PBJ CRM — Changelog
Current release: 1.19.0 (August 2026). One-time purchase per major version — every 1.x update below arrived free to existing owners.
1.19.0
Photos and paperwork now live on the record they belong to. Drag a picture onto a person, a company, a to-do or a job; pick one off your computer; paste a screenshot straight onto the page; or take a photo on your phone while you are standing in front of the thing. Pictures taken on a phone are shrunk before they are sent, so a job full of them does not eat your website’s room or your data allowance. A small picture stays small — the limit is a ceiling, not a target.
None of it goes into the WordPress media library. Files sit in a private folder the web server refuses to hand out, under names nobody could guess, and every download and every thumbnail checks who is asking before it answers. That is the point of it: a photo of a customer’s alarm panel, a signed worksheet or a serial plate is not something that should be readable by anybody who guesses the address.
Every file can carry a label. “Before”, “After”, “Receipt”, “Estimate”, “Serial plate”, “Signed”, “Damage”, “Parts” and “Site” are ready to tap, and you can add your own. Inside a record the files gather into a drop-down under each label, with anything unlabelled kept at the bottom where it cannot quietly go missing.
Each file has a “Share with the customer” switch, and it is off until somebody turns it on. When it is on, the customer sees the picture and not the notes attached to it — where it was taken and what took it are stripped out of the copy they get.
Files use the same 30-day recycle bin as everything else. Taking a file off a record takes it off THAT record; if it is not filed anywhere else it goes to the bin and you have 30 days to change your mind. Settings shows how much room your files are using and warns you at 80% of whatever you set aside for them, before your host does. Big files go up in small pieces, so a long video is not stopped by an upload limit, and a dropped connection only re-sends the piece that failed.
Deleting somebody under a privacy request now also destroys the files held only about them, the copies on disk included. Files that are also filed against somebody else’s job are kept, and the screen tells you so. This release adds four database tables and takes the database to version 16. Nothing existing was altered.
1.18.0
Businesses are visible to your staff again. The previous release protected a business’s private details by hiding the business itself from anyone whose contact list did not already include it — and a business that arrived from a CSV, Square, Google or Microsoft import belongs to nobody until somebody claims it. On a normal site that meant every business vanished for every employee and manager: the company list came back empty, and with it went filing a person under a business, raising an invoice against a company, and pinning an Archive record to one.
The protection is still there and still withholds exactly the same things. Somebody who is not allowed to see a business now sees its name and web address and nothing else — no notes, no phone number, no postal address. Enough to pick it from a list and label a record; nothing that was copied down from the business itself.
Opening a company directly no longer refuses staff who can see it in the list. Companies whose business is in the recycle bin are still not found, which is unchanged and deliberate. No database change.
1.17.0
A privacy fix worth taking: a business’s notes, phone number and address were visible to every staff member, whatever their contact list allowed. Also fixes the recycle bin refusing customers whose tickets are finished, and money on the calendar printing with no currency sign. No database change.
1.16.0
Put the CRM on your phone. Under Settings → Theming there is now a switch, a name and an icon upload; turn it on and a phone offers “Add to Home Screen”, giving your team a full-screen CRM with your own name and logo under it instead of a browser tab. The icon is cut square and resized for you and is kept in the CRM’s own folder, never your Media Library. It deliberately does not work offline — the CRM has to ask the website who you are on every visit, so there is nothing safe to keep on the phone. Off until you switch it on.
1.15.0
A List view on the calendar. One day after another instead of a grid, which is far easier to read on a phone and better at answering “what is next?”. The month grid is unchanged and both are always available — pick with “How to show it” and it remembers your choice. On a small screen the List is what you get until you choose otherwise. Day headings for today and days still to come open the same “New task” button the month view got in 1.14.0.
1.14.1
Fixed: calendar times now read on your business’s clock, not the clock of whichever computer you happen to be using. Before this, the DAY an item was filed under came from your business’s timezone while the TIME beside it was converted to the viewer’s — so a task due at midnight could sit under Wednesday and read “8:00 PM”. Every row on the calendar had it. Display only; nothing moved to a different day.
1.14.0
Tapping a day on the calendar now offers what you can start on it. Today and any day still to come show a “New task” button that opens the task editor right there with the date already filled in. Days that have been and gone do not offer it — a task dated last Tuesday is late the moment you save it. The list is built to grow, so add-ons can put their own entries beside it.
