Light Blue Changelog

What's new in Light Blue 7.0.0

Jan 5, 2018

Improved email options:
Subscribers can now send emails via Light Blue, and make use of great features like HTML formatting and being able to schedule emails to be sent in the future. You can also send emails directly to your Light Blue account, which makes it really easy to keep a copy of all of your clients’ correspondence linked to their records in Light Blue.
Charts:
Light Blue’s reporting features have been enhanced with a new Charts section, which allows you to generate insightful reports that help you to grow your business in just a couple of clicks.
Multiple brands for forms, contracts, and online invoices:
Your client portal can now include multiple brands, allowing you to use different formatting and branding options for your forms, contracts, online invoices, and emails.
More customisation options:
Light Blue’s detail views are more customisable than ever, and you can simplify them even further to show just the information that’s relevant to your business.
And much, much more:
Behind the scenes there are thousands of tweaks and refinements to make Light Blue faster, better and more intuitive. You can read the full release notes here, and we’ve gathered together the video tutorials that cover Light Blue 7’s new features into a convenient group for you.
A free upgrade for all of our subscribers:
Subscribers to Light Blue’s online services can update to Light Blue 7 by using the ‘Check For Updates’ command within the Light Blue desktop app.
If you already have a Light Blue licence, but don’t subscribe to our online services, the best way of upgrading to version 7 is to add a subscription. As well as being able to upgrade for free, subscribers have access to Light Blue’s most popular features, including our online contract signing service, forms, online invoices, and our new email features.
Charts:
Light Blue’s reporting features have been enhanced with a new Charts section, which allows you to generate insightful reports that help you to grow your business in just a couple of clicks. They’re really quick and easy to use, and give you an intuitive understanding of how each part of your business is performing.
Improved email sending:
You can now send emails via Light Blue, and make use of great features like HTML formatting and being able to schedule emails to be sent in the future.
Emails that you send via Light Blue are automatically saved to the Activity panel of the record that you sent it from, which helps you to keep a complete history of all of your dealings with your client together in one place. You can use a variety of HTML formatting options within the emails that you compose in Light Blue, and the emails that you send can also have your client portal branding applied to them.
Send emails directly to your Light Blue account:
Emails can now be sent to your Light Blue account, which removes the need for importing them from Mail (on a Mac) or Outlook (on Windows).
Each Light Blue account has a unique email address (e.g. [email protected], you can find your account’s unique email address in the ‘Email’ section of the Preferences window) and any email sent to that address will be automatically imported into your account. Records from the main sections in Light Blue also have their own unique email address (which you can get via the options menu on each record’s Activity panel), and any email sent to this address will be automatically linked to that record. You can forward an email from a client to this address to import a copy of the message into Light Blue, and any emails sent from Light Blue will automatically include your unique email address in the reply-to header so replies from your clients will come back to both your normal email address and your Light Blue account.
Multiple brands for forms, contracts, and online invoices:
Your client portal can now include multiple brands, allowing you to use different formatting and branding options for your forms, contracts, online invoices, and emails.
Scheduled sending of text messages:
Text messages can now be scheduled to be sent in the future, allowing you to set up reminders in advance or prepare a campaign to be sent out at a specific time.
Sending text messages via a dedicated phone number:
Text messages can now be sent via a dedicated phone number. This is particularly helpful for customers in countries that aren’t supported by our existing text messaging service (e.g. the USA and Canada) because it’s available in a wider range of countries. You’ll rent a dedicated phone number from us, and any text messages that you send from Light Blue will come from that number. Replies will be imported into Light Blue’s Inbox, and you can also have them forwarded to your own phone.
Shoot tags:
You can now apply your own customisable tags to Shoot records, and use those tags to quickly find a batch of records.
More customisation options:
Light Blue’s detail views are more customisable than ever, so you can simplify them even further to show just the information that’s relevant to your business.
We’ve also added new types of custom fields (custom text fields can now be turned into single line fields, paragraph fields, comboboxes, or checkboxes) and added an option to move your custom fields into their own tab to free up valuable space in the Shoots and Contacts sections.
Trash:
We’ve added a trash can feature to Light Blue where, instead of being deleted immediately, records from the main sections in Light Blue are moved to the trash. This gives an opportunity to restore those trashed records if you realise that you made a mistake.
Record duplicating and merging:
We’ve made Light Blue’s helpful ‘Duplicate Record’ command more handy by promoting it to the toolbar, so whenever you want to create a new record that’s similar to an existing one (e.g. setting up a new price list or form) then you can save yourself a load of typing by using this feature. We’ve also add a record merging tool that can help you out when you realise that you’ve accidentally ended up with duplicate contacts, bookings, etc. Light Blue’s record merging tool allows you to quickly combine the useful information from a pair of records.
64-bit support for macOS:
The macOS version of Light Blue 7 is now a 64-bit application, which should ensure that it continues to run well on future versions of macOS that reduce support for 32-bit applications.
Forms:
You can now add checkbox fields to forms. Custom fields that have been set up to display as a checkbox in Light Blue will automatically display as a checkbox on your forms, and you can also add miscellaneous checkbox fields.
You can now add popup menu fields to forms. The shoot ‘Location’, ‘Enquiry Source’, ‘Referral Source’, and custom fields can be displayed as popup menus in your forms by supplying a list of the options that you want to include in the menu. You can also add miscellaneous popup menu fields to your forms.
Form fields can be hidden, by supplying a default value that will be imported into Light Blue when the form is imported. This can be applied to the shoot ‘Location’, ‘Enquiry Source’, ‘Referral Source’, and custom fields.
You can customise the ‘Submit’ button’s text for your forms.
Each form template can now have its own ‘thank you’ URL, which is used to take your client to the specified page when you use the form as a contact form.
You can make clients confirm their email address by forcing them to type it twice into forms.
Name fields in the contact sections on your forms are now optional.
Shoot type menus on forms can default to “Select a type” to make your client pick something rather than just go with whatever your default is.
When you’re adding a form to a shoot, you can now see which contacts will be included for each contacts section. This is a handy way of checking, for example, whether you’ve correctly labelled the bride and groom for a form that includes a ‘Wedding Couple’ section. We’ve also made it more obvious when a contacts section doesn’t include any matching contacts.
We’ve added customisable versions of the %ContractURL%, %FormURL%, and %InvoiceURL% tags that you use in the emails that are sent when you publish a contract, form, or invoice. You can now specify your own custom link text (e.g. %ContactURL:Please click this link to open your contract%) and you can also specify a button that has the same styling as the submit button in your client portal (e.g. by using %ContractURLButton%, or %FormURLButton:Click here to open the form%).
We’ve removed the automatic “preamble” text from the email we send you when someone fills in one of your public forms, to make the preview that appears in email apps more useful.
We’ve added an optional email template that can be used to send a customised acknowledgement email to the ‘Main Contact’ of a contact form.
Submitted forms can now be printed from the Activity panel
Contracts:
Requiring a drawn signature (as well as a typed one) is now optional for contracts and contract templates.
We’ve added a %ContactSignatoryFullNameAddress% mail-merge tag.
Calendar:
We’ve added an option to the Day view, which allows you to split your calendar into one column per resource. This is particularly helpful for businesses with multiple photographers, rooms, etc, who want to easily see which times are booked up for each resource.
The ‘All-Day’ part of the Day and Week views automatically resizes depending on the number of all-day events.
The currently selected event is now more obvious.
Enquiries are now more distinct from confirmed bookings.
Days that aren’t part of the current month are more obvious in the Month view.
The calendar can now be filtered by shoot type and appointment type.
Displaying events from macOS calendars is now opt-in, to avoid confusion from newcomers who might think that they’re seeing duplicate events if they’re publishing events from Light Blue to a calendar on their Mac.
