I would like to start this post off by first putting to rest the rumors that Pencil’em is opening a bar.   It’s just not true.  We did however add “The Pencil’em Bar” as a new feature to our application interface.  The Pencil’em Bar was built to give you direct access to some cool new site features.  The Pencil’em Bar gives you access to quick info like the number of appointments you have on the selected day, and how much money you are expected to make on the selected day. From the main scheduling page, simply click on a date and you will now see how many appointments, and how much money you are supposed to make that day.  Next to these details you will find a link to the most current blog post.  This should make it very easy for you to see when new company blogs are released.

We’ve got a lot of things planned for the Pencil’em Bar in the future so keep your eyes open (and on the blog!).  Client self booking will be released soon, and The Pencil’em Bar will play a part in this new feature.  Below is a screen shot outlining some of the features of The Pencil’em Bar:

The Pencil'em Bar

This has been a long requested feature, and we are proud to announce that we have added this feature to all Pencil’em accounts.  There is good reason for the delay in rolling this feature out, and it is largely due in part to the way Pencil’em users create their services.  In talking with our users, we discovered that many of you didn’t want the service listed in the reminder emails, or wanted to be able to control which services would appear in the emails and which wouldn’t.  So we have now built this into the system and with a quick set up, you can select which services you would like to appear in your reminders and confirmation emails.

Add Services to reminder / confirmation emails

1. First, navigate to the “Services” page in the main menu.
2. Click on the first Service in your service list that you would like to make appear in the confirmation / reminder email
3. Click on the “Edit this Service” button and the Edit Service dialog form will appear.
4. You will notice there is now a new drop down menu labeled “Display in Emails?”, by default this will be set to No, so change it to “Yes”.
5. Click “Save Changes” on the dialog box to save the changes.
6. Repeat the above steps for each service you want to be made public (show up in confirmation / reminder emails).

The above steps are for services that have already been created.  If you are creating a new service, the process is the same, however you would just specify wether or not it should appear in the emails at the time of creation.

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So you going out of town, planning a trip, or just simply don’t want to be scheduled on a particular day.  There is now a simple way to block out an entire day so that you won’t be scheduled.  Just follow the instructions below:

Pencil’em Desktop:

1. Select “<Personal Time>” from the “Select Client” drop down menu item.
2. From the “Personal Time” drop down menu item, select “Entire Day” to signify you would like to block out the entire day.  At this point the “Select Time” menu settings will disappear since the entire day will be blocked out, there is no need to specify the start time.
3. Continue on to add your Appointment Label and any neccessary notes.
4. Click the “Create Personal Time” button and the personal appointment will be scheduled.  It will appear in your daily view as a personal appointment starting at 12:00 am and lasting 24 hours.  You can still book other appointments on this day, however you will need to confirm the booking conflict.

Pencil’em Mobile:

1. Click on “Schedule” to access the scheduling page.
2. Click on “Personal Appointment” in the secondary navigation bar.
3. Set the Date you would like to block out.
4. You can skip the “Start Time” as this will be an all day appointment, and the start time will be automatically set for you.
5. From the “Length” drop down menu select “Entire Day”.
6. Add a label and notes and click “Schedule”.

We are working to unify the look of our main scheduling page, and have upgraded a few components to give them a fresher look.  They still function in the way your are used to, they just look a bit different.  Below you can see what the new Client Quickview looks like.  A simple pop up box will appear when clicking the “Client Quickview” icon.  This new box replaces the old popup box that would appear in the middle of the screen.

New Client Quickview

To close the Client Quickview popup, simply click the “Close” button located at the bottom of the quickview box.

We’ve reworked the way recurring appointments work (in look and function).  In the past, the recurring appointments would automatically schedule recurring appointments for one year.  After receiving feedback from our users, we’ve found that many users book appointments in chunks, like 3 – 4 months at a time.  In this case, the system would create appointments for one year, when they really only needed recurring appointments for 3 or 4 months.

Clicking the “Recurring” button on the scheduling page now brings up a small pop up box (see the image below) and you can specify the Appt. Frequency (how often the appointment recurs IE every 2 weeks) and the Appt. Duration (this is how long the appointment should recur for, IE 4 months).  So, if you select “2″ for Appt. Frequency and “4″ for Appt. Duration the appointment would be scheduled every 2 weeks for the next 4 months.

It’s a simple change, but one that makes the recurring functions even more flexible.

New Recurring Appt. box