Running a small business is tough. It doesn’t matter if you’re starting your business, growing it or just keeping alive there is nothing easy about it. As the owner everything falls on you and sometimes its overwhelming and you want to through the towel in. Don’t ! Here’s a tip on how to deal with those days: Go-To-The-Well. You can call it the well of inspiration, the well of persistence or the well of patience, but everyone has somewhere they can go to juice-up and get going again.

The key is knowing what your well is. For me its time with my peers. A good chat with a trusted fellow entrepreneur helps to blow away the frustration and put things in perspective. For others its family time, a hike in the woods or a good book. Ultimately, its your job to know  your well and know when to go there!

Your thoughts?

billFLO Ian

Well, whadya think? Should you stalk customers?

For many years, Intuit has had a program where they follow users home and watch them use QuickBooks and Quicken in their homes. If that’s not stalking, I dont know what is! (Ok..our lawyer says I have to clarify that Intuit actually pays their customers for their time so it’s all above board!). Our friends at Freshbooks stalk their customers in a different way - they follow them to dinner (Whats that? Oh, right. My legal eagle says I should point out the fine folks at Freshbooks actually buy their customers dinner and drinks too!).  You get the point though, customer stalking is important and worth paying for. About 3 months ago, I was reminded of the value of “customer stalking” when I spent a morning with a customer of ours.

Actually, hold on for a second.  That catholic, Irish guilt is getting to me. I have to come clean (clears throat…) The customer stalking title was just to get you to read my post. There, I said it.  The real point is a little less exciting but way more important if you want to build a succesful product. So lets get to it.

The particular customer I was visiting really feels the pain that billFLO eliminates. So I was looking forward to watching them use billFLO and compliment us on how great it is. I watched as the customer spent a couple of minutes copying 10 or so billFLO invoices to billFLO buyer from their email client. Great, I thought, now we’re ready to start the billFLO show. These folks will be blown away. A couple of questions, followed by a couple of clicks and all the billFLO invoices are imported. That was quick and easy, I’m thinking.

Me: “So, what do you think?”

Cusomer: “I like not having all the paper”

Me: Good, I think. ”Anything else”

Customer: “Well, its not that much quicker than the way I normally do it”

Me: WHOA. Hang-on. What are you talking about you fool? A couple of clicks and you were done. Pause… Mmm, lets stay calm here, and try to work this out. “Tell me some more”

Cusomer: “Well, copying the invoices from my email takes a while”

Me: WHAT? just because you use a crappy email client that doesnt copy multiple files at once, you think billFLO is slow? What are you smoking? “Oh, I see”.

I left soon after and to be honest, I was pissed-off. It wasnt quite the self-congratulary buzz I had hoped for. What I did learn though, is customers define the user-experience, not us. We’ve since launched a new version of billFLO that streamlines this process significantly for the user. 

LESSON? Deliver the best experience as defined by your customer (and stalk them ethically!)

Hot on the heels of yesterday’s announcement, we’ve got more Goodies! This time it’s for billFLO buyer users . Today we’re announcing billFLO buyer supports approval workflow, rule-based importing and email receipt of invoices! Can I get wOOT wOOt!

Email Receipt of Invoices - when your vendors send your billFLO and PDF bills to your new billFLO email address, the bills will show up automatically in billFLO!

Approval Workflow - Is there an invoice a co-worker needs to see before you pay it? No problem, send her an approval request to review the invoice. She can review and approve it in her browser. (Check out the vid below of approvals in action)

Rule-Based Importing - billFLO now analyses invoices as they are received, according to your rules, to pre-assign accounting info (account, project, etc) and require approvals as needed.  Now, when your rules have been satisfied you can import all those invoices with a single click!

And, one more piece of good news. We usually roll out new releases by accounting system, but not this time. Our dev team has been working super hard (thanks guys!) to make these features available for ALL our users as of today.   

You can get this release of billFLO buyer here or just open billFLO buyer and you’ll be prompted to download the new version. Enjoy!

Wouldn’t it be rewarding to be able to make a living helping your local community? There’s a shining example of a business that does just that - your local hardware store. Here’s a place where customers can buy that lamp for the christmas tree lights, get advice on their next DIY project and even get special stuff ordered in for them (try that at Home Depot!).

What’s probably not apparent though, is that in the back office the hardware store owner is struggling under mounds of paper invoices. Every hammer, trash can and piece of timber ordered results in an invoice! In some cases a mom-and-pop store will have a full time bookkeeper just to deal with the invoices.

