Archive:
July, 2010
Have you met Leafy? He’s usually found doing the grunt work on the FreshBooks blog for scheduled maintenance. However, Leafy is a little tired of charming you only from the blog – he wants to meet you and see the world! So we’re sending Leafy on a world tour to visit with customers, get cultured, and take in the sights.
Stop number one? Beautiful (and romantic!) Niagara Falls, Ontario! In fact…he’s already been there!
The big question is, “where should Leafy go next?!” We’d like to put him up with you, a wonderful FreshBooks customer who is willing to show him a good time and take some photos to send back to the FreshBooks team. You’re also responsible for sending him on his next trip, which we’ll e-mail you the details for (and cover the travel/shipping costs) once you send back the photos of his stay with you.
If you’re a FreshBooks customer willing to help show Leafy the world, send him an email (leafy[at]freshbooks[dot]com), and he’ll hop on the first flight to your door! You can also keep up to date with his travels on Twitter.
We miss you already Leafy – don’t stay away too long!
At FreshBooks, our development team is given one day a month to Hack Off any part of the application they feel inspired to improve (sometimes focused on a specific program). The changes range from added features, back-end code cleanup to some things that are just zany and fun. It’s pretty much a win all around.
Recently, the FreshBooks design team decided to run a hack off for themselves to kick off a new program. There was a lot of success (with some changes you’ll see soon). Since it was first FreshBooks design team hack off ever, there was of course some learning. Especially around team dynamics.
1. Setting the stage
- Focusing your hack off on a specific area can really kick-start a new development program. It also makes it easy for a team member to carry forward in the future.
- If your hack off is focused around a specific program, make sure the whole team has a shared understanding of what the current situation is and allow everyone to share views.
2. A few rules go a long way
- Come up with some basic ground rules at the beginning of the hack off that will help focus your team. By having guidelines for work that is produced, it can really help people focus on concepts and content rather than form. In our case, we agreed on the art direction so the design team didn’t have to waste time thinking about it.
3. Collaborate or be competitive?
- Figure out ahead of time if the hack off is going to be competitive or collaborative in nature (both can be good). We found our team didn’t really do well as competing forces and the collaborate pieces were the shining stars of the day.
- Brainstorm ideas as a team: what’s working, what isn’t working, or where the real pain is. Having tons of great ideas at the outset makes it much easier to get things accomplished during the hack off.
- Ask the team to give their insight during the hack off. It inspires others and can create more ideas in the end. You can also get valuable constructive criticism that will make your work even better.
- If you have great development, support and marketing resources at your fingertips, use them! They will likely provide some great insights.
- Have people join your table/pod/office so they feel more involved and can contribute more directly.
4. Maximize and organize the day
- Don’t do a half-day hack off as it’s not enough time. Minimum should be 1 full day.
- Don’t wait until 5pm on a Friday to try to show your results. People are busy and trying to leave for the weekend.
- Co-ordinate the reveal at the outset with your leadership team so they can attend the final presentation with full attention.
- Bring in lunch so you don’t waste time leaving the office for food.
- Keep the time as uninterrupted as possible so people can focus on the hack off.
Bonus tip: Follow-up process for implementation of hack off concepts
- Develop a concrete process for getting hack off ideas into the real world. You can spend so much time working on this stuff, but the ideas might lose steam after the hack off is over and will never get implemented.
- Showing off your stuff at the end of the hack off is really fun… but the audience is on your side. There’s no time for people who were not participating in the hack off to give feedback that may improve your work. Allow some future time for critical feedback.
If you’re looking for the great way to improve your product, a hack off is always a solid idea. Just remember to set the stage, collaborate, gather feedback and maximize the time so you can get the most out of it. And make sure you have clear plan for moving forward the changes.
Special thanks to a great guest poster, Jason Blumer, for this post! Jason is a CPA, Partner, and Head Creative Dude at Blumer & Associates, CPAs, PC. Jason’s an innovative, smart thinker who knows his stuff. Thanks Jason!
You can also check out Do I Really Need an Accounting Package (Part 1) to read more!
As the Head Creative Dude of a CPA firm working online with businesses around the country, I thought I would chime in on using an accounting package with FreshBooks. Thanks FreshBooks for letting me give your readers my 2 cents!
