What we shipped: The first half of 2021 in review

In July, our CEO and Co-Founder Stuart McLeod outlined our vision for the world’s global, cloud-based practice management solution. And the wheels are already in motion.

The first half of 2021 included more than 200 added features, functionality, enhancements and bug fixes. With new updates coming every three weeks. 

Here is a summary of every major #KarbonUpdate we released from January to July in 2021.

You can also watch this quick recap of me explaining our major releases during our recent Karbon 2021 roadmap exclusive preview webinar.

Instantly install templates from the Karbon Template Library

The Karbon Template Library includes hundreds of templates for all common accounting and bookkeeping procedures and processes, sorted into regions, services and common collections.

You'll find templates compiled by Karbon experts, templates used and shared by other Karbon customers, and templates for other applications from our vendor partners.

If you are logged into Karbon, you'll have the option to Add To Karbon, which will add your chosen template and give you the option to open it in Karbon within seconds.

Templates include all of the Karbon functionality you expect, including automators, client tasks, job roles, and statuses. Once installed, you can customize them to suit your unique workflows and create client work.

Timer

You now have the ability to track your time directly within Karbon and record it against the relevant work item or contact.

You can use the timer icon from any area in Karbon, and it will automatically detect what you’re working on.

And when you stop the timer, smart notes are automatically added to the time entry based on the activities you have worked on during that time. You can also edit these, or add your own notes for more detail.

Plus, you will be notified if your time gets close to the remaining budget allocated for that work item or contact to help you avoid scope creep.

Global search

We enhanced the ability to search Karbon using filters across contacts, work items, email, notes and internal discussions. Search the entire app, from anywhere in the app.

Internal comments on Client Tasks

Client Tasks are an easy and useful way to communicate, collaborate and share documents with your clients. And now you can have internal discussions with team members on these tasks too.

Easily toggle between Internal to leave a comment just for your team's eyes, and External to share with your client.

And to make sure you’re always clear about what can and can’t be seen by your client:

• External comments will always appear in pink

• Internal comments appear in the blue that you're familiar with on all other comments throughout Karbon.

Karbon & Liscio integration

Our new direct integration with Liscio helps you deliver a seamless end-to-end experience for your clients.

Connecting Karbon andLiscio means you benefit from a single shared database of your clients and their companies. If you create a new client contact in Liscio, it’s automatically created in Karbon (and vice versa). Or if an Account is updated in Liscio, the relevant Organization in Karbon is updated.

This means your team can be confident that they’re always working with the most up-to-date information—saving time and reducing errors.

Schedule an email

Let’s say your email is typo-free and has all its attachments. But it’s 9pm on a Sunday evening. You don’t particularly want to set expectations to your clients that you’re available at every hour of the day, so you don’t want to send the email now, but you’re also worried you’ll forget in the morning.

Well, now you don’t have to remember. Simply compose your email like normal and schedule it for later.

Undo send email

Whether you notice a typo, send to the wrong address, forget to add that attachment, or immediately regret what you wrote once you click Send, you can now undo your sent email.

Template list update

It’s now easier to track and manage your saved workflows with a re-designed Templates view. If you have a large and growing template collection, this is a particularly useful update for you.

Updates include:

• A streamlined and compact design so you can view more templates on your screen

• The flexibility to view and sort your templates by name, last published by, date added, last edited, or times used

• A direct link to the Karbon Template Library, so you can easily browse and add more templates 

• The option to create work directly from a work template's options menu (...)

Other notable updates and changes

• You can now add an internal note against more than one work timeline

• Exports of timesheet data now include a column for ClientID

• Verify that your colleague's email is connected (this can happen if they haven't logged in to Karbon for some time, and it can stop Client Task emails from auto-sending)

• You can now edit work team members from a template (previously, you were only able to make changes to this information from a work item)

• You can now create work directly from a template

• Time data exports now include a column for 'Fee type'

• You can now navigate to an organization contact from the header of any linked person contacts

• You’re now able to edit the work team on a template (previously, you were only able to make changes to this information from a work item)

• The email your clients receive when a comment has been added to their Client Task no longer displays the comment—they can now click the link provided to view the comment in the full Client Task view.

• Work item and contact headers are now static, ensuring that the most important details are always right where you need them (and you no longer need to scroll back to the top to switch to a new tab)

• Now you can also see what activity/ies you carried out to trigger suggestions in your suggested time entries. And your weekly time entry export now includes a sheet with data for all colleagues.