Take A Byte Limited

Take A Byte Limited Used to notify customers of the status of the 'In-Contact' service.

28/11/2025

I'm pleased to say I've added another improvement to package bookings - your customers can now choose their own dates if you want them to. There is a new field on the package booking edit screen called 'Allow date selection'. Set this to 'yes' to allow your customers to choose their own dates.
When enabled, an additional button is placed where the pre-selected package courses are listed. So, your customers can still select from the pre-defined list or click the button to select their own dates. Any minimum or maximum days between courses that you've set are still enforced even when they select their own dates.
It will also work hand in hand with the 'Minimum number of dates' setting added earlier. So if you have a 5 day course and you've set it so that the customer just needs to select the first 3 dates, then when selecting their own dates they will only have to enter the first 3 dates, the remaining 2 are set to 'to be arranged later'.

28/10/2025

Package courses can have many training sessions in them, and currently all days have to have a date allocated to make a booking. I've modified this so that you can choose how many of the training days need to have a date selected, leaving the rest as 'to be arranged'. Here is an example to illustrate the improvement.

Suppose we have this package:

Session 1: CBT
Session 2: Mod 1 training
Session 3: Mod 1 test
Session 4: Mod 2 training
Session 5: Mod 2 test

All sessions would need to have a date in order to book it. The new setting allows you to say 'Just set the date for the first two sessions'. When it's booked it will just select dates for the CBT and Mod 1 training, leaving the rest as 'to be arranged'. The new setting is on the package course edit screen, I've attached a screenshot.

I've also added a 'Diary dates' tab to the package edit screen so you can see what packages the system will come up with when booking. You can make changes on the 'edit details' tab and then see the effect this would have by looking back on the 'diary dates' tab,

Kind regards

Damien

09/10/2025

When a customer books online they are asked for their email address. If a match is not found then online booking asks if they want to 'create a new account' or try again with a different email address. This has now been changed to make it simpler. If the email address is not found then the 'new customer' screen opens immediately, allowing them to enter their details. The screen asking them if they want to create a new account has been removed, making the booking flow simpler,

Kind regards

Damien

23/09/2025

When booking online customers needed to enter a password that would be used next time they wanted to view their bookings or make additional bookings. This has now been removed in favour of single sign on codes which replace passwords.

Now, when booking, no password is asked for, making the booking process easier. When the customer needs to log in they are just prompted for their email address. Once entered, a six digit code is emailed to them that they then enter to complete their login.

This removes the need to add and remember passwords, and adds additional security using two factor authentication - only someone with current access to their email address will be able to log in,

Kind regards

Damien

27/08/2025

I've upgraded the contact dashboard to give customers a lot more information about their own bookings and payments, and to give it a much better appearance. The best way to see these improvements is to open up one of your own contacts, preferably one with a course in the future, click on 'Communication' and choose 'View contacts dashboard'. This will show you what they see when they click on the link in any e-mails they are sent.

The first screen they will see is their next course. It shows the date and time, how many days to go, the arrival time and a 'directions' button. The directions will use the 'what-three-words' address if it's been entered, otherwise the address and postcode. There is a menu at the top that enables contacts to see:
Future courses to be taken. If enabled the contact can change the date or cancel the course as in the previous version.
Previous courses that have been taken
Charges and payments. If the contact owes money they the 'make payment' buttons will be shown
Communication - this shows all emails and SMS texts sent to the contact, and any they've sent to you
Send message - This enables the contact to send you a message directly from within the app. It will come to you just like an email, so it will show up in all the places an email to you would be shown.
Your details - Shows the contact their name, address, email address and phone details.
Any notes or confidential notes are not shown, just like before. It only shows course dates, course names and booking amounts,

Kind regards

Damien

17/07/2025

If you regularly enter the same text when recording the details of a phone call then this new feature will be useful to you. When you record the details of the phone call you will see two new buttons just above the 'call notes' field:

1) Update quick text list - Use this to set up a list of phrases that you frequently use when making call notes.

2) Select quick text' - Use this to select one or more of those phrases that you've set up. Those phrases will be entered into the 'call notes' field once you click the 'OK' button.

There's no limit to how many you can set up, and you can reorder the list at any time to put frequently used phrases at the top.

Kind regards

Damien

23/04/2025

Over the next couple of weeks there will be an improvement made to the SMS system, but it may look like it's made it worse! This is why I need to explain what is happening.

When a text message enters the SMS gateway it can fail for a number of reasons e.g. incorrect number length. These failures are already notified, so you know when this happens. Once the text message gets handed over to the receiving network (Vodaphone, EE, O2 etc) then there is no tracking beyond that point. So if the receiving network discovers that the number does not exist there is no way of notifying you that the message cannot be delivered.

This is where the new update is. The 'In-Contact' system will receive a notification from the receiving network about the delivery failure. The system will update the SMS message to show that it has not been delivered and it will notify you if you are on the notification list.

The notification list is in 'My Company -> SMS text message configuration' and is called 'Bounced SMS notification'. Add yourself to this list if you want to know every time an SMS message cannot be delivered, or remove yourself from it if you don't.

So this change will mean a larger number of text messages will be marked as 'Undelivered' than before, but it's not because there is something wrong. It's because the system is now being notified of the delivery failures where it was not before,

Kind regards

Damien

23/10/2024

When you buy mailshot credits or SMS credits in the system you need to enter the credit or debit card details each time. I've added an improvement where the system will offer to securely store the card details, so that when you next make a purchase you can just select the card you last paid with. If you don't want them stored you can select 'no' or ignore the prompt,

Kind regards

Damien

04/09/2024

I may be in a position to offer direct bank transfers as a payment option through the 'In-Contact' system. This would mean that on the payment screen there would be a new button 'Pay by direct bank transfer' as well as the other three options of 'pay by card', 'pay by Apple Pay' and 'pay by Google Pay'.


The main advantages of paying by direct bank transfer are:
You get the money directly into your bank account within seconds. These are cleared funds, ready for you to spend. The money travels directly from the customer bank account to yours, no intermediates, no card companies in between.

No chargebacks! Yes, I'll say that again, no chargebacks!!! The only way a customer can get their money back from you is to speak to you nicely.

Fully integrated within the 'In-Contact' system. It will make bank transfers easier than paying by card so you will not have to do anything.
Costs

The cost of the service will be a fixed fee of £25 per month plus VAT, and then a transaction charge of 1% plus VAT per transaction. This will be subject to a minimum number of customers taking up this service, I will not be able to offer it unless this is the case.

Timescales

Subject to enough customers being interested I should be able to get it implemented by January 2025. If you think this is a service you would be interested in then please reply to this email to let me know, then I can see if there is enough interest to take things forward,

Kind regards

Damien

08/07/2024

Mailshots can now have attachments added to them. When you create a mailshot there is a new 'attachments' field where you can select one or more attachments. These are then included with the mailshot email when it is sent,

Kind regards

Damien

28/06/2024

There is a problem with all Clover online payments at the moment, I am currently investigating. Over the phone payments are working OK, it's only online payments.

Kind regards

Damien

24/06/2024

The payment chasing policy screen has been updated to include an option for chasing just the deposit or the full balance. Chasing just the deposit will look at the 'deposit amount' for the course and use that to chase payment, the 'full balance' looks at the total course price and chases that.

Having this additional option means you can set up two separate policies, once to chase for a deposit after booking, the other to chase for full payment just before the course is to take place.

This screen can be tricky to configure, if you need any help with it then please get in contact,

Kind regards

Damien

Address

10 Lichfield Close
Chelmsford
CM12

Telephone

+441245386307

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