Thursday, October 16, 2014

Pensmore Software Simplifies Work for Merchants, Launches Intelligent Payment Link / manages sales data into QuickBooks Online (QBO) by automatically recording credit/debit card sales transactions from their payment applications and point of sale systems into their cloud accounting system.

Today, Pensmore Software announced the launch of their latest payments services solution, Intelligent Payments Link (ipLink). This product will greatly simplify the way merchants record their merchant service specific sales data into QuickBooks Online (QBO) by automatically recording credit/debit card sales transactions from their payment applications and point of sale systems into their cloud accounting system.
ipLink is approved on apps.com and is estimated to save thousands of hours each year for small business owners.
"Pensmore has always been about bringing business efficiencies to the SMB market space," said Jeff White, CEO of Pensmore. "With ipLink, we once again simplify the way small businesses get their sales data into their accounting applications."
Initially, ipLink will consist of two payment applications that will pass sales data to QBO. Lightning, a mobile payments solution will record all sales that are made instantly to QBO. The second integration is DataCap's IPTran.  These devices connect to traditional cash registers and allow integrated payments for small merchants using ECR's.
"The ability to provide a link between a merchant's cash register and their online accounting is a considerable value-add for the electronic cash register space," said Justin Zeigler, Director of Marketing at DataCap. "With more than 600,000 active ECRs in the United States, the opportunity for VARs to present this functionality to their installed base and go-forward customers is massive. Mobile payments and connected online accounting services allow VARs to stay ahead of the technology curve without forcing a full POS update on their customers."
Pensmore Software will continue to work with other developers to ensure connectivity of ipLink to their service that will enable Point of Sale, e-commerce, and hospitality software solutions to automatically record sales data into QBO.   
"Sales data is one of the most important tools a small business owner needs to run their business effectively," said Todd Youngblood, VP of Marketing at Pensmore.  "With access to this, data merchants can see where they are making and losing money and how to focus their business to be successful in the long term. It has always been a challenge to get this data into accounting systems. We are proud of how we've just solved this critical challenge for business owners." 
For more information about Pensmore products and services please visit www.pensmoresoftware.com
Posted on 5:02 PM | Categories:

Xero's US Investors Wince As Share Price Slumps And Growth Slows / "analysts who cover Xero are all unanimous in putting a sell rating on Xero stock"

Ben Kepes for Forbes writes: (Note, all values in the following article are set in New Zealand dollars since Xero is listed on the New Zealand stock exchange and reports in its home currency)

When high-profile investors Peter Thiel and Matrix Capital Management pumped close to $150 million into listed cloud accounting vendor Xero a year ago, it sent the share price soaring. The shares were purchased at $18.15 and hit over $45.00 earlier this year, valuing the company at close to $6 billion. Not bad for a company that started outside of the US, and hasn’t really put the pedal down in terms of US market entry.
After its latest operating update however, those investors must be wondering about their investment. In the past year Xero has lost a US CEO after high profile hire Peter Karpas was hired with much fanfare in February, only to part ways with the company six months later. Xero’s US president Jamie Sutherland is still there, but has been relegated in role if not in title after both the appointment of Karpas and then the stepping in of CFO Ross Jenkins to act as temporary CEO after Karpas quit. The share price has reverted back to less than what investors paid for their holdings 12 months ago (see chart below).  [snip]. 
xro
Posted on 11:34 AM | Categories:

Stockspot is spot on with cloud-based financial advice / Australia's first cloud based investment advisor,

