This is where you'll find news of recent updates to your Brightpearl account. We list the changes by version number, since not all users will be on the same version of Brightpearl at the same time. We've highlighted the updates that you really should read if you don't have much time. You can tell what version of Brightpearl you're running from the number in your URL (address bar) when you're logged in.
We also recommend that you subscribe to our blog to get updates delivered straight to your inbox. Click the orange RSS icon at the top of the Brightpearl blog page.
To add your feature requests, please use our UserVoice forum.
Coming soon
Massively advanced stock control with multiple warehouse, multiple location, goods-in and goods-out management, bin-to-bin stock movement within a warehouse, full stock audit trail and a way to handle stock movements from a bonded warehouse.
2.78
We've improved the Paypal payments log; it's now in the report centre and you can process the gross amount and the fee amount into your accounting system separately.
Paypal checkout process creates orders on the system before going off to paypal for payment, so if the customer does not return to the system the order is not lost.
We've got a video explaining the whole Paypal process in one sitting.
We’ve made access to the Brightpearl helpdesk more simple and reliable by removing the one-click logon option from customer accounts. This means that you can raise and update your tickets by simply going to the Brightpearl homepage (www.brightpearl.co.uk) and clicking on the helpdesk link below the sign-in box, without needing to be logged in to your Brightpearl user account. Note that to access helpdesk via the Brightpearl website, you need to be a user on the Brightpearl website, which is different from your own Brightpearl administration system. By default, the user that set up your Brightpearl account will already be on Helpdesk.
If you have extra staff members that require access to our helpdesk, then please get in touch via the live chat on our website with your Name, Account ID and Email address.
If you change your password or email address in your own Brightpearl account, it will not change the details in the Brightpearl website helpdesk.
2.74
There's a "set primary" button in the colleagues tab of the contact edit screen - which allows you to switch the primary contact in a company very simply.
We've also added more hardware into the network to support an increasing number of clients.
Warning of upcoming changes
We're going to be removing support for the following template widgets that display a table of items on a quote/sale/purchase document:
_invoiceProducts_
The new widget _productTable_ is configured via the drop-down menu options in Setup : Options : Sales.
2.71
Contact Lookups - now this is really handy. Search, save the search, and work on it for a bit. Since we're trialling this feature, you need to turn it on at Setup:Options:Contacts. Let us know what you think.
Expenses are now assigned to a contact in the accounting entries (as opposed to the expenses entries) which means that you can assign all staff to a common expense nominal account, then filter activity on that account by staff member. All your historic data will be connected up when you first log in.
Slow moving stock report. You can find this report under the "stock" menu item in the Products Zone if you have Standard stock control or higher. It shows items that have sold less than a chosen threshold figure.
Daily Brightpearl PA email reminder - get push updates of sales taken, tasks, contacts and accounting information.
Accounts email address is now available in email/print window for quotes, statements etc.
You can now create your own template for the email that you receive off a Smartform submission. Choose the template in the Smartform settings page.
Line graph showing accounts history on the accounts dashboard now excludes your Year End transactions, which were messing up the display.
Switch off the "view this on our portal" link on outgoing sales, quote and remittance advice emails.
Add tasks to projects - even if you're not using the Project management module, you can now assign tasks to projects for the purpose of timesheet entry.
Project costing : you can now enter a journal to move one cost/expense into multiple projects if you want to split a contractor fee, for example. Read more about project costing here.
Fixed issues with creating purchase orders for sales from the sales list screen (batch PO create, consolidating from multiple sales) - standard stock control upwards only.
Now out in beta is our Timesheeting module : a quick and easy way for you and your team to enter their hours. Time billing has now moved into the Project management pay plan, which you can switch on at Setup:Configuration and billing. Have a go, and let us know what you think using the Feedback tab on the left of your screen! If you enter time by mistake, click the totals at the bottom of a column to go to the Time Log report where you can delete any time entry that you've entered.
Accounts corrections report - now you can dig around the corrections audit trail : see Accounts:Tasks:Correction report.