1.13.0
Today — a single list of everything with your name on it. Your tasks and your help desk tickets together, sorted by when they are due, with anything late in red at the top. It is the first thing under Tasks & Tickets. A task can now say which ticket it is the follow-up for, and when both would show they appear as ONE line carrying the ticket’s number and a button to open it. Nothing was replaced: the full Tasks and Tickets lists are still their own screens. Today only shows tickets when PBJ Helpdesk 2.8.0 or newer is installed.
1.12.0
Internal only. Add-ons can now ask the CRM for the address of their own settings panel on the Templates & Notifications tab, instead of guessing it. That is what lets an add-on move one of its screens here without leaving a dead link behind — PBJ Helpdesk 2.7.0 is the first to use it. Nothing changes on screen and no data is touched. Update this before updating the Help Desk.
1.11.0
Dark mode is properly dark — the page behind the CRM is black rather than charcoal, and it is black the moment the page opens instead of flashing white first. Cards stay slightly lighter than the page so they still read as cards. The CRM screen is also now genuinely independent of your website’s theme: your theme’s styling no longer reaches inside it at all, so the CRM looks and behaves the same whichever theme you run and however you change it — and every other page on your site is completely untouched. Finally, the screen uses the full width of your display instead of sitting in a fixed column, so wide tables get the room they need, with a hairline border keeping the edge visible: dark on a light page, light on a dark one. Appearance only — nothing changes about how anything works.
1.10.0
A new Templates & Notifications tab gives you one place to decide which emails your team gets — and, because add-ons put their own templates there too, one place to find the wording of anything you send. You can now change one person’s email settings on their behalf. Staff groups have moved into the CRM itself, so a group means the same thing whichever add-ons you run; your existing groups came across exactly as they were, and deleting a group now simply ungroups its people rather than leaving them pointing at something gone. Your team can fill in their own job title, direct number, booking link, office hours and photo, and drop any of it into an email with a click — every screen that writes an email now has a button for each merge field, offering only the fields that make sense there. The ready-made marketing emails sit above “write a new email” rather than inside it, and choosing which mailbox a marketing email sends from is a dropdown of your own mailboxes instead of a box asking for its number. The CRM screen now fills the page on its own, with no site logo, menu, header or footer around it. Security: removing someone from the CRM signs them out everywhere immediately and refuses to let them back in, and staff sign-ins now last hours rather than the site’s default of days — so anyone signed in when you update will be asked to sign in again. Your existing notification settings are carried across, and the database updates automatically.
1.9.0
The Square, Google Contacts and Microsoft Outlook import cards each gained a tick box: Bring people who are already here up to date too. Left off, which is still the recommendation, an import only fills in blanks on somebody already in the CRM, so it can never contradict what your team has typed. That is also why running the same list a second time reports a large “skipped” number and nothing has gone wrong: a person who needs no changes is counted as skipped, not updated. Tick the box and the other service wins where the two disagree, so records you imported months ago are brought up to date. A blank at the other end never wipes something you already have, either way. Off by default. No database changes.
1.8.0
A bug-fix release from a full code review of the whole suite. Merging two records no longer fails when their marketing settings differ. Somebody moved to the recycle bin can no longer be emailed by a campaign that is already going out. Invoices with no customer attached, or filed against a business, appear on the calendar at last. Editing a business through the company screen now follows the same permission rules as everywhere else. Plus: a timed-out sign-in asks you to refresh instead of claiming you have no access, the “Which PayPal” box no longer locks itself on Live, checklist ticks from two people at once no longer lose one, and turning a business back into a contact now really does check for open help desk tickets.
1.7.0
Campaign emails now write in the standard WordPress editor with starter templates and an “Insert a detail” personalization picker. Business profiles carry the full field set with an Employees panel and address boxes. The two-way sync can no longer create a business or company on its own — company changes arrive as a note for you to act on.
1.6.0
Square import fixes (custom fields now fetched per customer; phone-only customers import; same-provider duplicates stay separate), repeatable checklist tasks, calendar filters that remember your choices, card-style people/business lists, and a full mobile pass across the suite.
1.5.x
The CRM team became the ONLY staff list for the whole suite (helpdesk agents are CRM staff), and customer-less helpdesk tickets became visible on the calendar.
1.3.0–1.4.8
The fully guided Connected accounts page: a step-by-step card for Square, PayPal, Stripe, Google and Microsoft, visible webhook addresses, credential locking with a Disconnect button, “Sign in with” mailboxes that send over true XOAUTH2, and much clearer error messages throughout.
1.0.0–1.2.0
The foundation: contacts and businesses in one book, imports and two-way sync with a human approval gate, the drip email marketing engine with tracking/unsubscribe/consent, reports and GDPR tools, the whole-business calendar, the front-end portal with themes, the module hub, the 30-day recycle bin and the bulk record manager.
