We have been very busy over the last month improving our product, we have 57 new improvements coming your way.

As well as tons of minor improvements the headline features are the ability to customise email templates in Accounts, Bookings and Allotments. and along with this we have continued to improve bookings app, with the ability to book multiple venues within the same booking.

Email Templates

Email deliverability improvements

Before we jump into the templates, we have made improvements to the reliability of our email sending. We have done this by using a separate email platform for the Scribe applications and our internal systems. Given this, we are no longer required to include unsubscribe links. We have made a few other tweaks and process improvements, which improve the reliability of emails reaching a users inbox.

Templates

Within all Scribe applications, we make it easy for Clerks and council staff to email their customers or suppliers without leaving Scribe.  We currently support email in the following areas:

• Accounts - payments, receipts, invoices and purchase orders
• Bookings - Enquiries and actual bookings
• Allotments  - waiting list, tenants, inspections and notices
• Cemetery - coming soon

Our customers love this feature, but they often ask to change the text and format of the emails, including adding attachments.  This is now possible, we have a “Templates” menu option under the CRM menu.  This is where you will have access to all the System templates, and you can edit them and change them to your needs.

‍

Whats more, the template editor has some additional features.

Rich-text editor

You will get access to a toolbar, which provides access to standard document editing tools, such as:

• Text formatting
• Listing with numbers and bullets
• Inserting and editing tables
• Embedding images

Merge tags 

The templates support dynamic content, which is a bit like mail merge on Microsoft word.  You have access to merge tags related to the record (like invoice data), and also general data, such as your council address (stored in your council profile).

‍

Attach files

Depending on the record type, you can also attach further files to the email:

• Uploads - upload any file
• Invoice - attach the invoice of the related record (where relevant)
• Calendar - link a calendar invite (where relevant). The invite is in ICS format so will work with all calendar types.

‍

Preview your template

When you are happy with the changes to your template, you can then preview the template with real data, by selecting a live record. 

‍

Bookings App

We have made a number of changes to support councils who have larger venues and facilities.

Book multiple venues under the same booking

Previously you could only book one space per a booking.  This caused extra admin overhead for weddings, football clubs, and other big events which required booking multiple spaces within a large venue and/or grounds.  Booking Clerks would have to create multiple single bookings for each space, which resulted in multiple invoices. 

With this update, you can book multiple spaces under a single booking, and get a single invoice in Scribe Accounts.  If there are any changes required to that booking, you can make them all under a single record.  Much more straightforward and streamlined.

Assign administrators to Venues

Finally, we have added another feature for councils which have a larger number of bookable spaces.  Sometimes councils will have spaces which are physically in different parts of the town and hence will have different teams managing those spaces.  So to make sure the right staff are alerted when online bookings are made, we added the support of an admin email to be associated with each individual space.