Improved loading speed if you’re displaying lots of events from your macOS calendars.
Appointments, time off, and calendar notes can now be duplicated from the calendar or Home screen.
Added a “Personal” category to time off.
Calendar feeds:
You can now create calendar feeds that only show that you’re busy, without including any details for the events. This is handy if you want to give someone a feed that they can use to see when you’re available, without giving them any confidential information.
You can now include Calendar Note records in your calendar feeds.
Shoots:
You can now import shoots (as well as contacts) into Light Blue. This is helpful if you want to import historical data into Light Blue when you’re first setting it up, but it’s also helpful for anyone who wants to import a set of leads into Light Blue as shoots rather than contacts.
Added an option to highlight shoots and appointments that are scheduled outside of your business hours, by colour-coding the event’s date and time. If the event clashes with another confirmed or unconfirmed event then that colour-coding takes priority, otherwise out-of-hours events are highlighted in purple on the Home screen, Shoot records list, and Activity panel.
You can now specify multiple default resources for your shoots, so that when you select a shoot type you can now have multiple staff, rooms, and equipment added to the shoot.
We’ve added a ‘Mark Found Shoots as Completed’ command to the Housekeeping menu, to help you keep the ‘Current Events’ list on the Home screen manageable.
When you add a member of staff to a shoot, the ‘Role’ field now defaults to the job title that you set up for that member of staff in the Preferences window.
Added a ‘Copy All Email Addresses’ command to the options menu on the Linked Records panel.
When cancelling a shoot, linked appointments are now cancelled instead of deleted. We’re also offering to delete scheduled emails and text messages that have yet to be sent.
Contacts:
We’ve added an optional ‘VAT Number’ field, which you can enable or disable in the ‘Finances’ section of the Preferences window. If it’s displayed, it appears on Contact, Quote, Sale, Purchase, and Payment records. When you link a contact to a Quote, Sale, Purchase, or Payment, their VAT number is copied across along with their name and address. If the VAT Number field is being displayed, it will also be visible on your printed records, and included in the ‘Export Financial Data’ and ‘Tax Report’ commands.
When an address is linked to more than one record, the number of linked records is displayed and you can use the options menu for that address to quickly find all of the records that share that address.
We’ve added options for including a contact’s notes, history, and to-do list in our built-in printing template.
Added a ‘Default Website Label’ preference.
Improved importing from the macOS Contacts app for contacts with company details.
Sales, quotes, and purchases:
We’ve added “A Different Percentage Of The Balance…” to the list of options for the ‘Create Sale’ button on Quotes.
We’ve added a ‘Calculate Net & Tax Amounts From Gross Total’ button to the purchase item editing dialog, as an alternative to typing in the net and tax amounts of the item separately.
Added an optional product code field to price lists, sale items, and quote items. You can enable this feature from the ‘General Preferences’ section of the Preferences window.
Added an optional production instructions field to sale and quote items. This is included in the new production order. You can enable this feature from the ‘General Preferences’ section of the Preferences window.
You can now track both the salesperson and photographer on Sale records. We’ve also added a new sample custom report called ‘Photographer Sales Performance’ that allows you report on each photographer’s sales. You can enable this feature from the ‘General Preferences’ section of the Preferences window.
Added an optional production order, which is a new built-in template that can be printed or saved as a PDF from a Sale record. You can enable this feature from the ‘Printing’ section of the Preferences window.
We’ve added an option to include a space for a client signature on invoices, production orders, and quotes. You can enable this feature from the ‘Printing’ section of the Preferences window.
You can now choose to include your client’s primary phone number and email address on our built-in invoice and quote templates. You can enable this feature from the ‘Printing’ section of the Preferences window.
Custom fields can now be included in our built-in invoice, quote, and receipt templates.
When you’re invoicing a sale, Light Blue now warns you if the invoice date is older than today, or older than your most recent invoice date (if that date is in the future).
You can now save a bespoke product from a sale or quote item to your price list.
You can now select a different email template when you’re setting up an invoice for online payment.
When you add a new contact to a purchase, we now default the Type field to “Supplier”.
We’ve changed the default VAT reporting period for Ireland to four months.
Added a method of bulk changing the Sale Status field to the Housekeeping menu. This is only displayed if you’ve enabled the Sale Status field.
Sale Status-related quick queries are no longer displayed if you haven’t enabled the Sale Status field.
Fixed a problem where, if the decimal separator is not set to ‘.’, applying credit to a sale would ignore the pennies.
When using the ‘Export Financial Information’ command, if the contact name is blank we now include the company name instead.
First name mail-merge tags (e.g. %SaleBillingFirstName%) now work when the name is a single word.
Activity:
You can now filter the Activity panel to show or hide specific types of activity.
The Task Manager can now be filtered by task category.
You can now reschedule a selection of tasks in the Task Manager to the same date.
Documents can be exported from the Activity panel.
We’ve added a ‘Bulk Delete Documents…’ command to the Housekeeping menu, which allows you to delete all documents with a particular file name from particular sections. This is helpful if you’ve mail-merged lots of large documents, and want to delete them to free up some disk space.
Inbox:
Added ‘Received in the last 3 months’ and ‘All received dates’ options to the filter menus.
The Inbox’s count of unprocessed items is no longer limited to items from the last 28 days, because you can now display items of any age in the Inbox.
The default action for emails and text messages in the Inbox is now to preview the message, instead of linking it to a record.
You can now create a new contact record from an email in the Inbox, as well as being able to add a new enquiry.
When you import a contact form submission that only includes contact details, Light Blue now gives you a choice between importing just the contacts or linking them to a new enquiry for you.
When you accept an online invoice payment via the Inbox, creating a Purchase record for the transaction fee is now optional.
We’re no longer creating the ‘Light Blue incoming emails’ folder in the macOS Downloads folder if you haven’t enabled importing emails from Mail.
Templates:
Added a link to our mail-merge documentation to the Contract Templates, Document Templates, Email Templates, and Text Message Templates sections.
Localisation:
All of the text that appears on forms can now be translated.
You can now specify the words that will be recognised by Light Blue for “weddings”, “bride”, and “groom”.
Other changes:
When you’re typing in a time field, Light Blue is better at preserving any minutes value that you’ve typed if you edit the hour.
Saved queries, custom reports, data exports, and import orders can now be renamed in the dialogs that you use to load and save them.
Improved the efficiency of the ‘Backups (Previous Versions)’ folder, by only keeping backups from the last five Light Blue upgrades.
The ‘Export Records’ dialog now remembers that last set of fields that you exported for each section.
Added a hidden feature to the ‘Export Records’ dialog, where holding the Alt key down while opening the dialog will export just the currently selected record.
Light Blue’s static web gallery generating features are now hidden by default, because we’re planning to remove them in a future version of Light Blue.
We’ve hidden our product workflows feature by default, because it’s not used by many customers and sometimes causes confusion to people who are new to Light Blue.
We’ve changed the default left margin for your clients’ details on invoices, quotes, and receipts. Hardly anyone seems to use windowed envelopes now, so we’re now defaulting the left margin of their name and address to match the rest of the invoice.
You can now specify a mail-merge template that will appear in the Print dialog for all sections, not just sales, quotes, purchases, and payments.
We’ve removed averages from most of the reports that are available in the Reports menu, because they often didn’t add anything useful.
Fixed a layout glitch that could cause the detail panel tabs to appear underneath other fields.
Added an email template export / import feature.
The ‘Export Records’ command is now renamed to ‘Export Single Record’ when you open the File menu with the Alt key held down, to make that hidden feature a bit more discoverable.
On Windows, saves that trigger an immediate data sync (i.e. the app isn’t already syncing or waiting to do a data sync) no longer suffer from a delay before reloading the saved record.
Added ‘Next’ and ‘Previous’ buttons to the template translation editing dialog.
Added a ‘Mark as Completed’ / ‘Mark as Uncompleted’ command to the Task Manager options menu.
On Windows, we’ve changed that way that Light Blue monitors its documents, template files, etc, for changes to make it more efficient. You shouldn’t notice any changes, apart from lower CPU and power usage.

