We at WebWorkerDaily review a lot of web apps. Since many of us — and many of you — have iPhones, I like to keep tabs on web apps we’ve written about, to see whether they get a companion iPhone app. So here’s a list of seven useful iPhone apps for some of the better web apps that we’ve reviewed.
Shoeboxed. Organize your receipts and business cards through this service (see our review here). With the web app, you scan in what you want to save and organize or mail in your “shoebox” of items to scan and let Shoeboxed do it for you. The results are searchable and easy to organize. With the iPhone app, you can take a photo to digitize a receipt or card. Read the rest of this entry »
Mike McDerment is the co-founder and CEO of Freshbooks. I caught up with him at the recent LessConf event in Jacksonville, Fla, to chat about Freshbooks’ focus, whether you can trust web apps with your data, and working with family members.
Do you work with family members? How does it work out for you?
FreshBooks users with iPhones or iPod Touches can now manage their FreshBooks account while on the go with MiniBooks, an app from Groovy Squared. The app synchronizes with your FreshBook account, so you can access your data even if you lose your network connection.
MiniBooks comes with the following features:
Clients: Search for clients and contact them with the iPhone’s phone and email applications.
Invoices: Create, edit, search, view and email invoices from within the app. You can also view the status of the invoice and record payments.
Timers: Start and stop timers that can track multiple activities on one screen. Active timers will keep running even if you close MiniBooks.
The tools that we use to run our businesses and organize our lives are supposed to make thing easier. We choose them because we identify a need — a pain point — and are looking for a solution. In my experiences working with small business, bookkeeping is a common area where most folks are looking for some help.
In my review of bookkeeping and tax prep service Outright back in April, I highlighted not only its ease of use, but also its ability to play nicely and communicate with other apps. As a bookkeeping app is just a part of the chain of tracking income and expenses, these connections to your existing data are critical and keep data entry times to an absolute minimum.
I’m thrilled to hear that the Outright folks are extending this reach, with two major additions to the list of apps that Outright is compatible with being released today. Both should really help the typical small business keep finances and expenses in check.
Bowness used the apps in his business for about a year each, and his in-depth, insightful observations of the merits and issues with each of the services are based on long-term, real-world usage and worth noting.
Especially interesting are his notes of problems or quirks with each of the apps, which could be very handy when it comes to picking the right service for your business. According to Bowness, Freshbooks’ time tracking is “difficult when you have multiple employees,” its project management is “dismal” and its reports “suck.” Blinksale, meanwhile, offers neither integrated time tracking nor the ability to integrate with a payment gateway, he says, and cannot create estimates. Harvest is similarly unable to create estimates or integrate with a payment gateway, according to Bowness, and recurring invoices are not handled that well. And he finds it “ridiculous” that SSL support is only available with the $90-per-month plan.
Freshbooks is the most feature-rich, Bowness notes, but while it does everything, he says that it “doesn’t do anything particularly well” and its interface is not intuitive. And Blinksale is perfect if you are a freelancer, but not if you have staff. Bowness’ personal favorite is Harvest, which delivers simplicity while boasting a substantial feature set (although not as complete as Freshbooks’).
Which do you prefer: Harvest, Freshbooks or Blinksale?
The other day I noticed that someone had posted a quick poll on LinkedIn. I thought a poll like that might be a good tool to use for informal market research, so I clicked on the link to create my own. However, I was met with a message saying that I needed to upgrade my account to access the polling feature. I perused the prices, then quickly determined I wasn’t going to upgrade.
This isn’t the first time I’ve considered upgrading my LinkedIn account and decided against it, which led me to start thinking about all of the “freemium” apps — basically free apps with premium upgrades — I’ve been using. I started feeling guilty about taking advantage of the “free” in freemium services, especially because I’ve had the opportunity to interview founders of these companies, many of whom confess to struggling over pricing. So what makes us decide to pay for an app? Read the rest of this entry »
As we approach April 15th and tax time, it is normal for us to think about how we maintain our books and evaluate if our current process is working for us.
While there’s no shortage of accounting programs available, with varying levels of complexity and pricing, it can be difficult for a small shop to find the right solution. Focusing on ease of use and integration with other web apps, Outright is a great choice for web workers.
Amidst the noise being generated by those attending and reporting on the SXSW conference, I caught wind of a particularly interesting announcement made by BatchBlue and some other web service providers about a “Small Business Web” of integrated SaaS products designed for small business.
“The Small Business Web is a movement to bring together like-minded, customer-obsessed software companies to integrate our respective products and make life easier for small businesses,” Pamela O’Hara, CEO of BatchBlue, told me via email.
By using the APIs, or Application Programming Interfaces, present in each other’s products, the participating companies hope to offer a very high level of integration between their services. This will allow each company to focus on its own core competency, while allowing for easier data portability and a better overall experience for the user. Read the rest of this entry »
We at WebWorkerDaily review a lot of web apps. Since many of us — and many of you — have iPhones, I like to keep tabs on web apps we’ve written about, to see whether they get a companion iPhone app. So here’s a list of seven useful iPhone apps for some of the better web apps that we’ve reviewed.
With so many invoicing web apps available (many of them 
The other day I noticed that someone had posted a quick poll on 
Web Work 101: How To Escape The Cubicle
