We have a whole load of new features available from 15th September. The most important things that you need to know are outlined below. As usual, all of our demo accounts have already been updated to the latest version, so please log in at http://demo.thisispearl.com/admin and have a play to ensure that you’re not going to be surprised by anything.
Order processing
Drop ship sales and Purchase Orders
The concept of “drop ship” has now been extended to Sales Orders as well as Purchase Orders. If an order is drop-ship, then the stock is going to go direct from supplier to customer, and will not need to be received into a warehouse. When posting a sale to accounts, Pearl will always use the sales code (eg a 4000 code) for your accounts, regardless of whether a sale is drop ship or not. If a sale is drop ship, then no stock will be removed (even if items on the sale are set to manage stock), and no Cost of Sales entry will be posted into the accounts.
For drop ship Purchase Orders, where you would expect to see a Stock code (1001 for example) for Assets received, a drop ship Purchase Order will use the associated Purchases code (5002 for example) without creating a stock movement when receiving the Purchase Invoice.
No PDF for daily till sales
End of day till (department) reconcile does not produce PDF invoices any more, to speed up the system.
Notes sent to supplier in body of email as well as Purchase Order PDF
We’ve fixed an issue whereby the notes entered when placing a PO where only getting inserted to the PDF, and not in the email. They are now in the email too.
Events and Activities
Automatically add all staff to an event
If you want to add all administrators to an event when it’s created, you can turn this option on at the Setup:Options:Events screen.
Default “notify” for events
A number of our clients have requested that the “notify” box is unticked by default when updating an event. This is now something that you can choose on the Setup:Options:Events screen.
Contact management and CRM
MailChimp automatic webhook handling
“Webhooks” are what Pearl uses to ensure that your contacts are marked as unsubscribed when they choose to leave a list via the link at the bottom of an email sent via MailChimp. Previously you had to set up your webhooks manually, it’s now a completely automated process 
MailChimp detailed statistics [Pearl Starter upwards]
Even more tasty is the ability to drill down and see exactly who has read your mail campaign, which email addresses bounced, and who unsubscribed. All email campaigns sent via MailChimp from the latest version of Pearl onwards will have drill down information, as long as you’re on the Starter pay plan or above.
CC staff when sending emails
Using the popup email box (click any red link), you now have the opportunity to quickly copy an email to other staff members.
Automatic email to account manager when adding note to Timeline
Wouldn’t it be great to be sent a copy of all communications made with your most important customers, even when you’re away from the office? Now you can! There’s a tickbox for contacts that have account managers – so that you’re up to date, regardless of who actually speaks to the customer/supplier.
Website and Ecommerce
Website: PayPal integration updated
When buying items online via the Pearl shopping cart, the full cart information is now passed to PayPal, where previously just a generic “order” was sent. Each line item is shown with the tax-inclusive value. This will enable you to quickly identify all you need from within the PayPal portal.
Website editor
We’re trialling a new, faster website editing system that doesn’t load all the web categories on the same page. Click Website:Website editor to give it a go. The old categories list is still there so that you can do some of the things that the new website editor can’t yet cope with (such as changing the order of the pages). We’ve put a quick video up to show you how the website editor works.
Styles-only CSS on template management
You can add some CSS styles into a box provided for each template at the Website:Manage templates screen. This CSS will be injected into the top of every page that uses that template, and will be the CSS that is pulled into the WYSIWYG editor when editing page content. Previously the WHOLE styles.css was pulled into the drop down menu for the page editor, slowing it down. You wouldn’t need to access the layout CSS, for example, when editing each page. New sites we build split the layout CSS into styles.css file, uploaded as normal, and the “styling” (pageHeading etc) into the template CSS box.
Smartforms no longer require redirect URL
Perhaps you manage your website on a different system from Pearl? Did you know that you can embed a Pearl SmartForm into your existing website to capture leads directly into your Pearl CRM? The SmartForms now no longer need you to specify a “return URL” for when the user submits the form – it will just display the text that you specify, along with sending an autoresponder, emailing you and even sending a text message if you like.
New image and file uploader
You’ll probably have noticed the new image and file uploader that we added to all accounts a couple of weeks ago. Much easier to work with, and it sorts the images by alphabetical order (at last). You can now delete images too – but be careful, it doesn’t know whether these images are still being used on your website somewhere …
Accounting and Finance
Configurable options for invoice discounting on payment allocation
If you want to clear a customer or supplier invoice with an adjustment, you’ve previously only had the option of fixed codes, eg Exchange Rate Variance, CIS etc. You can now include ANY of your nominal codes as a discount/adjust code, in the Chart of Accounts setup area.