The use of the right accounting package depends on whether you are a sole proprietor or whether you are a corporation. For the most part, a sole proprietor only needs single-entry bookkeeping (which tracks Profit and Loss), and a corporation requires double-entry bookkeeping (which tracks Assets, Liabilities and Equity in addition to Profit and Loss).
Among other things, the type of bookkeeping you need (single vs. double) determines what type of accounting package you need (are we having fun yet? 
).
So it goes like this:
- First, know which type of tax entity you should be (sole proprietor vs. corporation)
- Second, determine the accounting package you need
A couple of points about the first step above, determining which tax entity you should be:
- Start your business as a sole proprietor. It’s the easiest form of tax entity to manage, and the cheapest to start (in the US). But if you start making a lot of profit, then it is a stinky tax trap.
- Become a corporation only if you have significant profit (maybe around $70,000 USD or so per year). Corporations are a lot more complicated to manage but they offer a lot more avenues to save on taxes.
Truly, you don’t really need to know all this stuff about single and double entry bookkeeping because smart web apps like FreshBooks do the behind the scenes stuff without you even knowing it. To build a smart web app like this is actually pretty tricky because you have to build it to look pretty, while disguising the fact that it is doing some accounting on the back end. It’s hard to make bookkeeping sexy, but FreshBooks has done a great job!
All you need to do is:
- Use the system consistently,
- Develop some basic processes within your company that help you manage your work and clients,
- Watch your cash, and
- Be bold enough charge what you are worth.
Systems like FreshBooks help do all of this for you, it’s the humans in the businesses that get lazy and foolish about their business. I don’t want you to become an accountant, but I do want you to be a smart business owner. And being a smart business owner means you have to do more than just perform your trade – you have to manage your time and other people, collect money from clients and negotiate contracts.
Why should you know all of this? Because your business is your life blood. Your business pays for your groceries and your car insurance. You may be a great plumber or a one-of-a-kind illustrator, but if you don’t know who owes you money or what your year-to-date profit is then you are operating in the blind. And that is just foolish.
A few points of summary,
- Don’t do your accounting (whether single or double entry) in Excel (or Numbers),
- Don’t produce your invoices in Word (or Pages),
- Consider your online accounting system your roadmap to your future (with a great trail of paid invoices in the past),
- Don’t become a corporation unless you have to,
- But become a corporation when you have to,
- Find and USE a smart web app like FreshBooks to manage your sole proprietorship or corporation,
- Go find an astute web-savvy CPA to give you counsel and help you make more money
Get in touch!
Jason M. Blumer, CPA, CFE
Website: www.blumercpas.com
Blog: thriveal.com
Email: jason@blumercpas.com
Skype: jason.m.blumer
Twitter: @jasonmblumer
Update: This maintenance was completed at 12:24 AM EDT, Monday, July 26 2010.
On Sunday, July 25 2010, at 11:59 PM EDT (3:59 AM Monday morning, UTC), FreshBooks will be temporarily unavailable while we switch back to our primary data centre in Dallas. (This is the same work as was attempted last weekend; we’ve added a bunch of extra verification steps and pause points in the process, though, to account for what we encountered last time we tried.)
To err on the side of caution, we expect this maintenance to take about 30 minutes during which your FreshBooks account will be inaccessible.
We will post updates to our Twitter account, which you can also see at status.freshbooks.com. We appreciate your patience during this window, and we expect this will be the last maintenance window for a while!
When the cornerstone of your company is rockstar customer support, there are always a few companies that you look to as an example for providing extraordinary experiences everyday, and Zappos is high on the list. So the FreshBooks support team took a field trip down to Las Vegas and experience first hand, how the Zappos team do what they do.
Our day started when Julie picked us up in the Zappos bus:
After a short drive down the highway, we arrived at the Zappos office and posed for a picture:
Note the common denominator in both pics: hotness.
After pictures and a lot high fives from the Zappos team, we started our tour and one-on-ones with their Training and Customer Advocacy teams. We could write an entire series of blog posts on everything we learned (not to mention a ton of fan fiction), but here are our summarized take aways:
- Zappos puts a huge focus on employee goals. Their Goals Coach, Augusta, is focused on helping their staff achieve both professional and personal goals, and they have awards and milestones for employees who reach them. It’s not full on counseling, but it’s more than a pat on the back – it’s genuine give-a-damn about employee success on and off the job. And it’s flat-out extraordinary.
