We released host of features, enhancements and bug fixes to Fresh Proposals software in this months. Here is a preview of what is in store for you.

 

LawPay Integration

Fresh Proposals has partnered with LawPay payment solution. This new partnership allows law firms to streamline their client onboarding workflow, from sending client proposals to collecting payment thus engaging and onboarding clients. With this integration, law firms and legal professionals, including attorneys and advocates, will gain the ability to seamlessly handle client payments within the LawPay solution.

Details of FreshProposals + LawPay Integration

When you connect your LawPay account with Fresh Proposals’ and you have engagement fees (fixed, or recurring) in the proposals, quotations, engagement letters and contracts sent to your clients; You can specify whether

First Payment – Payment First

1. 1. Clients should pay first before signing engagement letter or
   2. They can pay after signing the document

Payment Mode Preference

1. Clients should pay using ACH alone or
2. Card payment alone or
3. Choice with the client to pick from ACH or card

Initial/Advance Payment Amount

1. Clients should pay only fixed percentage of document value or
2. Percentage of fixed fee in the document
3. Percentage of fixed fee in the document plus first installment of the recurring fee (monthly, quarterly, yearly)

 

Once document is signed by all parties and client has also made advance payment, setting up automated recurring payment is pretty simple. Click on the Set up Recurring Payment button on the summary page, It will fetch recurring fees client has selected int he document and you can set start-date for recurring payment to be collected.

 

Schedule Send Proposal

You asked for it and we have delivered it. It is an interesting feature request.

Details of ‘Schedule Send’ feature

An interesting feature to schedule a day and time of the day to send a proposal.

Let’s say you have been working on a proposal and completed the draft by evening or late night. You do not want to send proposal at odd hours however you do not want to forget sending it the next day or send it in the afternoon. You can schedule it for tomorrow or a future date and time.

 

Once you schedule sending of a proposal, it can be seen as scheduled on the

a) Proposal Emailer page

 

b) In the Proposal Summary page

c) In the Proposal Listing page

d) In the Proposal Activities tab

If anyone tries to edit the document, he will be warned that the document is schedule to be sent and unlocking will cancel the scheduled send activity.

 

Proposal Sign Reminder

With proposal sign reminder, you can take document automation to the next level.

Let’s be honest, it is not easy to keep track of so many things happening around us. One can be efficient doing one thing or many things at a time; but to improve proposal conversion is not only about crafting a solid proposal content and/or its design.

We have to reconnect with client and move the proposal towards conclusive direction.

Clients may be busy, may have some other pressing things/ issues going in their life; we can not keep track of when, which client viewed your proposal, when to follow up with him/her.

You can let the software do the heavy lifting, smart work.

‘Proposal Sign Reminder’ feature is exactly about automating proposal process in a smart way.

Details of ‘Signature Reminder’ feature

We introduced Signature Reminder email to further automate the proposal process: not just for creation/ personalization or reminding clients to view proposals; it is also to remind them to sign.

What if your clients have viewed your proposal but they haven’t taken any action on it?

You can now set automated reminder to remind clients to sign the proposal after ‘x’ number of days after they have viewed your proposal.

Knowing client has reviewed your proposal, you don’t have to manually remind them to sign it. That’s why it is a smart reminder.

(In can you are not aware, Fresh Proposals already reminds clients to make payment if they have signed the document and payment is enabled, applicable for a given proposal)

As a proposal sender, you will also receive notification right when client is sent sign reminder. You can preview the content of sign reminder sent to client in the proposal activities tab.

 

Pin Favorite Sections

This feature will further improve how you organize your content. While elements in the content library are obviously reusable, you can now identify most-usable sections within the list of sections and be more effective in setting, identifying and using highly usable sections.

Details of pinning a section

You can add pin to a section, you can remove pin if it is already added to a section. This option is available in the Section Library and listing.

When you try to add sections in Proposal Editor or Template Editor, you will see pinned sections on the top.

 

You can also view pinned section in the smart sections list rules.

 

Upload PDF – Improved Approach

What has changed in the Upload PDF feature?

Previously imported PDF would be converted to images using a third party library. We were aware of its limitations or trade-offs which is size of image vs quality of image. High quality image would be heavy (not just for storage but also for rendering thus degrading the performance for end viewers: clients). We tried keeping the combination as optimal as possible. We were exploring better alternatives to the current implementation.

The new approach will retain the PDF instead of converting it into individual images; and rendering directly in the client’s browser. You can add other content blocks such as textbox, signature, input form on top it (just the way you were doing previously).

 

Right click Fee row to display contextual menu

What is this new menu option for a fee row?

We noticed few users would click on the fee row and while they wanted to add a new row or delete a row; instead they were displayed table related menu. We have updated the option menu displayed when you right click on a fee item. These options are more applicable to fee row instead of the entire fee table.

This contextual options menu will also prevent users unknowingly deleting entire table while they might wanted to delete just a selected/ individual fee item.

(to access fee table related menu, you can right click on the header, footer or three dots on top of the table).

 

Stripe payment failure reason in email

When you send proposals which require advance payment, clients initiate payment process. In most cases clients successfully make the payment. In some cases, clients are not aware that they will need to make payment right after signing the proposal; and they tend to skip the payment for the time being.

How Fresh Proposals handles these cases?

When clients skip payment, we inform proposer that client has skipped payment.

If you have set payment reminder email, client is automatically sent a reminder email to make payment.

What is changed in Stripe payment notification email?

In other cases payment fails.

There are certain reasons for such payment failure.

To bring more clarity in communicating the reason; we have started relaying failure message in the email notification. Typically clients see reason of failure on the payment popup; same message is relayed in the notification sent to proposers.

Why are you sending this information to me?

Set of users who are not aware that online payments can fail for various reasons would get confused. The reasons could be : incorrect card number, invalid expiry date, insufficient fund, etc (as you can see these are beyond our control). To avoid this confusion for a section of users, we have started adding the reason for payment failure in the email.

Improved UX of adding CC in proposal emailer

What is CC’ing in a proposal email?:

You can mark a copy of your proposal email to someone in your team, to other contact of your client or someone external (not added in Fresh Proposals).

The experience of adding, removing recipients in CC was not very clear to some of users hence we decided to update it.

Now you can add recipient right on the popup as shown below and you can remove added recipient in the CC field,

 

Ability to refund, void charges collected via CPACharge

What is refunding, voiding charges using CPACharge?

Do you know you can refund, and void charges using CPACharge and LawPay?

Yes, you can.

If transaction is completed, you can issue refund.

If client has authorized the transaction but it is still not processed, you can void it.

You will find these options to refund, void transaction in Proposal Activities tab that shows payment activity.

View email template in emailer – even if reminder email is already sent

Few users wanted to view reminder email template used for existing proposal. While this information is already available in the proposal activity, we have enabled the view button even if reminder email is already sent. That said, system does not let you change email template or delay if that reminder email is already sent.

 

Signature block – updated its default color for new accounts

Minor change to the signature block when added to proposal editor. We changed the block color from what it is today to white.

Added currency: Netherlands Antillean Guilder

Users near islands on Caribbean sea started using Fresh Proposals and wanted to send proposals with their own currency, We are adding currency as and when requested. Here is the one we have added and now you can include it in your proposals.