simple cloud accounting software

Mobile Version coming shortly!

We are pleased to announce that we will shortly be releasing our mobile edition.

We have set ourselves some tough goals in being able to create invoices, record payments, track expenses, and instantly see how your business is doing on mobile devices.

Beginning with "smart" mobile phones, our aim is to be the first app to create and send invoices in seconds, without needing to navigate through many screens.

You can easily get to any part of the system with simple buttons as shown below:

billfaster employs an emerging standard in ease of use by employing the list button, to easily get to the main menu, while your current page "peeks out", so you always know where you are.

Initial functionality will be invoicing, recording payments, a business overview, contact and item management, with more following shortly.

We expect this to be available within the month, with App Store editions released before the end of the year.

Oh, and one more thing, our mobile edition, will be one of the only apps of this type to take full advantage of landscape mode!

the billfaster team

Deliveries and Customer Specific Notes

We are sometimes asked if we can add customer specific notes and payment terms to invoices.

You can easily achieve this by going to the Contacts page, and then adding your delivery instructions or payment terms for a selected customer.

These will then automatically appear in all invoices for that customer, which you can further edit if you like before sending.

Also in Contacts, you can set up delivery addresses,if different to billing address which can be used with the "Classic Ship To" invoice template.

A ready made delivery note inside your invoice!

the billfaster team

Refreshed Website

Refreshed website pages this morning,reflecting our focus on fast, simple cloud accounting and expense tracking.

Simplified navigation and added a short invoicing video, highlighting the speed and simplicity of our free invoicing offering.

Hope you like it!

We also included our partnerships with Startup America, and Enterprise Ireland

Startup America is a US government backed initiative, where resources and funding from key partners help startups get up and running.

billfaster is a proud partner along with FaceBook, LinkedIn, Google,HP and many others, all comitted to this great initiative, key to kickstarting the US economy.

Enterprise Ireland, the Irish government state agency helping small businesses grow globally, is a key investor in billfaster.

billfaster team

Order Processing Update

We have updated order processing for both Sales Order Processing and Purchase Order Processing

Previously you could only promote an estimate (quote) to an invoice, and the estimate "became" the invoice.

Now you have to option to promote and estimate to either an order or an invoice/bill

Now, we store history of estimates, orders and invoices.

This also means that billfaster will retain any changes made between quotes, orders, and invoices.

Tip: Did you know that you can search for order numbers and quotes from the "Search Current Invoices" box?

This means that you can easily find the original estimate and/or order that the invoice was generated for.

The same applies to quotes and orders!

billfaster team

billfaster has a new look!

billfaster has introduced a new streamlined look to make it easier to access any function you need.

All the menu options are on the left hand side of the page, and remain there at all times, and can be navigated by just clicking on your selection.

This means you no longer need to "Close" these pages. Just click the next area you wish to go to.

Below is a "before" and "after" image.

Navigation Changes:

* Customer Orders, Estimates, Recurring Invoices (which were on the Invoicing menu of the old system) is now directly under the MONEY IN menu on the left hand side of your screen.

* Cash Sales is now on the Other Income option under the MONEY IN menu on the left hand side of your screen.

*Bank Transfers (which was on the Cash Sales menu of the old system) is now under the ACCOUNTING menu on the left hand side of your screen.

* Supplier Orders, Estimates, Recurring Bills (which were on the Bills menu of the old system) is now directly under the MONEY OUT menu on the left hand side of your screen.

* Contacts, Time Tracking & Items can all be found in the new ADMINISTRATION menu on the left hand side of your screen.

Most screens operate as before, but there are some additional features, that should help you better organize your work.

For example: The Invoice Entry Screen (also known as the New Invoice screen), now shares the screen with the Invoice List. This way you never leave the Invoice Entry Screen, whenever you save a NEW Invoice it appears on the listing below yet still allows you to enter more invoices without any additional clicks.

This 'entry and listing screen' feature is evident throughout the system.

Also, note the BLUE UPWARD ARROW (see Customer Invoice Screen image above) , allows you to move the listing into Full Screen Mode.

Clicking a Blue Downward Arrow returns the entry screen.

Clicking the check-box option found on the lists, allows you to DELETE or ARCHIVE those entries.(see listings image)

The Expenses and Other Income (Cash Sales) screens give you the option to link a supplier (vendor) or customer account to business expenses and cash sales respectively. (see expense screen image below)

The Payments Screen has a new field 'Enter Amount Paid', allowing for quick payment entry.

