Kickserv changelog kickserv.com

Xero has recently updated their Terms of Service. This has required us to make some changes to Kickserv's Xero integration. Starting on the 14th of December, 2022, until further notice, new connections to Xero will be disabled. Existing active connections to Xero will be maintained and can continue syncing to Kickserv, so if you currently use Xero, you should not be impacted--with one exception.

Because of the way Xero’s API connection works, if you are using the Xero integration, you must sync at least once every 100 days in order to maintain the connection. If you do not sync every 100 days, your Xero connection will expire, and the integration will no longer operate. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Please reach out to our Success Team with any further questions.

New

Just in time for the holidays, we've added a new payment option. Unexpected jobs can break your customer's budget, and credit card interest rates don't always suit big purchases. Your customers can now cover those large or unexpected jobs with help from Klarna! Adding installment plans as a payment option can boost your close rate by over 40%, as well as increasing your average purchase price.

Setting up your Kickserv account to accept financed payments could not be easier. If you have Customer Payments set up, you'll see a new option in your Customer Payments settings:

Just like the setting says, you can either leave the Financed Payments option disabled, enable it for all payments, or enable it only for payments above a specified amount. **Note that Klarna is not yet supported on every currency--only USD, EUR, DKK, GBP, NOK, and SEK are available. If you choose a Stripe currency other than one of these, you'll see a message that Financed Payments are not available for that currency.

Once you've enabled Financed Payments, customers paying through the Customer Center or via payment request will see the option to apply for financing through Klarna. Here it is in action:

-ust like a credit card payment, funds are transferred into your Stripe account up front with fees deducted, and Klarna collects the financed payments from your customer. Klarna's merchant rates vary from country to country, but in most cases are comparable to a credit card payment.

Read more on Stripe's Klarna integration

Get started with financed payments today and give your customers more payment choices!

New

We recently announced changes to the way the Kickserv Contact Form works. Read the original update here). In order to simplify service, we’ve combined our existing contact form with a newer, more flexible form. The new form creates booking requests directly in your company’s inbox and provides an immediate way to get the conversation going. We just deployed one of the last pieces of that puzzle.

What this means for you: In addition to creating booking requests where our users can engage their customers in conversation, there’s an option added to directly create the booking request as an unscheduled opportunity.

Lastly, the old form is being retired, so we encourage anyone who currently has it embedded in their website to update to the new link that will be provided. This link can be found in the Contact Form panel of the Customer Center & Contact Form settings.

Mobile

Improvement

We just dropped an update to the Kickserv mobile app. Lots of fixes and improvements to share with you:

• Added an option to save your account identifier and username on the login screen
• Improvements to the Files drawer
• Click-to-Call now works again for Google Pixel devices
• Job charges no longer display as taxed when they shouldn't be
• Payment logging now behaves more consistently
• GPS updates now behave more consistently
• Buttons have been made more accessible for certain devices
• Several other bug fixes and stability improvements

If you don't have your mobile devices set to automatically install app updates, be sure to grab this one from your App Store of choice.

New

From the "well, that was a no-brainer" department…

From the Settings screen, click Document Settings, and then click the Invoice tab. You'll see a new option under Payments:

Check this box (and don't forget to click the Update document settings button!) and you will no longer have to explicitly mark an invoice as paid once it has a payment and its balance is zero; it'll get marked paid automatically. This will happen whether the payment is an online credit card payment, is logged manually, or is added from QuickBooks™ or Xero and then synced to Kickserv. Note: this will not affect any existing invoices--only ones that you create from this point on.

We know, we really should have done this long ago. Hope it's worth the wait!

New

QR codes are everywhere now. Restaurants put them on tables so you can read their menu on your phone. Businesses put them on flyers. You can even scan one to send money (but you should probably check to make sure it isn't going to Nigeria first).

How'd you like your very own QR code for your business?

This one goes to the Contact Form for one of our demo businesses--you can scan it with your phone and see for yourself. To get your own code, look in Settings > Customer Center & Contact Form and click the QR Code tab.