New in Light Blue 6.2.2 (Jul 13, 2017)

New in Light Blue 6.2 (Apr 3, 2017)

When running a VAT report, the reporting period now defaults to the previous two months if you’re using Light Blue in Ireland.
Importing a ShootProof order now attempts to link to a matching Contact and Shoot record. We also store the email address and phone number provided by your client in the Sale record’s Notes field.
You can now import semicolon-delimited files in any situation where Light Blue is expecting a CSV file.
When importing purchases from a CSV file, we’ve improved our attempts to find a matching Contact record for the supplier by attempting to find a unique match for the supplier name instead of relying on a complete match for both the name and address. We’ve also fixed a bug that could make importing a CSV file that contains currency symbols fail.
You can now import a whole folder of ProSelect XML files via the Records menu.
On Windows, dialog windows would open on the main screen even when Light Blue is on a secondary screen. We’ve also made it so that, if you move the main window, preferences window, or background activity window onto a secondary screen then they will reopen in the same position when you next open them.
We’ve added a ‘Mark Found Shoots as Completed’ command to the Housekeeping section of the Records menu. This is helpful for anyone who wants to mark a whole batch of shoots as completed in one go.
The Housekeeping section of the Records menu and the cog menu in the Task Manager now allow you to delete all tasks that are overdue by more than a month, to assist anyone whose list of outstanding tasks has got too long to be useful.
The ‘Mark Stale Enquiries as Cancelled’ command in the Housekeeping section of the Records menu wasn’t working.
The way that quotes are displayed in the ‘Linked Records’ panel has been improved to prioritise displaying the quote’s status.
We’ve added support for using a proxy server to Light Blue. If you need to use a proxy server to connect to the internet, you can enter its details in the ‘General Preferences’ section of the Preferences window.
When printing a contact record, you can now include the contact’s history and to-do list.
When publishing an invoice for online payment, the email template is always reset to its default wording rather than reusing any modifications you have already made to that invoice’s email.
When you attempt to publish a contract where the reminder email settings aren’t valid, we now display a more helpful error message.
When editing a workflow, steps are now automatically deleted if they don’t contain a description.
When previewing a contract template, if there was an error syncing the template then the progress bar could fail to go away.
If you’re using Light Blue’s password protection feature, the currently logged in user is now recorded when you add a Document to the Activity panel of a record.
When running a tax report on a cash basis, the totals for your purchases are now displayed at the bottom of the list of purchases as well as at the top of the report.
Quote mail-merge tags can now be used in Form emails.
Fixed a problem with Google Calendar publishing that could cause the app to run slowly.
Fixed a bug that made it hard to select a linked shoot if you’re adding mileage via the Preferences window instead of via a Shoot record.
Fixed an error message that could appear when a shoot or contact is linked to more than 1,000 other records.
Fixed a problem where items in the Reports menu could fail to enable or disable correctly.
Changing a shoot session’s date could fail to update the due dates of that shoot’s outstanding tasks.
On a Mac, we’ve fixed a problem where some fonts would print as Times New Roman when using our built-in templates.
The ‘Export Financial Information’ command now correctly escapes double-quote characters.
Line breaks in ProSelect order files are now imported correctly.
Duplicating a shoot now duplicates its request groups correctly.
A failed MPA Cherubs import could leave Light Blue unable to save records.
Fixed some in correct French translations.
If you’re using one of our template translations, Sale records that are created from a Quote now use a localised version of the word “Quote” for its reference.
Fixed any crash reports that have been sent to us.

New in Light Blue 6.1.3 (Sep 15, 2016)

New in Light Blue 5.5.3 (Aug 21, 2015)

New in Light Blue 5.5.2 (Jul 14, 2015)

We've added a new field, for the date of the most recent payment to a Sale. That's useful for mail merges, with the tag %SaleMostRecentPaymentDate%.
When importing emails from Outlook on Windows, some messages could fail to be imported.
Mail merge documents could become large if you were using PNG files. We now strip out some redundant data within the file.
We've added ages to the %ShootContacts% mail merge tag.
We've had a few people recently who've accidentally deleted Shoot records, even though there's a warning. We've added an extra warning for Shoots which have linked information, to make sure that deleting the Shoot record is what's intended.
Printed address blocks could sometimes contain blank lines. They're now trimmed.
We've added support for the Wordpress email field with the 'confirm' option.
Special characters in subjects of emails sent as part of the contract publication process weren't coming out properly. Now they do.
When publishing a contract, if you weren't connected to the online services, an error about syncing would come up. We've made that more friendly.
If a contract is viewed in a browser without JavaScript enabled, we now warn about it.
Changing the suggested name when saving a PDF could cause it to be saved without a file extension.
Increasing the font size on printouts wasn't working. Fixed.
Printing emoji would give a segmentation fault. We now strip out emoji :-(
We've added the shoot date summary as a subheading to the Shoot printout.
Shoots where only one contact had an age would print ages for all contacts.
In rare circumstances, tax rates could print on reports with some spurious decimals (eg 7.85% would print as 7.8499999905). (The tax amounts themselves were fine.) Fixed.
The 'net value' for zero-rated tax items was printing as zero on the cash-based tax report. It now correctly reports the net value of zero-rated items.
Right-clicking on the Task Manager was the same as left-clicking, which was rather confusing. Right-clicking now doesn't do anything.
When maring several tasks as completed in the Task Manager, we now warn of what's going to happen, to try to prevent mishaps.
We've slightly reformatted the dialog which shows incoming data from the Light Blue API, which makes it easier to read.
Deleting a Resource from a Shoot wasn't updating iCal or Google Calendar.
Updating a Contact which had been published to the Mac's Address book would only work on the machine on which the Contact was first published.
Deleting a phone number or address from a Contact wouldn't republish it to the Address Book.
We've also fixed various unexpected quits which have been reported to us.

New in Light Blue 5.5.1 (May 11, 2015)

Updates and fixes:
Some people have reported that their computer is downloading files more regularly than we'd expect, and we've put some fixes in place to try to prevent that and log when it's happening.
In Light Blue 5.5, we updated the database engine behind Light Blue, and some people have reported slow performance. After exhaustive investigation, we've uncovered some strange behavior in that database engine, and we've worked around it; we're also working with the people who make it, to try to fix things in the engine.
In the query dialog, when querying on Shoot Status, there's now a 'Confirmed or completed' entry in the popup menu, to make it easier to search for shoots which have either status.
Whenever there's a staff popup menu, we now use full names, not just first names. It was either that or get people to only employ uniquely-named members of staff, which seemed a bit harsh.
The 'Contact Source' report now works on multiple sources, which is great for comparisons.
We've added a SaleLinePrintSize mail merge tag.
If you're trying to publish a contract and you haven't yet set up your client portal, we're giving more helpful advice.
Accepting a contract from the inbox could fail if filters had been applied.
When printing, there could be spurious line breaks before the last word in the line.
Duplicating a shoot request template which had grouped items wouldn't duplicate the grouped items properly.
New Note records or Document records added via the Add Note icon weren't saving in the correct order.
In the Activity panel, long descriptions could overlap staff initials.
High invoice numbers could have thousand separators in them, which looked rather odd.
If you moved around in the calendar (ie to a different month) then back to today, then went off the Calendar and back to it, you could be taken to the wrong date.
We've fixed a few curiosities in contract formatting on both the website and in PDFs.
We're being cleverer about sorting out problems if there's ever a problem updating from one version of the app to another.
For shoots with more than one session, the 'Add workflow' dialgo was putting all the sessions into one popup item.
When adding a workflow to a Quote, selecting 'Balance due date' from the popup would display an empty popup.
We've fixed a few unexpected quit reports, including one when you were turning on publishing to Google Calendar.
We've slightly changed the way that email importing from Outlook works.
The Net Profit amount on Shoots would be incorrect if you moved which shoot a Sale was linked to.
Transaction Date and Paid In Date fields now autocomplete backwards, rather than forwards.
Some numbers (eg percentage invoiced when making a Sale from a Quote; mileage in the list view) would incorrectly have a decimal point after them.

