2023 Release Notes and Update History

November 2023

v22.11.1

Added a new bulk data import tool to allow you to import customers using an Excel spreadsheet. This means that both customers and inventory items can now be bulk imported.
When setting an appointment type description, you can now use rich text formatting.
Added a new Staff Members filter to the appointments calendar, allowing you to filter the calendar to view a specific staff member's appointments.
You can now track seamstresses and sales associates independently for customers. Additionally, appointment types can now be marked as being run by a sales associate or seamstress. All together, this means that appointments can now be automatically assigned to the correct staff member if you've configured these settings.
Added an Event Date column to the orders table that can be sorted by clicking on the column header.
Added 2 new optional fields to the appointment booking form: Home Address and Referral Type. These can be turned on in Appointment Settings > Field Setup. If you turn these fields on, they will display to your customers when they book a first-time appointment.
You can now set a specific disclaimer message for credit card reserved appointments. The default message is "If you need to cancel, inform us as early as possible.", but you can now change this to reflect your actual cancellation policy.

October 2023

v22.10.1

Added new available customer types: Groom and Groomsman.
Added new report: Inventory Trends by Attribute Report. This lets you view your sales trends by inventory attributes such as size, color, and others.
The inventory form now includes a new Retail Price Markup Calculator, which makes it more convenient to set the retail price of an item based on a markup multiplier from its wholesale price.
Added new option for Appointment custom fields: Limit to Appointment Types. This lets you specify that a custom field should only be available for specific appointment types instead of all appointment types.
Added new option for Order/Measurement custom fields: Limit to Customer Types. This lets you specify that a custom field should only be available for specific customer types instead of all customer types.
When creating an order, the Size field will now populate with the available size options instead of just being a plain text field.
When creating an order, a warning will now display if the price is set to a non-recommended price, which helps reduce errors for unintentional price changes.
When creating an appointment from a client's profile, there is a new Show All option for appointment types. This lets you pick from first-time appointments instead of only follow-up appointments.
Added new filtering capabilities for the orders table. Currently this just includes the ability to filter the orders by a specific vendor.
Further improved de-duplication capabilities introduced in previous version.
Added a new version indicator that makes it more obvious when a new version of CloudBridal is available. This is located in the top right corner of the app, and will display a red dot when a new version is available.

September 2023

v22.9.1

Improved de-duplication capabilities when creating appointments. Now, if a client requests an appointment, it will check to see if there are any existing client profiles that match the client's email and phone number. If there is a match, it will automatically associate with the existing profile instead of creating a new one. A similar check is also done when adding an appointment as a staff member, and will allow the staff member to associate the appointment with a matched profile.
You can now offer appointment time slots in one of 3 modes: Optimal Fit, Every Half Hour, or On the Hour. Optimal Fit is the default mode that CloudBridal has always supported, and calculates slots to try and fit in as many appointments as possible in a day. Every Half Hour will offer time slots that begin at the top of the hour as well as on the half hour. On the Hour will only offer time slots that begin at the top of the hour. The two new modes are useful if you want to give your customers more choices for appointment slots, but come with the risk of potentially creating wasted gaps in the calendar. You can configure this in the Appointment Settings page by going into the Appointment Schedules section and editing a schedule.
Added ability to mark an inventory item's image as the favorite image. This becomes the preferred image to display in the inventory visual mode, as well as the image that displays for the item on a receipt.
It is now possible to charge a cancelled appointment as a no-show. Previously, it was only possible to charge confirmed appointments that the customer did not show up for. This is useful for when the customer cancels the appointment at the last minute. The customer will also be shown a warning when they attempt to cancel their appointment, describing that they may be charged.
Added a new setting to to the Appointment Settings page, Allow customers to cancel appointments. This is enabled by default, but you can disable it if you would like to prevent customers from being able to cancel appointments online.
Added 2 new automatic email conditions: First Appointment Date: Item Purchased and First Appointment Date: No Item Purchased. This allows you to send an automatic email to a customer [X] days after their first appointment based on whether or not they purchased an item. You can also target specific appointment types to give you full control over which customers receive an email.
The monthly calendar view for appointments now displays the appointment type instead of the customer type.
Removed the Store Hours section in the appointment settings, opting to calculate store hours completely based on the configured appointment schedules. This makes it easier to update your hours, as you no longer have to do so in 2 different places.
The Appointment Schedules area in the settings now allows you to view the schedules by day of week instead of the whole week. This makes it easier to manage schedules for specific days when you have a lot of schedules that are hard to see in the week view.
Updated the appointment form to allow you to expand the customer's notes instead of always displaying them.

August 2023

v22.8.2

Redesigned the customer profile page to be more compact and easier to read. The customer profile page now has a new tabbed layout, as well as a sidebar that displays the customer's info at a glance. This also improves usability on mobile and tablet devices.
Revamped the customer Comments into a new Notes section that supports the ability to add multiple notes, providing automatic timestamps, and the ability to edit or delete notes.

v22.8.1

Payments made on payment plans can now be paid by customers online through Stripe. If you've configured Stripe, you will just need to enable the Enable Charging in Payment Plans checkbox in the Payment Settings page. This will include a link in payment reminder emails which allow the customer to submit a payment using their credit card, which will be processed by Stripe and automatically sync up with the CloudBridal payment record, marking it as Paid. Your store email address will also receive an email any time a payment is made by a customer.
The client portal now includes a list of the client's payments, if they've made any. This also includes upcoming payments if they are on a payment plan.
When exporting data to Excel, date fields are now recognized by Excel as dates, allowing operations such as sorting based on the date instead of alphabetical order.
The Orders Created report now includes a handy filter that allows you to specify which customer types to include in the report.

