Early this morning we released version 4.6 which includes some new features we hope you will enjoy.

What’s new in this release?

A Redesigned Generate Invoice Page

Your generate invoice page has been redesigned to be even easier to use. In addition, you can now choose which details you wish to display or omit when generating invoices from your timesheets.

An Improved Search Interface

Your search tool in your account has been upgraded from a pop-up window to a slide-down interface which will hopefully save you even more time when searching for information inside your account.

There are more details about the release inside the application. Be sure to click your “4.6” link at the bottom of your account for more information on this release.

The Elephant and Castle on King Street in Toronto is a big place. I once got lost trying to find people I DID know, so I made extra sure that a bunch of people I DIDN’T know would have a few signs to show them the way.

It’s possible other patrons raised their eyebrows at FreshBooks business cards sticking out of picture frames with encouraging messages like “This Way!”, but we didn’t receive any complaints.

A bunch of FreshBooks customers and a few of us FreshBookers gathered Thursday night to get together and talk about the ups and downs of running a business these days. We had Connie, the librarian-turned-social-networks-consultant. We had Emmanuel, the Flash programmer running his own studio. There were computer consultants, artist representatives, overseas traders and web developers. A diverse bunch, to say the least.

Josh and I shared stories about our respective times in Tokyo, and Kimberly confirmed for me the story about the flaming Taipei monorail I’d only ever heard from an insane painter (it was good to get it from a slightly more reliable source). I talked a great deal with Jerry about how the study of literature relates to software development, and James told me about a crazy spreadsheet wizard who can predict the future with spooky accuracy.

It was great getting together with all these folks and hearing their stories, understanding how FreshBooks can provide value to so many different types of users. Running your own business is a lot of work, and it’s pretty amazing to feel like we’re helping these folks realise their dreams. I was actually touched when I asked Emmanuel when he started up his studio and he said, “The same time I signed up for FreshBooks.”

I didn’t hear back from anyone who got lost in the place looking for us, so I assume the business card breadcrumbs were 100% successful. We’d love to show you pictures of the event, but to tell you the truth, we were all having so much fun we completely forgot to break out the cameras!

While our dev team is busily working on our next big release, we’ve decided to release some new functionality that you can enjoy in the mean time. This morning we added a new vCard import tool which allows you to import client records from vCards into your FreshBooks account. vCards can be exported from a number of programs including Mac OSX’s Address Book.

To try out the new vCard import tool:

1. Login to your FreshBooks account.
2. Click on your white “Settings” link on the top right corner.
3. Click on your blue “Import/Export” link under “Step 3″.
4. Click on your blue “vCard (e.g. Mac OSX Address Book)” link.
5. Select the vCard and click your Upload button.
6. Review your data and click on your Import button when finished.

If you have spent anytime getting to know us here at FreshBooks you would know that we like to do things a little differently.

Not different just to be different but different because different is interesting (I tried to add one more “different” but couldn’t make it fit…oh I guess I just did).

A great example of this took place last week at the How Design Conference.

You see we decided to exhibit at this conference and after we registered we realized that we didn’t have one of those super slick and fancy Trade Show Booths that make lasting impressions to all that see them.

This was a problem since having a poor Trade Show booth is probably worse then not having one at all.

So putting our “Fresh” glasses on we came up with a cool solution…we basically did the one thing no one expected to see at a design conference!

Instead of having a fancy booth made for us we decided to get two 8 Foot x 8 Foot Canvases. Jazz Martin - an artist who is also a FreshBooks user - took some glue and paint and created a living breathing (always changing) art installation that started at the first moment that the conference began and was worked on until the last moment of the event.

This accomplished a bunch of cool things for us:

• People liked it
• People talked about it
• People kept coming back to see the progress

We were so pleased with how this turned out and proved to ourselves once again that when you replace ordinary and boring with extraordinary, you can never really go wrong!

I am young, I am inexperienced - at least when compared with senior management at established companies. What I have going for me is that I know that and I accept it.

It’s great starting companies, but odds are you need help to do it successfully. On many occasions I have recommended advisors for entrepreneurs, but it’s not just leaders who need advice - your staff do too. Why? Because you can’t do all the hard work. When you are running a fast growing company your staff are wrestling with tough problems, and when they’re doing that they *deserve* help that you probably can’t give them.

