courtesy: Pure Brides

Over the past few months I’ve had the privilege of working with Anna and Gemma from Pure Brides in Norwich, Norfolk UK. Pure Brides carries fabulous Wedding Dresses, Bridal Gowns in Norwich, Norfolk. Anna and Gemma have been instrumental in providing feedback and suggestions for BridalLive enhancements; especially for the UK. Many of the features you see in BridalLive are a direct result of their insightful feedback. So if you happen to be looking for wedding dresses in Norwich, Norfolk, Pure Brides is THE place to go.

I caught up with Anna and asked her a few questions about BridalLive. The interview follows:

Tom: Tell us a little about your shop? How did you get into bridal, your location, how long in business, sq footage, etc.

Anna: I’m based in Norwich in the UK and got into bridal simply as the opportunity presented itself, the numbers looked good and I was looking for a different direction from the corporate background I had come from. We have been trading for 5 years now and have around 1300 sq ft.

Tom: What made you choose BridalLive over the other bridal-specific software vendors?

Anna: There was nothing else in the UK that was even close to doing what BridalLive does. I have looked at a variety of different options, only one of which was Bridal specific and none of these even came close to what I was looking for. I was at the point where my web designer and I were looking to try and develop our own software when I found BL and so it was a great find for me as all the hard work had already been done!

Tom: How long did it take to learn to use BridalLive? How long to train your staff?

Anna: My manageress and I found it very intuitive and got to grips with it very quickly, and we are pretty used to working with Windows and regularly use a computer, the other members of my team have definitely found it harder, as they are less comfortable working on a computer and are very used to writing everything down, so the transition has been painful in places, but they do all love it now and despite the many ‘how do I’ type of questions that we get throughout the day, they can see the benefit and are beginning to feel more professional as a result of BridalLive. It’s take a few months, but we are rather unique in that we were the 1st UK shop and have had to change several bits and pieces to make the system ‘feel right’ in the UK and we deliberately took it slowly as we weren’t able to fully switch over until all the UK specific updates were in place.

Tom: Has BridalLive improved your bridal shops operations? How?

Anna: YES! It’s very easy to immediately locate brides info, and there are no excuses for mislaid paperwork or incorrect balances or payments being taken. The reports features are fab and actually made it very clear to me where we are making good money and where we need to re-evaluate stock etc.

Tom: What is your favorite feature of BridalLive?

Anna: There are so many, the reports are excellent, but so are the tasks, you’ll never again forget to do something, just set yourself a task and it will stay in the list until you mark it as completed! Yay, a few less sleepless nights worrying about the thing I’m sure forgotten, but can’t actually remember what it is!

Tom: Would you recommend BridalLive to other bridal shops? Why?

Anna: Absolutely, although the fact that I don’t want my immediate competitors to have it tells a story!

I want to thank Anna for taking time out of her busy schedule to share his thoughts and insights with everyone. Pure Brides has an excellent selection of Mother of the Bride dresses. Check them out!

Version 1.3 is a direct response to your feature requests. All of the enhancements and new features added in this version were a direct result of the outstanding feedback I’ve received from shops using BridalLive. In this blog post, I’ll outline some of the more notable new features.

Improved Order Tracking/Management

In version 1.2, in order to be able to see the status of a customer order, you had to open the customer’s Sales Order and click “Associated POs”. We’ve improved this in version 1.3, by adding the PO #, Est. Ship Date, and Qty Received to the contact’s purchase history tab. These new fields are available for each sales order line item listed in the purchase history. Also, you can now jump directly to the Inventory Item, Sales Order, or Purchase Order right from the from the line item!

Additionally, we’ve added the ability open the contact tab directly from the Purchase Order. For each line item on the PO, we’ve added a new icon that will open the contact’s tab. Also, we’ve added the ability to copy the Contact’s name and event date to the notes field on the PO. Simply select “Copy contact information to PO” when you are creating the PO and voila!

From the POS side, you can now enter notes for each line item and track which items have been taken home on a Sales Order. Also, for those of you who require a certain deposit percent for Sales Order (i.e. 50% down), you can now specify this percentage under Administration > POS > Default Deposit Percent.

Receipts got an upgrade as well. With version 1.3 you can now print your logo and any line item notes. To add your logo, simply go to Administration > POS > Print Logo on Receipt.

Improved Appointment Options

In version 1.2 appointments were either “Pending” or “Completed”. With version 1.3 we’ve now introduced the concept of “Re-Booked”, “No show”, and “Canceled”. Using the accompanying report titled “Appointment Status Count By Month”, you can now track how many appointment were not completed and why. With this feature, you will now have the ability to measure improvements made in Pre-Sales communication with the bride.

Also, the Quick Appointment now has a notes field where you can enter notes specific to that appointment without having to open the appointment.

Improved Inventory Management

In version 1.2, every item was unique by short description, size and color. As a result, new items for the same style were added to the inventory every time a different size or color was sold. While some prefer this technique, we added to option to manually specify color and size on the Sale and Sales Order without new items being added to the item list.

To make things even easier, we’ve added to concept of Color Groups and Size Groups that can be added to Vendors. When these color and size groups are linked to the inventory item, the color and size fields on the Sale/Sales Order use these available options. Moreover, this feature establishes a foundation needed to be able to suggest sizing based on the contact’s measurements.

For a complete listing of new features and improvements, please reference the release notes.

How to get the new version

Updating is free and simple and takes less than 30 seconds. On each computer running BridalLive, follow these 3 steps:

1. Open the Administration Module
2. Click “Program Settings” in the left navigation menu
3. Click “Check For Updates” and accept the updates.

As always, if you have any questions/suggestions, please contact me.

Helping you thrive,

Tom Esposito