New in Light Blue 5.5 (Mar 26, 2015)

Online contract signing:
When a client decides to book a shoot, you want to make sure that confirming their booking is as simple as possible. It needs to be really easy for your client to sign your contract and pay a booking fee, so they don't hold up your business by taking ages to email or post things back to you. And, of course, you don't want to spend more time than you have to on boring admin tasks! Our new online contract signing service makes the whole process of confirming a booking really simple.
Our great new online contract signing features are included in a subscription to our online services, which starts at just £7.50 + VAT per month. As well as contract signing, the online services mean you can hook up your web contact forms to Light Blue, sync data between devices (Mac, PC, iPhone and iPad) and get all the updates we release in future for free!
Other new features:
We've added an 'Import Price List from CSV File...' command to the Records menu.
We've added a 'Reprint Invoice' button to invoiced Sale records, to make it clearer that you can reprint an existing invoice.
We've added a 'Contact Source Analysis' report that will be particularly useful to MPA Cherubs partners.
When printing a Shoot record, each linked Contact's primary address is included.
Printing a Contact record now includes the contact picture.
You can now create a linked Purchase record directly from the Linked Records panel on a Shoot record.
When importing Contact records from a CSV file, you can now re-use an existing Source.
The built-in calendar and date picker can now use any day as the first day of the week, rather than just Monday or Sunday.
You can now export a Contact's primary URL.
When using the contextual menu in a record's Activity panel, only the options that are relevant to the specific type of record that you clicked on are shown.
We've added 'first reference' preferences for the Quote, Purchase and Transaction sections. These work in much the same way as the 'first invoice number' preference, and are especially helpful for anyone who wants Light Blue's reference number to carry on from those that they used in a previous system.
You can now specify whether you want to use miles or kilometres when you're recording and reporting on mileage.
We've added preferences that allow you to choose whether to include the notes field when printing Shoot, Quote or Sale records.
We've added a default Purchase category preference.
You can now specify a default Quote 'balance due' workflow.
Bugs fixed:
When linking a company to a Quote, Sale or Purchase record, the company's name is now used more helpfully in lists and reports.
On Windows, the quick search dialog now triggers its query when you press the Enter or Return keys.
When linking an existing Contact to a Shoot, the search dialog now displays company names properly.
If Light Blue encounters any problems while upgrading your database when you install a new version, it now gives you more helpful error messages.
When there are clashing events in the built-in calendar, they're now sorted so that confirmed events come before enquiries.
Fixed a problem where importing emails from Outlook could cause an unexpected quit.
In some cases, if you go to another record when you have unsaved changes in the current record, the changes would be saved and the right record details would be loaded, but the wrong record would be selected in the list.
Fixed a problem where using the 'next appointment' mail-merge tags from a Sale record could use the wrong Appointment record.
When editing items on a Quote, Sale or Purchase record, the description field now resizes correctly when you add additional lines of text.
Fixed a problem where the cash-based Income & Expenditure report could double-count purchases that included both capital and non-capital items.
Fixed a problem when using the 'All Records' option in the Inventory report where using a two-digit year in your operating system date format could cause a problem.
The Income Forecast report now groups records together by the month of the quote balance due field, not the quote date field.

New in Light Blue 5.1.2 (Jan 30, 2015)

New in Light Blue 5.1.1 (Dec 23, 2014)

An error message could appear on Mac OS X Yosemite when trying to import emails with attachments from Mail. This is a bug in Yosemite which we have reported to Apple; we are working around it until Apple fixes the bug.
If you've got any Contact records that have accidentally had either your email address added, or any other email address that you send a lot of messages to, you can end up with an excessive number of emails imported into your database. We've added a tool that helps you to identify any affected records and tidy them up. To use it, hold down the Alt key and open the Help menu.
When importing emails from Outlook on Windows, some messages could be duplicated.
Accessing a shared account which hadn't been set up already could get stuck on 'activating your copy of Light Blue'.
Multi-day all-day events published to iCal could be one day too short.
Upgrading from Light Blue 4 to Light Blue 5 could show a database error dialog.
When editing a session's start date, in a very specific set of circumstances it would be possible to get stuck in a loop of 'this date is in the future' dialogs.
In some cases, resetting data from the server could cause database errors.
On Windows, we've removed the separator before the 'edit list…' from popup menus, because it could be selected. This has caused some Shoots to have blank shoot types; we have added a query to find them so users can fix them.
Loading the Pictures tab could be slow when the hi-res files were stored on another computer on the network.
Invoices with only zero-rated items were not showing that the items were zero-rated.
The tax report list of transactions could total some twice.
Text in the credit note dialog could be truncated.
When dragging and dropping shoot requests we now maintain the expanded/collapsed state of each group.
Creating new events from the built-in calendar could be unreliable if the calendar was filtered to hide some of your staff or resources.
Contact companies weren't publishing to the 'Company' field in the Mac's Address Book if the contact type was 'person'.
Yosemite was allowing formatting to be used in text fields.
We've added Avery 7159 as an address label format.
We've added some extra warnings when deleting records from the main sections.
The 'squares' web gallery templates have been updated to make them compatible with iOS 8.
Fixed unexpected quits that could happening in rare cases when publishing to Address Book on a Mac, enabling menu items, clicking on the cog menu in the Shoot Schedule panel, generating web galleries, or sorting the list view.
We've added a 'republish to Mac Contacts' command in the Records menu, for when people accidentally delete something from the Mac's Contacts application.

New in Light Blue 5.1 (Sep 15, 2014)