David Swan for ITWire.com writes: Financial advice can be a complex beast for even the most seasoned wolf of wall street, and one Aussie startup, described as Australia's first cloud based investment advisor, is here to help.
Finance markets can prove extremely difficult to navigate but are made exponentially trickier by often-expensive and opaque financial advisers, who charge a premium for advice that may not prove fruitful anyway.
An interim federal government report into financial services confirmed advice is too expensive, with almost half of Aussies (42%) having never used a financial adviser.
“A generation of younger investors can no longer afford access to investment advice due to cost,” Stockspot's Chris Brycki said.
“The Murray report confirms that technology can reduce costs for consumers, decrease risk and improve the quality of and access to advice.”
The report found fees in Australia’s superannuation sector are among the highest in the OECD and there is “little evidence of strong fee-based competition in the superannuation sector”, resulting in only “modest” declines in fees over the past decade.
“Fees have consumed over a quarter of superannuation returns since 2004, despite scaleincreases,” Brycki said.
iTWire spoke to Stockspot's Chris Brycki at length to find out what his cloud-based startup,Stockspot, is doing to turn the tide back in favour of the consumer; giving reasonably priced financial advice, all online.
Are young people getting screwed over when it comes to financial advice?
The government report was looking at all areas of the financial system, but the advice side, and especially access to advice, was probably one of the areas they looked at in a lot of detail. With FOFA, which is the new financial advice laws, one of the biggest issues is conflicts of interest, that exist within the vertically integrated banks. And the result of this means people that don't have a lot of money to invest, or to give to a financial adviser to help them, usually end up paying a lot of hidden fees, because they can't afford an upfront fee of a few thousand dollars. What they end up doing is being charged fees on their superannuation, on their insurance, and on their investments. The fees are quite hidden and most people don't understand them.
The report basically looked at ways technology can help to open access to financial advice, and also financial products, especially for people that don't have a lot of money. Young guys like us. Some interesting stats came out of the report too, for example 20% of people received financial advice online, yet there are very few providers out there offering services, helping people manage their finances online. We're the first end-to-end online direct to consumer product out there. So there's a big unmet demand for it. The difficulty in it is actually getting set up, the regulation is still quite hard for small businesses. It's taken me a year to get to the point where I am now, where I can offer consumers a good online product.
That would put a lot of people off, right? If they knew it would take them a year to get things up and running.
Yeah, exactly. Well like any business, if you went and set up a store or something, once you have the rent and have your product you can start selling. But financial services, for good and bad reasons, it's very highly regulated and difficult to set up. Not many people would be silly enough like I was to quit my job and spend a year trying to set up a business. So yeah the government looked at ways it could open up the marketplace to more competition, and they talked about potential to improve efficiency and competition, through technology products. It's a theme we've looked at a lot, like they mentioned in the report cloud technologies for instance have the ability to enable companies to offer products direct to consumers without really clunky software. Which is what we're doing already; offering a complete product that is all sitting up in the cloud as opposed to making people own software. There's Xero in the accounting space, and they're doing something similar for accounting.
Would you describe yourself as the Xero for the stock market?
Yeah, we're the Xero for investing. Except with Xero the only difference is they're mainly going through advisors and accountants. So they don't go direct to consumer. Whereas we want to go direct to consumer, because unfortunately advisors add a lot of fees for consumers but in many cases don't add a lot of value. They charge a lot for their time, and they need to I guess because they can't speak to a thousand people in a day, but because you get to speak to someone you end up paying a lot of money. My view is that in a lot of other areas of our lives, like travel or shopping, people should have the option of buying at a lower cost and buying directly. There's always people that want to go to DJ's and have that whole store experience, and have someone help them, but there's also going to be people that want to do shopping online. And I think it'll be the same with financial products as well.
Do you provide advice too, or is it more for people that know what they want to invest in?
