As we wrap up 2024, we want to take a moment to celebrate the fantastic improvements that have made Prospect CRM more powerful and user-friendly.

This year, we introduced a range of features and enhancements designed to boost your productivity and streamline your workflow. Below is a recap of all of these exciting features:

In 2024, we worked closely with our colleagues in the Unleashed product and engineering teams to really make the CRM and Unleashed integration as seamless to use as possible.

Here's a quick summary of some of the integration enhancements:

Our Access Financials integration includes essential data sync including currencies, tax information, product details, inventory data, product prices, orders and invoices as well as the creation of orders in Financials from CRM Quotes. We're also providing basic integration with projects and cost centres in Access Financials, which can be assigned to Quote lines within the CRM. This project and cost centre info will also be pushed to Access Financials when confirmed.

Users can also create Sales Ledgers directly within the CRM. Once created, these Ledgers will be pushed into Financials, allowing users to utilize them for creating Sales Transactions in both systems.

We also added the functionality to import price records for non-stock/service items which will benefit customers that sell non-material or non-diminishing services. Additionally, we've introduced special pricing including fixed prices, price bands and quantity breaks.

More recently, we further enhanced this integration by allowing users to create new Projects directly from the CRM. This feature can be enabled via System Settings. When creating a Quote, you have the option to select an existing Project or create a new one using the Project creation screen. This screen allows you to base new Projects on existing ones, duplicating all cost centres. Additionally, you can assign each Quote Line to a different cost centre and view them grouped by cost centre on a separate tab, including line costs in the report. These enhancements aim to improve your workflow and provide greater flexibility in Project management.

Any 3PLs who already have their CRM connected to Xero can now also connect to Mintsoft 3PL software for additional functionality. This is designed for 3PL businesses (not Mintsoft Multi-Channel Retailers, or at least not yet!) and provides two key features in addition to the existing Xero integration:

A new integration to FactoryMaster is now available in Preview. Access FactoryMaster is an MRP (Material Requirements Planning) solution for small to medium-sized manufacturers, including those with ambitious growth plans.

More recently, we enhanced this integration to allow users to mark Products in the CRM as requiring Equipment creation when using FactoryMaster. When a Sales Order with such a Product is imported from FactoryMaster, an associated Equipment item will be automatically created in the CRM. This Equipment item will include the Serial Number and Invoice Number assigned in FactoryMaster, helping you track your equipment more effectively.
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In 2024, we launched the all-new Growth Engine and our Growth Hub - packed full of help guides and resources on how to make the most from the insights. The Growth Engine analyses your CRM and ERP data, turning it into digestible charts that illustrate your progress in each of these seven growth strategies. By seeing clear upward, flat, or downward trends you can quickly pinpoint which areas need the most focus and improvement.
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Later in 2024, we introduced an empty state for each one of the Growth Engine graphs, along with a ‘Learn More’ guide. These enhancements are designed to assist users in gaining a deeper understanding of the prerequisite data and optimizing their CRM setup to maximize the value derived from this feature.

We also made some further adjustments to how we display and calculate churn statistics. We now attempt to calculate the error in our automated statistics based on the oldest data, and then apply error correction going forward to the latest stats. This should help to improve situations where we show a higher churn rate for newer data, since it hasn't had a chance to be corrected yet as customers order again just a bit late.

In December 2024, we launched the all-new Calendar & Events feature. Users can now stay on top of their schedule by syncing seamlessly with Outlook. Plus, we launched a new "Enable New Tasks" system setting, which you can use to turn on the new Tasks for your Workspace, allowing you to migrate whenever you're ready - without needing to get in touch with us.

Our new marketing Landing Pages allow users to quickly and easily create focused mini sites for use in Pay-per-click, SEO, email and other forms of marketing campaigns. A key feature is the ability to host CRM Enquiry Web Forms on these pages, so you don’t need to update your website every time you want to use an Enquiry Web Form in an email or PPC campaign.

Please note: this feature is currently in Private Preview, so is initially only available to select Early Adopters.

We added a new feature for our Pegasus Opera Accounting System integration that enables you to create back-to-back Purchase Orders. After confirming a CRM Order with insufficient stock, a two-step wizard menu gives you the option to create a Purchase Order. You can adjust the Purchase Quantity and select Suppliers from a drop-down menu for each Quote line individually.

Lines are then grouped by Supplier, and you can fill in delivery information as well as providing an email address for Order confirmation. Once the steps are completed, Purchase Order requests are created and processed by the Automation Manager, updating Opera and the CRM with the corresponding PO request numbers and automatically sending an email to the Supplier. This feature ensures efficient management of Orders with insufficient stock and allows you to stay within the CRM for all your Order processes!