New features:
Light Blue 5.1 is now compatible with Developer Preview 6 of Mac OS X Yosemite.
Added an option to show or hide undated tasks from the Task Manager.
There's now the option (in the cog menu on the task manager) to display just the first outstanding task for each linked record.
Purchase totals in the Linked Records panel now display the total rather than the allocated amount.
When importing to update a record in the inbox, we now display the values to be imported when you're choosing what to import.
When the task manager is grouped by linked record, we no longer hide the links which take you to that record.
We've reverted some changes to printing which were causing unacceptable perfomance issues. Text in PDFs is no longer selectable.
Members of the MPA's Cherubs scheme can now import contacts from one of their monthly data files using a convenient shortcut that we've added to the Records menu.
You can now send timestamps to the Light Blue API, which makes it easier to link services like Google Calendar to your Light Blue account via Zapier (e.g. so that you can create new records in Light Blue when an event is added to Google Calendar).
You can now get directions to any address in Light Blue by using the cog menu attached to that address. You can get directions from either Google Maps, or Apple's Maps app (if you're using Mac OS X Mavericks or later).
Light Blue's built-in calendar now highlights the selected day, and is more predictable when switching between Month, Week and Day views.
If you're subscribed to our online services but haven't switched them on within Light Blue, we now remind you to switch them on. We also notify you if you've changed your username or password but haven't remembered to update them in the app
We've made it easier to move your Light Blue data to a new computer.
Anyone who prefers double-clicking to ‘open' items can now set up Light Blue to require a double-click to switch between sections or pick a record. This can be turned on in the ‘General Prefs' section of Light Blue's Preferences window.
When you're importing contacts from a CSV file, you can now import into the Contact Reference field.
You can now export contact tags when you're exporting contact records.
French addresses are now formatted correctly.
When you're sending emails to contacts from a shoot record, we're being more sensible about offering you the choice between using that contact's email address, or the head of their group's email address.
The task manager now displays due and completed dates as "Yesterday", "Today" and "Tomorrow" to make it easier to use when grouping tasks by another other than due date.
The Inbox now displays a summary of the records that emails are linked to, to make it easier to see which emails have been linked to which contacts or shoots.
The ShootContacts, ShootRequests and ShootSchedule tags can now be used on templates from the Quotes and Sales sections as well as from the Shoots section.
You can now append "ZeroBlank" to a mail-merge tag if you want to hide it from a template when the relevant field is zero.
When you're importing pictures into a shoot, we've made it more obvious whether you've chosen to organise your pictures in a single folder, or using separate sub-folders for your processed and unprocessed images. You can also change that setting for each shoot.
When a Quote has been fully invoiced, we now ask you to confirm if you really want to create new Sale records from it.
Bug fixes:
The section and quick query list could fail to draw sometimes on Windows.
The sale item picture selection dialog could fail to close on Windows.
Sale item picture thumbnails could fail to load.
A spurious 'invalid login' error could appear after data sync.
Sometimes, in Light Blue, it's possible to enter events which end before they start. We now publish those to iCal or Google Calendar as full-day events, with a note of what's happened.
Importing a Company from the Mac's Contacts application, when the company had at least one address, would make a spurious extra address.
Fixed a database error when clicking the 'Unallocated' link for transactions for a Contact.
The day of the week for the end date was incorrect when listing all sessions.
When printing shoot details, we now list all session details in full.
Printing an outgoing transaction would print the Amount column as zero.
Printing the list view to email as PDF would send it to the printer.
Added a Zapier action for our API.
Removed a spurious tag from the Management Information report.
Fixed problems when syncing, generating web galleries, adding contact addresses, renaming files.
branding graphics could overlay addresses on invoices.
Fixed some minor visual glitches caused by the changes we made to the Windows version of Light Blue in 5.1.
Increased the amount of time that data sync will wait to receive a reply from our servers, to improve its compatibility with slow internet connections when transferring lots of data.
A further change to the quick search box to make it function correctly on the Home screen and Calendar.
Workflows with appointments which had appointment types could have extra blank tasks added.
Keys sent to the API are no longer required to be case sensitive.
Text in the setup wizard had a nasty background.
Two of the magnifying glasses on the Home screen on Windows weren't properly positioned.
The Unpaid total for Sales could appear over the Paid total if, when it was told to become visible, it was scrolled off the edge of the screen.
Deleting a record which had been scrolled could leave the scroll bar 'stuck' until relaunch.
Incoming data with a start time but no end time wouldn't set the end time.
The quick search box was losing its focus when the query was run.
Events that clashed in the Day or Week view of our calendar could be positioned incorrectly in some unusual circumstances.
Dragging files into the Activity panel now works on Windows as well as Mac OS X.
When entering dates into Light Blue, we're now being stricter about not letting you type unlikely years to avoid typos from scheduling something in the wrong century.
It's now possible to reset the password for a member of staff if you don't have an active subscription to our online services.
When creating emails in Apple's Mail app, any images included in your default email signature are now preserved.
Importing emails from Outlook could occasionally import the wrong attachments.
When attaching or removing extra screens to your computer, it was possible for Light Blue's main window to get stuck in an odd position until you trashed your Light Blue preferences file.
When printing an invoice addressed to a company, the company name could appear twice.
On Windows, it wasn't possible to print multiple copies of the same record.
When creating a Sale record from a Quote, it's no longer possible for the invoice date to be set to a future date.
Linking a different Shoot to a Sale or Quote record would sometimes fail to update the totals on that Shoot.
Some of the web gallery templates provided with Light Blue weren't working properly on Internet Explorer 11.
The Unpaid total field on Sale records could sometimes appear in the wrong place.
Some rare crashes have been fixed when: importing emails from Outlook, generating a web gallery, printing when your page setup details have been corrupted, publishing to contacts, reordering rows in the contact import dialog.

New in Light Blue 5.0 Beta 1 (Dec 10, 2013)

BIG NEW THINGS:
Contact grouping:
To help photographers who deal with groups of people on their shoots (e.g. family or corporate photographers) we're introducing the concept of Contact Groups. With these, you can specify one Contact as head of the group (ie the one you want to communicate with), and then other Contacts as group members.
These other Contacts will still be added to Light Blue as Contact records, but it's much faster to add them than before.
When you're working with Contact records – for example, sending emails, mail merging, exporting, printing labels and so on – you can choose to use either information from the Contact you're on, or information form the head of their group. That means, for example, that you can have a child as the primary contact for a shoot, but use their parent's information when you're sending letters or emails to them.
The easiest way to add a group of Contacts is by going to a Shoot record, then the Linked Records panel; click the + button, then ‘New Contact'. You're entering the details of the head of the group at the top, and the group members below.
Contact tagging:
We've added a great new feature for everyone who wants to make the most of their contact database for marketing: contact tagging. Light Blue already included powerful querying tools that let you, for example, pull out all of the contacts who spent more than a certain amount of money on portraits in the current calendar year. Contact tagging lets you manually tag individual contacts and quickly pull them out of your database, so they're great for keeping track of things like:
Categorising leads you've received according to the types of shoot they're likely to be interested in (e.g. you could create tags for ‘newborns', ‘seniors', etc).
Keeping track of which promotions you've included contacts in (e.g. ‘2014 New Year promo', ‘2014 summer promo').
Have a look for yourself on the Contact panel; it's in the right-hand column. You can add tags in the Preferences window, and colour code them too.
Editing invoices:
In Light Blue 4, once you'd created an invoice, it couldn't be edited. Sometimes, however, you need to make a change to one you've already sent; in Light Blue 5, you can now edit invoices once they've been created. Once an invoice has been included in a sales tax report or VAT report it will still be locked, but this change gives you the flexibility to deal with customers changing their minds without having to issue a credit note.
Time Off:
It's now really easy to keep track of when people are out of the office, or when equipment or rooms are unavailable, with our new Time Off features. It's easy to block out time from the built-in calendar, with just a double-click on the relevant day, and any sessions or appointments which clash with time off will be shown in red, so you can easily see if you're scheduling something when you're not available.
‘Custom Reports' let you save your List view:
The List View is a great way of generating your own reports, but up to now you've had to recreate them every time you need to run one. Now, using the new Custom Reports, found in the Reports menu, you can save the columns and queries which go with them, to make it really easy to bring up your favourite reports on how your business is doing.
We've provided some examples of custom reports to show you what's possible. For example, there's one that allows you to quickly find out how effective your marketing is by totalling up the number of shoots you've booked from each source and telling you how much you've made from them.
Importing: a new ‘Inbox', including importing from Outlook on Windows:
Our email importing feature on Mac OS X has been really popular, because it allows you to import copies of the emails you've received from clients into the activity panel on shoots and contacts to give you a complete history of all of your dealings with your clients.
We've now moved your incoming emails to a new ‘Inbox' section, which you can find in the left-hand column of Light Blue; it's searchable, faster, prettier and easier to get to than before.
We've extended the email importing functionality so you can now import attachments from emails, and we've also added support for Outlook on Windows, too. To use this, just go to the Inbox; you can import your emails using the button in the bottom left hand corner.
A data API for web contact forms:
One for the techies! Light Blue's optional online services already offer really powerful features, and we've extended them to make it possible for you to send information directly to your Light Blue account from your own website. For example, you could hook your website's contact form directly into your Light Blue account, or put up a form requesting information about a wedding so that you clients can fill it in directly rather than posting you a piece of paper. For more about this, see our website at www.lightbluesoftware.com/api .
AND THERE'S MORE:
Communicating:
Email templates can now use attachments, so it's easier to send brochures and forms out to your customers.
You can now create emails to a found set of contacts, using your default mail application. (This is intended for when you want to email a few people with things like booking confirmations, etc.; for bulk marketing email we still recommend exporting a set of email addresses from Light Blue for use in a mass-mailing service such as MailChimp.)
Calendar & Home screen improvements:
We've made it easy to offer alternative dates for your enquiries by allowing you to add extra sessions to a shoot from our built-in calendar. When you confirm the booking, you'll be asked if you want to confirm just one session or all of them.
On the Home screen, today's events are highlighted to make them more obvious. If you don't have any events scheduled for today, we indicate where today would be so that you can quickly see which events have already happened and which ones are coming up.
There's now an indication as to whether events are scrolled out of view in the built-in calendar, so you don't miss anything that's taking place at a different time of day.
You can now set the built-in calendar to start the week on a Sunday – one for our American friends!
Our built-in calendar now shows the current time when you're on week or day view, so you know how long you've got left before your next shoot.
Saving you time:
Appointment Types let you create templates for appointments, making it easier to set up standard appointments. For example, you could set up an appointment type for viewing sessions that allocates a particular member of staff, books a room and blocks out a set amount of time.
You can now delete more than one entry from linked records, activity, schedule and requests by selecting multiple items before clicking the delete button.
We've added ‘next' and ‘previous' buttons to several dialogs, such as on Shoot Schedule or Requests, making it faster to jump between long lists of items.
You an now save field orders when you're performing a data export, so once you've got it set up just the way you like it, it's easy to come back to.
We've reorganised the Preferences window to make it easier to find what you're looking for.
Text-based custom fields on Shoots and Contacts can now be changed to auto-complete, saving time when you're entering data.
Printing:
You can now print envelopes, or print addresses via a Dymo label writer.
On a Mac OS X, we've been able to really improve the quality of printed text. On both Mac OS X and Windows, we've improved the quality of the customisable branding that you can add to our built-in templates.
You can now print the task manager and calendar, as well as being able to print several records in one go, which is great for when you need to resend several invoices to a customer.
When you print a price list, we now include your branding; we also ask if you want to hide the cost and profit information – meaning it's much easier to send price lists to your customers.
Being even more useful:
You can add pictures to Contact records, so you can get a quick reminder of what your clients look like before meeting them again.
Contact Ages are now displayed in months for children under two, to help portrait photographers better prepare for shoots.
You can now select options for calendar feeds – so you can have one for just your portrait shoots, or one for a particular staff member, for example.
You don't need to have ‘processed' and ‘unprocessed' subfolders in your Shoot folder any more – instead, you can simply import a single folder of images against a shoot.
On the Sale screen, we've added a ‘Salesperson' popup that lists the staff you've set up in the Resources section of the Preferences window. This lets you track how each of your salespeople are doing. Of course, we've added a report to show this information, too; that's under Custom Reports in the Reports menu.
When you're linking pictures to a Sale Item, you can now choose pictures from any shoot, not just the shoot to which the Sale is linked.
You can now group shoot requests together, which is invaluable for wedding photographers (eg ‘Formal portraits', ‘Intimate shots', ‘Would like')
We've really improved the efficiency of the application, so it uses less CPU (and therefore doesn't drain your laptop's battery) when it's idling.

