After a massive rewrite, I’m delighted to announce InBloom Shop Software version 2!

This was a re-dreaming of what InBloom can and should do with FileMaker Pro’s growing ease of use and power, as well as what a good product should strive to be.

This new version is designed for retail and resale business owners who aren’t technical wizards and want simple functionality to manage their inventory, buyers, consignors, sales, documents, and more in one centralized solution.  It works wonderfully well for furniture consignment shops, clothing consignment shops, auction dropoff stores, art galleries, antique stores, and more.  Best of all, it is completely cross platform.

What’s New
Here’s what most users will want to know about:

1. A new and elegant interface in the spirit of Apple’s i-suite of applications:  Yes, it looks like iPhoto, iMovie, and the others
2. Manages multiple quantities gracefully: Because businesses often have blends of merchandise in either one-of-a-kind quantities or in larger lots with multiple quantities, InBloom tracks all of this much more easily.
3. Twitter.com integration: Now you can create announcements or even auto-tweet particular inventory items with one or two clicks.
4. PDF and email integration: FileMaker Pro users can generate receipts, contracts, and more as PDFs and even auto-attach them to emails
5. One-click mailing labels: Printing mailing labels to a Dymo Labelwriter printer just became a one-click workflow.
6. Dynamic & persistent sorting: FileMaker 10 users can sort more easily than ever.  The record sorting is maintained after any data changes.
7. Better support for barcodes and barcode scanning:  More price tag formats with and without barcodes have been added.
8. Easier updates: The structure of InBloom has been vastly upgraded so imports and exports of data are seldom necessary.
9. Easier management: Finding sales, reprinting checks, and other small functions have been enhanced and made significantly easier.

What’s New For Geeks
FileMaker geeks will appreciate the vastly simplified cross-platform printing, the Separation Method data combined with “Anchor-Buoy squids” in the data model, hiding the new FM10 toolbar for a customized version, sub-summary persistent sorting, and more.  There’s a lot more to come on these notes so please start the dialogue on things you would want to know more of.

Versions
A single-user version (aka InBloom Lite) is available as a runtime meaning you don’t need FileMaker Pro, or as a FileMaker file (aka InBloom Pro).  Either option is available for Mac or Windows and is currently available at $375.

Support
If you need help with InBloom, there’s a myriad of options.  Free phone support is available for the first 60 days.  After which, customers have unlimited email support. A new online knowledge base has also been set up at InBloomSoftware.com/help in addition to a user-to-user forum hosted at Google Groups.

The InBloomSoftware.com website has also been vastly overhauled and will feature more video tutorials and frequent updates to help users in the easiest manner possible.

Lastly…
I love keeping an open dialogue with InBloom customer on things they like and things they would like to see improved.  Feel free to post comments or send an email to support@inbloomsoftware.com, either way