Brightpearl has been selected for the .net magazine 2010 Best of the Web Awards in the “Web app of the year” category.

There are ten applications in the category with a definite emphasis on tools for web designers including sites that give information about web browsers, access to more fonts, free fonts, site building and quick site wire frame generation.

Two of the entries in the more business focused area are Wufoo and Mailchimp which are partner companies to Brightpearl.

Wufoo is a great tool for creating web forms and collecting information which can be fed into your Brightpearl contacts database. The forms can be on your Brightpearl web site or on any other site you control.

Mailchimp is an email marketing application which also integrates with the Brightpearl CRM features allowing you to seamlessly manage mailing lists from within Brightpeal and also get the benefit of the full feature set of the Mailchimp marketing tools.

These partner applications are great, that’s why we integrate with them, so we know this will be a tough competition to win.

If you are a user or just a fan of Brightpearl, help us out by going to the site and voting for us. It’s easy to do and you don’t need to vote in all the different categories.  The page loads with the Web App of the Year section open so just click on the Brightpearl radio button and then click the Submit button below all the other categories.

And while we are on the subject of voting, there is a site called KillerStartups.com where people vote on the web apps that they like. Brightpearl has just been added to their list so if you are in a voting mood, you can mosey over to KillerStartups and add a vote or comment.

Vote for Pearl Software in the Software Satisfaction Awards 2010!

The whole team at Pearl has been working hard to ensure that we continue to listen to what out customers want and to provide an excellent ongoing level of service. Well now is the chance to have your say!

Pearl has been nominated in two categories at the Software Satisfaction Awards 2010. Previous winners have included Salesforce.com and Smartpoint, with the focus of the awards having very much shifted to software-as-a-service (i.e. web-based software) and cloud services over the last few years.

If you believe that Pearl has given you access to excellent web-based capabilities as well as a high level of customer support, please complete the survey below (it should only take a minute of your time).

Thanks for your support and we look forward to continuing to support you. Click here to vote in both categories*

Pearl (Accounting and Finance)

Pearl (CRM and Customer Management)

The survey closes at 5.00pm on Wednesday 14 July 2010.

* The customer survey is very straightforward, with every entrant having their own unique survey. The survey consists of five simple questions, all on one screen.

Further to our post back in December about the VAT rate increases, we’ve made some changes to all our UK client accounts.

We originally thought that the automated rate change should be opt-in, ie all your items would stay 15% VAT unless you manually changed them yourself.

Even with blog posts and a direct email newsletter, we only had 9 people that wanted their products changed for them. OK, we thought, everyone is on the ball, they’ll take care of it themselves. Looking at the logs this morning, we see that lots of you are still selling items at 15% vat. You can’t do this now that the rate has changed!

The repercussions of having lots of incorrect sales on your system would be a bigger headache than having to tweak your prices, so we’ve updated all T5 15% items to be T1 17.5%. This means that your gross prices (including tax) have gone up by about 2%, but your net (ex tax) prices have not changed.

If you want to update your prices, use the powerful spreadsheet import tools in Pearl. If you’re running on the latest version, you can use the data manager, otherwise use the price list import tool.

Multiply your current net prices by 0.9787 to keep your gross price the same as it was before.

Pearl is now even easier to use.
Web based accounting and CRM in one system. Anywhere, anytime.

One company using Pearl Office is Doug Richard’s School for Startups, the leading provider of business training for entrepreneurs in the UK. Doug’s team work in several offices and spend a lot of time on the road, so Pearl allows all of the team to access information about their contacts (such as customers, partners or suppliers) and manage their money when out and about. “Most small businesses take little advantage of the software that they have, usually because it is difficult to use. Pearl is the newest, freshest and most simple Accounting and CRM package available on the web.” Doug Richard, BBC Dragon’s Den.

One of the best things about web based software is that we can listen to what users need, and react faster than traditional installed systems. Currently we’re releasing improvements about once every 3 months (see the recent post about the upcoming mods).

To have your say, click Help : Feedback from within your Pearl account to reach our Uservoice forums where you can suggest and vote on what you’d like to see.

Pearl on Uservoice

We’ve updated our uploader script – for your product and template images, website CSS files and media content.

If you don’t run your website in Pearl yet, have a look at the features here. We do everything from B2B portals through to event booking and ecommerce.

Upload images and CSS files

Cloud Computing (also known as Software as a Service) has heaps of benefits, one of which is cost. There is no need to buy expensive software or worry about keeping up to date with the latest version upgrades. All you need is a computer (PC or Mac), a web browser and an internet connection. There is nothing to install and you can be started in minutes.

Last week we launched a series of free online web seminars nicknamed the Pearl “Wednesday Webinar“.  They run at 11:00 (BST British Summer Time) every Wednesday and are aimed to give business owners/managers the chance to find out how cloud computing can save them time and money. The first one was a hit – read the reviews here – so make sure you see our events calendar to see what topics we are covering in the coming weeks.

To join the webinar, all you need to do is register, grab a coffee and sit back.

This week we are looking at how to take complete control over your products, purchasing & stock… all in the same system as you handle E-commerce, till-point and telephone sales.

Traditionally, a system that does all this would normally cost a small fortune. Cloud technology allows us to provide small businesses with the systems to compete with their bigger competitors and make a name for themselves. After all, it was during previous downturns that several household names appeared…

• Ryanair bought a fleet of jets during an aviation downturn.
• Apple Computers demonstrated to the world that it can innovate during downturn when it launched its iPod in 2002.
• Google who introduced cost-per-click (CPC) advertising in 2001

During tough times, most companies may stifle the innovation culture, but each of these successful companies adopted a ‘different’ approach.