Archive:
October, 2011
Update: Beatriz has won our 2011 Costume Contest for her amazing Carmen Sandiego disguise! Another congratulations to the winning customer Tara Harte who won our random draw! Thanks to everyone for sending in their votes.
It’s that time of the year again where the staff at FreshBooks go all out and create some ghoulish delight with our trick or treat worthy costumes. As usual, we ask our awesome blog readers and customers (Hey, that’s you!) to help us decide which costume will rule supreme. So come and check out our colourful cast of characters, and vote for your favourite by commenting below.
If you prefer to tweet away, you can also vote via Twitter! Just hashtag your vote with #FBHalloween and the winner will be announced Tuesday afternoon!
Bonus! All the folks who leave a comment or tweet in their favorite photo vote will automatically be entered in a contest to win a $50 iTunes giftcard! Happy Halloween to all!
First off the bat, we have Shaun as “Shaun” from “Shaun of the Dead”. Zombie outbreak? No worries, we’ll take the car. Go to Mum’s. Kill Phil (Sorry Phil!), grab Liz, go to the Winchester, have a nice cold pint, and wait for all of this to blow over. How’s that for a slice of fried gold?
Speaking of Zombies, there’s no better person to help you escape the latest zombie outbreak than Jill Valentine from the Resident Evil Series! Played by one of our support rockstar, Nox.
Already bitten and turned into an undead? No worries, at least Levi here’s looking stylish as a Zombie Cowboy!
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Wondering what’s new for you in FreshBooks this week? See below! In fact, FreshBooks has been consistently and regularly updated since 2004. Since all new features are available everyone, you always have the most updated version of the service. And if you have any ideas or feedback, send us a note!
Want to know if you just got paid? Of course you do! Getting paid is awesome and now you can know instantly via email when a client pays your FreshBooks invoice. Better yet, you now also will receive a weekly report on your account of all your essentials, including how much you got paid!
Know when you get paid
Three new email notifications are now available for you:
- When a client pays your invoice
- When a late payment reminder is sent for an overdue invoice
- When an invoice has been sent
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Halloween is less than a week away and while you’re all grown up now, I’m sure you still have your own Halloween traditions, whether it be going to the neighbor’s annual costume party, watching horror movie marathons or having jack-o-lantern carving contests.
FreshBooks has a few traditions of its own as the office stops what we are doing to take Halloween seriously. Very very seriously…and on top of dressing up, we like to spend a few minutes adding hilarious captions to wacky drawings. So with that in mind we would love you to join in! Tell us why the vampire looks so happy and you could win a $50 iTunes giftcard!
Either leave a comment below or tweet the caption to us. We’ll pick a winner on Friday, October 28th at 12:00 PM EST.
Happy Halloween!
Update: Congratulations to Mrinalini (http://www.mkwriter.com/), who is the proud winner of the $50 iTunes gift certificate with her caption of “Oh joy! Client has agreed to pay me in blood!”. Thanks for everyone who entered, we had a good chuckle here at the office 
When we visited Zappos last year, the experience redefined how we handled many of our support functions here at FreshBooks. They inspired us to revamp our training program, refocus our support goals, and expand our culture activities in big ways. FreshBooks isn’t just a software product – we provide a service to our customers, and having an above-and-beyond customer experience is the cornerstone of that.
One of the shared values of our support team is that we should never stop learning. Whether it’s learning more about our customers, or learning more about how other companies handle their support, we strive to know more and grow every day. We hold support at a high standard, and visiting other companies that are world-renowned for their support helps us share notes, and expand our ability to provide next-level customer experiences. Sometimes learning isn’t even about getting some new tools – finding out we’re already doing this right is also hugely helpful.
If you want to share in some of the insights we picked up on our most recent trip to Zappos, I’ve summarized some of our big take-aways that we plan to incorporate into our everyday support experiences:
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The whole FreshBooks Support team recently flew out to Las Vegas to tour Zappos, a company that has long been an inspiration for our own Support philosophy. While in town we were able to pay a visit to 3 of our Vegas customers to learn more about what they do. We love visiting our customers because it helps us get a feel for how different people customize their FreshBooks experience, meaning we find out how to improve our support. We also love showcase the amazing people using FreshBooks, and sharing their unique stories of following their dreams. And these three folks are doing some incredible things.
