With yesterday’s new version of FreshBooks, the Amazon Payments service is now available to FreshBooks users. This has been in the works for a while now, so we’re really interested in hearing about some of the first user experiences with Amazon Payments. Consider what follows a quick-start guide, and an invitation to try out the service.

There are a few things about Amazon Payments that might seem a little strange, so I’m going to try my best to explain all of the “gotchas.” If anything is unclear or you have additional questions, you can either post to this thread, or email our support team or myself directly.

How does this thing work?

First off, note there are two kinds of accounts: Business Accounts and Personal Accounts. If you’d like to receive payments for FreshBooks invoices, you’ll need a business account. You can sign up over at Amazon’s site.

Business accounts are (for now) U.S.-only. I’m sure Amazon is working on adding support for other currencies; we’ll keep everyone posted as they are added, but for now, Amazon requires business account holders to have both a valid U.S. mailing address and a valid U.S. bank account. You’re asked for both when you create your business account, and if you choose not to provide this information, you won’t be able to receive any payments to your business account.

The reason for this is a little strange: unlike services like PayPal, Amazon does not deduct transaction fees from FreshBooks payments. Rather, Amazon first attempts to withdraw the transaction fee from your Amazon balance, and if this fails, so does the transaction. To remedy this, you must submit and verify your bank information, and then transfer enough funds from your bank account into your Amazon account to cover your first transaction fee. This is a bit cumbersome, but for the time being there is no workaround.

Head to Amazon’s site to find out more about the transaction fees.

How do my clients pay me?

Personal accounts can be created by anyone worldwide, provided they have a valid credit card. If they’ve ever purchased from Amazon.com, chances are they already have one, too. Note there are slightly higher transaction fees for International Credit Card payments — again, the fee structure is worth a look. Personal accounts have limited privileges in comparison to business accounts, but if you provide a valid U.S. address and valid U.S. bank account in your personal account, your transaction limits are increased.

Okay, so how do I start accepting payments?

To enable Amazon Payments in FreshBooks, head to your “settings” area and choose “enable online payments.” Here you’ll see the option to enable Amazon Payments toward the bottom; this will redirect you to their site to enter your account information. At this point, you can sign into a business account you’ve already created, or create one on the spot. Amazon will ask you if you wish to authorize FreshBooks to make payments to your Amazon Payments account. Once you have confirmed, you will be redirected back to your FreshBooks account.

Now, when you create invoices or recurring profiles, or back to edit existing ones, you will be able to select Amazon Payments as a payment option.

I have questions. Where do I go?

I hope this long-winded post has cleared up some questions you may have about Amazon Payments. Again, if you have any additional questions, please post them here, email our support team, head to our support forum or email me directly.

Tomorrow morning (Wednesday, December 19, 2007), we are releasing FreshBooks Version 4.2.

Please expect a short period of downtime between 7:00 AM and 8:30 AM EDT (NOTE: this is 4:00am in LA, 7:00am in NYC, 12:00pm in London, 7:00pm in Hong Kong, and 11:00pm in Melbourne).

We sent a detailed email out about this and other FreshBooks news this morning. If you didn’t receive it, you can go here to view it online.

Version 4.2 includes a number of usability improvements, integrations with Amazon Payments and a major API update. It has some other goodies that I am sure you will like.

Tomorrow morning (Wednesday, October 24, 2007), we are releasing FreshBooks version 4.1.

Please expect a short period of downtime between 4:00 AM and 7:00 AM EDT (NOTE: this is 1:00am in LA, 4:00am in NYC, 9:00am in London, 4:00pm in Hong Kong, and 5:00pm in Melbourne).

We sent a detailed email out about this and other FreshBooks news this morning. If you didn’t receive it, you can go here to view it online.

Version 4.1 includes a number of infrastructure changes in our back-end architecture as well as some small tweaks, but the most noticeable changes will be part of the next version (Version 4.2) scheduled to be released before the end of this year.

After countless hours of testing, we’re pleased to announce the total redesign of the FreshBooks interface.

Highlights of the new release include:

• account statements;
• lighter, faster pages;
• a colour picker that is really fun to use;
• support ticketing has received an interface update;
• and again, total interface redesign.

We’ve affectionately named this release “Sexy Beast” (Daniel bought us the cake to celebrate the release… and yes… it’s an ice cream cake).

