GigaOM » Collaboration

Create Freshbooks Invoices in Salesforce

Simon Mackie — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 22:00:02 +0000

Online invoicing service FreshBooks today announced a new integration with Salesforce, enabling Salesforce users to automatically bill through FreshBooks without leaving the Saleforce interface.

This new integration is possible through the use of a third-party app, DataSynch OnDemand for FreshBooks & Salesforce. Made by Pervasive Software, it’s available in the Saleforce AppExchange and costs $19.95 per user per month.

The app synchronizes data between FreshBooks and Salesforce, providing the ability to:

Insert Salesforce accounts into FreshBooks as clients and vice versa
Use Salesforce to generate estimates and invoices in FreshBooks and vice versa
Automatically create FreshBooks invoices/estimates when an opportunity is marked as “closed-won” in Salesforce

This Salesforce integration adds to a very long list of applications now integrated with FreshBooks. The company seemingly wants to integrate its product with as many other apps as it can; indeed, it was one of the founding members of the Small Business Web initiative, which seeks to build closer ties between its members’ apps. It’s a smart policy to have, because users are increasingly faced with a “patchwork quilt” of web apps (GigaOM Pro link, sub. req.) that focus on very specific tasks. Using such a varied number of tools can prove cumbersome and result in “data silos” if vendors don’t provide easy-to-use integrations via the use of APIs, so the efforts of FreshBooks should be applauded. It’s just a shame this particular integration (a much-requested feature) is only available though the use of an app that requires paying a significant monthly fee.

What integrations between apps would you like to see?

Related GigaOM Pro content (sub. req.): Enterprise 2.0: Web Apps and the Patchwork Quilt Problem

Web Work 101: 10 Apps You Can’t Do Without — Redux

Aliza Sherman — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 18:00:50 +0000

Last March, I wrote a piece about the 10 apps a web worker can’t do without. A year later, and the app landscape has shifted significantly, so here’s an updated list of what I consider to be the best solutions for our critical tasks in 2010.

Backoffice

1. Invoice management

Freshbooks is still an excellent invoicing service, but there are some new and some improved invoicing apps in this space, such as:

You can also track expenses with:

Expensify (see our review here)

And add functionality to your online invoicing:

OfficeDrop (includes Freshbooks integration. See my review here)

Also check out Celine’s piece on managing your finances online. If you are looking for solutions for creating and managing contracts, check out Celine’s roundup of contract resources. You may also want to check out Outright, a bookkeeping and tax prep tool that Scott reviewed.

2. Time tracking

Need to get a handle on how much time you’ve spent on a particular project or task? There are apps for that — some standalone, some that integrate with your invoicing systems, and some like Where is My Time that help you to analyze how the time flew by and how productive you were during that time. Here are some others:

Klok
BubbleTimer
toggl
Paymo (tracking with invoicing)
Intervals (plus task and project management)
RescueTime (with time management and project tracking. See our review here.)

And in the time-, cash- and distance-tracking category, take a peek at 1DayLater (see our review here).

3. Social CRM

Here are some startups that provide useful Social CRM products:

For quick contact information exchange, I love the Poken social business card and am so disappointed that they aren’t taking off like I think they should. I wear my cute skull Poken at every conference I go to but have yet to get “poked” unless Poken is a conference sponsor.

I’m also keen on Bump for the iPhone and Android, and also covered some other contact sharing apps in this roundup: DropCard, Rmbrme, BeamMe, ShareCard, SnapDat.

At SXSW, I was given a very impressive demo of relationship management tool Gist (see our review here) that promised a lot, though I have yet to incorporate it into my daily work.

4. RSS Reader

I don’t know about you, but I’m over RSS readers. But to be fair to those who have yet to discover the social firehose, you could go with the ever-popular Google Reader and the novelty of Snackr, which puts a little ticker at the bottom of your computer screen for passive, almost subliminal consumption of your feeds.

