I'm proud of all we accomplished in 2019 and motivated by the excitement and appreciation of our customers when they see each new iteration of Check Cherry. In my recap of 2018, I wrote Matt and I both felt that 2019 was going to be even better than in 2018. I'm happy to share, our instincts proved to be accurate. While it's been a lot of work, it's also been a lot of fun to see Check Cherry continue to mature and help more people.
Our customers are continually sharing feedback while they use and implementing the Check Cherry's style of a CRM or booking management system into their business. I want to give a HUGE thank you to all of those who took the time to provide feedback (big and small) to help make the platform better. Check Cherry has come a long way and is in a great spot; however, we recognize there are still a lot of ways to make Check Cherry better. Please keep the feedback coming.
On to the recap of 2019:
Availability
We rolled out a series of features allowing customers to manage the availability of their company, packages, staff, equipment, and more. Included was an innovative feature for bundling items together and capping its availability. This bundling aspect of Check Cherry allows for more complicated configurations, such as managing the availability of double-sided backdrops or a set of equipment often included as a package.
Proposals
We developed an official solution allowing customers to send proposals to their clients. A simple, yet highly effective implementation, the proposals feature compliments the self-service booking side of Check Cherry extremely well. It's been heavily used and we received a lot of feedback leading to several iterations over the year.
Mini-sessions
With mini-sessions, you can offer several short slots for customers to choose within a given time frame. Minis are popular in the world of portrait photography and helpful for booking short sessions at your studio. We think they will come into play for other customer profiles of Check Cherry, just as photo booths in the years to come.
Zapier
We released and reiterated upon a robust integration with Zapier. This feature gives customers more options for integrating their Check Cherry account with over 1,500 other applications. For example, one can easily sync their customer list with the mass/bulk email service provider of their choice such as Mailchimp or Contact Contact.
Designs
We continued to improve the Design feature. Enhancements include integrations with the PBO Design Shop and Photo Booth Talk.
Square
From the time of our public launch in late 2016, integrating with Square was a common feature requested. In 2019 it made it to the top of the list, and customers can now choose among Stripe, Square, and PayPal to process card payments.
Widgets
With widgets, customers can embed components of their Check Cherry account directly within their marketing website. Widget options include backdrops, add-ons, staff profiles and more.
Email Events
There is no more guessing if a client opened or clicked an email. Check Cherry now reports back the following actions for each email sent: delivered, opened, clicked, bounced, dropped.
TaxJar
Some of our customers are required to collect a different sales tax rate for each address/venue they provide services. With Check Cherry's TaxJar integration, customers can now automatically set an accurate tax rate based on state, county, city, and special districts.
Travel Fee Enhancements
We improved Check Cherry's feature set around Travel Fees. Customers can now scope Travel Zones on a package-by-package basis, add a custom address for each to calculate the distance and prevent self-service bookings that fall outside their travel zones.
Multi-package Support
One can now add multiple packages per booking/proposal. This is a great feature for those who offer multiple services (e.g., Photo Booth and Photography) for one client event such as weddings or corporate parties.
Staff Account Enhancements
We added extra permissions for staff accounts allowing admins to limit access to pricing and other actions of standard accounts. One can also now specify and customize the title/role of staff accounts for each booking.
Calendar Refresh
Perhaps one of the most used features of Check Cherry, the calendar, got a refresh allowing one to see Confirmed Events, Proposals, Canceled Events, Company Time Off, and Staff Time Off in a single layout.
Improved Search
We leveled up some of the search features for Check Cherry to make it easier to find the booking, proposal, or design you're looking to work on next. We're indexing more data and leveraging best-in-class search technology for fast and forgiving lookups.
Override More Stuff
Over the years, we've come to realize just how important flexibility is when closing a deal. While Check Cherry is setup to auto-populate based on your business and package preferences, we spent meaningful effort to make it flexible. Allowing customers to override booking data such as the price of a package, price of an add-on or payment due date.
