Updates

Add the ability to do a percent milestone cost versus a dollar amount, but still retain both options.

Be able to allow employees to edit their timelog entries versus admin having to. Additional permissions would need to be set for this as well for those employees who can and can not do this.

Setting an option to hide the pricing column on estimates and invoices to just show the TOTAL of the invoice or estimate to the client. PDF and estimate/invoice view options.

Would be amazing to have the ability to re-adjust or re-organize the tasks inside the milestones so that you don't have to enter them in the order you want to see them.

Adding the ability to attach multiple PDF's to a Purchase order.

Right now, you have to send credentials at the time of client being added into the system. It would be good and beneficial to be able to auto-send this even after the client is added to the system.

At the moment when a client declines an item inside an estimate, it does not automatically deduct that from the total until it converts automatically to an invoice. We'd like the ability for the total to auto-adjust if the client declines a item inside the estimate.

Currently, as I see it, the only way to tell if a client has signed a contract is if you download the contract. When we assign a contract to a client and sign it there is a notification on the top right of the contract page saying it is signed, however that is just saying we have signed it. Once the client signs it there is no additional visual notification that the client has signed. It would be hugely helpful if on the main contract page there was another column that showed the contract status so that we could quickly glance through all of our contracts and know immediately if there is anything that needs to be addressed.

We hope you all are doing amazing!

Recently, indema went through a Re-structure internally of our development team. This was a critical step in our growth, as we discovered that our existing dev team was not a suitable fit for our growth that we experienced.

We did elect to hire an external-based development firm located in United States (where we are headquartered) so that we could focus on growth.

So what does this mean for the platform? Amazing things! But, there are some downfalls to this. With a external team, we have to consider that they run on whats called "sprints". Their sprints are 3-week sprints where there is no push of updates on a more consistent basis like we had with our previous internal team. This sadly does increase the time we have to rectify reported bugs. We absolutely LOVED that we used to be able to rectify bugs the same day, but the unfortunate part about that was it was more of a band-aid and not actually determining the CORE of the issue.

There are some benefits to this as well, where our dev team can actually spend a bit more time diagnosing issues so that we get to the core of the issues that users experience. This allows us to ensure that the issue is actually rectified and not just put a band-aid on it.

We have also made the decision to not implement any new features until January 2023. This will allow us to focus on bugs and performance improvements that are very much needed. I'm sure you can agree!

We strive for the platform to be the best it can be, and we want to ensure that we stabilize the platform so that new features we do release are not negatively impacted by the current reports of bugs we have.

We are just getting started, and while these are growing pains we have, we want to assure you that we are working tirelessly on the back end to bring the best platform we can to our industry.

If you have any questions at all, feel free to ping me directly: Timothy@indema.co. I'm happy to answer any questions you have or concerns!

With love.
T

Hello everyone! It's almost the holidays, and i'm sure you all are going to be super busy!

For the past year, we have been analyzing our plan structure and discovered that a few firms would be utilizing the hub plan, but still only have 1 user. Similarly we have seen instances where because we offer 3 plans with everything inclusive of it, it sometimes caused confusion on what plan design firms should choose.

At the same flip of the coin, we also looked at our pricing structure and how indema has been (and still is/will be) the most affordable. Though, we have also felt that with all of the features we offer and are coming out with come January, we also had made the decision to do a pricing re-structure as well.

On January 1, 2023 we will be converting to a 1 plan product. A single plan is much easier to manage for firms and they dont have to worry about upgrading or downgrading.

We will also be aligning this with our single-user plan, where we bill at a per user per month structure, at the $35 rate aligning it with our single plan.

Systematically nothing will change.

One more order of business pertaining to this as well which I think is important to outline. We will not be able to grandfather current users in this new structure. We will be making the necessary adjustments automatically come January 1st , and you will be automatically added to the new plan, and all data will also transfer pertaining to the amount of users you already have in the system.

Any lifetime deal users are not impacted by this change, and any users on our original pricing structure from day 1, will also not be impacted by this change.

