We're pleased to launch the next generation logo for Avanti.
We wanted to keep the humming bird theme, introduced in the previous 2020 logo. We also wanted to return to the uppercase logo tradition for the Avanti name, using a new typeface. We've also altered colours, going with a light magenta for the name and a yellow for the humming bird image. We believe this makes the logo more visually striking and impactful.
We are pleased to announce a new cloud business system from the makers of Avanti, Dryft (pronounced drift).
Dryft is our recommendation for customers who are looking to adopt a cloud-based business system.
Avanti has always been a Windows desktop solution and while we have enabled it to be hosted and used in the cloud, it is still using the same desktop software. The key benefit of cloud software is that it can be accessed simply and easily anywhere through a web browser and utilise the latest technologies - Dryft delivers this.
Dryft is the brain-child of original Avanti founder, Gareth Connor.
"From the beginning of designing Dryft, we never envisioned building a like-for-like system to Avanti. Instead I wanted to take everything learned with my experiences both before and with Avanti and build a system for the under-served market of small businesses who want a system that focusses on operational processes rather than on accounting. A system for business owners, managers and their teams rather than their accountants. This is where we can add real value for small businesses and where we saw all of the demand during the latter stages of my time at Avanti." explained Gareth.
Headlining Dryft as a Lead-to-Fulfilment system, Gareth told us "Experience has told us that small businesses don't want bloated, complex and expensive ERPs and CRMs, they want a straightforward system that lets them simply manage their processes from managing sales leads through to quote, order, invoicing, stock and fulfilment. Dryft is designed specifically for those businesses."
On asking if Dryft includes accounting, he answered "We are not in the mix for accounting, it's not our intention to be in that market. We want to complement rather than compete with big-brand accounting software by integrating with them rather than being a replacement for them. We also didn't want to preclude the many small businesses already using those systems from accessing the superior operations capabilities of Dryft. Ideally we would have loved to have integrated with Avanti, but as it's a desktop system rather than cloud, that's not really on the cards."
He went on "We're in the launch phase for Dryft right now but ultimately, we want Dryft to be a complete platform for businesses to grow and thrive on so we will eventually look to include financial, banking and tax compliance capabilities but always on the basis of it being optional & secondary - the day-to-day operations are where we aiming to help and add value for small businesses. However Dryft does include customer account management - or debtor/sales ledger as it's termed in traditional accounting software - but we're steering clear of any hint of accountant-speak in Dryft."
Asked about why build a new cloud system as Dryft and not as Avanti he answered "Avanti at it's heart is accounting software onto which we built operational features later based on customer feedback. I wanted to create a system that took the opposite approach. Trying to shoehorn our new system and it's different approach under the Avanti name would have set the wrong expectations and ultimately forced us in a different direction. Under a new name we had complete freedom to build the system we envisioned."
Visit dryftsoftware.com for more information and to sign-up for free, time-limited early access to Dryft.
Our focus is heavily on sustainable growth for our company and on bringing customers onboard who we are a good fit for and who we can add massive value for their businesses. As part of this we have to ensure we have the capacity to provide an excellent service for customers.
With that aim we are now at capacity with the number of active customers that we have and from 30th June 2022 are halting onboarding new customers on Avanti. Our focus for the upcoming months is on serving the valued customers we already have using our system in their businesses. We are looking to expand capacity in the autumn with our team and other resources necessary to begin onboarding and supporting new customers again and provide them with an exceptional service and experience in moving to our business management system.
We hope and expect to be welcoming new customers again early in 2023.
We still welcome enquiries and if you are looking at implementing a new system in 2023 please contact us at info@avanti.software
We are pleased to announce that Avanti has now received formal recognition from HMRC to carry out VAT return submissions for Making Tax Digital.
Our next update, Version 4.4, will include this facility and we will be releasing it to subscribers later this week.
We appreciate that this has been a long time in coming. In late April we announced that MTD VAT return submissions in Avanti was "complete" in terms of our development and would be included in the next update to Avanti. Shortly after this, HMRC understandably tightened up it's requirements for MTD in particular around fraud prevention. This took us back to the drawing board to implement the huge changes to comply with the new requirements before we could re-commence the process of achieving recognition. Due to current circumstances, the recognition process as well took longer than anyone would have wished. Over 4 months on however, we're delighted to finally achieve recognition and enable customers to submit their VAT returns directly from within their Avanti software.
If you're an Avanti subscriber, keep an eye out for the update to Version 4.4 dropping into your inbox shortly.
This week we are celebrating the 10th anniversary of the launch of Avanti.
A decade has flown by since Avanti was first released to customers in 2011 and we are delighted to have reached this milestone for our product and for our company. We are even more delighted to have the honour of still serving a significant number of those customers who received that very first version 10 years ago.
A massive Thank You to all of our customers. We couldn't have done it without you and we appreciate you more than we could possibly say :)
As part of our birthday celebrations, our founder, Gareth Connor, has been spending some time reflecting on how Avanti got started and the lead up to it's launch in July 2011. Click here to read
We recently released Version 4.3 as our April bi-monthly update and we have put together a brief demo showing the new enhancements which have been included. With Making Tax Digital VAT return submissions coming in the next update, which will be released as soon as it's possible, we've also included a preview demo of how this will work within the video.
