Spring has arrived and that means a bit of spring cleaning around Fons. We're looking all over the app to find the places that cause frustration and confusion to see if we can make it 1% better. And it turns out that a lot of 1% changes makes for a pretty big list of release notes. There is nothing that we'll call out specifically this month so take a look and hopefully we've found a few places to make your life 1% better!

It's been a few months since we served up a hot batch of release notes, but we're back! Our typical cadence for the holiday season is to focus on internal initiatives since no one wants big changes taking place during a big family gathering. So, rather than bore you with infrastructure and build tooling updates we kept the release notes to ourselves. Now let's take a look at what's been cooking for YOU the last few weeks

It's that time of year when we dust off our math skills to tell the IRS what they already know so they can take what they already have. It's a cruel game, but we all have to play it. Fons can't make it go away, but we can give you your 1099 form. Log in to download your form if met the requirements this year.

We're big fans of the flat rate subscription at Fons: students pay the same amount per month and cancellations and holidays are already calculated into the cost. Just fix it and forget it. But if you need something a little different, we're launching Per-Appointment subscriptions: students pay in advance for their appointments and "true up" each month to account for cancellations or extra appointments. It's invite only right now, so shoot us a note at [email protected] if you are interested in trying out this new model.

Communication is vital to the life of your business and Fons conversations let you keep that open line of communication with your clients going but you've been limited to only seeing the last 25 messages. WE. WILL. NOT. BE. LIMITED. Need to see message 26? Or heck, want to go back to the beginning of time (or at least November 2020 when conversations launched). We've got you covered.

Take down the Jack-o-Lanterns and put up the Christmas Trees, it's November! We're kicking off the final quarter of 2023 with a massive release of quality of life improvements and bug fixes that are aimed at freeing up your time running the business so you can spend more time doing what you love. As usual, there's a lot here, so let's jump in and take a look.

With your busy schedule, updating your clients one at a time just doesn't cut it. Good news! We've added a bunch of bulk operations to let you manage your clients more efficiently so you can get back to what you're best at: Teaching (we also know Netflix doesn't chill on its own...). Bulk billing setup, subscription management, labeling, and more can all be found in the action menu on the client list page.

It's 4pm Wednesday afternoon. You just had a great meet and greet with a new student and you're both ready to make this time slot a regular thing. Now you can turn an individual appointment into a recurring series with just a few clicks from the edit menu. Perfection!

When it comes to getting paid, we all know the best solution is automatic collection through Fons. But life messes with all of us, and sometimes you need the flexibility to accept a dirty crumpled check from little Billy. Fons has you covered with the ability mark a failed payment as paid outside Fons, and we'll even send mom a receipt.

Enhancements 💄

Bug Fixes 🐞

❤️ the Fons engineering team

It's October, and that means time to start rolling out the treats! Our list of treats may be short this month, but there's some goodies in there (did someone say fun-size Snickers?) and at least one king size candy bar. Ok, with the obligatory candy analogies out of the way lets's take a look at some of the highlights.

Fons is great for running your appointment-based business, but what if all you need is a bit of online presence and some lead generation? Now you can get just that with a Fons Marketplace subscription! You can personalize your public listing, get discovered by search engines, and have a digital presence where prospective clients can directly contact you. It's just a few bucks a month and no per-lead fees. This has always been part of the full Fons Pro subscription, and now we're making it available to more people. Check it out!

We've heard how much you love the new task list and we're committed to making it work even better for you. In some places we've expanded what we're looking for, and in others we've narrowed it down. The result is an even more curated list of what you need to do to keep you business running smoothly.

Enhancements 💄

Bug Fixes 🐞

❤️ The Fons Engineering Team

September is usually a great month to be a student as everything gets refreshed: new teachers and classes, new friends, and (my personal favorite) new clothes. We're keeping with the trend at Fons and sprucing up some of your favorite features to make them more intuitive, efficient, and fun.

We've heard from you all how much you love the conversations features in Fons, but if we're honest, we've also heard that it was cumbersome at times. Between being buried on the client details and only showing part of the conversation in the todo page, it left a bit to be desired. Now you can view all your conversations right from the main navigation and quickly respond to all your clients. ...and did we mention it has chat bubbles? 😍

There's a lot to keep track of running an appointment based business, and sometimes things fall through the cracks. With this release, Fons is expanding its safety net to catch the things that fall before they become an issue. The reimagined task page will let you know what clients haven't responded to appointment or payment requests, who still needs to enter their payment info, if you've had any recent payment failures, and much more. It's like one stop shopping for everything you need to keep your business running smooth so you can focus more on teaching.

The Fons marketplace got a promotion to the main navigation this month. And with it came an improved editing experience that gives you a live preview of your marketplace and (drumroll please) drag & drop support for adding images. It's easier than ever to get your brand out there and start generating leads. Speaking of which, we also upgraded our support for leads that come from the marketplace so that you can track them in Fons and easily convert them to clients.

Enhancement 💄

Bug fixes 🐛

Happy Fons-ing!
❤️ the Engineering Team

The summer schedule got to our release notes last month (sorry!) so we've got a lot to cover this month. Let's jump right in...

Need to track your business expenses, but don't need a full accounting solution? Fons has you covered! Now you can upload receipts, categorize expenses, and be better prepared for tax season 😱. Check it out under the report tab. Check out this Help Center article on How to Create Expenses, Vendors, Categories and Report on them

When and where should I add a note? How can I see the notes I've added? We heard you and have streamlined the process. From the appointment details page you can now add a follow-up to assign homework or give feedback. We'll track this in the conversation between you and your client so you never miss a beat. Additionally, if you have client specific notes, we'll show those alongside each attendee in an appointment so you don't have to hunt them down. Take a look for full details in our Help Center article Client Notes and Appointment Follow-Up FAQs

It's been a long time coming, but we (finally) support $0/hr appointments. Now you don't have to tell your mom the software requires you to charge her for piano lessons 😉

One of the most frequent questions we are asked by new Fons customers is "what will my clients see?" With the addition of client mode you can now see exactly what they will see. For more information see Testing Fons with Client Mode

Enhancements 💄

Bug fixes 🐛

Remember if you ever need more information on any new features checkout our Help Center.
Happy Fons-ing!