We do both. People can already directly invest, you can just set up an eTrade or a CommSec account, but people that do that, well first of all people are scared to do that. A lot of people that aren't actually in finance don't understand what they're doing, but also people that do that, even if they think they know what they're doing, they often don't. Or most people don't, and they end up not doing the right thing, having too much risk in their portfolio, then doing the wrong thing when markets fall and getting scared. So we wanted to provide advice as well, because we help people find the right mix of investments to match their risk profile, and how long they want to invest for. And then they need money, and it's quite a complicated process in the background. Even though it looks quite simple for consumers, there's a lot of work in the background to actually match people up with the right product. And that's what we do, we match them up with what's the right investment mix for them.
Usually if you were going to go and do that, you could do that and see an advisor, but they usually say the minimum fee is two thousand dollars, or five thousand dollars. It's just too much money for a lot of young people.
For more, continue onto page two.
Can you talk me through the process, do you meet in person, or is it an online chat that goes on? And how much does it typically cost?
It's completely online, so you go through a questionnaire, and it's ten questions about what's your attitude towards risk, what's your timeframe, when you need cash, whether that's next year or in two years' time for example. That's important information. And then based on all your answers we create a mix of low-fee index funds, so these are funds that are listed on the stock market and charge low fees, but most advisors don't recommend them, because they don't get kickbacks. They're like the 'home brand' funds, where they're the same product but just a much lower fee. So we find the right mix of them, and by mix I mean instead of just owning Australian shares, like most people would if they went and set up a CommSec account, we give people global shares as well, emerging market shares, bonds, and metals as well. And then based on your answers to the questions we work out the right percentage of your money to put in each of those baskets, and then we manage that investment process and read the answers of people, and we do all the tax reporting as well for you. So at the end of the financial year there's no work for you to do. You can just basically plug straight into Xero if you use it, or print off a statement. So yeah, the whole process is online, mainly just through the website and occasionally some emails to let you know what's going on.
The minimum investment is two grand, so anyone can really get started, and if you invest two grand, the fees for a year is about a hundred and fifty bucks. And that's a lot lower than if you went through an adviser, especially if you're getting started.
So do you pitch it mainly as a way for people to get started with the stock market, or is it really for anyone?
It's both. What we're seeing is a lot of people signing up that are just young people that might have two thousand dollars or somewhere between two and 20 thousand dollars and they want to get started in investing, and make sure they're investing in the right things. A lot of those sort of people, who are just getting started and saving up for a house or want to get a better interest rate that they're getting with the bank, and also people that manage their own super. Self managed super's a really big area of superannuation, it's like $530 billion, of people that manage their own, and a lot of those people start to do it themselves and then realise it's actually a lot harder than they thought. And so they want a bit of assistance in setting it up and getting the right mix of investments. So typically those people, the average self managed super fund in Australia is about $500,000. So they're a lot bigger clients. So we're seeing a mix of those bigger clients that are managing their own super and also just young people that are just getting started.
What's your background Chris, what job did you quit to be able to do this?
Since I was a kid I've always loved trading and investing, I worked during uni at a hedge fund, trading stocks. And then went to UBS, which is a big Swiss bank. Basically where you invest the bank's money. So I was a portfolio manager for the bank, for five years. And then I spent a little bit more time at a hedge fund investing for them, before I left to start this last April. So almost a year and a half ago. I was young and wanted to have a go at starting a good business, as opposed to working for the big banks.
Have you got a team going?
At the moment it's myself, and a developer, who I went to school and uni with. So we're really good mates. And a whole bunch of advisers we've got now, we've got an ASX-listed company invested in us, that happened a few months ago, and from there we have a few advisers that help us on strategy and that sort of thing.
Are you seeking more investment? Where's that at?
Not at the moment. We have enough at the moment. At the moment we're focussing on improving and iterating the product and making sure customers are happy, and making sure we have a perfect product before we go to the next step and start marketing it. We're not going out and marketing too hard yet.
Finally, what do people need to look out for when they're investing?
Often people's biggest downfall is making the wrong decision when things get tough. The markets always go up and down. Behavioural finance is a whole area in itself, just understanding people's emotions when they invest. If you go and do it yourself, like I found when I was a kid, you go through a wide range of emotions and they can be pretty tough to deal with.
For more on Stockspot head over to its website.
Posted on 9:48 AM | Categories:

