What's new in YourTradebase?

Say hello to… friendlier customer names

20 February 2019

Introducing a neat new way to send friendlier, more human messages to your customers. Like the friendly human you are. How? By using their first names. Simple, right?

The way you talk to your customers is so important. Being clear and consistent gives people confidence and being warm and friendly, well, that makes people like you.

Trouble is, until now, it’s been tricky to sound friendly when you send emails in YourTradebase. You had to use people’s full names. Like Mr and Mrs Smith, or Mr and Mrs Fancy-Surname. All a bit formal really. Especially if you’d worked with them for a while. There was a way to choose a friendlier name, but lots of you told us it was a real pain.

So today, we’re introducing friendly names. From now on, when you add a new customer to YourTradebase, as well as entering their full name, you can choose to enter a friendly name too.

For example, their full name might be Mr & Mrs Taylor, but for their friendly name you can add Dean & Sharron. A whole lot more human.

Full names + Friendly names

Using friendly names in your emails

It’s up to you which name you’d like to use, so you can vary it depending how familiar you are with each customer.

Just visit your settings > email templates and switch the {{customer}} tag to {{friendly_name}}. Then we’ll automatically use their friendly name whenever you email them.

Or, if you’d like us to make the switch for you, just click switch to friendly names now… and we’ll get it done.

So, instead of this…

Email with customer’s full name

…you’ll get this:

Email with customer’s friendly name

Want to search based on your customer’s friendly name? Go right ahead – we’ve included that, too.

Happy friendly messaging!

More customising power to you

1 November 2018

Customising paperwork means you can decide how your quotes and invoices look, and what your customers get to see.

It’s good to put your best foot forward, so we’ve made that even easier with a few extra paperwork customisation options.

Here’s what’s new:

Show prices that are £0.00… or don’t

Want to leave zero-priced items off your quotes? We’ve got this!

Just choose whether to show them with one teeny tiny click…

Show optional item prices… or don’t

Want to hide optional item prices? No problemo.

One quick click lets you show them in your quotes, or leave them off.

Show the ‘excludes tax’ label… or don’t

Want to make it clear your quote doesn’t include VAT or sales tax? Easy!

Just tick the box to add a label, so your customers know where they stand.

Bonus! Total won’t show if all quoted items are optional

Not quite a shiny new customising option, more of an added bonus, this one.

Yesterday: if all your quoted items were optional, we’d show a total box of £0.00. Urgh.

Today: if all your quoted items are optional, no total box is displayed. Hurrah!

Happy customising!

A fresh new look

24 October 2018

Lately, we’ve been freshening things up here at YourTradebase. Last month saw a spanking new main navigation menu. Today we’ve launched a sprinkling of extra freshness across the rest of the app.

What does this mean? You’ll find things clearer to read, easier to click and faster to use, on any browser.

Let’s take a look:

– It’s now easier to identify tasks and events on the dashboard and the invoice total is more visible

– It’s now easier to find customers when creating new quotes and invoices with improved auto-search

– Tasks are now tidier and more compact

– The Invoices listing is now easier on the eyes.

All these changes and more are ready and waiting for you in your account. Just log in to see them up close and personal…

Happy clearer, easier, faster working!

Say hello to our new navigation

19 September 2018

There’s a few changes heading your way to freshen up the way YourTradebase looks and to make things faster and easier to use.

Today, we launch the first of those changes: a fresh new navigation, updated for all screen sizes to be clearer, easier to click and faster to load.

Here’s how it looks on larger browsers:

You’ll find your settings, manage team and account options by selecting your initials:

And here it is on your mobile:

Happy navigating!

Updates for August 2018

3 September 2018

We’re always working to make YourTradebase better, faster, simpler and more helpful for you. Here’s what we’ve been up to in August…

More detailed CSV exports

Our CSV exports have been upgraded with some helpful extra titbits, including:

See a breakdown of costs for material and labour for your quotes and invoices.
Won dates are now included when exporting your quotes to CSV
All dates within your CSV exports have been updated so they can be more easily ordered when viewed in a spreadsheet.

That means more helpful data about what’s going on in YourTradebase.

Clearer reporting of email delivery issues

Letting you know if we can’t send an email reply to you. If your client replies and we’re not able to email it to you, we’ll let you know about it when you next log into YourTradebase.

