The Pencil'em.com Blog

Make Pencil’em work for you

Greg — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 05:35:35 +0000

One of the key benefits of using Pencil’em is the way in which we will simplify scheduling and help you eliminate those annoying “no-shows” that just happen! But Pencil’em does so much more. Do you sometimes find yourself just sitting there with open blocks of time. Why not send an email blast to your “group” of Pedicure clients with a one day special for those open slots. Or do the same for those clients who haven’t been in for awhile (don’t worry, Pencil’em will quickly tell you who has been absent). Bottom line, you have to “market” your business, and Pencil’em is loaded with ways to get the job done! Stay tuned for more exciting ideas on how to grow your business and make more money using Pencil’em!

Pencil’em Mobile, give it a try!

Greg — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 05:20:20 +0000

In the hair and nail biz, we understand that many of you do tons of scheduling, but usually don’t have a computer in the work space. We also understand that pen and paper (or your book) are the norm for keeping track of your life! Pencil’em Mobile gives you, the independent operator, access to one of the most powerful tools in the industry and will dramatically simplify your life. Pencil’em Mobile unlocks the power of your cellphone and enables you to schedule, confirm and remind clients of upcoming appointments, all automatically, using only your cellphone! It will also provide you with a complete record of what you’re doing today, tomorrow or on any future date. Pencil’em will also help you eliminate all the calling, texting, and emailing that bogs you down throughout the day. You will also see a drop in the many calls you must take every day from clients who are just checking on appointment times and dates. If you’re not already using Pencil’em Mobile, we encourage you to take a look. You will be glad you did!

Sort clients by Last name

Greg — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 03:37:28 +0000

We’ve got a simple but useful new feature to tell you about today, and it involves how you view your client lists. By default, Pencil’em will sort your clients by First name, so “Amy Smith” would come before “Christine Jones” and so on. We’ve now added the ability to list your clients alphabetized by last name, which does a few things. It changes the way the lists are laid out, so instead of “Amy Smith”, it will now read “Smith, Amy”. Alphabetizing would then take place based on the last name so “Jones, Christine” would come before “Smith, Amy”. Once enabled, all client lists will use the new format. This includes the scheduling page (client drop down), the clients page (client list, and email clients), as well as Pencil’em Mobile.

To enable this feature, simply click “Settings”, then click “Appointment Settings” in the left hand navigation. You will see a new drop down menu for “Client Name Display”. Simply select “First” or “Last” name first. Simple as that!

Pencil’em Featured on NBC w/ Video

staff — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 21:26:32 +0000

We had a great time in the NBC Studios this morning. Alex Delgado hosts the daily show Central Valley Today and did a brief interview with Greg Goforth, creator of Pencil’em, along with a local Pencil’em Pro, April French. Somebody should have told Greg to relax and SMILE! He was nervous but had fun none the less. April gave some great insight to how beauty professionals can use Pencil’em and how it’s made her business better!

Pencil’em Creator featured on NBC

staff — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:25:58 +0000

We are excited to announce that Greg Goforth, the creator of Pencil’em Scheduling Software will appear on Central Valley Today with Host Alex Delgado on Friday, Nov. 20th at 11:00 am. Alex will be talking with Greg about Pencil’em as well as some cool new up and coming features. For those not in the Central Valley of California you can see the interview streamed from the KSEE 24 website at the web address below.

http://www.ksee24.com/programming/cvt

Bar Graphs, Line Charts and Earnings, Oh my!

Greg — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 23:51:42 +0000

Ok, silly blog titles aside, we’ve got some cool new features to tell you about today. It has always been the goal of Pencil’em to better the lives of our users by helping them build their own businesses and give world class tools at a very affordable cost. We are always looking for ways to better our software and one thing we saw as a problem in the beauty industry (especially to independent contractors) was the ability to easily see how much they make on a daily or monthly basis.

Lets take your taxes for instance. If you are using a book to manage your appointments, doing your taxes probably consists of flipping, page by page, through your appointment book and adding up each and every appointment. If you didn’t keep detailed records you are probably estimating the amount of money you made which can lead to inaccurate totals. There is a better way!

Today, we’ve rolled out several new reports that let you see the amount of money you have made, or are for casted to make. Come tax time all you will need to do is run the Earnings report to get exact, accurate, and detailed earnings for each month of the current year. If you run the detailed Earnings report you will be able to view an appointment register letting you see every appointment you performed for each month.

New Earnings Report

New Settings Screen

You will also notice that we have changed the way you access your account settings. You can now click the settings button from any page and you will get a drop down screen where you can update your password, phone number, username, email template, and logo. You will also see some cool new features here that allow you to see where you are in regards to your account set up (which is helpful to new users). As you start adding clients and services, and creating appointments you will see a cool set of graphs that give you quick stats regarding how many appointments you have per month (in line graph or Pie Chart), as well as monthly earnings at a glance.

New settings screen

The Pencil’em Bar

Greg — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 03:42:16 +0000

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

Pencil’em How-to: Add the Service name to reminder / confirmation emails

Greg — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 04:53:28 +0000

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

First, navigate to the “Services” page in the main menu.
Click on the first Service in your service list that you would like to make appear in the confirmation / reminder email
Click on the “Edit this Service” button and the Edit Service dialog form will appear.
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”.
Click “Save Changes” on the dialog box to save the changes.
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.

Pencil’em How-to: Block out an entire day

Greg — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 06:28:47 +0000

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:

Select “” from the “Select Client” drop down menu item.
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.
Continue on to add your Appointment Label and any neccessary notes.
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:

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

Client Quickview shows off a new look

Greg — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 21:30:13 +0000

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.