What's New with Q? February 9, 2012

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Justin Lund
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Atrium Subscription Billing System

The big change in this release is that ShootQ's subscription billing engine has been rewritten and moved to Atrium. While this probably isn't exciting to you, it is to us, becuase it lays the foundation for Nimbus premium themes! Nonetheless, the billing system has been improved to serve you better, which will hopefully make you (and even better your accountant) happy. Learn more in the Knowledgebase Article.

Nimbus Updates

  • We've dropped categories for tags. Why? Tags are more flexible; you can add multiple tags to posts, search with multiple tag terms. Having just tags makes things simpler and easier to understand.
  • Applying tags to galleries also tags the images. This will help users find individual images more easily and quickly, and saves you time in tagging images.
  • We've added support for theming public areas of ShootQ separately from Nimbus. For customers who have already tried Nimbus and their public area is "frozen," we will enable this feature in waves over the course of February.

ShootQ Updates

  • Tired of typing in addresses when taking payments in ShootQ? Now we will pre-populate the fields with the customer's address!
  • Failure messages for credit card payments have been vastly improved, so you know exactly why a card isn't working. No more cryptic errors!
  • We have made it easy for you to send an automated customizable thank-you email to your customers when they make an online payment.

Happy Q'ing!

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12 Comments

Date Votes
  • 0
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    David Medina

    Yes, I second Sara. We need Paypal to play better with ShootQ.

  • 0
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    Michael Hanlon

    I third that. Paypal integration would rock.

    That being said in the meantime I am going to have my webguy create a page on my website and use the paypal code to create my own checkout page.

  • 0
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    Phil Stefans

    I'm in the trial period, and I love ShootQ, but payment processing is a big factor that will determine if I keep using it. Being an Australian user, we haven't got access to the online merchants listed with ShootQ, so I'd like to be able to rely on using Paypal... please look into this!

  • 0
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    Phil Stefans
    Thanks David, i did see that but i got the impression that it just sets a link to a third party site and would effectively leave the client at the paypal login screen....does it take any data over with it (payment amount etc)? I was looking for something a little integrated...i want a fairly seamless client experience from that perspective... I love the workflows and the record keeping of ShootQ, and certainly dont mind having to manually record payments of invoices...the only two factors id like to see added are Paypal integration and an ipad app with contract signing capability or at least being able to generate a pdf file with signing boxes, as opposed to typing in names...if they add that capabilty theyll be receiving money from me for a long time to come...
  • 0
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    David Medina
    Phil, you can add any payment processor as a third party external link. It will send the client to where you want him/her to go to pay. What it won't do is to automatically register the payment in Shootq when done. You have to do it manually. I use PayPal standard and it would be great if it had a 100% integration but still, ShootQ is so useful that even without it I still use it (since 2008). I have look at many other solutions and while they are also great the miss some very important functionality. ShootQ was and is really well thought out to the industry best practice.
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    David Medina
    Yes, you are correct. That is what it does. And I agree with you, it would be great to be able to do what you suggest. I and many others have been asking for a better integration with PayPal standard. I, like you, can only use PayPal standard. Not only would be a better client experience but will also liberate us from repetitive admin task of receiving payments manually. My point was that I have look at every other system out there, I have consider the ones that offer those features, but found them lacking in other areas more essential. ShootQ has become too essential on my business that even without those things you mention is worth every penny. To mention a few, Automatic invoices, lead tracking, workflows and automatic emails, online bookings. ShootQ is my administrative assistant and bill collector.
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    Phil Stefans

    Thanks for your help mate, I think I'll just put a message on the invoice payment message page to ask people to email me for a link to pay the invoice via credit card, and I'll just send thru a payment request from Paypal for them. A little cumbersome but it'll have to do for now. 

    Yeah I had a look at a few other systems, even downloaded a few, but ShootQ seemed easiest to set up, and I've loved what I've seen so far...just the paypal and the ipad thing are my only issues...

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    Caroline Robert

    For those who want to use Paypal Standard there is a way to have it semi automated. Use the third party option in shootq by creating a "Make a Payment" page on your website. Use paypal button creator to make the HTML to have a "Pay Now" button. The trick is to leave the item price field blank so that the customer has to enter the price they owe once they are redirected to paypal. 

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    Tim Skrastins

    Thanks for letting us customize thank you e-mails to customers!

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    Mindy Belcher

    I, too, am really happy we can customize a response when clients make a payment.

    However, I have to say that I am sorry to see that in this update that there were so few improvements in ShootQ in general -- we are ASKING for them.  There are almost 500 requests from photographers.  Some have been implemented, but really only quite a small percentage.

    I was told that this in this update  that you were going to address some of the issues, such as being able to set up multiple invoices on the same day each month etc.

    Can you give us some insight as to why things that we are requesting are not being acknowledged or addressed?

    Thanks,

    Mindy

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    David Medina

    "We have made it easy for you to send an automated customizable thank-you email to your customers when they make an online payment."

    Much welcome. Thanks!

    Keep up the great work!

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    Sara Lamond

    Only wish I could enable online payments - can't use paypal and google checkout is not an option for your international users.  Seriously shootq - maybe you don't like paypal but a lot of your customers do!  And it is the ONLY option for us.

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