And here are a few other popular feed readers:

Filtrbox (see my initial review here)
Netvibes (this is really more of a “build your own landing page” service that incorporates feed reading features)
Feedly (a similar landing page service)

For saving articles to read later, I currently use a combination of Delicious, Instapaper, and “favoriting” tweets containing links on Twitter.

Communications

5. Email management Social communications management

I have changed the heading of this section because I find that my communications are no longer mainly taking place through email, and are increasingly moving into my social networks.

While I am trying to move away from Gmail and start using email management tool PostBox again (its attachment management tools make it a compelling option for me), I am also looking out other social communications management systems and apps.

I was panicked to find Threadsy — the intriguing integrated communications client that you could use to see your email, social networks, and Twitter in a single place — under “re-construction” but have signed up to see what is happening with the app.

You might also like to check out a few email productivity add-ons we’ve reviewed, such as Xobni, Rapportive and MailBrowser.

6. Calls, Conferencing and Instant Messaging

Right now, my company has been moving away from Skype. Although we all love the app, it seems to drops our calls almost constantly now. We are moving back to the old-fashioned telephone for calls, while for conferencing we have been using FreeConference.com.

Here are a few phone conferencing and webinar-style conferencing systems that I also use:

Note that I didn’t include WebEx in the list. I am convinced that the company, which once dominated this space, has had a hard time keeping pace with the more nimble startups.

One other phone-related service that my company is trying is eVoice, because we need a virtual PBX system that can accommodate our UK office as well as multiple U.S. locations. Unfortunately, I don’t have enough experience with it yet to tell you how it is working for us. Stay tuned.

Work Process

7. Project management

My company first used Basecamp for project management before switching to 5pm. Today, I’m seriously checking out glasscubes as it provides project management together with collaborative space. It is much lighter on the project management side — it’s really just a task management app — but I’m getting a feel for the company’s interesting take on how virtual groups can work better together. More on that soon, too.

Just for giggles and grins, check out my old post about this topic: “Project Management, Collaboration and How Our Brains Work.”

8. Calendars and Schedules

I’m excited about the web-based services that allow me to give out a link to my calendar — or just a portion of my calendar — so people can get on my schedule. But as my post about a scheduling bungle at SXSW due to system time zone issues, I know that there is still no single tool that “does it all.”

Still, here is a quick rundown of a few tools I’m still using or trying out:

TimeBridge and their Meetwith.me feature
TimeDriver
Tungle
ScheduleOnce

9. Cloud-based collaboration/document sharing

While I still use Google Docs, some fundamental integration issues are making me look elsewhere. As I mentioned earlier, my company is currently experimenting with glasscubes.

Here are a few others:

iWork.com (from Apple)
Zoho
Colaab (see our review here)
Backboard (useful for feedback on docs and files)

And I know you’re going to think this is kooky, but the 2.0 version of Spinscape combines mind mapping principles and collaborative communications in a way that is quite compelling to me.

10. File storage/backup/sync

Take a look at SugarSync. It provides backup, file sync and file sharing “on-the-go” on any Mac, PC or mobile device (check out my review here). Here are some other useful options:

A newbie in the “active backup” and file storage space is Soonr, which also has Mac, PC and mobile capabilities.

What are some of the must-have applications you’ve found invaluable in your own web work?

stock.xchng images by johnnyberg, gun, toutouke

Related GigaOM Pro content (sub. req.): Enabling the Web Work Revolution

OfficeDrop Incorporates Contextual Files Into Freshbooks Invoices

Aliza Sherman — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 14:56:50 +0000

How many times have you sent an invoice to a client, and then they ask for more details or supporting documents to detail your work for them? Now tying specific files to your invoices can be a cinch with OfficeDrop (formerly called Pixily, which we covered in 2008) and the application’s new integration with Freshbooks, the online accounting solution.

OfficeDrop is a paper and document management application. You can manage your files (both scanned paper documents and digital files) by document or by folder, but as OfficeDrop uses text-searchable PDFs it also becomes a “search engine for paper.” It also offers an enterprise-level mail-in digitization service and can do from dozens up to millions of pages.

