When it's finished generating the data the program will pop up instructions for getting the results to the Aveda Master spreadsheet. Basically this just involves opening the Aveda Master spreadsheet, selecting the Paste Here tab at the start, clicking on the first cell (A1), and clicking Paste. Once you paste the information the Aveda Master spreadsheet will automatically fill in all the information on the DATA Entry Page.
If you don't have the Aveda Master spreadsheet available when generating the report our non-Cloud customers can use the file c:\salon\aveda0.xls on their main computer to do the same steps. Our Cloud customers can email themselves a copy of the file from the Send button under Customer Display by choosing Attach File and selecting aveda0.xls from the file list.
Whatever steps you use, our new Aveda Master Report will save you a ton of time! As always, don't hesitate to contact support with any questions.
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
New Cloud Feature - Taskbar Replacement
Our Cloud software has been very popular but many of our existing
customers that recently converted to Cloud brought up an important
question - How do we switch windows like we could with the installed
version? Unfortunately the Cloud version of our program removed the
Windows taskbar that allowed users to switch between open windows. We
made changes to make it easier to use the program without that option
but the frequency of that question lately made it clear we needed to
make a change.
So we pushed up our sleeves, got to work, and created something that in many ways will work out better for our Cloud customers than the old Windows taskbar. Our taskbar replacement targets the specific main windows we feel are the most critical to our program - the main screen, Appointment, Appointment Detail, Check In/Customer Display, Check Out, Customer Payment, Verify Monies, Close Period, Paging, Inventory, Salon Use, Reports, and Maintenance. A few important that users can't minimize such as Close Day were left off of the list but we feel that the above list will allow users the flexibility they had to switch back and forth between the various windows in our program without having that list cluttered with all the extra windows that the Windows taskbar added. As an added bonus the tabs on the taskbar will always show in the order I listed above regardless of what order you open them in. This makes it easier to find the window you need and to quickly switch between all open windows.
We will be updating all our Cloud servers over the course of the next week or so with this great new feature. Please contact us with any questions or problems. This option will also be available to our customers that are using their own in-house servers - simply give us a call and we'll be happy to help you set this up for your own server.
So we pushed up our sleeves, got to work, and created something that in many ways will work out better for our Cloud customers than the old Windows taskbar. Our taskbar replacement targets the specific main windows we feel are the most critical to our program - the main screen, Appointment, Appointment Detail, Check In/Customer Display, Check Out, Customer Payment, Verify Monies, Close Period, Paging, Inventory, Salon Use, Reports, and Maintenance. A few important that users can't minimize such as Close Day were left off of the list but we feel that the above list will allow users the flexibility they had to switch back and forth between the various windows in our program without having that list cluttered with all the extra windows that the Windows taskbar added. As an added bonus the tabs on the taskbar will always show in the order I listed above regardless of what order you open them in. This makes it easier to find the window you need and to quickly switch between all open windows.
We will be updating all our Cloud servers over the course of the next week or so with this great new feature. Please contact us with any questions or problems. This option will also be available to our customers that are using their own in-house servers - simply give us a call and we'll be happy to help you set this up for your own server.
Monday, July 30, 2012
Email in The Spa/Salon Manager
We've added several new features to The Spa/Salon Manager
lately that need email support. When I went back in to look at our
records though we had many salons that hadn't taken advantage of
everything our software offers to people with email accounts. This seems
like a good time to explain how our email service works, how to tell if
you have email set up through us, and list many of the great features
that our email service can open up to your business.
Email support within the program is a free service we offer to all customers that have either an active Maintenance or Cloud Contract. In order to allow you to send emails to your entire customer list at once we create an email account on our own email server. This prevents issues with various email providers refusing to send out your emails due to some arbitrary limit on the number of people you can send an email to at one time. We set up each business with an email address that ends in @spasalon.com and then offer a choice of either checking that email address directly or having all responses forwarded to one or more of the employee's current email addresses. Your customers will see the emails coming from your business name @spasalon.com and can reply to those emails. It's a seamless process that ties our software's email capabilities to whatever email addresses you plan on checking.
Checking whether you've set up email with us already is an easy process. Simply go to Maintenance and then hit More Choices until you see Internet Marketing. If you have the Internet User Name complete then you're ready to try your email. To test whether your email is functioning correctly you can go to Customer Display, pull up your own name, make sure your email address is on the correct line, and click Send Email on the screen. You'll then be able to write an email to yourself and check your email to verify that Spa/Salon Manager is sending the emails successfully. If you're not yet set up or have any problems sending the email contact our support department and we'll be happy to get you ready!