6 Nifty Invoicing Solutions for Small Business: CloudBooks, SageOne, Nutcache, Invoiceable, FreeAgent, Billbooks

Pratik Dholakiya for Small Business Trends writes: Small businesses have needs that are unique and vary from business to business. Close to 90% of all functional businesses comprise less than 5 employees, and hence cannot work with accounting solutions tailor-made for gigantic companies.
Invoicing and accounting solutions specifically designed for freelancers and small businesses have grown in popularity over the last few years. Let’s have a look at the ones that are currently ruling the roost.

1) CloudBooks

invoicing solutions for small business
CloudBooks is a complete cloud-based accounting app that can keep you updated on all your business needs. You can track time and expenses, manage different tax rates and create estimates which can be converted into invoices in a single click. You can also prepare reports and generate automated recurring invoices.
CloudBooks allows your clients to comment on estimates and invoices. Recurring expenses can be automated and added to invoices so that you do not miss passing on the costs. PayPal and Authorize.Net are the online payment gateways available to you.
Customization of expenses allows you to add unique expenses and costs, which can be later passed on to the clients. This is a great app for freelancers and small business owners. It has great features that make invoicing a breeze. You can keep tab on payments and track delays. Client page allows the client to collaborate on projects and view invoices.
CloudBooks is also perfectly capable of supporting large teams and multiple projects. You can add and assign tasks, track time and manage projects with ease. Role–based permissions guarantee the safety and security of vital financial information while enabling collaboration.
Time-tracking is made simple and effective with automated timer. This allows you to view billed and unbilled hours instantly and raise invoices accordingly. CloudBooks is a feature-packed app that makes all aspects of your business accessible at your fingertips, right on your phone. They offer you a free trial period of 30 days where you can send 5 invoices, but it does not include online payment options and phone support.
The free version of the app is available if you have one client and no staff, and offers 5 invoices per month. The basic version costs $2 per month and the premium version $20 per month. The team plan costs $10 per month and is best suited for small businesses.

2) Sage One

invoicing solutions for small business
Sage One is a cloud-based invoicing and project tracking solution. It has a convenient and user-friendly interface. The instructions are easy to follow and in a few clicks you are all set to go.
Customized invoicing is made easy by Sage One. You can assign multiple tax rates to different customers, track invoices and record payments and delays. There are facilities for online payment and recurring billing, as well as a reporting tool.
Project and expense tracking is facilitated by Sage One. Freelancers and entrepreneurs find it easy to collaborate and work on projects. There are tools to assign tasks, track expenses and costs, and monitor the time spent on activities. Email notifications and reminders help keep the team in the loop and on their toes. Invoices are raised correspondingly and dispatched in a timely fashion.
There is a 30-day free trial access to the full version. The basic version of the software costs $9 per month.

3) Nutcache

invoicing solutions for small business
Nutcache is as efficient and effective as a free invoicing system can get. The cloud-based free invoicing program offers you unlimited number of users, clients and invoices in addition to tools for time- and expense-tracking.
Nutcache is delightfully simple and quick. It is easy to create quotes or estimates and mail them. But the default mail does not allow you to add additional attachments or let the client add comments. Users cannot create their own default email or modify the system-generated mail to be sent out to clients. This is a cause for bother for most of the users. There is also a problem of inconsistent customer support and limited online payment options. But most of these issues are minor.
Nutcache is multi-lingual (supports 10 languages) and extremely user-friendly. Its mobile app, Nutcache Time Logger, available in App Store and Google Play, also gets the customers’ vote on these accounts.
There are frequent updates and upgrades which make Nutcache interesting, innovative and customer-oriented. “Tax invoice” labels have also been introduced.

4) Invoiceable

invoicing solutions for small business
Invoiceable is hugely successful and widely used. It is a free cloud-based invoicing and billing software aimed at small businesses and freelancers. Invoiceable is simple and easy to use, and perfectly capable of meeting your demands.
Invoiceable allows you to create detailed invoices. Recurring invoices can be automated. You can also add discounts and accept partial payments. You cannot customize the invoices extensively. You can add in your company’s logo and change the header of the template.
Invoiceable allows you to create client statements and reports of invoices. There are no complex tools to manage inventory though you can save items to speed up data entry.
However, customer service is tardy and there are times when you are left on your own. Another drawback is you can only have one user per account. There is no mobile app available as of now. There have been no recent updates or additional new features, and there is nothing exciting on offer for customers.
The fact that it is free makes Invoiceable appealing to freelancers and mom-and-pop shops with no extensive business needs.