Also, credit notes and payments on account can be allocated to existing outstanding invoices.

These are just some of the main user interface changes that we have made. New features will be discussed in our billfaster newsletter.

We welcome your feedback, let us know what you think!

billfaster team

billfaster – HPSU of the day....!!

A big thank you to The Daily Business Post for choosing billfaster as the High Potential Startup (HPSU) of the day on the 10th April 2012..! We were so delighted to receive this recognition and we would love to hear your feedback.

The article was written by Philip Connolly, highlighting the simplicity of billfaster to the sole traders and small businesses to manage their accounts without having any accounting knowledge.
Please click the link to read the full article:

Cheers!

billfaster team

billfaster at SxSW 2012

Flew into Austin on Wednesday, the 7th of March, after 22 hours travel from Dublin. 6.5 hour stopover in Atlanta created a new 'most boring' experience for us! Ate TGIF stuff not realizing how many times we would eat at a TGIF while in Austin! Still we were 'lucky' compared to others who took nearly 2 days to arrive.

Registering Thursday for SXSW took half an hour which taxed out usual impatience levels until we saw the queues on Friday. It triple wrapped around the whole convention centre (see here!) in fact half hour queues would be considered short as we would learn later.

Anyway there was a massive buzz around the city as it opens its doors to over 200,000 people over the next 10 days. Great bands, street music, mini villages were everywhere!

They say that more business is done at the parties than at official meetings. Of course we had to see if that was true! And so, that Thursday night, we were off to the FreshBooks party, somewhat both a competitor and potential partner to us. The “party” was outside in a ranch about 30 miles away from the convention centre. There was the longest queue for food and drinks - the cold weather forced us to the first bus back to Austin, with no food or drink :(

Thursday’s SxSW summarized:

tunein is a great app for streaming music!

FaceTime meet iMeet - exactly what we need to liaise with our Dublin office.

Super impressed with @startupamerica at SXSW - very organised & hosting some great events for startups! Attended 2 super ones at Hilton.
We saw Faster Design Decisions with Style Tiles presented by @samanthaToy at FastDesign http://www.styletil.es - Saves heaps of development time!! 'words can mean very different things to different people' from @samanthaToy at FastDesign
Recommended @abookapart for responsive design FastDesign

Going the extra mile!
Thursday evening we had decided that it might be a good idea to have billfaster tee shirts, so we called a few local places, to find they were all booked up. Obviously we weren't the only ones to leave it so late...
Chantel then found an online service: buildurshirt.com which could deliver within 2 days. It was super easy to design and upload logos, and prices were good. Unfortunately we had a problem on the checkout page so we called and left a message for some help. The following morning we received a call from Brandon who surprised us by offering to print 4 tee shirts free of charge.
Austin which normally has 300 days of sunshine, had more rain fall that Friday and Saturday than the previous 6 months! And Brandon from buildurshirt.com walked to our hotel to hand delivered the tee shirts! We had a coffee and a great chat and are really grateful to Brandon and buildurshirt.com for going the extra mile, literally!



Chantel, (not me ;)) must have brought the Irish weather with her since it pissed out of the heavens for that Friday and Saturday.
Friday, was the official first day, and we went to many amazing conferences and meet ups. Like many things in the USA the sheer size of it all was mind blowing! Evenings we're magic with Austin’s famous 6th Street music and buzz.
Friday evening we went to the Startup America live party which was a much better experience. It included live music from a great local band: Green River Ordinance. Scott Case CEO introduced Steve Case, Reed Hoffman, Steve Blank and even a telecast address from President Obama. Startup America is a great support for startups!



Telecast from President Barack Obama @ Startup America Celebration

Friday's SxSW summarized:

We were at the ‘A Celebration of American Startups’ event.

'Who needs sleep when you’ve got the startuplife'

All those in favor of crowd funding for businesses raise a hand - Steve Case

Make every book a platform' says @ReThinkBooks

@nowaitapp keeps you from standing in line

Reid Hoffman says "we're moving from information age to network age" so assemble the best team around you

PayPal’s New Digital Wallet Will Offer Personalized Deals, Flexible Payments, and more.

'iWallet' Is Headed To the iPhone

Magician Turns Isis Mobile Payment System Into Magic - http://mashable.com/2012/03/09/isis-mobile-payment-magic/

Saturday morning, 10 March, we are due to attend the Austin International Tech Summit at 9:00am.