To enable Back-to-Back Purchase Order Creation, navigate to System Settings here. You'll need to set a Delivery Charge Product and select an Email Template to be sent to the Supplier.

We added a new record view that shows a Sales Order record, imported from the ERP/Inventory Management system (or equivalent where there's no sales order, i.e. shows details of draft invoices in the case of Xero).
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This new view gives basic information about the order or invoice as well as the associated product (or service) lines. Where the Order originated from a CRM Quote, there's also a hyperlink to open the originating Quote. However, the key benefit to this new view is that it will provide details of the Order (including product lines, prices etc.), even if the Order didn't originate as a CRM Quote.

Users will now see two separate pages (tabs) on the CRM customer record. The first is called "Quotes" which will list all the Quotes (whether confirmed to Order or not), web baskets, etc., as well as Orders processed through the CRM quoting interface. The second page, called "Orders" will list all orders, whether generated via the CRM or not.

When sending an email from a Quote, the email attachments window allows you to browse and attach documents from the CRM Library. In this latest update, where documents are already associated with Products on the Quote, an additional option will show allowing you to browse those specific documents. This allows users to find the most relevant attachments more easily and faster - saving time and producing more informative customer Quotes!

We’ve improved the UX around Quotes and Opportunities by adding a primary button in the header bar to help guide the user on what to do next. This replaces the “create sub-record” button (e.g. for creating Documents or Problems under an Opportunity) but has these record creation options available in the split button drop-down instead along side other (often more important or more relevant) actions, such as confirming or cancelling a Quote etc.

When deleting a group from a Quote, users can also choose to delete all lines within that group (i.e. removing the whole group and all products within that group, or just removing the grouping and keeping the Quote lines).

It's now possible to disable the automatic recalculation of Opportunity values when a Quote under that Opportunity is created or updated. For example, you might have multiple Quotes under an Opportunity. Or, even with just a single Quote, you may have included product lines on the Quote that are entirely optional or speculative, and as a Salesperson you may know that your $10,000 Quote is only likely to generate $5,000 of business (because the customer is only likely to buy half the items on the Quote). In which case, you can turn off the automatic calculation (which would set the Opportunity value to $10,000 and manually set the value you are expecting - i.e. $5,000; providing more accurate and useful pipeline reporting!

We also improved the user experience of the Magic Matrix with several enhancements logged and voted on via the Feedback Portal, including:

We've enhanced the Report Builder interface by introducing the ability to reorder fields within the Groups and Summary sections and to rearrange the Report grouping. The updated user interface now allows users to conveniently drag and drop both individual fields and entire groups.

You can now customise the "New Record" menu, in the same way as you customise the CRM Layout. You can add or remove fields where needed to make record creation streamlined for you and your users. When using the Customiser, a new page will appear at the top of the page list - for example, 'New Contact'. Adding fields to this page will make them visible when creating a new record of that type. Mandatory fields will still be added to the creation menu automatically, allowing you to rearrange them as needed.

We’ve optimised the email sending process to run in the background, so you can continue using the CRM without having to wait for attachments to be generated and sent. Emails will appear in your timeline with a “Sending…” status and will be updated to “Sent” once completed. If there’s an issue, you’ll be notified, and the status will change to “Failed” with an error message.

We’ve enhanced our Save to CRM add-in for Outlook and Gmail to enable the creation of Contact records directly from your email. Previously, this process required manual entry within the CRM, but now you can seamlessly create Contacts without leaving your inbox. Additionally, the add-ins support creating new Companies, ensure all required fields are populated, and alert you if the email address already exists in the CRM.

We’ve added product images to the multi-line order entry screen, making it easier for you to identify Products when creating a Quote. This enhancement reduces errors and speeds up the Quote creation process. Additionally, we’ve improved the Search Report and the Global Search to display product images, providing visual cues that make finding Products quicker and more intuitive.

We’ve introduced a new feature that shows when an RFM category changes from one status to another and records these changes to a history table. This enhancement is specific to Company activity feeds and will reflect the status changes of the default Sales Ledger, thereby offering you better visibility of your customers’ trends. This information can be hidden via a system option.

But these updates were just the beginning! Over the Christmas period, our technical team will be doubling down on our progress, making Prospect CRM even faster and more reliable. We're committed to enhancing the core of our system to deliver a seamless user experience. From behind-the-scenes performance upgrades to impactful new features, you can look forward to more updates that will make the system more efficient and intuitive in the new year.

Stay tuned for our upcoming roadmap, where we'll share all the exciting enhancements and new functionalities planned for the year ahead. It's your guide to what's coming next and how we're taking Prospect CRM to the next level to better support and grow your business!