What's new
Recent Meridian releases in plain language, newest first.
The recent releases that change what you can do, in plain language. Newest first.
September 2026
Your edition, spelled out
Settings → Billing now tells you exactly what your edition includes, generated from the same rules the app enforces — so what you're told you have is what you can actually do. Anything that's part of your edition but still being built is listed separately and marked not shipped yet.
Alongside it, Meridian now distinguishes two different refusals that used to look the same: your plan doesn't include this (the whole shop, fixed by changing edition) and your role doesn't have permission (just your login, fixed by your manager in a minute). See your edition and what's included.
Read-only really is read-only
A Viewer could previously make changes through parts of the app, despite the role saying otherwise. Every write is now checked properly, so the permissions matrix describes what actually happens. If someone was relying on that gap to get their job done, give them a role that covers it.
Dates behave the way a calendar does
Dates that mean a day — due dates, expected dates, period dates — are now stored as days rather than moments, so they can't shift by a few hours depending on who's looking or where the server is. Combined with the shop timezone below, a ticket closed in the evening lands on the day it happened.
Fixes worth knowing about
- Card payments now record the brand, last four and approval code, so the Reference column on the payments table fills itself in instead of showing a dash — and your surcharge disclosure is printed on the receipt and the emailed invoice.
- Recording a payment larger than the balance is refused instead of being quietly absorbed. Taking cash and giving change is unaffected.
- Settings no longer appears for people who can't open it in a way that leads nowhere useful, and a few screens that quietly did nothing when they failed now tell you what happened.
August 2026
Vendor returns
Parts going back to a supplier now have proper paperwork. Build a return against the original receipt or straight from stock, request and record the vendor's RMA number, print a packing slip with no cost on it for the box, ship it, and record what the vendor actually settled — in batches, if that's how they pay. Meridian tracks what each vendor still owes you until the claim is closed.
When you take a customer return of something defective, wrong, or specially ordered, Meridian now offers to send it straight on to the vendor rather than leaving it on your shelf. See return parts to a vendor.
Closing the month
You can now close an accounting period so nothing new can post into it. Reopening is possible but recorded permanently — who, when and why — and that record survives closing it again. Owners and managers can reopen; accounting can close but not reopen.
Alongside it, Backdated Entries shows anything posted well after it was entered, flagging the ones that crossed from one month into another, with a CSV export for your accountant.
Your shop's timezone
Settings → Shop now carries a Timezone, and it decides which day — and which month — a transaction belongs to. Before this, a ticket closed at 6:30pm on the 31st could land in the next month. If Meridian worked your timezone out from your address, it'll ask you to confirm it; saving the page is all that takes.
The same section adds a Past Dates policy: choose whether appointments and purchase-order expected dates may be set in the past, warn, or be refused outright.
Fixes worth knowing about
- Emailed invoices now link somewhere your customer can actually open. The link used to land them on the staff sign-in screen.
- Tax areas can be edited and retired, not just added. Renaming a code that's in use is refused rather than silently disconnecting the customers and orders attached to it, and deleting one that's in use deactivates it instead.
- The Time Clock no longer starts with somebody already selected, so one click can't begin the wrong person's day.
- Opening a part's edit sheet and saving it no longer writes a phantom adjustment into its history.
- Vehicles can be added from the Vehicles list, not only from inside a customer.
- The schedule tells you when something didn't work. Creating, rescheduling, declining and sending reminders all used to fail silently; now they report what happened and keep your typing.
- Customer requests no longer blank the page when you acknowledge, schedule, decline or close one.
- Purchase orders got the search box their filter was already built for, and the Low Stock filter now distinguishes "nothing is low" from "no part has a reorder point set yet".
- Editing order details records what changed, so the history panel is a real trail rather than a promise.
July 2026
The customer portal
Your customers can now sign in to a portal of their own — no more single shared link.
- Real logins, multiple users per account. A fleet's admin invites their own people and decides who sees what: an accounting contact sees billing only, a driver sees only their assigned units, a manager sees everything. You can also set this up for them from the customer's page in Meridian.