❤️ the Engineering Team

Summer came early in Seattle, the sun is out, and our sunglasses are on because there is no more beautiful place to be than the Pacific Northwest in the summer. But even if you don't live in the area you might need some sunglasses because Fons is looking mighty bright this month!

Out with with the beiges and whites, and in with grays and blacks so that you too can now be one of the cool kids sporting Fons in dark mode. And if you're a switch hitter, preferring to change between light and dark mode with your device, we also support an automatic mode that will do just that!

Clients don't always signup on the first of the month, even though that's when you'd prefer to charge them for their subscriptions. Now you can prorate the first payment of a subscription and still have it bill on your preferred day of the month. No more special onetime payments!

Here's the rest of the summer fun

Enhancements💄

Bug Fixes 🐞

Apparently something is in the water in Seattle, because we are knocking out the hits this month at Fons. We've got features big and small, several long requested enhancements, and the usual smorgasbord of bug fixes and aimed at one thing: helping your business run smoother so that you can focus more on your clients. So let's dive in and see what we've got this month.

Scheduled Availabilities
Now you can setup your summer availabilities in advance without messing up your current availability. This one was so big it got its own blog and you can read all the details here.

Private Appointments Notes
Ever need to jot down some notes on an appointment that are just for you? Whatever the content you can keep track of it and only your staff members can see what what said.

Reports, Reports, Reports
That's right...three new reports are debuting in Fons this month: archived clients, client package details, and Fons billing history. Now you can find even more of what you need to help you keep your business running efficiently and effectively.

...and there's even more:

Enhancements 💄

Bug Fixes 🐛

❤️ Fons Engineering

While we are always looking to improve the Fons experience, we often favor making improvements for our existing customers. But since you've been getting the word out, Fons is growing, and we needed spread some love to the new customers as well. And this month we are excited to announce a complete re-imagining of our onboarding experience to help guide our newest Fons family members into the pit of success!

Moving your business over to Fons used to be a daunting task, especially if you didn't know where to start setting things up. May that never be said of Fons again! We now walk you through each step to setup Fons in a way that leaves you confident you've done it correctly. In particular, "setup mode" allows you to add clients, invite staff, and schedule appointments without fear of sending out premature notifications or charging clients. Make all the changes you want, and when you are ready, take your Fons account live and we'll take care of the rest!

Do you ever wish setting up a family of clients was more intuitive? Or that you could setup a new staff members' schedule before they've accepted their invite to Fons? Well, now you can do both! There's a few other gems in the client and staff wizards that will make life a little easier with Fons...but we'll leave those for you to discover :)

Last month we started showing disputes in the UI. While the feedback was positive, we saw room for continued improvement. Now a first class citizen under reporting, disputes can easily view by status with instructions on what steps you need to take next. We hope you don't have to use this feature very often, but if you do, it's a smoother experience now.

❤️ Fons Engineering

Our focus for the first quarter this year has largely been around smoothing out the rough edges in Fons. While this means that the release notes are smaller in size, we think things still pack a good punch.

It turns out that a lot of people were getting confused with how to "correctly" setup client, particularly when it came to multiple family members or parents paying for children. We made a few changes to the flow, as well as some visual updates, to try and lead everyone into the "pit of success" (I'm told this phrase sounds depressing, but I love it!). Now you can include labels, cc contacts, address, and family members when creating a new client. Then we'll walk you through setting each person up to correctly bill for lessons.

No one likes them, but sometimes they are the reality of doing business. Before now, we'd reach out to you when a dispute was raised for a payment. Obviously this wasn't ideal or sustainable. Going forward, if a client ever disputes a charge, you'll be automatically notified with directions on how to submit evidence for the dispute. And you can view any disputes on the payments page. Here's hoping you don't have to use this feature much.

Who's got time to wait for spinning cursors and long page loads? We're always looking to keep the app fast, but sometimes you run across something that really kicks it up. And this was one of those months...we were able to decrease some of our longest operations from several seconds to dozens of milliseconds! You'll notice these changes most obviously on the calendar page, particularly for our bigger organizations.

We'll be back with more next month. Until then, keep letting us know how Fons is working for you and what we can do to make it work better!

We've been quiet since December as we've been working mostly on behind-the-scenes enhancements and identifying the places in Fons that cause your business the most friction. This doesn't always result in flashy changes to the application, but if Fons serves your business better then you can serve your customers better...we both win! With that in mind there are two significant updates that we're highlighting in addition to the usual collection of updates.

A significant percentage of our organizations bill their clients via subscriptions, and there is a common refrain of questions that we get from you regarding them: what are "Billing: Subscriptions" fees, why are they debited from bank account, and how can I update the price of all my subscriptions at once? It's time to put all those questions to rest!

We've been slowly rolling these features out to each organization one at a time, with the goal of having these features available to all organizations by March.

We all love recurring appointments, but we've seen a trend in support tickets reporting that something "just isn't right". So, in November we spent time comparing the subtle differences of Fons recurring appointments to iCal, Google Calendar, and Outlook. We learned a lot in the process (everyone has issues once you start make a lot of schedule edits) and made a number of changes to how we handle recurring appointments on the back end. You won't see any visual differences, but we think that we've smoothed out the rough patches for those of you that do more than just set-it-and-forget-it with recurring appointments.

