What’s new in FlowState

Most texts from the counter are the same few: we've got your gear, we need your boots, we're running behind. Now you write them once.

• Tap a saved reply, then send. Saved replies sit above the message box in Messages. A tap puts the text where your cursor is, without wiping what you've already typed. Nothing goes out until you press Send.
• The details fill in. Your shop name, and the customer's first name for a customer on file, are filled in when it sends. A blank only you can fill, like {when} or {price}, keeps Send locked until you replace it.
• Save one mid-conversation. Typed a reply you'll need again? Save it from the message box with a short name.
• One list for the whole shop. Add, edit, reorder and delete replies in Settings, under Messaging. Each one shows when it will go out as more than one text. Six starters come with it: got your gear, bring your boots, running behind, extra work found, pickup nudge and hours. If your list is empty, one button adds them.

Mount pickups now mention boots. When any pair on the order is getting a mount, the ready-for-pickup text and email add one line: if their boots aren't already with you, bring them for a final fit and release check. It reads right whether the boots stayed at the shop or went home. A dismount gets the regular text. To word the mount text your way, it has its own card in Settings, under Messaging.

Less typing between customers, and mount customers know to bring their boots before they reach the counter.

Are my skis done yet? That call now answers itself, and if the customer still has a question, they can text it instead of ringing the counter.

• Two texts go out on their own. When the work order comes in, the customer gets a text with a private link to track it. When every item is done and racked, they get the pickup alert, the same one the completion email carries. Both read as your shop, not as us.
• They can text back. Replies land in Messages, linked to the customer they came from, with that customer's open work orders listed beside the conversation. When two customers share a number, you pick which one it is.
• Nothing sits unanswered. A count rides on Messages in the sidebar and in the browser tab, and a customer text stays counted until someone replies or marks it handled. Answer from the counter between customers, or from the bench.
• Consent, STOP and HELP are handled for you. A customer gets texts only after they say yes, in writing, and one STOP ends it. The conversation locks itself when they do, so nobody sends to them by accident.

Texting is registered with the carriers under A2P 10DLC, shop by shop. For a new shop it's set up during onboarding and starts once the carriers approve.

Most pairs that come in for a mount also need a tune. Until now that meant two items, two tags, and a total that missed one of them. Now one item carries every service you pick for it.

• Pick more than one service per item. Mount and Tune on the same pair: tick both. The item shows what you picked and its subtotal, and the order total adds it up.
• Every service shows everywhere. The work order, the board, the Tune and Mount tabs, the customer’s tracking page, and the pickup email all list each service. Insights splits revenue by service, so a mount plus a tune counts as both.
• Tags print each service. One chip per service on the ticket, so the tech at the bench sees mount and tune without opening the order.

The wizard now ends with a review. After the items and the ready date, one screen lists the customer, each pair with its services and prices, binding and boot details for mounts, the notes, and the total. Edit anything from there. Create & print creates the order and opens the tags in one click. Mounts go to the agreement step first, then print.

Two smaller things from the counter:

• A phone or email that already belongs to another customer is flagged the moment you enter it, with that customer’s name, instead of after the whole order is keyed in.
• Two pairs of the same ski for the same service are two items and two tags.

Fewer items to re-key, and nothing prints until you have seen the whole ticket.

“Are they ready yet?” is the call that pulls a tech off the bench. Now every customer gets a private link to their own order the moment it’s created, whether they submitted it online or you wrote it up at the counter. No account, no app, no phone call.

The tracking page shows:

• Where the order stands. Plain stages, no jargon: checked in, on the bench, ready for pickup, picked up. Orders submitted online start a step earlier, at request received.
• Every item on its own line. Skis done, boots still on the bench? The customer sees both, so they know exactly what they’re waiting on alongside the overall status.
• When to come get it. The estimated ready date, plus your address, phone, and pickup hours.
• A receipt when it’s over. Once the order is picked up, the page becomes a record of what was serviced.
• Your shop’s logo at the top. The page reads as your shop, not as us. The link keeps working after pickup; it doesn’t expire out from under anyone.

The “ready for pickup” email now carries that same link, so a customer who hears their skis are done is one tap from the full order. It and the new tracking email share one clean layout built around your shop’s logo. If you’ve customized your own pickup template, it stays exactly as you wrote it.

One less reason for the phone to ring during the rush, and one more surface that looks like your shop.