At this time, OfficeDrop is the first document management application integrated with Freshbooks. You can store your documents in OfficeDrop, then right in a pulldown menu you can assign documents to Freshbooks invoices, so that the final invoice you email to your client contains links to specific documents related to the invoice itself, such as a contract. If you’re an independent contractor, for example, you could attach a related proposal and timeline to the invoice. If you’re a graphic designer, you could attach an image. If you’re a freelance writer, you could attach your article drafts. Your client can view attached documents as PDFs or in their original form.

Keeping your documents organized in OfficeDrop is a breeze. You can sort your OfficeDrop documents by folders, subfolders and labels (similar to tags) and then easily search your files for, say, contracts or proposals. OfficeDrop uses a straightforward file tree format for organizing files, and you can share your files in a granular manner; down to the document, or an entire folder containing subfolders and documents. For example, you could share an entire folder of your expense reports and related receipts organized by month with your bookkeeper. You can securely share your files with multiple people or even share files publicly, such as by embedding a link to a support document in your blog. You can also email files into folders with specific labels.

Do you use OfficeDrop? Has it helped you move to a paperless office?

7 Handy iPhone Apps For Your Work

Aliza Sherman — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 15:00:02 +0000

We at WebWorkerDaily review a lot of web apps. Since many of us — and many of you — have iPhones, I like to keep tabs on web apps we’ve written about, to see whether they get a companion iPhone app. So here’s a list of seven useful iPhone apps for some of the better web apps that we’ve reviewed.

Shoeboxed. Organize your receipts and business cards through this service (see our review here). With the web app, you scan in what you want to save and organize or mail in your “shoebox” of items to scan and let Shoeboxed do it for you. The results are searchable and easy to organize. With the iPhone app, you can take a photo to digitize a receipt or card.
Evernote. The Evernote browser bookmarklet makes it easy to save all or portions of a web page to categorize content and images (see our review here). The Evenote iPhone app lets you do the same with a snap of your iPhone camera, create notes and record audio memos.
Bento. If you’re using the personal FileMaker Pro application (see our review here), you might want to try the iPhone app which can operate as a standalone app or sync with your desktop version. You can get mobile access to your Bento libraries and collections, create new records, edit details, sort data, and modify forms.
Freshbooks. If you’re looking for easy invoicing, Freshbooks is a great solution (see our coverage of the app here). You can use the MiniBooks app to sync with your Freshbooks account and manage invoices, time, and other related functionality.
Task2Gather. Gather, manage and share your tasks, subtasks and projects for yourself and your team (see our review here). Sync the iPhone app with the free Task2Gather desktop application and manage tasks on the go.
SugarSync. Work in the cloud, collaborate, back up and sync important documents across all platforms and key devices with this pervasive application (see our review here). View and share files on your iPhone to keep the work flowing, even if you’re not near your computer.
TimeBridge.While TimeBridge sets out to be your meeting and conference call one-stop solution (see our review here), the iPhone app gives you control of your meetings while you’re traveling. Call in and handle business on the go.

And a little something extra: Starbucks has not one but two iPhone apps, so you can find the Starbucks nearest you and even build a perfect drink that you can share with friends. Then use your iPhone and the Starbucks Card Mobile to pay for your java (in selected stores) and manage your account. I’ll take my cuppa joe with extra cream, please.

What is your favorite web application with a companion iPhone app, and why?

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LessConf Interview: Mike McDerment, Freshbooks

Nancy Nally — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 18:00:56 +0000

Mike McDerment is the co-founder and CEO of Freshbooks. I caught up with him at the recent LessConf event in Jacksonville, Fla, to chat about Freshbooks’ focus, whether you can trust web apps with your data, and working with family members.

Do you work with family members? How does it work out for you?

