Added the ability to add/delete/edit a simple list of products which can be accessed from the invoice creation screen via a shortcode.
e.g. you could create a product called 'High Tensile Sheet Steel 20x40', give it a stock code of ht2040 and a price of 21.99
and when you create an invoice, just type the shortcode 'ht2040' in the line item will automatically fill in the full description and
price!
Sometimes success brings new challenges and the massive increase in users over the past few months has meant
my little app was running a little slow so did a little investigation and it seems our
webstats were the culprit :( . So today I switched it over to something more suitable to high traffic
applications and I think you'll be very pleased with the results. Let me know!
This week I started working with the amazing tean at SubHub (they have an amazing product which allows you to create your own website in about 10 seconds but what's really impressive is the new app store that's part of the application which will open up the world of 3rd party development for content providerssubhublite.com).
I joined them temporarily to help out with their billing system and hopefully to provide some CRM help as we go along.
It's been a few weeks since a big update so I just wanted to let you know what we've been upto.
We've had a lot of requests for additions that are a bit niche but really important to the businesses that have been suggesting them.
So we've been providing a "professional services", uhm, service. Where we've been developing customised editions of the free CRM app for
a pretty reasonable fee. This means we can carry on providing the core app for free and at the same time run a sustainable consultancy.
Here's some good examples of what we've been focusing on for our professional services clients:
Web leads - plugin forms for your website that automatically notify you and push leads into your CRM
Hey, it's our end of financial year so we're a bit quieter than usual but we still found time to make a couple of cute additions today. We tidied up the main CRM page
and also added a default 'Update date last contacted' when you add notes to a Contact. Nice!
A few request have come in for a single screen that shows all invoices paid over time, so we put up the first slice of this feature today. At the moment it lists all
invoices paid ordered by date. Over the next week we'll add the facility to search by start date & end date and also by client - and then export to Excel!
We rushed this out for the weekend! It's a very early working version of an Inventory, which allows you to create a list of products
which you can assign short codes and prices so when you create invoices there's no need to type the long full name out anymore! We'll be refining
this and integrating into the CRM side of things next week too! phew!!
Well an epiphany is a bit melodramatic but it is the 6th! Anyway, if you've been wanting to be able to create a new customer invoice
by copying the previous one, well now you can do it with one click. Just select 'Copy' from the dropdown box on a invoice and that's all you have to do!
We've also started to improve the look and feel of some of the CRM screens, you've probably already noticed the main area is much more friendly :) and you
can now edit and modify dates without having to visit the main records.
Hope you're having a great Christmas! Just a quick post to annouce that we've now got our interface avialable in Russian thanks to
the amazing Valentina! See you in the New Year :)
It's very quiet here in South Wales at the moment as we're all snowed in and I've been unable to get to the office - the servers are all fine, they love the cold!
I just wanted to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and we'll see you in the New Year with some great new updates!
Morning! Just back from a terrific family holiday, a week away with just the children and no distractions does wonders for the
old creative batteries. So it's been a bit quiet on the development front but this week sees the start of an important re-design.
As we've now been up and running for almost 3 months the feedback has been terrific which gives me a lot of opportunity to
refine what we have, learn from any mistakes and keep the product powering forward. Merry Christmas to all our users and Twitter followers,
we really appreciate the support!
Today we added something quite awesome. We also added German to our list of interface languages (Thank you so much Rosa, or rather Danke!)
. But that wasn't what was the most awesome, what is really rather cool is the ability to import contacts now straight from your Twitter
stream with a single click. We also added searching so you can now really easily search twitter and create new lead in seconds. Lovely!
We also got approved from Dropbox.com today and our Dropbox.com integration is now at production status meaning you can now grab your Dropbox files from within
inPractice CRM, soon you'll be able to quickly create shared folders for clients, attach them to their contact records and quickly email them.
We rolled out being able to send, reply and DM directly from your CRM app today! Tomorrow we'll roll out the import function that
will let you directly import twitter followers into your CRM database and also set automatic trackers to monitor them!
Today you might have noticed that there's a new link on the control panel, for Twitter! This marks the first outing
for our Social CRM requests. I won't go into too much detail here but I think you'll find it massively useful if you tweet and are
an avid follower of other twits.
South Wales based inPractice have released free business applications in both Welsh and Norwegian thanks to the help of its users, with Spanish, German and Italian due for release soon. The online application that helps business ...
Hey, have you been wanting to get your data our of our free online CRM app into Excel or some other app for reporting? Yes? Awesome. We've just started putting
in the export buttons on the CRM and contact screens. Click 'Export' and get your data out in CSV format which you can use in Excel, Google docs or just plain note pad. Lovely!
A bit earlier than I anticipated, I've uploaded the first (experimental verison) of Dropbox integration. At the moment you can only download files
from your account but this will support file uploading soon - you'll also be able to associate a folder with a client record card too!
Today we finished crowdsourcing the complete interface in Welsh & Norwegain. Massive thanks to Caspar and Eds in taking the time to help with the tranlsation.
Diolch yn Fawr Eds. Takk Caspar!
Great suggestion from a user in Germany, to be able to modifiy the invoice print out! So you can now turn the colour table on or off and also change the font style that's used.
We will continue to extend this customization so that you can eventually control the entire layout.
Not as sexy as adding new features but probably more important, i.e. making sure the app does what it says it can do, today was spent addressing some
very minor bug nagging glitches for users with Internet Explorer 7 - which are now thankfully all fixed :)
OKay today we also found a little bit of time to start our multi-lingual interface development, at the moment it's restricted to the control panel
but it shows our direction and dedication to making sure our product is not just an English one. As a Welshman with an Italian father it's something that's very important to me ;) If
you'd like to help with any translation or spot any errors please drop me a line!
