Visual design change to Clear Books apps - Dashboard

Interesting change and interesting time of the day to do it. Worth noting the the Purchases hyperlink on the homepage just above the total purchases number now does not work.

Like it but please change the names of your apps (in clearbooks) to match what you renamed them to months ago (on your website) :)

Not going to lie but it looks like we've stepped back in time. To a time I remember when every Facebook status had to start with "Ade Adebayo is:' Surely there's more pressing functional improvements that could be made. I remember a previous visual design change less than two years ago. The new design although weird at first looks ok but it's no better than the previous version. Everything looked fine - functionality over visuals should surely be a priority.

Hi Chris,

Thanks for your post, I must say the new design looks very clean. Also can I add that some users may be required to press Ctrl + F5 on their keyboard to do a hard refresh of their web browser, to allow the new design to appear.

Regards,

Shaz

Uuuugh no. Why the redesign? There's tons of white space (you're not Apple) and the numbers are squished up. People of a certain age have terrible eyesight. Can this be a consideration when you're redesigning?

Thumbs down from me i'm afraid.

Re the dashboard, it's all too white/blank and non-engaging with no clearly defined breaks between widgets.

Saw it yesterday and thought i'd leave it overnight incase it was a bug.

It looks fine, though as Ade says above, there seem to be no functional improvements at all. Why is there so much white space in the sales / purchases summaries on the dashboard? Surely you could have extended the right hand part to show more of the company names that owe you / you owe?

I think there are more pressing improvements that could be worked on, i.e. the number of integrations you offer with third party services is far below your main competitors.

I concur with Thomas Eccles....

It is native for a big visual change as such to get some fire in the first few weeks (it's just normal part of change aversion). Apple initially got similar feedback when they changed the design in iOS7 - yet very few people miss the old design now.

But this doesn't mean the new design is optimal.

Please keep the feedback coming, but try to be constructive by pointing out issues with the current design. This will allow us to improve.

Hey Roey Izhaki - please note there have been many constructive points which if listened to and developed would help Clearbooks improve.

Many of these points and ideas have either not been responded to or have been brushed aside in place of other 'advancements'.

In Apple's case they have developed products to make our lives easier and have given us services we didn't even realise we needed until we started using them. They also threw it out to the rest of the world and allowed them to develop Apps for everything their devices couldn't do. At Clearbooks it's much, much different.

Please refer to some of my previous posts dating back almost 3 years. I am a Clearbooks lover but i'm often left confused as to where you are going with the product when you don't listen to the people who use the site every.....single.....day.

Developers and designers are completely different roles and visual changes and functional changes are completely different jobs.

Why does X gets done when there are more pressing issues to deal with?

Makes me laugh a lot of these comments. People clearly do not understand the difference in job roles.

Functionality changes are nothing to do with the visual design and clearbooks employs developers and designers, who have a separate role and work on different things.

It's like saying to a plumber why have you not fitted a light switch!

Whilst I can see your point James, to many of us IT is just IT. I appreciate that's probably not fair but it's a way of life.

I'm an accountant - I wouldn't however expect the vast majority of non-accountants to really take on board the difference between a payroll clerk, a bookkeeper or an accountant - the end user (or client in my case) just wants the job doing with as little fuss as possible.

I personally fully understand the natural order of things and Roey's link to his full explanation is perfect (well said by the way Roey). I've got no issue with the way in which things have been done, in fact it's been nice of late to see bits of development happening now the bulk of the Netherlands project is out of the way. Roey's feedback on my bank import thread for example has been great.

My main constructive point would be the white/blankness of it all - it just doesn't engage or excite the user in my opinion, almost feels unfinished (which is why I was close to reporting it as a bug as I presumed semi-changes had gone live that shouldn't). I've had two clients say the same thing already.

Your not alone in thinking something was wrong with the dashboard Kevin, I thought that at first. Looking today it looks much nicer though, to me.

Thumbs down from me for the dashboard. Don't think it's added any visual improvement to make the interface or experience better.

I'm with Kevin on this, there needs to be something to distinguish each widget, the background colour (grey I think) is too light and so all the widgets just roll into each other, can they not have a 2-3 pixel border?

Sorry if I've missed something, or maybe I didn't spend much time on the Dashboard before, but what do the numbers under Sales & Purchases mean, year to date, this month, unpaid, paid? For clients I'd rather not have to add this to the things I have to explain to them, it should be obvious.

Ditto "Accounts" is a bit meaningless in this context, didn't it used to say Bank Accounts?

On my Dashboard there's one for Account (codes). Again sorry if this has always been there but does it mean and what is the little up/down arrow box for, as it seems to do nothing?

