Blog
We're constantly adding new features to At The Yard to make it more powerful and more flexible. This allows us to meet the needs of more yards than ever and in turn allow them to offer an ever increasing range of services to their liveries.
In addition to expanding the product we think that it's important to regularly look back at existing features and continually work to improve the user experience.
To achieve this we take a range of approaches:
We use all this to identify features and areas within At The Yard that could be improved. From there we design and implement updates to enhance the usability of the existing features for everyone.
The latest fruits of this process have led to the recent refresh of the booking system (which also happens to be the first feature we ever built for At The Yard). Up to now we've displayed the next few days available slots in a long list (shown below). Whilst functional it was not the most aesthetically pleasing and could definitely be made easier to use when making a booking.
To improve this we've overhauled the Booking System giving it a more calendar like structure with everything displayed in time order, top to bottom. This improves clarity and ease of use whilst allowing you, at a glance, to get an overview of a facility for the day (or the week).
I'm sure you'll all agree that the new booking view (shown below) is much clearer and easier to use.
This design refresh has also come to our mobile experience (shown below). Finally, whilst implementing the new look we improved some of the underlying systems that control bookings. This will allow us to continue to improve the booking experience as time goes on.
As always, all subscribers to At The Yard have already received this update. Just go to the booking tab on the main menu, pick what you want to book and you'll see the new look.
As mentioned, this update came as a result of us talking directly to our existing users. We're always excited to get feedback on the product whether it's in regards to our existing features or suggestions for new ones. Either way it allows us to improve the experience for all the users of At The Yard.
So if you have suggestions for new features or improvements to any of the existing features in At The Yard please let us know by using the feedback link at the bottom of every At The Yard screen or by talking to your account rep.
P.S. If you've stumbled across this page and have your own livery yard we'd love to show you more of At The Yard. Please visit our contact page and get in touch.
One of the first features we added to At The Yard was Products. It let you display the items available for purchase at your yard (e.g. hay or straw) and allow your liveries' to record their purchases.
You've always been able to see these purchases by looking at the charges created on a liveries account. Whilst this worked we wanted to introduce new features to make this easier to use, more powerful and more informative.
To make this happen we are happy to announce today the new Product Management feature in At The Yard. This new feature consists of three main areas:
Stock Takes
You can now enter stock takes directly into At The Yard. By doing this you can:
Hopefully you'll already be keeping track of this information and will just need to start adding it to At The Yard. If not we recommend that you start doing stock takes. Not only are they a good idea but they allow you to get so much more from the new product management feature.
Graphs
For each product you sell the stock take data and the purchasing information is combined. This allows for a pair of graphs to be generated. The first shows you the stock level and the purchases made over time. The second shows you the percentages of purchases made by your different customers during that time.
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| A stock graph generated by At The Yard | A user breakdown graph generated by At The Yard |
We designed these graphs to help you get an intuitive feel for the purchases made on your yard. Letting you know when, how fast and who's purchasing your products.
Stock Discrepancies
The unfortunate reality when selling products is that, inevitably, the numbers seen during a stock take won't always match what you're expecting.
We all hope that this is just the result of an honest mistake, however the sooner you're made aware of it the easier it is to track down the mistake. At The Yard will automatically show you the difference between the expected stock level and the one recorded in the stock take.
Then, combining all three parts; the stock takes, the graphs and the discrepancy information you can track down the missing stock and get paid for the products you provided!
As a subscriber you're already setup to access this feature and begin taking advantage of the new information available. Just go to the Management menu item (in the top navigation bar) and click Product Management.
We hope you'll find this new feature useful. We're excited to hear how you use it and any feedback you have. Let us know by using the feedback link located at the bottom of every At The Yard screen or by talking to your account rep.
P.S. If you've stumbled across this page and have your own livery yard we'd love to show you more about At The Yard. Please visit our contact page and get in touch.
An essential part of any successful livery yard is supporting your liveries in looking after their horses. Part of this is providing extra support beyond their base livery package. This can be anything from Turn Outs, Muck Outs all the way through to Tack Cleaning and Equissage.
This is as important for a full livery yard as it is at a DIY yard. Regardless of what liveries receive as standard, offering extra help not only improves their experience but can be a way of generating extra revenue for your yard.