The Spa/Salon Manager has an extensive list of features that it now supports for our email-enabled customers. This list keeps growing as we see further opportunities to use this no-cost feature to improve the way our program helps you manage your business.
Email support within the program is a free service we offer to all customers that have either an active Maintenance or Cloud Contract. In order to allow you to send emails to your entire customer list at once we create an email account on our own email server. This prevents issues with various email providers refusing to send out your emails due to some arbitrary limit on the number of people you can send an email to at one time. We set up each business with an email address that ends in @spasalon.com and then offer a choice of either checking that email address directly or having all responses forwarded to one or more of the employee's current email addresses. Your customers will see the emails coming from your business name @spasalon.com and can reply to those emails. It's a seamless process that ties our software's email capabilities to whatever email addresses you plan on checking.
Checking whether you've set up email with us already is an easy process. Simply go to Maintenance and then hit More Choices until you see Internet Marketing. If you have the Internet User Name complete then you're ready to try your email. To test whether your email is functioning correctly you can go to Customer Display, pull up your own name, make sure your email address is on the correct line, and click Send Email on the screen. You'll then be able to write an email to yourself and check your email to verify that Spa/Salon Manager is sending the emails successfully. If you're not yet set up or have any problems sending the email contact our support department and we'll be happy to get you ready!
The Spa/Salon Manager has an extensive list of features that it now supports for our email-enabled customers. This list keeps growing as we see further opportunities to use this no-cost feature to improve the way our program helps you manage your business.
- Email marketing is a snap with Spa/Salon Manager. You can easily send emails out to all of your customers with email addresses. Adding a picture is as simple as clicking a button and selecting the picture from your computer. You don't need to export customer lists, integrate with other products, or place extra phone calls to another company. Simply click the Send Email button, select Send Email to All Customers, and click Continue...then you're ready to create your email!
- Our email marketing also uses our powerful Mailing Reports to make it easy to do targeted emails. It's easy to create an email list directed to one specific group of customers based on a variety of filters.
- Spa/Salon Manager sends many emails out for you automatically. You can set up the program to send nightly emails including appointment confirmations, reminders, birthday greetings, new customer thank you's, and text message reminders for appointments.
- Once you've set up an email address with us it's easy to start using our paid service Email Artwork by IBCS to send out professional quality advertisements to your customers.
- The Paging section of Spa/Salon Manager (discussed in the first part of this blog post) offers the ability to use employee's existing cell phones to create a robust paging service that replaces expensive pagers or mood-killing audio paging systems.
- For our online booking customers a variety of emails will now be sent out directly from the online booking. This includes messages to the customers to confirm successful booking of appointments as well as full integration with the paging system. For all of our Cloud customers we've already set this up for you. For our non-Cloud online booking customers please contact our support department so we can ensure you have these new features available to you.
Wednesday, July 11, 2012
Touch Screens and Spa/Salon Manager
I just finished my first cut at a standing desk and the process of working on putting together a comfortable and easy-to-use workstation reminded me of an important point we don't spend enough time talking about - from the very beginning we designed the Spa/Salon Manager program to work well with touch screen monitors.
Now any program will 'work' with a touch screen monitor. A touch screen simply allows you to replace the motions and left-click actions of a mouse by touching the screen with your finger. A mouse allows for far more control than touching a screen allows though. The design of Microsoft Windows itself shows this expectation of control - small buttons, tiny drop-down menus (File, Edit, View, etc. along the top). Most Windows versions of salon software follow that same model - they're designed to look like a Windows program. That means that unless you're very careful it's easy to miss what you're trying to click with a touch screen - the buttons are just too small and touching the screen too inexact to make the touch screen a time saver or even a comfortable option at a standing work station.
Our program isn't designed following those Windows standards that are unfriendly to a touch interface. We used a button-based menu system for all of our screens rather than Windows drop-down menus. All of these buttons are far larger than you'd find in a typical Windows program. We've made sure to avoid any small data entry boxes and as often as possible have offered drop-down boxes as an alternative to typing in information. The effect is that our program not only makes it easy to use a touch screen in place of a mouse - for many operations we avoid a need for a keyboard as well.
So who should use a touch screen? The same people that are trying to do what I'm doing right now - standing at a desk rather than sitting. While reaching toward a touch screen while seated can be cumbersome, reaching toward a touch screen while standing is often easier than using a mouse would be in that same position. I've seen some wonderful ergonomic desks built to use a touch screen - one even had the touch screen built in to a slanted standing desk similar to a podium! However you set up your ideal desk though our program is designed to make it comfortable and easy to touch the screen.