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MiniBooks: Putting FreshBooks On the iPhone and iPod Touch

Meryl K Evans — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 20:00:02 +0000

FreshBooks users with iPhones or iPod Touches can now manage their FreshBooks account while on the go with MiniBooks, an app from Groovy Squared. The app synchronizes with your FreshBook account, so you can access your data even if you lose your network connection.

MiniBooks comes with the following features:

Clients: Search for clients and contact them with the iPhone’s phone and email applications.
Invoices: Create, edit, search, view and email invoices from within the app. You can also view the status of the invoice and record payments.
Timers: Start and stop timers that can track multiple activities on one screen. Active timers will keep running even if you close MiniBooks.
Estimates: Create, edit and email estimates that you can turn into invoices.

If you don’t already have a FreshBooks account, you’ll need to sign up for one before downloading MiniBooks. MiniBooks can’t synchronize taxes or give staff members access to FreshBooks, due to limitations on the FreshBooks backend. The free MiniBooks Lite version limits you to three clients, while the full version retails for $14.99.

Do you use a billing app on your phone? What do you use?

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Outright Teams Up With PayPal & Expensify to Ease Your Bookkeeping Woes

Scott Blitstein — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 14:00:05 +0000

The tools that we use to run our businesses and organize our lives are supposed to make thing easier. We choose them because we identify a need — a pain point — and are looking for a solution. In my experiences working with small business, bookkeeping is a common area where most folks are looking for some help.

In my review of bookkeeping and tax prep service Outright back in April, I highlighted not only its ease of use, but also its ability to play nicely and communicate with other apps. As a bookkeeping app is just a part of the chain of tracking income and expenses, these connections to your existing data are critical and keep data entry times to an absolute minimum.

I’m thrilled to hear that the Outright folks are extending this reach, with two major additions to the list of apps that Outright is compatible with being released today. Both should really help the typical small business keep finances and expenses in check.

I would imagine it’s safe to say that the majority of small businesses use a credit card for purchasing supplies and for most of their day-to-day expenses. The convenience, delayed payments and rewards programs make them a favored option. This new partnership with Expensify, which we covered while it was in beta a few weeks back, allows you to now directly import your credit card transactions right into Outright on a nightly basis. It even puts your expenses into the appropriate Schedule C categories.

Also announced today is the ability to directly access your PayPal information from within Outright. Given the number of small businesses that use PayPal for payment processing (both expenses and invoicing), this should make tracking those transactions considerably easier.

The authentication methods differ for these integrations. The Expensify authorization requires you to input your user name and passwords for your bank sites. This information isn’t retained by Outright, while Expensify is a full PCI Compliant application with permissions to only read your data, not to perform any transactions.

The PayPal integration, on the other hand, uses a method similar to the OAuth protocol used by Twitter. When initiating the connection, you are taken to the PayPal site to log in which then passes back an authentication token back to Outright delegating the proper permissions.

I make the distinction because while I believe all necessary precautions are considered and in place for either method, I appreciate how Outright is pushing for easier and more secure data connection processes and using those whenever possible.

These new integrations add to the existing hooks already in place with Freshbooks, Shoeboxed and eBay, providing a wide spectrum of data connections to get the bulk of your data directly into Outright without duplicating your data entry efforts.

Also revamped is the reporting and graphing engine used in Outright. If I have had any criticism of Outright in the past it was that, other than the outstanding Schedule C report it generates, the reporting options have been lacking. It has always been somewhat difficult to view the data in any format other than the defaults. The new graph formats are much more comprehensive, and data filtering options allow for a more customized experience.

New users to the service will be greeted with a nice wizard-like process to get up and running quickly. If you arrive armed with the account information you need, it shouldn’t take more than a few minutes to get your accounts connected and have an almost immediate glimpse into your business financial health. Existing users can access these new connections from their account management screen.

In the big picture view, this is really just an another incremental step for Outright as integration with other apps is at the forefront of their strategy. Outright and the other members of The Small Business Web are doing wonderful things together to make our day-to-day experiences using web software easier and more productive.