Current release: 1.19.0 (August 2026). One-time purchase per major version — every 1.x update below arrived free to existing owners.
1.19.0
Photos and paperwork now live on the record they belong to. Drag a picture onto a person, a company, a to-do or a job; pick one off your computer; paste a screenshot straight onto the page; or take a photo on your phone while you are standing in front of the thing. Pictures taken on a phone are shrunk before they are sent, so a job full of them does not eat your website’s room or your data allowance. A small picture stays small — the limit is a ceiling, not a target.
None of it goes into the WordPress media library. Files sit in a private folder the web server refuses to hand out, under names nobody could guess, and every download and every thumbnail checks who is asking before it answers. That is the point of it: a photo of a customer’s alarm panel, a signed worksheet or a serial plate is not something that should be readable by anybody who guesses the address.
Every file can carry a label. “Before”, “After”, “Receipt”, “Estimate”, “Serial plate”, “Signed”, “Damage”, “Parts” and “Site” are ready to tap, and you can add your own. Inside a record the files gather into a drop-down under each label, with anything unlabelled kept at the bottom where it cannot quietly go missing.
Each file has a “Share with the customer” switch, and it is off until somebody turns it on. When it is on, the customer sees the picture and not the notes attached to it — where it was taken and what took it are stripped out of the copy they get.
Files use the same 30-day recycle bin as everything else. Taking a file off a record takes it off THAT record; if it is not filed anywhere else it goes to the bin and you have 30 days to change your mind. Settings shows how much room your files are using and warns you at 80% of whatever you set aside for them, before your host does. Big files go up in small pieces, so a long video is not stopped by an upload limit, and a dropped connection only re-sends the piece that failed.
Deleting somebody under a privacy request now also destroys the files held only about them, the copies on disk included. Files that are also filed against somebody else’s job are kept, and the screen tells you so. This release adds four database tables and takes the database to version 16. Nothing existing was altered.
1.18.0
Businesses are visible to your staff again. The previous release protected a business’s private details by hiding the business itself from anyone whose contact list did not already include it — and a business that arrived from a CSV, Square, Google or Microsoft import belongs to nobody until somebody claims it. On a normal site that meant every business vanished for every employee and manager: the company list came back empty, and with it went filing a person under a business, raising an invoice against a company, and pinning an Archive record to one.
The protection is still there and still withholds exactly the same things. Somebody who is not allowed to see a business now sees its name and web address and nothing else — no notes, no phone number, no postal address. Enough to pick it from a list and label a record; nothing that was copied down from the business itself.
Opening a company directly no longer refuses staff who can see it in the list. Companies whose business is in the recycle bin are still not found, which is unchanged and deliberate. No database change.
1.17.0
A privacy fix worth taking: a business’s notes, phone number and address were visible to every staff member, whatever their contact list allowed. Also fixes the recycle bin refusing customers whose tickets are finished, and money on the calendar printing with no currency sign. No database change.
1.16.0
Put the CRM on your phone. Under Settings → Theming there is now a switch, a name and an icon upload; turn it on and a phone offers “Add to Home Screen”, giving your team a full-screen CRM with your own name and logo under it instead of a browser tab. The icon is cut square and resized for you and is kept in the CRM’s own folder, never your Media Library. It deliberately does not work offline — the CRM has to ask the website who you are on every visit, so there is nothing safe to keep on the phone. Off until you switch it on.
1.15.0
A List view on the calendar. One day after another instead of a grid, which is far easier to read on a phone and better at answering “what is next?”. The month grid is unchanged and both are always available — pick with “How to show it” and it remembers your choice. On a small screen the List is what you get until you choose otherwise. Day headings for today and days still to come open the same “New task” button the month view got in 1.14.0.
1.14.1
Fixed: calendar times now read on your business’s clock, not the clock of whichever computer you happen to be using. Before this, the DAY an item was filed under came from your business’s timezone while the TIME beside it was converted to the viewer’s — so a task due at midnight could sit under Wednesday and read “8:00 PM”. Every row on the calendar had it. Display only; nothing moved to a different day.
1.14.0
Tapping a day on the calendar now offers what you can start on it. Today and any day still to come show a “New task” button that opens the task editor right there with the date already filled in. Days that have been and gone do not offer it — a task dated last Tuesday is late the moment you save it. The list is built to grow, so add-ons can put their own entries beside it.
1.13.0
Today — a single list of everything with your name on it. Your tasks and your help desk tickets together, sorted by when they are due, with anything late in red at the top. It is the first thing under Tasks & Tickets. A task can now say which ticket it is the follow-up for, and when both would show they appear as ONE line carrying the ticket’s number and a button to open it. Nothing was replaced: the full Tasks and Tickets lists are still their own screens. Today only shows tickets when PBJ Helpdesk 2.8.0 or newer is installed.