Inline edit of contact status - in the contact search results screen, just click the status to change it.
Products : Meta keywords, description, and the brand name are now included as columns in the Product export from the report centre.
Website : HTML "fieldsets" are being used throughout the portal with consistent CSS hooks so that you can style it all up in one go. Designers- see http://training.pearlsoftware.net for a full run down of website capabilities.
Accounts-only module : search for contacts using the quick search box at top right, and delete contacts using the icon on the listings. Much better.
Helpdesk : new layout for ticket listings, with the ability to export to Excel and PDF. You can filter the ticket list by company (which will include tickets for all staff) by clicking the company name, and the "View open tickets" link on the pop-open bubble menu on a contact takes you to the company ticket list. You can batch process tickets and sort by last updated date too.
In-line edit of CSS for website - no more browse/upload/save/change/browse/upload hassle :)
Eventbrite import now has the option to create sales automatically for attendees. That's going to save you HUGE amounts of time.
Export order delivery information from the Sales List in the report centre. If you need to import a CSV file into your courier's dispatch system for example, this could be really handy. Go into the report centre, open the Sales List report, and tick the "include delivery info" in the advanced options.
EC Sales list now in report centre, with full drill down to find the contacts without a VAT number that have had a T4 transaction recorded against them. Of course now that it's in the report centre you can export to Excel too, or print a fancy PDF to attach to your HMRC return.
Outgoing Skype calls made easy! Add your contacts' Skype details into the contact card and get nice handy "call me" buttons that open you Skype dialler.
If you need to bookmark your login page - your login page is always http://www.thisispearl.com/accountID.login
PayPal payments pro for ecommerce users. You can now take payment via PayPal pro - which means that users will never leave your website. Paypal standard redirects the user out to PayPal, which can look a little amateur. Full documentation here.
Google calendar integration launched to beta stage. Full documentation here
A new method of calculating stock to order for "Just In Time" purchasing - use the Stock Analysis screen, select a supplier - we've added the "committed less allocated" method for you.
If you're running our Servicedesk module, you'll find that then helpdesk ticket list is now in the report centre, with some added benefits:
- Export to Excel, or print a PDF. Excellent for client review.
- Limit the tickets to all those for a company, regardless of staff member within the customer's company. Very handy!
- More filter and search options
BIG CHANGE : Bundles cannot be stock items. Saving a bundle where stock tracked = yes will remove any stock and set the item to "manage stock" = no. This is because things get horribly complicated with stock management, allocation and fulfilment when you're dealing with both the bundle and the components within. We'll bring it back sometime soon, once we have better handling of "assembled bundles". We need an extra concept of "assembled" which would be a bit like "allocated" but not connected to an order.
Template widget _backOrders_ has been deprecated. Please ensure you don't use it.
Removed support for SECPAY payments within Brightpearl - please use the PayPoint web system directly.
Helpdesk re-structured. All lists are now part of the report centre which means that you can export, filter and produce reports for management or clients.
2.64
Access all nominal codes when entering a Customer or Supplier quick invoice. The restriction for Customers = 4000 codes and suppliers = all other codes was just too restrictive.
New website widget : RSS feed. Use [#RSS?url=http://feeds.feedburner.com/BrightpearlSoftwareBlog#], currently limited to 10 items, only available on phase 2 sites.
When importing and matching your bank transactions, the tax rate in the "create new entry" box will be automatically set when you choose a nominal code, according to the Tax code set for that Nominal code. Watch out for this!
"Add to cart" buttons are now also shown at the top of the cart as well as the bottom, to improve checkout flow.
Display the mapping nominal code (perhaps your IRIS code?) in place of the Brightpearl internal nominal code for familiar bookkeeping if you're moving your practice over from other software.
Extra filters on the product sales report for commission reporting - limit to products only on sales "assigned to" or "created by" a certain salesperson.
Update product bundles by spreadsheet using the Data manager and Excel. Great if you have hundreds and hundreds of bundles - requires a decent, unique SKU structure. Documentation coming soon.
