New: The People Tab

by Casey McKinnon | May 18/2011 | New Features, people tab, UI, UX

FreshBooks just got simpler. The new People tab allows you to easily manage all the people you collaborate with. This includes your clients, staff and contractors. Now you’ll have less clutter (fewer tabs = good), and all your contacts will be in one place.

FreshBooks People Tab - Client, Staff, Contractors

The tab includes four sub-tabs with all the same functionality that had previously existed in the former Clients and Team tabs:

Clients: Add, edit and see all of your clients. From there, you can create invoices, projects, expenses and account statements for your clients. Not to mention add/edit credit (deposits) and see how long your clients take to pay you.
Staff and Contractors: Add, edit and see all of your staff and contractors, even set their re-billable hourly rates for invoices.
Assign Clients: Assign clients to your staff so they can only track time, assign expenses, and invoice those particular clients.
Sent Emails: View any email you have sent to your “People”. Such as an invoice to a client, an invite to a contractor, or a reminder to your staff to track their time.

If you have any feedback about the update, please let us know below in the comments.

http://smsmarketing.com Jrocks

Hurray for less clutter!
http://chillico.com Scott

This stinks!!!!! I hate the new interface and want the old way back!!! If this is really what we are stuck with I might be leaving. Very confusing and way less organized!
http://www.freshbooks.com/our-team.php#casey Casey McKinnon

@Jrock – thanks!

@Scott – sorry to hear that. Can you give a little more detail about specifically what’s not working for you anymore? What are you finding more confusing, and less organized? If you’d like to talk about it offline, you can send me an email – caseymck@freshbooks.com.
http://uniondesign.ca David Lewis

Cool! Nice to see some iteration on the UX. I really wish Freshbooks would do a total rethink on the time tracking however. Most of the UX is fine but I always find the time tracking area confusing.

One example would be when editing an entry in “monthly” view. You click “edit” for an entry in the table below the calendar and then the editing takes place in form above. That’s a big disconnect. The “Edit entry in form above ^^^” proves that this really isn’t working. Hints like that should not be necessary. Why not make the entry editable inline within the table rows?

There are other issues as well. Overall I find the Time Tracking could use a lot of work.

People thing is a good change. Nice to see. Thanks!
http://www.freshbooks.com/our-team.php#casey Casey McKinnon

@David, thanks for the note. I agree with you on the time-tracking comments, and have captured your comments for future releases we’re working on.
http://www.inthevine.ca inthevine

Thanks for the update! Some apps feel like you’re pushing up hill fighting to get things done. The freshbooks app is feeling like we’re going downhill (in a good way): lighter, easier, more intuitive.
http://uniondesign.ca David Lewis

p.s. The big new CSS3 buttons throughout are a nice touch too!
http://www.thehandsomehandymen.com/ Olly Hill

Great and you seem to have done some magic on the back end things; seem soooo much faster.

Now if you can take care of my tax bill that would be amazing!

Keep up the good work FB!
http://www.freshbooks.com/our-team.php#casey Casey McKinnon

@inthevine – thanks for the support!

@David – the buttons are part of a bigger strategy to refresh the app experience – look for more of these improvements soon!

@Olly – yes, lots of back-end magic happening which is not something we normally advertise. We’ve got a team of people dedicated to making the app speedier and more scalable, and you’re seeing the fruits of their labor. The Dev Blog sometimes talks about these sorts of things, you might want to check it out.
http://www.piematrix.com Paul Dandurand

A new People tab is nice, but I don’t understand why Clients is now under People. That doesn’t make sense. I now have to think to find clients, which will not be intuitive for new users. I also need to click twice to get to my client list. Finally, Clients are business entities, whereas, people are, well people. My vote is to keep them as separate tabs.
http://acmephotography.net AcmePhoto

Speaking of people, I’d love if I could have divisions or departments listed under “company” Or possibly sub-accounts. (Local division, vs division in different city) For example I have a few national clients, and it would be nice to have better tracking w/ out having to create whole new accounts, just to have a different billing address, etc.
http://www.hotpressweb.com Brent Weaver

Is there a plan to publish a roadmap for freshbooks? I have mixed feelings about the design change – I agree with @Paul, I now have two clicks to get to clients, which to me is a downgrade on usability. The new buttons are nice, but they don’t really help my business in anyway.

What would help would be to allow multiple admin level users on an account, cashflow projections, and Paypal Pro merchant support for both one-time payment and recurring invoices.
http://www.hotpressweb.com Brent Weaver

Strike my two clicks – I see it does go straight to clients…however, the rest of my comment remains valid.
http://creation-1.com Justin

Oh You Fancy HUH? Looking good guys. I was just telling my coworker last week how nice it would be to track what you said on the email when you sent an invoice.
http://www.626autosport.com john

Great Job Freshbooks ! The only think I would like to stay with you guys is a lower price. Your prices is way higher than all the competitors out there. When I am subscribing for years, it can add up. Please think about lower your prices or I will have to force to switch over Zoho, Invoicera, BrightPearl….
Allan

Hi All:

Thanks Freshbooks, looks nice. As I read some of the comments here about requests for additional features, this comes to my mind: Freshbooks and most of their “partner apps” are meant for VERY SMALL BUSINESSES and freelancers like me. I do so much appreciate that I don’t have to try to make an app meant for “the big guys” work for me. Those bigger apps are almost always too bloated with “features” and WAY too expensive.
There are companies that cater to those who need more than Freshbooks has, and that’s OK. But there are millions and millions of “little guys” out here who are a company of one, two or three. We like the KISS principle for our apps–AND the interoperability with related apps. (For example–who needs a GANNT chart when the whole company has two people? If your company needs a whole lot more, there’s another app for that!)
Please, FB–don’t add TOO MUCH.
We “little guys” appreciate you!
Thanks!
Allan

OK. That should say “AN email marketing app”…I’m a writer…

But seriously, this IS the last word. When figuring the cost of your apps, remember that with subscriptions, you can usually move “up or down” each month depending on your needs and ALL of the IT, updates and upgrades, and support functions are included in the monthly fee.