Enhancements 💄

Bug Fixes 🐛

❤️ Fons Engineering

The snow came early to Seattle this year keeping our every 8 years streak alive. While an inch of snow is enough to shut down our city (embarrassing, I know) it hasn't kept us from pushing out new features to keep your business running smoothly.

We know that tracking financials is vital to the health of your business and so we have been hard at work improving the reporting pages. The new payments and pages pages are one-stop shopping to track all the money that you process through Fons. You can quickly list the history of payment failures and refunds, track when money should be available, and see the breakdown of transactions and fees that make up a payout.

Need to retry a failed payment, stop automatic collection on a payment, or issue a refund? We've got all that here too! There's no more need to hunt down each appointment separately to perform these actions. You can even delete a onetime-payment that was paid outside Fons.

We think these changes (and the rest listed below) are some really nice quality of life improvements and hope you do as well.

Enhancements 💄

Bug Fixes 🐞

❤️ Fons Engineering

Another month, and another set of improvements to go with it. We've spent the bulk of this month working on the foundation for some improvements to our billing process that we'll announce later this year. So while the list of updates is smaller than most months it doesn't mean that we've forgotten you!

We've heard from a number of you that the ability to add appointment specific notes would be a helpful way to follow up with clients with tasks, homework, and the like. And now you can do just that from the appointment details page. We'll send the note to all attendees so they can keep up with whatever you send their way.

Calculating payroll is a trick prospect and there isn't one single approach that works for all of our users and the current payroll report wasn't cutting it for our larger organizations. We built a new and improved version that we think checks the necessary boxes so you can more quickly and accurately calculate your employees' pay.

Enhancements 💄

Bug Fixes 🐛

❤️ Fons Engineering

September was an exciting month in the word of Fons. In response to a great feature request thread over at Fons Family, we decided to see how many of your ideas we could bring to life in a month. We built features requested by more than 70 different "likes" and celebrated the releases along the way. It was a blast and for us, and helped make Fons work better for you. Thank you for all the great ideas and for working with us to make Fons the best it can be.

Possibly one of the most requested features over the history of Fons made its debut this, and we are stoked about it. There's not much to say other than...finally!

Ever had a client complain that they don't want to set up an Fons account for a one-time only appointment? Now, they can do just that!. A client can book a no-cost appointment without creating an account and they will receive an email with an ics attachment to add to their calendar so they don't forget. You'll see them as a client in your organization and be able to contact them or reschedule the appointment as usual. A little less friction at booking means more conversions.

Sometimes you don't want to see a client in your active list, but you aren't quite ready to delete them entirely. When you archive client, we'll delete their payment information (for security and peace of mind), but keep them around in the archive in case they come back for more appointments at a later date.

Enhancements 💄

Bug Fixes 🐛

❤️ Fons Engineering

August is the best. The weather is amazing for getting outside (one of 2 months this is true in Seattle) and everyone is starting to anticipate new rhythms as the school year approaches. New clothes, shoes, books, and Crayola crayons (a personal favorite) are all finding their way home. This year, Fons has been joining in anticipation and preparation. We've been listening to your feedback and learning what new things in Fons would help start your year off on the right foot.

Appointment creation is kind of the bread and butter for Fons, so its always a little unsettling to make changes. But we had been chewing on some ideas and the brilliant community over at Fons Family confirmed our suspicions. You all were ready for something new. This feature comes in two parts.

We don't just say that we want feedback from our customers...we LOVE feedback from our customers. In fact, much of what we hear finds it way into Fons eventually. Five difference enhancements this month are directly related to requests we received from you. And there are a few more in the works that we'll announce in the weeks to come.

Sometimes the work of the engineering team isn't a visible feature or shiny new addition to the app. Sometimes, it's the thankless work of sifting through log files and infrastructure reports that claim our attention. We never want Fons to feel slow so we actively searched for the those places that were (or would become) problematic and addressed them early. We reduced the timing of many of our most used APIs, reduced the quantity and size of data being transferred, and reduced the overall memory footprint of Fons in your browser. Some gains were significant, some minor. All of them are working to keep Fons running smooth so that your business doesn't have to wait on us.

Enhancements 💄

Bug Fixes 🐛

❤️ Fons Engineering

July is typically a slower month for many Fons providers. School is out, vacations are in, and no one wants to think about business unless they absolutely have to. And while you we out (hopefully) enjoying the lighter load, we've been taking this month to focus on making running your business smoother when things pick up again.

We know that reporting on your business data is vital to keeping you running smoothly and this month it is exciting to be releasing a complete reimagining of reporting with these new pages:

Cancellations happen...that's part of doing business. And sometimes cancellations require a refund...that's part of doing good business. Fons now alerts you when a cancellation might require a refund due to cancelling outside your policy window. Keep an eye on the to-do list and we'll let you know when these scenarios come up.

Are you a verified provider? Well, now you can let the world know with our new "Powered by Fons" badge. You can grab the code snippet to put on your web site under Settings->Share. If you aren't yet verified, just write in to support and ask!

Enhancements 💄

Bug Fixes 🐛

❤️ Fons Engineering

This past May was one of the coldest and wettest in Seattle's history. 😒 That made for plenty of time at the keyboard making Fons the silver lining to an otherwise endless raincloud.

We launched labels last month with great fanfare and we'd be remiss to pass up an chance to toot this horn again.

Labels have been added to staff members along with the new Find-a-Time page. Now you can search for an available time to schedule clients, filtering by staff member(s) or label. Check it out under the NEW button.

We also enhanced the payroll report to include a breakdown by label..so, if you label your appointments, this should give you better insight into how each type of appointment is performing. 🌊

Payment failures are a part of life we have to deal with. Making it difficult to retry failed payments is something we can (and did) fix!

