Tattoo Management Studio

First, I apologize this blog hasn’t been very active. I can assure you things are always much more busy than they appear here. Truth is the blog never quite took off, but hoping to change that this year!

Tattoo Management Studio in 2012 is going to be very exciting. The first release of the year, 2.0 is only a few weeks away. And after that… well, let’s just say it’s going to be amazing.

Today REV23 Development released Tattoo Management Studio Express Edition v1.4 with the much anticipated Google Calendar Integration. Here is a quick tutorial on how to configure that integration.

1) Open the Employee you wish to configure integration for. “Security” –> “Employees”

2) On the Ribbon menu, click the “Tools” option then click the “Configure Google Calendar” button.

3) Step through the Wizard. It simply asks you for your username/password and which Calendar in your Google Account you’d like to sync with. You can even create a calendar specifically for use in Tattoo Management Studio.

4) When you’ve saved the account you’re done! You just need to make sure and turn on and start the Tattoo Management Studio Integration Service. You can do this from your Start Menu in the Tattoo Management Studio Express Edition folder, and the “Service Configuration” shortcut.

5) In the Service Configuration window, click the “Integration Service” tab, and click the “Start” button. Here you can also modify how often the integration runs. By default, it is set for every 6 hours. You can reduce this to 1 hour if you’d like.

You’re done! The first sync should happen anywhere between 5 minutes to 1 hour after you start the Integration Service. During the first sync it will pull down all future appointments from Google and push your future appointments from Tattoo Management Studio.

At this point you can configure the rest of your artists accounts, or they can log on and do it themselves!

As you all know, Tattoo Management Studio is able to read driver’s licenses with our Driver’s License/Credit Card Reader. But this only works for the 21 states that include magnetic strips on the back of their driver’s licenses. What about the rest of you?

We’re happy to announce that in the coming weeks, Tattoo Management Studio Express Edition will be able to read 2D Barcodes which are included on driver’s licenses in a whopping 45 states! This means we’ll have complete coverage for those of you who have both the Driver’s License/Credit Card Reader and our new Barcode Scanner!

What barcode do I scan? The 2D barcode looks something like this…

And from it, we’re able to pull the same information as the magnetic strips. Name, Address, DL Number, Gender & Birthdate!

Stay tuned for how to order your new barcode scanner (which will have many other functions in Tattoo Management Studio Express Edition in the coming months!)

Get Tattoo Management Studio Express Edition Now!

Today we released Tattoo Management Studio Express Edition v1.3. The focus this round was true multiple location support. Multiple shops can now share one database and have customer history available, or keep everything completely separate.

Other features include the Free Time Calculator! Easily find an empty block of time for a specific artist (or any artist) based on the duration you need.

Manual (call-in) credit card authorizations are also supported now as well as 25 other minor features and improvements.

Don’t have Tattoo Management Studio? Learn more about it at http://www.rev23.com

Thanks to the guys at H2Ocean, you can now download their catalog into Tattoo Management Studio Express Edition!

Now that v1.2 is released with integrated credit card processing, it’s time to start thinking about new features!

We have our internal roadmap pretty well built out and want to share some of it with you, so you have an idea of what to look forward to in the future.

• We’ve been doing a lot of work behind the scenes the last couple of versions to make Tattoo Management Studio Express Edition a solution for all tattoo shops, not just those in the United States. Coming up in a quick maintenance release later this month will be some additional tweaks to really move this forward to better support our UK and Australian customers. And coming in early 2011 will be the ability to have Tattoo Management Studio in multiple languages.
• Multiple location support! What many of you don’t know is that this has actually be in the software since its very first release, just not available for you to see. We’re going to be taking the covers off of this one very soon!
• QuickBooks integration! Export all your financial data to QuickBooks so you can cut payroll checks and do your taxes much easier!

That’s not all. We have a lot of things in the works that we’re just not ready to share yet, including new products to the Tattoo Management Studio product family.