We had bought a tiny umbrella the day before and dressed in our new billfaster tee shirts, set off on the 10 min walk to the convention centre. The umbrella was like holding a stamp over us to keep the rain off! We arrived like drowned rats!

Anyway, Ireland was up fourth on the itinerary with Minister Sean Sherlock and Simone Boswell, from Enterprise Ireland, and a few Irish companies presented 1 min overviews of their business.

Then we were off to an Irish pub :), Fado, to watch the rugby match: Ireland vs. Scotland, which we won of course :)

On Sunday, we were at the Google village - very impressed, especially by Discovery house. We also went to the foursquare party that night courtesy of our IDA friends :)

Monday morning, 12 March, was an early start for us at Startup America stand and we join the Enterprise Ireland stand later that morning, where we met Renee Blodgett.

While we were at SxSW, we met with Renee Blodgett, founder and editor of We Blog The World - a community blog network that shares story of various topics. She is also the founder of down the avenue - ‘bringing passion to technology, business and life’. These websites are great to read stories about cultures, technology, travel, politics and many more. We showed Renee the simplicity of billfaster and were delighted to hear that she would blog about us on We Blog The World. Here’s the link for the full article:http://bit.ly/IsCG2r - Thanks Renee!! :)

Our favorites at SxSW :

Startup America, Catch A Chevy, buildurshirt.com, IDA, We Blog The World, Enterprise Ireland

SxSW 2012, Austin Texas!!

Hi All..!!

The billfaster team are coming to see you at the South by South West (SxSW) Interactive trade shows in Austin, Texas for the first time and we are looking forward to be part of this great event. The SxSW Interactive festival are held from the 9th – 13th March 2011 in the Austin Convention Center.

This unique trade shows combine music, film and interactive industry together under one roof and it is one of the largest event hosts by SxSw. There will be hundreds of exhibitors showcasing their products and services. As part of Ireland SxSW 2012, billfaster is excited to be one of the exhibitors. SxSW is a great place for us to mingle around and meet with new people. This is definitely an awesome experience for us to bring back!

So if you are in town, come over to the Convention Center, stop by and say Hello! to the billfaster team! We will be in the interactive division of the trade show or should I say the ‘cool’ and ‘exciting’ side of the trade show :-)

Just to be sure that you won’t get lost in the Convention Center (it’s massive btw), I’ve highlighted where billfaster and the other Ireland SxSW team will be. Hope to see you there!!

billfaster team

South African Number

Simplicity - a mantra!

An upcoming update to billfaster, all editions.
Reading a Steve Jobs 1998 interview, where he told Business Week that:
 "That's been one of my mantras - focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex. You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it's worth it in the end because one you get there, you can move mountains."

This is especially true with the challenge facing us in billfaster when balancing simplicity and functionality.
We like to think that billfaster is simple to use, and the feedback from a recent survey was that our users do find it simpler to use than many other accounting systems.


With this in mind, our challenge is to increase functionality to give even greater benefits to our users, while making it even simpler to use than before.


Simplicity does not need to come at the expense of functionality.


Nor should functionality need to lose simplicity.


My mother recently asked me to show her how to use an old nokia mobile phone, which I thought would be no problem, but I found that it was actually harder to find a contact and make a phone call, than any of the current smartphones.
And I'm supposed to be tech savvy!

So what's coming?

Stay tuned for more on this :)

Have a great day.
Rod

A new look website for 2012

We have finally updated our website mid December last.

I remember being asked by fellow billfasters:  
How long would it take to update the website?

A week, I said, two at most.
With confidence.

In July 2011...


There are more opinions on how to update the website than stars in the sky.

Then there is the agreement bit.

The truth is, we were looking to reflect our simplicity mantra in our website.

We hope we achieved it.

Thanks a million to those of you who gave us feedback and encouragement and a special thanks to our customer Claire Haidar who stayed up very late one night to complete the testimonial video for us...

Rod

Managing Personal Expenses in billfaster

Hi All,
We have just added an update to handle recording personal expenses in billfaster.

To add a personal expense, ie paid from your personal credit card or cash, (rather than the company one!):

1. From the expenses screen, enter the Expense category, as normal.
2. From the Paid drop down, select PERSONAL EXPENSES
3. Enter the amount and "Save"

Cash Planning Released

Hi All,
Released first version of our cash planning addition to the Gold edition this morning.

In this version, you can create as many different cash plan scenarios as you wish, for as many different dates.

You can update Actuals from the system, and compare to the budget you have set.

Coming shortly, exporting to Excel.

the billfaster team...

