After much eager anticipation and endless waiting, the FreshBooks time tracking widget for Mac OS X is complete!

This widget means you can track time worked for your clients with a click of a button, without logging in, and even when you’re on the road without an Internet connection — though you will need one to actually submit the time to your FreshBooks account, of course.

Download it now »

Attention Windows Users: You may wish to check out TimerSync, a 3rd party time tracking application that’s received good feedback from our customers!

I have enough conflict in my life.

“I’ll be converting all my current client invoicing to FreshBooks and starting new clients there. FreshBooks, you rock.”

As a professional workplace mediator, executive conflict coach and conflict resolution blogger, I willingly walk into other people’s conflicts. A Red Cross blood-drawing nurse once slapped her hand on my forehead to take my temperature when she heard that.

In my line of work, I have to stay calm and centred, keep my approaches simple and straightforward, and make communication with clients clear and easy. And I want my business systems to do the same for me.

Yet when I switched to a Mac in 2006, I wasn’t feeling very relaxed about how much more complicated my client invoicing system got. QuickBooks for Mac didn’t meet my simple, straightforward standards and neither did any of the other options I sampled. None quite managed the kind of invoicing and time-tracking solution I hoped was out there somewhere.

FreshBooks came to my rescue and I’m such a fan I included it in my top 10 for 2008 list on the blog I write for my fellow mediators. Some mediators aren’t very comfortable with technology for business, yet I can comfortably recommend FreshBooks even to them because I know they won’t be overwhelmed by learning or using it.

When I first visited FreshBooks’ site and read the claim about getting paid faster, I have to admit I rolled my eyes at the apparent hyperbole. A week later I stopped the eye-rolling permanently when a chronically late-paying client had a cheque on my desk just a few days after my first FreshBooks invoice went to them via e-mail.

I’ll be converting all my current client invoicing to FreshBooks and starting new clients there. FreshBooks, you rock.

FreshBooks is currently seeking a Product Director to lead and manage our development team. This new position is located at our offices here in Toronto, Ontario.

You will work together with other business groups to drive product enhancements and new products to help grow the FreshBooks service and online community. You will be unafraid to ask the tough questions of both other managers as well as product developers. You know how to get the most out of people and have a keen sense of “what counts” when it comes to product and business decisions.

If you’re interested, or know somebody who might be, please check out our careers page for more information on this great new opening!

FreshBooks welcomes Adrian Miller as our newest guest contributor to Fresh Thinking. Adrian will share the wisdom garnered from her many years of experience in sales training.

In her first post, originally written for CustomerThink, Adrian gets us thinking about our sales methods. Next month will bring the first of her many original contributions to Fresh Thinking.

No, that title’s not an error.

My question isn’t about your goals, your aims, your vision, your mission, your business plan, your targets, or any of that other stuff that comes together and answers the question of why you are in business.

I’m here to ask you, specifically and simply: how are you in business?

What are you like?

Are you pleasant? Are you responsive? Are you fair? In how you are in business, do you demonstrate that you care about helping people with whatever solution you provide? Do you give your customers a reason to be glad that they do business with you? Would you buy from yourself?

Here’s the thing: business culture today is so focused on the target/goal/objective, that the means of achieving those ends — the ‘how’ of business — is often an afterthought. In fact, sometimes the ‘how’ is not thought of at all, and so it becomes utterly subjugated, sacrificed and snuffed out in a relentless — arguably obsessive — pursuit of the bottom line, of exclusively measurable outcomes. The ‘how’ becomes nothing but a necessary evil between you and the ‘why.’ And like all necessary evils, you treat it with resistance, contempt and disdain.

Focus on the ‘how’

I’m not saying every single customer you meet should receive flowers or a ticker-tape parade (”Hooray! You’re our 9th customer today!”). I’m saying that the ‘how’ of your business is as essential as the ‘why.’ The ‘how’ matters. It’s important. Your customers deserve more ‘how’ from you. And if they get a taste of it from your competitors, they’ll come to expect it from you, too. If you don’t have the ‘how’ of your business in shape, you’ll lose them. And who can you blame for this other than yourself, and your anti-’how’-ism?

So. What can you do to inject some high-quality ‘how’ in your business?