So, we’re extra happy to announce today that we’ve got something to make hardware store owners life easier. We’re expanding the billFLO invoice network to enable Do it Best store owners receive their invoices electronically with the billFLO buyer service. That’s right, the network of 4,100 independently owned Do it Best stores can now receive all their Do it Best invoices in billFLO format, straight to their PC. Enjoy!

Since our last big launch we’ve been inundated with requests from eager Accounting System Vendors looking to add billFLO functionality to their offerings. So, I’m happy to announce, that today we’re making billFLO machine readable invoices available to every small business with the launch of our billFLO seller API!

Our launch partner for the API, Clarity Accounting, deployed billFLO in just a few hours for their customers. So, start lobbying your accounting system provider to get you billFLO invoices!

Find out more at www.billflo.com/developer.php

billFLO Ian

On October 21st, The Irish Network of San Francisco will hold a panel event entitled “Irish Entrepreneurs in the Bay Area” at which our CEO, Ian Sweeney will be speaking. This promises to be a great event with Ian joining a group of accomplished entrepreneurs . More information is available at the Irish Network of San Francisco website.

Ben Kepes of CloudAve and I have talked previously about making Small Business data common, as a means of allowing it to move where it needs to. This post is somewhat of a response to his post earlier today and another earlier one about OAccounts.

There seems to be a misconception that data needs to be standardized to protect the small business customer.  If everything is standardized then the customer can move wherever they want with their data. The problem is that’s not how it works in reality. 

Lets talk some real-world data portability needs: 

1) Operations Data - Moving operations data is all about freeing a business’s data to flow (intra-company) to the apps they use. This enables the product or service to be delivered most efficiently. 

2) Data Migration - If I want to move from QuickBooks to PeachTree, or MailChimp to Vertical Response I want to take my data with me.

3) Transactional Data - This data is shared inter-, rather than intra- company like Payments, Purchase Orders and Invoices.

The advent of the XML/Restful API means the operations data is being freed up at a very rapid rate. Intuit’s IPP and the Small Business Web are focused on this area. (Disclosure: billFLO is both an Intuit Developer and a member of the Small Business Web). What’s great about this is that the data is not standardized, it’s just fully accessible and open. Take what you need and use it however you want.

The data migration issue is moving a little slower. Some of that boils down to motivation on the part of the incumbents (Do I want to spend time building a back door so my customer can leave?). However, when the data is simple like a feed list or a calendar, standards do work (opml and iCal as examples). But, if we’re talking about complex data, like the data stored in an accounting system - standards don’t work. They are too time-consuming for the vendor to implement and the benefit isn’t there (Updated: A point Dennis Howlett appears to agree with in this old post). The good news is, the API that’s being used to get the operations data exposes all the data you need to migrate to a new app.  

Transactional data is a mixed bag. Payments are obviously automated on proprietary networks. On the other hand, procurement transactions (invoices, purchase orders, etc) have long resisted automation despite many attempts (EDI, ebXML, UBL).  Again, the data is complex and integrating to EDI is a pain. The payback simply isn’t there for the SMB vendors even though the pain is there for the customers. Again the right solution is make the data open, via an API, and let 3^rd party vendors like ourselves do the leg-work of integrations.

It boils down to this. If the data is simple, a standard works. If it’s in any way complex (or is complex to get), open access to the data is the way to go. Either way, the customer gets data-portability.

Your thoughts?

billFLO Ian

- Invoice Batching: Instead of a customer receiving one email for each invoice, billFLO seller now batches the invoices in one file and attaches it to a single invoice. This makes it a single- action for the customer to add the invoices to billFLO buyer.

- When customizing emails, added the ability to customize the subject line.

- Fixed bug where PDF Invoices were marked as paid even if they were only partially paid.

- Fixed bug where “Pay Url” value would persist in the billFLO invoice when not selected in preferences

And, billFLO seller continues to be one of the quickest and easiest ways to email invoices from QuickBooks.

To get your free copy, simply click here and select QuickBooks Desktop from the Accounting System drop down menu. To upgrade to this new version, click Check-for-Update under the Help Menu and follow the prompts.

- A significantly streamlined User Interface

- “My billFLO Stats” to keep track of your billFLO usage

- Support for sending billFLO invoices via the billFLO email server or your own email server

And, billFLO seller continues to be one of the quickest and easiest ways to email invoices from QuickBooks.

To get your free upgrade, simply click here and select QuickBooks Desktop from the Accounting System drop down menu.

Please let us know how you like it!

billFLO Ian