New in Light Blue 4.3.2 (Oct 25, 2013)

New in Light Blue 4.3.1 (Aug 29, 2013)

New in Light Blue 4.3 (Aug 13, 2013)

New features:
We've added an interactive guide, which helps explain key areas within Light Blue. People who're new to Light Blue 4 will have it displayed automatically; people upgrading from Light Blue 4.x have the option of showing it.
We now allow time formatting as h:mm p.m. (with dots after p and m).
You can now set a shoot's status by right-clicking on it in the records list.
We've added a 'help button', similar to that in the Activity panel, to the mileage dialog and price list, to make it more obvious what they're for when they're empty.
When adding a new Schedule item, the cursor now defaults to the Time field.
Screen-based reports now respect the font size option for printouts.
The close button is now enabled in the setup wizard.
We've greatly sped up the quote query in the quickfind box, and improved the application's general speed when working with large datasets.
We've added the event date to the Quote printout, as it was in v3.
We've added example documents for mail merges for each section.
Fixes:
We've changed the way that some of the mail merge tags are handled behind the scenes. There shouldn't be any external difference to how they appear or work.
We've fixed some unexpected quits which could very occasionally occur when syncing pictures, drawing the calendar, drawing certain types of fields, working out which documents to sync, retrieving information from the Mac's keychain, printing labels, entering an address's city, showing the shoot session's menu, loading iCal calendars, showing a sale item whose picture couldn't be found, syncing pictures, generating thumbnails, loading information from the database, deleting addresses, and detecting shoot clashes.
When adding multiple shoot requests in one go, requests are now delimited by soft returns as well as hard ones.
Shoot_NextAppointment tags weren't working from Sales and Quotes; ShootSessionsLong wasn't working at all.
Adding sale references could temporarily append values from another record.
The Contact Statement and Contact Financial History report menu items weren't enabled when accessing contacts which were part of a list of records of multiple types.
Mark as Paid on a Sale or Purchase was saving overly large amounts when using , as a decimal separator.
Sale reference and contact method labels could go awry when one was deleted.
Duplicating a sale with a sale item which has a picture linked to it, then editing the picture on the new sale, would edit the picture on the old sale.
The shoot schedule list was displaying a pixel of the top of a second line of text, which looked ugly.
We've removed the ability to reschedule completed tasks on the task manager, and corrected the count of items to be reschedule.
It was possible to save a session with an end time but no start time.
Sale and Quote items had an incorrect collapsed height when the 'Exclude from Discount' checkbox was checked.
Web gallery pricing wasn't working properly with european currency separators.
We've removed the information on cost from the description in web galleries; it's presented elsewhere so is redundant.
Your choice of time suffix is now respected on a Mac.
Adding a picture from an unrelated shoot to a Sale was causing Light Blue to hang.
Exporting emails from Mail on a Mac wasn't working properly.
Timed iCal events, when displayed in Light Blue, would display across an extra day in Month view.
In the built-in calendar, events could sometimes fail to appear in Month view if an event from a previous day continues to the next.
Increasing the font size on printouts wasn't working properly; font sizes in general weren't working properly with the currency separator set to ',' .
Extra shoot subfolders weren't being created on Windows when there was more than one requested.
Importing data was setting the wrong values for some currencies when using ',' as a decimal separator.
The quote line description field was clipping the text contained within it.
The shoot staff list wasn't updating when resources were updated.
It was possible to have more than one copy of Light Blue open on Windows, which was causing some really interesting problems.
When creating credit notes, tax amounts behind the scenes could be mis-saved.
Updating the shoot title wasn't updating the shoot title on any linked sales.
The Current Shoots section of the Management Information report was pulling out shoots with linked appointments before today.
We've made a few fixes which prepare Light Blue for Mac OS X Mavericks.
We've made the warning about branding graphics a bit less zealous.
We've improved the quality of graphics when they're printed.
The sale picture linking dialog wasn't updating search results until the mouse was moved.
List view headings could sometimes miss out a bit of text if they spanned more than one column.
Some sale and quote items with 'Don't apply % discount' ticked weren't collapsing properly.

