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Making At The Yard easy to use is something we’re always working to improve. Today’s update represents a huge improvement to the experience of our new customers setting up At The Yard for the first time.
We’re announcing our new Yard Setup Wizard. This new feature will help get new yards up and running in At The Yard in record time. It allows you to setup the following in a matter of minutes:
Take a look at the video below to see just how easy it can be to get At The Yard up and running for your yard.
We recently launched an update to the rota system in At The Yard that expanded functionality to let yards organise everything from staff rotas through to who’s turn it is to clear the paddock.
But what if you still need more?
Well that’s where integrations come in. Like At The Yard is with livery yards there are companies who’s focus is 100% on building the best software for creating and managing rotas.
Through integrations you can pick the best software available for rotas and bring that data into At The Yard where it can be easily displayed to your customers on the dashboard.
RotaCloud (https://rotacloud.com/) was the clear choice for us to support as the initial 3rd party rota System to integrate with At The Yard and we are excited to be announcing the launch today.
RotaCloud is based in the heart of Yorkshire, UK - and who better to tell you about themselves than themselves:
Having been on the receiving end of more than a few poorly managed work rotas themselves, RotaCloud’s co-founders David, Joel and James decided to come up with a solution. They pooled their skill-sets and got to work building an app that would let managers create and share rotas in minutes, regardless of their experience of rota management or technology. Cut to today, and RotaCloud is used by more than 3,000 businesses all over the world, saving managers time, helping businesses grow, and making life easier for their staff.
- RotaCloud - https://rotacloud.com/about/
Before you get started you’ll need to make sure you have:
To start the setup you need to go to the Integration Configuration page by clicking the button on the Admin ➔ Yard Config page. On this page you’ll see a section called RotaCloud Integration and a button you can press to enable the integration. Once you’ve clicked it you’ll see the following screen:
Next you’ll need to create an API key over in RotaCloud. You can do this by going into RotaCloud, go to the settings menu and go to the 'API & Webhooks' section. Create a new API key called At The Yard and copy and paste the API key into the box in At The Yard and click Store Key.
At The Yard and RotaCloud are now connected.
The next thing to do is link your staff users in At The Yard to your Employees in RotaCloud. To do this click on the Manage Contact Links button.
You’ll need to go to each staff member’s row and select the corresponding employee name from RotaCloud in the dropdown box. When you’re ready click on Create and it’ll setup all the links between the users and the employees in the two systems.
Your rotas will now be set to synchronise - this updates every 2 to 3 hours so you may have to wait a little while for the first synchronisation to take place. Once the first synchronisation takes place your rotas will show up under the Management ➔ Rota page. To let users see them you’ll need to go into the manage section for the rota and check the Publish checkbox (you may also want to check the Show in Forecast checkbox depending on your needs).
Congratulations! RotaCloud is now setup and syncing data with At The Yard and you can start benefiting from both systems working as one.
We introduced the Rota feature to At The Yard in late 2019 (read more here). It allowed yards to organise their recurring tasks and show them to their staff and customers within At The Yard. We later added the ability to add times as well as days but, beyond that, the Rota feature has stayed pretty much the same. This has worked well for the customers who’s needs were met by this narrow feature set but we wanted to make it more useful for more of our yards.
In particular we want to make Rota’s more useful as Staffing Rotas. So today we’re excited to release an update to Rotas to make this possible - focusing on two significant areas; a new type of Rota and a new way to display the Rota.
Dates have only been supported up to now by giving a rota the title of the day of the week it was applicable for but this wasn’t ideal stopped yards from really using this feature.
To make what we wanted to do possible we added a new rota that is ‘dated’ rather than ‘named’, it’s called a ‘Week Commencing’ Rota.
This Rota type allows you to create a Rota for a specific week. Simpler and clearer for you and your users and it means we can do much more to help organise and manage your Rotas for you going forward.
The calendar (and the today view) have become a central part of At The Yard. It’s the first thing people look at whether they’re on their phone, computer or at a kiosk at the yard.
With this in mind we’re making it possible for Rotas to be shown on the calendar (for both ‘Week Commencing’ and ‘Named’ Rotas).
Just by being able to make a Rota so much more visible we think it’s going to change the way yards use this feature.