1.12.0
Internal only. Add-ons can now ask the CRM for the address of their own settings panel on the Templates & Notifications tab, instead of guessing it. That is what lets an add-on move one of its screens here without leaving a dead link behind — PBJ Helpdesk 2.7.0 is the first to use it. Nothing changes on screen and no data is touched. Update this before updating the Help Desk.
1.11.0
Dark mode is properly dark — the page behind the CRM is black rather than charcoal, and it is black the moment the page opens instead of flashing white first. Cards stay slightly lighter than the page so they still read as cards. The CRM screen is also now genuinely independent of your website’s theme: your theme’s styling no longer reaches inside it at all, so the CRM looks and behaves the same whichever theme you run and however you change it — and every other page on your site is completely untouched. Finally, the screen uses the full width of your display instead of sitting in a fixed column, so wide tables get the room they need, with a hairline border keeping the edge visible: dark on a light page, light on a dark one. Appearance only — nothing changes about how anything works.
1.10.0
A new Templates & Notifications tab gives you one place to decide which emails your team gets — and, because add-ons put their own templates there too, one place to find the wording of anything you send. You can now change one person’s email settings on their behalf. Staff groups have moved into the CRM itself, so a group means the same thing whichever add-ons you run; your existing groups came across exactly as they were, and deleting a group now simply ungroups its people rather than leaving them pointing at something gone. Your team can fill in their own job title, direct number, booking link, office hours and photo, and drop any of it into an email with a click — every screen that writes an email now has a button for each merge field, offering only the fields that make sense there. The ready-made marketing emails sit above “write a new email” rather than inside it, and choosing which mailbox a marketing email sends from is a dropdown of your own mailboxes instead of a box asking for its number. The CRM screen now fills the page on its own, with no site logo, menu, header or footer around it. Security: removing someone from the CRM signs them out everywhere immediately and refuses to let them back in, and staff sign-ins now last hours rather than the site’s default of days — so anyone signed in when you update will be asked to sign in again. Your existing notification settings are carried across, and the database updates automatically.
1.9.0
The Square, Google Contacts and Microsoft Outlook import cards each gained a tick box: Bring people who are already here up to date too. Left off, which is still the recommendation, an import only fills in blanks on somebody already in the CRM, so it can never contradict what your team has typed. That is also why running the same list a second time reports a large “skipped” number and nothing has gone wrong: a person who needs no changes is counted as skipped, not updated. Tick the box and the other service wins where the two disagree, so records you imported months ago are brought up to date. A blank at the other end never wipes something you already have, either way. Off by default. No database changes.
1.8.0
A bug-fix release from a full code review of the whole suite. Merging two records no longer fails when their marketing settings differ. Somebody moved to the recycle bin can no longer be emailed by a campaign that is already going out. Invoices with no customer attached, or filed against a business, appear on the calendar at last. Editing a business through the company screen now follows the same permission rules as everywhere else. Plus: a timed-out sign-in asks you to refresh instead of claiming you have no access, the “Which PayPal” box no longer locks itself on Live, checklist ticks from two people at once no longer lose one, and turning a business back into a contact now really does check for open help desk tickets.
1.7.0
Campaign emails now write in the standard WordPress editor with starter templates and an “Insert a detail” personalization picker. Business profiles carry the full field set with an Employees panel and address boxes. The two-way sync can no longer create a business or company on its own — company changes arrive as a note for you to act on.
1.6.0
Square import fixes (custom fields now fetched per customer; phone-only customers import; same-provider duplicates stay separate), repeatable checklist tasks, calendar filters that remember your choices, card-style people/business lists, and a full mobile pass across the suite.
1.5.x
The CRM team became the ONLY staff list for the whole suite (helpdesk agents are CRM staff), and customer-less helpdesk tickets became visible on the calendar.
1.3.0–1.4.8
The fully guided Connected accounts page: a step-by-step card for Square, PayPal, Stripe, Google and Microsoft, visible webhook addresses, credential locking with a Disconnect button, “Sign in with” mailboxes that send over true XOAUTH2, and much clearer error messages throughout.
1.0.0–1.2.0
The foundation: contacts and businesses in one book, imports and two-way sync with a human approval gate, the drip email marketing engine with tracking/unsubscribe/consent, reports and GDPR tools, the whole-business calendar, the front-end portal with themes, the module hub, the 30-day recycle bin and the bulk record manager.