Scheduling and booking settings have caused countless hours of confusion for you...and we are sorry for that. We moved a few things around in hopes that it will make more sense:

Enhancements 💄

Bug Fixes 🐛

❤️ Fons Engineering

Happy May!
There is a lot to unpack this month... I'll highlight a few of the biggest changes since I think they are pretty exciting.

Last year Fons introduced Tags into a few select places within the app. It quickly became clear that this was a hit people were asking for more. We talked with a number of our customers over the year to find out how we could best extend this feature and we're excited with what we came up with together:

We'll be continuing to add labels to more parts of Fons over the next month so keep your eyes peeled as we roll things out!

How many times have you scratched your head wondering when a a failed payment in Fons will be automatically retried? Were you confused by the fact the answer changed depending on what type of charge it was? Yeah...so were we.

Now all automated payments (subscriptions and appointments) will retry on the same predictable schedule:

Never give up! Never surrender!
*Except after day 15...that feels like plenty of time 😉
*Subscriptions charged via ACH will not automatically retry to avoid excessive bank fees

For the engineers in the crowd, we finally finished a multi-month project to upgrade our UI codebase to Typescript. This is a game changer for us as it enables us to identify bugs earlier in the development process. It also paves the way for us to more easily keep our dependencies up to date which keeps security risks at bay.

Enhancements 💄

Bug Fixes 🐛

❤️ Fons Engineering

Happy April!

The release notes are a little late this month because April 1st never feels like a good day to make any sort of serious announcements on the internet. Our big focus for the last month was to improve the booking experience to streamline things for your clients...but there's a lot more than just that!

Enhancements 💄

Bug fixes 🐛

Hopefully there is at least one treat in there that helps make your business run a little better!

Happy March, Fons Family!

It's notoriously wet and grey in Seattle this time of year, making it the perfect month to get away in search of sunshine and warmth (I found mine at the San Diego Zoo!). While sun-hunting vacations lead to a slower month on the engineering team, we're still committed to continually making things a bit brighter in the world of Fons.

I want to do a special callout to the first feature on the list this month. You are often looking for ways to make the Fons experience more personal to your brand and we are always looking for ways to make that happen. Now you can pick a color for your organization and we'll use that on your public booking page instead of the (oh-so-pretty) Fons green! Just update your organization profile under Settings and enjoy.

Enhancements 💅🏻

Bug Fixes 🐛

You all collectively billed over $1 million last month for the first time in Fons history. That's over 20K appointments invested in your clients. A truly amazing milestone! And while you stay focused on your clients, we'll keep making that that easier by improving Fons. So here's what we've been up to:

Enhancements 💄

Bug Fixes 🐞

We skipped the release notes for December so there's a lot of ground to cover this month. Let's jump in and see what we've got

Enhancements 💄

Bug Fixes 🐛

The list of the changes we made this past month looks small...but the significance of those changes feels huge! We created a brand new experience for booking appointments, cleaned up a lot of confusion around client billing setup, and finally added the oft requested attendance tracking feature! Its always exciting to release changes that make running your business a little smoother and (perhaps?) a bit more joyful.

Enhancements 💄

Bug 🐛

Happy October Family!

Tricks and treats abound in the release notes this month as we continue our efforts to update the look and feel of Fons. This month marks probably our biggest update yet as we have finally refreshed the appointment creation process. We are are really excited about this one as it addresses a number of pain points and areas of confusion from over the years. We hope you like it too!

Enhancements 💄

Bug Fixes 🐛

​

This month's release feels like a big deal even though the list looks short. First, we launched our beta version of day-of SMS reminders. You can enable it in your Booking settings and clients will get a text message reminding them of their appointment about 4 hours before. We think it's awesome. Second, we completely reworked the appointment details page. This refresh spruces up the look and also makes some tasks easier to complete. And third, we (finally!) made it possible to update a client's email, phone number, and timezone without having to contact support. 🙌🏻 . Hopefully these updates help make running your business a bit smoother as we head in to the busy fall season.

Enhancements 💄

Bug Fixes 🐛

We love your feedback so let us know how we can make Fons work better for you!
❤️ Fons Engineering Team

Summer has arrived in Seattle...and surprised us with 100+ degree temps! Between the heat and these release notes covering 2 months (sorry, I forget to post in June) our list of updates is hotter than normal! 🔥 🔥 🔥

The bulk of our time the last several weeks has focused on getting more people to experience the greatness of using Fons. We completely redesigned our marketing website and launched our Champions program to help you get the word out about Fons and make a few bucks along the way. But fear not...we did not ignore our commitment to make your business run better by continually updating our app. Check it out:

Enhancements 💄

Bug fixes 🐛

We hope some of these fixes help make your summer a little cooler! 😎
❤️ the Engineering Team

The sun has been shining a bit brighter in Seattle the last few weeks remind us that summer is nearly here...and there is no better place than the Pacific Northwest in the summer in my completely unbiased opinion. Fons is shining a bit brighter too, as we continue our push to give the app a bit of a facelift that will continue for the next few months. We also continue to make changes in direct response to your requests and bug reports making Fons the best place to run your business...again, a totally unbiased opinion.

Enhancements 💄

Bug Fixes 🐛

Hopefully there is something in the list that makes your day shine a little bit. If not, let us know how we can make Fons better for you...we love to hear from our customers!

❤️ the Engineering Team

Happy April!

No fools here...everything in our release notes is 100% Fons Truth!

It's always nice to take some time to do a bit of spring cleaning and we cherish the opportunity even on the engineering team. We started the process of giving the Fons app a bit of a face lift this last month. You may notice some cleaner looking pages and dialogs with an updated look. We like the way it looks and hope that you do too. We're not done (there's A LOT in Fons) so we'll keep it up over the next several releases until we are.