Coaching and mentoring is an intimate relationship and ideally the apprentice should choose teacher, but you can suggest advisors you have recruited - who know you, your values, your style and your business. Being familiar with those subtleties of your business are less relevant for technical advice, but useful nonetheless. I think it’s much more relevant for HR and strategic initiatives as your culture and your vision will lend itself better to some opportunities than others.

In the past I’ve talked about why advisors matter, how to recruit them and how to make successful relationships with advisors. All those things apply to your staff as well, so get them connected.

Just a quick announcement for anyone who may be trying to reach us in the office today: the office is closed for Victoria Day Monday, and we’ll be back at it Tuesday.

If you are interested in the history surrounding this May holiday, Daniel wrote about it here.

The FreshBooks add-on family is growing bigger all the time! We’d like to celebrate the latest addition to the fold.

Easy Time Tracking gives FreshBooks users a way to access all of FreshBooks functionality from their Windows desktop, whether they are online or offline. Never again get stuck when you’re on the the road without Internet access.

Easy Time Tracking features an elegant timer application that sits in your system tray, and provides full two-way synchronization with FreshBooks. Import customers, projects, and tasks from FreshBooks. Export time logs to FreshBooks. Track Expenses.

Better yet, Easy Time Tracking makes it easy to backup your FreshBooks data onto your own computer, and you can work from a USB Flash drive.

Easy Time Tracking has been on a market since 2005 and has won multiple awards. It was developed by Logic Software Inc, whose products are used in 27 countries by of thousands of customers at some of the world’s most well-known organizations like General Electric, Heinz, and the United Way.

Early this morning we pushed out a new release affectionately dubbed “Animal House”. Here’s a quick rundown of what’s new:

Tax management for your expenses

Now you have the ability to add taxes to your expense categories. The benefit of this is that once you set the taxes you want to associate with a given category, all you need to do is enter an expense total and we will backwards calculate the amount of tax on the expense for you. This will come in handy at tax time - especially for UK and Canadian based companies.

Staff time-tracking via the API

When we first released our Mac OS X time tracking widget, only admin accounts were supported. Now your staff can join the party with their very own API token. Here are the steps they’ll need to retrieve their token and get rolling:

1. Login.
2. Go to the “Profile” link in the top right hand corner.
3. At the bottom of the page, collect your URL and token.
4. Input these values into the widget.

Note: You (as the administrator) must have enabled the API in your account and agreed to the API terms of service before your staff can retrieve their token. But if you are already using the widget or another FreshBooks add-on, you’re good to go already.

There are other additions to the API relating to projects, credits and some other goodies. Check the developer blog for those details a little later today.

Improved “Assign Client” page

We’ve made the “Assign Client” page easier to use, which is great news for accounts juggling permissions between clients and staff.

More e-mail customizations

In this release we also added the ability to further customize your emails. You can now include invoice/estimate numbers and amounts in the body of emails sent to your clients.

So, that wraps things up.

Hey folks, just a quick note that FreshBooks will be briefly unavailable this Thursday morning while we perform an upgrade.

When will FreshBooks be unavailable?

The upgrade takes place Thursday, May 15th at 11:30 AM GMT (that’s 4:30 AM PT, 7:30 AM ET, et cetera). It’s expected to take half an hour. During this time there will be periods when you will be unable to access your FreshBooks account.

Once the upgrade is complete, watch our blog and your e-mail inbox to find out what’s new!

FreshBooks got a nice mention in the Financial Post this weekend about how we’re helping to green businesses. There is more about our history in the article, but this is my favourite part:

Perhaps FreshBooks’ biggest environmental impact is the greening of other businesses in 100 countries. “We are empowering people to work from home or remote locations, so less travel is involved. The feedback we get on our blog, is ‘the best thing I’ve done to green my business is I’ve stopped driving to work.’ “

This is a really exciting aspect of what FreshBooks does — we enable an emerging class of service-oriented professionals who choose to work more independently and more remotely than has been known before, and we’re honoured and humbled to be supporting them in this way.