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 10^th 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: http://www.businesspost.ie/#!story/Small+Business/Startup+Of+The+Day/HPSU+startup+of+the+day%3A+Billfaster/id/19410615-5218-4f83-e523-66dca1986279

Cheers!

billfaster at SxSW 2012

Flew into Austin on Wednesday, the 7^th 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 L

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!

Right click http://billfasterblog.blogspot.com/ to read the full article :-) ....

Brandon from buildurshirt.com

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 http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/09/paypals-new-digital-wallet-will-offer-personalized-deals-flexible-payment-spending-and-more/ 
•  'iWallet' Is Headed To the iPhone - http://mashable.com/2012/03/09/iwallet-apple-patent-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 9^th – 13^th 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!!

South African Number

Hello South Africa!

We are delighted to announce that we can now be contacted at a Johannesburg local number (011) 0838308. 

So, when dialing from South Africa, just enter 0110838308 and if you are dialing from a neighboring country dial +27 110838308.

We look forward to hearing from our fellow South Africans, even if it’s just to hear how great the weather is..

Tot siens

Chantel

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 Burge 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"

This will record your expenses to personal expenses which you can then get paid for by your business.

You can then see in your reports any personal expenses you are due.

When you have been paid by the business for your personal expenses, go to Cash Sales, and then in the Transfer section, Select Bank in the "From" drop down  and PERSONAL EXPENSES in the "To" drop down, and enter the amount.

In this way you can easily track your personal expenses and what you are owed by the business, and when it has been paid.

Gold edition users can set up separate personal expense accounts for each user, to easily track individual expenses.

Remember it is always good to enter these expenses as they benefit both you and the business. You get paid for your expenses, and the business records the expenses and any tax associated with them.

Please note that "PERSONAL EXPENSES" transactions are NOT included in the Bank totals on the main screen.

the billfaster team