Blog

If you just logged into your dashboard, and were wondering what in the hell just happened, we're here to explain!

We've just released the framework to our new dashboard, along with some cool updates to the look and flow. Right now it doesn't seem like much of a change, because most of it is under the hood, but trust us, this is a monster update. Let's look at some of the changes.

Navigation

Right away you probably noticed that the Navigation is different. Sales stays, but we're now calling Products, Inventory. Next, we've changed Modules, to Apps. Modules was a cool term, and it made total sense to us, but truthfully, it made no sense to store owners. It also felt a little like a junk draw. We had tons of stuff thrown in there, that really needed a better home. Now, when you click Apps, you'll only see the Apps you've installed. We kept Storefront, but moved Settings to the right, because it's a screen you rarely ever go into. Lastly, to the left of Settings, we have a new link called App Store. As you can probably guess, this takes you to the old Manage Modules screen. We believe this layout makes a lot more sense to both new and existing store owners.

Sales Overview

Now let's look into each section. First is Sales. We've added a little gear icon on the left, that houses some filters that aren't used often. Here you'll also find your Customers section. If you remember, it had been in the Modules menu, but since we changed that to Apps, and are only putting Apps you install in there, it needed a new home. Next to the gear we added a button called Overview. If you click that, you'll be taken to our new reporting section. This new section is a lot more powerful than the previous one, so it deserved a very prominent spot in your dashboard. Here's a couple of ways we improved it:

First, if you look at the top, you'll see that you can now view daily reports by week, month, or your own custom date range.

Second, if you scroll down after you've select a time period to report on, you're going to see the totals for that time period. This is going to help a lot with bookkeeping. If you click the number of total orders, for either the entire time period, or just one day, it will take you back to your main sales area, and load up just those orders. You can then export them to CSV. You might also notice something else that wasn't here before, up to the second reporting on today's sales.

Inventory

The next screen we tackled was Products, which as we stated before, has been changed to Inventory. As you can see, we no longer consider Ticket Selling an App that you need to install. We're bringing it right to the forefront. This will now be standard on all dashboards, but it won't be the default screen. We'll always default to Products. The reason we wanted to make Tickets a standard feature from now on, will become more apparent in the coming months. For now we can only say, trust us :).

You also see another gear icon on the left hand side of the Inventory screen. Once again, we put all the different actions like Sort and View, in there, but we also included some of the screens people rarely go to. For instance, Shipping is located in there. 99% of the time, when you want to create a new Shipping Profile, you do so when you're creating the product. But every once in a while, you need to alter a profile, that's when you'll need to go to the Shipping section. The same thing goes for Digital, Venues, and Categories. These are things that are added from inside the Product or Ticket Creator, but live in a different area that's rarely touched.

Bonus Updates

Another very cool addition to the dashboard are bookmarkable search URLs. In the past, our URLs didn't change when you searched for products and orders. But now, after you search or click an ordered total in your Inventory section, the URL updates, which will allow you to share or bookmark it. So let's say for instance, you just put up a new release and you wanted to have a bookmarked link that goes directly to the sales for that record. You could do a search inside your Inventory section, the URL would update, and then you can bookmark it, so any time you wanted to go right to that release, you could. It's a simple upgrade to the dashboard, that should make life a whole lot easier.

The last and final thing we'd like to talk about is our new Bug Bounty program. Since the dashboard has so many changes, and Limited Run is a small team of just 2 dudes and a bulldog, we believe our greatest resource is customer feedback. That's why if any of you find a bug in the dashboard, we'll waive your next monthly fee. Now, we want to make something clear. This needs to be a bug. Meaning, a feature must not work the way it was intended, and it breaks. We love designers and all, but if you contact us saying that we're off by a pixel somewhere, we might have to add a month to your balance, instead of giving you credit for one. We're kidding! Seriously though, it needs to be a legitimate bug. If it isn't, we'll sic Napoleon on you.

We have a ton more planned for the coming months, so be sure to follow us on Twitter for the latest.

We recently made an improvement to how you can export your sales. In the past, you could only export each order as a single row in a CSV file. This worked well when using it with a shipping service like Endicia. What it wasn't good for though, was bookkeeping. Now you can choose whether you want to export your sales to CSV as "One Row for Each Order" or "One Row for Each Order Item". This new choice will put each item bought on it's own line, regardless of whether it was ordered with other items.

Changing your export preferences is easy:

1. Go into your dashboard by signing in on the homepage.
2. Click "Sales" in the dashboard navigation.
3. Click the down arrow attached to the "Export" button.
4. Click to enable "One Row for Each Order", "One Row for Each Order Item", or both.
5. Click the "Save" button.

After updating your export preferences, select each sale you'd like to export, and click the "Export" button like you normally would. Depending on your preferences, one or more zipped CSV files will start downloading.

For more details on exporting a list of your orders, take a look at this help doc. And if you have any questions, feel free to contact us.

We have awesome news from Stripe, our credit card processing partner: They're now beta testing in six additional countries!

If you're in Australia, Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland or The Netherlands, head over to Stripe's Global Page and use the "Get Notified" form on the top right to request access. Once they've added you to the beta, you'll be able to enable credit card processing in your store's dashboard.

And if you're in the United States, United Kingdom, or Canada, and you're not already using Stripe to accept credit card payments from your customers and fans, you're making a tremendous mistake!

To enable Stripe, just go into your store's dashboard, click "Settings" at the top, click the blue "Connect With Stripe" button, fill out the short form, and in just a few seconds, you'll be accepting credit cards.

And when we say just a few seconds, we're not kidding!

It's spooky how easy it was to setup @stripe and accept credit cards through my @limitedrun store at http://t.co/n22qBljIN3.

— Wells Tipley (@wellstipley) August 22, 2013

They might even send you cupcakes!

As always, if you have any questions, please send us a message.

One of the nice little features Stripe makes possible is the ability to link directly to a transaction inside your dashboard. As you can see, this makes it really easy to jump right to a related credit card transaction when managing sales in your Limited Run store.

But with PayPal, this sort of thing wasn't always reliable because of the way they structured transaction URLs. Fortunately, a store owner (and fellow NY'er) informed us that PayPal recently changed how they handled this. So now if you click into a sale in your store's admin area, you'll see the same "link out" icon next to your PayPal transaction IDs, just like you previously saw for Stripe transactions.

And on a side note, if you're in the US, Canada, or the UK, and haven't added Stripe to your store so that your customers can pay you with a credit card, what in the world are you waiting for?

We just released a small update to the Ticket Selling module's Will Call List. Sometimes parents buy their kids tickets to a show using their PayPal account, and because of security reasons, we only add the name that's associated with that PayPal account to the Will Call list. Plus, it's easier than making every buyer type out the name they want on it. That takes time, and you know we're all about fast checkouts. Anyway, to solve the "Parent Problem" you can now edit any name that appears on the Will Call list.

As you can see from the Vine gif above, changing a name is easy:

1. Go into your dashboard by signing in on the homepage.
2. Click "Tickets" in the dashboard navigation.
3. Find the Show you're looking for and click the "Will Call" link on the right hand side.
4. Find the person's name you need to update and click the arrow on the right hand side.
5. Click the "Edit Name" link.

Name changes will appear on the interactive Will Call list, as well as the printed PDF.

On a related topic, make sure you have the "Customer Checkout Note" module installed so the buyer can tell you they're getting the tickets for their kids and what names should appear on the Will Call list.

To install the "Customer Checkout Note" module

1. Go into your dashboard by signing in on the homepage.
2. Go to your store's "Modules" > "Manage Modules" area.
3. Install the "Customer Checkout Note" module.

See you next week!