Comedians
Johnny Di
Johnny Di Domenico does some pretty incredible stuff – his specialty is what he calls Content Driven Comedy, and he achieves this by bringing a huge array of hilarious characters to your business to help drive your message home. He can impersonate over 30 well-known celebrities, and has a dozen characters that are uniquely his own. By combining comedy and impersonation with company event goals, he makes memorable meetings – simple as that. He is also extraordinarily personable, and wonderfully fun to be around.
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Hiring or working with other owners is all about getting more done and faster, while being able to focus on the work that you love. As much as it can be rewarding, it can also be painful.
Mike McDerment, former independent business owner, now CEO / Co-founder of FreshBooks, takes you through when it’s time to work with something else, why, and most importantly, how.
This video was originally posted for International Freelancer’s Day, a great online conference for sharpening up your independent skills.
Nine times out of ten, you work out of your email inbox. Email is the place you often deal with clients, check off to-do lists, and manage projects.
Client emails can brighten your day when they tell you how amazing your work is. That brightness can fade when you’re trying to find how much your client owes you or trying to log hours for the emails your writing all because your spending so much time going back and forth between FreshBooks and your inbox.
Today, email and billing just got simpler by combining FreshBooks with Gmail. It’s now easier than ever to track time and manage invoices because you can do that directly in Gmail. What else can you do with FreshBooks for Gmail?
- Save time by adding that new client you just closed right into your FreshBooks account.
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You may remember Michael Bierut from such design films as Helvetica and from such museums as the MoMA. On top of his illustrious art career, he has been a graphic designer for 25 years and is now partner at Pentagram, a design firm based in New York. In his Creative Mornings presentation, Michael talks about clients, how to deal with them, how to treat the good ones, and when to send the bad ones packing.
Some of the best lines from his presentation:
- The best clients love design, or don’t give a damn about it
- Great clients lead to more great clients
- If you find five great clients, you’re set for life
2010/01 Michael Bierut from CreativeMornings on Vimeo.
This video is from the original Creative Mornings in New York, an excellent event for creative professionals with chapters all over the world. FreshBooks is a sponsor of the event.
FreshBooks CEO, Mike McDerment and our new CMO, Stuart MacDonald, are about to spend the next 10 hours together in a car driving to Chicago and they want to talk to you about your business. You can literally ask them anything.
Why talk with them?
Both Mike and Stu are experienced business advisors and verterans of starting their own companes. Mike founded his own web agency and FreshBooks. At the web agency, Mike was able to find a way to only work 19 hours days a year on client work to then spend the rest of his time starting FreshBooks.
Stu is a mentor, investor, consultant and frequent speaker on things digital and entrepreneurial. He is also the veteran of several start-ups including starting Expedia.ca in Toronto, one of Canada’s most successful tech companies. Stu went on to become the CMO of Expedia.com.
How did this come about?
Mike and Stu need to be in Chicago tomorrow and looked into flights. However, the lowest price available was $1700 each! So they thought, why not jump in a car and talk to you about your business?
How do you get to talk with them?
If you would like to speak with them, please send an email my way . I’ll arrange a time for you. Times are available for Today (Oct.11) and Tomorrow (Oct. 12th). Please include what you would like to ask them about. Times will be served on a first come, first serve basis.
Update (Oct. 12, 2011, 4:52pm EST): All the available times have now been taken. Thanks to everyone that jumped on the phone with Mike & Stu!
Flickr: neutralSurface
When you’re running a small business — maybe so small that it’s just you or with 50 of your closest employees — it can be tempting to pinch pennies as much as possible. You want to make sure that you’re bringing in as much money as possible and you’re not spending it on unnecessary expenses.
But there is plenty of truth in the claim that you have to spend money to make money. While just spending your business’ cash on anything that comes along probably won’t get you where you want to go, there are expenses that have a significant return on investment (or ROI) — places where you can spend money and get a lot more back for your efforts. Here are a few pointers on where spending your money can be very helpful (or profitable).
- Highly targeted marketing: The odds are good that you have a very clear idea of what type of client you want to work with. Take that ideal one step further and look at exactly where you’re likely to be able to connect with those clients. Depending on your industry, there may be must-attend events or particular websites with great advertising opportunities. Invest the time and money into your marketing strategy — if you do it right, you’ll get the most value for your money out of any business expense you might have.
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