2022 in Review: The Biggest New Features on GrowthWheel Online

2022 was yet another year with monthly software updates — as always based on requests from the community of GrowthWheel Certified Business Advisors.

In 2022 we released 9 new features and services in addition to various backend features in the software. Check them out below or see them in action on GrowthWheel Online.

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Release overview

Continued Education Program for Certified Advisors at no additional cost!

The GrowthWheel Continued Education (CE) program offers Certified Advisors - at no cost - to continue their professional development every month as often as they wish, and get proof of a higher skill level.

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“5-packs” - The Decision Sheets packed with all 5 tools under each Focus Area.

With this update you can now send more tools faster, so when the clients would like to focus on “Marketing”, “Financing” or “Employees”, you just send them the whole stack to work on with one click.

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Email all clients at once!

With this update you can now select multiple or all clients from your client’s list and choose the option in the bulk action menu ‘Send Email’. You’ll get a template with all the clients’ emails for you to just add the message and click send!

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Share clients with any other advisor from other organizations in your network!

From the team member's page of a Client Company, you can now quickly search by email, name or center and find any GrowthWheel Certified advisor from other centers who are part of your network.

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Register SBA 888 trainings with aggregated or participants data.

Advisors with SBA-funded agencies in the US are now able to register training sessions on GrowthWheel Online with all the required fields and validations to get an error-free report to upload on EDMIS NG.

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Export SBA 641 & 888 Forms – Error-free reports to upload on EDMIS NG.

SBA-funded agencies (US) can now submit error-free reports to upload on SBA’s EDMIS NG! Thanks to our upfront data validation and conditional logic, business advisors will have all data entered correctly into GrowthWheel Online.

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Easily add Quarterly or Monthly budgets!

Decide to plan budgets by quarter or now – with most of our recent update – by month! The easiest way to get the big picture of future financials with the specification the client needs.

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OnDemand Recorded Training to your clients on a co-branded LMS platform

Now you can at no cost offer  7 OnDemand Training for clients delivered effortlessly. Direct from GrowthWheel’s Elizabeth Binning to your clients!

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Migration to GrowthWheel CRM from current CRM systems.

With this technology you are now able
to switch to GrowthWheel as your new CRM-system with a fast and easy data migration.

We have designed a 7-step process to customize the platform, import data,
and get your team onboarded to start using GrowthWheel as a new CRM & Client Collaboration platform

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That's all for 2022! 

We will continue in 2023 with more updates from our community to help you be the best business advisors you can be.

New update: Option for Monthly Budgeting

Decide to plan budgets by quarter or – with our upcoming update – by months! The easiest way to get the big picture of future financials.

Now you – and your clients – can decide to switch to add budgets data by quarters or by months.

By having the option available on each page where you usually track budget data by quarter, you can now switch to a monthly tracking page, for an more detailed view of the future numbers.

The page will adjust table entry and graphs to a monthly view. Here you can enter numbers distributed differently than on the quarters view.

You can always go back to the quarter and get an overview of the numbers you added before, if that’s the case.

As always you can print these pages as a nice PDF file to share with the client.

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Easily Track Budgets by Month or by Quarters
— With Beautiful Autogenerated Graphs!

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New: OnDemand Training for Entrepreneurs

You can now offer – at no extra cost – OnDemand Training for clients. Delivered effortlessly. Direct from GrowthWheel to your clients on a co-branded eLearning platform with your logo

Each workshop covers the topics of one of the 20 GrowthWheel focus areas and when taking the course, participants will get access to the frameworks, decision sheets, and articles.

We will design a customized and co-branded e-learning platform for your center, with your logo, links to one or more pages on your website, and of course, with a custom intake form so you can gather the information about participants that you need.

It is your decision to charge - or not - for the GrowthWheel OnDemand Workshops (terms apply if you charge). And also, we can host your own recorded content for a small monthly fee.

It takes us less than seven days to get your new ondemand course platform up and running!