Picking a ski, snowboard, boot, or binding used to mean scrolling a long list of brands and models. Now you start typing and the list filters to what you mean, on both the customer intake page and the staff work-order form.

• Type to filter. The brand and model lists narrow as you type, so you land on the right one in a few keystrokes instead of scrolling.
• Add what's not listed. A "Not listed, type it in" option sits at the top of every list. If the catalog doesn't carry a brand or model yet, type it and it goes straight onto the order, without leaving the form.
• Everywhere it matters. Skis, snowboards, bindings, and boots all work the same way, for customers filling out intake and for staff building an order at the bench.

The result: faster intake during the rush, and no pair held up because a brand isn't in the list yet.

A paper ticket taped to a ski is a single point of failure. Now, the moment you create a work order, you can print a durable ticket for each pair and scan your way back to the order anytime.

When staff create a work order, the flow now includes:

• Print on creation. Finish a new order and a print window opens with one ticket per item, sized for a 4 × 2¼" receipt or label printer. The content scales to fit the ticket.
• A QR code on every ticket. Scan it from any phone to open that exact work order, with no searching and no typing the number.
• Promised-by and notes up front. Set the ready-by date and any notes while you create the order. Both print on the ticket.
• Send the mounting agreement as you go. For mounts, email or text the waiver for the customer to sign on their phone, then confirm it's signed, without the counter pen.
• Your custom services show up. The services you've set up beyond tune, mount, and repair now appear as options at the counter and on your online intake page, and the list stays tidy however many you offer.

One less slip that can go missing, and a faster path from the rack back to the record.

Getting a signed mounting waiver used to mean catching the customer at the counter, pen in hand. Now you can send it ahead of time.

From a work order, the Board intake dock, or a customer's profile, you can:

• Email the waiver straight to the customer, so they sign from their phone.
• Copy a link to send however you want — text it, paste it into a message — which helps when all you have on file is a phone number.
• Resend or regenerate a link when the first one expires or gets lost, without hitting an error about a link already being out there.

And when the customer opens the link, they now see the full agreement terms — the title, the body, and the governing jurisdiction — before they sign. Until now those only appeared in the PDF after signing.

The result: fewer people waiting at the bench with a pen, and a waiver that actually gets read before it's signed.

The Work board is where your shop actually lives, so that's where FlowState now starts. Open the app and you land on the Board by default — Pulse, List, and Focus are still one click away.

Online drop-off requests have a home on the Board too. A triage dock sits just left of your workflow lanes, holding every order a customer started online. Click one to review it and set a promised-by date when you confirm intake.

A few more things landed in the same update:

• Returning customers match correctly. An online order now attaches to an existing customer only when both the email and phone match, so a shared phone number can't tie a submission to the wrong person — and the customer can sign their agreement in the same visit.
• The gear catalog is built in. Ski, snowboard, boot, and binding brands and models now fill the pickers on both the customer intake form and the staff wizard.
• A mounting waiver is ready out of the box. Every shop starts with a default mounting agreement; make it your own at Settings → Agreement.

A few work-order pages used to break when you reached them directly instead of clicking through the app. Printing a tag opened the print view in a new tab and hit a blank "not found" page; refreshing a work-order page while signed out returned a raw error instead of the login screen.

Both are fixed. Direct links to a work order, the print-tag view, and a plain browser refresh now load the app the way they should — so you can bookmark or share a link straight to a specific order and it just opens.

Rack location used to be optional, which meant an order could be marked ready — or picked up — with no record of where the gear actually sits. Now it's a required step.

Before you can notify a customer or mark an order picked up, FlowState asks for a rack location. The Notify and Mark-picked-up actions stay disabled until you set one, with an inline hint, and the board won't let you drag an order into "Customer notified" without it. So when someone comes to the counter, anyone on the floor can find their gear fast.

Update: there is no Notify action any more. Staff mark each item done and enter its rack location, and when every item on the order is done and racked, the customer gets the ready notice automatically.

Curious what FlowState feels like on your own bench? You can now launch a private demo shop in a couple of minutes — no sales call, no credit card. Confirm your email and you get a working shop pre-loaded with sample customers and work orders across every stage, yours for 7 days.

Everything behaves like the real app, including your shop's own online intake link, so you can run a pair of skis from drop-off to pickup before you commit to anything.