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

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:

1.       Go to Time Tracking ,  and in the Select Project list,  select Sales (Existing Customers)

2.       In Select Task list, Select Visit.

3.       In Select Contact Group, select person e.g. Rod

(Groups are set up in the Contacts page)

4.       In Select Contact, Select your Customer

5.       Click Save

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!

We are adding multi user capability to our gold edition this month.

You will be able to invite users to login and access areas within billfaster that you have allowed.

This is defined by the role you have set up for each user, as follows:

• Administrator - Complete access to system and control of other users
• Standard user - Complete access to system
• Invoicing user - Can  enter the Customer Invoicing section
• Bills user - Can enter the Supplier Bills section
• Cash In - Can enter cash sales 
• Expenses - Can enter expenses
• Accounting - Can enter the accounting section
• Reporting - Can run reports only
• Read Only - Can review but not modify or add information to billfaster

Adding users is as simple as clicking the User button in the Setting page, and entering the email address and the role of the new user. This will invite the user to activate their account for your organisation.

We will keep you posted as this gold feature is released later this month.

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!

Welcome to the billfaster.com blog.

Here we will be keeping you posted on all news, updates, etc for billfaster.

We hope you find this informative and useful, and welcome any comments or feedback you may have.