It’s easier than you think. Simply start here:

• Don’t act like you’re doing your customer a favor by selling to them; guard against this especially if, right now, you’re very busy and your stuff is in high demand. Business is a cycle; you’ll come down to earth sooner or later, and the trail of pissed-off prospects in your wake won’t care to help you get back up.
• Don’t ever confuse soft-selling with that ugly creature called “anti-marketing”; the former is an authentic and empowering way to develop a relationship with a prospect, while the latter is an invention of miserable, self-absorbed people who should be in deep, multi-discipline therapy.
• Focus on two fundamental aspects of customer happiness: their happiness with the sales process, and their happiness with the solution they buy from you. When people engage in word of mouth marketing, they often emphasize the ‘how’ of the sale more than the ‘why’ or the ‘what.’
• Remember your customer’s name! Don’t be afraid to ask for it if you happen to forget, because nothing is worse than getting a name wrong; it’s sloppy. If you can remember your own name, you can remember someone else’s.
• Make sure the colleagues around you support your efforts to develop a quality sales experience; don’t have Sarah from shipping or Joe from accounting running around, madly waving a waybill the air, while you’re trying to talk to a prospect about your “total commitment to customer service.”

See? Simple things.

Start with these, and build a ‘how’ consciousness into your business. Don’t take my word for it, just see for yourself. You’ll soon see that a better ‘how’ leads to a better everything else — including a better bottom line.

Another year, another day of celebration: last Wednesday we celebrated another glorious Cinco de Moustache here at FreshBooks.

Yes, this post is even later than last year’s, but we had to wait for the statutes of limitation to run out.

We were fortunate enough to have thrice as much moustache as ‘07. Take a look at the contributions that made this year such a smashing success:

Left to right: Taavi, sporting a classic mouthbrow; Alistair, from his live showercam; and me, straight from the cab of my 18-wheeler.

Want to learn how you can use effective public speaking to sell your services?

Then sign up for “Speak Powerfully/Sell More,” a one-hour online class on Friday, March 28, 2008. The session is co-hosted by FreshBooks customer Adrian Miller.

To grow your business or promote your career, it takes exquisite presentation skills and high impact, results-oriented sales techniques. And anyone can learn them.

In this fast-paced live audio teleconference, experts Diane DiResta (author of Knockout Presentations) and Adrian Miller (author of The Blatant Truth: 50 Ways to Sales Success) will lead you through powerful techniques to increase your confidence and grow your business.

Registration is $39 USD and includes a collection of takeaways, including an audio course on public speaking you can listen to on your own time. If you’re interested, get on over there and sign up now.

Stay tuned for more

Monday will bring a guest post from Adrian on selling your services. She’ll be joining us as a regular guest contributor, and we’re happy to bring her wisdom into the fold here on Fresh Thinking.

Welcome, Adrian!

Serving your customers comes down to keeping your promises. You honour your word. You honour your commitment.

This isn’t about contracts and terms. It’s not about performance reviews. It’s not about call centre metrics and wait times and phone queues. It’s definitely not about policies.

Customer service is all about — only about, exclusively about — keeping your promises. Honouring your word, your bond, your commitment.

Promises don’t start with your customers

You haven’t seen me add “to your customers” at the end of these sentences yet, have you? I didn’t write, “you honour your word to your customers,” or “you honour your commitment to your customers.”

Because that’s not where it starts. That’s where it ends. That’s the goal. That’s the end of the journey.

Customer service starts with keeping your promises with your co-workers, your colleagues, your staff, and your friends at your company. And they with you.

These are promises big and small. They’re promises in writing. And they’re unwritten promises that sustain a company, enabling it to thrive in good times and survive at others. These promises form the little threads that bind each member to the desired outcome: happy, well-served customers.

Recognize the importance of your staff

IT Guy makes sure everyone has the best, fastest, most dependable IT resources necessary to do the job, at all times. And he promises to listen.

The “customer service” staff — and I quote the term because really, everyone in a company is in customer service, some companies just haven’t bothered to communicate that — they commit specifically to making the customer happy. They answer the customers’ calls, and communicate to everyone else in the company what’s needed to keep the customer happy.

Billing Guy makes sure the invoices are absolutely correct, all the time, keeping customer service free for other needs; and IT Guy’s promises keep Billing Guy happy with correct, timely invoices.

Then there’s Sales Guy. Sales Guy is very happy when all this happens. Why? He’s the direct beneficiary of referrals from happy customers. His conversion ratio continues to rise as he sells with the confidence brought by his promises kept with his colleagues, and theirs with him.

