Posts Tagged ‘Workflow’

P1Wired just added a new feature to the Category and SubCategory drop-downs on the Add\Edit Customer window.  P1Wired created this feature to simplify the set up associated with new customer data. Currently in P1Wired, when you want to add new customer codes, you go to the setup option, find the tab you are looking for and add your new codes.  We realized this may be too many steps in a photographer’s workflow.

Simple and Easy — with this new feature, just click on the Category combobox, the first value will be [Add New].  Go ahead and select [Add New] and up pops the Add\Edit Category window.  Just add the new code and press the save button, your code gets added and applied to the customer you are adding.  

This new feature should be a big time saver and allow the photographer to add a new code on the fly. This was a great suggestion from one of our users and we will be adding this functionality to all the combo boxes in our next release — scheduled for July 2010.

P1Wired released 15 new features in our studio management software on May 15th. This post describes two more of the features included in the new version of P1Wired.

P1Wired has multiple tabs on the customer form to allow you to store all the great data you receive from your customers. To provide a simple and easy way to review any new data in a tab, P1Wired has added highlight hinting. If there is information added in a tab, it will show up as a different color in the customer form. There isn’t the need to click through the tabs in the customer form because the color highlighting will let you know if there is new customer information — it will be a real time saver.

P1Wired also added some new validation features to the studio management software. The validation features will assist the photographer with the data entry in the software program and insure a better level of quality control. This will also be a big time saver for the photographer.

P1Wired developers added a Quick Entry feature to the order form. This new feature makes it simple and easy to add items to an order.

Simply put in your item code, description, quantity and pose and the item gets added to the order. This new feature allows you to key in a 10 image order in less than 60 seconds.

If you have products or services set up with barcodes, P1Wired also supports a barcode scanner. This is an effective measure to increase workflow efficiencies and reduce key punch error. One site worth looking at is Barcodes Inc. to review the products and opportunties currently available in this space.

We just released some new features in P1Wired.  Most of the enhancements come from recommendations made by the current P1Wired user-base.  We will provide a brief write-up on each of the new features for photographers over the next several weeks.

As you know, if you are doing business face to face, accepting credit card processing has become a necessity.  We have enhanced the credit card processing in P1Wired so a photographer or studio can process credit cards in both a keyed and swiped format.

The swipe capability adds efficiencies in the form of lower merchant fees, reduced human error and time.  Given the importance of credit card processing to any retail business, we will make additional related enhancements in our next release this summer.

Please keep in mind when selecting merchant services:  4 Easy Ways to Save on a Merchant Account.

1. Ensure you have the right type of Merchant Account for your clients

2. Never focus exclusively on the discount rate — look at the entire processing expense

3. Look to save on the processing equipment given the efficiencies that have been created over the last couple of years

4. Limit the time associated with any agreement — if possible, move to a no contract relationship

P1Wired has teamed with Merchant Warehouse and believes the services and products offered by them are very competitive.  We are working very closely with Merchant Warehouse to address the ever changing credit card compliance and the requirement for better and tighter security with respect to sensitive credit card information.  We will continue to make sure this a priority for P1Wired – Simple and Easy.

For the next release (scheduled for May 15th), the developers have been adding new functionality and focusing on the “flow” of the application, as defined by the current user base.  It is the number one goal of P1Wired to keep photography studio management “Simple and Easy.”

One suggestion that has come up several times is a simple and flexible workflow to easily email an invoice to a customer.

We have been tinkering with the current invoice feature and added some new options.  With a click of a button, an invoice (pdf) is created and attached to a customer email.  The customer email is a template that can be modified and tailored by the photographer or studio.  When the email is ready to send it can be further personalized to incorporate any additional information or it can be sent out, as is. These additional options should address much of the workflow for invoices.

If you have any additional suggestions, please let us know by submitting an idea or suggestion in the SUPPORT tab of the P1Wired website.