Fret not though, we are committed to improving the app and fixing bugs along the way, so here's the short list of other interesting changes.

Enhancements 💄

Bug Fixes 🐛

Happy Fons-ing!

❤️ the Engineering Team

Hey Fons Family!

Spring isn't for a few more weeks but we decided to dust out some of the cobwebs a little early around Fons. Our focus last month was to focus on bugs, performance, and some of the more popular feature requests. I won't list everything we did (there were more than 60 unique items!) but here are some highlights of the most exciting ones.

Enhancements 💄

Bug Fixes 🐛

Here's hoping that we're making your business a little easier to manage. And if there is something that you'd like to see make it into a future release, just drop us a note and we'll take a look.

❤️ the Fons Engineering Team

Hello family!

My apologies for missing the monthly release notes in January. In my haste to enjoy time off for the holidays I forgot to write the January release notes so this month is a two-fer.

We've been putting a lot of time into our QuickBooks integration, and while I know we teased it would be done before December, we don't want to send it out before it's ready. Progress continues and we are hoping that it will get approved in the QuickBooks app store sometime this quarter. We'll announce it here so keep your eyes peeled.

And here's a condensed list of everything that we've been working on since December.

Enhancements 💄

Bug Fixes 🐛

❤️ Fons Engineering Team

Happy December!

This year has been dragging along at a snail's pace while simultaneously flying by. And that mirrors who I feel about this month's release notes. There's not a lot to show but we also got a ton done.

Our big focus was on getting our client conversations beta pushed out to all users. We have received great feedback from you all and are still making some fine tune tweaks on things but overall are really pleased with the addition. Hopefully you've had a chance to check it out and are putting it to good use. We've a few more tricks up our sleeves that we are planning to continue to improve on what we've got so stay tuned.

Performance has also been a focus this past month. We've adjusted some of the dials and saw some really nice improvements on this front that should hopefully make the app a little more snappy for everyone. Every little bit helps!

In the meantime, enjoy the shorter list of updates!

Enhancements

Fixes

I can't believe that November is already here! And with it comes our monthly roundup of all the features we've been sending your way for the last month. It's a modest list this time as we're working hard on a few big features we'll be adding in time for the holidays and new year. So stayed tuned for the real excitement next month while you enjoy the updates.

Enhancements

Bug Fixes

We teased a big feature last month and we are excited to announce that it's here: Calendar Sync! Staff members can now link a calendar of their choice to Fons and we'll automatically add/update that calendar with your Fons appointments...in seconds!!! We got positive feedback in our beta and now its available to everyone. Set it up under your calendar feed settings and stop worrying about iCal feeds. Eric Branner says "Its the bee's knees!"*

Aside from calendar sync, we have the usual collection of bug fixes and improvements spanning a variety of topics. Take a look and find your favorite.

*not an actual quote

Enhancements

Bug Fixes

Hey family!

The release notes are a little lite and a lot late this month due to summer vacation before school starts up again. We've got some more substantial work in the hopper that we hope to announce later this month if all goes according to plan. So hopefully this mini-release whets your appetite for more and smooths out some of our rough edges.

Enhancements

Bug Fixes

Wow...August is already here!

Time is flying, but (hopefully) we are keeping up with it. We've got a packed list of release notes this month with some long-awaited features and our usual bevy of bug fixes. We are most excited to announce that we now offer the ability to add a custom email address for sending notifications from your account. Now when clients reply with questions it will go directly to you! All you need is your own domain. A few other requested goodies are hiding in there as well, so take a close look and see how Fons just keeps getting better!

Enhancements 💄

Bug Fixes 🐛

We call the month of June "Junuary" in Seattle because you never know whether you'll get rain or sun from day to day. However, I am happy to report that its all sunshine for the monthly release notes! Hopefully there is a ray or two of Fons sunshine peeking out for you to make your business operations a bit brighter.

Enhancements 📈

Bugs 🐛

Happy Fons-ing, and keep the feedback coming.

They say April showers bring May flowers. But at Fons, the rainy days of April in Seattle brought a TON of new features. The most obvious is a complete reworking of our main calendar. We've been able to give it nice facelift as well as address some of the pain points of our larger studios. Your feedback has been incredibly encouraging and we are thrilled that its serving you better!

But don't let the shiny new calendar distract you from the rest of the good stuff. Read for yourself...there's a good chance you've asked for something that made that cut.

Enhancements 💅

Bug Fixes 🐛

I'm taking a different approach to release notes for the month of March. Rather than list everything we've been working on I want to highlight two of the biggest projects that kept us occupied.

Zoom integration 🎥

With COVID-19 causing all of us to retool our businesses to work online, we pivoted early in the month to get this one out ASAP. Now you can connect your Zoom account to Fons and easily use Zoom for your appointment locations. A unique Zoom meeting will be created for each appointment and included in the reminder emails sent to your clients. BAM! It's just that easy. Check it out under Settings -> Integrations and take it for a spin.

Workshops ⛺️

With Workshops you can now create a series of appointments that are all billed as a single purchase. This is great for summer camps, weekend intensives, 3-day seminars and the like. Managing them is super easy and they appear on you and your clients' calendars so everyone knows when things are happening. You can find them under Settings -> Workshops.

The regular smattering of bug fixes is always included in every release as well.

We're a little late on the announcement of everything we got done in February, but since we are releasing new versions of the app all the time you've probably been enjoying these already! Two of our more requested features finally made their debut (better family management and saved locations) and a ton of other odds and ends were tossed in for good measure as well.

We know Fons already delights you and your customers but we are always looking for ways to improve on what we've got so don't ever hesitate to ask for what you need. Some of our best features have found their infancy in your ideas!