Back at the start of the year we made a commitment to release bi-monthly updates to our software to get necessary changes and enhancements to you rapidly. Following the release of 4.2 in February we have now released Version 4.3, our April update. If you're an Avanti customer and subscriber you'll see it drop into your inbox shortly.
Avanti 4.3 includes changes to give you more control and automate the way your PDF documents are produced. For customers who have asked for greater support for Just-In-Time fulfilment of sales orders, we have improved the Stock Reorder report to include items with outstanding sales orders and to make it easier to raise purchase orders from within the report. We've also added more options to improve the information you can include on your Delivery Notes.
We are pleased to continue to honour our commitment to release customer-driven improvements rapidly as we drive Avanti forward.
The VAT reverse charge for the construction industry changes how VAT registered businesses dealing with suppliers or customers in construction handle VAT. It effectively moves responsibility for the VAT from the supplier to the customer with the purpose of preventing fraud.
The CIS scheme isn't supported in Avanti as it is not aimed at construction-based businesses however some of our customers do have construction companies as customers and/or suppliers and need to be able to handle the VAT reverse charge in their VAT returns.
While we focussed on speed and performance in the last update, Version 4.2, we also introduced a couple of handy little enhancements as well. One of these is the facility to be able to perform batch stock price changes by percentage.
This can be done using the existing Multi-Edit option in the Stock section.
We are super excited to announce the launch of the Hosted Cloud solution for Avanti.
Our new Cloud offering enables you to have the same software that you know and use running for you in the Cloud. It provides a complete managed solution so all of your Avanti software and data is hosted in the Cloud and accessed from any PC which has an internet connection. This enables your team to work remotely from home, from the office or indeed from anywhere in the world provided an internet connection is available.
We are pleased to announce the release and immediate availability of Avanti Version 4.2. If you're an Avanti customer and subscriber you'll see it drop into your inbox shortly.
Avanti 4.2 is the first update to the Avanti desktop software for a while and signals our intent for 2021 and beyond to release much more regular updates to our software.
Avanti 4.2 includes some performance and scalability improvements which have been much sought after by many users, some fixes and a small number of enhancements. We will continue to develop the Version 4.x line of our software and release updates for it regularly until we release Version 5 which has been in the pipeline for some time.
We are delighted to be able to release an update so early into 2021 from a fresh start on 1st Jan as we endeavour to drive Avanti forward rapidly. Keep an eye out for the update dropping into your inbox.
Happy New Year to all of our customers and followers! We hope it brings you every success and happiness. We are positive it will be a lot better than the last on every level :)
For us at Avanti, 2021 looks set to be a very exciting year. As of 1st January we have regained our independence to develop, publish and market our software in the way which aligns to the needs of our company and those of our customers.
To show our intent we are coming straight out of the blocks for 2021 with Avanti Version 4.2, a new update to our software which includes a number of enhancements, performance improvements and fixes.
We're delighted to formally announce Cloudflow, a service we'll be previewing before the end of the year to compliment and "cloudify" Avanti.
When we say "cloudify" we mean giving you some of the benefits and advantages of using the cloud, such as accessing your business information remotely and on different devices without having to have all of your data and information stored in the Cloud.
We think it's a great way to give you the benefits of on-premise (keeping your data and apps on your own system, utilising functionally rich desktop software) together with the benefits that the Cloud offers (use remotely and on any device and platform). The best of both worlds as we like to say!
The status of Cloudflow has now been changed. Click here for the latest info
As we've outlined in previous posts, there are 2 or 3 big changes coming in Avanti 5. In addition to these there are a number of significant new features which have been much requested. Right at the top of this list is Back-To-Back Ordering - the ability to process purchase orders back-to-back with sales orders to ensure a simple managed process for Just-In-Time fulfilment of non-stocked items.
As we've highlighted in previous posts, a massive amount of work has gone into improving performance in Avanti 5. This covers all areas and aspects of the software including rearchitecting how the software reads and updates data. In addition nothing in the software has escaped optimisation to how data is retrieved to squeeze every last drop of speed out of data queries. As we like to say "Speed is a feature!"
To really make sure we're achieving our objectives we have focussed on testing the software on 10 year old PCs and old wireless networks to ensure it flies even on really old technology - if it's fast on these types of systems then it's going to be lightning fast on modern and capable PCs and current wired and wireless networks and indeed it is!
Whilst under-the-hood optimisations are critical and make up the bulk of performance improvements, there are also many performance related elements which will be visible to you, the user, to help you make the software more performant.
It seems like a lifetime ago since our last update on Avanti 5, indeed the world has changed incredibly in that time. It's been a difficult and challenging time for everyone over these last six months, especially for small businesses. Like all businesses, we have not been immune to the effects of recent events and all of our plans have been affected. With that being said we are committed to delivering on all of the plans we have previously announced. While there is lots to talk about and news to inform you of, let's focus on the long awaited Avanti 5 in this post.
Let's start at the beginning of the Avanti 5 story. As we've posted about here previously, in early 2018 we began development of our next-generation Cloud business system, Aspire. Our original plans were that this would take approximately 20-24 months to complete.