Website/CRM - "contact us" message is now inserted as the first note on the timline. You may get duplicates if you are also using email integration...
Extra graphs on the accounts dashboard widget, to include net profit in blue. How much easier can it get to see your profit line! If you're selling products with stock, then you will need to have "Cost of Sales" accounting turned on to get the most up to date, accurate graphs. If Cost of Sales accounting is off, you need to run regular accurate stock valuations to get a true net profit figure. Talk to your accountant if this sounds confusing.
You can now export data maps for using in another Brightpearl account. This is most handy for our partners who may be using familiar data maps between multiple clients, but it also allows us to start building "drop-in" data maps for things like eBay/Amazon import on orders, or Sage imports for products etc. Click the save icon in the data map list screen to export one.
2.62
Search orders by collection date.
New report : Stock take report. This allows you to export a nice simple Excel file with only the column headers that you need, ready for import back into Brightpearl using the data manager.
We've added an extra field to Contacts:Browse ... extra filters "where:" - the customer code (ie account code, to be found in the financials tab when editing a contact).
New widget for templates : _shipMethod_ : used for shipping method on packing notes and orders (Standard and Premium stock control module only).
Website: Phase 2 site owners have the ability to define product-specific templates, so that you can show a certain category in a different design, for example. Also have the option to choose an override "option display" type for certain items, so if your site shows sisters as drop-down menus, you may choose for some products to have sisters as a table. Only supported in the BUY widget on the product detail page. Choose both these settings in the images/website tab in product edit, or use the Data manager.
2.60
Batch process Purchase Orders from Stock analysis / low stock report - it's as easy as 1-2-3:
- Select supplier
- Choose calculation method
- "GO" to show products and adjust quantities
- Create new Purchase order!
Export packing notes to Excel - if you're running our Premium stock control module you can keep control over multiple part shipments of a single sale. Each time you raise a "packing note" you can specify the shipping method, then when they get picked and packed, you can filter and export a full list of packed items including delivery address for your courier software or to create a shipping mandate.
Recent history on bank receipt/payment screen : now shows the history for the selected account.
Smartforms now insert contacts onto your Mailchimp list. Prior to this update, tags were added to contacts via website smartform, but not all the way through to a connected Mailchimp list. If a Brightpearl tag is connected to a Mailchimp list, the user will be added to the list - if you have the newsletter field on your smart form, and the user selects "yes". Both your website registration and "contact us" forms are Smartforms.
We've made some lovely improvements to order fulfilment (Premium Stock control only):
- The packing note reference (after the order ID) is now relative to the order. So previously a packing note 201124/123434 would now be 201124/01 or 201124/02 for the second packing note for that order.
- You can add the _barcode_ widget to any document template. It displays the order reference and packing note as a 10 digit string. If there's no packing note (ie you're looking at a whole order) then the packing note ID is padded to 2 digits.
This is the start of a whole new level of semi-automated and barcoded warehouse/sales order processing. - The fulfil screen will now automatically choose options for you if you have items in stock in the warehouse to which the order is set.
- Choose a shipping method per packing note at the fulfil stage, which will define the packing note template that's used. So, if you want to ship part of the order via Royal Mail with a PPI code on one template, and the rest of the order from another warehouse via courier with another template type, you can!
- Batch print, pick, pack and update stock of packing notes. This is really going to save you SOOO much time.
Time tracking enabled on all pay plans! Just go to Setup:Options:Events to switch on the timer. This will appear in jobs, on the timeline and on sales orders so that you can see how long you're spending on different tasks. A full timesheet system is on the way.
Customer and Supplier Quick-invoice screens now restrict the nominal codes that you can enter. If you're adding a customer invoice, you can only use 4000 codes, and if you're entering a supplier invoice, it won't let you choose a 4000 code.
2.59
You can now add extra characters to the Telephone fields for details like "home" or "work":
We're nearly ready to launch our API. Documentation coming soon for your perusal. Click here to register your interest.