My role then becomes like that of an insurance agent. I ensure everyone communicates openly, including myself, on all that’s needed to grow our company. The bond is maintained as we grow and change — very important. Many companies forget this in their rush to change, and then wonder why, at the end of the day, it all fails.

Happy staff make happy customers

Promises to a customer are the simple end result of the promises kept with each other. The good habits of listening and accountability, honouring our promises, and helping each other — and therefore ourselves — becomes the norm in all interactions. Doing the right thing really does come naturally. You just have to ensure no one gets in the way; create a few meaningful extrinsic rewards; and sometimes undo the mental habits of previous jobs.

At that point, there’s simply no way a promise to a customer could be broken. What would be the point? It would be like those Visa commercials, where a community’s smooth and happy operation comes to a halt with the use of cash. Only here, our community with our customers would come to a halt with the breaking of promises to each other. What would be the point — adding a little dash of agony? We can get our share of that from any number of other companies.

But those companies known for providing great customer service are “merely” (!?!) filled with members busy each day keeping their promises to each other.

Customer service: it begins with keeping your promises.

Credit for this meme should be given to Mike Wagner, CEO of White Rabbit Group, along with Steve and Andrew MacGill from Peersight Online, who recently joined our company for lunch at our offices.

Our service philosophy involves opening the floodgates via phone, forum and email. We listen to what our users are saying, see their point of view, feel the pain they’re feeling. It’s an essential way of giving us the perspective we need in building two great things: the product itself, and our relationship with the people who use it.

Our new support rotation program

With over 300,000 users and growing, and with new team members on board, our support processes needed some attention to make sure we were always on top of providing great service. We wanted to find a way to scale our support efforts as demand continued to grow.

Quick turnaround time in support is a top priority here at FreshBooks, so a support rotation program was devised. Each employee does email, phone and forum replies once a week to stay in touch with our users; every one of us becomes what I call a “support lead,” to make sure all support queries are taken care of. Two or three support leads collaborate to form a support team for the day.

What we’ve seen so far

While some support calls take a bit longer as our “new recruits” get familiar with every nook and cranny about FreshBooks, everyone understands the reason we’re doing it and our customers are being super supportive of their obvious efforts. We expect the program to last as we double our user base, and by that time we’ll have weaned a few staff members off support, with the aim of building a dedicated support team with the help of the experience we gather from this program.

Since starting over a month ago, we have benefited from the rotation in a few ways:

• The whole team is more aware of the current set of feature requests and necessary enhancements.
• Exposure to support means everyone has a better understanding of our users’ most common issues, and a deeper knowledge of the functionality of the product.
• Better understanding of the most common support questions builds up our collection of workarounds and solutions.
• Support time allows us to exercise team effectiveness in communication, coordination, and cooperation.
• The stigma of doing support has vanished because everyone in the company is doing it.
• The rotation brings structure to our weekly schedule, allowing us to focus on both support and our individual superpowers.

Support builds a humble person

In addition to being current and up-to-date with the rotation program, the team also benefits from this humbling support role. As one of our customers, Zane Safrit, says, “putting others’ needs first builds a humble person.”

It takes quite a bit of patience from every single one of us, and creates a staff with rock star skills.

My name is Joe Scarpa and I’m the founder and “chief healer” at Mac House Calls, an Apple-certified computer services company.

“We are able to accept credit cards on-site via FreshBooks’ integration with Authorize.Net.”

About two years ago I made my first attempt at automating our invoicing process. I devised a system that ran on Palm OS based on a package from an upstate software company.

Overall it was pretty slick; our consultants used the software on their Palm Treo handhelds to create invoices and time slips, complete with job notes. Through a custom interface, the information from the Treos was imported into our accounting system, MYOB. It was really easy to create invoices on a Treo; just a few clicks did the trick.

This was a giant step forward from our previous system (paper with carbon copies, hand-entered into the accounting system), but it still had numerous shortcomings:

• It was very difficult to enter job notes. Typing on the Treo keyboard was cumbersome, and as a result we found our consultants often waited until the end of the day to do this, rather than at the time the work was complete.
• We had no integrated way of handling credit card payments. We mostly ended up calling these in by phone.
• The Palm-based system didn’t allow us to leave the customer a receipt at the time services were rendered. Instead, receipts were e-mailed out from our accounting system after having been imported.