We’ll be spending today taming the beast (read: squashing any bugs we may have missed in our testing) and generally tweaking things. You can expect more tweaks and improvements in our upcoming release. As always (and since this was such a big release), if you come across something we should investigate, please send us a note. Otherwise, we would love to hear what you think of the new design — please comment below and let us have it.

In case you missed it, we re-released the FreshBooks API in late June. Here’s a quick look at what’s happened since:

• Several kind users have contributed Ruby, Perl, and Symfony (PHP) client-libraries that make it easy to integrate with the FreshBooks API.
• Looking to make a quick buck? A number of our customers are hiring developers to help their businesses integrate with FreshBooks via the API. Please check out the developer forums for details.
• Recurring invoicing via the API is on its way. This much requested feature will be included with the next major release of FreshBooks (sneak peek here).

If you’d like to get up-to-the-minute API news, please check out our dedicated FreshBooks API blog.

Introducing Amazon Flexible Payment Service

A couple months ago the good folks at Amazon invited FreshBooks to be among their first few 3rd party integrators with Amazon Flexible Payment Service (FPS), the next leg in their amazing line up of web services. It follows smash hits like Amazon Simple Storage System (S3) and Amazon Elastic Computing Cloud (EC2). The service is not publicly available, and won’t be for several months, but we can now share with you the inside scoop and explain why FPS is an exciting platform for payment processing, and what it’s like to work with.

Over the last few weeks, Levi has been working closely with the Amazon FPS team to integrate their new payment gateway into FreshBooks. As the name suggests, FPS is very sophisticated because it is very flexible. It not only accepts multiple types of requests (SOAP and REST), but more importantly it also has unparalleled ability to control payment amounts and methods.

Finally, micropayments that work!

Anyone who has ever used Amazon Web Services has noticed Amazon can bill as low as only 1 cent a month. If you’ve ever been jealous they can do that and you can’t, well, now you can. With FPS, you can now bill as low as 1 cent, and Amazon will charge a transaction fee of one quarter of one cent. Bring back the penny candies, because this changes the game for the entire web. There may have been micropayment solutions before, but none backed by a major trustworthy player like Amazon.

I always wanted to run my own bank

Paying for each and every one cent purchase sounds like a headache for your customers. Amazon Flexible Payment System solves the problem by maintaining an account balance between every two parties. Much like a bank, you can add credit and make debits to your heart’s content and Amazon keeps track of the balance owing. Your customer can buy a bag of candies one penny at a time and only whip out their credit card once.

This is important and powerful. FPS is the first payment system that separates a charge from a payment. This makes it possible to pre-pay for services and then deduct fees over time from the balance. Think of independent digital music stores that let customers purchase, say, $10 credit to buy 100 songs for $0.10 each. Alternatively, you can accrue charges over time, and let your customers pay the balance owing all at once at the end of the month, much like your VoIP phone company charges long distance. This dramatically cuts down on credit card transaction fees.

Unprecedented control

Moreover, Amazon FPS provides a lot of control over your Amazon account transactions. For any payment, you can specify exactly how you want to get paid: directly out of another Amazon account, using a credit card, using a bank transfer (aka using the ACH eChecking system). Compare this to PayPal, where your buyer can use whatever method they want to pay for your product or service. If you want to cut down on credit card transaction fees, FPS can make sure your customers pay you with the lowest cost method.

Of course, for FreshBooks customers, we do not force your clients to choose any one payment method since getting paid faster is usually much better than cutting down on transaction fees.

Show me the money!

The astute amongst you may have noticed that one quarter of a cent is 25% of the transaction, which can add up. Rest assured that is only the cost for transactions under $0.05. Their fees scale well:

Additionally, qualified developers can apply for the following volume discounts for credit card transactions:

• 2.5% + $0.30 per transaction for payment volume from $3K- $10K
• 2.2% + $0.30 per transaction for payment volume from $10K - $100K
• 1.9% + $0.30 per transaction for payment volume over $100K

U.S. only

Unfortunately, because Amazon is only licensed to transfer money in the U.S., international customers can only pay by credit card for an additional 1% of the transaction amount. Additionally, in order to create an Amazon Payments account, the recipient must have a US-based bank account, billing address, and credit card.

Safety first!

Amazon has also taken extra security measures, which is singing our tune here at FreshBooks. For each and every payment transaction, we must request a new security token from Amazon that expires only after a short period. This greatly reduces the chance that an attacker in the middle can double charge your customers by intercepting the transaction.

