Freshbooks Ties to Basecamp and a Taste of What’s Next
March 1st, 2007
If you have been dreaming about the paperless office like John at Duct Tape or me recently searching for CRM solutions and my trials with Google Apps you know that integration is key.
Today, Freshbooks, the online billing system announced that you can now bill and share data with your Basecamp account.
This is a long anticpated integration for many users of both applications and the day has finally come. We are still waiting for a way to manage the rest of the books but Mike McDerment says we’ll have to wait.
For me, like many Freshbooks forum members we are found having to enter data twice. This is partly because there is no open API available to interact with Quickbooks. Intuit is following the Microsoft, closed model where Intuit applications will integrate with only those expensive, partner applications such as MS office, ACT! and other such overpriced over-featured garbage. (Ahhh, I really wish Inuit hadn’t bought out M.Y.O.B (Mind Your Own Business) in Canada. It was simple, fast and easy has hell to understand.)
McDerment says that business owners don’t use accounting software (Quickbooks) in the same numbers as their Word and Excel counterparts:
Most businesses start using Word and Excel to manage their invoices because one day they need to bill a client and they have not prepared for it. The need almost comes out of the blue since it’s the nature of entrepreneurs to be more focused on doing interesting work and serving clients; billing is an afterthought. I once read that 3.5 million US businesses are using QuickBooks, and 6.5 million use Word/ Excel. So entrepreneurs use Word or Excel because those tools are there when the time comes to send that first invoice and they rarely look back…until the pain sets in.
What kind of pain do Word and Excel create in your billing process? First, invoice formatting is a pain and your documents don’t look great. Then there is the management of your files. Have you ever tried to track which of your invoices have been paid in Windows folders, or tried to tell how much an invoice was for by looking at files in a folder? Total nightmare.
I agree with the second part—those people are foolishly waiting for the shoe to drop.
Eventually they will need to fill out a tax form. Going to your accountant with a spreadsheet and no system is a waste of time and money. I suspect that whatever will come from Freshbooks will be a great tool. Why not transactional exports for Quickbooks and Simply Accounting right now?
Are you using Freshbooks or some other online application for billing or accounting such as QuickbooksOE? Let me know.
Entry Filed under: Productivity
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4 Comments Add your own
1. Chris Busse | April 24th, 2007 at 1:33 pm
Quickbooks does have an open API, you just have to pay extra if you want your app to go through a certification process. The API is very well documented with a great developer community.
Using it, I have created a utility (just released today) called ChronoPipe that imports time from Basecamp to QuickBooks.
We use it with our QuickBooks OE account and it will work with any version of QB that supports time tracking. Give it a look!
2. Jay Gilmore | April 24th, 2007 at 4:42 pm
Thanks Chris, I will look at this.
I have really gotten into using Freshbooks and just getting my assistant to reenter the invoices into QB. I have to say it is much easier for me as I don’t have to print out invoices and my clients have been able to view and pay their invoices online. Quickbooks is a fine package for my accounting but it is terrible for simple billing. The pdf output is not modifiable so all the filenames are identical. Another option is to print to a pdf distiller and then email it but that is too many steps.
I don’t use my Basecamp at all right now as I have found that my clients aren’t savvy enough or don’t have the time to learn. My team members work well over the phone and email. I write copious notes so it is not an issue for tracking. I found that I don’t like the pricing structure for BaseCamp either–cost benefit is nil.
Again thanks for your comments and I will still review the project.
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