We’ve received a lot of great feedback from you, our customers, which has helped make Tattoo Management Studio the product it is today and we encourage you to keep sending us that feedback!

REV23 Development is pleased to announce the release of Tattoo Management Studio Express Edition v1.2.

What's New in v1.2.10160.50:

Version 1.2 represents a major leap forward for Tattoo Management Studio with over 50 new features and improvements. With the introduction of integrated credit card processing, and a lot of "behind the scenes" work, Tattoo Management Studio is well positioned to grow well into the future!

· Integrated Credit Card Processing

· Options, layout and application skin save per user account

· Employee Work Hours

· Table, Header/Footer & Page Layout support for Letter Editor

· Formatted HTML e-mail appointment reminders

· New permission for calendar visibility to create custom roles that have the same functionality as the built-in Scheduler group

· If a customer is selected for an appointment, their name/phone number automatically appears in the scheduler (no more double typing!)

· Customer source tracking

· Over 2x the previous database storage space!

· much more!!!

Current customers can login to the REV23 Development Website and download the update today!

We’re proud to announce the launch of our new Online Store for Tattoo Management Studio. The store is fast and secure, and new customers can order Tattoo Management Studio products from it immediately!

Visit the online store now!

Tattoo Management Studio Express Edition v1.2 is approaching fast, and with it comes many changes. One of the biggest changes is our upgrade to SQL Server 2008 R2. Depending on when you first installed the software, your experience will be different. And in some cases, may require a manual upgrade of SQL Server. We are going to be contacting those users one-by-one assisting them with this to make sure they get all the benefits of the new version. Though this may take us a little time to complete.

So, let’s get to it.

First and foremost, before you update to v1.2 TAKE A BACKUP OF YOUR DATABASE! As always, the installer will ask you if you’d like to do this before the install, so make sure you say yes. Save the backup onto your desktop or some other safe location.

Next, as was the case when you first installed Tattoo Management Studio, there are more prerequisites that need to be downloaded and installed. This will happen automatically in the installer, just like before. These new prerequisites will help propel us forward with new features and technologies coming in later versions.

If you downloaded and installed Tattoo Management Studio Express Edition BEFORE July 13th, 2010, SQL Server 2008 R2 will be installed as part of these prerequisites. Users that have installed AFTER July 13th will need to perform an optional (but recommended) upgrade to SQL Server 2008 R2. As mentioned, we will assist these customers personally. We will also post those upgrade instructions here on the blog.

If SQL Server 2008 R2 was installed automatically, you will need to restore the database you previously made a copy of. Again, don’t worry, we will get with all of you to do this process, just outlining it here for those who want to attempt this upgrade themselves.

Finally, for customers connecting to the server from other computers, these workstations will need to be reconfigured through the same easy wizard that you previously used.

After this, Tattoo Management Studio Express Edition v1.2 will be installed and ready to go. Now, the big question. Why the hell did we do this? There are a few reasons, all of which revolve around our ability to quickly deliver new features & products to our customers. This was no accident, and has been very carefully architected over the last several months.

We appreciate your patience with this process and know that these changes are a necessary part of our ability to continue grow Tattoo Management Studio into the best tattoo shop management software available.

Remember to check out the blog on Credit Card Processing in v1.2.

As we’re getting closer to v1.2, our biggest release yet containing over 20 new features, we wanted to start showing off some previews of what we’ve done. First up, Appointment Icons & Customer Information.

First, in the screenshot, notice the customer’s name, “Tattoo” is the subject, and the name is being pulled in from the customer field if it’s been filled out.

Next, notice the new icons. These indicate if a text message and/or e-mail reminder will be sent, as well as if a deposit has been paid. Pretty cool!

We can’t give you an expected release date on v1.2 but we’re still aiming for “Summer 2010.” We’re very excited about this new release and can’t wait to get it into your shops!