Newsletter
Greetings from teamr and Synchronous Technologies
Volume 5 :: Edition 10 :: 20 Oct 2009

   
  
     

Ah, the good old days...

Maybe you're old enough to remember that infomercial that would come on at 2am with the lady and her little handheld voice recorder that would tell her over and over again "don't forget your two o'clock appointment!"

It reminds me of those freewheeling days of college, up till 2am studying for some exam that I'm sure doesn't apply to much of anything I do any more (except impressing nerdy friends with partial recall of random laws of thermodynamics).  But it *does* reinforce the idea that people need to be reminded of stuff.

Event reminders are old news - Teamr gave those to you from our very humble beginnings.  But our new appointment calendar, which lets your website visitors request appointments with you in your available time slots - now that IS new. 

The other thing that's cool and new is our first step toward CRM (that's Customer Relationship Management, one of those buzzwords that's taken hold in the last several years).  CRM lets you keep track of your contacts in more meaningful ways, helping you to remember all of your interactions with everyone you know.

And so we continue our growth in more business applications.  Read below and find out how we save you time and help you grow your top line revenue with our new invoicing tool.

In This Issue

Technology Update
* Appointment calendar
* Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
* Send Invoices and automatically receive payment online
* New FAQ / Searchable Help

On The Burner
* See what we are working on for next month.
* Improvements are all based on your feedback...keep it coming.

Technology Update

Appointment Calendars. If you run a business (or know someone who does), you know the value of having a rock solid appointment calendar.  Our calendar is already good at helping you keep track of events.  But now we make your life even easier. 

Remember last newsletter, when we talked about customizing your calendar by clicking on the Modify Season pencil icon?  (Note: depending on your group type, this could be Modify Session, Term, or Year)


Review your calendar configuration settings

If you regularly have appointments with clients, you can now set up available time blocks and let people request appointments through your website!  We automatically make sure that any appointment request doesn't overlap with an existing appointment.  We stop any bogus requests, as every request must be confirmed FIRST by the requestor.  And after you receive a request, you can either confirm it, deny it, or suggest an alternative. 

After you set up an appointment event type for your calendar (any event type with a Maximum Attendees setting of one person), you'll see these new clock icons on your calendar.  Click on them to set up your appointments (screenshot below).



Manage your daily appointments and requests



Customer Relationship Management (CRM).  Managing contacts is one thing.  Now Teamr is bringing your contact management to the next level with new CRM tools available to Premium accounts.  You may already make use of unlimited user-defined fields and easy reporting and data entry tools -- the new CRM allows you to retrieve and store more information about your contacts.

So what does this mean to you exactly?  First off, we automatically now put all your activities with each contact in the contact details (click on the person's name in the All Contacts area under the Contacts tab).  That by itself is nice, but there's more.  You can also now add any other interaction with the contact right there. 

Now you have every event the contact has ever attended, every email ever received, and any notes you want to make about anyone -- all at your fingertips!


Click on any name in your All Contacts area to see CRM


Send Invoices.  As part of our CRM upgrade, we also added a powerful new feature - the ability for you to send invoices.  At the top of the CRM area, you'll see a handy link called "New Invoice" - click that to open the invoice builder.

You will see you can add an invoice description and below that, you can add up to 25 individual line items.  You can also include events that the contact owes you for attending (perfect if you charge clients for meetings or appointments).  Each line item and event automatically calculates your invoice total. 

As you would expect from any Teamr feature, it's super easy to use.  Sending your invoice to the contact is as easy as checking a box.  Once the contact receives the email, if you have your Paypal account set up, there will be a link to pay your invoice on that email.


Send invoices to contacts from inside your CRM



New FAQ / Searchable Help.  We have a new resource for you inside your Learning Center.  You can now search for a topic that may apply to something you may be working on or have a question about.


More resources for you on the Home screen


Why Go Premium (and Premium Pro!)

As you already know, Teamr and all of our other sites are free to use and offer some great organizational tools.  But going Premium unlocks some serious power - and for only $4.95 a month, you can't go wrong.  Here are a few key functions you'll find once you upgrade:

  • Multiple administrator functions for sharing responsibilities with other group members
  • Integrated Storefront for selling your goods or services
  • Online payment collection for store purchases or receipt of online donations
  • Powerful email marketing tools including delivery tracking and HTML templates for newsletters
  • Additional online storage for photos and other files

At only $49.95/year for our ridiculously cheap annual Premium upgrade, you get a whole year of powerful team organization tools.  Learn more about Premium accounts on the Teamr website.

Premium Pro is even better.  No ads anywhere, extra file storage, and more email customization.


On the Burner

  • Our next big push is for an accounting system integrated inside your account.  Stay tuned for that!
  • We're working on a new navigation that should speed up everything.

 

MyTrainerLink

 Personal trainers have their entire business managed in one place - if you work with one or know of one, let him or her know about us!

teamr Sites:

Be sure to tell your friends about teamr's sites. Everyone knows someone that could benefit from our free tools!

 

 Follow us Online

If you join us on any of these networks, please take a moment to post a hello message to us!

* Blog: We've set up our blog - check it out at http://blog.teamr.com

* Facebook:  Go to Teamr's Facebook page and become a fan!  You'll get more advanced updates when we make upgrades to our system.  And once you become a fan, you'll get access to the new Facebook widget application!  Use our new Facebook address to find us:  www.facebook.com/teamr

* LinkedIn:  Search Groups for Teamr and you'll find us, or you can just click here to see our group

* Twitter:  Follow us on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/team_r

* iGoogle:  Do you use iGoogle for your homepage or search? Click here to set up the new iGoogle gadget.

* iPhone: Go to the iTunes App Store and download the Teamr Companion!

 

 

Upgrade to Premium Pro

Aside from all the benefits of a Premium account (accepting payments for events, the online store, email templates and tracking, custom event types, etc), you can upgrade to an ad-free account.  The cost is nominal and only depends on how many contacts you have in your account.  Click on the My Account screen to learn more!

Know someone who could use Teamr?

Forward this email to a friend or colleague who might be interested in using a state-of-the-art team management software platform.

As always, we appreciate any feedback you have and hope that you are enjoying teamr and our family of sites! Stay tuned for more upgrades coming soon!

A history of previous upgrade announcements is available on our Technology History page.

Until next time,

Lars, Doug, Marlyn and Rocky
Founders, Synchronous Technologies Group Inc.
The teamr Family of Group Management Sites