5) FreeAgent

invoicing solutions for small business
FreeAgent is a cloud-based accounting and invoicing solution. It is designed for small and mid-sized businesses.
FreeAgent is a highly useful tool if you bill for hours and work with several contractors on projects. The timer can be set for multiple users. It automatically records logins and log outs, and the total hours worked. You can also opt to manually track your time. This helps you bill your client efficiently and maintain updated timesheets.
Estimates can be created easily and sent to clients. Once approved, they are converted into invoices in a couple of clicks. FreeAgent allows you to add attachments or documentation to invoices. You can create your own default mail for invoices.
FreeAgent helps you set up automatic recurring invoices and automatic payment reminders, and send automatic thank you notes to clients when payments are made against invoices. This is a very attractive feature in FreeAgent.
Expenses can be tracked and added to costs. Employees can track unbillable expenses from their side as well which you will reimburse. Client contacts will be able to view project status, invoices and payments on their portal.
The excellent job-costing feature helps in project management. You can track unlimited number of projects, assign tasks and track expenses, and time. You can view the profitability of the project and all the related documentation and invoices comprehensively.
The developer has not come out with a dedicated mobile phone app but with API you can create one of your own.
FreeAgent offers a free trial period of 30 days. After that it has a fixed pricing plan of $24 per month for access to the full version. It also has an extremely attractive referral program.

6) Billbooks

invoicing solutions for small business
Billbooks is a cloud-based accounting invoicing and billing app. You can send instant invoices and estimates to your clients, wherever you are. The app makes it quick and simple to raise invoices. Enter in few details and your invoice is ready to be dispatched. You can also add discounts and set up automatic recurring invoices and payment reminders.
Estimates can be sent out in multiple languages which makes it a handy tool for users with foreign clients.
Billbooks has plenty to offer by means of payment gateways including, but not limited to, PayPal, Authorize.Net and Stripe. Reports are generated in a timely and neat format. If you are working on projects, profit and loss reports can be generated on a project-to-project basis.
Invoices and estimates can be exported to PDF format, edited and printed with ease. There is an option for data import which makes your expense tracking and invoicing easy. Billbooks makes it easy to share data and copies of estimates with different staff members as well as with contacts on the client’s side.
Search feature helps you dig out past invoices and you can ‘star’ your clients which makes it easy to access their data.
Billbooks charges according to the number of invoices you want to send out. Twenty invoices costs $10, 50 invoices $20, 100 invoices $35 and 200 invoices $60. The invoices never expire and you have access to the full set of features, and can support any number of clients.

Conclusion

Invoicing is a time-consuming activity. Try the above invoicing solutions for small business and stick with any you like. They will definitely prove to be a value-addition in no time.
Posted on 9:35 AM | Categories:

ManageEngine Integrates QuickBooks, Computer Telephony with ServiceDesk Plus - MSP

ManageEngine, the real-time IT management company, today announced the release of the latest edition of ServiceDesk Plus - MSP, the company’s web-based, ITIL-ready help desk software specifically built for managed service providers. The latest version of ServiceDesk Plus - MSP comes loaded with features like QuickBooks integration and computer telephony integration (CTI), which allow service providers to concentrate on service delivery instead of worrying about the tools used to deliver service.

ManageEngine is demonstrating ServiceDesk Plus - MSP in booth 6 at MSPWorld Fall Conference 2014, being held Oct. 15-17, 2014, at the Cosmopolitan Las Vegas. ManageEngine is a gold sponsor of the event.

Managed service providers use a handful of tools from help desk software to billing and accounting applications to deliver services and manage their clients. Making these tools work in harmony to provide better service to clients has always been a challenge for MSPs. Without that harmony, MSPs lose a lot of their productive time shuttling between these tools rather than focusing on what matters the most — service delivery. Now, ServiceDesk Plus - MSP makes this job easier for managed serviced providers with QuickBooks and CTI integration.