If you have more than 300 website categories and pages, then you don't have access to the old style "categories and pages" screen. It's just too big, and crashes most browsers on many computers. For those of you that have computers powerful enough to cope, we're sorry. It was causing too much grief.
We've moved the "more options" on website page edit underneath the page content. Why? Almost all designers now have enough screen space to have a decent sized edit window as well as the options visible on screen. It was a bit of a hassle having to open the "more options" every time when working with a big site. There are also a couple of permissions settings : "registered users only" (must be logged in to view this page and menu item) and "tag" (must be logged in and have the tag to view the page content):
New report : VAT exceptions report. This will show you any transactions that don't match the tax code as set in your Chart of Accounts. So if 7400 Travelling is set to T1 and there's an errant T3 transaction for it, it will show on this report. Access this report from the drop down menu in the Accounts report centre.
We've made time management easier.
When in the contact timeline you can either add time without leaving the screen, or you can pop out the timer in a separate window whilst you get on with other work for the contact. To switch time billing on, visit Setup:Options:Events.
2.57
Order/Sales import now supports "comment" column, along with a number of other columns. See the documentation.
Pop a statement from wherever you are in the system using the contact bubble menu:
Dropbox 2.0 for email integration
This is a major improvement on our old dropbox system, where Brightpearl checked a special GoogleMail account every 10 minutes. Now, there's nothing to set up at all, plus it's faster and has a few funky extra features. Read about email integration here.
Added a new salutation : "Mr and Mrs"
Bundle Display on Paperwork now allows for the contents of bundles on packing notes to be displayed either compressed on a single row or exploded on separate rows, and bundles on invoices to be displayed either compressed or not at all (showing only the bundle title). These options are in Setup -> Sales -> Order Processing
New column available to use on your quote and invoice templates. Where you use the _productTable_ widget on a document template, a table of items will be displayed. The column settings on this table are set at Setup:Options:Sales. We'll be adding a completely configurable list at some point, but until then you can choose from a number of options. We've added a new column "item_tax" which displays as below:
Full documentation and videos on configuring templates is well overdue, we'll get it online soon!
The email/Print screen now supports multi departmental "from" information, so that when sending documentation for a sale in a department, the correct sender is used.
Stock table now supports 4 decimal places.
2.56
Order import tool now in beta! This is Good News for those of you selling on Amazon, eBay or Paypal. You can just tweak a spreadsheet and drop all the sales into Brightpearl, creating customers on the fly. Read how to use it here.
Faster timeline processing - no more saving every time you need to add a note! The page automatically saves notes, telephone updates, and activities.
Quicker activity management. If you've not using project management, then activities (calls, jobs etc) open up in a simple mini window. Aaaah, much nicer. If you are using project managment then you still have the full heavyweight event edit screen. Tickets are always opened in the full screen. We've also added a new event type called "follow-up". Soon you'll be able to add your own types, but not just yet ...
Cleaner, easier task manager screen.
Multi currency display on invoices and in the sales list report. Added "financials" tab to modal contact edit window for accounts-only pay plan.
We've started work on our Contact API, which is due for launch at the end of January.
2.55
Wordpress CRM integration! Read about the Wordpress CRM plugin here or Download the plugin from Wordpress.
Import contacts from Outlook Business Contact manager. Contacts:Import:Outlook business contacts. Drop your CSV file straight in.
Product information within admin back-office. Now you can access loads more information about a product whilst in the product list. Click the number in stock to pop open the information window. We'll be adding more data into this screen over the coming weeks.
Date range on Lead Source report, also now showing the number of leads generated. View your Lead source report at Contacts:Marketing:Lead sources
Email files directly from the notes trail. Automatically adds as an attachment to outgoing email.
2.54
Extra filters in Contact list (lead source, tag, status), and extra columns available for export (Salutation, Lead source), accessed via Home:My preferences. The contact list screen will gradually start to replace the current "contact search" screen, since you can export to excel from here.