- Culture and history are extremely important. Before the tour started, there’s a full history lesson from Mig Pascual on how Zappos was founded, and how the core values were developed. The 10 core values of Zappos are written on every staff member’s name tag, and while not everyone knows them all off by heart, everyone can name at least 7.
- Training is an established process with clear milestones. Next on the tour was meeting Roger from the training team and he showed us the ropes. Training at Zappos is a lot like a university degree – there are required courses, electives, classrooms, and if you fail a test (and there ARE tests) you have to repeat the course. Fail too many times and you’re in trouble. Training is all focused around the core values, so if someone is not ‘getting’ things then it’s a good indicator they may not be a great fit.
- Employees’ well being is a huge focus. During the tour from Marie and Mig, you see A LOT of the Zappos office and one thing is clear: from the goal counselling, to nap rooms, subsidized cafeterias and incredible medical benefits, Zappos takes care of its employees. We’ve even decided to implement a few ideas ourselves. The nap room and free ice cream are pretty high on our list.
- Every team is a cohesive unit. When the tour entered the HR department, they played “Eye of the Tiger” and shook Shake-Weights at us. The executive area is called “Monkey Row” and has a jungle motif. Each team feels like a family and it looks like they have a great time.
All in all Zappos was an amazing experience on two fronts. On the one hand, we learned that a lot of the support stuff we’re already doing, like having no limit for call times and encouraging our staff to go above and beyond to solve customer problems, is exactly what we should be doing. That’s a nice feeling.
On the other hand, there are definitely some new strategies we’re looking at trying out, and we got some great insight on how to scale our company culture as we grow. Zappos and FreshBooks both started as a few people in a small office, and it’s good to know that as we grow we can take our culture and experiences with us.
FreshBooks wants you to steal our software. We are selling $120 worth of new FreshBooks accounts for only $55 on AppSumo for the next two weeks.
Not enough of a steal? We’re going in with our partners. You’ll get:
- 6 months of service from social CRM BatchBook ($90)
- 6 months of email marketing service MailChimp ($140)
- Survey and form tool Formstack ($84)
- 100 MOO mini business cards with free shipping. ($25.49)
- And a $120 coupon for FreshBooks, worth 6 months of our Solo plan
That’s $459 worth of small business software and services for $55, which is a price so low you should be ashamed of yourself for buying it.
Why are we doing this crazy thing? 50% of every sale goes to the National Wildlife Federation’s Gulf Oil Spill Restoration Fund.
We can’t go down to the Gulf of Mexico to help, but we can donate our software for this time critical cause. Can we raise $10,000? $20,000? $50,000? Maybe, but we’ll need your help!
Buy a small business dream pack yourself. When else will you get such a sweet chance to help your business and the world at the same time?
And please tell your friends. It would be criminal not to share a deal so good and a cause so noble with your friends. Tweet it! Put it on Facebook!
As we said, the time to act is now! This deal is only good until August 2 because the Gulf needs help right now.
Already have a FreshBooks account but want to help out? Donate directly to the NWF.
View invoice details in Salesforce
When it comes to your business, nothing is more important than taking care of your clients. Using a CRM tool like Salesforce helps you stay organized, and keep your clients happy. But what do you do once the sale is closed? Somewhere along the way, you’re going to need to get paid for whatever products or services you provide, and that’s where FreshBooks comes into the picture.
Connect your CRM and billing system together
Through the magic of the FreshBooks API, great services like Salesforce are able to connect directly to FreshBooks to make things faster, and easier for your business. The DataSynch for Salesforce and FreshBooks helps connect your CRM and Billing systems.
Create invoices automatically
After closing a deal, your sales agents will mark opportunities as ‘closed-won’ in Salesforce. Running the DataSynch will take care of the rest, automatically creating an invoice in FreshBooks which is ready to be sent out.
Create Freshbooks invoices through the DataSynch
Stay updated after the sale
The synch keeps you updated on what’s going on by providing details on the status of invoices within Salesforce. Get a glimpse of your clients invoicing history while on a call, or check to see which invoices are awaiting payment and require a follow-up, without leaving Salesforce.
From a trusted developer of Salesforce solutions
The DataSynch is from Pervasive Software, a publicly listed company and expert in Salesforce solutions. It’s available now in The AppExchange.
If you liked this post, check out our add-ons page, and learn how you can get more out of FreshBooks!
