How many small business owners ask this question very soon after starting up a new business….why bother with credit cards? There are a lot of reasons why it doesn’t make any sense to accept credit cards. The biggest and most obvious is the cost. If the credit card companies take 2% to 4% of all my revenue, why the heck should I even consider it? Not to mention the enormous hassle of setting up a merchant account and a payment gateway. If most of my clients don’t mind sending me a cheque, and I get 100% of this money, then it’s a no brainer.

Or is it? In many small businesses, saying cash is king is a very fair statement. Too often if you are running a small consultancy or freelancer business and you run out of cash, your business grinds to a halt. If you are a young business, you probably aren’t able to get much help from the banks unless you have a fancy house to put up as collateral. Therefore, without much financial security, your business is at a major risk if a few clients do not pay on time. If you start to collect credit cards, it makes it that much easier for your clients to pay you immediately. Not only can they pay with credit (which helps them if they are also a small business), but you will receive the funds immediately instead of waiting for a cheque to arrive in the mail and having to make an extra trip to the bank to make the deposit.

At first glance it seems really crazy to give up 2-4% of your revenue right off the top to the bank. However, when you consider the ease of payment and steady cash flow, it is likely worth every penny. At the very least it is worth it to run the numbers on accepting credit cards. Maybe it isn’t worth it until you reach a critical mass of customers, or maybe you could start by just accepting PayPal. Either way, you owe it to your business to do your homework.

Today, I will share a tip on how to categorize anything from estimates to support tickets in your FreshBooks account. The benefit to categorizing various objects inside your account is to allow you to quickly display information that is useful to your specific business.

Here’s an example. Let’s categorize clients by importance. You can add categories to your clients or other FreshBooks objects when you create or edit them. Let’s edit an existing client and add some notes.

In the above image, I have added the words “Very Important” somewhere inside the Notes fields for two clients. Now that I have categorized these two clients, I can look up these two specific clients at any time in the future by doing a quick search on that category phrase.

This concept can be applied to invoices, estimates as well as other FreshBooks objects that have the search function available.

For example, you can add your staff’s name to your invoice notes such as “Assisted by: Daniel”. Next, you can bring up all invoices that the staff member Daniel worked on by searching on “Assisted by: Daniel” with your invoice search tool.

I hope this helps. Please leave me a comment if you have any questions.

We got a few shiny new flat screen monitors at FreshBooks recently (the old ones will be donated to the Electronic Recycling Association). When researching the best way to configure the power settings, I was surprised at the difference just a few changes like these can really make:

• Put your monitor to sleep. Monitors use one third of your computer’s energy consumption. Screen savers don’t save energy, they protect your screen from “burn in”, so when you’re away from your desk for more than 15 minutes, either turn the monitor off or set your power management settings to send the monitor to sleep or power off. Mac users, go to System Preferences > Energy Saver. In Windows, go to Start > Control Panel > Power Options, or follow detailed instructions for Macs and PCs.

• Go flat. When buying a new monitor, consider a flat screen — they use 1/3 the energy (and laptops use 1/4 the energy of a desktop).

• End of day. Turn off your monitor (and computer and printer) if you’re away for more than 2 hours and at the end of every day. If you want to go the extra step, and save up to 2% on your energy bill, unplug your computer and printer (as well as your iPod, Blackberry, cell phone chargers, etc) when you leave, or go on holiday. If it makes it easier, plug things into a power strip and unplug the power strip.

What difference will it make? You’ll save money and reduce the amount of CO2 that goes into the atmosphere.

Not long ago, I ordered the book “Baby Mix Me a Drink” online from BuyOlympia to send to my friend in NYC. When it hadn’t arrived after 3 weeks, I sent an email to BuyOlympia asking them to investigate. Two hours later Pat emailed back to let me know that, according to their records, the book had been delivered. He could have stopped there, but didn’t:

I noticed the address was an apartment; could it be with the apartment manager? Or at a front desk?

If it doesn’t turn up, we can send it again — perhaps there’s a different (say, work) address we could use?

Send it again? This response was in stark contrast to another online ordering experience I recently had, of sending FreshBooks t-shirts to delegates at a conference in the U.S. Having chosen the 2-day shipping option, I was disappointed to find the t-shirts had still not arrived by the end of the conference — 5 days later — and even more disappointed by their response: Oops.

What makes BuyOlympia’s offer even more memorable is the fact that:

We see this type of thing happen all the time in new york city; sometimes I’m surprised how many people *do* actually get their packages there.

Great customer service like this can help grow your business. By responding quickly, offering a solution, and giving more than expected, BuyOlympia is a service I will continue to use and recommend to others.

It was not too long ago when I was suddenly paralyzed with back pain as each minor neck movement resulted in significant back agony.  Getting home was a challenge as checking blind spots when driving meant significant neck work.

The problem? A lack of a good headset.

Providing great custom support not only means hiring the right people, but buying the right equipment.  Our older headset had broken down and I was often forced to hold the phone in between my head and shoulder to keep my hands free when speaking with clients.  This resulted in my painful experience described above.

Investing in a good headset is your first step towards increased productivity and saving yourself a painful trip to your doctor.  After much research, we purchased the Plantronics S12 system.  It is a mid priced headset and station combo.  I have been pain free and very happy since purchasing it.

Hello everyone. Just wanted to make a quick post to let you know we’ve got a great new addition to team FreshBooks: Sunir Shah.

Levi and I met Sunir a couple years back. At the time he was working sales for Social Text, and we were always impressed by his ability to connect with people. He’s a social guy and a technologist. Born and raised in Deep River Ontario, Sunir has genetics on his side. His Dad was Kenya’s Chief Civil Engineer until he realized he wanted to move to Canada to give his family a fresh start. He landed himself and his brood in Deep River where he worked his way to a position running Canada’s Chalk River Atomic Energy facilities. Fairly heady stuff, no? One day at lunch Joe (PhD Computer Science and FreshBooks co-founder) mentioned he was off to a conference about discrete math. Sunir was curious to hear a little more and offered his 4.0 GPA in math as currency to continue the conversation. He has a computer science degree, a Masters in Information Studies with a specialty in Knowledge Media Design. Guess the apple does not fall too far from the tree…

Sunir has worked at three start-ups prior to arriving at FreshBooks. Despite the fact that his other jobs largely revolved around compiling code, he’s going to be heading up marketing and community development at FreshBooks, and despite the ridiculous talents he possesses for writing code, we know he’s a natural for the role. So you will be hearing from him here on FreshThinking, see him at events and you can expect his door to be open to you…he may even be calling or emailing you sometime soon…

So…without further adieu, please join me in welcoming Sunir to the FreshBooks team. Welcome Sunir - we’re stoked to have you aboard.

P.S. We are hiring web developers and a crack designer right now. Contact us if you are interested.