Now any program will 'work' with a touch screen monitor. A touch screen simply allows you to replace the motions and left-click actions of a mouse by touching the screen with your finger. A mouse allows for far more control than touching a screen allows though. The design of Microsoft Windows itself shows this expectation of control - small buttons, tiny drop-down menus (File, Edit, View, etc. along the top). Most Windows versions of salon software follow that same model - they're designed to look like a Windows program. That means that unless you're very careful it's easy to miss what you're trying to click with a touch screen - the buttons are just too small and touching the screen too inexact to make the touch screen a time saver or even a comfortable option at a standing work station.
Our program isn't designed following those Windows standards that are unfriendly to a touch interface. We used a button-based menu system for all of our screens rather than Windows drop-down menus. All of these buttons are far larger than you'd find in a typical Windows program. We've made sure to avoid any small data entry boxes and as often as possible have offered drop-down boxes as an alternative to typing in information. The effect is that our program not only makes it easy to use a touch screen in place of a mouse - for many operations we avoid a need for a keyboard as well.
So who should use a touch screen? The same people that are trying to do what I'm doing right now - standing at a desk rather than sitting. While reaching toward a touch screen while seated can be cumbersome, reaching toward a touch screen while standing is often easier than using a mouse would be in that same position. I've seen some wonderful ergonomic desks built to use a touch screen - one even had the touch screen built in to a slanted standing desk similar to a podium! However you set up your ideal desk though our program is designed to make it comfortable and easy to touch the screen.
Tuesday, July 3, 2012
Storms - Another Reason for Cloud Software
In my previous posts Why Cloud? and Switching to Cloud I covered quite a bit of ground about our Spa/Salon Manager Cloud software. The recent rash of storms have illuminated some other benefits that I didn't cover though that definitely deserve attention. Specifically, I'd like to take some time to look at how a Cloud salon would deal with the storms versus a non-Cloud.
When the power goes out for a non-Cloud business there's only one option available - move the main computer to somewhere that has power. Sometimes this is feasible. Occasionally it's possible to use a generator or UPS power backup device to power the main computer temporarily. Beyond that though there would be no Online Booking access for customers, no Employee Access for employees, and no way to send out an email to customers letting them know that your salon is closed due to a power outage. As a best-case scenario you would keep your power to your main computer long enough to write down phone numbers for customers, then call them back with a cell phone to let them know you're closed. As a worst-case you would have no access to your information.
When the power goes out for a Cloud business you have many more options available to you. Because your main computer does not store your information it's still available to anyone that still has working internet. This could be an iPad, Android Tablet, or even a smartphone. Worst-case you could call us to have us look up your information for you. If you needed to send an email to customers notifying them of a closure you could do it from anywhere and even if you had no access we would be able to send the email for you.
We just had this exact situation come up on a tech support call yesterday. We had a customer that had no power and wanted to let their customers no they would be close through Thursday. Unfortunately, we couldn't help them. They didn't have Cloud, we didn't do Online Backups for them, and they couldn't bring a copy of their backup to a computer that had power. Because we had no access to their current information as we would have with Cloud or even a copy of their information as we would have with Online Backup there was nothing we could do to help.
These situations are obviously rare. They're a small part of the decision-making process when it comes to choosing the right software option for your business. But when the lights go out in your salon, knowing that your software will still be running will make the entire situation less stressful and give you one less problem to fix.
When the power goes out for a non-Cloud business there's only one option available - move the main computer to somewhere that has power. Sometimes this is feasible. Occasionally it's possible to use a generator or UPS power backup device to power the main computer temporarily. Beyond that though there would be no Online Booking access for customers, no Employee Access for employees, and no way to send out an email to customers letting them know that your salon is closed due to a power outage. As a best-case scenario you would keep your power to your main computer long enough to write down phone numbers for customers, then call them back with a cell phone to let them know you're closed. As a worst-case you would have no access to your information.
When the power goes out for a Cloud business you have many more options available to you. Because your main computer does not store your information it's still available to anyone that still has working internet. This could be an iPad, Android Tablet, or even a smartphone. Worst-case you could call us to have us look up your information for you. If you needed to send an email to customers notifying them of a closure you could do it from anywhere and even if you had no access we would be able to send the email for you.
We just had this exact situation come up on a tech support call yesterday. We had a customer that had no power and wanted to let their customers no they would be close through Thursday. Unfortunately, we couldn't help them. They didn't have Cloud, we didn't do Online Backups for them, and they couldn't bring a copy of their backup to a computer that had power. Because we had no access to their current information as we would have with Cloud or even a copy of their information as we would have with Online Backup there was nothing we could do to help.
These situations are obviously rare. They're a small part of the decision-making process when it comes to choosing the right software option for your business. But when the lights go out in your salon, knowing that your software will still be running will make the entire situation less stressful and give you one less problem to fix.
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