To really get down into details, the PHP SDK also requires you to download an X.509 certificate, then use OpenSSL to create a .p12 keystore, and then convert it into a .pem keystore. All of this is in the interest of security.

Ruby and Java and PHP, oh my!

Speaking of SDKs, Amazon has really shown they get it by releasing the FPS SDK in Ruby, not just Java and PHP. This is the first payment gateway that has done this, and we applaud them for it.

Key tip: Levi tells me he had trouble with the Ruby SDK. For some reason, at least his version of Ruby (1.8.6) outputs two tags, contra the WS security standard, and therefore breaks the SDK.

It’s not easy being first

The biggest initial challenges we faced were simply getting IP access to the sandbox and making sure we had the most recent version of the SDK. Once we passed those hurdles, and we had some files that were missing (the PHP SDK requires a WSDL file that none of the other SDK’s require) the SDK was simple to install and I had it up and running within a few hours. Hopefully they’ll add the missing WSDL file by the time they release.

Slippery SOAP

Another challenge Levi had with the FPS SDK was the lack of examples of actual SOAP requests. The PayPal API comes with a number examples of the SOAP structures, which helped when building the requests from scratch without using the PayPal SDK.

Key tip: Luckily, once Levi got the Amazon FPS PHP SDK up and running, all of the SOAP requests are available inside the log files (in /SampleApp/logs/AmazonFPS.log).

To save you the trouble, here is a basic Amazon FPS SOAP request for the following call in PHP:

$payResponse = $SoapClient->call(
'Pay',
'UniqueMessageId'.microtime(true),
$keyStoreLocation,
$keyStorePsswd,
$payRequest,
$namespace
);

The elephant in the room

The question is, how does Amazon stack up against PayPal and Google Checkout.

Well, you have to think about Amazon FPS as a payment service just like you think of Amazon S3 as a backup service or Amazon EC2 as a webhost. None of Amazon web services are meant to be fully packaged, ready to use systems. They are all lower-level systems. S3 is the storage for a backup system. EC2 has the raw Internet-connected machines you install the server goodies necessary for a modern webhost.

Building foundation computer-sciency services is easy to understand, but how does one write a more fundamental payment service? By stripping payment down to the raw functions: credits, debits, payments, payouts, and a ledger to keep it all organized.

Amazon FPS is meant for people who need more control over money flows, especially those who need the kinds of cheaper, smaller transactions in order to make their business feasible (think digital goods resellers, like digital music). In fact, you could probably build the next PayPal on top of Amazon FPS, and I have no doubt someone will try.

What’s also nice is that Amazon.com, through its more famous book, music, and merchandise channels, probably has millions of average customers that PayPal and Google Checkout do not, and now those customers are only a click away from your business. This greatly expands the marketplace of people willing to use person-to-person online payments, and that can only be a good thing.

In the meantime…

So, we’re looking forward to finishing up the integration of Amazon FPS with FreshBooks shortly. It looks like it will be a great alternative to PayPal and Google Checkout once it is fully released to the general public. In the meantime, you will be to access it indirectly through the FreshBooks API.

Over the past few months we’ve been hard at work on a redesign of FreshBooks. Don’t panic—the app will work the same way, we just wanted to achieve a higher standard with our aesthetics… to some degree, FreshBooks the app has always had a year 2003 feel to it, and it’s high time we brought FreshBooks up to date.

The following are a series of screenshots highlighting some of the changes—they’ll be rolled out soon:

Navigation Simplification

As these “before and after” pictures indicate, we’re making a move to a more traditional tabbed navigation. This will simplify the FreshBooks experience and make it easier to navigate the app, and it allows us to ensure the navigation is more contextualized. For those of you who are power users, we’ve worked hard to keep frequently used links ever-present, so FreshBooks is still fast fast fast and you can get where you need in the fewest number of clicks.

Better Notification Messaging

For a long time now I’ve wanted to tidy up our error messaging. With our upcoming release our messages will be better—much better. You might think this is a small thing, but we’re guessing you will find it’s a pretty big deal.

Colour Picker Redesign

The picture pretty much says it all. This colour picker is way easier to use and it’s dynamic so you get instant feedback. We’ve included more samples too. In a word: magic.

