This week we're pleased to announce two new major milestones for 2010; Brightpearl version 3, and the launch of our new inventory/stock management system. We've been working hard over the past few months to bring you one of the most advanced inventory management systems available online, and of course it's 100% integrated with your accounting and ecommerce. Now you really have no excuse not to move off Sage or Quickbooks.
Brightpearl version 3 has been available to new users for a while now, featuring many improvements across the application including:
- Cleaner user interface on many of the commonly used screens
- Better batch processing of contact, product and order data fields
- Clickatell SMS integration
- Support for international users with US date format and multi tiered sales tax.
- 4 US time zones in addition to GMT (more due in 2011)
... but that's really only a small selection. See the full release notes. We'll be updating all users to version 3 over the next few weeks, aiming to have completed the update by the end of January 2011.
We'll be running a webinar on Wednesday 22nd December 1100 GMT to cover all the new stuff in this version, and cover some common workflows like creating and sending quotes, dealing with sales and also inventory management. Sign up for the webinar here. (If you're in the US or Canada then you'll never have used version 2, so there's no need to join).
If you're using inventory management and you're not yet on version 3, then make sure you read on...
The Brightpearl inventory system features:
- 3 levels of stock control : Basic, Standard and Premium to suit all types of product based business
- Powerful Purchase Order processing
- Full audit trail of stock movements
- FIFO (First In First Out) valuation
- Full automatic integration with your accounting ledgers
- Accurate cost-of-sales accounting
- "Allocation" of stock before shipment
- Multi warehouse support
- Aisle/Bay/Shelf/Bin location management within a warehouse
- Track inventory levels for each option of a product (eg size, colour)
- Easy filtering of sales and purchases
- "Drop ship" purchase ordering for items not in stock
- Part-shipment of Sales orders
- Easy back order processing
- Accurate handling of inventory and Purchase Orders both pro-forma and on credit terms.
For full details of which features are available on which pay plan, see here. For those of you interested in the technology, we've got a completely new data model behind the scenes that is robust and scalable. It's all been built on our new Service Oriented Architecture, which means that it's not long before you can access much of the functionality over API too. The new data model does mean that when you start using the new inventory system, we'll need to migrate all your old data.
We'll be upgrading all users over the next few weeks, aiming to have everyone running the new system by the end of January 2011. You'll be prompted automatically to upgrade when you log in to Brightpearl. You can postpone the upgrade until you've got a few minutes to spare. If you're not using inventory management, none of this will affect you.
Full documentation for the inventory management is on our website, and it's definitely also worth having a play around with one of our demo systems:
http://www.hankselectrics.com/admin
Basic inventory; electrical retailer
http://www.solaristar.com/admin
Standard inventory; equipment wholesaler
http://www.indopacific.biz/admin
Premium inventory; clothing and sports equipment wholesaler
Want to get started now?
We already have a few hundred users on the new system; for those of you champing at the bit to switch over now, you can get started right away! You'll need to raise a support ticket asking to be upgraded and we'll bring all your data over for you. If you're running Brightpearl version 2, then please read this forum post - there may be some extra things to consider.