Please also note: Any annual user due to renew within the first quarter of the new change, will be adjusted to the first 3 days of the previous month with a credit with the exception of January month renewals. This is due to the fact that with legacy users, we will have to manually convert the accounts over. With efficiency in mind, we are manually converting the accounts internally. This means that your renewal date will be 1 month prior to the normal date. With this process, you will be issued a 1 month credit to the account to compensate for the month's difference. If you are wishing to cancel your account, you must advise our team 30 days prior to your normal renewal date. Please set a reminder if you wish to explore this! (with this notice being 4 months from the date of the system change). If you have any specific questions about this please do let us know ASAP. Please review the terms of use pertaining to account termination by visiting this link: https://indema.co/terms-of-use-agreement/ .

Please do ping me or the team directly if you have any questions or concerns! Timothy@indema.co.

Thank you for your attention to this!
Take care, and have an amazing holiday!

Hello designer! In just a few weeks we will be launching indema 3.0 which is why you see a shiny new website!

This is our biggest update yet, and we wanted to share some of the things that are changing, and some more details into not only what changes happen on the platform but also the company changes as well. As we evolve to serve a bigger audience of designers, we strive on feedback and the user experiences we have at indema, and are constantly improving to ensure that we stay up to date, and ensure that every designer’s voice is heard!

So, let’s dig into the details.

// THE COMPANY
Some of the business operations will be changing and how we handle them. This comes with understanding how designers interact not only with our main website, but also our back-end platform that the designers primarily work in.

• indema no longer will be offering a trial period for new accounts starting July 1, 2022 (pre-release to 3.0)
• We have updated all of our terms, privacy policies as well as security to be more transparent with designers.
• New website to better fit our brand identity.
• New process for onboarding and how these will be performed
• New demo process (Webinar) and will be hosting 2 times per week (after 3.0 launch).
• New training structure once 3.0 is released. This will include a lower one-on-one hourly training rate, as well as free weekly training webinars for specific topics.
• New contact protocol for non-users and users of indema.
• Consolidation of some of our internal processes to make a more streamlined approach to designers.
• We’ve updated how we handle all of our feature requests and bug reporting.
  Platform
• Our platform updates are what has changed the most, this was all changed and adjusted based on user-feedback and also user monitoring. We have a huge focus on efficiency – this was complicated to do initially with how robust indema is, but we’re pretty confident that with indema 3, we can hit a different level of efficiency.

// DASHBOARD

• New Feature: indema spotlight allows you to do everything from that single search bar. Add an invoice for a specific project. Edit a specific client? This allows you to be able to do everything without having to click on multiple spots, or know where to go.
• New Feature: My Tasks section – This new section allows you to see all tasks that are past due or becomming due soon. You can also manage the tasks right from the dashboard, or start the timer.
• New Feature: Projects Section- This new section on the dash allows you to see a summary of all your projects – keep track of hours you are using, and the progress.
• New Feature: Finance overview- While not “new”, it just updates the existing finance overview to show more than just income vs. expenses. You can see total outstanding invoices, invoice revenue, markup revenue, billed hours, and value of billed hours. Also on a daily, weekly, monthly and year-to-date view.
• New Feature: Overdue invoices – Be on top of your clients with a section for overdue invoices.
• New Feature: We’ve moved the settings, and account information to a top bar to make it easier to find. We’ve also added “feedback”, and “Report a bug” so you can do both without having to contact support.

// CONTACTS

• Contacts section is no longer in 3 different pages. One page shows your clients, leads and your vendors so that you dont have to click multiple times to switch between the three types of contacts.
• New Feature: Custom fields: You can now create custom fields for clients, leads and vendors in case there are data points you need to keep track of that indema doesnt do by default.

// TEAM

• We’ve updated the term “Employee List” with Team.
• We’ve moved the department and designation sections to the settings so it makes this menu section slimmer.
• We’ve officially retired “Holiday” calendar.

// WORK

• The work section is now slimmer, with removing the tasks, task board, time logs, and freeflow Gantt (this was moved to business menu).