I'm very disappointed with Clearbooks for this change. I see no improvement in the system and in fact it has introduced more bugs then before.

So everyone knows, if you now try to remove a widget with the X it doesn't work. If you move a widget this does not get saved. The expense widget now does not work at all.

Personally I think Clearbooks need to focus on adding missing functionality to the system rather than changing the look and feel of a system that has works fine for a long time now. I fully understand about James comment about having Developers and Designers, but it would be a good move to have these two teams actually talk to each other and test the system before putting it live.

Can anyone else confirm if they are having problems with the Yodlee feed, before Christmas I was able to click the refresh button wait 5 minutes come back and it had refreshed. Now I click the refresh button, it goes to do the refresh, come back 5 minutes later and the refresh seems to have cancelled, last import time being set back to my last refresh. I now have to wait over night for the refresh to happen.

I agree with Ade, there are so many functions missing from within Clearbooks that it makes you wonder what the companies focus is. Little issues that become very annoying. For example I changed my car back in September but I am not able to archive my old car from my employee transport list which means every time I do my mileage I have to change the car.

I had the same problem with Yodlee over Christmas Daniel. Very annoying.

There was a good explanation posted by the support team. You can read it here:

https://www.clearbooks.co.uk/2014/12/17/yodlee-issues-an-explanation/

Regards Ade A

"The headline sales figure used to be click-able to take you to Sales > Invoices > Unpaid but it is now the Sales widget link. Change it back please"

User request via ticket.

Agreed with Vanish, it is far more natural to drill into the number.

Really don't like the new look for the dashboard, is there any way you can revert it back? as we prefer the more 'visual' look,

1. No longer clear what this figure relates to and not possible to drill down.
2. Text should be right-aligned and make more use of the space available instead of cutting names short.
3. Look messy and out of place compared to above 'create' button. Could they not be aligned to the left of the create button in the same format (perhaps not bright red though)
4. Wasted space.
5. Widget boundaries should be more prominent.
6. Create an edit post feature within the community :-)

I agree with the ambiguity of the "Sales" - of what? And what's that figure? "Sales" = stuff I've sold, whereas that figure I stuff I've sold but not yet been paid for - and the fact that it isn't clickable makes the ambiguity worse.

DItto for "purchases" - should be "Unpaid Bills" (as it was before).

Massively agree with Kevin. The wasted space can be massively better used - we are all numbers & data people, after all.

I have taken the available space and just edited the HTML very quickly to put some more detail in it. You can get 6 companies, very easily. Not just 3. How about something like this...

I think this is related to the recent design changes: https://secure.clearbooks.co.uk/community/ideas/9428/reconciliation-is-not-clear-enough-which-item-is-being-explained

+1 for Daniel's widget. Look how much more useful that is at a glance. And it's also better looking!

Transferring my thoughts for another post;

The design is indeed very nice, however I'm finding importing transactions harder visually -

From that image you literally couldn't tell which transaction is selected - There used to be a highlight making this obvious.

Could just be me being picky - It's been pointed at that there are green ticks however this doesn't help when there are multiple unimported transactions and the very subtle text change is really hard to spot

Even a few seconds slowing my efficiency by making me have to click the transaction before I import - Whereas before I could immediately see which one had been auto-selected on opening, and jump straight to the bottom to reconcile

Cheers all,

See Roey's screenshot posted 3 days ago https://secure.clearbooks.co.uk/community/ideas/8480/a-few-steps-to-improve-the-bank-import-reconciliation-process

I think that'll sort out any confusion.

Great stuff, thanks for the link Kevin!

Make sure you vote on this one too Dave - https://secure.clearbooks.co.uk/community/ideas/9428/reconciliation-is-not-clear-enough-which-item-is-being-explained - as that deals with that specific issue too. It's really annoying!

I see they've introduced your widget changes this morning Daniel - you must be so proud! ;-)

Although the 'overdue' bit isn't working - mine says £0.00 overdue, when there is actually thousands of pounds overdue!

Hello all,

Please can you look at an update to the bug fixes made on the Dashboard from your feedback.

Changes to the dashboard update

Please note that the overdue is still pending it's bug fix.

Vanish

Profit and Loss still showing 2015 for last year?

Hello Sarah,

Thanks for the note. We do have this one on our list of dashboard bugs. I have put this as pending on the update I have put just now.

Sorry for the inconvenience caused.

Vanish.

Hello,

The issue with the P+L having 2015 when in fact it was 2014 has been resolved.

For the overdue figures being nil, please can you try to do a hard refresh on your browser. The code adjustment for that is live and should be okay.

To do a hard refresh, you need to use Ctrl + F5 on Windows and Cmd + R on Macs/Macbooks.

Vanish.

Working for me now - thank you.