Even though FreshBooks is based out of Canada and our Thanksgiving took place last month, we thought we would share with you today some of the things that make us thankful, besides our wonderful FreshBooks users of course.
Have a safe holiday!
Problem
A couple weeks ago we had a problem: we wanted to collect testimonials for a new version of our homepage. Collecting testimonials can be a real pain. First you need to decide who to ask and then sort out how to ask (phone, email, forum, blog, etc). Then you need to compose some kind of message (email, post, etc), send it and wait. All of this takes time and potentially interrupts people who don’t want to be interrupted.
Solution
We turned to Twitter:
Results
In less than 10 minutes we had 9 testimonials, and Jaco got a selection of those onto the new home page that same day. So a project that could have taken 4-8 hours – maybe more – took about half an hour. That’s a huge time savings, all thanks to Twitter.
Watch how you can now generate FreshBooks invoices in TSheets, a time tracking tool built for the mobile workforce.
Today we’re happy to announce that TSheets, a time tracking service built for the mobile workforce, has made it easy to generate FreshBooks invoices from inside their application.
FreshBooks has many customers that work in the field, such as those in the building and construction trades. We’re always looking for ways to better fit their work flow. We think many of our customers will find TSheets beneficial.
TSheets provides a lot of flexibility when managing agents constantly on the move. Using TSheets, your workforce can clock in/out with SMS text messages from any cellphone. More advanced users can use iPhone, Android, or mobile web time tracking interfaces. They also have cool voice time tracking through an integration with Jott.
TSheets also has a very flexible system for organizing tracked time. With their hierarchical job code system, you can do more than track projects and tasks. You can organize your time and your team any way you want.
While TSheets does work well for sole agents, they really help larger companies with a team of field agents. They provide customizable time reports to make it easy to keep track of what’s going on out in the field. The reports even roll up into QuickBooks ready for payroll.
Overall, pretty sweet. Our thanks to TSheets for making this happen.
Watch the screencast to see how it works.
I’ve been watching a few threads in our forums sparked by customers who want to gain visibility into our product roadmap. This is an important and sensitive issue, both inside and outside our company. We really value all the input we get from our users, and work hard to translate the thousands and thousands of requests into good decisions for everyone.
That said, after a few years of not knowing how to handle questions around what we’re doing next, we’ve settled on a practice of not telling anyone what we’re doing until it’s released. In a nutshell we won’t be sharing our product roadmap, and here are 5 reasons why:
Commitments weigh you down
Once you say you are going to do something, you really ought to do it. If you don’t follow through you are going to let people down. If you change your mind once or twice, you can probably get away with it. But if you make it a habit of going back on your word, you will lose credibility.
But credibility is just an internal problem – a bigger problem is it costs our customers when we mislead them. The problem for them isn’t that we blew our credibility; it’s that they made business decisions based on our commitments and when we don’t meet them, they suffer real business consequences.
I’ve killed the release of new features the night before they were scheduled to be rolled out. Why? They were not up to standard. Fortunately we hadn’t told anyone these features were on their way, and no harm was done. Releasing on a specific date what you said you would is a packaged software thing, and on the web you don’t need to subject yourself to this weight. Commitments make you heavy and less nimble, so avoid them every step of the way.
Keep Your competition guessing
Are your competitors watching you? There’s nothing like giving away your roadmap to inform your competition and make it easy for them to head you off at the pass. Keep your plans to yourself and you’ll always have your competitors guessing – which is right where you want them.
Purchase decisions get delayed
Here’s a scenario: I’m on the phone showing someone FreshBooks and I can tell they are as good as sold. And then I make the mistake of telling them what we are doing next and the conversation goes 180 degrees and they say, “that’s great – get in touch with me when it’s ready!” Not only did I lose a sale, now I have to follow up with someone in the future so I’ve created work for myself! Talk about putting salt in a wound.
People delay purchase decisions if you tell them “what’s coming”. I’ve seen this countless times. Early adopters might be different, but once you reach a certain level of maturity in the market, your product should sell itself as it is today. If it doesn’t, what are you saying about the people who pay for it now?
Don’t set expectations too high
Despite what people in Silicon Valley might tell you, you don’t need to tell everyone about your big vision to be successful. Instead, play your cards close and focus on doing a good job of telling people what you’ve done, not what you’re going to do. People want to believe in you, and there’s nothing like a track record of delivery to ensure their aspirations are well founded.
You can bank on surprise and delight
Finally, and most importantly, surprise and delight are hugely valuable. At FreshBooks we work hard to execute on extraordinary experiences every day. To be extraordinary you have to exceed expectations, and the best way to do that is to do something your user is not expecting … like releasing a feature they’ve been dying to have but figured you’d never implement.
Use Skydeck with FreshBooks to turn cell phone calls from your clients into billable hours.
Some clients require better customer service than others. That’s why many FreshBooks customers give out their cell phone numbers. Of course, in return for always being on call, you should expect to be compensated. In an ideal world, billing your clients when they call should be easy, and now, it is.
When I heard of Skydeck, a new service that keeps track of your cell phone calls, I knew it was gold. They automatically gather your cell phone records from your cell phone carrier. It didn’t take much to turn that information into money for you.
Now, you can quickly and easily convert cell phone calls into time tracking entries in FreshBooks. Our new Skydeck to FreshBooks importer matches up your clients’ phone numbers in FreshBooks to cell phone calls logged in Skydeck. It’s only a couple clicks to import them into FreshBooks. From there, they are ready to be invoiced to your clients.
Thanks goes out to FreshBooks customers Chris Moyer and Derek Herman who put this app together for us.
Note: Skydeck is only currently available in the United States.
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