Archive:
December, 2011
Welcome to Day 12 of Freshtivus! With the holidays approaching, we’re busy giving away gifts to our fantastic users. We are also following the story of Sam, a small business owner who is struggling with her invoicing and just discovering FreshBooks. If you missed any part of her story or want to see our previous giveaways, see our past posts here.
Throughout the Twelve days of Freshtivus, we have been following Sam’s discovery of FreshBooks. Since she saved so much time with her invoicing, Sam is spending her new found free time honing her video game skills. We hope you also experience the time-saving benefits of using FreshBooks. Thanks for coming along with us on Sam’s journey! Enjoy this last giveaway and have a wonderful holiday season!
Ever wonder how other FreshBooks customers run a business and do what they love? Customer portraits connect you with your fellow FreshBooks peers to share guidance and inspire you.
The Toronto-based small business Aromachology is making major headlines as its one-of-a-kind scents gain popularity all over North America. Founders Kirsten Menkes and Ashlee Firsten create custom fragrances designed to reflect a person’s individual preferences and suit the specific personality of it’s wearer. Their innovative perfume bar combines art and science: you choose your perfect scent profile – are you Sophisticated & Sensual? Bold & Brisk Woodsy? – and pair it with additional aromatic notes that can help stimulate certain attributes (graceful and creative here we come!).
Hear from Ashlee on what a typical day looks like at Aromachology as they roll out their new bath and body line and the kinds of lessons they’ve learned along the path to success.
As part of our series on helping folks get paid for their work, this guest post is written by the RightSignature team to share some ideas on how to avoid contract nightmares. RightSignature is a tool that lets you get documents signed online and integrates with FreshBooks.
Whether you’re a freelancer, contractor or small business, having a solid service contract in place can be the difference between payday and days of anguish. A contract is ideally brief yet effective but most importantly must cover the terms that are critical to protecting your business. When you’re building contract agreements, here are 6 terms that your contract should include as a minimum:
1. Service Description and Parties’ Responsibilities
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Baby New Year is here to tell you what’s in store for 2012! Will it be full of exciting rewards or unexpected challenges? You decide what he’s saying! Give us a caption of this illustration in the comments below by Dec 31st at midnight and win an iTunes giftcard!
Welcome to Day 11 of Freshtivus! With the holidays approaching, we’re busy giving away gifts to our fantastic users. We are also following the story of Sam, a small business owner who is struggling with her invoicing and just discovering FreshBooks. If you missed any part of her story or want to see our previous giveaways, see our past posts here.
Smooth and simple. That’s how invoicing should be. To ensure that things do run smoothly, our QA and Operations teams keep a keen eye out for bugs and errors so that we have as few issues and as little downtime as possible. Our QA crew keeps their minds and bodies strong through things like ballet, Tae Kwon Do, yoga and chess so that they’re in top form when combating bugs. Meanwhile, the Operations team prefers the foosball table, cooking, board games and the sax to unwind. They certainly deserve it, as they work hard to always have someone on call to take care of any issues that arise, even after office hours.
In this episode, Sam receives a “bug kit” from QA Superstar, Betty, as thanks for helping find a bug. She then meets Jason, and gets a glimpse of our Operations team. Watch today’s video to find out the winner of the Day 11 giveaway, and don’t forget about our poetry and caption contests.
What will 2012 hold for small businesses? We asked a handful of business trend-watchers and business owners for their opinions on how the coming 12 months will likely shape up. Their verdict? Overall, businesses will build on the social media lessons they learned in 2011, and will turn to technology to boost productivity and flexibility. Next year will also bring employee-recruitment challenges, and it will bring about a new appreciation for relationship building as an important stepping stone towards financial success.
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Rolling Stone magazine ranks the song Thank You by Sly and the Family Stone way down at 402nd on their list of 500 greatest songs of all time. To us that number seems really low, because at FreshBooks saying thank you is always number one on our list… and that’s what we’re going to do now.
2011 was a very special year for FreshBooks: we surpassed 3.5 million users, we grew to nearly 100 staff and we welcomed customers from as far as Malaysia, Moldova and Montserrat to the FreshBooks family. We are so appreciative of being able to play a small part in our customers’ successes. Seeing their passion and drive is truly an inspiration – and incredibly motivating.
So thank you for making our 2011 amazing. 2012 promises to be a really exciting year as well. Thank you for trusting us, thank you for being awesome and see you in the New Year!
A note about our holiday schedule:
Support lines are open and available to you during the holidays! The office IS however closed Friday December 23rd, Monday Dec 26th and Monday January 2nd. Other weekdays we’re available as usual, 9am-6pm EST. Don’t hesitate to drop us a line if we can help: (North America) 1-866-303-6061, (UK) 0808-101-3408, (Ireland) 1-800-949-046, (Worldwide) +1-416-481-6946.
We met Kevin Lee at our customer event in Los Angeles (the first stop on the RoadBurn 2.0 tour) and loved his insightful perspective on working in the City of Angels. He breaks down some of the LA cliches about what it’s like to have Hollywood as a neighbor and the true value of doing lunch.
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Welcome to Day 10 of Freshtivus! With the holidays approaching, we’re busy giving away gifts to our fantastic users. We are also following the story of Sam, a small business owner who is struggling with her invoicing and just discovering FreshBooks. If you missed any part of her story or want to see our previous giveaways, see our past posts here.
They say that communication is important in every relationship. To ensure that we have great relationships with our customers, our eloquent yet fun Communications team is here to let you know what’s going at FreshBooks. When not talking about his favorite brew, our beer connoisseur, John, is diligently composing blog posts to keep you informed. Editor Extraordinaire, Amanda is making sure we’re continually bringing fresh content to you by putting our customers in the spotlight. The Communications team frequently shares customer portraits on our blog to connect you to your fellow FreshBooks users and share their stories.
In this episode, Sam is sent to the future where her soon-to-be self is being interviewed by Amanda for a customer profile.
Welcome to Day 9 of Freshtivus! With the holidays approaching, we’re busy giving away gifts to our fantastic users. We are also following the story of Sam, a small business owner who is struggling with her invoicing and is just discovering FreshBooks. If you missed any part of her story or want to see our previous giveaways, see our past posts here.
From time to time, FreshBooks customers propose an idea for a new feature. Letting us know about your Fresh Idea is easy! You can email us at support@freshbooks.com, post to our forums, or fill out the feedback form when you log out. Every vote matters! Our product team does their best to work on requests that would be of most use to most customers. When he’s not busy being a rockabilly performer, our Director of Product Management, Casey, helps to prioritize our upcoming features. With the help of supertalented Avrum, and tech-lover, Melina, our product team is here to listen to your suggestions as you help to make FreshBooks even better.
In this episode, Sam has a great suggestion and wonders what FreshBooks does with people’s requests. Luckily, Melina was kind enough to pop by and introduce herself and the team. Enjoy today’s video, and don’t forget, our poem and song contests and caption contest are still running!
has sent, it would stand taller than the 