Helping you stay in touch with your clients, and keeping things running smoothly.

Speedier materials and labour

We’ve been getting some reports of slowdown when searching through big material and labour lists. And that just won’t do.

So we’ve made some big speed improvements to materials and labour. Because faster is better! Whoosh.

More helpful help guides

Need some help with something in YourTradebase? Now you don’t need to leave what you’re doing to go grab some help – we’ll display helpful guides you want to read right there in YourTradebase for you.

Now, help is closer than ever.

Easier conversations

If you get an email reply from your client, it’s now easy to see the whole conversation in one place.

No more trying to remember what was said, or what that client reply is all about. Just follow the link in your email, and we’ll show you the whole conversation.

Fixed-up some duplication issues

We’ve fixed an issue where changes to already accepted quotes were causing job items to be duplicated. Now your job items are kept fully in sync with the work your client has accepted.

We’ve also fixed a small bug with quote numbers for teams that create multiple quotes at the same time. We now make sure that your quote numbers are unique, even if multiple people on your team create different quotes at the same time.

Connect YourTradebase to Xero

8 August 2018

If you’re already using the Xero accounting app, we’ve got some great news for you – link up your Xero account to YourTradebase and save a whole lot more time.

Invoices, cashflow, bookkeeping – all connected, all sorted. It’s a little bit like magic.

Freedom from accounting

We’ve been working with the nice folks at Xero to make integrating YourTradebase and Xero as easy as possible. Connect in 3 simple steps, then we’ll take care of creating all your invoices in Xero for you.

Bye bye, repetitive paperwork

No more double data entry or manual imports – any invoices, payments, or customers that you create in YourTradebase will automatically be created in Xero.

Hello happy accountant

With your accounts linked up, you’ll have up-to-date books, paperwork-free evenings and lots more time to get on with the job you love. Which means happy customers – and a happy accountant too.

Get started today by visiting Settings > Connect to Xero – you’ll be up and running in just a few clicks, or read more about connecting to Xero in our help guides.

Happy Xero’ing!

Export a customer to CSV

21 May 2018

If you get a GDPR request from your customer to share with them the data you hold, we’ve made it easier to grab that data from YourTradebase.

To export the data for a customer, visit that customer, then select ‘Actions > Export to CSV’

Your CSV file will then automatically download with the data you hold on that customer.

We’re working to improve this very soon, by allowing you to also export the messages and invoices you hold for a particular customer.

Happy exporting 😎

Product Updates for April 2018

1 May 2018

We’ve had a busy Easter! Here are a few of the product updates we’ve launched recently… (not quite as tasty as an extra large Easter egg, but almost…)

Customise your job sheet notes

You can now customise your job sheets by choosing whether to show customer notes, job notes, or both (or no notes at all).

Visit your job sheet, click ‘Customise’ and choose your flavour of notes. Your choices will automatically be applied to new jobs you create in the future.

Choose where we send YourTradebase billing invoices

Nobody likes getting a bill, but it’s a little easier to take when you can choose where it gets sent. At least, that’s what our customers were telling us.

So we updated YourTradebase so you can tell us which email address you’d like our invoices to be sent to.

Visit ‘Settings > Manage Account’ and select ‘Change where invoice emails are sent‘ within the ‘Your Invoices’ section.

Log out of all open tabs

When you’re working in multiple tabs, and then log out from one tab – we’re now automatically logging you out of all open tabs. We’re good like like that.

This fixes an issue some customers had with coming back to the site having logged out from a different tab.

Badly formatted email addresses now flagged up

If you enter an email address that isn’t formatted correctly, we won’t be able to deliver it. We now let you know via a handy notification.

Plus a host of bug fixes…

We’ve been busy squashing pesky bugs, we’ve squashed lots these last few weeks – if you find anything not quite working right… you know who to call… (helpdesk@yourtradebase.com, in case you didn’t know who to call.)

Reporting your CIS deductions

15 March 2018

If you’re deducting CIS, we’ve got an update for you that makes reporting CIS simpler.

CIS deductions now show up when you export your invoices to CSV.

It’s now easy to see all your CIS deductions within a particular time frame, and to total them in your spreadsheet software of choice.

To get started, make sure CIS is turned on and export your invoices. That’s it!

Happy deducting!