Enhancements 💄

Bug Fixes 🐛

Even though things are a bit slower this time of year, as we all take time with family, that doesn't mean we're ignoring our Fons family! This month we focused on continuing to iron out pain points, and add subtle features to help you in your business. We got a lot done so check our list twice and see if there is anything in there just for you.

Enhancements 💄

Bug Fixes 🐛

The brisk Seattle air is signaling the looming return of winter and with it several months of gray clouds. Our rain coats are on and we're ready...bring it on! We are also working hard to get you all ready for kicking off the new year strong in January and we've got lots to talk about that came out over the last 4 weeks. Let's get into it.

🎉Fons Chat is in BETA 🎉

We've been working hard to build chat into Fons. Now you can send SMS messages directly to your clients from within the app and the whole conversation will be saved so you can review it later. This is a killer feature and we are looking for folks interested in joining our beta test group. We've been using this feature for a while now and think you're really going to like it! Just ask and we'll add you to the beta testers list.

Features & Enhancements 📈

Bug Fixes 🐛

Halloween is over, Autumn is in full swing, and as usual there's lots to talk about in the world of Fons. We've been hard at work over the last month on lots of updates and a few surprises that we're putting final touches on before announcing. So while you're dreaming of what my come next, here's what you've already got:

Enhancements 💄

Bug Fixes 🐛

Family is supposed to keep each other updated...and I dropped the ball this summer by not posting regular release notes. My apologies.

We've been busy adding a ton of new features and fixing bugs and have been releasing those change quietly all summer. So here's the list of the most exciting stuff over the last 2 months.

Enhancements 📈

- improvements to marketplace SEO 🔍

- optionally require advanced payment for appointments booked via your booking page 💵

- Scheduling Blackout - avoid last minute requests by requiring clients to book in advance

- you can now add a note to a rescheduled appointment 📝

- added a report to view what appointments and clients have been charged 📊

- better error message are displayed to clients if a credit card is declined 💳

- update referral links to point to our marketing site so people can learn about Fons before signing up 🔗

- better ui for sharing links your marketplace and booking pages 🔗

Bug Fixes 🐛

- some deposits were not being displayed in the transaction list 💰

- better detection and prevention of duplicate payments 👭

- editing appointments public visibility sometime crashed the app 💥

- appointments charges were not being logged in the client activity list 🏷

- old email address we shown in the UI after a user changed them ✉️

- pending subscriptions sometimes displayed the wrong start date 📅

- direct links to recurring appointments resulted in a blank screen ⬜️

- clients who double clicked to pay for a package could get double charged in some instances 2️⃣

- canceling appointments from mobile failed sometimes 📱

- occasional sad face errors were showing in new customer onboarding 😢

It's been a while since we did release notes...something to do with vacation...but we're back and cleaning out some of the cobwebs.  Nothing too glamorous, but something smoothing out rough corners makes a big impact on helping you and your clients work more efficiently.

I do want to call out our new referral program.  Now under the settings tab you'll find a way to share a link with your friends...and if any of them sign up and start using Fons, we'll send you $50!  So if you know anyone who'd benefit from Fons, let them know and make some money in the process.

Enhancements 💄
- add referral links to settings 🔗
- edits to recurring appointments are now intuitive when they take affect
- public booking options are now sorted alphabetically 🔤
- update billing section title to `client billing` to reduce confusion 😕
- change payment statuses to `sent` and `paid` to reduce confusion ❔
- update cancel button text in modals to be `cancel now` to reduce confusion ❓

Bugs 🐛 

It's July already, can you believe it?

We've got a load of Fons love that we've been working on the last two weeks to celebrate the start of summer. Most notable is the introduction of a new public calendar feature for you to publish appointments that clients can join at any time. Let us know what you think and how we can make it better serve your business needs.

Enhancements

- Public calendar listing all public appointments 📆

- Ability to mark an appointment as public ✔️

- Clients can join a public appointment 👫

- Toggle to show/hide the todo list 🔛

- Hide todo list by default on mobile 📱

- Remove the bell menu in favor of todo list 🔕

- Add better text to activity log for package payments 📦

Bug Fixes 🐛

- Hourly appointment cost did not update when duration changed 🔢

- 45 minute appointments were being shown as "1 hour" in todo list 🕘

- Clients could request an appointment at no charge from booking page in some scenarios 💸

- Package and subscription clients book package prepaid appointments by default 👍

- Fix issue where clients couldn't cancel subscriptions 🚫

Who doesn't look forward to release notes on Mondays?

We continue to work hard on streamlining your business so that you can focus on what you do best, so we spent the week looking at a few of the pain points we've been hearing a lot about: Clients not responding to requests (both for appointments and payments) and more flexibility when changing the cost of appointments. We think we came up with good solutions for both:

Enhancements 💄

- Notifications are visible on the dashboard w/o using the bell menu 🔕

- Allow changing the cost AND billing model for any existing appointment 💰

- Refinements to the client signup process 🍷

- Add subscription start/end dates on client details 📆

- Add phone number field to "contact provider" on marketplace profile ☎️

Bug Fixes 🐛

- "Setup payment info" step wasn't getting checked off for ACH clients ✔️

- Sometimes the cost section for past appointments didn't match what was actually charged 🤦‍♀

- Clear up notification text for auto-confirmed appointments 🖊

- Clear up notification text for subscription appointments ✏️

- Canceled appointments showed as both canceled and confirmed in Agenda in certain scenarios ⛔️

Hopefully we fixed some of your pain points this time. If not, let us know as we're always looking to make Fons better for you and your business.

Another Monday, and with it another round of update to the app. It's a regular smorgasbord this week as we're trying to iron out all the wrinkles that cause hang ups for you and your clients. So if you have any issues, and haven't already let us know, drop our support team a note and we'll take a look at to see what we can do.