New CRM activity added to Time Tracking

Managing your customers!

Working hard this last month getting a simple but useful CRM activity recording added to the Time Tracking section to more effectively manage your customer interaction.
We have defaulted common CRM projects and task for all editions.
The bronze edition now includes a new report on Project Task Activity hours.
The Silver edition now includes CRM acvitiy recording, which follows our "simple by example" mantra.
For example, you may want to track store visits, follow up on orders, and see what stores have not been visited or planned to be visited for a particular period.

To achieve this, simply follow the following steps:

You can optionally assign a next step that will automatically create a new entry for you, where you can reassign or change dates etc.

You can also add notes, and flag completed.

In reports, go to CRM Activity by Customer and you can see at a glance:

                All visits that have been assigned and whether complete.

                The last visits assigned and complete.

                Any stores not visited this month, or at any time.

                Hours spent on these activities.

               

We welcome your feedback...

Rod

Sign up faster than 26 seconds!

Signing up made even simpler!

We believed we were the fastest to securely sign up a new account, with a recent clock in of just 26 seconds!
But that did not stop us from trying to further simplify the process. And we have...
Previously, a new user signed up with billfaster, then checked their email and clicked the activation link.
They then simply entered their password, selected their country, and activated their account.
And they were good to go!

Well now we have made it even easier!
Now a new user signs up and enters their password, and selects the country, and immediately begins to use billfaster. They have up to 7 days to activate their account, by clicking the link.

By the way, why activate? Well this enhances the security by confirming the email address used for billfaster login, as well as ensuring unique primary login addresses for each billfaster account.

Multi User now available

We released the ability to invite users and set  different roles this week.
This is particularly useful to accountants who have multiple clients running billfaster.

From the Settings page, a billfaster Aministrator can set up a new user and role in seconds, and securely invite them to become a user of their billfaster account.
The user, e.g. an accountant then activates their login to that account, and can access those areas of billfaster allowed by that role.

The Administrator can easily change roles or cancel the users account at any time.
The user sets their own password, which can never be accessed by the Administrator, ensuring maximum security for all billfaster users.

In this way, an accountant uses a single login and password to instantly access all client accounts!
See previous blog post for a summary of the different roles.

 

Multi User coming to Gold this month

Hi All!

Cash Planning - for all occasions!

Have you ever not wanted to look at you bank account, because you are afraid what you'll find?
Same if you use a credit card?

Now why do you think that might be :)

Could it be that there is often some payment or other you have forgotten about, that comes out every month?

There is usually a time lag between the bills you receive and when the payments are actually made.

If you look at your bank account before the payments are made, you can often forget that more has to come out, and so you think you have more available than you do!

And what do most of us do then? Spend it of course! Then,  next time we go to the bank we see that we have less than we thought.

And that is why we often are reluctant to look at our bank balances!
Don't you agree?

This is where cash planning comes in!

Cash planning allows you to easily see ahead and get a truer picture of your cash flow.
It also allows you to set targets, or budgets, and see how your business is performing against them.

We will be shortly adding a new cash planning feature to the system to help you get an instant view of your cash requirements and focus shortly. Stay tuned :)

billfaster apprentice 2011

background:

billfaster limited provides an online simple business system for start-ups and small businesses globally. With users in over 70 countries, we are currently seeking to grow our full-time team in the digital marketing area.

billfaster apprentice:

The billfaster Apprentice is a competition for digital marketers to showcase their skills in the global online space. But don’t worry, no one will be fired, or quizzed! We are offering the winner full time employment and the opportunity to excel as part of our dynamic team in building a global presence through digital marketing in the small business sector.

challenge:

The challenge is to sign-up at least 1000 active users of the billfaster system between the 30th May 2011 to 8th July 2011. The winner will be announced on 15th Jul 2011.

winners prize:

Full time role in digital marketing with attractive salary and benefits. The opportunity to excel in this exciting and growing area of global marketing initiatives.

Internship:

The billfaster Apprentice is a six week internship where all participants get to apply their marketing knowledge and gain valuable work experience. The ability to utilise social networks, forums, blogs, links, targeted portals, and SEO would be an advantage.

contact us:

Anyone, who feels that they have the appropriate skill-set to tap into the online market, can apply to apprentice@billfaster.com.

billfaster invoicing challenge!

We wanted to see if there was any faster way to send invoices than with www.billfaster.com!

Here is one attempt!

Please let us know if you have any other ways!

Welcome!