New in Light Blue 4.2 (Jul 10, 2013)

New features:
We've vastly improved the speed of the built-in calendar, which makes it both faster to load and smoother to resize.
Custom labels in contact methods or sale references now persist, so you can pick them again for new contacts or sales.
You can now change a shoot's status from the Home screen or the Calendar.
We've added a field for a sale called '% paid', which can help you decide when to send sales to the lab.
Orphan addresses are now deleted when they're no longer used.
Fixes:
We've tracked down the cause of the seemingly unexpected quits that were affecting some of our Windows customers. After a brief show trial, the relevant bug was taken to the back of the Light Blue secret bunker and summarily executed.
The 'greater than or equal to' and 'less than or equal to' options in the query dialog weren't working properly.
The updated OS X Mail exporter script that came with 4.2 b1 didn't work properly on versions of OS X older than OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion.
When setting up iCal publishing on a Mac, the 'Change' and 'Cancel' buttons have been clarified.
We've fixed unexpected quits that could happen (rarely, but sometimes) when importing from a malformed ProSelect XML file, when an update failed to receive any information from our server, when loading records with link fields, when loading the built-in calendar, when double-clicking on an activity list, when importing messages from Mail on a Mac, and when importing pictures.
Repeatedly opening and closing a popup menu on a contact reference or sale reference would cause 'Custom' to appear once for each time it had been opened.
Generating a web gallery could try to include images which weren't available.
The 'add multiple appointment' warning dialog could appear repeatedly when using the mouse to pick a product linked to a workflow with more than one appointment.
Changing the label for a contact method or sale reference which hadn't been saved wouldn't preserve the label.
The 'Detail view' and 'List view' commands in the Window menu weren't working. (Has it really taken this long to notice this?!)
Some session times had been imported as 00:00 (caused by a data problem in the old version of Light Blue). We've been clever about fixing this because it's only a very specific error which could have caused it.
'Mark as paid' for purchases now links the transaction created to a resource if it's an expense claim.
Pictures weren't centring properly in collapsed sale items.
Credit notes no longer talk about sending money.
Marking several purchases as paid could use the incorrect amounts.
Appointments weren't sorting with events in the month view of the built-in calendar.
'Squares' web galleries weren't working properly in newer versions of FireFox because of a conflict with the mootools framework.
Typing a decimal point or decimal separator in a number field which a) already has one and b) has all the text selected doesn't work.

New in Light Blue 4.1.10 (Jun 18, 2013)

New in Light Blue 4.1.9 (Jun 17, 2013)

New features:
The financial report basis (i.e. whether a report is run on a cash or accrual basis) is now remembered when you re-run a report.
The speed of loading and resizing the built-in calendar has been improved, and some glitches in the positioning of events and text in the calendar have been fixed.
We've added a warning when loading a .doc, .docx or .rtfd file as a template that mail-merging is only supported for RTF files, and made it more clear when printing that it'll be using our built-in templates.
Fixes:
It was possible to paste return characters into single-line text fields; multiple lines are now stripped.
We've fixed potential unexpected quits when building data to upload, syncing pictures, loading data into line items and saving line items.
We've fixed a pair of problems which made it possible to delete the Preferences record, which would cause Bad Things to happen.
Clicking on anything other than a shoot title from the task manager would find no records.
We've made some performance enhancements under the hood.
In a few places, with US localisation, 'Inquiry' was spelt 'Enquiry'.
When exporting pictures from a Sale, Light Blue could report them as missing if there wasn't a .jpg version available.
In some cases, sending emails via Outlook on Windows could have problems with using multiple email addresses or with our auto-BCC feature.
The label for the 'Deposited' field on the Transaction screen is no longer truncated for photographers in the USA.
Shoot in the Linked Records panel are now sorted by date & time.
In rare cases, the start & end date displayed in a shoot record could be switched for shoots that last more than one day.
Importing a sale from ProSelect could import the wrong date for the sale & payments.
Financial reports now take discounted totals into account in all cases where they apply.
Printing from the Shoot, Contact and Purchase sections included an unnecessary margin at the bottom of the page.
The 'Mark as paid' buttons on Sale and Purchase records could get the payment amount wrong for photographers in Europe who use difference decimal separators.
On Windows, picture thumbnails could fail to appear when printing an invoice.
Fixed crashes that could happen in rare cases when: exporting images from a sale; importing contacts; running Light Blue for the first time after installing an update; using the login window; reordering items in a price list; using corrupted images for web gallery watermarks or branding on our built-in templates

New in Light Blue 4.1.8 (Jun 15, 2013)

New in Light Blue 3.4.2 (Jun 14, 2012)

New in Light Blue 3.3 (Nov 7, 2011)

iCloud and iCal publishing
Non-discountable quote and order lines
New tax calculations
New mail-merge tags
Jumping from the Task Manager to the linked shoot or contact
A new 'Orders for Future Shoots' Quick Query
Querying for shoots linked to a particular member of staff
Calendar publishing keyboard shortcuts
Unconfirmed events in the built-in calendar
New 'Revenue by Product' Quick Report
Addresses
Other changes:
'Include Payment Terms on Invoice' can now be set for each shoot type.
Meetings in workflows weren't published to iCal if 'Publish tasks' was off. Fixed.
Contact titles would not appear on built-in quotes even when 'Include title in full names' was set to 'Yes'. Fixed.
The 'Add linked order' button on the iPad interface could show an error message. Fixed.
When performing mass mail merges, the 'Neither' option, which chooses not to open the created documents or copy them to the desktop, would open them anyway. Fixed.
In a very obscure situation, schedule templates could be added to shoots in the wrong order. Fixed.
When creating a mass email from the shoot screen, the Subject field wasn't being populated if the template didn't have a subject. It now defaults to the same as if an email was being generated to a contact linked to the shoot.
The Task Manager date headers weren't respecting the localisation setting for US users. Fixed.
Orders imported from ProSelect weren't having their tax amounts imported correctly. ProSelect’s export only exports the tax amounts for each line, and not the percentage tax rate applied. Light Blue works on tax percentages, therefore when orders are imported from ProSelect, we now apply your default tax rate to each order line. If you have changed any tax rates from your default you should update the order in Light Blue once you’ve imported the order.
Although we don't let you include line breaks when you're typing into a request for a shoot, it was possible to copy'n'paste them into the field and for that list to be truncated when you print it. We now convert any line breaks into commas when you do this.
When you're creating a web gallery, you can no longer include illegal characters in the name of the web gallery folder.

New in Light Blue 3.2 (Jul 26, 2011)

New in Light Blue 3.0 (Jan 13, 2011)

