FreshBooks Supper Club

Welcome to the May edition of the FreshBooks Supper Club. This virtual gathering of intelligent and very good looking people happens once a month and is delivered directly to your inbox. We jam an assortment of profiles of the beautiful and talented people who use FreshBooks (Fresh Faces), Contests, FreshBooks Tips and Tricks, and my favourite, news and stuff from inside the FB walls. Among other things, this section will outline what events and cities we will be visiting to spread the good word of FreshBooks.

News and Stuff from inside the FB walls

FreshBooks Advice – I want to start this month with a contest. Usually I end with this sort of stuff but I am pretty excited by this month’s prize that I couldn’t wait...but first a little housekeeping. Last month I asked you guys to send me your advice questions so you could benefit from some of my worldly experiences. David K. from Toronto won the 12 month membership to MarketingProfs and since his question was of a bathroom nature he asked to remain anonymous and not share his question...and I was glad to oblige.

I found this advice stuff fun and it made me feel good to know I was helping, so I am going to do it again. Send me your questions about life and matters of the heart and this month there will be four winners, all receiving an autographed copy of our friend Andy Sernovitz’s book Word of Mouth Marketing. *Please note* these will not be autographed by Mr. Sernovitz but rather by me with a personalized inscription of...

Follow us on Twitter and WIN!

We love Twitter and want more followers. If you are already on this magical web application why not mosey over to our Twitter Home and start following us. We never try to sell you anything and have been known to have the occasional contest where we give you cool stuff!

New Version – Animal House

You should already know that we are always improving things around here and we will never rest until...well you get the point. So here is what is in our newest update (version 4.5) called “Animal House” in honour of mister six degrees of separation himself, Kevin Bacon. Some of the improvements are:

• ADD TAXES TO YOUR EXPENSE CATEGORIES
  You can now add tax rates to your expense categories. FreshBooks will automatically calculate your taxable
amounts based on your expense total and tax rates. A new expense tax report has also been added to your
account.
• INCLUDE INVOICE NUMBERS AND AMOUNTS IN EMAILS
  You can now include invoice numbers and invoice amounts on your outgoing invoice emails. When customizing
your emails, the "New Invoice" and "Invoice Number" buttons will allow you to place these values anywhere you want.
• ASSIGN CLIENT PERMISSIONS MORE EASILY
  Your assign client page has been redesigned to be easier to use to allow you to quickly limit which clients your
staff members can see.

For a complete list of changes to your account, please click on the version number link at the bottom of your
account.

...and speaking of “more e-mail customization”, did you know you can customize a whole slew of emails that go to your clients? My favourite option is the “Late Invoice Notification” emails (located in the Customize Invoices section of your account settings) because collecting money, especially overdue money is the least fun part of your job but I think if you bring some fun to this situation you will probably get paid faster. I am not suggesting you do this. I am just letting you know what I have loaded in my personal FreshBooks Account.

For accounts 40 days old I send: I know paying invoices are no fun but getting paid is. So please take note that your invoice is now 40 days old. Please pay your invoice as soon as you can, so I can feel joy from receiving money and then feel the sorrow of paying my own bills.

At 75 days: Now if we were dating, 75 days would be a cool milestone of sorts but since no part of our relationship involves going to movies and sharing milkshakes I feel the need to remind you that your invoice is now 75 days old. Please pay your invoice as soon as you can so the butterflies can return to our relationship.

And at 220 days: Please pay your bill so I can stop crying every time your name comes up!

Fresh Faces: Michelle Riggen-Ransom

I'm Michelle Riggen-Ransom, the Communications Director at BatchBlue Software, a company that makes web-based software. Our first product, BatchBook, is a CRM for small businesses and entrepreneurs that's easy to use, customizable, and oh-so affordable. Basically, we want to give small businesses access to the same tools and technology that the bigger guys have because, being small ourselves, we like small businesses better.

I first heard about Freshbooks when I started my own web communications consulting business in 2006.  As a writer, I really liked the way they communicated about their product on their web site.  They seemed friendly, approachable, entertaining and open to feedback.  And the design was both inviting and easy to use.  I started using FreshBooks to invoice my clients right away and always met with favorable response from folks who had not yet used them. In addition to helping me get paid quickly, FreshBooks’ streamlined invoicing service helped me appear professional in my new role.

Over the past couple of years, FreshBooks has made improvements and tweaks to their product, and I joined BatchBlue as Communication Director.  As we've ramped up our first product, BatchBook, we've worked with freelancers in various capacities.  We recommend that our freelancers use FreshBooks for all their invoicing, since we find it so easy to manage from our end. Because they're freelancers like us, they tend to do what we say.  It's now a part of our "unofficially official" new employee on-boarding to acquaint folks with FreshBooks for invoicing.

And now...FreshBooks has expense reporting!  This made it very easy to expense all those fabulous Texan meals and taxi trips down at South by Southwest this year, where I had the enormous pleasure of enjoying pancakes with the FreshBooks team.  Any company that drives down in an RV to serve pancakes to their customers is one with which I want to do business.

I never even considered using something like Quickbooks: I'm just not that kind of girl. I like to know that there are human beings behind the companies I work with and that's what I encounter in my every transaction with FreshBooks. My company, BatchBlue, is in the business of contact management, so we know a thing or two about good customer relationships. One of our goals is to make our small business customers feel as comfortable using BatchBook for CRM as we do using FreshBooks for our invoicing and expense reports.

If you’d like to be our next Fresh Face, let us know how FreshBooks helps your business!