“Help desks for MSPs are business critical and should enable MSPs to deliver service in a profitable manner,” said Umasankar Narayanasamy, director of engineering at ManageEngine. “We’ve enhanced ServiceDesk Plus - MSP with new features that allow managed service providers to increase their efficiency and their bottom line at the same time. And we continue to make the standard edition of ServiceDesk Plus - MSP available for free, so MSPs see just how powerful our solution is — risk free.”

Streamlining MSP Operations with ServiceDesk Plus
The latest version of ServiceDesk Plus - MSP lets users integrate their help desks with the popular accounting software, QuickBooks. ServiceDesk Plus - MSP users who employ QuickBooks to invoice and bill customers can look forward to a seamless integration between the two products. Specifically, users will be able to sync accounts, work log types and work log time with customers, items and quantity across ServiceDesk Plus - MSP and QuickBooks, respectively. This out-of-the-box QuickBooks integration takes away the need for dual entries, making accounting and charging customers a lot easier for service providers.

CTI is another new feature in ServiceDesk Plus - MSP. CTI fetches caller details such as a caller’s name, account name, site and pending tickets and displays those details in the ServiceDesk Plus – MSP user interface to help technicians provide a personalized response to the caller. The product supports Asterisk and Avaya for its computer telephony integration.

Recognizing the need for optimizing response times, ManageEngine has included two new features in the ServiceDesk Plus - MSP iPhone application — custom push notifications and request approvals. These two features further empower technicians to take action while on the go by notifying them of request and task assignments, requester replies, request approvals or rejections. The app also allows technicians to approve or reject any request approvals submitted to them — all from their iPhones.

ServiceDesk Plus - MSP has also enhanced its built-in billing module, allowing service providers greater flexibility in charging customers for their services. MSPs can choose criteria such as ticket priority and urgency, and bill their customers accordingly.

Pricing and Availability
ServiceDesk Plus - MSP 8.3 is available immediately and can be downloaded at http://www.manageengine.com/products/service-desk-msp/download.html. The standard edition of ServiceDesk Plus - MSP is available for free. Additional pricing details can be found at http://www.manageengine.com/products/service-desk-msp/get-quote.html
Posted on 6:04 AM | Categories:

Top 10 time saving apps for business owners

 Seb Dean from The Imaginaire Web Design for the TheLondonEconomic.com writes:  When it comes to running a business, especially in the early stages, you’re likely to be absolutely swamped with trying to stay in control of all areas of the business. Covering sales, fulfilment of orders, working with suppliers, billing and all of the other areas is commonplace and just thinking about it is enough to give you a headache! Luckily, those clever tech kids have been hard at work to help automate a lot of the processes and save you time. Here are The London Economic’s top 10 time saving apps for business owners:

1.     Quickbooks

Paid: Available on Desktop, Android and iPhone
Quickbooks is an accounting SaaS (Software as a Service) product. It allows you to automate the whole of your financial record keeping and also billing. This app is fantastic for new businesses, particularly those that offer a monthly service where the same sort of fee will be charged on a monthly basis. Quickbooks allows you to set up contacts within companies that you work with and then assign a monthly invoice to be sent to their email – meaning you don’t have to worry about whether you’ve invoiced your clients each month, it’s all automated.

2.     Bitrix24

Free: Available on Desktop, Android and iPhone
Developing a steady stream of customers for your business is about building a sales process throughout your organisation that takes a systematic approach to the key areas of sales: prospecting, quoting, the sales meeting, closing and retention. Bitrix24 is a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system that allows you to keep track of any prospects that enter your sales funnel, which stage they are at in the sales process and any sales that you’ve made. The software also allows you to keep notes on each contact within a company, so you can pick up your next conversation where you left off.

3.     Mailchimp

Free: Available on Desktop, Android and iPhone
Mailchimp allows you to automate your email marketing, meaning you can stay in touch with your customers and potential customers without having to set aside time to do so. You can group your customers and prospects into separate lists based on which stage of the sales process they’re at and send emails tailored to them.