“The FreshBooks interface is fast and intuitive.”

These shortcomings rendered this method more labour-intensive and error-prone than we wanted, so right around the time we were ready to replace the Treos with iPhones, I started looking for another solution.

Thanks to FreshBooks, here’s our new and improved process:

1. A customer calls for an appointment. If the customer is new, he’s added to MYOB; a drag-and-drop interface copies him to Address Book, and into FreshBooks via its API.
2. The consultant finishes the work and creates an entry on-site in FreshBooks. We are able to accept any kind of payment, including credit cards via FreshBooks’ integration with Authorize.Net. The customer receives a printed invoice on the spot, and an e-mail with a link to the invoice online.
3. Via the FreshBooks API, each FreshBooks invoice created during the day is imported into MYOB.

That’s it! This system has really worked out for us.

We’re pleased with how the team at FreshBooks worked with us to address any issues that came up while working through things. Our Web-based system is more reliable and less error-prone than our previous system. The FreshBooks interface is fast and intuitive, and its API uses standard XML, so it was easy to understand and easy to work with, using both C and AppleScript.

Our customers are impressed with our streamlined processes, and we’re pleased with the bottom-line benefits.

Back in December we asked our customers, “who inspires you?” Armed with that information, we set out to ask those people a few questions.

Second in our series: brand identity afficionado FJ de Kermadac.

All of us here at FreshBooks are quite familiar with your work, but for those of our readers may not be, please give us the basics: age, nickname, serial number…

My name is FJ de Kermadec. I am “Frenchman of the Board” at Webstellung, the firm I founded in 2004. We specialize in identity and strategy — everything for a brand to be born and thrive, on- and offline. We also run a philanthropic program for the living arts and support independent artists.

I am based in Paris, France, but I travel quite a bit between Paris, the U.K. and the U.S. — anywhere Air France goes. In my spare time, I contribute to Mac related publications, which I find is a great way to keep learning.

I keep an updated summary of things on my personal site, FJdeKermadec.com.

What led you into the world of Web design? What’s forcing you to stay in the world of Web design?

I started designing sites as a way to put some thoughts and data online, things I wanted to share and get feedback on. I’ve never liked being forced into templates, so I quickly had to write my own tags. It started with a couple styling declarations and it quickly turned into entire pages.

There is always a better way to get a message across. Ways to write or present it to make it spread faster or stick longer in the minds of the recipients. My quest for perfection is a never-ending one, and it keeps pulling me back onto the Web.

Do you relate accessibility and standards with Web 2.0?

Web 2.0 is very much like Web 1.0 in that regard. There are companies and designers that care about standards, and others that don’t. The voice of standards is certainly easier to hear today than it was a few years ago as designers gain a deeper understanding of the Web and see the beauty of code as a part of an overall aesthetic.

Furthering the cause of standards and accessibility has always been a struggle and I fear it will continue to be one, regardless of how rich the Web experience becomes.

Are you a designer with a passion for standards, or a “standards guy” who can also do the design, or some other combination of the above?

I like to think I’m a combination of both.

To me, true creativity can only thrive on a basis that is sound and orderly, regardless of the medium. In paintings and print, it gives us eye-pleasing layouts and enhances the message, on the Web, it gives us interoperability, in music it gives us harmony.

I apply standards to everything practical in my life, from Web design to coffee cups. At Webstellung, we have standard rules and procedures for nearly everything. That allows us to build things, and then maintain them without worrying about how they’re built.

What’s the single biggest change you’ve seen in the industry in the last ten years?

Order and method are back. After being dazzled by the idea of constant change and permanent fluidity, the industry is finally reaching a productive position. New ideas and technologies are seen in the context of fundamental design and business concepts.

Clients come to us to build long-term projects. They’re still very much interested in the newest ideas and cutting-edge technologies but they see them as part of an overall strategy. Weekly re-branding is going the way of the Flash intro, which means brands can finally be given the attention they’ve been craving.

How do you decide the price of someone’s site design? Is it a formula or are the rules re-shaped for each client?

Web work is only a fraction of what we do, as we focus first of all on brand and message.

However, all the work Webstellung performs is billed on an hourly basis and all our hours are billed at the same price. That way, clients can course-correct projects easily, without requiring a whole new contract to be negotiated. They also needn’t worry about the split between development, typography, design, music editing…

Branding especially requires that lots of strings be pulled and many specialists be called in — the same person cannot design the uniform of your lift attendants and put together your Web site. Our clients rely on us to make it all simple, and this means simplifying cost structures as much as we possibly can.