Enhancements 💄

- added field for SEO specific title on marketplace pages (this is a big deal!) 🔍

- fine tuning of search results on Fons Marketplace pages 📻

- added payment success/failure icon to attendee list 🏷

Bug Fixes 🕷

- notification bell showed empty alert in some scenarios 🔕

- attendees could confirm appointment series far in the past 🕙

It's time for Monday Release Notes!

If you're a software engineer like me, you probably would love to hear about all the infrastructure changes we've been making to allow Fons to scale seamlessly as we grow...but since most of you are business owner you're probably more excited about how Fons is changing to make running your business easier...

Enhancements 💄
- Reschedule day of week and time for recurring appointments 🔁
- Show client payments in notification tray 🔔
- Support address autocomplete on appointment location 📍

Bug Fixes 🐛

- Some package appointments were still getting charged 💳
- Date picker was covered by keyboard in some instances ⌨️

It's Monday and I'm personally off to a slow start...but that doesn't mean we've forgotten about release notes!

Nothing too exciting today, but small improvements add up and hopefully they're helping your business operate smoother.

Enhancements 💄
- support "do not charge" for package appointments 💸
- support package/subscription payments for group appointments 🔄
- add button to copy link to marketplace page 🔗
- add informational box on what the marketplace is ℹ️

Bugs 🐞
- fixed whitespace formatting on public booking options 📝
- providers can remove all instances in a cancelled series with one click 🖱

Sometimes release notes are really exciting. And sometimes...

We have been doing a lot of really cool (to engineers) work to make the transition for our Learning Musician friends a little friendlier, which means there isn't too much to show in terms of new fun in the last weeks.

- Improvements to marketplace search algorithm 🔍
- Improvements to marketplace SEO 📈
- Creating a client with hourly billing failed in some scenarios 🤦🏽‍

As usual, we thrive on your feedback so don't hesitate to let us know how we can make Fons better for the whole family!

Mondays are better with release notes!

May 1st is this Wednesday and with it comes our official launch of the Fons Marketplace! We've been focusing all (ok, most) of our attention on putting that final bit of polish on the everything so that your profiles look great to humans as well as search engines. We're pretty excited with how its all coming together and hope that you are too!

- Add markdown support for organization bio 📝
- Marketplace logos are no longer contained to a circle!!! 🔵→🔳
- Displaying full address in marketplace is now opt-in (keep it secret, keep it safe) 🧙‍
- Consolidate marketplace settings in UI so you don't have to look all over to change things 🎚
- Make marketplace search page even more search engine friendly (blah blah blah, boring technical details, blah blah blah) 🕵️‍

Please let us know how things are working out for you or if you have any suggestions.  We're all 👂.

❤️ the Fons Engineering Team

Earth Day Release Notes!

We missed release notes last week because...well, honestly, I forgot to post them.  Oops!

So here's two weeks worth:

Enhancements 💄
- Better support for non-US phone numbers ☎️
- Can change the cost of an entire series to $0 💸

Bug Fixes 🐞
- Error canceling a range of appointments in some scenarios on mobile 📱
- Oh Snap! error when adding new staff members 🚫
- Inconsistencies between billing reports and downloaded files 🤦🏽‍
- Packages paid outside Fons were non deducting appointments in some scenarios 📦
- Cannot confirm an appointments without paying for your package 🎟

We are continuing work on the Marketplace (coming in May!), improving the public views as well as the pages in the app you all will use to manage your Marketplace profiles.  You have been giving us so much good feedback and we are better for it!  Thanks and keep it coming.

Mondays are better with release notes!

May 1st is this Wednesday and with it comes our official launch of the Fons Marketplace! We've been focusing all (ok, most) of our attention on putting that final bit of polish on the everything so that your profiles look great to humans as well as search engines. We're pretty excited with how its all coming together and hope that you are too!

- Add markdown support for organization bio 📝
- Marketplace logos are no longer contained to a circle!!! 🔵→🔳
- Displaying full address in marketplace is now opt-in (keep it secret, keep it safe) 🧙‍
- Consolidate marketplace settings in UI so you don't have to look all over to change things 🎚
- Make marketplace search page even more search engine friendly (blah blah blah, boring technical details, blah blah blah) 🕵️‍

Please let us know how things are working out for you or if you have any suggestions.  We're all 👂.

❤️ the Fons Engineering Team

Earth Day Release Notes!

We missed release notes last week because...well, honestly, I forgot to post them.  Oops!

So here's two weeks worth:

Enhancements 💄
- Better support for non-US phone numbers ☎️
- Can change the cost of an entire series to $0 💸

Bug Fixes 🐞
- Error canceling a range of appointments in some scenarios on mobile 📱
- Oh Snap! error when adding new staff members 🚫
- Inconsistencies between billing reports and downloaded files 🤦🏽‍
- Packages paid outside Fons were non deducting appointments in some scenarios 📦
- Cannot confirm an appointments without paying for your package 🎟

We are continuing work on the Marketplace (coming in May!), improving the public views as well as the pages in the app you all will use to manage your Marketplace profiles.  You have been giving us so much good feedback and we are better for it!  Thanks and keep it coming.

It's spring break around our neck of the woods so Monday is off to a later start than normal, but we've still got some treats for you.

We're continuing to work on the Marketplace, improving the profile page, making links cool when shared, and getting the search results built out.  Be sure to update your profiles and enable the Marketplace under Settings->Settings so that you are included in searches when we make it live later this month.  If you want to check out how things are progressing, feel free to go to https://fons.app/marketplace.  Search is pretty limited right now, but that will be our next big focus.

For non-marketplace related goodies:

Enhancements 📈
- Make links to marketplace/booking have rich content when shared via social/sms/etc 🔗
- Show package repurchase count on client details 🔄
- Add cost of subscription to the client's view of subscription 💵
- Update description on subscription transaction to include client and period 🏷

Bugs Fixes 🐞

April 1st is always a dangerous day to be taken seriously when talking about new features, but we're doing it anyway.

