1. Changes to billing
2. Sending email from Pearl
3. Exploring the report centre
4. API information
5. One page checkout
6. Other updates

Web based software for growing businesses

Latest news from Pearl

Changes to the way we bill for your account

We’ve had a lot of feedback from users who are frustrated with the monthly popup screen, where you need to enter your card details each time. We agree. It’s hassle that nobody needs. From March 1st, we’re going to be introducing automated repeat billing, so that you just get your Pearl invoiced to you each month with minimum fuss. We’ll charge the same card, which you’ll need to enter in the same way as before just one more time.

We are of course fully PCI compliant, your card details are not stored anywhere on our system. We will be using SagePay for card processing, a side effect of which will be the ability for you to take card payments from your clients and customers from within the Pearl screens using your own SagePay account, in the same way that the Secure Trading integration works.

Sending batch email from Pearl

You all know that we integrate with MailChimp for volume email marketing. For smaller mail-outs, you can use the contact list screen to batch email. This works to a point, and does allow you to merge more fields than the firstname/lastname only that the Mailchimp integration supports. The thing with sending from the contact list screen is that the mail is sent from our servers on behalf of your email address, which increases the risk of the mail being spammed, and also increases the risk of our servers not delivering key emails like invoices and statements.

If you want to use the contact list screen for batch emails, then you’ll need to set up your Pearl account so that emails are sent via your servers over SMTP. We’re letting you know that from the start of March (sooner for new accounts), you will only be able to send batch emails from the contact list screen if you have an SMTP account configured. We have a new video to show you how to set up your SMTP.

Gmail supports SMTP – setting up Pearl for SMTP is a great way to get your outgoing emails appearing in your Gmail sent items.

Exploring the report centre, expenses and lead follow up

We’ve added a few more videos to our YouTube channel. If you’re just starting out with Pearl, or even if you’re a seasoned pro, it’s well worth having a look to see how you can get the most out of your system.

Updated link to our API information.

Last newsletter we invited you to sign up for our API, which will allow you to communicate with your Pearl database using other software. We got the link wrong! So here it is:

Click here to sign up for free developer news

Read our API documentation – you can get started today!

Pearl Web – the next phase : including one page checkout

So, as we mentioned before, the way that we handle Pearl websites is being updated. We’ve slipped a couple of weeks on this for various reasons, but one of the goodies that we’re going to be offering is a one page checkout process. This will only be supported on “phase 2″ websites, so get planning now if you want to be able to make use of the new features. It’s probably worth getting in touch with one of our design partners to see if they can upgrade your site for you:

Centation, Bristol

Glow Creative, Bristol

Do you know a web design company that would like to pick up some more work? Get in touch!

Other system updates to watch out for

Please make sure you earmark just a minute or two to have a look at the release notes on our website. It’s really good for you to know what’s happening. One update that we suggest you watch out for is the automatic selection of Tax codes when you are using the “create new entry” box in the bank statement matching screen.