Xcelerate Q3 Review: What Shipped and How to Use It

On November 4, Bobby Land, our Chief Product and Technology Officer, walked more than 40 restoration operators through what the product team shipped this year and how to put it to work. Candice Shino answered questions in the chat, and Brad Hodson hosted. If you missed it, or you want to send a section to your team, the recording is above and this post covers the highlights.

Jump to a section in the recording

• Platform speed (8:27)
• Time tracking (11:29)
• Invoicing and Xcelerate Pay (15:23)
• Texting (19:22)
• Email and calendar (21:53)
• File types (25:03)
• Custom job statuses (27:25)
• Custom job numbers (30:00)
• Analytics (34:02)
• Referrals (39:08)
• Estimates (42:08)
• Mobile (47:57)
• What we're working on next (52:03)

Faster screens, starting with your file lists

Bobby opened with the work he called the team's first priority: platform speed and stability. His stated goal is every page loading in under three seconds, and he was clear that not every screen is there yet.

One change you can use now: the Master Jobs and All Files screens load an 18 month window by default, with a dropdown to switch to 12 months, 6 months or All. Bobby shared a customer with more than 20,000 files whose list went from about 45 seconds to about 2 seconds. Choosing All still works, and it returns to 18 months when you refresh the page.

Time tracking: fewer clicks to fix a timecard

Bobby described the "33 click problem": a customer showed him that correcting one employee's Monday hours took 33 clicks. The team reworked how edits work. When you change an entry, a pop-up now warns you if it overlaps another entry, tells you where to go to fix it, and lets you undo a recalculation. Entries are also marked when they are overtime or overnight.

Release notes also describe a library of state-specific overtime rules in Payroll Administration. In the session, Bobby showed that you set the state for each employee, and the edit pop-up takes that state's rules into account. Xcelerate does not run payroll, so you still export timecards for your payroll system.

Invoicing and Xcelerate Pay

Bobby showed the invoicing that works alongside Xcelerate Pay. Xcelerate Pay is in beta, and accounts go through a merchant application and approval. In the demo he built an invoice from an estimate, sent it to a customer as a payment link, and showed the payment history and receipts the customer sees. He also showed the merchant portal, where you see transactions and payouts.

Want to be first in line? Reserve your spot on the Invoices & Payments waitlist below.

Texting

Bobby also walked through the setup for two-way texting, which is in beta with select customers. Carriers require you to register your company and confirm customer consent before you can text, so the setup wizard walks you through both.

Email and calendar: choose where Xcelerate appointments land

If you schedule technicians, you may have noticed appointments landing on your own calendar. Under your email integration's synchronization settings, you can now choose a secondary calendar for Xcelerate appointments, so the scheduler's personal calendar stays clean. You find it under My Profile, then Email Integrations. Bobby noted that only a handful of customers are using it so far and asked for feedback.

File types, custom statuses and custom job numbers

These three changes are about making Xcelerate fit the way your company already works.

File types. An admin can turn file types on or off under Admin Settings, File Types. At least one must stay on. Bobby mentioned a janitorial type added recently, and that KPIs are now available for every file type.

Custom job statuses. Admins can add custom statuses under a standard status category, set them active or inactive, and reorder them. A newer option lets a custom status show on its own instead of stacked under its parent.

Custom job numbers. Under Admin Settings, Job Intake Form, Job Number Format, a format builder lets you choose the order and delimiter, add a location abbreviation from Company Setup, and reset the sequence monthly, yearly or never. It warns you about collisions and about the 21 character limit QuickBooks places on job numbers. The format applies going forward; existing job numbers do not change.

Analytics

If Analytics is enabled on your account, you can see CRM, production and billing data in interactive reports, filter them, and export to CSV. Bobby explained that the data refreshes overnight, so what you see is at most about 24 hours old. He asked which reports you want added or improved.

Referrals

Referral tracking now supports more than one referral on a file or master job, with one marked as primary. Bobby noted that referral entries live inside Xcelerate and do not sync to QuickBooks. Tracking for jobs you refer out to others (Referred To) is in a limited rollout.

A rebuilt estimates workflow

Bobby previewed a rebuilt estimates workflow that keeps revision history and tracks main estimates, supplementals and change orders separately, so you no longer lose the original estimate when the scope changes. It is with a small group of customers now.

What we're working on next

The last ten minutes of the session covered what the product team is building next. Those items are early and can change, so the details stay in the recording: watch from 52:03.

Your questions from the chat

Thank you for the questions. Here are the answers we can give today. If yours isn't here, reply to the recap email or open a support ticket and we'll follow up.

Does billing push through to QuickBooks?
Xcelerate syncs with QuickBooks Online and Desktop. In the demo, Bobby showed payments syncing back to QuickBooks. Which records sync and when depends on your setup, so Support can confirm it for your account.

With payments, can we bill card fees to the customer?
Bobby showed a card surcharge option on invoices. Surcharging is only allowed on credit cards, not debit cards or checks, and a handful of states don't allow it at all, so it depends on where you operate.

Are texts with a customer saved in the customer's file, or only in the text message section?
Texts and emails sent from the app are logged as a note on the file. Two-way texting is in beta with select customers.

Our team set up calendar syncing but it only works for about half of us. How do we get help?
Open a support ticket so the team can look at your setup. One attendee shared that disconnecting everyone and reconnecting fixed the same problem for them, which may be worth a try while you wait.

Will the mobile app pick up the web changes, like new master jobs, job numbers, file types and referred by?
Admin settings are not on mobile today, but if custom job numbers and the new file types are set up on the web, they should show up on the mobile app. Multiple referrals are not on mobile yet, and Candice has logged that as a request.

Will you send out the summary of the chat questions and answers?
Yes, you're reading it :)

One more note from the chat: an attendee liked the new dashboard and asked us to keep a clear status label on the file view. We passed that to the product team as they work on the mobile reskin.