Blog
We’ve been hard at work for the last 6+ weeks working on introducing the ability to share horses between your customers in At The Yard. This latest feature represents significant changes throughout the system from subscriptions through to invoicing and much more. It’s moved us away from the one horse - one user paradigm we’ve had up to now.
We’re excited at the new opportunities this change of paradigm brings to our customers, both now and into the future with features coming down the pipeline.
Lets look at a few of the new scenarios you can now manage with At The Yard.
A common arrangement is for a livery to have one or more sharers for their horse. These sharers are generally responsible for feeding, grooming, mucking out and everything else that the horse might need on their days.
Whilst looking after the horse it’s likely that there will be costs for feeds or other supplies. The sharers can now be given their own account in At The Yard and be given permission to record these against the owners account. This will save further time for owners and the yard staff alike whilst further reducing the chance for charges to be forgotten or missed.
By having their own account they can also now book facilities and order services in their own right and receive invoices for them directly. Again, further simplifying the admin burden for both owners and the yard manager.
If your yard keeps a collection of horses that are made available to liveries, members or regular customers you can now represent this within At The Yard.
Once setup the horses will then appear to your users when booking facilities, lessons, cross county courses etc and allow the costs of these activities to be billed to their individual user accounts.
We hope this addition will allow yards to explore additional business models and revenue streams and offer new and exciting services to their customers.
Syndicate horses are owned by a collection of owners who both benefit from the horse as a group and cover the cost for the horse as a group.
With this latest update you can now support these arrangements in At The Yard. You can record the various stakes different members have in a horse and make the horse available to all the syndicate members.
Much like with the shared horses, described above, costs incurred whilst the yard or a syndicate member is looking after the horse can be billed directly to the horse’s own account.
And again, by having their own account they can also book facilities, order services that are for their individual sole benefit and have them billed to their own individual account and receive invoices for them directly.
Finally when it comes to invoicing, At The Yard will automatically calculate each member of the syndicate’s individual portion of the invoice they owe, based on the stake they have in the horse - whilst still showing them the overall invoice for the horse so they can see all the costs involved.
As always, all subscribers to At The Yard have already received this update. Throughout the system these options are now available. Over the coming week we’ll be releasing a collection of guides on how to setup each of the scenarios and also how to complete invoicing for syndicate horses. In the meantime if you’re looking to get this setup ASAP get in touch and we’d be happy to arrange a support call to guide you through the setup process.
Finally 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.
P.S. We know we missed this weeks #featurefocusfriday - we were aiming to have this ready for Friday but the final testing setup meant we slightly missed it. We’ll be back next week with another #featurefocusfriday.
Every #FeatureFocusFriday we focus on a particular feature in At The Yard, exploring how you can use it for your yard. This week we’re looking at the Yard Events feature.
Every day there is something going on, from vets and dentists visits all the way through to construction work that might be taking place. Keeping everyone informed is essential for keeping a harmonious and safe environment for everyone (both horses and people).
Making a New Event
Any user can make an event. In this example, we are going to make an event for the entire yard as a staff member. Step 1 is going to the “Staff” menu and clicking on ‘Yard Events’.
And then click on ‘New Event’.
This brings up the ‘Yard Event’ page which allows you to enter the details of the event; time, date, duration, description and user to which it applies (if applicable). Finally it has the option to tick the ‘Public’ button. When ticked it’ll make this event visible to every single user at your yard - great for when something is happening yard wide.
And that’s all there is to it. The event will now be visible to staff and liveries alike and everyone will be kept informed of the construction work (or whatever’s happening at your yard).
Like all features in At The Yard the aim of the events system is to make things quick, easy and simple. In this case it’s getting information to your liveries in a timely and visible fashion, helping keep livery satisfaction high whilst saving you time.
See you next Friday!
“No Man is an Island”
— John Donne
No man (or women) is an island and either is a yard owner. It takes many people from the owner, to grooms through to perhaps your bookkeeper or accountant. With At The Yard you can add all your team to the system with their own account.
This guide will show you how to setup an additional admin user but the same principle can be used to create users with any roles (e.g staff users).
Step 1 - Go to the Admin Users Page
Click on the Admin button and click on Users.
Step 2 - Creating a new user
Note: You may be able to skip this step if you’ve already created your user and only wish to make that user an admin.
Click on ‘Create a Non-Login User’.
Fill in the new users information.
When finished click on ‘Create User’. It’ll go back to the admin users page. Find your new users and click on ‘Manage User’
Navigate through the page to find the ‘Manage User’ box, within that box click on ‘Allow user to login’.
At this point you’ll need to log out of your original At The Yard account by clicking on your name and clicking Sign Out.
You’ll have received an email asking you to set a password. Simply follow the instructions and you’ll have a new user in the system.
You will then need to then log out of your new account and log back into your original admin account before proceeding with step 3.
Step 3 - Making the user an admin
Once you’ve logged back in as your original admin user go back to the Admin Users page and find your new user. Once again click on ‘Manage User’ at the end of their row. This will load the new user management page. Find the Manage User box and this time click on ‘Edit User’.
Scroll to the bottom and find the section call ‘User Roles’, by default it’ll only have the User box ticked. Select all the boxes for the roles your new user requires. It is our recommendation to include all roles (apart from Assistant) for an admin user (e.g for an admin user tick Admin, User, Manager and Staff).
Click on ‘Update User’ and that will save the users new roles.
The user has now been made an admin. You can log out of your original account and login with your new user and you’ll have access to everything you need to get your job done.
We’ve been improving and adding features throughout 2018 and look forward to everything coming in 2019. Have a good night and see you all in the new year!
Happy Christmas to everyone from the team behind At The Yard. We’ll see you all in 2019!