Our customers are continually sharing feedback while they use and implementing the Check Cherry's style of a CRM or booking management system into their business. I want to give a HUGE thank you to all of those who took the time to provide feedback (big and small) to help make the platform better. Check Cherry has come a long way and is in a great spot; however, we recognize there are still a lot of ways to make Check Cherry better. Please keep the feedback coming.
On to the recap of 2019:
Availability
We rolled out a series of features allowing customers to manage the availability of their company, packages, staff, equipment, and more. Included was an innovative feature for bundling items together and capping its availability. This bundling aspect of Check Cherry allows for more complicated configurations, such as managing the availability of double-sided backdrops or a set of equipment often included as a package.
Proposals
We developed an official solution allowing customers to send proposals to their clients. A simple, yet highly effective implementation, the proposals feature compliments the self-service booking side of Check Cherry extremely well. It's been heavily used and we received a lot of feedback leading to several iterations over the year.
Mini-sessions
With mini-sessions, you can offer several short slots for customers to choose within a given time frame. Minis are popular in the world of portrait photography and helpful for booking short sessions at your studio. We think they will come into play for other customer profiles of Check Cherry, just as photo booths in the years to come.
Zapier
We released and reiterated upon a robust integration with Zapier. This feature gives customers more options for integrating their Check Cherry account with over 1,500 other applications. For example, one can easily sync their customer list with the mass/bulk email service provider of their choice such as Mailchimp or Contact Contact.
Designs
We continued to improve the Design feature. Enhancements include integrations with the PBO Design Shop and Photo Booth Talk.
Square
From the time of our public launch in late 2016, integrating with Square was a common feature requested. In 2019 it made it to the top of the list, and customers can now choose among Stripe, Square, and PayPal to process card payments.
Widgets
With widgets, customers can embed components of their Check Cherry account directly within their marketing website. Widget options include backdrops, add-ons, staff profiles and more.
Email Events
There is no more guessing if a client opened or clicked an email. Check Cherry now reports back the following actions for each email sent: delivered, opened, clicked, bounced, dropped.
TaxJar
Some of our customers are required to collect a different sales tax rate for each address/venue they provide services. With Check Cherry's TaxJar integration, customers can now automatically set an accurate tax rate based on state, county, city, and special districts.
Travel Fee Enhancements
We improved Check Cherry's feature set around Travel Fees. Customers can now scope Travel Zones on a package-by-package basis, add a custom address for each to calculate the distance and prevent self-service bookings that fall outside their travel zones.
Multi-package Support
One can now add multiple packages per booking/proposal. This is a great feature for those who offer multiple services (e.g., Photo Booth and Photography) for one client event such as weddings or corporate parties.
Staff Account Enhancements
We added extra permissions for staff accounts allowing admins to limit access to pricing and other actions of standard accounts. One can also now specify and customize the title/role of staff accounts for each booking.
Calendar Refresh
Perhaps one of the most used features of Check Cherry, the calendar, got a refresh allowing one to see Confirmed Events, Proposals, Canceled Events, Company Time Off, and Staff Time Off in a single layout.
Improved Search
We leveled up some of the search features for Check Cherry to make it easier to find the booking, proposal, or design you're looking to work on next. We're indexing more data and leveraging best-in-class search technology for fast and forgiving lookups.
Override More Stuff
Over the years, we've come to realize just how important flexibility is when closing a deal. While Check Cherry is setup to auto-populate based on your business and package preferences, we spent meaningful effort to make it flexible. Allowing customers to override booking data such as the price of a package, price of an add-on or payment due date.
Hundreds of refinements, enhancements or fixes.
Looking back, there were a lot of smaller tweaks or enhancements which are not worth mentioning in this recap. However, all of those small changes add up to make a huge impact on how smooth and easy-to-use Check Cherry is for customers.
LOOKING TOWARDS 2020
Our team is really excited about 2020 and where Check Cherry will be in 12 months. We're not satisfied simply creating a better mousetrap, we want Check Cherry to be something unique, innovative and to continually challenge the definition of what category of software Check Cherry falls under. We're so much more than CRM and while booking management will likely always be at our core, we have a few exciting features that have been on our wishlist for years and it looks like 2020 may be the year we get to push the envelope and see how everyone responds.