iPhone and iPad interfaces:
One of the questions we get asked most often is 'Can I take Light Blue with me on my iPhone or iPad?'. We've always loved the idea, but up to now there have been too many technical barriers to releasing an iOS version - FileMaker's database format simply didn't play nicely with anything which ran in iOS.
However, earlier this year, FileMaker launched FileMaker Go, which lets you run FileMaker databases on an iPhone or iPad running iOS 4. We've taken full advantage of this, and from Light Blue v3 you'll be able to take your copy of Light Blue with you. The iPhone and iOS interfaces we've designed for Light Blue let you access your most important information on the go, letting you concentrate on the basics of running your business while you're out and about without getting distracted by unnecessary complexity.
Unlike other providers of photography business management software, the iOS features are built in to the release of v3, and there's no extra charge for them. The only thing you'll have to pay for is a copy of FileMaker Go from the App store (currently $19.99/£11.99 for the iPhone and $39.99/£23.99 for the iPad).
Hosting service:
Another favourite question is 'Can I access my copy of Light Blue when I'm on the road?'. Our response has always been 'Yes, but you'll need to find a company to host it for you, explain to them what it is you want to do and get it set up'. Our new response is 'Yes, of course, we'll host it for you; it's really easy'.
As of Light Blue v3, we'll be able to host your data for you on our dedicated servers in London. This isn't 'cloud' software that you can only access through a web browser - you still have all of the benefits of a system designed to work closely with your computer, but you'll be able to access it from any of your computers that have an internet connection. We'll look after your data, including backing it up for you and ensuring you've got the most up-to-date version of Light Blue v3, and all you need to do is install the copy of FileMaker Pro that you’ll get from us as part of your hosting setup.
For the single-user version of Light Blue v3, hosting will be optional - you'll be able to run Light Blue either as a standalone piece of desktop software on your Mac or PC, or we can host it for you. We'll only be selling the multi-user version with a hosting package, which means that new multi-user setups will be much, much easier to install.
Of course, the hosted version will play nicely with our new iPhone and iPad interfaces.
New built-in calendar:
The built-in calendar in Light Blue has been completely redesigned and now features time slots, colour coding and resource management as well as day, week, month and schedule views.
Improved tax handling:
Anyone who sells different products and services at different tax rates will love the new tax-related features in Light Blue v3. If you're based in the UK, we've also added a VAT report that will calculate the totals you need for your quarterly VAT returns.
Picture thumbnails on invoices:
If you're using Light Blue to manage your image files, v3 will include thumbnails of the pictures your clients have ordered on its built-in invoice templates.
Bulk contact importing and de-duplication:
If you're buying leads or importing them from another system, our new de-duplication system will help you to keep your data clean and avoid sending multiple emails or mail shots to the same contact.
US time formatting:
Our American users will be pleased with the new 12-hour clock option so that they don't have to put up with the bizarre "military time" 24-hour clock that the rest of the world uses.
New reporting features:
We've added some new Quick Reports in v3. Aged debtors and creditors reports have been added, alongside a new report that totals up the amount earned from each shoot for each of your members of staff. Mileage reports now total up the amount of mileage done for each mileage rate, which is useful for your tax returns.
Shoot schedule & requests templates and mail-merging:
Anyone organising complicated shoots - whether they're weddings or corporate jobs involving lots of locations - is already using Light Blue's schedule & requests features to keep their shoots organised. v3 adds templates that let you quickly apply a standard schedule or set of requests to a shoot, and even lets you customise them once you've applied a template.
Light Blue v3 now includes mail-merge tags for schedules & requests so that you can include them in your own branded communications, along with sample templates to get you up-and-running.
Contact and shoot enhancements:
Customisable contact & shoot references. You can now edit the automatically assigned reference numbers for your contacts and shoots to fit your existing numbering system, or you can just stick with the numbers automatically assigned by Light Blue.
When you're linking a new contact to a record, Light Blue automatically processes what you're typed into the search dialog to save you having to re-type the contact's details.
Social networking links. Everyone's using Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, so Light Blue v3 lets you access your contacts' profiles directly from their record.
Contacts can now be assigned direct line numbers for each address you've added to them, as well as the main phone number that belongs to the address.
You can include warnings about particular contacts in Light Blue v3. These warnings will appear wherever you're able to link a contact to another record, so you'll know if any particular contacts need special treatment.
Each type of shoot can be given a default length, so when your staff are booking in new shoots they don't have to remember how much time you need to allow for them.
The next task for your shoots is shown in list view and on the Summary screen to give you a quick overview of what needs to be done next.
The 'Show all records' command now excludes cancelled shoots by default.
Other new features and changes include…:
We've added new, super-slick web gallery templates for you in Light Blue v3, all including shopping carts for selling prints online.
You can export the contents of your price lists into standard file formats, as well as import a set of products into one of your existing price lists.
The 'Staff' list has been replaced by a generic 'Resources' list that lets you manage rooms and equipment as well as the staff in your business.
Orders that have been invoiced now put up a warning before letting you edit them. The same applies to payments or purchases that have been included in a VAT return.
Duplicating an order or purchase now duplicates the lines that make up the order or purchase.
You can choose different names for the 'processed' and 'unprocessed' folders in the shoot folders that Light Blue creates to manage your image files. You can also choose to omit the date of the shoot from the default name Light Blue gives your shoot folders.
Email signatures that are automatically added to all of the emails you send from Light Blue. When sending emails, Light Blue automatically warns you if you mention attachments in your email but haven't included any.
Enhancements to the iCal syncing options, including an option to only sync events to iCal and improved handling of situations where lots of events or tasks have been deleted from either Light Blue or iCal.
Improved mail-merging, with searchable lists of document templates and the ability to include more than one table in your templates (for example, a table containing the shoot schedule and another containing the list of client requests in the same template).
You can now customise the range of shoots that are included in the 'Current shoots & meetings' list on the Summary screen.

New in Light Blue 2.3.1 (Nov 11, 2010)

New in Light Blue 2.3 (Sep 10, 2010)

New in Light Blue 1.5.1 (Sep 10, 2009)

Important things:
Events were being published to Google Calendar in GMT regardless of the timezone specified in the calendar. Events are now published in the timezone of the calendar's settings. If the calendar you are publishing to was created by Light Blue: Photo 1.5, please check the timezone from within Google Calendar.
Login details were required on the 'Email settings' tab of the 'Summary' screen. It is now possible to use SMTP servers which do not require a login.
Other new features:
If a linked contact did not have a name specified, the 'Contact' field in the 'Linked contacts' portal would not show any data. The 'Company' field has now been added to the data which shows.
You can now reorder requests on the 'Shoot - detail' screen.
The addresses on invoices have been repositioned slightly to fit windowed envelopes. If you have chosen a 25mm header on the 'Branding' tab of the 'Settings' screen, the address is positioned to fit into a windowed DL envelope. The large 50mm header size fits a windowed C5 envelope.
A 'Recent Shoots' query has been added to the 'Quick Queries' menu. This finds all confirmed shoots that have already taken place, excluding any which have been marked as 'backed up' or 'archived'.
The Quote tab of the 'Shoot - detail' screen now includes a Notes field that is included on the printed version of the quote. A mail merge tag, %shootquotenotes%, has been added so that you can include this field in document and email templates.
Picture filenames now appear in brackets after the product description on invoices. This allows longer filenames to appear.
Other bug fixes:
Certain shoots were being incorrectly flagged as updated when publishing to Google Calendar.
The 'History' portal was sorting only by date. It now sorts by date and time.
The 'Shoot - list' view now sorts by time as well as date.
The 'Landline' field was not appearing on the printed version of the 'Contact - list' view.
Allocation-related fields have been removed from printed receipts to make them simpler.
The user guide has been updated to add shoot end date, start time and end time tags (which were undocumented).
Paragraph marks now convert properly when being mail-merged into an HTML email.
An odd set of circumstances could produce an order with no prices when the 'Invoice balance' button was clicked on a quote.
Duplicating a price list no longer sets the type of all products to 'Print'.
Extra checks have been added to reduce plugin registration warnings on slow-loading machines.
Clicking on the envelope icon to send an email in Windows Vista could cause the application to crash.
Long Order and Quote product lines could be truncated.
Lists of email recipients in an email created in Light Blue: Photo can now be separated by semicolons as well as commas.
Invoices would display the ID given to image files by Light Blue: Photo, rather than the image filename.
The telephone number fields in the 'Contact - list' and 'Payment - list' views have been made wider to accommodate numbers with spaces.
'Invalid relationship' errors were being thrown when performing a Find on the 'address' or 'landline' fields in the 'Contact - list' or 'Contact - detail' views.
Dates were being truncated on the printed version of the shoot schedule.
Duplicating a Purchase record no longer duplicates the reference number or payment details.
Purchase lines and orders can now be un-linked from their related shoot.
Shoot folders can no longer be created if the shoot doesn't have a title.
An item is not added to the history if you try to add a missing template to it.
Some negative prices were formatted incorrectly.
The maximum number of linked contacts that are included on the shoot print out has been increased to 50.
The application now remembers the window position when you quit and relaunch it.