Registration and use of Outright is free, although there are plans to offer paid plans in the future.

Do these new hooks into Expensify and PayPal make Outright a more attractive option for you?

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A Comparison of Freshbooks vs. Harvest vs. Blinksale

Simon Mackie — Thu, 14 May 2009 20:00:03 +0000

With so many invoicing web apps available (many of them covered here on WebWorkerDaily), choosing one can be a daunting task. Even limiting your options to the most popular services doesn’t help that much, as the costs of the various plans vary so little. So we were excited to see that Stuart Bowness, of Victoria, B.C.-based design studio Simple Station, has posted a useful comparative review of three of the most popular invoicing apps: Freshbooks, Havest and Blinksale.

Bowness used the apps in his business for about a year each, and his in-depth, insightful observations of the merits and issues with each of the services are based on long-term, real-world usage and worth noting.

Especially interesting are his notes of problems or quirks with each of the apps, which could be very handy when it comes to picking the right service for your business. According to Bowness, Freshbooks’ time tracking is “difficult when you have multiple employees,” its project management is “dismal” and its reports “suck.” Blinksale, meanwhile, offers neither integrated time tracking nor the ability to integrate with a payment gateway, he says, and cannot create estimates. Harvest is similarly unable to create estimates or integrate with a payment gateway, according to Bowness, and recurring invoices are not handled that well. And he finds it “ridiculous” that SSL support is only available with the $90-per-month plan.

Freshbooks is the most feature-rich, Bowness notes, but while it does everything, he says that it “doesn’t do anything particularly well” and its interface is not intuitive. And Blinksale is perfect if you are a freelancer, but not if you have staff. Bowness’ personal favorite is Harvest, which delivers simplicity while boasting a substantial feature set (although not as complete as Freshbooks’).

Which do you prefer: Harvest, Freshbooks or Blinksale?

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To Pay Or Not to Pay: When to Move Beyond Free

Aliza Sherman — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 16:00:00 +0000

The other day I noticed that someone had posted a quick poll on LinkedIn. I thought a poll like that might be a good tool to use for informal market research, so I clicked on the link to create my own. However, I was met with a message saying that I needed to upgrade my account to access the polling feature. I perused the prices, then quickly determined I wasn’t going to upgrade.

This isn’t the first time I’ve considered upgrading my LinkedIn account and decided against it, which led me to start thinking about all of the “freemium” apps — basically free apps with premium upgrades — I’ve been using. I started feeling guilty about taking advantage of the “free” in freemium services, especially because I’ve had the opportunity to interview founders of these companies, many of whom confess to struggling over pricing. So what makes us decide to pay for an app?

My decision process works something like this:

1. Is it mission critical? Not every app or tool I use is critical to the well-being of my company, but some are. Our project management system? Critical. Our internal social networking system? Not so critical, because we’ve not all adopted it yet, but this could change.

2. How useful is the free version? In my WWD review, I was impressed that Deskaway‘s free version had more features than Basecamp‘s. That could have won me over, but its interface just didn’t work for me.

3. Can I live without more functionality? I used Basecamp for quite a while without ever thinking about the reporting available with a paid plan. I was getting my reports from Freshbooks, and Basecamp was just a way for me to manage client information when I was working solo. I only upgraded to the $24 per month plan when I needed to manage more projects. Payment made sense because I had so much more new work to cover the expense.

4. Should I upgrade and pay or seek out a different app? Once I began adding more team members to my company, Basecamp’s inadequacies for deeper project management became obvious. So instead of upgrading a notch or two further — and still not having the functionality we needed — we moved over to 5pm at $4/month more. Again, the cost was palatable because more team members meant greater productivity and more moving parts to manage, so it made good business sense.