This post outlines two systems issues we encountered last night.
Introduction
At 12:01 AM EDT this morning we performed scheduled maintenance. The work involved returning to our primary data centre, after having switched to our secondary data centre earlier in the month. We did the work on time, but it did not go well. There were complications and we elected to retreat to our secondary data centre.
Problem #1
Retreating to our secondary data centre was the right decision, but there was a cost: any data entered over that one hour and forty five minute period not available in your account now.
Technically the data is not lost, but we can’t automatically restore it either. Our recommendation is to re-enter the data if you can. If you need help recollecting what the data is, you can call us and we can assist you on a case by case basis.
We are contacting everyone who logged in over this time to let them know what happened. Fortunately, this period (Sunday at 12 AM EDT- 2 AM EDT) is the about lowest period of system usage and that is why we chose to do this work then. But clearly, we failed on many levels while attempting to move back to our primary data centre.
We are incredibly sorry for this. If you were affected, please get in touch with us and we will do our best to make it up to you. If you do not receive an email, and you were not working last night from 12:01 AM EDT- 3 AM EDT, you and your account will not have been impacted by Problem #1.
Problem #2
Before we retreated to our secondary data centre in Virginia, we had managed to bring up our primary data centre in Dallas. When we retreated, some systems continued to run and replicate (this is a good thing) in Dallas. One of these systems was a cron that manages our recurring billing process. So at 5 AM EDT this morning, we discovered that for some FreshBooks accounts (see below), we ran recurring billing twice meaning a handful of our customers charged their customers twice, which was entirely our fault. Here are the specifics on the duplicate transactions:
73 FreshBooks accounts
214 transactions
$14,940 charged
On behalf of our customers, we are in the process of voiding all duplicate transactions. We have already been in touch with the payment gateways responsible for running these transactions, so by the end of today, our customers and their customers’ credit cards should not be impacted. That said, issues and customer confusion throughout today is a very real possibility and we are very sorry to have created it.
There is some good news in all this. The good news is, the number of accounts impacted was relatively low. There are two reasons why the number of accounts was low: first, not all the many people charge cards on the 19th of the month. Far more do on the 15th and the 1st and doing the maintenance on the 19th was intentional.
Second, we have re-architected our recurring billing process in recent months, but we have been gradually rolling it out to ensure we do not create errors – obviously this is critical and complicated system that is sensitive to errors. Ironically, our new system is more intelligent than the one that has worked dutifully for the last 7 years and it does not permit repeat transactions. So, if everyone were running on the new architecture, this would not have been an issue at all.
Where to from here
You will receive an email restating this information if you were affected. That said, our mission is to help you get paid painlessly, so you can focus on what you love to do. Losing work you may have done during this period does not help you focus, or get paid painlessly. It is likely to drain love out of the work you do, and certainly your enjoyment of using FreshBooks.
We are gravely sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused and welcome the opportunity to make it up to you. Please contact us if we can provide any further assistance.
Earlier tonight we performed scheduled maintenance on FreshBooks, during which we moved from our secondary datacentre in Virginia back to our primary datacentre in Dallas. This followed an emergency switch to Virginia earlier this month when our Dallas database servers encountered problems with their storage hardware.
Unfortunately, the move back to Dallas tonight was unsuccessful, and we’ve had to switch back to Virginia and restore our databases to the last snapshot prior to tonight’s maintenance. As a result, any changes made in FreshBooks between 12:10 AM Eastern time (4:10 AM UTC) and 2:00 AM Eastern (6:00 AM UTC) have been lost, and you will need to re-enter that data.
We’re aghast that this situation has occurred and that the affected time period is as long as it is, and will be making changes to our processes immediately to prevent the problems that led to tonight’s failed cutover. If you are affected by this situation and need assistance in re-entering your changes, please don’t hesitate to give us a call.
This Sunday, July 18 2010, at 11:59 PM EDT (3:59 AM Monday morning, UTC), FreshBooks will be temporarily unavailable while we switch back to our primary data centre in Dallas. (We’ve been running out of our standby data centre in Virginia since an incident last week.)
We expect the maintenance to take about 10 minutes, during which your FreshBooks account will be inaccessible.
We will post updates to our Twitter account, which you can also see at status.freshbooks.com. We apologize for the inconvenience.
will send an invoice and a dolphin will swim the length of a 