When you add up your monthly subscription costs for all of your apps, compare that to paying an IT person or the time and expense to get upgrades and support from the big enterprise applications.

I have found the fees for the apps I use, including Freshbooks, to be cost-effective in comparison.

That’s really all. Time to get to work and to contact my client who “forgot” to pay me…two clicks and he gets a reminder from my Freshbooks app.
http://www.writingitrightforyou.com WritingItRightForYou

One more thing (OK, I’m a writer, so there might be more than “one thing”…)

Please work your FB app for what it is: invoicing and time tracking with a smidgen of project management and accounting.

It is NOT meant to be a CRM or a full-blown project management app or complicated accounting app. The great thing about FB is that for those functionalities, there are other apps out there with those specialities that LINK TO FRESHBOOKS. To me, that is THE AWESOME!

Check out the add-on store. You can have a CRM app, a Project Management app, a email marketing app, and other apps that you need and they all interlink with Freshbooks AND work on all of your mobile devices directly or through other 3rd-party apps.

Try it, you’ll like it. Meanwhile, FB can continue to do what it was meant to do and do it well!

That’s all.
http://www.freshbooks.com/our-team.php#casey Casey McKinnon

@Paul – We’re taking the stance that clients are people too, and we think it makes sense to make it easier to find all of the people you work with in one place. The sub-tab is still called Clients.

@Acme – your point is noted about having more detailed client profiles. I can’t say this is something we’ll be building in the near future, but I’ll hold onto this idea for future discussions internally.

@Brent – you are correct, it is still only one click to get to clients. Multiple admin levels is an interesting idea, and I’d like to hear more about what kinds of permission levels you’re looking for. Email me caseymck@freshbooks.com if you’d like to talk more.

@Justin – thanks for the kind words, I will pass it on to the team.

@John – our prices are likely to stay firm, because we want to maintain our high level of service. We need to stay in business so we can help you stay in business . Lower-priced solutions might have similar functionality, it depends on what you value in a company, and how you value your time.

@WrightingRightForYou – you deserve a blog post of your own for that! . Its a constant struggle we face every day trying to make the product increasingly simpler, while evolving it to help our customers look more professional, get paid faster, and save time. As you’ve said, we can’t be everything to everyone, but we hope more folks like you will continue to be customers for a long time if we manage to keep it simple and helpful.
Dan Poynor

In the forums I’ve never noticed any users complaining about the number of tabs, requesting fewer tabs, or wishing all people could be combined into one area. Searching through forums just now I’m not finding anything to suggest this effort was based on customer feedback. No +1′s found.

When will we get the wider page layouts? 980 pixel width layouts have been a standard since at least 2008. The problem is Projects Names are impossible to read when only a few characters are visible in list view. Adding the full names to the mouse hover text helped, but showing more of the names is list view has been a repeated request from your customers in the forums for years.
http://www.freshbooks.com/our-team.php#casey Casey McKinnon

@Dan – You are correct that no one asked us to consolidate the tabs. There was a lot of redundancy between the two tabs, and the main navigation of the app was cluttered, so we consolidated.

As for wider page layouts, we’re standardizing on a 960 grid, as you can see from this website. We moved the website over first because we had the chance to do it quickly.

We don’t talk publicly about timelines to deliver anything, but keep an eye out for more visual improvements in the future.
http://www.1776discount.com Matt

This UI overhaul was a solid idea. I’m not a big fan of the “apple look-alike” buttons but it does come off rather sharp. I would imagine the site looks even better on mobile devices as well.

• How much longer on the custom domain pointing option to “rebrand” the sub-domain?

Good luck and I wish FreshBooks the best of luck!
CP

Ack… Don’t get me wrong, I love freshbooks and it would actually be hard to imagine running my small business without it. But having said that I’d, too a bit dismayed by the fact that I now need two clicks to get to my client pages. This is pretty much the core of the app and to bury this link while keeping other far less useful links in the top menu seems to be a step backwards in terms of usability.

I’m also not too happy with the many small and frequent chances to the client profile screens. I much liked it better the way it was originally.

In fact over the last few years of seen constant tweaks to the user interface that are either minor improvements or even steps back while seeing nothing of some of the essential changes requested on forums that would really help improve my business and for which I’ve seen many requests from others as well.

Examples

- custom terms for invoices.
- improved late payment notices (or at least more than 3 notices)
- Separate “Repeat” settings for each line item on recurring profiles.
http://www.freshbooks.com/our-team.php#casey Casey McKinnon

@CP – There appears to be some confusion about how many clicks it takes to get to your client list. Its still only one click. Click on “People” and you will see you entire list of clients. This shouldn’t be a step back at all, or any extra work for anyone.
AP

Make the UI wider – I imaging like most people here being stuck at 700 and something pixels wide is crazy when we’re all running at 1920×1080 monitors
http://www.freshbooks.com/our-team.php#casey Casey McKinnon

AP – thank you.
charliemurder

I second that

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