Clicking the Download button underneath the code will save it to your computer.

So once you have the code, what then? Well, you can put it anywhere you want. Print a bunch of copies and put them in mailboxes. Stick it on the side of your truck (you could have it printed on a magnet if you like). Pin it to a bulletin board. Add it to your Facebook page. Even post it on a billboard. The sky's the limit. Wherever you put it, potential customers can scan the code and go right to your Contact Form to request service, directly from their mobile device.

How are you going to use your QR code? Let us know!

New

Do you have a piece of information you need to add to every invoice or estimate? Like, say, a contractor license number, a tax ID, or something else that you're required by industry regulations to display on all your customer-facing documents? You could use the Notes or Terms fields for this, but what if you need to display that license number in a more prominent location, or you use a custom document template?

If this applies to you, we added a new field that should help you out: the Company Identifier field. You'll find it in Settings > Company Information.

This is a free-form text field--that's internet-nerd lingo for "put anything you want in here, as long as it's 30 characters or less". And since we don't know what exactly you're going to use that field for, you'll want to include a descriptive label for it. Something like:

License #86-75309

or maybe

Tax ID: 123-45-6789

or even

Favorite Ice Cream: Pistachio

You could even double up:

Dogs: Good, Cats: Evil

If you enter text in that field, Kickserv will include it on all your estimates & invoices, right underneath your billing address, like so:

If you want to put it somewhere different, you can do that too. That's where our custom document templates come in.

New

Mobile

Just in time for the holidays, we bring you our biggest mobile app update in quite awhile! Read on for the details:

Onboarding

You can now set up your Kickserv account from the mobile app and get started right away once you sign up and install it. You don't even need a computer!

First, we'll ask you for some basic information about your company. Then you'll add a couple of products or services if you haven't done that already.

Don't worry, you can always edit them later, or skip this step entirely. Revisit these settings anytime in Account settings on the main "three dot" menu.

Note: some owner or admin users of older accounts with products and services already added may be directed to the items screen on first launch. If this is you, you can safely skip this screen and you will not be asked again.

Payment requests

Payment requests have been a total game-changer in the Kickserv web application, so we're bringing them to mobile. You can send a payment request right on the spot when the job's done, and the customer can pay you from their phone without handing over a credit card. Get paid up to twice as fast as check--or even faster, with our new Instant Payouts option.

Geofencing

Ever forget to start tracking your time when you get to a job site? The Kickserv app can remind you when you get there and remind you to clock out when you leave. Say goodbye to inaccurate time entries.

Customer files

We brought customer files to your mobile device. No more digging around for that photo the customer sent you--it's in the palm of your hand in the Files section of the customer screen.

Tags

At last, you can see and manage tags for your jobs and customers in the mobile app.

New help system

We've brought our all-new help system, powered by Zendesk, to mobile. Search for and read help articles, and even chat with our support team, without leaving the app.

Bug fixes and other things

• Fixed various issues with technicians not being able to see job assignments and tags
• Fixed a bug that prevented a clocked-in user from automatically clocking out of a deleted job
• Fixed an error saving a contact with no address

Mobile

New

If the majority of your customers prefer not to receive invoice and estimate notifications by text, you can now turn this off by default. Check the new setting at the bottom of the Estimate Messaging and Invoice Messaging settings tabs.

Improvement

Whenever we release a new feature or a significant change to the way Kickserv works, we post the details to our changelog so you can read about it. Unfortunately, the changelog was kind of hard to find—you had to find the link in the old help popup, and then you had to click on it to see if there was anything new. So we made some tweaks.

We added a Changelog item to the Profile menu at the bottom of the main navigation (that's the one with your picture and name). When there are unread posts in the changelog, you'll see a little badge next to the navigation, like so:

When you click on it, naturally, you'll be taken to this changelog, where you can read about all the stuff we've been up to lately.

As you can see, we also moved the Feedback and Help links into this menu, to bring them a little more front-and-center, and because the footer at the bottom was getting pretty full (you never know, we might need to put a link to our TikTok down there one day).

Hope this helps keep you in the loop.