Ballpark

Although we’re rather fond of the distinctive style of Ballpark, we wanted to provide our users with a pared down, minimal alternative to the “Airmail” style template. For those who would prefer a neutral aesthetic for their invoices and estimates, you can now use the “Simple” template.

If you’d like to make the switch, just head to your account’s Settings screen, and then the Defaults tab, and you’ll find an area labelled “Invoice & Estimate Template”,  with the default Airmail option and the new Simple option.

For our UK/European users who, for tax reasons, are required to include their client’s address on invoices, your client’s contact information will appear alongside your own in the Simple template.

The team has heard the call for a more personalized and brand consistent experience with Ballpark, and one of the most professional touches you can present to a client is your own domain name. Head to the Settings screen of your account, and you’ll find a new Custom Domain tab where you can get started.

There are a couple of caveats to bear in mind with this new feature. One is that SSL will not be enabled when using a custom domain, and the other is that this feature is only available for users at the Studio subscription level and above.

Now you can stay informed about all of your dashboard activities right from the desktop. Simply download and install Ballpark Notifier and link it to your Ballpark account. A handy icon will appear in your menu bar, and you can receive your choice of built-in or Growl notifications.

Head to the Ballpark home page or download it here to check it out.

We’ve just finished working on a great new feature for Ballpark users. It’s becoming more and more common for people to use their iPhones for just about everything, and now keeping your estimates and invoices in order with Ballpark is on that list.

Users can navigate to the Ballpark dashboard on their iPhone and be greeted with an optimized view of their activities. Even the browser controls will disappear for a more complete application experience.

Adding Ballpark to the home screen will display a custom icon that fits right in with the rest of your applications. For those inclined to do so, that same icon will appear when creating a desktop version of Ballpark with Fluid.

Head to Ballpark on your iPhone now to check out the new dashboard!

We just completely revamped our pricing structure. Plans now start at $6 and up, and we’ve added unlimited estimates, SSL, and PayPal instant payments across the board. Existing plans have been automatically updated and the new features should be live immediately.

Check out the new plans on the sign up page

Universal Live Search
Live search is now available at the click of a button. Just click the magnifying glass in the navigation bar and start typing to search across invoices, estimates, and contacts.

Improved Contact Management
You can now keep track of additional contact information, view recent activity across all invoices and estimates, and keep notes about each client.

Notes are especially useful if you’re working with a team. While Ballpark has always had internal comment threads for specific invoices and estimates, notes are a great way to let your team know that you’ve been in contact with a client, keep track of background information (how you met, their birthday) and ensure that everyone is on the same page.

Send Invoices and Estimates to Multiple Recipients
Need to send a copy to accounting? No problem. You can now enter multiple recipients on the fly.

FreshBooks Import
We’ve also added the ability to import your FreshBooks clients into Ballpark in seconds. Just click on “Settings” and hit the “Import” tab.

As always, let us know if you have any questions about the new features. We hope that you enjoy them as much as we do. More on the way!

We just pushed one of the biggest changes to Ballpark yet, a completely redesigned client view. The client view is what a client sees when you send an invoice or estimate. When we started building Ballpark last year, we were simply going to send invoices and estimates as PDFs attachments via email. As a result of this, the web-based client was an afterthought, a stopgap that we threw together quickly to meet our launch deadline.

We spent the last few weeks redesigning the client view from the ground up and we couldn’t be happier with the new look. We might be biased, but we think we’ve got the slickest invoices around.

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View Recent Invoices & Estimates
In addition to the new look, we’ve also added the ability to view recent invoices and estimates that you have been sent. When your client visits the invoice or estimate, they will now see a drop-down that shows them their most recent invoices and estimates as well as the status (open, overdue or paid).

The dropdown shows your their 5 most recent invoices and estimates across all Ballpark accounts and color codes them yellow for open, red for overdue, and green for paid.

Make Payments in Any Amount
We’ve also added the ability to specify the payment amount. In the old client view, clicking “Pay via PayPal” would simply redirect you to PayPal and ask you to pay the full balance, with no option to change the amount. It meant that if you wanted your client to cover PayPal fees, or make a partial payment, they had to bypass Ballpark completely.

Now when your client clicks “Make a Payment”, they’ll have the ability to specify the amount.

We hope you enjoy the new client view. Let us know if you have any questions or comments.

Today we’re adding two highly requested features to Ballpark: recurring invoicing and estimate to invoice conversion.

Recurring Invoicing

Recurring invoices make it easy to automatically send clients an invoice on a weekly or monthly schedule. For instance, if you work on a monthly retainer, Ballpark can automatically send your client an invoice for that month’s hours each month.

To create a recurring invoice, click on “Create a New Invoice”, enable recurring billing by flipping the switch to “On”, tell Ballpark if you want your recurring invoice to be drafted or sent automatically, then punch in the date. Once your recurring invoice has been created, you can edit its details by selecting the invoice in the recurring invoices section in your invoices dashboard.

Estimate to Invoice Conversion

We’ve also added the ability to quickly convert an estimate to an invoice. Once a client accepts your estimate, you can convert it into an invoice with the click of a button, make any necessary changes, and send it off immediately.

To convert an estimate to an invoice, simply click the “Convert to Invoice” button that appears in the sidebar once you mark your estimate as accepted.

Textile Markup Support

We’ve also added full textile markup support in comments and notes.

We hope you enjoy these additions! As always, if there’s something you’re itching to see in Ballpark, please let us know on our customer support community.

Today we’re proud to announce some great new additions to Ballpark. We’ve had an incredible first month and wanted to say thank you by sending a few of the features we’ve had in our skunk works your way.

Highrise Deals Syncing
Highrise Deals are a great way to keep track of estimates and proposals and take note of which you’ve won and lost. Avid users of Highrise ourselves, we’ve added the ability to sync your Ballpark estimates with Highrise as Deals. Learn more about Highrise Deals

To enable Deals syncing, go to Settings > App Integration, flip the switch to “ON”, enter your Highrise API information and click “Save changes”. Once you enable Deals syncing, Ballpark will automatically create a Highrise Deal for each new estimate that you create, then update its status accordingly when you mark it as accepted or rejected in Ballpark.

We use Highrise to keep track of incoming RFPs and emails from clients that need to be shared with our team. WIth Highrise Deals syncing, we can keep the whole team - specifically team members who aren’t in Ballpark - aware of what projects we’ve won and lost, leave notes about what happened, and keep everyone on the same page.

Improved Client View
We’ve also made some improvements to the client view. You can now brand your invoices and estimates with your logo, let clients view the remaining balance, as well as the date and amount of each payment that you have received.

Additional Currencies
As requested, we’ve added support for Australian Dollars, Swedish Krona, and Malaysian Ringgit. We are working to add all world currencies, but if you need us to add one in the meantime, feel free to let us know.