// PROJECTS

• New Feature: Brand new dashboard design.
• New Feature: Performance Metrics: This shows how many hours you are tracking for the project. Total hours allocated, hours used, hours left, # hours over-allocated, % until threshold reached, and value of the hours you have already tracked.
• New Feature: Project Financials: This new section shows project budget, total invoices and current profit, as well as breaks this down below with showing project revenue, expenses, budget remaining, time billed, and total in PO’s.
• New Feature: Estimates and invoices no longer populate in a popup.
• New Feature: Added new field when creating projects called “Max Weekly Hours”. where if you and your client have an amount of hours that you can not (or should not) go over, you can keep track of this.
• New Feature: Visionboard: You can now officially attach visionboards to your projects, where you can collaborate with your clients.
• New Feature: Added credit notes to projects.
• New Feature: Added the ability to hide just 1 file or specific files from the client portal inside project files.
• We removed project summary from the new dashboard, but will still show for employee side and client side.

// FINANCE

• Our finance section is no more! We have completely made it where you have to do everything from either spotlight or within a project. Expenses was moved to Business page since this is still used for business expenses, not necesaarily just project expenses.
• Indema 3.1 release in a few weeks will add a new finance page that shows ALL of these in 1 page. We were not able to release this for 3.0 just yet.

// PRODUCTS

• Completely brand new product section re-designed to not have to scroll in a table.
• New Feature: Product status: Create product status’ so you can keep track of each product YOUR way.
• New Feature: Client status: When a client approves or declines a product, this will automatically indicate this
• New Feature: New user-interface for the product manual add, complete with the ability to add the product image right when you are manually adding the information, not after.
• New Feature: Filtering options: We’ve added a crazy amount of filtering options to include (but not limited to): show items RFQ was sent, show items that were ordered. Show items that have a ship date, show items that have a tracking number, show items that dont have a tracking number, or dont have a ship date. Total filters added: 23.
• New Feature: Images are 4 times the size on the product page.
• New Feature: You can now add decimals to QTY. Meaning if you need 1.84 QTY of something, you can add that and the calculation will reflect accordingly.

// OTHER CHANGES

• We’ve added a new bug reporting tool where you can screenshot, or take a video right within indema to report your bugs.
• We’ve re-structured the self-omboarding process to be a course instead of just a checklist onboarding.
• We’ve re-designed indema.co/gethelp which showcases some of the new things we are doing, as well as helpful articles and content.
• We’ve re-written all of our help articles to reflect all of these new changes and processes.
• We’ve re-recorded all of our how-to videos to reflect all of these new changes and processes.

// NOT SO GOOD NEWS

In short, we’ve struggled quite a bit by being extremely open with new features that we add. In the past, if the feature was super easy for us to implement, we would just do it. Unfortunately, this has somewhat trained some of our users that they can ask for specific things that pertain to their unique process, and then get a bit upset when we cant implement those features for them specifically. While the way we did things was never intended to say that we would customize the platform for your specific use-case, this has fallen short on our end to not set that expectation to everyone.

Moving forward, we will be glad to implement things, however, they would have to be added to our feedback tool (feedback.indema.co), so that it can be voted on. We will implement features that have the most votes AND is the least complex. Meaning, if there is a feature that has 100 votes, and another that has 150 votes to implement but is more complex than the 100 vote feature, we would implement the 100 vote feature first. We wnat indmea to work for everyone of course, but that’s not entirely realistic and we hope you understand our position on that.
What I can promise is that we will do everything in our power to implement as much as the community wants.

With these updates, our platform is easier to navigate making the learning curve lower than before, as well as performance enhancements to make indema a bit faster. We anticipate these changes to officially launch August 4, 2022 pending significant testing and ensuring there are no bugs when launching. As of July 15, we are on track for this release date.

All the best,
Timothy

Hey designers! We have been a bit quiet on development lately, primarily because we have been working on something relatively huge. More an improvement than a new feature. So, I wanted to outline what we are doing.

We have been making a huge adjustment / improvement to the products page.
Here's everything that we are updating:

1. There will be no more "scrolling" left and right to see all columns.

2. We will be adding more columns to the view, to increase the Key points of a product from the existing 31 points to a whopping 40 points.

3. There will be two tabs at the top that filter the view to two sections. The first being product details that encompass the details of the actual product. The next, being dates and warehouse information as well as pricing information. Switching between the two details allows you to be able to see everyone in one place, versus having to scroll left and right all the time.

4. A brand new product add page that covers most of the product key points.

5. New filtering options that allow you to then filter the products from (example), show products with a quote date. Or, show products without a quote date. And the list goes on. We added an incredible 23 filter options which also include enhancing the existing filtering options there already.

