In the first post in this series, we covered some of the costs and benefits of online payment gateways. Now it’s time to dig deeper into how these things work. This post is a little longer than the first, but trust me: it’s worth it if you’re looking to learn.
How do payment gateways work?
You know those machines where you swipe your credit card in restaurants and retail stores? A payment gateway is kind of like one of those, just without the need for a card to be present to be charged. It is literally a gateway between you, your client, your client’s credit card provider and your bank.
The main job of the gateway is to validate your client’s credit card securely, make sure the funds are available, and get you paid.
Some gateways also require what’s called a merchant account. A merchant account is essentially just a special kind of bank account that handles your funds received via credit cards. If you have a storefront or a retail business, and are swiping people’s cards, then you already have a merchant account.
With this morning’s release of FreshBooks, we’ve added a second round of international language options. You will now be able to send your clients invoices and estimates in German and Dutch (in addition to our already-awesome English, French, and Spanish)!
We’ve had a ton of translations provided for us, including one in pig-latin (I can’t promise when this one will make its way into the application). We are still looking for more translations! If FreshBooks is still lacking a translation you are looking for, you can help by providing your own translations here. Thank you to all those who have provided translations so far.
Create Clients Inline
One UI change that we’re very happy about with this release is the ability to create new clients inline. When you select ‘New Client’ from the pull-down menu on an invoice, you will no-longer be redirected off the page. Instead, you will get a slick inline form which allows you to quickly add new clients to your account on the fly.
Per-Project Task Rates
On a project, if you set the billing method as ‘Hourly Task Rate’, you will now have the option to set project specific rates.
By default, the current rate set on a task will be used. When billing, however, whatever rate was set at the time of the project’s creation (or when it was last updated), that’s what will be used on the invoice generated.
Referring FreshBooks is now easier than ever
We’ve improved the usability of our Referrals page to make it easier for you to tell your friends about FreshBooks, and to make more money through referrals. Now you can see which referrals you’ve sent right on the referrals page, and we’ve made it clearer how to send an invitation to use FreshBooks.
To see this new page and functionality, mosey on over to the “Refer FreshBooks” tab beneath the “Home” tab.
Have you ever run out of cash waiting for a client check? Did your business grind to a halt because of a missed payment? Then online payments might be for you.
I’ve learned a lot of hard-won lessons building FreshBooks. Most of the things I’ve had to learn are around design, development and how to get new customers. These are the things you need to know if you are going to build a successful web app business, and it just so happens I have a hand in running a conference called Mesh University that’s all about those things.
MeshU is being held in Toronto, Canada this May 17th, and the line up is outstanding. Here’s a taste:
For Developers
Want to learn about scaling your dev team? Come listen to Joe Stump – Digg’s former chief architect.
Building a product from scratch and wondering how to do it? You’ll want to know all about how to be a lean startup, and Dan Martell – a valley-based, East Coast Canadian and serial entrepreneur – will show you how.
meshU has been around for 4 years, and this is the first one where someone from FreshBooks will be speaking. Our very own Diana Clarke will walk you through a massive project that she’s leading for us – porting FreshBooks from PHP to Python. Diana is a champion, and anyone who has built a technical platform that’s been around for any length of time will appreciate the lessons she has to share.
Chris Thorpe is CTO of The Guardian… I’m not entirely certain what Chris will be talking about to be honest, but I can tell you The Guardian is probably the most technically innovative media company out there, and Chris is a great presenter.
Sales and Marketing
Everyone likes free marketing, right? Sean Ellis has helped runaway successes like Dropbox, Xobni, and LogMeIn do just that, and he’s coming to Toronto to give you a guiding hand with your web apps.
Web businesses often struggle building their sales team. How do you do it? Do you need one? What should the team look like? The right answer to these questions can make all the difference between slow growth and rapid multi-million dollar, market-leading growth. Trouble is, there’s nowhere to turn to learn how to do it right. So you better come to meshU and meet Isaac Garcia. He’s the co-founder of Central Desktop and take it from me: you have no idea how successful this company is. Isaac’s personally one of my favourite entrepreneurs.