Once setup (which can be done by ticking the ‘show on forecasts’ button in manage Rotas) it’ll be great for everything from letting liveries know which member of staff will be available on a day through to letting everyone know who’s turn it is to clear the paddock.
If you have any feedback or would like to suggest any additional enhancements to the Rota feature please let us know on our contact page or by talking to your account manager.
Subscription Dependent Pricing (read more about it here) lets you offer discounts for additional services and facilities to your customers - managed by the subscription to a livery or membership package that they have.
In this guide we’ll show you how to setup Subscription Dependent Pricing. As the process is the same for both facilities and services, this example will show the process for a service but it’ll work exactly the same for a facility.
Before you start you need to make sure you have the following setup:
Once you’ve got everything setup you’re ready to begin. The discounts are setup under the Admin Edit Screen for the relevant facility or service you wish to offer the discount on. You’ll see the following section within the edit screen:
You can add as many discounts as you need by clicking the + button.
From here you need to make two choices. First select the service a customer is required to have a subscription for to be eligible for the discount. Second you need to set the percentage discount you’ll offer to the customer if they have the relevant subscription.
The following shows an example for a Turn Out service.
In this example you can see the standard price for a Turn Out is £5.00 and it has two possible discounts. For customers with a subscription to the standard Livery package they’ll receive a 10% discount when they order the service, whereas if they have a subscription to the Full Livery - 5 Day package they’ll receive a greater 20% discount.
Once you’re done click on Update and the discounts will be setup. As a customer they’ll see the standard price alongside any discounted prices that may be available to them for their horses (if they have a relevant subscription for that horse).
Everything else is then automatically taken care of as part of At The Yard’s automatic billing system. If you have any questions when setting this up for your yard please contact your account manager and they’ll be more than happy to help.
If you manage a livery yard you’ll know how important it is to offer a range of packages to your customers. By offering more choice you can attract more customers with prices that work for them and make financial sense for the yard.
But in the past choice has always come with more complexity - for every new type of package you offer and for every extra service or perk within that package comes additional admin work - and as yard manager it means that work normally falls to you!
But not any more! At The Yard has been helping remove ‘admin work’ for years. Meaning you can offer greater flexibility without spending extra hours in the office. It lets you automatically track:
Any one of these offerings would have required lots of work to track what a customer had used then more still to work out how much to charge them for any extras they had. All of them combined? Well… it’d just not be practical, you’d never leave the office!
Not the case with At The Yard, everything is automatically tracked and billed for you - nothing falls through the cracks!
Offering included options as part of a package is great, but what happens once they’ve used up their allowance? Wouldn’t it be great to be able to encourage them to make the most of more of the yards services - generating more revenue for the yard - whilst still offering them a discount in recognition of the monthly fee they pay to you.
Or how about your customers on smaller packages such as a DIY livery or someone who pays a membership fee for the year upfront - being able to offer beneficial pricing to them encourages further uptake and recognition of their ongoing patronage and the relationship you have with them over that of an unknown one time guest.
To support this, and the many other scenarios, we are releasing Subscription Dependent Pricing. This new feature lets you offer discounts for additional services and facilities to your customers - managed by the subscription to a livery or membership package that they have.
Let’s imagine you have 3 Livery packages and an Affiliate Membership package that external visitors can sign up for.
With these 4 packages you’d like to offer a discount for riding lessons based on the package a customer has with you (with increasing benefit coming with the larger the package they have signed up for)
With Subscription Dependent Pricing you can offer the following:
| Package | Full Livery | Part Livery | DIY | Affiliate Member |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Riding Lesson with School (Standard) | £75.00 | £75.00 | £75.00 | £75.00 |
| Package Discount | 20% | 10% | 5% | 5% |
| School Rental (Discounted) | £60.00 | £67.50 | £71.25 | £71.25 |
As you can see the Subscription Dependant Pricing allows you to offer benefits to your customers, helping you retain liveries and build long term affiliate members (for customers who are regulars but don’t (yet??) stable their horse on the yard) by offering them a discount over your standard prices.
Not only does this save the customers money but improves cashflow and income predictability for the yard all whilst requiring no extra work on the admin side.
This is only a simple example and we look forward to seeing how our customers use this new feature. It’s available today to all existing and new subscribers and a How To will feature in a following blog post with details on how to set up Subscription Dependant Pricing for your yard.