The eagle eyed amongst you all will have noticed a number of handy new features in your Pearl account. Here’s a summary of what’s new:

Contacts

The default credit limit and credit terms for new contacts is now defined by the settings in your main company contact. To edit this, visit Setup – Options – Defaults, and click the blue link.

Import all your contacts from Outlook with the import wizard. Outlook has some funny characteristics that has meant that we’ve had to put a lot of work into this feature – if your data throws up a hiccup, let us know. Always tag imported contacts so that you can identify them later!

You’ll have spotted that Groups are now Tags – expect to see the Tag concept rolled across the rest of Pearl in the near future. You can batch add and remove tags using the options in the left hand side of the CRM screen.

Batch email – to send an email out to a number of contacts, use the batch email feature in the left hand side of the CRM screen. This does use email credits, from 0.6 pence each. You can also use the more powerful email marketing features, which will soon have full stats and analysis in place.

Batch process for large numbers of contacts – gone is the threshold of 750 contacts … you can now choose to perform an action on a much larger group of contacts without having to display them all on screen first. There’s a handy little “display/perform” menu in the advanced search filter on the CRM screen

Sales and Invoicing

We’re pleased to say that the new PDF system that we put in place a few weeks ago is proving much better, and has resolved the issue of failing PDFs. All PDFs now go out with a “view online” link – which will introduce your customers to your web portal, which will mean that they (hopefully!) go to get information themselves rather than hassle you for re-prints, statements and so on.

If you want to give your customers the ability to pay their invoices online, you need to set up one of the following payment methods: PayPal, Protx (now SagePay), Secure Trading.

Credit card payment – you can take card payments from customers from within your Pearl account – visit the Setup – Payment screens in your admin area for a full walk through on setting up the Secure Trading console.

Accounting

Whilst entering quick invoices, you can quickly add a new customer or supplier without leaving the invoice entry screen – look for the link on the right hand side of the screen.

Any of your nominal codes can now be set as a “bank account” – change your settings in the Chart of accounts setup screens.

You can export your Chart of Accounts by using the Export Trial Balance, with “include zero balance” ticked. Handy if you are setting up multiple Pearl accounts and want each of them to have the same chart of accounts.

Lock accounts to one user – very handy for your accountant to lock the accounts for their exclusive access whilst you continue to enter transactions on a day to day basis. Have a look at the Accounts – Setup – Year end screen.

Products

You can now add up to 15 sub products in a bundle – it was just 6 before.

If you want, you can edit the value of stock in your stock table, using the Products – Stock – Stock report screen.