Fixed a bug whereby the country in the modal contact create/edit screen was not saving.
2.53
Product sales message and product warehouse messages (premium stock control only)
2.52
Eventbrite CRM integration. A powerful and easy way to bring in your event attendees. Read more here
Project timeline. A very handy place to see all notes, quotes, jobs and financial information on a project.
Optional display of 4 decimal places for the net price on Sales, Quotes and Purchase Orders. Setup:Options:Sales
Import contacts from VCF file. If you're using a Mac address book, you can export all contacts and just drop them straight into Brightpearl using the VCF import tool. You can also just import 1 VCF at a time if you need.
Sales forecast report. Weighted sales values, by payment due date, over the next few months. Shows gross total amount, and amount due to pay. Available from the Sales drop down reports once in the report centre.
2.51
Notes added to the sales quote/invoice will also be added to the contact timeline (it already is if you're using the sales order processing screen, the one with the discount and SKU columns).
Added a link to the Organisation list, which is the list of Primary contacts.
You can invoice a sales quote/draft straight off the bat, without saving it first. Just make sure you've got all the details right :)
You can now edit the subject line on outgoing Purchase Orders, Sales quotes and Invoices. Nice!
2.49
We've added the ability to show a user "Gravatar" (Brightpearl admin and on your website servicedesk, if you have one) so you don't need to upload pictures any more. We'll be adding contact photos across more places in the system soon.
The full email body is now hidden by default in the timeline, so you can see more at-a-glance, and click to open emails for more detail if you need.
We've nearly finished PayPal Payments Pro for ecommerce users, which allows you to use PayPal without the user leaving your site. This will reduce the number of transactions that go missing when the user doesn't return to your website after paying. Note that you will need to pay for an SSL certificate so that your website can transfer card information across to PayPal in the background across a secure connection.
The timeline now shows last 20 results across all note types as standard, rather than timeframes as previously (eg "last 30 days"). This means that however long ago you last contacted the person, you'll see information on the timeline.
Import contacts from Google Contacts. This job's been finished off, and you can now import all your contacts from Google with just a couple of clicks, including telephone number and address fields. We're working on the two-way sync, but Google doesn't support first/last name as separate fields, and it bundles the address all into one, which makes things tricky. Visit Setup:Import data from the main menu.
2.47
New pay plans: Office plus extra modules. This is is a wonderful step forwards for those people that really don't want full blown CRM, but still want the benefits of online accounting, and vice versa - if you want hosted CRM but are still going to use your offline accounting, then Brightpearl CRM only is for you at just £12 per user per month. Read more about the pay plans on our website.
You now use Tags for "stockist" list on website - allowing multiple dealer lists, for each or your brands perhaps. See our blog post for more information.
Product lists managed in report centre. At last, you can now filter, search and export selected product lists in the report centre area of Brightpearl. You won't notice a huge difference to the way that the screen is laid out, but you can do a whole lot more than you could before, just click the "advanced options" at the top of the product list page.
Delete contacts from Mailchimp. If you've got a rapidly growing list of contacts in Mailchimp, and you want to thin it down to stay within a price plan, you can now use Brightpearl to delete contacts from the Mailchimp list completely. Note that this will also remove any record of unsubscribes, which means that you can inadvertantly put the contact back on to a list again, so be careful.
Use staff member email address to send automated emails if company email address not set. Useful for smaller businesses where you only have one email address. Since you can't have the company email address the same as your personal login email address, this is a good solution.
Configurable timeframe settings on bank balances dash chart. So that you can see how your bank balances have been doing over the past few months. Click the "settings" icon on the bank balances dashboard widget.
Flat rate VAT. We support flat rate VAT for both Cash and Standard (Accrual) based VAT schemes. Read more here.
Expense management and reporting. Read more here.
Persistent date on Quick invoice, Expense, Bank receipt, Bank transfer, Journal entry screens. Brightpearl will remember the last date you entered, rather than defaulting to today, making it easier to enter lots of data in arrears.