Data…data, data, data. Let’s face it: web apps are made of data, and chances are you don’t know the best ways to organize that data and draw value from it. Come get an introduction to data warehousing and the value it can bring to your business with the help of Anthony Upward.
Design
In the interests of wrapping up this post, I’m just going to tell you that Aza Raskin of Mozilla is a killer presenter, and is likely to tell you about the future of the user experience online. Do you know how the web will feel in ten years? Aza does. You’ll want to have awesome usability if you want to design great user experiences, and Meredith Noble is going to make usability easy. And finally, speaking of user experience, when I’m looking for product inspiration there’s a book I frequently turn to – it’s called Sketching User Experiences. Bill Buxton (the author and a certifiable design master) will be keynoting meshU.
*Sniff Sniff* do you smell that? That’s the scent of delicious, mouth-watering food being made in the kitchen.
Today is FreshBooks’ 4th FIPPLE (FreshBooks International Potluck Party Lunch Event). FIPPLE is an event taken very seriously by all FreshBookers: there are prizes to be won, egos to be buffed (or bruised) and, most importantly, delicious food to be devoured by all.
Who will prevail? Who will become the Master of FIPPLE (MFIPPLE)? Who will suffer from the worst case of food-coma / the itis? (Not to be confused with the actual medical suffix -itis, which means inflammation… ouch. Although a certain swelling around the tummy is an expected and natural FIPPLE side-effect).
As it’s Earth Day, I’m hoping there’ll be a lot of organic, sustainably-farmed food choices, sourced from local suppliers. Also hoping no one gets too literal and serves up a plate of earth.
While the entire FreshBooks crew is getting its FIPPLE on, we’re afraid there will be no phone support from 12:30pm – 1:30pm Eastern Time. But we’ll be back at our desks, supercharged from our epic nomming at 1:30 sharp — so please feel free to leave us a voicemail message or email us, and we’ll get right back to you!
For scenes from our 3rd FIPPLE, check out these taste-tastic videos:
If you’re a hardcore software developer, kicking ass in your current gig but wondering just how far you could go, how do you pick your next gig?
For the past ten years, one of the most quoted and referenced sources on this question has been a post by Joel Spolsky of “Joel on Software” fame - The Joel Test: 12 Steps to Better Code.
When he first posted the test, Joel called it a “highly irresponsible, sloppy test to rate the quality of a software team,” and yet it’s been cited as gospel by programmers, investors and reporters – it’s even earned its own Wikipedia entry, acknowledging its usefulness as a due diligence tool
If you’re shopping for a new job, the Joel Test won’t tell you everything about the dev team you’re looking to work with, but it’s still a good, quick way to gauge some essentials.
As we’re on a major hiring push right now (and, note: we are always hiring great developers even when we’re not on a push), we figured it was high time we took the Joel Test ourselves – so you know what to expect if you want to work here. In typical Freshbooks style, we figured the test needed some freshening up – it is ten years old, after all.
So – here’s our updated version of the Joel Test. Twelve original questions, with FreshBooks answers, plus a few key questions you should ask before you join a dev team in 2010.
1. Do you use source control?
You’re kidding, right? Is anyone still building code without source control? We use reliable old SVN for most of our products, with a few things stored in Git just to keep things interesting.
2. Can you make a build in one step?
Damn skippy. You have to be able to do this if you’re going to handle question three the way we do.
Rolling frequent code updates and hotfixes for a web app makes it even more critical that this is a simple, seamless process. Check!
3. Do you make daily builds?
Daily? How very Twentieth Century. Build and run unit tests on every commit. Build early, build often.
4. Do you have a bug database?
Of course. See Q1. We’ve just switched from Trac to Redmine, since we wanted to be able to track multiple projects, but still aggregate issues for releases. Redmine’s sub-projects features let us do that.