Announcing our super secret project: the Fons Marketplace!

Optimized for search engines, and simplified with that Fons touch, the Marketplace gives your business it's own place on the internet so that new clients can easily search for and schedule your services. We'll be releasing the full set of features along with how-tos and FAQ over the next several weeks.

Give it a spin by updating your organization's profile then checking out the preview page under Settings->Organization->Settings. And feel free to let us know what you think so that we can get it just right before we make it available to the world!

If you're looking for the standard release notes, they are light again this week, but here they are:

Enhancements 📈
- Add summary/totals row to PDF reports 📊

Bug Fixes 🐞
- Clients got a white screen when scheduling appointments in future months ⬜

❤️ the Fons Engineering Team

When the release notes are light it either means we're out enjoying the Seattle sunshine or we're working on something super-secret. This time it's the latter(!) but we've still got some work to do before we spill the beans.

We'll continue to keep squashing bugs and the occasional feature while we're focused elsewhere so don't be shy about sharing your ideas with us.

Enhancements 💅

Bugs 🐞
- In some situations clients weren't able to schedule appointments via booking link 📆
- Clients can confirm single appointment within a series when not added to the whole series 🔄
- Billing details update correctly when switching between multiple organizations 📊

❤️ the Fons Engineering Team

Spring is nearly here!  We're taking a little time to do some spring cleaning around the app as we try and knock out a lot of the bugs and features you all have been so diligent to report.

There isn't much a of theme to the work so I'll let the massive list of updates speak for itself this week:

Enhancements 📈
- Update login flow to provide better experience for new clients 🤘
- Ability to cancel a subscription before it starts 🚫
- You now have the choice to cancel appointments when canceling a subscription ❓
- Fons notifications now come from "Fons Notifications" so they look less spam-y 📧
- Pending deposits show in the billing dashboard 🏦
- Additional text added to package emails to clarify what the charge is for 🤷‍
- Show appointment cost on booking link 💵
- Better validation message when scheduling an appointment with a non-existent client 👻
- Auto-confirm appointments requested by clients ✔️

Bugs 🐞
- Billing dashboard and downloaded reports show the same numbers 💯
- Package cost was not being saved in new account creation 📦
- Multiple notifications were being sent when re-purchasing a package 📧
- Client tour info didn't alway complete payment information step
- Public booking had errors when scheduling an appointment in future months 📅
- Error when canceling multiple appointments from mobile 📱

❤️ the Fons Engineering Team

It's a bit of a light week as we spent some time updating and experimenting with some of our software dependencies.  We (the engineers) think that's totally cool.  You (the customers) don't really see anything exciting as a result so it's probably pretty boring.  We can agree to disagree. 😛

Enjoy the updates and keep the feedback coming!

Enhancements 💅🏽
- Add prepaid balance to the client list page 🔢
- Update new organization onboarding to include billing model setup 💸

Bug Fixes 🐞
- Cost not visible when creating an appointment for an hourly client ⏳
- Incorrect information in email for new subscription clients 📧
- Subscriptions weren't starting on the correct date under some circumstances 📆
- Error when creating recurring appointments 🔄
- Error adding a client that already has a Fons account 💁🏻
- Package auto-purchase now happens when the balance reaches 0 📦

I want to call out that last fix in particular. A few weeks ago we changed package auto-purchase to run only when the client *needed* more appointments, rather than at the time the balance reached 0.  There are some reasons that this made sense (largely for technical reasons) but it turns out that it has caused more confusion than help for those of you who use packages.  We heard you, and we're changing it back.

​

This week's release notes are a bit light as we are focusing our efforts on improving the client booking experience.  Even so, we are always making changes to keep your businesses running smoother.

Improvements 📈
- Complete payment requests now show the payment date rather than the request date 📅
- Added client name to the income/expense report 🏷

Bug fixes 🐞
- Adding clients on mobile phones was broken...sorry 📱
- Refunding some onetime payments was getting an 'Oh Snap' error 💸

❤️ the Fons Engineering Team

📆 WOOT! Release of public calendars to embed in your website or share a link 

💰 Now the ability to choose when you want your clients subscription date to start!!!

🏃💨 Super fast new app Download Info!

📓 + 🔥 THIS IS SO HUGE! You can now add your own personalized note on the notification to your customer.
​
🐮 + 🔔 We all know we want MORE notifications (this is actually one you asked for)! So, we did it! A new notification to the organization when a client is ready to start being charged. Such as when they enter their billing info for the first time or when they accept the new invite. 

🔪 Notifications are a big part of our system, but it seemed like we were over doing it  a bit... Actually a ton (minus the new above notification.). When you logged into to accept something it would show you the notification on the same screen to accept stuff. So we removed it. ✂  ... it was just that easy.  Now notifications won't pop up and will just show the icon, that there is something that needs to be addressed.

💰  We decided that when there is no cost on the appointment it really doesn't make sense to show a cost... yep duh.

🚫 We like to make sure there are tons of 🔘  to push on our app, sometimes too many! So, now when you have an appointment scheduled and you view the details and it showed 2 "cancel" buttons, we reduced to only one.

📫 "Show me the Money! You got it!"  - email we added a link that will go directly back to the appointment or subscription for more details.

🌈 You can now have transparent organization logos

💸 You can now change the cost per appointment in a recurring series of  appointments!
​
🕒 Now custom appointment duration times

📆 Your calendar view is even more pristine!

💰 Billing and appointment process is even more refined.

🚀 Adding your current and new clients is now rocket-fast!

😁 Super slick improvements to the login and app navigation and family features!

We are always wanting to improve Fons and make it even greater, so remember if you ever have a feature request just let us know!