2.40
Choose your own "from" name when sending SMS messages. Setup:Options:Contacts. Since the field is only 11 characters long you might want to set something different from your full company name.
Full screen charts. A number of the dashboard widgets are available in full screen ... click the "view full screen" link which sits just under the chart.
Project costing on all pay plans. Regardless of whether you're using Brightpearl accounts only or the full blown all-in project management, you can assign sales, purchases and accounting entries to a project, and filter your profit and loss by project.
Overhauled email marketing. We've improved the way that email marketing is handled with Mailchimp. Some important differences between Lists and Interest groups, so if you're using Mailchimp then watch the YouTube video here
Lightweight quotes and estimates for service based companies. If you've not got stock control, then you'll be using the new "quote" screen which is much simpler and easier to use than the full features "order" screen. Watch the video here.
Sales pipeline forecast dashboard widget. Add a weighting and a payment due date to see a sales forecast over the next few months/weeks, by sale status. We're going to be adding many more features to this soon, so drop it onto your sales dashboard now.
Payments on account can be tagged to sales. If you're taking a "payment on account" (perhaps a deposit), you can enter the Sale ID (eg 100456), so that when the sale is posted to accounts (invoiced) the prepayments are automatically allocated against it.
Prepayments and deposits posted directly to ledgers. When you mark payment taken against a sale, the transaction will be posted into your accounting system straight away. So if you take payment using the in-built credit card console, the transaction will appear immediately in the account you've set to take your credit card sales. The web portal works in a similar way, so that if your clients pay for a quote online, the payment is put into the ledgers, even if the sale has not yet been invoiced. When the sale/quote is invoiced, then the prepayment is allocated to the invoice. Watch the YouTube video here
Import OFX files from online banking. We now support native OFX file import. Robust and reliable - without the need to edit a spreadsheet. Watch the YouTube video here
Only add contacts to leaf level tags. Only tags with no children can be added to contacts.
New email/print process for Sales and Purchase Orders. Click email/print from any sale, quote or purchase order to open the email/print screen in a new tab. From here you can email or print as before, but with the ability to add a message to the email and choose the attachment format (or else include in the template in-line on the email as HTML).
Lead source reporting in Profit and Loss report. We've added the ability to filter your profit and loss by lead source so that you can see exactly what marketingis worthwhile.
Option to show bundle sub-products on product list in order edit screen. If you're using bundles to hold just one or two subcomponents, it's handy to see these components displayed on the sale edit screen (rather than a level down with the "view bundle contents" link. It makes it much easier to allocate stock too. This is a setting in the Setup:Options:Sales screen.
Colleagues tab in contact edit screen. If a contact has other people in the same company, you can see these contacts on the "colleagues" tab when editing the contact.
"Not tagged" filter when searching contacts. Very handy this one. It's important that all of your contacts are tagged so that leads don't get dropped, and responsibility can be assigned to someone for follow up or account management. You can now search for contacts that don't have a tag.
Contact pipeline dashboard chart. A nice graphical way to see the number of contacts on each of your contact statuses.
Pipeline stages for contact and lead management. You can drop your contact Statuses into one of five Stages. (Suspect, Prospect, Lead, Customer, Failed) This will be used for more holistic company wide pipeline reporting in conjunction with sales and quotes.
Contact status trending dashboard chart. Once you've added your contact statuses to one of the pipeline stages described above, you can see how many contacts are landing on or moving between stages over time.
Pop-open bubble menu for contacts used across all pages where contact is present. Once you get the hang of using this feature, it really saves a lot of time. You can now access the pop-open bubble menu from anywhere in Brightpearl that you're dealing with a contact. Don't forget that you can hold Ctrl down (or Cmd on a Mac) to open the link in a new tab.
Datamanager launched. Last but certainly not least, this is a super powerful way to manage contacts and products in bulk. Explore the options under the "Excel" icon on the Setup:Import data screen. Read about editing products in bulk by spreadsheet here.