6. STATUS'! You will then also be able to add custom status' to products, and filter by those status'.

7. FLAGGING! You will also be able to flag a product. In the settings, you will also be able to indicate how frequently you get an email about the flagged items. This can technically be flag for anything, but the intention of it is to allow you to get a email to remind you to follow up with the vendor about these products you are flagging.

And lastly... Auto-approval/auto-decline updates... So, when your client approves an item, it will automatically show you which items are approved/rejected by your client so you don't have to fish for that information or chase it.

Due to the intense changes we are doing to not only the user-interface but also the logic of the platform it's been taking quite a while and pushing most of the features we need to get done on hold or be delayed/pushed back. So, we are terribly sorry for any delays in new features. Once we have this changed, it will be much easier for us to adjust the products page to bring WAY more to your firm pertaining to products.

As always, thank YOU for being the best part of indema. <3

• Timothy

Hey Designers!

We have officially migrated to quarterly update notes instead of monthly. Why? Because we aren't updating the app nearly as much as our first year, still, quite a lot of updates just not as frequent as before. So with that, here is your most recent indema digest!

🪰BUG FIXES:

• Fixed an issue where we removed the system form auto-bulking time logs from one day. If you want to put time log entries for an invoice into 1 line item, you can use the "grouping" feature to do so.
• Fixed an issue where some users were getting an error when trying to create an estimate of approved items from the product review page.
• Fixed an issue with ship-to address not showing up on PO.
• Fixed an issue where emails were not being sent via email automation module.
• Fixed a PDF layout bug that caused a random line on some generated documents.
• Fixed an issue where some cases of "[objet-error]" was showing on newly updated invoices.
• Fixed an issue where estimate and invoice numbers were not generating correctly. Causing a "already used" error.
• Other various fixes to small to list. 😀

🔥 NEW FEATURES:

• Email automation! You can now send out e-mail automation campaigns to leads and clients.
• New product review facelift where you can now show detailed information on the image popup, and choose what to show the client. Project-specific.
• You can now group items in estimates and invoices and show grouped item to clients.
• Added new certified partner program. (indema.co/partnership)
• In at indema - A brand new community for designers. Coming End of May! Apply by going to indema.co/whose-in
• Added combine option on time-log invoices.

🛠️ NEW IMPROVEMENTS INITIATED:

• New support portal: $ Support.indema.co$ with updated articles.
• Updated billing page to show all billing and add-ons, as well as billing details in one page.
• Updated the sign-up flow (obviously doesn't apply to you, but for new folks!), where its a single page sign-up process.
• You can now delete uploaded images from the visionboard.
• We've completely re-vamped our settings section to add notes, adjust some settings, and added more notification options for you.
• Added "QTY" column to products section
• Added "Spec #" column to products section.
• Improved performance by paginating products section so that it loads quicker.
• Made an adjustment to time-log invoices where it will no longer auto-bulk time logs into one. You can still do this by combining them and showing combined version to the client.

⏰ UPCOMING + STATUS:

• Adding new columns to the product section so you can manage the product even more. (Adding tracking, expediting, CFA approval date, PO sent date which will auto-generate, RFQ sent date which will also auto-populate, Ordered date, Quote received date, Lead time with a dropdown and pre-made date range of RTS, 1-3 weeks, 4-6 weeks, 6-12 weeks, and 12+ weeks, Status where you can create custom status for items, approved/declined which will auto-populate if client approved/declined and also be manual in case client verbally approved, and lastly a flag column where you can flag an item for follow up.
• A new set of 12 filtering options for the above to where you can show all products that don't have a quote date, or show products that are ordered. Etc...

⭐ CURRENTLY WORKING ON:

• XERO integration (No ETA, as we are running into conflicts with QBO)
• New File manager and project files User Interface. (NO ETA)
• inbound and outbound email capabilities with automation. (DELAYED TO JUNE)
• Specifications Module (DELAYED TO MAY)
• Integrately connection. API to connect other apps. (NO ETA)

NOTEWORTHY:

• We have fully retired the "Payroll" section that generated pay statements.

Until the next update, TaTa and hope you all stay safe, healthy and enjoy your week!!