Archive for May, 2009

Friday, May 22nd, 2009 / von Schorsch

Estimate Status, dropdown menu, invoice-numbers

As mentioned in the last post, we implemented reminders. Besides we made a few little changes.

Estimates

Now Estimates can be tagged with a status-option. While implementing this, we deleted a few not used status-settings. The now available Options are:

  • draft, open, accepted, rejected

In the Background we switched the known status billed in accepted. This status was automatically set when an invoice was created for the estimate. This function is deleted. The arguments for this step will be communicated in the comment-area, if somebody want to know more about this.

We also gave estimates the option to give them a title. It is already used in the reminder section and is nice to place for example a project-title in your pdf-template. This field is also tied to the textsearch.

Invoices

The automatic setting of invoicenumbers for new invoices is cancelled. That is made because now Invoices saved as draft do not reserve a invoice-number. As known the invoice-number is now set when opening the invoice.

Main-Menu

After more and more document-types filled the section invoices it was time to get a drop-down-menu. In the Future we will insert a navigation-section called documents, where also the estimates will be organized.

BILD-> Screenshot Drop-Down-Rechnungen (gibts nicht mehr J)

Secrets

In the Screenshot above you can already see a new Function ….find the mistake….

It is not done yet. Also a secret is the web-template and product thing.

Interface

The formular for the search of your Login-Adress is pimped with a little usability-upgrade. When you fill one field ( domain or eMail) the other remaining field is deactivated.

The displayed total in the header section is taken away. Our Users did not want to make employees or friends being able to see that at a glance.

Last but not least we took care about out lists and search options. After we implemented the lists first there had been several discussions about the default settings of how it shows up after clicking it first. For Example the Invoice List was switching within the last few weeks from being sorted after date of invoice to status to price to client to invoice number (last setting). Same issue was in the lists for clients and products. To end this we decided to sort the lists after date of change. That makes the user having a consistent sorting of all lists and makes him able to see the most actual files first.

Friday, May 22nd, 2009 / von Schorsch

Creating reminders

With todays update reminders are available in SalesKing. Reminders are created from existing invoices. The Link for that is placed in the details of the invoices.

Invoice sidebar - Reminder

Within the reminder settings you can access three reminder-steps where you can define for each step the due-date, the title, the pre and after text and the reminder-fee. If you do not wish to set a reminder-fee, for example for the first friendly reminder just do not fill the field.

Details Payment Reminder

The Details oft the reminder do not differ to invoices, credit notes etc. on first sight. But in the Template you can easily see the differences because there are no to which taxes, no quantity or reductions. The Reminder just has two blocks: first the invoice-data the reminder is tied to and the reminder-fee, if setted.

With your own pdf-templates you are able to modify your reminder for example you can show your client the next official steps when creating the third reminder.

Friday, May 15th, 2009 / von Schorsch

Reminder, products, languages

What is going on with “This week at SalesKing”

We decided to choose striking head-lines to match our goal to provide our RSS-Feed-Subscribers and, of course google a better view on our news. The articles are and will be tagged with weekly-news.

Last two weeks we did not do nothing. As always we fixed a few little bugs, but we focused on reminders, products and languages.

Reminders

The from many users desired feature reminders is just a little step away of being released. Little Sneak-Preview:

Sneak-Preview Reminder List

Reminders do, of course have own pdf-templates as you know from estimates and invoices. More details we do provide with the release.

Products

As we mentioned before, in near Future it will be possible to publish your own products. This is not as easy as it sounds because it needs other formatting and the ability to order things. Who now has got e-commerce in his head is not on the wrong way. The challenge for us is to keep the system as easy as possible, because the use-case are mini-shops or service-distributors as we are.

Languages

From the beginning we wanted to be able to run the SalesKing in different languages. That is also why we decided to use the .eu-Domain. Until yet it was problematic that translation just had been possible by using gettext. With the implementation of a new translation-format we came very close to our goal to provide online-translations in the browser. While switching to the new format it is now time to retype all of the strings in the code, to clean-up the language-files and to reorganize something about 3000 translations.

Sounds like lot of work? …. It definitely is and that is why we are sorry that we cannot give fix informations of release-date.

Sunday, May 3rd, 2009 / von Schorsch

This week at SalesKing Vol.2

This week has started with a Live-Update. The improvements from last week are now available for our users.

On Friday there was the second update with search-features for invoices, estimates, credit-notes and products. In documents (invoices, estimates credit-note) search is done with number, order-number. In products you are able to search after names, price and description. Beside this we implemented new fonts for the pdf-creation (List follows) and some little stuff in the roles and rights-system.

For the coming week we announce step by step improvements for products. First we will focus on publishing of products …. it keeps on being thrilling.

Friday, May 1st, 2009 / von Schorsch

Barcamp Cologne the 3rd

As being a citzen of colgne you can’t not be at this event, so that is why the very long waiting-list did not scare us. As little topping there will be a remake of the laptop-pimping-session (LINK). The detailed information about this will be a secret …. I can mention that there will be no drill-machine come to action!