Helping you to help yourself

9 March 2018

Fantastic customer help is something we pride ourselves on and work hard towards. If you’ve been in touch with us, hopefully you’ve had a great experience.

But fantastic support is more than just great chat. Sometimes, you just want to read the manual and figure something out yourself.

So, we’ve made 4 big improvements to make help better…

Get the help you want, whenever you need it

Introducing our new help menu. You’ll find it hanging out at the bottom-right of every screen in YourTradebase.

It gives you the help you need, the way you want it:

Help yourself – browse our help guides.
Chat with us – get help from a human in our support team.

Read the manual, wherever you are in YourTradebase

We’ve got a manual, but most of the time, you wont need it.

When you do, you can search through – and read – our help articles without leaving YourTradebase.

Just select ‘Browse help guides’, enter your search and read help articles without leaving the page.

Great to get quick answers about something you’re working on.

Browse our brand new help manual

We’ve moved our help articles to a new home at https://help.yourtradebase.com.

It’s a stronger foundation for some better help content we’ve planned for later this year.

Know what’s new and updated

Want to see what’s fresh and new around the place? Select ‘Product updates’ to find out.

It’s where we’ll share the most recent changes we’ve made to YourTradebase.

Happy helping-yourself! 🤗

All New: Notifications

21 February 2018

When something important happens in YourTradebase, it’s important you know about it.

We already send you an email to let you know, but not all emails are read, and that could mean things are missed.

We had to do better when important things needed your attention.

So today we’re pleased to announce notifications:

What we’ll notify you about

Whenever something important happens, like:

You get a new message or reply from one of your customers
You send a message and we can’t deliver it
Anytime a customer accepts your quote online

How we’ll notify you

New notifications will show up in your notifications menu, which you can access anytime from the main navigation – just click on the bell to open your notifications.

You’ll know if there’s a new notification for you – the bell in your main navigation will show a red dot.

Once open, you’ll see a list of any new unread notifications you have, as well as a list of some recently read notifications. Clicking on any notification will show you the full details about it.

You’ll still get an email telling you about these important things, too.

Reading notifications

When you click on a notification to see the full details, we’ll mark it as read for you.

We’ll also mark a notification as read if you open the email we send you.

Lastly, you can mark all your notifications as read by selecting ‘Clear all’ at the top of the notifications menu.

See all your notifications

Want to see a previous notification you’ve received? Just click ‘See all notifications’ at the bottom of the notifications menu. We’ll show you all the notifications you’ve ever received.

You’ll see your notifications when you next sign in to YourTradebase. We’re sure you’ll find them helpful 👍

Email messages v2

13 December 2017

We’ve just released some big improvements to make sending and replying to email messages faster, easier, and, well, betterer.

Here’s what’s new:

Edit event confirmations before you send them ✍️

You asked for it, we built it. You can now review and edit all event, work date and appointment confirmation emails right before they get sent.

No more heading to the settings to update your email templates just before sending event confirmations.

Send event confirmation emails

Customer replies straight to your inbox 🎉

Until now, your customers could only reply to emails about quotes and invoices. From today, all email replies will be sent through to you in the app and in your inbox.

So any event confirmation replies are sent straight to you, and stored in YourTradebase for easy reference.

Receive replies to confirmation emails

Add email attachments to event emails 📎

Need to include an attachment when sending an event confirmation? You got it.

Add attachments to event confirmations

Easier conversation threads 📣

Need to see what was said and when? Just click on any email activity link and you’ll see the whole conversation all one page.

New conversation threads for messages

Re-activate inactive email addresses🍕

Sometimes you send an email but your customers email is down, or their mailbox is full.

Now, if you want to try the same email address again, you can re-activate it and send away…

Activate email addresses

Better deliverability and bounce handling🎈

We’ve made a ton of updates and changes to the way we handle email messages in YourTradebase. All to make emailing faster, easier, and more robust.

Here’s some of the stuff you’ll notice (and some of the stuff happening behind-the-scenes):

Already ready a customer reply in your email inbox? We’ll automatically mark it as read in YourTradebase.
Faster to send email messages. Much, much faster.
Better error messages when something goes wrong.
Way better attachment uploading. Faster, too.
Error-free email input on mobile.
Full notifications of any bounced email messages.

Happy Emailing!