Version 2009 Volume 1 New Features Guide

Note: Review this document for complete feature and system information details.

New Business Management Features

Dashboard Reporting:  StudioPlus’ new Dashboard reporting screen gives you tremendous control and flexibility in how you manage and report on your studio’s data.  The new Dashboard allows you to create standard reports that you can monitor on your Dashboard, or run them as a printable report, and drill-down into the individual numbers.

• Performance Reports:  A Performance Panel is designed to give you immediate feedback on how your studio is doing compared to your budgets (which are also known as your targets or your plan).   StudioPlus has two types of Performance Panels available to you – including Today’s Performance and Overall Performance.  

• Dashboard Reports: A Dashboard Report Panel has almost infinite reporting possibilities to give you visual feedback as to the performance of your studio.  These Report panels are highly customizable, giving you the ability to choose from multiple performance indicators, multiple ways to group your data, multiple date ranges, and multiple ways to visualize your data with different chart types.  These Reports can also be saved and recalled later from the main StudioPlus Report menu or viewed directly from the Dashboard.

• Create and Compare to Budgets: The added ability to create budgets, or targets, for virtually every number you want to track.  Create monthly budgets for total sales, receipts, session averages, even break them down by sales person, photographer, or session type.

Exclude Payment Methods from Reports: You can now choose which Payment Methods you want to exclude or include in reports, such as the Home Page Snapshot or the Dashboard Reports.  Go to the Maintenance - List Maintenance - Payment Methods screen to select the payment methods you want to exclude, such as Gift Certificates.

New Filtering Options: With the addition of more powerful reporting features, StudioPlus 2009 also includes more filtering options.  To create new filters go to Tools – Filter Builder.

• Payment Type Filters

• Appointment Type Filters

• Phone Call Type Filters

Client Since Date: This new field tracks when each lead becomes a client.  The date is automatically entered in when you create their first Session or Invoice Record.  For StudioPlus Users upgrading from 2008, this date will automatically update based on the date of each client’s first invoice or session record.

New Invoice Types: New invoice types have been added for any invoice created from a Session record.  The first invoice created from a session after the session is booked, will now default to “Initial Order”, indicating the initial print order placed.  Any subsequent invoices created form this session will default to “Reorder”, indicating that this invoice is not the initial order.  These new types replace the old “Print Order” invoice type. You can manually change these designations at any time.

These two new invoice types can only be assigned to Session-Based invoices.  Also, the “Generic” invoice type can only be assigned to Client-Based invoices.

Note: the Dashboard Report for “Average Initial Order” is based on this “Initial Order” invoice type.

Appointment Date Booked: StudioPlus now automatically tracks the date that you book your appointments.  This information is then used for reports, such as the Dashboard reporting.

Other New Features

StudioPlus Lite replaced by StudioPlus Standard: StudioPlus’ Lite Version has been phased out and replaced with StudioPlus Standard.  The feature set is substantially different.  StudioPlus Lite did not include any invoicing or payment tracking.  StudioPlus Standard does include invoicing and payment tracking, but other features previously available in the Lite version are no longer available in Standard, such as High School Senior/Organization features, Wedding features, advanced scheduling options, HTML Emailing or Triggers.  

StudioPlus Express Introduced: With the release of StudioPlus 2009, we have released a new product designed for new professional photographers called StudioPlus Express.  With many of the advanced features removed, this new product helps new photographers get up and running quickly.  

Note: StudioPlus Professional or Lite customers cannot “down-grade” their databases to StudioPlus Express.