5. Do you fix bugs before writing new code?
Mostly, but it depends on all kinds of things. This answer can’t be binary. What you’re really looking for here is reassurance that there’s pressure to fix bugs. But a large-scale application is just going to find itself with bugs that literally aren’t worth fixing. So a better question here is: “Is there a credible champion for fixing bugs?” And at FreshBooks, the answer is: “Yes!”
6. Do you have an up-to-date schedule?
Mostly, Keeping a schedule up-to-date given the pace of change we maintain is a challenge. We manage two. There’s a high-level “roadmap” that outlines our top business priorities and in what order we mean to tackle them, and then we break down work into two-week chunks and plough through it, updating everyone’s expectations as we go.
7. Do you have a spec?
”Yes, but…” A spec doesn’t have to be a document. But there has to be a shared understanding of what’s to be built. At FreshBooks this is more likely to happen via conversation, prototyping and testing than by pain-staking maintenance of a rapidly-changing document.
8. Do programmers have quiet working conditions?
Not so much. FreshBooks thrives on collaboration and spontaneous contributions. This works well for some, not for others – so we’re figuring out some new options for the team members who work best in quiet solitude. In fact, we’ve just rented a chunk of new space that will be connected to the existing office. It’s large enough for the whole team and will be separated by glass from the current space. People will be able to choose between zen-like calm and frenzied activity.
9. Do you use the best tools money can buy?
Without question. We make monthly Amazon purchases to keep our bookshelves well-stocked with the latest thinking, and developers are welcome to select any sort of machine they want for their work. We even use the best tools money can’t buy – there are a ton of incredible free resources out there too.
10. Do you have testers?
Check. And they’re awesome. Doesn’t matter how hard core you are or how beautiful your code is, everyone misses stuff. Everyone. If your core dev team are testing their own code, they’re going to churn out crappy code. They’re “too close to the coalface” to see the problems. The FreshBooks dev team naturally take pride in sending really tight, solid code to QA. But it’s also key that they also have a killer QA team to trap stuff they might have missed.
11. Do new candidates write code during their interview?
We’d rather assess your natural talent than your knowledge of a specific language. A red hot coder can usually learn a new language pretty fast, so because we aren’t so picky about particular technologies, we don’t always get into code writing in interviews. Instead, we get developers to design systems for us, so we can appreciate both their technical design chops and how they go about framing and sharing their thoughts.
12. Do you do hallway usability testing?
Um… we don’t really have any hallways, but we do kitchen and foosball-table usability testing. And in meeting rooms. And at people’s desk sides.
OK, so that’s the original Joel Test. But if you’re hunting for a new code shop gig these days, what else should you ask?
Here are some more thoughts:
13. How much of your code is covered by unit tests? How do you measure that?
If you’re thinking of joining a shop that doesn’t take unit testing and code coverage seriously, prepare for a world of pain. Nothing makes it easier to change and refactor code than serious unit testing. But unit testing without formal code coverage inspection is only half the battle — you need to know, without guessing, how much of your code is covered, and whether or not that coverage is increasing over time.
14. Do developers TALK to users on a regular basis?
Why would you even want to build software if you never get to talk to the people who use it every day? A company that hides its developers and builds a wall between them and users is no place to feel good about the work you do.
15. Are developers able to contribute to open source projects?
Pretty much every company these days benefits from open source technology, one way or another. If you’re getting; you gotta be giving. Make sure prospective employers are serious about their relationship with open source — it’ll tell you a great deal about how they view their relationships in general. If their approach is just to take without giving back to the open source world, what does that tell you about their mindset and culture?
FreshBooks is very pleased to be supporting the upcoming HackTO event here in Toronto on May 15th.
At HackTO, developers are gathering to share ideas, inspiration and hard work to create new applications — in a single day — based off the public APIs of some of Toronto’s hottest technology companies. The sponsor companies (including FreshBooks, Idée, and PostRank) will have technical experts on hand to help folks understand their APIs and work effectively as they hack away on their one-day dreams.
