Blog
One of the most common interactions users make with At The Yard is ordering an ad-hoc service from their livery yard.
This is great for liveries. By making it quick and easy to order additional services they can make the order as they think of it. No more forgetting to write it a book when you get down the yard like the old days. It’s also great for the livery yard. The easier it is for their customers to order extra services, the more they’ll do so and so the more revenue the yard makes! We think this is a pretty great win win all round!
So! With this in mind we’ve been polishing and refining the ordering process to make it easier than ever. To do this we made 2 small changes to how the ordering process works:
With these changes (and a bunch of little others like improving the day selection checkboxes to make them easier to select) we’ve got the number of clicks for an average service order down from 9 to 5 (if our counting is right). This is not only quicker but it has simplified the whole process as well.
Sounds good, but seeing is believing! So take a look at old and new side by side and get a feel for how much quicker and easier it really is.
We hope you all agree that it’s a significant improvement.
This update is the latest in our ongoing series of refinement and polishing updates. These improve the day to day experience of using At The Yard. We’re having a great time making them and believe the cumulative results will lead to real benefits for our users over time.
So, if you have any suggestions for any little tweaks or improvements to a feature, please get in touch and let us know!
This week, rather than bring you one big update of an existing feature or something brand new, we’ve launched lots of little updates and tweaks to existing features in At The Yard.
We’ve always had the ability to filter charges by date and by a specific ID. We’ve updated this to remove the ID filtering (it was never used) and add the ability to filter by description. This means you can now filter charges by a particular service (e.g. a Lesson).
We’ve also added a total of the charges at the bottom. Meaning you can now choose a service and see the total income for a chosen time frame!
The user calendar is present on the front screen of every users page. We’ve updated this so that users can travel forward and backwards in time to see what’s going (or has been going) on. They’ll see their services, bookings as well as the public service and bookings of other users.
There’s also a small update on it’s design. We now only show a week (as you can navigate through) so it uses less space and it now automatically increases/decreases in size to show all the calendar items present without having to go to another page. Finally depending on the view it’ll automatically enlarge todays forecast.
When creating a user in At The Yard you had two methods:
These are still both present but we’ve added a third!
Create a Login User. This allows you to create a user who will instantly receive an email with instructions as to how to login whilst also allowing you to instantly start configuring their account.
As part of this addition we’ve made a new menu which explains the various options and allows you to easily select them.
This should reduce any confusion that previously existed and add extra options to yard owners!
The create all invoice button allows you to automatically create invoices for all customers who have an outstanding debt. Previously when you did this you had no choice but to send an email. Today we’ve added an additional option which allows you to create the invoices without sending emails.
There are a few extra little tweaks here and there (but they’re not too exciting so we’ll spare you the details). As always we’re working on new features and look forward to being back with more soon - in the meantime enjoy the little tweaks and small additions.
For certain services and facilities you want all your customers to be informed when ever a new order or booking is made. To make this possible, this #FeatureFocusFriday, we’re introducing Yard Wide Display of Orders and Bookings.
To setup yard wide display (also known as public display) you need to go to the Admin tab and click ‘Services' or ‘Bookings’, click Edit or Create. On the form that loads scroll down to the bottom and you’ll see a check box ending in ‘to all users?’.
When you check this checkbox, whenever a booking or order/subscription is made for the facility/service it’ll be displayed on each users individual calendar on their front page.
Like their own calendar entries the type will be denoted by it’s colour in accordance to the key. New with this feature, in the case of a public event it’ll be denoted with a 📍either side of the entry.
When you click on a calendar entry it’ll load the usual detailed view. In the case of a public entry it’ll also display an additional line letting you know who’s made the booking or order.
This feature helps in providing transparency and increased communication for your customers. If you need any help setting up your public services or facilities please feel free to get in touch and we’ll be happy to help!
As with many of our new features this comes from discussion with one of our customers. If you have any feedback of existing features or would like to suggest new ones we’re always happy to hear from customers (both existing and prospective 😀)!
We’ve got a small update to the invoicing system on this #FeatureFocusFriday. It allows you to customise how you want to group similar charges made by a user when creating an invoice.
First let us take a look at an example where a customer has purchased multiple of the same supplement on different days. In the first image below we have the default grouping options which separates the purchases out by date.
In the next image (below) we have adjusted the grouping options so that it ignores the date. This means that all purchases of the same type and with the same details will be grouped together. As a side effect of a larger group you’ll see a date range in which the all the charges were made.
To change the settings all you need to do is click the Grouping Options button when creating a new invoice. You’ll then be able to check/uncheck the options you wish to exclude.
For example, if you want to exclude different dates as a distinguishing factor for your groups you would simply check ‘Date of charge’, if you want it included you uncheck it.
As always, if you find yourself needing additional options let us know and we’ll add more as needed.
Enjoy your #FeatureFocusFriday!
It’s common for yards to look after a horse on behalf of the owner when the Vet, Farrier, Equine Dentist etc. comes to the yard. This is an essential service for owners who work full time and might not be able to get to the yard themselves.
When it comes to paying it’s simple when it’s a large business (like a veterinary practice) they just add it onto the owners account and have their finance department keep track. But when it’s a smaller supplier typically 1 of 3 things happens:
Option 1 ensures the supplier is paid in full and on time (which keeps them happy) but mean’s you’re having to use the yard’s money, not only tying up capital but should the owner decide not to pay making you the one out of pocket.
Secondly when you recharge the owner it’ll count as an income from an accounting point of view (even though there’ll be an equal expense to cancel it out). Whilst this shouldn’t increase your tax bill can push you towards the VAT registration threshold (we wrote a blog post around this subject last year - https://www.attheyard.co.uk/blog/2018/5/11/the-future-of-vat-and-livery-yards). Many yards wish to stay under this threshold and certainly wouldn’t want to be pushed into it based on ‘recharged’ services where there is no upside for them.
Option 2 takes all the burden off of you but comes with other issues. You can end up being in the middle of a supplier and owner who’s paid late or not at all. In the worst cases this can sour the relationship between the yard and the supplier - something nobody wants to happen.
All this whilst being out of the loop of what’s going on and unable to step in and defuse the issue before it becomes critical. It’s the simpler option but perhaps not the most effective…
Option 3 is a middle ground. The yard would act as an intermediate, receiving the requests for payment and passing them onto the owner, who can then pay the supplier directly.
You can keep informed whilst never being out of pocket, the only real downside is it means more admin work.
After considering all the options, and talking to our customers, option 3 looks to be the best approach and so, today, we are introducing Third Party Payment Requests into At The Yard.
With Third Party Payment Requests in At The Yard you get all the benefits of acting as an intermediate with none of the downsides. We’ll help you keep track of everything and keep the admin to a minimum.
All you need to do is enter the requests from the supplier into At The Yard when they give them to you. Once done the owner gets a notification of the request and can go ahead and pay it (and let you know). This way you can stay on top of everything - with At The Yard automatically showing you who has outstanding bills so you can give them a friendly prompt and keep relations between the yard, owners and suppliers in tip top shape!
As always, all current subscribers to At The Yard have already received this update.
As a manager user go to the manager tab and click payment requests. From here you can start adding requests for payments on behalf of the suppliers.
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.