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Example of e-learning site
— With GrowthWheel and Own Content

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New: Easy migration from other CRMs!

It has never been so easy to change to GrowthWheel as your new CRM system! We have a migration team ready to help you with the transition from an old system to GrowthWheel.

Getting your historic data to be migrated into GrowthWheel is now an easy task. We have designed a 7-step process to get data and team ready and onboarded to start using GrowthWheel as a new CRM system, and Client Collaboration Platform 

You will have a stress-free migration process to GrowthWheel, usually in 2 weeks, and with full support from the GrowthWheel Migration Team.

New update: Share clients with advisors from other centers

Now you can easily share clients with any other advisor from other organizations in your network!

From the team member's page of a Client Company, you can quickly search by email, name or center and find any GrowthWheel Certified advisor from other centers who are part of your network.

You can revoke access to the advisors you have shared the clients with at any time!

This is an easy and simple way to share your clients with other colleagues that may not be part of your organization, but are working with this client too.

Contact us if you are working closely with other centers and are not already set up as a network.

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New update: Report Form 641 & 888 data to EDMIS NG (for SBA-funded Agencies in the US)

Don’t worry any more about long error reports when uploading your 641 and 888 forms. You can now make error-free reports from GrowthWheel Online to upload on EDMIS NG!

Thanks to our upfront data validation and conditional logic, business advisors will have all data entered correctly into GrowthWheel Online. By the time you are required to report your 641 or 888 forms data to the SBA, with just a few clicks you will be able to export an XML file without errors to upload on EDMIS NG.

This is the easiest and fastest way to get your reporting ready to avoid delays, extra work and stress on the team.

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New: GrowthWheel 888 Training Form – (For SBA-funded Agencies in the US)

We added the last piece for being EDMIS compatible, with the implementation of the 888 Training form on GrowthWheel Online!

Advisors are able to register training sessions on GrowthWheel Online with all the required fields and validations to get an error-free report to upload on EDMIS NG.

With this new feature you’ll be able to:

• Fill out a 888 form for all your training sessions to report back to SBA.

• Register participants by individual or aggregated registration.

• Make an export of an XML file with the 888 training sessions of your organization.

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Add Training Registration by Participants
— and easily add demographic information

Using this method you will add training participants with their demographic specifications and get calculated the aggregated data required for the reporting.

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Update: Email multiple clients at once!

Share events, courses invites, tools and much more to multiple – or all  – clients with just a few clicks. The easiest way to communicate with all your clients.

Select multiple or all clients from your client company’s list and choose the option in the bulk action menu ‘Send Email’. This will generate a template with all the clients’ emails for you to just add the message and click send!

It is fast and easy to reach all your clients whenever you need – it will help you reduce time and efforts.

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Update: Download the new '5-Packs' of Decision Sheets

This month we are releasing “5-packs” - The Decision Sheets you already know but packed with the 5 tools under each Focus Area.

This means you can send more tools faster, so when the clients would like to focus on “Marketing”, “Financing” or “Employees”, you just send them the whole stack.

Remember the best way to share tools? Just share them! They are self explanatory and comes with videos for the client. You just have to say "Take a look at this stack and pick any tools that looks useful to you."

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In this short video, Elizabeth Binning will show you how this feature works:

New GrowthWheel Continued Education Program for Certified Advisors!

We are launching a new Continued Education Program for GrowthWheel Certified Business Advisors this year at no additional cost!

The GrowthWheel Continued Education (CE) program offers Certified Advisors to continue their professional development every month as often as they wish, and get proof of a higher skill level.

After the initial GrowthWheel Certification Course advisors can obtain up to four higher levels of certification.

To obtain your next level advisors must complete three qualifying “Continued Education Workshops” (2 hours) along with an annual Re-Certification (4 hours).

This program will help you:

• Advise clients with confidence

• Build a career path with Certificates

• Get up to 48h of Professional Development

Certification Workshops are available every month Live Online and later On Demand.

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2021 in Review: New Releases on GrowthWheel Online

Also in 2021, we have updated and added new features on GrowthWheel Online — as always based on requests from the community of GrowthWheel Certified Business Advisors.

In 2021 we released 9 new features. Check them out below or see them in action on the GrowthWheel Online platform.

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Release overview

New feature: New Quick Access & Help menus with shortcuts

We started 2021 with this new feature to make it easier and faster to add new client information.

With our new “Quick Access” and “Help” menus on GrowthWheel Online, you now have shortcuts to create different records for your clients along with accessing our support center and much more.

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Update of the GrowthPlan: Updated 360º Screening Colors

We introduced a nice visual enhancement to the GrowthPlan menu on GrowthWheel Online.  

You can now see different color schemes while making 360° screenings for status, opportunities or skills.

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New update: Framework Videos

We know everyone loves videos! This update added videos to all the Frameworks in GrowthWheel Online.

If you like to use and share GrowthWheel Frameworks to give clients a visual inspiration for making decisions, you now have videos to go with them.

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New update: Google Address Lookup

With the addition of the Google Address Lookup you and your clients will have a faster and more accurate way to enter a business address. 

You can quickly make and select a google address search or add a custom address if needed.

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Update: Improved design for tracking “Interactions”

In this update we re-designed the interaction’s dialog so you now have an even better experience when you invite clients for a meeting or make meeting notes.

It is easier now to focus on the separate sections throughout the meeting with clients.

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New feature: Client Intake Forms Lets Your Clients Self-register

With this update you will love everything about the new way for your clients to self register through the Client's Intake Form.

Having clients sign up to your programs, register for training courses from your website, and immediately have their information in your CRM system has never been easier.

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New feature for SBDC’s: 641 Forms on GrowthWheel NG (beta)

Our biggest news of the year for SBA-funded agencies was to introduce GrowthWheel NG (next generation)as a beta version, and — yes — you can use it to report to SBA in the near future!

Clients fill out their own 641 form in GrowthWheel Online. When you review their information, you will see an indicator if the information is missing or has improper validation.

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New feature: SBA Counseling Sessions

As part of our new GrowthWheel NG features, we introduce the easiest way for SBA-funded agencies to track your Client’s Impact Records on each counseling session.

With the new SBA Counseling Record you will have a pop-up which makes gathering impact information from meetings with clients easy and simple.

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Update: New EDMIS Error Dashboard & 641 Intake Form for your website

We kept improving GrowthWheel NG (Next Generation) for SBA-funded agencies! This time with a new simple way to get an overview of errors on the 641 form — before you submit to EDMIS!

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 That's all for 2021! 

We will continue in 2022 with more updates to help you be the best business advisors you can be.

Update: New EDMIS Error Dashboard & 641 Intake Form for your website

We keep improving GrowthWheel NG (Next Generation) for SBA-funded agencies with a new simple way to get an overview of errors on the 641 form — before you submit to EDMIS!

With the new “EDMIS view” you can now see any errors all your clients 641 data including the intake form and the counseling sessions.
With a list of error count it’s very easy for all advisors to check missing client information or wrong data and make the updates needed.

In this way you always know — in advance — when your client's records are ready to be reported to SBA.

You will also have a new “Last Updated” date indicator that will turn red after 90 days without any update on the client’s 641 information. This way you can make sure your clients' information is up-to-date.

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In this short video, Elizabeth Binning will show you how this feature works:

Updated 641 Intake form sharing settings
— Share or embed in your website your 641 intake form 

You can now share the 641 intake form with your clients online.

Find your custom link sharing on the new "Intake Form" submenu under your “Profile Settings” menu. Each advisor on GrowthWheel Online will have a unique link to share. 

You can also embed the 641 intake form on your website. Copy the embed code from your intake form settings page and copy it to your webpage. 

We continue our work with GrowthWheel NG (Next Generation) to be EDMIS (SBA) Compatible...

What is coming next?

• Register your 888 training sessions with aggregated numbers

What is coming later?

• Simple Export: All 641 and 888 report files in XML format for upload on EDMIS NG.

• Easy migration: Seamless import of your historic 641 and 888 data

• Register your 888 training sessions with individual participants

New feature: SBA Counseling Sessions

As part of our new GrowthWheel NG features, you can now easily track your Client’s Impact Records on each counseling session with our recent update in GrowthWheel Online.

With the new SBA Counseling Record you will have a pop-up which makes gathering impact information from meetings with clients easy and simple.

As on the 641 form you will get instant notifications for missing or invalid data.

This release will help you:

• Add all your SBA required information from each meeting

• Register impact data, if the client has received funding

• Select which sessions are reportable to SBA

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In this short video, Elizabeth Binning will show you how this feature works:

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Track your Client’s funding
— And choose which sessions you will report to SBA

We have integrated conditional logic so you will see the funding specification only if you check that your client has received funding.

Also you get to choose which counseling sessions are reportable to SBA or not. Only reportable sessions will be included in the EDMIS report.

New feature: Client Intake Forms Lets Your Clients Self-register

We think you will love everything about the new way for your clients to selfregister through the GrowthWheel Client's Intake Form, our most recent update.

Having clients sign up to your programs, register for training courses from your website, and immediately have their information in your CRM system has never been easier.

Sharing your custom link with clients to self-register will automatically create a new pre-client on GrowthWheel Online, under your organization, which you can later invite to the platform to continue collaborating.

This release will help you:

• Access your intake form sharing options from your “Profile Settings” page

• Embed the intake form into your website for online registrations

• Open your client's intake form from the “Client Relation” menu to review or make changes

• Each advisor has their intake form custom link, so clients are associated with them

• Clients can accept and give permission to your custom terms at the intake form

We hope that this new user-friendly feature makes gathering data and onboarding your clients into your program simple and easy.

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In this short video, Elizabeth Binning will show you how this feature works:

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Intake form sharing settings
— Share or embed your intake form with just a few clicks

Find your custom link sharing on the new "Intake Form" submenu under your “Profile Settings” menu. Each advisor on GrowthWheel Online will have a unique link to share. This way, all clients signed up using their link will be associated with them immediately.

You can also embed the intake form on your website. Copy the embed code from your intake form settings page and copy it to your webpage. Clients can self-register to your services, courses, programs or else, with the GrowthWheel Intake Form.

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Keep your client’s profiles up to date
— All information is instantly added to GrowthWheel Online!

Once an intake form is received and the new pre-client is created, you will find that the information entered on the intake form will also be saved across the different pages in GrowthWheel Online: the business profile, demographics, engagement, etc. This way, you can keep updating it as you continue working with your clients.

You can also click the intake form button under the client relation menu to reopen the initial intake form for review or make necessary changes.

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New feature for SBDC’s: 641 Forms on GrowthWheel NG (beta)

We are happy to introduce GrowthWheel NG (next generation) for SBA-funded agencies as a beta version, and — yes — you can use it to report to SBA in the near future!

You can now have your clients fill out their own 641 form in GrowthWheel Online. When you review their information, you will see an indicator if the information is missing or has improper validation.

With this release, you will be able to:

• Have your clients fill out their 641 form on their GrowthWheel account

• Fill out the 641 form yourself on GrowthWheel Online under "the “Client Relation” menu

• Share with clients the intake form and see the information on their 641 form

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In this quick video, Elizabeth Binning will show you how it works:

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Instant validations indicators
— Get error-free reports right away!

The system will automatically recognize fields with missing information or wrong validations, show an indicator with the error count, and highlight the field that requires changes.

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And this is just the beginning...

What is coming (very) soon?

• Register your counseling sessions with all SBA requirements.

• Have your clients fill out the 641 form as an intake form.

What's next?

• Register your 888 training sessions. 

• Export the 641 and 888 report files to upload on EDMIS NG.