Tidy Page Numbering

Since they are not primary navigation items, we’ve toned down the page numbering to make the links pop out less (i.e. classic blue links really pop out on white) . We also used CSS to make the clickable area larger for the page numbers, which in turns make it easier to click on a number (design note: a one letter text link is never ideal and that is what we were using before).

What Else is New?

Under the hood this signifies our move to CSS/XHTML with the application—standard stuff these days, but a big move for an application designed in 2003 when this was not especially common. So our pages are leaner and tighter, and we’re also taking better advantage of compression technologies which have reduced our average page size to about 1/3 of what they are today, so you can expect faster page loading.

As you can see the app has a new, fresher feel thanks to this redesign. We’ve affectionately titled this release “Sexy Beast” and it’s going to be easier to use for first-time visitors and less cluttered for regular users. This release will include more changes than I have outlined here, and as usual you can expect a steady stream of continuous improvement thereafter—it’s the FreshBooks way! We’ll send an email just before the release like we always do. We hope you enjoy it.

Great news, second quarter report cards are now available inside your FreshBooks account. If you have an account that was created any time in 2006, you can compare how you did last quarter with this quarter.

That’s not all. You can also see how your industry is changing as a whole.

We sent a detailed email out about this and other FreshBooks news this past Monday. If you didn’t receive it, you can go here to view it online.

If you have any questions about your second quarter results most answers can be found in this FAQ blog post.

Today we are releasing the FreshBooks API.

You can find Ben’s wonderful documentation here. The API now has its own blog to share recent updates, scripts, samples and examples - if you are a developer, subscribe. We also have a forum just for those of you who are playing with the API.

Who is API for?

• Developers connecting FreshBooks with their own systems or cool desktop widgets.
• Web application developers, web hosts, or subscription services who want to avoid drowning in lost time building their own billing backend.
• Companies needing to replace their existing billing backend because a lack of reporting, payment history, and friendly dispute mechanisms is upsetting customers and internal developers.
• Anyone with good ol’ customers that need good ol’ invoices via snail mail.

What Can You Do with the API

Every day, new web applications are joining the Software-as-a-Service movement. We wanted to contribute back to our fellow peers in the simplest way possible, and the best way we know how, and help them get their money in the door. With the API, you’ll be able to:

• Deliver professional invoices over email and through the good old snail mail.
• Efficiently track outstanding accounts receivable.
• Cordially manage billing disputes.
• Record payment histories for your customers’ peace of mind.
• Smoothly collect payment online collecting by credit card, PayPal, or eCheck.

Because the API allows you to manage clients, create invoices, and record payments, it’s easy to slide it into your existing billing system. Don’t go through the agony of learning how to mail invoices, negotiate with payment gateways, and track those delinquent customers yourself! You should only have to worry about your own business.

Other Thoughts Regarding the API

Of course, because the API is a true open API, you can do a lot more with it. FreshBooks doesn’t want to own you. Get your data out, play with it, and shove it back in. Hook FreshBooks up with your favorite productivity tool or desktop widget. (Tip: We’ve already integrated Basecamp! Maybe you want to integrate with some of the other great services out there.) Stuck with QuickBooks? We’re building an import/export tool. Now, you can build an import/export tool for your own favorite or least favorite application.

Have any other cool ideas? Maybe you want to build your own end-to-end sales operations company. Go ahead. Build it on our backs. We’re not asking for a cut from your sweat.

Join our developer community and let us help you with your next steps.

BTW - we were planning to launch the API and documentation around noon, but we’ve been outed by Techcrunch and a few other blog posts, so you can expect this post to be updated throughout the day as more content trickles out. In the meantime, please roll with us. Thanks.
vvv

This morning, FreshBooks successfully released version 3.9 with Estimates. So far, people seem to be enjoying it, here is some early feedback:

The estimates look great! I also like the new header bar at the top that has the customer’s profile/logout link. Customers used to have problems finding the profile link. This will make it easier for them to find.

You just eliminated one more piece of additional software for me. Thanks!

Thank you, thank you, thank you. In my opinion the new estimates feature is a milestone that will go down in Freshbooks history as the moment when it all got tied together into one huge killer app.

If you haven’t had a chance to try it out yet, the way it works is you can create an estimate before you start any project.

You can then send the estimate to your client and the client can review it online just like they would an invoice. If they are happy, they can accept the estimate or request changes.

You can have a conversation back and forth about the estimate.

Once you and/or your client is happy with the estimate, you can convert it to an invoice or a recurring invoice with one click.