Archive:
September, 2011
Here’s a last minute heads-up that registration for the International Freelancers Day is closing at midnight Eastern Time tonight! This online conference is brought to you by the International Freelancers Academy and is the biggest ever online conference exclusively for solo professionals.
The conference includes 17 educational online sessions. Best of all, the event is completely FREE!
FreshBooks CEO Mike McDerment will be presenting a session titled “How, When and Why to Make Your First Hire” The session starts at 1:00pm Eastern Time. Be sure to tune in!
To learn more about this awesome event, or to register, visit:
www.InternationalFreelancersDay.com
At the Twitter office
“I used to think the worst thing in life was to end up all alone. It’s not. The worst thing in life is ending up with people who make you feel all alone.”
That there my friends is a thought provoking albeit slightly dark quote from the film, World’s Greatest Dad written by observationalist and philosopher, Bobcat Goldthwait. I think about this line a lot and am sharing it here because it applies (kinda) as a tie-in to our #Roadburn2 stop in San Francisco. As with all our customer appreciation trips, we go out of our way to make sure all of our customers are happy but on this leg of the journey it happened in reverse: it was our amazing customers that took care of us and made sure our trip was special and memorable.
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Your FreshBooks account will be unavailable for approximately 15 minutes starting at 9:00am Eastern on Wednesday morning (September 21st, 2011) for a brief maintenance update.
Please ensure you save all work by 8:55am ET! With 15 minutes of downtime, perhaps consider reading this list of ways to spark your creative brain. Alternatively this is also a great time to grab a cup of coffee or tea, meditate, catch up on your blogs/news feed, do a quick 15 minute workout (a combination of burpee, push-ups, sit-ups, and squat jumps), or just sit back, and relax.
You can follow our Twitter feed or status.freshbooks.com for updates throughout the downtime. We apologize if this causes you any inconvenience but we promise it’s to make FreshBooks even better.
Kristel Yoneda grew up in Hawaii, went to college in Washington DC, and now lives in Los Angeles where she works as a Promotions Manager by day and a writer…later in the day. We sat down with her to learn how she pursues her passion:
1. What helped you realize that writing was your thing?
I’ve always loved writing. I’m sure my math teachers disliked me because I never paid attention in class. I would scribble poetry and song lyrics in the margins of my homework instead.
It’s crazy how words can convey an emotion or memory so sharply that it knocks the wind out of you. I love that feeling when you read something and you could have sworn it happened to you, word for word. In high school I loved creative writing, but I never thought it was a profession I could actually have. Then during my senior year, my English teacher and I were having a discussion one afternoon about a short story I wrote for his class. He paused, then looked right at me, and said I was a writer. It was the best compliment I’ve ever received and it was the first time I believed it might be true.
2. What projects are you working on/most excited about right now?
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Not our actual ride but a cycle with a sidecar captures the true roadburn spirit.
Before we left on this little tour, Saul told us that “the reason everyone in LA hugs you isn’t because they like you but rather they are feeling how tender your meat is before they eat you alive.” He loves to say things like this and doesn’t realize we know they are just lines from movies.
In fact, we did get a lot of hugs from lots of amazing customers and friends during our stay in Los Angeles but unlike the movie quote, no one tried to eat us.
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Great news for FreshBooks customers in Australia! You asked for it, and now FreshBooks lets you collect online payments using eWAY, the leading Australian payment gateway provider. For the first time, Australian users can take full advantage of online payments in FreshBooks. With eWAY, your invoices can be paid instantly by credit card and automatically with recurring invoices.
Australia, get paid faster by signing up for an eWAY account.
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I was at a conference a few weeks back and a man came up to me unsolicited and told me what in his opinion The FreshBooks magic is. He said it is not only that we spend a lot of time in the real world with our customers, but that we seem to really enjoy the time we spend with them.
I’m here to say he was almost 100% correct.
Yes we love our customers and do enjoy spending time with them. So much so that we are leaving for a 10 day road trip with the sole purpose to meet, feed and thank as many customers in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Portland as we can.
Along the way we’ll be sharing some customer stories, things we learned and even some pretty pictures. We invite you to follow along with our adventure through the FreshBooks Twitter Account, this blog as well as the personal twitter (opinions are their own so please don’t judge) accounts of John, Amanda, Sarah, Stu and some guy named Saul. We will also be tagging everything with the hashtag #roadburn2 (because it sounds like a Bruce Willis Movie) so you can easily follow everything and we hope you all will participate in whatever we have going on.
Oh and when I said above that the guy was almost 100% correct it is because the real secret to our magic is [REDACTED]
It feels to good to finally share that!
You know that great feeling when you generate an invoice from a project and you see what you’re about to get paid? Now you can know exactly that for all projects everyday with the Estimated Billing report.
The Estimated Billing report gives you all the details of your billing and non-billable hours with the added bonus column of Estimated Billing. The column calculates how much all of your billable hours are worth based on the billing method you have set (task rate, project rate, contractor re-bill rate, etc.). You can also hover over the Estimated Billing amount to see how that amount was calculated for each row. Non-billable hours will show up as N/A.
The report is located in your “Reports” tab under Timesheet reports. Just click on “Estimated Billing.”
You can also group the report by either by Team, Project, Task or Week to get a quick total of your billing by any of these groupings. It is an option at the top of the report.
Please let us know your feedback in the comments below.
Going back to school is exciting but also scary for some. Scary because of school yard bullies, yucky boys (or girls) and just plain fear of being asked a question in class. Not everyone is afraid of being asked questions though.
I am sure we all remember that bearded kid who was freakishly tall with all the answers.
I hated that kid. Funny thing is, I remember him clear as day but can’t recall any of the answers he shared. Help me out, leave a comment or tweet us @freshbooks with what our friend below may be saying by 6PM EST Friday, Sept 9, 2011 and earn your chance to win a shiny $50 iTunes Gift Card!
Congratulations to Homestars.com, a FreshBooks customer, who recently crossed over 10,000 invoices in their FreshBooks account! We sat down with Brian Sharwood, president of Homestars.com, to find out how they got their start and how hiring the right people for their team has been key to their success.
Tell us a little bit about how Homestars got started?
HomeStars was started when founder, Nancy Peterson, was in the middle of a challenging renovation and realized there must be a better way of finding great contractors. Inspired by TripAdvisor, she set out to create a site where homeowners could share their experiences on home improvement so others could find the best contractors and avoid the nightmare of a home project gone wrong.
Why did you join the business? Or how did it come about?
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users collect enough money to buy all 