Of course, we’re in contact with our clients on a daily basis, so they know they won’t be surprised when the final hourly count arrives. We also keep a log of all hours worked so there’s no question of padding the bills!

One final detail, which is important in an international business, is that we bill our U.S. clients in U.S. dollars and our European clients in Euros. This adds a bit of complexity on our end but it takes a big variable out of the equation for our clients.

People who promote Web accessibility often aren’t the best designers, so their work can often be quite dull. How do you keep the spark of your visually appealing work?

I try to stay current in both fields. I consider myself neither a designer nor a developer but I strive to stay up-to-date and informed in every area my company works in. It’s no easy feat but it’s the only way to help our clients in a meaningful way — not just an efficient or eye-pleasing one.

I also have the opportunity to work with a terrific team and the final version of every project is born from repeated interactions between all persons involved.

Every member of our team is given an equal weight in projects. Our typographers can raise a red flag on a Web development project and Web developers often comment on business cards as we draft them up. That ensures everything we work on is cross-examined and analyzed by different “eyes,” ultimately providing a balance that is difficult to attain when a single individual covers it all.

Oh, and we are absolutely obsessive about QA, which helps a lot.

What are the biggest accessibility roadblocks you might encounter in an average day?

We’re here to solve the problems of our clients, and our clients are all active businesses. Active because they are very young, booming, or simply in an industry where waiting is not an option — think IT or fashion.

Some projects need to get out the door fast, especially those that are Web-based. I remember the time we designed and developed a streaming Web radio for a state museum in France in less than a week! (That was actually our first project ever.)

In those cases, one is often tempted to cut corners or take shortcuts, which is almost always the wrong answer. Distinguishing between real time-savers and convenient cop-outs is a constant struggle, whether in design or development. Accessibility is an especially tricky domain, in that it’s difficult to judge how a shortcut that doesn’t affect you could affect someone with a disability you don’t have, or who relies on a device you’ve never seen and cannot quickly test on.

How do you blow off steam? Have you ever burnt out?

I like to read — anything from fiction to a book on vi — go to the theatre or see a good operetta. Of course, being from Paris, I’m always up for a late dinner out with friends or a walk through the city at night. That’s one of my guilty pleasures and an endless source of inspiration — things happen when most people have gone back home.

How do you avoid distractions in the workplace? Put another way, how important is it to have a great environment for managing your workload?

I don’t. Design and development are creative endeavours and shutting the world out is no way to be creative. Of course, it is important to have an organized, logical and reasonably quiet space to work in, but life will always creep back in. Attempting to suppress your environment is a life-long endeavour that’s doomed to fail.

Having a great environment, however, is paramount. By great, I mean an environment that’s clean, healthy and organized. A place where you feel good and can stay in for a good many hours a day without bouncing off the walls, cutting ten years off your life expectancy or gouging out your eyeballs with the electric letter opener. Everyone will have his own set of criteria and a different idea of what makes a place “just right.”

FreshBooks caters to online creative types. What advice would you offer our readers on creating compelling designs, and growing themselves and their companies as designers?

Do not stop at providing the client with what they want, but take the time to understand, and provide them with what they truly need. Want and need are always compatible and I know of no client who will not listen to properly documented suggestions for improvements or developments.

The ability to read between the lines is what distinguishes a communication firm from a design factory that churns out brochures by the meter. Clients know and appreciate this.

If you could give one piece of advice to people just starting out in the field, what would it be?

You cannot and should not launch a business unless running it arrives at the very top of your personal enjoyment ladder, above all other activities, even those involving nudity.

[Editor's note: the opinions expressed in this interview do not necessarily reflect those of FreshBooks!]

You’ve chosen some pretty interesting fonts. Is it just a visual choice or is there something else driving the decision?

Our choices always start from visual and logical considerations. The tone and mood of a font is paramount to the building of a strong, genuine identity. In fact, if you have done your homework and know your client inside and out, you should never encounter any issue when selecting the right font: it will come to you.

Most of the time, the right-looking font will be from the right country or the right period too. Fonts carry a large cultural baggage with them, which people wrongly ignore. The right font is the one that looks right and ties into your brand inside and out.