Greetings, FusionInvoicers!
Happy New Year! We hope that, over the past year of uncertainty, your business weathered the turbulent tides well and that 2021 will hold many successes.
We would like to introduce you to the next phase in improvement to FusionInvoice. The changes not only affect the overall product, but the release cycles as well.
FusionInvoice 2020-1 was released in January 2020. It was one of our largest releases to date. Over the next month, we released version 2020-1.2 and 2020-1.3. This is a break in tradition - previous releases were numbered 2019-1, 2019-2, etc. Beginning last year, we made this change to better differentiate our maintenance releases from our feature releases. A maintenance release will be numbered with a decimal digit greater than zero (for example 2020-1.1, or 2020-1.2) - it contains bug fixes, language updates, and anything else that might be necessary to help the current major release to operate properly and continue to function as the underlying technology progresses. A feature release will have a decimal digit of zero (for example 2020-1.0, or 2021-1.0). Feature releases contain new features or improvements and may include some bug fixes as well. This change brings FusionInvoice more in line with standard software release practices.
Last year, we made the decision to reduce the number of releases in favor of more spaced out, much larger, and more robust releases. We received a lot of feedback regarding that decision and the amount of time it took between the 2020-1.3 release and today’s release. We heard you loud and clear - following today’s release, FusionInvoice is returning to our more conventional release schedule of smaller, more incremental releases.
Finally, effective immediately, we’ve made a change regarding our software end-of-life policy. We will no longer provide support for FusionInvoice versions that are more than two years past their release date. At the current time, versions prior to 2019-1 will be considered end of life and will no longer be supported. That change in policy was necessary due to the massive changes that have occurred over the years to the structure and feature set of FusionInvoice as well as updates to the underlying technology required to run it. It would have become impossible to maintain our ability to support older versions. Of course, we always recommend that you run the latest version of the software, but we will continue to provide support for all customers who are up to date on their support/update plan and are using a version within two years of its release date.
….and now for the moment you’ve all been waiting for……
We are very pleased to announce the release of FusionInvoice 2021-1.0!
This release is, by our standards, unreasonably big. We added several new core features, like Credit Memos and Pre-payments. We added an all-new global timeline feature, which pulls in real-time information from the entire system. Next we introduced the concept of a System user, added the ability to define parent-child relationships between client accounts, a new notifications system, a completely rewritten API, etc., etc. Of course we improved many existing parts of FI as well. (The list is WAY too long for this email.) So yeah, the update took much longer than we had originally expected, mostly due to the ripple effect that these new core features had on our existing codebase. That said, we were determined to release a new version that felt complete, with new features that worked seamlessly as integral parts of the product that we’ve all come to rely on.
A word about the all-new API:
This is a breaking change if you are using the API from prior versions. This is an entirely rewritten API, which is much more accessible from other applications and can easily be tested with common API testing tools like Postman, cURL, Fiddler, Insomnia, Swagger UI. etc. We will be providing detailed information about using the new API in upcoming documentation, but in the meantime, if you are using and relying on the previously provided FusionInvoice API, this update will be a breaking change. Please do not update your live FusionInvoice installation until you have the new documentation and have recreated your endpoints using the new API.
To see the unabridged release notes (with pictures!), head on over to https://fusioninvoice.com/new_release_notes
Existing users can update their software from their FusionInvoice.com account. New users must purchase a FusionInvoice license. Update and installation instructions can be found on the FusionInvoice 2021 documentation page.
The time and passion that went into this release was immense, but we couldn’t be more proud of the results. It’s our entire team’s sincere hope that you’ll be equally as happy once you’ve updated.
If you have any questions, please email us at [email protected]
Happy invoicing!
- Matt, Tim, and the FusionInvoice Team