FreshBooks Supper Club May 2009

Whoa! Please excuse us as we bump our traditional Supper Club intro to the next section as we are just too excited to announce that… (see headline below)

FreshBooks Makes The Cover of Entrepreneur Magazine – Get Your Personal Copy Free

Yup, our fearless and friendly leader Mike, complete with his FreshBooks T, is gracing the cover of this month’s Entrepreneur Magazine. Take a closer look at Mike in the shot and ask yourself if you’d really trust this guy to make anything “painless”!

Featured as one of Entrepreneur’s 100 Brilliant Companies, the article profiles FreshBooks’ customer centric approach and some of the other cool stuff we’ve done and are doing.

Rather than have you go and grab, a copy we thought what a better way to share the story then to… well… share the story with you. So if you would like us to send you your own very personal copy of this issue of Entrepreneur, then fill this out and we’ll get one out to you complements of FreshBooks.

OK… now that that’s out of the way (whew!) we are pleased to bring you the introduction to this month’s Supper Club which, as always, is chock full of the freshest news from inside the FreshBooks walls, and delivered straight to your inbox.

News & Stuff from Inside the FB Walls

FreshBooks Now Offers Contractor Nirvana

Last week was very busy and exciting at FreshBooks HQ. You may have noticed the chatter around our big announcement of Software as a Network (SaaN). This is some really cool stuff we’ve been working on to make contracting on FreshBooks super friendly.

We know most of you rely on working with others to get your jobs done and now you can track time and send and receive invoices with other FreshBooks users seamlessly from your own FreshBooks accounts. You can check out all the goods here and read what TechCrunch and Mashable had to say about it. We’ve even created a special training video for any new contractor you invite into a project that has never used FreshBooks before so they get up and running on your project super fast. But most important of all… click on your Team subtab and start inviting all your contractors to work on your FreshBooks projects!

FreshBooks Wins Webware 100 Award!

As if the cover of Entrepreneur wasn’t enough… all your lovin’ had us win the Webware 100 award for Productivity. This award is extra special to us because you all made it happen, so a big FreshBooks high-five goes out to each and every one of you that voted for us. And, if you remember from last month’s Supper Club it also means our CEO Mike has some serious shaving to do if he goes to collect that award.

More Fun Creating Invoices and Templates

A few weeks back we made some pretty slick changes to how you create invoices and estimates. You gave us a lot of feedback, and earlier this morning we rolled out some more lovin' for those pages based on that feedback, and added a new invoice template section to your "Settings" – so now you have another option when creating an invoice. The new template is cleaner than the classic and after thinking long and hard about what to call it we landed on… well… “Clean”! You can check out the new template by clicking on your white Settings link in your account and then your Template link – hope you like it. Oh, and by the way, both templates and all their variations now can be sent by snail mail. Giddy-up.

How To Build A Web App: Round 2

Last month, we held a workshop about Building a Web App Business from A to Z here at FreshBooks Central, hosted by our own Mike McDerment. Folks gathered from the four corners of the earth including Washington D.C., Chicago, Saskatoon, Ottawa and of course, Toronto attended and enjoyed the sold out event. Now, if you missed it then here is some great news, we’re holding another one on Tuesday, June 16! So, register here and get the straight goods on building a web app business.

Yes, FreshBooks is Hiring Again

It’s true. We’ve got lots to do here we need the sharp talent to “get stuff done”. In addition to just being a super cool place to work, we’ve also just landed a pretty kickn’ foosball table to sweeten the deal. Some of the sweet roles we are looking to fill include Customer Network Manager, Integrations Developer, Integrations Product Manager, Sales Consultant and QA Analyst. Take a look at our Careers page and let us know if you see something that floats your boat.

3rd Party Integrations you may just love

Thanks to our Chief Handshaker being so busy, Tactile CRM and MailChimp have integrated their services with FreshBooks.

• Tactile CRM - Stay on top of your sales by recording every deal, e-mail, telephone call, note, activity, meeting, invoices and (the most recent addition) estimates in Tactile CRM.
• Mail Chimp - Send email newsletters, event invitations, and auto-responders with ease. MailChimp will automatically clean unsubscribes and bounces. More importantly, use their awesome reports to track your performance.

Check out all the applications that have integrated with FreshBooks - and a few we built ourselves - in the Add-ons section of our community website.

Quick Hits

--> We've Started "The New Graduate Program" which is geared towards recent grads to get their careers started on the tight track - at FreshBooks!

--> Some humour to brighten your day.