- Work history and live status. Customers see their completed work — invoices, inspection results with photos, signatures — and watch open jobs progress line by line, including anything waiting on their approval. Estimates can be approved right in the portal.
- Billing, statements, and pay-on-account. Signed-in customers see open invoices and AR aging, download monthly statements, and pay a single invoice or a lump sum across their account — oldest first — by card or bank.
- Scheduling and PM self-service. Customers request or reschedule service, report maintenance they did themselves, and submit odometer readings — all of which flow into your PM forecasting.
- Fleet reporting and cost-per-mile. Fleet accounts get spend by unit, PM-versus-repair-versus-breakdown splits, and per-unit cost per mile — the numbers fleet managers ask for at review time, computed fresh every night.
- A Requests inbox for the shop. Customer requests land in a new Requests inbox with a live count. Acknowledge, schedule (it creates the appointment), or decline — and the customer is notified by email or text automatically, with your notification choices under Settings → Customer Portal.
- The old links still work. The no-login pay and approval links your customers already use are unchanged — and they can now offer a "get your own login" step-up when you enable it.
This help site
The manual you're reading launched — role-based guides for advisors, parts, technicians, owners, and admins, plus this reference section. It grows with every release.
Help, right where you're working
Every screen now has a ? button in the top bar that opens the matching how-to from this manual in a side panel — no leaving what you're doing. Press Ctrl K (or ⌘K on a Mac) and you'll also see Help for this page, plus any help articles that match what you type, listed under Help alongside your tickets and parts. Open the full page in a new tab whenever you want more room.
Fixes worth knowing about
- Text-to-pay and email-to-pay links no longer bounce customers who aren't signed in — they go straight to the payment page.
- Labor picked from the labor guide now prices itself automatically at the right hourly rate. Customers can also carry a negotiated labor rate, set on the customer's record.
June 2026
- QuickBooks Desktop export. Map your accounts once, then export your daily activity as an IIF file QuickBooks Desktop imports cleanly — on demand with a preview, or delivered automatically every night by email or in-app. Find it under Accounting → QBD Export.
- Shop Board drag-and-drop. Move jobs between lanes by dragging cards. The board only allows moves that make sense, so a card can't skip from Open straight to Invoiced.
- A cleaner sidebar and settings. Navigation is grouped into sections with a stable order, and settings pages only appear for the people who can use them.
- Orders list filters. Filter the orders list by location and by vehicle, and jump to a truck's full history in one click.
- Tech productivity, deeper. The tech productivity report takes custom date ranges and drills down to the line items behind each number.
- Driver inspection reports (DVIR). Fleet drivers get a simple mobile flow for DOT daily inspections, with defect follow-up for your mechanics and a new Driver role that sees only this.
- Mobile dispatch tickets. Field-service calls get a dispatch ticket and intake flow, so the truck board reflects what's actually promised.
- Truer parts profit. Parts now bill against their actual purchase cost, layer by layer — so job profit and inventory value on your reports reflect what you really paid, not an average.
- Core tracking, end to end. Customer core deposits, dirty-core shelf stock, supplier returns with their deadline windows, and the money reconciliation behind it all — tracked in one place instead of on a clipboard.
- Fleet-grade preventive maintenance. Meter history with bad-reading catch, due-date forecasting per unit, PM programs and enrollments, a fleet PM dashboard with automated reminders, deferred-work tracking that resurfaces declined jobs, telematics feeds (Samsara, Motive, Geotab), and PM sold as renewable contracts.
- Google sign-in. Staff can sign in with a Google account alongside email codes.
- Quick Ticket. Walk-in counter sales in seconds — new customer and cash sale on one screen.
Earlier this year
The spring releases built the foundations the features above sit on: the technician field portal with clock-to-job time tracking, mobile service trucks with van inventory and per-truck profit, the full billing and point-of-sale stack (text-to-pay, card readers, financing, returns and credit memos), and Foreman — the owner's copilot that watches your numbers and briefs you weekly.