I wanted to take this opportunity to introduce myself and share some of the valuable features and functionality that the Product and Engineering teams have released in the last month.
I'm Mandy Anger, the new Director of Product Development here at Accelo. I joined about six weeks ago and it's been full speed ahead ever since. I came to Accelo with over a decade of deep product experience in SaaS companies from startup to enterprise. My home is Salt Lake City, Utah, where I am lucky enough to be surrounded by beautiful mountain ranges. As a member of the executive team, I also get to enjoy the other side of the Rockies as I work out of the Denver office each month.
The Product team is excited to start connecting with you, our users, more often and in more meaningful ways. As we kick off Q3 and start planning for Q4, we will be reaching out to get your feedback and use cases to ensure that we are solving the right problems for the most users in the most elegant ways. In fact, we would love to gather your feedback right now. The Product Team has created a survey for our users that will directly impact our roadmap for Q4 of this year, as well as create a foundation for the 2022 roadmap. We know your time is limited and valuable, so each user who completes the survey will be entered into a drawing for a $500 Visa gift card.
Now onto the product updates! In the past month, we have worked tirelessly on updates for our community to assure you and your team are always up to date on the latest and greatest! From Custom List improvements to a couple of fresh previews coming down the pipeline, there's plenty to be excited about!
We have more Custom List updates! For starters, links will now open in the same tab, making it easier to navigate. In addition, we're rolling out several highly requested column and filter additions including:
We're also hoping to have status progressions operating in our new lists as well - watch this space!
Next up is a new and quicker alternative to getting your regular Timesheet Summary Exports. Our default export option now excludes the rather clunky "Content" (Activity body) column from the "Summary export" option. This field alone naturally made exports 3x longer and 5x larger (100MB down to 20MB). By reducing the load, you'll be able to reliably get your exports much faster. Of course, if you do enjoy the activity body content, you can always select the detailed export option as needed.
Additionally, we have just shipped the inclusion of User Groups when filtering the Timesheet report by Staff!
This means reporting on the activity for any staff associated with that group, in a single click.
Changing the template on a quote is now more intuitive. You'll have the option to keep or replace each text area content in your quote using the Intro, Conclusion, and Terms and Conditions from the template.
From the mobile side of things, we are now introducing Document Scanning on iOS, which will go a long way for folks collecting receipts via our app. This will provide users with the ability to directly capture a document and attach it to an expense. A photo of your receipt attachment will be cropped and "flattened" into a readable document image automatically. Unlike the raw camera, there is no need for users to clean up those photo attachments.
Simply select "Add Receipt" on the Create Expense page in the iOS mobile app and select "Scan Document." This timely upgrade will take effect on all users on Accelo iOS version 4.17 and iOS 13 and up.
The Mobile Product Team is investigating the options with Android. We will provide an update on how we will solve document scanning on Android once we have a viable solution identified.
Finally, project managers will be ecstatic to learn that Bulk Margin/Markup Editing for Projects has also been released recently.
This improvement allows for bulk updating the margin/markup of un-invoiced materials. If the sale price for materials has to be updated, users can save time by applying a global change.
Users will no longer need to manually calculate the sale price to reflect the desired profit margin. As long as you have the correct permissions and Financial Visibility, you can address this by going to the Materials tab on any View Object page and clicking a button to commence a bulk edit.
We're creating priority levels for tasks with special icons to help you prioritize day-to-day work. We're also continuing to add more filter functionality into the heavily used timesheet report as mentioned above.
I am excited to be part of the Accelo family and we look forward to hearing how these updates work for you in our community.