4.     Hootsuite

Free: Available on Desktop, Android and iPhone
Hootsuite is a fantastic tool for growing your social media following across platforms. To build a good audience across social media takes a lot of time and, as a business owner, it can be pretty difficult to dedicate enough time to it. Hootsuite allows you to schedule tweets and Facebook posts, meaning that you can set aside an hour or two of your week to work out exactly what you want to push out there and when you’d like to post, you can then schedule all of the posts in and Hootsuite will do the rest!

5.     Any.do

Free: Available on Android and iPhone
Any.do is a to-do list app which allows you to add tasks as you think of them and then add them to a specific day. The app will then remind you on the day that the task is due. Any.do also has the great functionality of reminding you at 9am to plan your day, something that we’re all guilty of neglecting.

6.     Cal

Free: Available on Android and iPhone
Made by the same people that made any.do, Cal is a calendar app that allows you to pull data from a range of sources such as Google Calendars, Outlook Calendars and your any.do to-do list. It has a very nicely designed interface and can remind you when you’re on-the-go about where you need to be and when.

7.     Google Analytics Automated Reports

Free: Available on Android and iPhone
Your website is a key part of your success as a business and monitoring its performance is vital. Most people use Google Analytics to see how many people have visited their website and the activity of website visitors. What a lot of people don’t realise though is that Google Analytics can run automated reports on a daily, weekly or monthly basis and email them straight to you.
This is great, it means you can schedule a report to run and see how your website is progressing over time, without having to take the time to log in to analytics. When you’re on the main view of your analytics account, simply click the email button (see screenshot below).
sebPIC
Then you just type in the email that you’d like to send the report to, change the attachments setting from CSV to PDF, select how often you’d like the report to run and on which day you’d like it to be sent then, hey presto, automated reports!

8.     Basecamp

Paid: Available on Desktop, Android and iPhone
Basecamp is one of the best project management tools out there and is a fantastic way to collaborate with your staff, particularly if you utilise freelance staff at different stages of a project. The app allows you to communicate seamlessly and allocate workload, meaning you can delegate more effectively.

9.     Google Apps for Business

Paid: Available on Desktop, Android and iPhone
As an alternative to Outlook, we love Google Apps for business. It allows you to use your own company email addresses (e.g. @theimaginaire.com) and you can then share and create documents ‘in the cloud’. What this means is that you can have a centrally located source for all of your files which members of your company can edit.
We also love the way that Google Apps can link in to other apps (such as any.do, Cal and Bitrix24) to increase the level of automation in your company!

10.Rapportive

Free: Available on Android and iPhone
Rapportive is a tool which links in with your Gmail account and searches for key information about people that you’re going to email. As a sales tool, this is excellent. When you type in their email address, rapportive will pull up their social media profiles and other information in a sidebar, meaning you can tailor your email to them more effectively. Rapportive can really help in the early stages of talking to a prospective customer.
Hopefully this article has been helpful to you as a business owner and will free up some of your time which will allow you to focus on growing your business instead of working within it – this is also known as the holy grail!
Visit theimaginaire.com for your Web Design and Internet Marketing needs
Posted on 6:02 AM | Categories:

Xero fell 4.5 percent to a 13-month low of NZD $16.96. The stock has declined some 63 percent from its March

Suze Metherell for Yahoo Finance New Zealand writes: Xero, the cloud-based accounting software firm, fell 4.5 percent to a 13-month low of $16.96. The stock has declined some 63 percent from its March peak of $45.99 in part due to a global selloff as investors questioned high valuations relative to earnings of tech companies. The Wellington-based company wants a million customers, and is targeting growth in the US market where so far it has some 22,000 of its total 371,000 customers from.
"The stock is weak, but we are in a market where hope doesn't have a high multiple placed on it," Goodson said. "To get to the multiple where Xero was formerly trading you need several million plus customers in the US, and to date that is a concept rather than a reality."
Posted on 5:54 AM | Categories: