What's new in August 2026: run your events end to end

5 September 2026 · by Adam

August was less about brand new toys and more about your account quietly swallowing things you were paying for elsewhere. Events and ticketing. Courses and community. Contracts with more than one signature. On top of that, the assistant stopped waiting to be asked and started doing scheduled work on its own. Here is the month in one place, what each thing is, what it does for you, and where to find it.

Sell event tickets and check people in at the door

Your account can now run an event from start to finish. You build the event page, set your ticket types, and sell them. Free tickets, paid tickets, different price levels, early bird, whatever the event needs.

The payment is taken in your account, so the money lands where the rest of your money lands. Every buyer gets a ticket with a QR code on it. On the day you open your phone, scan the code, and they are checked in. No paper list, no spreadsheet, no one at the door running their finger down a printout while a queue builds up behind them.

The part that matters more than the event itself is what you are left with afterwards. Every person who bought a ticket is a contact in your account, tagged, with a record of what they came to. So the follow-up the next morning is a job you can actually do, instead of a pile of names in a ticketing site you have to export.

You can also put your event registration on your own website rather than sending people off to a separate page, and track what your event marketing actually did, step by step.

What it means for you: a workshop, a seminar, an open day or a client night runs out of the same account as everything else, and the attendees become people you can follow up rather than a list you have to go and fetch.

Where to find it: events are switched on per account. If you run anything with a door and a date, reply to any of my emails and I will turn it on and walk you through your first one.

Run your courses and your community in one place you own

If you sell training, run a membership, or have a group of customers you want to keep together, all of it now lives behind one login that is branded as your business, top to bottom.

Your courses sit next to your community, next to your events, next to each customer's invoices, contracts and files. One login for the customer instead of one for the course platform, one for the group and one for their paperwork. Your public course and community pages are built to be found in Google, while the paid and members-only content stays locked.

Through August it kept getting better. You can post announcements inside a course, name your own course topics, and a join request to your community can now kick off an automation. Course videos also started getting their own subtitles made for them automatically, which matters more than it sounds, because most people watch training on a phone with the sound off.

What it means for you: you stop renting a course platform and a community platform on top of what you already pay for, and your customers stop juggling three logins to deal with one business.

Where to find it: memberships and communities in your account. The branded customer portal that ties it together is switched on per account, so tell me if you want it on.

Give your assistant a job it does every week without you

Your assistant used to wait for you. You opened it, you asked, it did the thing. In August it learned to work on its own.

You can now hand it a job in plain language and put it on a schedule. Every Monday at 7am. First of the month. Whatever suits. It goes and does the work and the result is sitting there when you get to it. Think of the reports you keep meaning to pull, the follow-up list you never quite get to, the weekly summary you would read if it existed.

The other half is that you can teach it how your business does something, once, and it sticks to that from then on. Your way of qualifying a lead. Your way of writing a quote follow-up. You are not re-explaining yourself every time you open it.

It also stopped needing you for the fiddly bits. You can ask it for a finished email instead of building one in the editor, ask it to build a calendar by describing what you want, and ask it to write your ads by telling it what you sell. All of that landed in August.

What it means for you: the difference between a tool that helps when you remember to open it and something that just gets on with a job you set once.

Where to find it: open your assistant, give it the job, and look for the option to schedule it rather than run it now.

A business card that works both ways and lives in their phone

Add to Apple Wallet

The problem with a digital business card has always been the same as a paper one. You give them your details and you get nothing back. They walk off with your number and you walk off with a handshake.

Your card now works in both directions. They can send their details back to you from the same screen, and that lands in your account as a contact you can actually follow up. That is the whole point of standing at a trade night in the first place.

It also goes into their phone wallet now, sitting next to their boarding passes and their coffee card, so it does not disappear into a camera roll they never look at again. Late in the month that got extended, so any QR code you make can live in a phone wallet, not just your card.

What it means for you: you leave a networking event with contacts in your account instead of a pocket full of cards you will never type up.

Where to find it: your digital business card settings. Share the link or the QR code, and let them tap to add it to their wallet.

Get two signatures on one contract, sent once

Anything involving a couple, two directors, or a client and a guarantor used to be a mess. You either sent the document twice and tried to reconcile two signed copies, or you chased them to sit in the same room at the same time.

You now add every signer to the one document and send it once. Each person gets their own link and signs their own section, in their own time, from wherever they are. The document completes when everyone has signed, and you get one finished copy with everything on it.

What it means for you: joint jobs stop being the ones that take a fortnight to get signed. Send it once, and let them sort themselves out.

Where to find it: your documents and contracts area. Add the signers when you build the document, before you send it.

Let customers book their own appointments and stop the phone tag

Your existing customers can now log into your branded portal and book, reschedule or cancel their own appointments, and see everything they have got coming up.

This is the one that quietly takes work off your front desk. The four texts it takes to find a time that suits both of you, gone. Someone who needs to move Thursday can move Thursday at ten at night without waiting for you to open at eight.

Your customers also get told the moment an invoice or a quote lands, and the moment you upload a file for them, so things stop sitting unread in an inbox.

What it means for you: fewer interruptions during the day, and customers who can sort themselves out at the hour that suits them instead of the hour that suits your phone line.

Where to find it: your customer portal settings, under app permissions, where you choose what customers are allowed to do. The portal is switched on per account.

Hold a customer's card without charging it

No-shows are expensive and awkward. You either take money up front and lose the people who were not ready to commit, or you take nothing and wear the empty slot when they do not turn up.

You can now collect a customer's card when they book without charging anything at the time. It sits securely on file. If they no-show, if they cancel inside your window, or when the final balance is due, you charge it then. No phone call asking a customer who let you down for their card number.

What it means for you: a no-show policy you can actually enforce, without a deposit scaring off the people who would have turned up anyway.

Where to find it: your calendar payment settings, on the calendar you want it on.

An AI that answers your phone and sounds like a person

If you have the AI agent answering your phone, August was a good month for it. The voices got a serious upgrade, to the point where most callers will not clock what they are talking to. It handles being interrupted, and it does not do that flat robot cadence that made the old ones obvious in three seconds.

More useful for you: it now tells you what it could not answer. You get a list of the questions that stumped it, which is effectively your customers telling you what is missing from your website, your pricing page and your FAQs. That list is worth reading.

You can also decide exactly what happens when a call ends, from the note it writes to who gets emailed to which automation runs, and an agent can ring someone as a step inside an automation rather than only answering calls that come in.

What it means for you: a phone that gets answered properly after hours, and a running list of the things your customers keep asking that you have never written down anywhere.

Where to find it: your phone agent settings. Some of the newer options are switched on per account, so ask me if you cannot see them.

Two booking page fixes worth doing this week

These both landed right at the end of the month, and they are the sort of thing that has been costing people bookings without anyone noticing.

First, you can put up to three appointment lengths on the one calendar. A fifteen minute chat and an hour long job no longer need two separate calendars and two separate links. The customer picks the one they need, you decide which is ticked by default, and the available times refresh to suit whatever they chose, so an hour long booking only ever shows slots that genuinely fit an hour.

Second, and this is the quiet winner, your booking window can now count only the days you actually work. If you are shut on the weekend and your window is two days, someone landing on your page on a Friday used to see a completely empty calendar and assume you were booked out. Turn on the count available days only toggle and the window skips the days you are closed, so they get Monday and Tuesday instead of nothing.

1. Go to Calendars, then calendar settings, then edit the calendar you want.
2. Find your date range setting. The new count available days only toggle is directly underneath it.
3. Switch it on and save. Do it on every calendar you have got, it takes about ten seconds each.

What it means for you: people who land on your booking page outside your working days actually see times they can book, and you stop maintaining two calendars for the same job.

Where to find it: calendar settings for a normal calendar. Services are under Services, global settings, service settings. For a rental, edit the listing and go to booking settings.

Also new in August

• Your invoices now reach everyone. Send an invoice to more than one person, so the person who books and the person who pays both get it.
• Build your ads by describing them. Tell it what you sell and it drafts the Meta and Google campaign for you to edit.
• Not every recipient has to get the identical email. Change parts of a send for different groups without building the whole thing twice.
• Review follow-ups catch every site. Not just the two you set up originally.
• Get your products onto Google Shopping. Straight from your store, no separate feed to manage.
• Your chat assistant can answer TikTok messages, alongside the channels it already handled.
• Put the chat box inside the page instead of floating in the corner, so it sits where you want it.
• Take a gift card off the bill yourself, when you are taking the payment rather than only at their own checkout.
• Your landing page can say the exact thing they searched for, so the ad and the page match up.
• Contact details slide over the top instead of dragging you off the page you were working on.
• Bring a video into your media library from a link, without downloading and re-uploading it.
• Tidy your files by asking. Rename, sort and clear out your media library in plain language.
• Send emails from more of your automations, including ones built on companies and custom records.
• Your callers hear a ringtone from their own country, so an Australian caller hears an Australian ring. Nothing to switch on.

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