June 2023

v22.6.2

Added new Update Price List feature in the inventory table, which allows you to quickly update the wholesale and retail prices across the board for a vendor.
Added a new time picker input field for desktop and laptop users which is easier to use on a keyboard.
Multi-item orders are now displayed in full detail in the orders section of the customer's profile page.
Prospects are now auto-created for confirmed appointments (no longer opt-in).
Increased text size of filled input field labels to improve legibility.

v22.6.1

Added new capabilities to manage Rentals. This is only available for the Ultimate plan, and can be enabled in the Order Settings. This gives you the ability to create a rental order, and will track new data points such as the reservation range, rental status, and so on. This will also enable overdue rental alerts, as well as a new rentals report.
Enhanced the Twilio integration by adding automatic appointment reminder SMS messages as well as removing the 150 character limit from SMS messages. Note: Be aware that these new features are only available if you bring your own number, which you can read more about here. You can enable the Twilio integration in the Twilio Settings.
Fixed issue where you could not resend the invitation to pre-register for customers who automatically have a profile created for them.
Fixed issue where the receipt could occasionally display 'NaN' instead of '0' for currency values.

May 2023

v22.5.1

Added new data filtering capabilities for the Inventory, Customers, and Appointments pages. The previous sidebar-based filters are removed in favor of filters that you can open by clicking the filters area underneath the search bar. This now allows you to Save or Load filter presets, and comes with a host of new filters specifically for the Inventory page.
You may now mark custom inventory item types as a 'Dress' type in the Inventory Settings. This allows you to create special dress categories instead of using the default 'Dress' system type.
In the Appointment Settings, you can now set scheduler color for appointment types! Previously, you could only set the color for appointment resources. Note that if you set a color on both the appointment type and the appointment resource, the scheduler will prioritize the appointment type color.
In the Receipt Settings, you may now configure receipts to display a tax-inclusive 'Total' column instead of just the tax-exclusive 'Subtotal' column that currently exists.
Receipts that contain multi-item orders will now break down each item in the multi-item order into its own separate line item instead of combining them, making things like discounts and prices easier to understand.
Various minor UI improvements.
Fixed issue where the appointment calendar would erroneously display a loading indicator after confirming an appointment.
Fixed issue where percentage-based discounts did not apply correctly to sub-orders when using the 'Apply Discounts After Tax' environment setting.

April 2023

v22.4.1

Added Twilio integration. CloudBridal has always used Twilio internally for SMS messaging, but the new Twilio integration allows you to bring your own Twilio account. This is useful if you would like to have full control over your phone number for things like call forwarding, voice prompts, or bringing your existing phone number. This integration can be configured in the Twilio Settings page.
Various minor bug fixes.

March 2023

v22.3.1

The 'Favorite Items' functionality received an overhaul, as this is now a dedicated module on the prospect/customer profile page. You are now able to see images for the favorite items, view their item details, the last quoted price, and more.
Added AI-powered text generation capabilities to the rich text field, only available on the Ultimate plan. Clicking the blue AI button opens up a dialog window that allows you to either generate a message based on a prompt, or to tidy up the existing text within the field to improve the overall readability and grammar.
The rich text fields throughout the app now have the ability to edit the source directly, allowing users to have full control over the HTML code if they need to make specific tweaks such as adding an image.
Various improvements to overall user experience, styling, and fixes througout the app.

February 2023

v22.2.2

You can now override the global appointment emails with specific emails based on the appointment type. For example, if you have different text you'd like to use for a fitting, or a first-time bridal appointment, you can do so now by editing the respective appointment type in the Appointment Settings. Then just click on the Email Settings tab, and set your text accordingly.
Added the ability to configure CloudBridal to automatically create prospect records when a client's first-time appointment is confirmed. This can be enabled in the Appointment Settings.
Added the ability to set the color of the top nav bar in the General Settings.
If you associate a sales agreement with a receipt template in the Receipt Settings, you now have the option of disabling the page break functionality by unchecking the "Include Page Break Between Receipt and Sales Agreement" checkbox. This will allow you to print the receipt and sales agreement on the same page.

v22.2.1

Added ability to capture a client's credit card information as a staff member when manually booking an appointment. This works for both charged appointments, as well as reserved appointments.
Improved appointment scheduler color customization options. Specifically, you can now set the following colors in the Appointment Settings:
- Primary Color: This controls several elements such as the button colors, as well as the input field outline colors.
- Menu Item Highlight Color: This controls the highlight color when the client selects either an appointment type, or a slot.

January 2023

v22.1.1

Added a new module, the Client Portal. This module is only available for Ultimate plan subscribers. You can view more information in the help documentation article here for details.
The automated emails tool has been updated with 5 new events, each of which gives you the ability to send an email automatically X days after the order status is changed to the new status.
- Order Status Changed: Ordered
- Order Status Changed: Arrived
- Order Status Changed: Work Completed
- Order Status Changed: Picked Up
- Order Status Changed: Cancelled
Added the ability to set a "Buffer Time in Minutes" to an appointment type. This gives a convenient way to automatically set up small buffer windows after an appointment where you can catch a break. You could previously do this using the "Select Detailed Availability" tool, but that required manually selecting each time slot.