Top debtors and top creditors accounts widgets
We’ve build a couple of new accounts dashboard widgets. Your top 6 debtors and your top 6 creditors (suppliers) are shown, along with the total money owed to you and the total money you owe suppliers. A nice handy display to have when you first access your accounts.
Email statement from popup window
Accounts statement handling has been massively improved. Wherever you see the little statement icon (on a customer edit screen for example) you can open and send a statement. Just click the icon and choose “print” or “email”. Watch the video here.
Debtors and Creditors in report centre – with “detailed” option
We’ve brought the Customer debt and Supplier debt reports into the powerful Report Centre – which allows you to export to Excel and PDF as per all other reports using the Report Centre. There’s also the option to show a per-invoice breakdown rather than just per customer/supplier.
Products and stock control
Stock locations
Premium Pearl accounts now have the ability to specify a stock location – Aisle, Bay, Shelf, Bin. This information is printed on picking and packing notes so that your warehouse staff can run around in super-efficient pick-pack mode. Picking notes are ordered by stock location (eg AA at the top). Each warehouse has it’s own stock location for items, as well as it’s own minimum stock level and re-order quantity. You’ll find that even if you’re not using Pearl Premium, you may have to choose your “default warehouse” when using or reporting on minimum stock (alert) and re-order quantities.
“Committed” column added to products list
We have added the popular “committed” stock column to the product search results in admin. It’s also available in the report centre on the stock reports. Committed stock is stock that is sitting on an open Sales Order, regardless of whether that stock has been allocated. An open Sales Order is one that has not yet been posted to accounts.
New handling of bundles [bundles are Pearl Standard upwards only]
We’ve restructured the way that bundles (kits, BOMs) are handled – where previously you could only have bundles within bundles to one level, there is now no limit to the number of “nested bundles” that you can have. Bundle sub-components are actually stored at the same level in the order as standard items, but are just not displayed. A by-product of this is that your standard sales reports will now pull in all subcomponent sales, making planning and Purchasing easier. All your historical sales will be automatically updated as soon as you log in to your account after the update. Bundles are shown in a grey-blue colour throughout the admin system so that they are easier to identify.
Other features
Administrators can change the permissions of the advisor login
If your Pearl account has been provided by one of our partners, then they will have an access login to perform administration tasks. You can now see this user in the staff list, and control what they have access to when they are logged in.
Part payments of orders using credit card console
The payment total box in the popup credit card processing console is now editable – which means that you can take multiple part payments for an order using the Secure Trading card payment screens.
Fixed position ribbon menu
For you Firefox users (good on you!) the little ribbon menu at the top of each page has always stayed where it should be, but for Internet Explorer users, it shoots off the page as you scroll down. We’ve fixed this, so even if for some reason you’re still using Internet Explorer, you won’t lose the menu. Download Firefox for free here. A by-product of this fix is that the reminders are now at the bottom right of the screen, where it should be, giving you more useful screen space and a slightly more pokey poke about your overdue stuff.
Removal of Pearlmail
The time has come to say goodbye to Pearlmail. It’s lasted well, but we are now running all new Pearl users on a Google Apps account which does much more and allows better CRM integration.
Bugfixes
Order fulfilment POs were using an incorrect nominal code, and defaulting to 4000
SMS text was not added to the user timeline if batch SMS sent from the CRM screen
Icons now show for transactions transferred from bank activity using the batch transfer process
Saving a new product sometimes lead to VAT being added twice
Sage customers and suppliers import (full details) now fully operational
Extra options added for different versions of TAS chart of accounts import
Various website widgets (eg FEATURED) were not pulling products correctly (see website phase 2 below)
The “next” link on your website calendar will take the user to the correct year on a Dec/Jan boundary.
What else are we working on?
There are some pretty handy changes to the way that websites can be built coming up over the next few months. Of course we’re ensuring that all existing Pearl sites are not affected. The new features are going to make it much easier to build a site from scratch, and also make it easier to manage templates and themes, as well as ecommerce widgets such as “featured items”.
Configurable import export for data
The existing product and contact import/export systems are being stretched to the limit, but it’s ok since we’re just about finished building a completely new, fresh and configurable set of import/export tools. You can already export any report from the Report Centre to Excel or PDF.
Synchronisation with Google calendars
Pearl is full of events that can be synchronised with Google calendars, which in turn can by synced with your iPhone, Outlook, iCal etc. This is still in test phase – we’ll be shouting about it properly when it arrives.
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