FreshBooks Archive

Typically corporate trips are great – you get to use someone else’s credit card for travel and meals. There’s only one time that corporate travel sucks – and that’s the time it takes to put together the expense report for the trip. As a former accountant and auditor, I got the bonus of having to review and let employees know when their steak and vodka was over the corporate limit.

Startup ExpenseBay aims to make reporting expenses easier and less painful. ExpenseBay allows you to connect to your personal or corporate credit card. Your transactions are downloaded into ExpenseBay and then you can assign them as needed into the different categories (e.g. meals, hotels, escort services, etc.). The mobile app also allows you to note cash transactions as they happen which is typically the biggest issue with expense reporting. 

You can attach receipts into each expense transaction which makes it easy to submit the expenses once complete. In addition, expenses can be submitted into your account via email.

ExpenseBay connects directly with some of the popular corporate accounting and expense reporting packages. They can also provide in-house company expense report management.
Continue reading “ExpenseBay Helps You Deal With the Horror of Expense Reports” »

One of the most practical talks at FOWA London came from the CEO of Freshbooks, an online invoicing app for individuals and small businesses. Mike McDerment reminded the audience of designers, developers and wannabe web 2.0 rock-stars that the excel number-crunchers of the corporate world can teach us a lot about how to measure business performance. When you’re trying to create the next widgetized social aggregation platform which is powered by supercharged virality it might not seem very sexy to fire up excel and start facing those cold white boxes. However, Mike urged everyone there to cook a monitoring system directly into their web-apps so that they know where their visitors are coming from, how many of them are signing up, and, crucially, how many of them are actually sticking around. Importantly, he urged everyone there not to assume that Google Analytics is the answer to all your measuring needs. Measuring is a business philosophy and Mike practices what he preaches. Freshbooks ads are all over the web and the ones that aren’t delivering ROI quickly are cut with the ruthlessness of a ninja swordsman.

This kind of obsession over the numbers is common among successfully bootstrapped companies. When you don’t have an enormous pile of green bills to cover in petrol and set alight, you don’t – simple as that. After spending the first two years in his parents’ basement, Mike has built Freshbooks into an extremely successful business with dozens of employees, thousands of paying users and, most importantly, extremely happy customers. Viral growth is a rare and elusive feat achieved by very few companies. Predictable growth is driven by regular measurement and informed improvement. In any case, if your app is growing like a weed, wouldn’t be nice to measure that?
Continue reading “Future of Web Apps Recap: Measure & Grow Your Startup” »

Here are today’s startup updates from the humid, moist New York City.

Worldwide startup updates

• Regator launches iPhone app – Regator
• How to create a mind map – Creately
• New templates added for invoicing – Invoicera
• Devver code tool moves into beta – Devver
• Freshbooks decorated their office for cheap – Freshbooks
• Tungle calendar app moves into Ning – Tungle
• Get tags and search now – Task.fm
• Tr.im URL shortener to be community owned – Tr.im
• A look at redesigning search – WebMynd

New York startup updates

• Pingg partners with Patrick McMullan for new designs – Pingg

Editor’s note: The following post is from Mike McDerment, the co-founder and CEO of online invoicing app FreshBooks. Since launching in May 2004 FreshBooks has touched over 900,000 lives.

I meet lots of web entrepreneurs who tell me they want to raise venture capital. Most of these people are first time entrepreneurs and they just assume that once they’ve got an idea, the next thing to do is raise venture capital. That’s naive. I always ask myself is, “is this person/company ready to raise money?” and 99 times out of 100 the answer is “no”. I’m writing this post in an effort to explain what goes through my head at those times and when it is right to raise institutional capital.

So, when is the time to raise Venture capital?

When: you don’t need the money

This may seem counter-intuitive on a whole bunch of levels, but the time to raise money is when you don’t need it. What I mean by “don’t need it” is you can carry on without it, or you have alternatives (like other people who want to invest, or a house you will mortgage). Many entrepreneurs don’t understand the value of finding their way without VC money, or they think they need the money more than they actually do, or they think they need it sooner than they do, or all of the above! (READ: the 7 ways I’ve almost killed FreshBooks) The result is they spend a lot of time too early in their businesses lifecycle focused on serving VCs instead of serving their customers. Raising money is a negotiation. You need options when you are sitting at the bargaining table – you need a path without capital, a legitimate path.
Continue reading “5 Milestones to Reach Before Raising Venture Capital” »

FreshBooks takes Day 5 in the CenterNetworks Holiday Gifts. Check out all of our FreshBooks coverage. Here’s a brief overview of FreshBooks from the company:

Stop invoicing in Word! FreshBooks is an online billing service for webprofessionals. Track your time, create invoices, collect payments online,and give your clients peace of mind with organized records they can access at any time.

FreshBooks is offering CN readers $20 off any new paid subscription. The code below is valid through to Dec 31, 2008. Enter code:  FRESHCLAUS08 during the registration process.

Toronto-based online invoicing service FreshBooks has announced the launch of an industry benchmarking service to help freelancers and small businesses make better decisions about their business. The service seems very similar to what PubMatic offers with their AdPrice Index. Basically FreshBooks takes anonymous data, aggregates the data and provides it back to site visitors so they can compare their actual numbers with the reported data.

The data will be updated quarterly and can be broken down into segments. FreshBooks explains how they get the data, "the data you see above is only collected from FreshBooks accounts that collect in US Dollars. We have removed the top ten 10% and the bottom 10% of the populations to eliminate outliers that might undermine the accuracy of the group as a whole. Also, we only include businesses we deem to be credible FreshBooks accounts."

Anyone can access the basic industry benchmark data and FreshBooks customers can request a "Report Card" which is tailored to their specific business.

This new program is smart on several levels. It helps everyone understand where they stand. It helps FreshBooks potentially gain a new service subscriber base. It also helps establish FreshBooks as a data service which can help drive new subscribers as the data is shared across the Web.

If you live in NYC and ride the subway, you’ve seen the advertisements for the Freelancers Union. Their tagline is, "A federation of the unaffiliated." and they define the service as, "a nonprofit organization that represents the needs of America’s independent workforce though advocacy, information, and service." The Freelancers Union claims that over 30% of the entire U.S. workforce are indie workers. Most of the services the Freelancers Union provides are available nationwide.

There are no fees to be a Freelancers Union member and frankly anyone who works for themselves (blogger, web developer, designer, writer, etc.) should be a member. The benefits the group offers are just awesome. Health insurance is the number one benefit in my opinion.

When I lived in Atlanta my health insurance for a good plan ran about $140/month. The same plan in NYC was 10x more or $1,400/month (no I am not kidding). An even better plan (also with Blue Cross) with the Freelancers Union runs around $210/month. Please note that these are single rates. There’s also a dental savings plan that normally is $7.50/month but with FU it’s $3/month.

Another awesome benefit is for Zipcar rentals. In NYC the normal Zipcar rates for an average car are $10.50-12.50/hour Mon-Thurs and $12.50-$14.50 Friday. When you join the Freelancers Union, that rate drops to $8.00 on all weekdays. This has already saved me a good bit of money and you get a wider selection of cars. From my testing this morning, discounts in other cities that Zipcar serves are similar.

There are a ton of other discounts including Web services Harvest (our coverage) and FreshBooks (our coverage). The Staples corporate pricing is pretty sweet.

There are also a variety of networking events/meetups, educational courses and a job/gig board.

To become a member you need to demonstrate income over $10,000 within the past six months. Seriously, even if you just use it for the Zipcar discounts, the Freelancers Union membership is very much worth the cost (which is free).