Part of offering extra services involves keeping track of orders and ensuring that they're fulfilled in a prompt and reliable fashion. Most yards achieve this by creating a list of the services needed for each horse ahead of each work day. This unavoidable task is simple at first but as you offer a greater range of services it can become complicated and time consuming.
For this reason we've put together our guide for keeping track of incoming orders and building your daily Work Lists.
Orders must be recorded and organised before you can assemble your work list. As orders come from nearly anywhere, the Yard Diary, phone, email, text message or even someone shouting it to you across the yard, it is important that they're recorded and organised as soon as they arrive.
No matter how the order came in it is essential that it's recorded and stored in a safe and reliable fashion. Update and remove records as needed BUT they must always match the latest orders made by your liveries. Each record needs to include:
It's from these records you can build your daily work list. When you choose to do this depends on how you run your yard, but the closer to the day, the less likely you'll be updating it with last minute changes.
For the actual list we've come up with 3 different styles:
When your yard assigns grooms or stable hands to care for specific horses this style can be an excellent way to structure your work list.
Each groom can see all the services ordered for the specific horse they're caring for; so they can focus on that horse and only that horse, completing all the services for it before moving onto the next.
Even on a small yard where the same staff are responsible for all the horses, this can still be a useful way of organising orders. By completing all the orders for a horse together (e.g. Bring In and Feeding) it can save your staff time running back and forth between horses.
There are lots of services which make sense to group together, such as Turn Outs and Muck Outs. For these tasks grouping all the orders for the same service together makes the most sense. When you build your work list with this in mind it can look something like the list below.
This is a great way of organising jobs when you offer a service which is commonly ordered (e.g. Muck Outs). You can focus on the task when you've already got the equipment to hand, repeating it for every horse required until you're finished.
As you'll have already seen sometimes Style 1 makes sense and sometimes Style 2. Different services call for a different approach. A hybrid solves this by building two work lists; one By The Horse and one By The Service.
Your staff will use the By The Horse list when focussing on caring for one horse on an individual level and providing the best possible customer service. And again when completing services which make sense to group together for a single horse (e.g Rugging & Booting).
Then they can use the By The Service list when completing a single repetitive task for a handful of horses across the yard. This allows them to get the equipment once (e.g. for Mucking out) and complete all the orders, before then moving onto the next service.
The hybrid approach is all about giving your staff the right tool for the right job at the right time.
Inevitably liveries will want to make changes to their orders, be it cancelling or amending them. A lot of yards choose to have a cut off point at which a livery can no longer change their ordered services. If your cut off point is on the same day as the service is to be fulfilled, you'll need a way to update your staff with the latest changes.
There are many ways to do this - phone calls, text messages or email. It's important though that it gets out to them as soon as possible. One way to help speed this up is by creating Contact Groups on your phone or computer. This lets you write one email and send it to all your staff in one go both quickly and easily.
Just make sure you've got someone responsible for sending the messages.
A work list whilst time consuming to produce and maintain is essential to running a successful yard. We've shown you the 3 different styles we've come up with, which you can use to help build your lists at your yard.
However if you're looking to speed this process up and make your life easier At The Yard can help. One of the great features available in the product makes the task of building a Work List quick and simple. We call it our Forecast View.
Forcast View
With the Forecast View you can always see an up to date view of the services ordered by your liveries. They make the orders directly in the system from a phone, tablet or laptop and it updates the forecast straight away.
It allows you to enforce cut off times for ordering services without any effort on your part. When setting up your service you choose the latest time that they can make changes by. At The Yard will then take care of enforcing the cut off for you automatically.
When using the forecast you can, at a touch of a button, swap between organising By The Horse and By The Service. This allows you to choose the style which best suits your yard and the way you work. As part of this we let your staff mark services completed so you can keep an eye on progress and provide peace of mind to your customers.
And when a livery makes or updates an order for a service an automatic notification system sends emails to all your staff, letting them know the latest changes so they can get straight to work.
This is just one of the many features of At The Yard that makes running your yard quicker and easier. If you would like a demonstration of our Forecast view or any of the other features of At The Yard please Get In touch.
Welcome to the blog for At The Yard.
We're introducing this blog as a place to provide product updates and useful tips for using At The Yard. We also want to bring you general articles on running a yard and anything exciting we find from the wider equine world.
So stay tuned as we're excited to start bringing you more content.