5. Do the fee levels hit my sweet spot? I realize I have two tiers of apps that I am willing to pay for, each with its own sweet spot in terms of pricing. For apps that benefit the overall smooth functioning of my business and provide real value that I can quantify, I’ll pay around $25 per month. I feel comfortable having four of these. The second tier contains apps that are useful in some aspect of my work, and I’ll subscribe to up to five of these at $10 per month. That’s about my limit. Right now, I don’t have a real method for deciding how much I will pay — it’s all from the gut. But we’re working to measure the costs of doing business and the impact our apps have on our bottom line, so eventually I should have some real numbers to work with.

6. How entrenched am I? In some cases, I begin to feel “trapped” by the choice I made initially when I started with an app. If I need to upgrade and the next level is out of my price range, what then? When I left Basecamp, I couldn’t easily figure out how to migrate information over to 5pm, so I just downgraded my membership to a free plan, and now cannot figure out how to access my data so it just sits there. Over time, those assets will be outdated and no longer as valuable as they were the first months of the migration, but I still feel a sense of my data being trapped. Avoiding this trapped feeling — as well as avoiding a huge learning curve of a new app — are two big factors when deciding whether to move to another service.

7. Can I afford not to pay? If an app I’m using has a positive effect on my business’ bottom line–or moving away from it has a significant negative impact–then I’m much more likely to dish out the cash.

Back to the case of LinkedIn. The lowest monthly upgrade is $24.95. Per month. For me, that hits a sour note. I get so much benefit out of LinkedIn at the free level and have for years that there is no incentive for me to pay. Just missing out on that Quick Poll feature isn’t enough to entice me over to a paid plan.

All LinkedIn could do right now to win my paying business — possibly — is to remove the free level altogether. But by doing that, their entire business foundation would crumble as many people migrate quickly away.

How do you decide whether an app is worth paying for? Which services do you consider well worth paying for?

Image by stock.xchng user jana_koll

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Simple Bookkeeping, Easy Tax Prep Make Outright Really Shine

Scott Blitstein — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 14:00:10 +0000

As we approach April 15th and tax time, it is normal for us to think about how we maintain our books and evaluate if our current process is working for us.

While there’s no shortage of accounting programs available, with varying levels of complexity and pricing, it can be difficult for a small shop to find the right solution. Focusing on ease of use and integration with other web apps, Outright is a great choice for web workers.

In reality, the accounting needs of the average solo web worker are usually pretty modest. Record the money in (income) versus your money out (expenses) and be prepared to pay your taxes when they’re due.

At its core, Outright is a basic web service designed to allow you to easily track your expenses and income. Using a familiar check register interface, you enter in transaction details and get quick and simple access to the general health of your business.

As a member of the Small Business Web initiative I wrote about recently, Outright integrates well with FreshBooks, the invoicing app, and Shoeboxed, the receipt organizer (both also SBW members).

In fact, it is when used in conjunction with these other apps that Outright really stands out. While it has all the right things to make data entry easy, like auto-complete and keyboard shortcuts, nothing could be easier than having your existing invoice and expense data imported automatically. When connected to your Freshbooks or Shoeboxed accounts, all transactions are updated nightly and even maintain a link connection so you can get to the original source quickly.

There are some challenges with this integration, though. For example, Outright exclusively uses the categories from Schedule C but since Shoeboxed doesn’t have that limitation, there are instances when it is necessary to manually re-assign a category to synced records.

I think the folks at Outright don’t stress enough the tax preparation angle when describing the usefulness of their service. With email reminders when quarterly payments are due, estimated payment amounts and a really handy Schedule C printout, using Outright just for the tax preparation functionality alone might make great sense.

If you’re already using Freshbooks or Shoeboxed, then getting an Outright account is almost a no-brainer. But even if you’re not using these apps, then Outright is still a very good choice for basic expense and income tracking.

oDesk integration was also recently added, and I imagine support for other apps is coming soon, so it might be a good idea to check in occasionally and see if they are supporting your app of choice.

Outright is free during the beta period and works wherever you have a browser and Internet connection.

How do you manage your books?

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