Open, flexible APIs are a critical part of the software ecosystem these days. For us, an open API is a really important part of the FreshBooks equation. This is why we’ve integrated with OAuth, and provided a rich event-driven interface via Webhooks. We’re not the biggest company in the world (yet!), so we can’t always find the time to build out the useful things our customers are asking for, however. We’re also not daft enough to think we’re the only source of ideas about what people might need.
That’s what makes an API such a rich source of goodness: external developers can dive in and create new applications that either solve specific needs or add creative value in ways the original developer might never have imagined. We’ve seen third-party developers hooking all kinds of great add-ons into our leading billing, bookkeeping and time-tracking functions. Great stuff we might never have done ourselves, for all kinds of reasons.
HackTO is bound to be a blast, and we look forward to the fantastic creations that appear on this day of mad coding, pizza*, and collaboration!
At the time the Google Apps Marketplace was first launched, we were being deliberately cautious by not supporting our existing customers’ accounts. We wanted to see how the Marketplace integration worked in live situations first. Now we know that everything’s looking solid, we’ve rolled out an update to address the biggest thing people asked for – connecting existing FreshBooks accounts to a Google Apps domain.
If you’re already a Google Apps user, this should make your work day even more seamless. From the point you sign on in the morning, you’ll be able to hop back and forth from managing your email, to working with documents, sharing files with clients, and now managing your billing and bookkeeping all through the universal navigation bar in Google Apps. Nice!
How does it work?
You can now add FreshBooks to your Google Apps navigation bar.
First, you need to already have a Google Apps account, and you need to know the login details for both your Google Apps and FreshBooks accounts.
Visit the Google Apps Marketplace and look for the FreshBooks listing under the “Accounting & Finance” category (hint: we’re here);
From the listing page, click on the big blue “Add it Now” button at the top right and enter the name of your Google Apps hosted domain;
If you’re not already logged in to your Google Apps account, you’ll be prompted for your username and password;
From there, you’ll be taken to the FreshBooks on Google Apps signup page, click on “Already have a FreshBooks account? Click here to connect it to Google Apps.“
Enter the URL of your usual FreshBooks login page, plus the account administrator username / password and click Connect;
Go back to your Google Apps Dashboard and next to FreshBooks click on Enable Service. Then click on Enable FreshBooks.
Done! You can now log in to FreshBooks from your Google Apps account.
Teaspiller connects you with certified tax experts.
The April 15th deadline to get your taxes filed in the US is quickly approaching. For any FreshBooks customers in the US still scrambling to find the time to do your taxes, relax! We’ve got you covered.
Teaspiller is an online service that helps connect you with certified tax experts from across the country. Browse profiles to find the right match for you, send in your tax-related questions, and have your taxes filed by experts.
With the Teaspiller integration, managing your books in FreshBooks and now getting your taxes done too has never been easier. Teaspiller can import your FreshBooks invoices, payments and expenses; giving your tax expert instant access to the data required for your filing.
This might just be the quickest and easiest way to get your taxes filed by an expert. Sign-up for a Teaspiller account today, and get those taxes in before it’s too late!
If you enjoyed this post, you might also want to check out our add-ons page to discover all kinds of other ways you can get more out of FreshBooks.
Hey everybody, just a reminder that the FreshBooks Headquarters will be closed Friday April 2nd, 2010 as it is a nationwide statutory holiday in Canada (Good Friday).
Don’t worry though, we’ll be back fully refreshed from the long weekend on Monday morning. As always, you can still leave us a message on our toll free line 1-866-303-6061 or send us an email support[at]freshbooks.com.
FreshBooks is an online invoicing, time tracking and expense management service that helps people save time, get paid faster, look professional and focus on what they love to do - their work.
I’ve learned a lot of hard-won lessons building FreshBooks. Most of the things I’ve had to learn are around design, development and how to get new customers. These are the things you need to know if you are going to build a successful web app business, and it just so happens I have a hand in running a conference called 
Teaspiller connects you with certified tax experts.
users collect enough money to buy all 
