February 2025 Updates

We've made hundreds of quality-of-life improvements to Business Liferaft in February. Our app now does more for you; bookkeeping integrations import bank transactions and match them to invoices automatically. We've streamlined interfaces by removing unnecessary fields for better clarity. Route planning now includes enhanced map visuals, making scheduling easier. You can also check assigned customers who haven’t been invited yet, allowing for later rescheduling. Plus, with one click, you can view routes and identify nearby customers who might be better serviced on a different date. Addresses can now record a Latitude and Longitude directly without needing a Google Places location.

Our work on our Native Mobile Apps for iOS and Android is coming along well. We expect our first Beta testers to be getting their hands on it in the next few weeks 👍

We have made numerous optimisations to save regularly used lists for faster access. Page load times have been reduced across much of the App. Plus we've made dozens of other User Interface updates.

Financial File - Visibility Preference Setting

We have added the ability to update your default visibility of items in Quotes, Estimates, Invoices, etc. Each preference is independent of the others, so it is possible to show more information in your invoices and less in your estimates (to help protect your Quantity Survey work). Each financial file can override this setting, so you are not tied to the level of visibility you want on any given Quote or Invoice. In addition, each item can also have its own visibility setting, so you can have all the flexibility to hide any information your customer does not need to know or may cause confusion. For example, if you specify 100 blocks for a job, the customer does not need to know that; they are buying the wall not the blocks. So, if you use 98, you should not need to count these and offer a refund later! Just an FYI, we have heard of customers counting items when a specific number was set out in a quote.

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Maintenance Invite UI Improvements

The system now automatically removes all Bookings when a Maintenance Season invite is deleted, streamlining the process.

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A delete option has been added to the Maintenance Plans page for quicker access.

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On the Maintenance Invites page, only invites that have not received a response are displayed by default. Typically, users are not interested in invites once accepted or rejected. However, these can be shown by selecting "Filters" and enabling the "Show Response Received" option.

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To improve clarity, when the Filters menu is hidden, the system now displays "No Response Received" to indicate that records are being filtered by default.

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Customer Reply to Maintenance Invite - UI Updates

The Customer page for replying to invites for seasonal maintenance has been improved. Extra spaces have been removed, the Cancel Maintenance option has been made less prominent (as this is not the action we want from customers!), the button layout now adapt better on larger screen widths.

Route Planner - Navigation Updates

The Next / Previous buttons when reviewing the Route Planner for a Work Date has been improved to display the new options more quickly.

Local map planning will now allow Bookings which have been scheduled but not offered to show. This will allow more flexible planning to move Customers between work dates.

View routes with one click: Now you can view the map of a Work Date without navigating away. If you are looking for routes in a specific area, you can check this quickly and easily.

Items Required Upgrade

Not sure what to order for your upcoming x weeks? As soon as the specified items are added to a Booking, we can build a list of all the items you will need to complete those visits. This can be broken down by the Supervisor responsible for the work. This means you can get all your stock ready at the yard for each van with no guesswork required 👍 A gamechanger for keeping your products organised. Each team member can see their own items needed as well. So if they see items needed that aren't in the van, they can deal with the shortage before they get on site (without return visits being required).

OnSite Reporting Simplified

Onsite Reporting options have been streamlined. We have removed "Products Fitted" which has been replaced by a more robust "Fitted Items" section. This Fitted Items section links to your product database for quickly selecting items; these will feed into future invoices to ensure that products do not go unbilled!

We have also removed the "Future Works Required" and merged this with the "Internal Notes" input box. With our powerful "Mark as Actioned" functionality, your team will always see when extra work is required when booking a future visit. No more forgetting you needed to X during your customer's next visit.

Bookkeeping Integrations - Bank Transactions

Processing bank payments is now included with our Bookkeeping Integrations for Sage and FreeAgent. No need to process the same payments twice, we will match your bookkeeping software to keep customer accounts up to date automatically.