Once again Jim Logan is right on the money with his advice on how to improve your cash flow by getting your invoices out the door:

Invoicing to some is like filing taxes, it seems like a chore. Usually it´s because there is no system in place or tools are lacking to gather required information and generate an invoice. Procrastination is the case for many.

It seems like very simple and obvious advice, but I think many small business owners need to hear it time and time again.

What our customers tell us time and time again is that FreshBooks makes invoicing so easy that they can do it right away without procrastinating.  With invoicing out of the way, the procrastinating can shift to other things such as cleaning your office, getting a haircut, and finishing that novel you have been working on for the last ten years.

Jim Logan is not on the FreshBooks payroll, but if he continues to put up posts like these (try staggering, streamline your collections, time to pay trumps all) perhaps we should make him an offer.

What is it about journalists that are always coming up with stories aimed at frightening the pants off of us small business owners. The latest threat courtesy of the Globe and Mail is targeted at all of you who are running your business from your home PC without any serious protection:

In the cyber underworld’s never-ending quest for weak spots, home computers are coming under increased attack as businesses tighten their defences, according to the latest Symantec Internet security threat report.

Now, I have a question, is this a valid story, or is it a PR story for Symantec aimed at selling more virus software? The answer is that it’s probably a little of both, but since we have a number of readers of this blog who are IT and networking professionals, perhaps we can hear from you on this one.

If you are like me, you probably do not want to take the risk either way. Even if they are only partially true, I think it is always worthwhile to take reasonable steps to protect your PC and your information.  For me that means investing and updating my virus software and treading carefully on the web, for others it may mean buying a Mac

We run an office and a technology company and I find faxes a pain. They come in and they need to be sorted and stored, so they take up space and paper. I also find maintaining our fax machine a pain. Our fax machine is a nice little Panasonic - but it is old school and requires a roll of carbon film instead of ink for printing. It runs out every few weeks and swapping it as well as shopping for supplies is a pain. Worse yet, when I looked at the used carbon films last week I realized how inefficient they are. The carbon pages are wasteful, as is using paper to receive faxes. Besides, filing electronic documents is much easier that filing paper documents (clutter, physical office space, searchability later on).So…we’ll be making the move to eFaxing solutions soon. Here are a couple we are looking at:

http://www.efax.com/ (highly recommended by a friend)
http://www.myfax.com/ (looks pretty good)

Do you have thoughts on these providers or any recommendations?

P.S. For any of you who are mobile workers, eFaxing seems like a great addition to your toolbox.

I just updated my preferences in Rackspace’s Noteworthy hosted email service. They confirmed my changes when they reloaded the page with RED TEXT like this:

I thought I had done something wrong.

Here are some of the physiological effects of the colour red:

Red increases the pulse and heart rate, and raises your blood pressure. It increases the appetite by increasing your metabolism, which is why red is such a popular color in restaurants. It is active, aggressive and outspoken. One bank found that their lines moved faster when they increased the use of red in the bank lobby, and in a study of several hundred college students, a researcher found that they responded more quickly to cues under red light than under green light.

Powerful stuff eh? Red text (like a red marker from your school days) also has negative connotaions…it is inherently “alarming” to see something in red text - I know I feel alarmed when I see red text and that is who I felt using Noteworthy.

To confirm a message when you are building web apps, use a happy colour like green and reinforce good behaviour and build trust. Doing this also lets you save red for when you need it…to alert and alarm your users when they have done something, or are about to do something, they need to be aware of.