Our core languages to start are: English, Cymraeg, Norsk bokmal, Espanol, Italiano, Francais, Deutsch & русский язык
Need to find a company really quickly, just start typing their name in the new quick search bar. It's always at the top of the screen
no matter what your doing you can find details (including main contact & phone number) really quickly!
One of users sent us a great suggestion for a dashboard (thanks Caspar), so we went a little further and started the basis for a fully
cusomtizable dashboard which can produce graphs as well as pure statistics on how your business is doing. Stage 1 went live today.
You might be curious to know what the new 'Message Center' link is, well imagine being able to set up your contacts so they automatically recieve handcrafted messages from you
automatically every few months, perhaps a simple message to say hello, now imagine being able to do it with hundreds of contacts with simple & friendly messages without having to do it for each one. We are
about to revolutionise CRM messaging.
A very colourful update today, exuse the pun! Had such a good response to the import label yesterday that I thought it would be good to add some colour to it and also make
this configurable from within the main Company edit page - so it's not just for import now, you can give individual companies a label and color so they stand out (e.g. great or late payers!)
Today, even though it's Saturday and I should be resting I couldn't resist just adding a couple of things to the import process to help improve it, thanks to some great suggestions from our users. I've added an "import label" so you can now group together the contacts you import. This will be very useful when you want to import lots of lists but remember perhaps where they came from or the type of contacts. E.g. Dentists in Ohio or Plumbers in London - perfect for sending out marketing or sales messages (which will be appearing over the next few weeks!)
I also modified the import to aggregate your contacts with the same company name, so if your CSV file has several contacts with the same company name, we'll only create one company but add the contacts as people that work in the company.
We've just added some great new features to the Dealflow (Sales & Lead tracking pipeline) which allow you to add notes and messages at each stage of the pipeline.
If you're wondering what the heck a sales pipeline is, here's what Wikipedia has to say about it:
A sales process, also known as a sales tunnel or a sales funnel is a systematic approach to selling a product or service. A growing body of published literature approaches the sales process from the point of view of an engineering discipline (see sales process engineering)[1].
Reasons for having a well thought-out sales process include seller and buyer risk management, standardized customer interaction in sales, and scalable revenue generation. A major advantage of approaching the subject of sales from a "process point of view" is that it offers a host of well-tested design and improvement tools from other successful disciplines and process oriented industries[2]. In turn, this offers potential for quicker progress. Quality expert Joseph Juran observed, "There should be no reason our familiar principles of quality and process engineering would not work in the sales process"[3]. A sales team's fundamental job is to move a greater number of larger deals through the sales process in less time.[4]
So far the response to our free little app has been amazing and your feedback means we can build exactly what you need. inPractice is 100% user driven so we are totally committed to making things you find useful. We're currently making daily updates which add around 2-3 new features per day so we thank you for your patience if something doesn't look quite right - chances are we on it, but we'd love to hear from you if you spot something, just pop it into the form below and hit send!
Today we put up the first part of our great new Dealflow system - here you can enter new leads and projects into your Dealflow pipeline.
It automatically tells you how much value is in each stage of the pipe and it's super easy to move deals from each section from:
Incoming, Qualified, Quote, Won or Lost. Thanks to Caspar for the suggestion!
You can now email a PDF copy of the invoice straight from your invoice screens, you can write a little note and we'll automatically
attach the PDF to the email for you!
We all know it's really important to keep in regular contact with your customers and suppliers, but it's also really easy to forget when
you've got a million and one things to do. That's why our CRM has a super simple system to remind you of items you need to follow up and
also items your team are following up. It's colour coded so overdue items appear in red, today is orange and future items are a soothing pale!
It's so flexible you can use it as a Todo list and just tick off the items as you do them!
We've had a bit of a spring clean on the left hand control panel, well we've moved the 'Follow Up' link into the main CRM page and have put in some
notification alerts to let you know when something needs your attention - much better than clicking a page just to see that there's nothing there!
So now, if there's an invoice that needs your attention (unsent or overdue) or a contact that needs contacting it will be highlighted
in red with the number of items for you attention next to it. Lush!
Our new import for CSV is now fully live! inPractice CRM Contact Manager uses a really simple
format for addresses so if you CSV file has address_1, address_2, etc so just select "Company Address" for each address line you want to import to including ZIP or Area Postcode
and we'll work out the rest! To get started just login and hit the Big Green Import Button (BGIB!)
You can now add and edit contact types on the main contact area - no restrictions or funny drop down lists, just whatever you like e.g.
Suppliers, Leads, Aliens, Fish, etc Go Wild!
Sometimes your point of view is just different...and that's fine! You can now tell inPractice what screen you want to see when you login - e.g. you can have your CRM communication
overview to show by default instead of your invoice overview. We'll be tailoring this even more as we go along so you can pick and mix the things you want to see. Just
go to My Settings and change your 'Default Home Page' under App Settings.
We've been getting a lot of requests from businesses who want to have a login for each member of their team. It's a great idea and should be ready
at the end of the week!
WE ARE ALL FINE FOR ie6& ie7 - you now have the free invoice and free crm love!
We've noticed that users with Internet Explorer 6&7 we're having a few issues calculating totals on their invoices, this has been corrected now ;o) Of course
we recommend using the most upto date version of the browser you're using; e.g. IE8, Firefox, Chrome or Safari (we particulary like Chrome & Firefox!)
Are you overwhelmed with trying to keep track of your clients and competitors on the internet, facebook, twitter and blogs? Well, we're
working really hard this next week to give you some ammunition in the fight against information overload. We'll shortly be rolling out some
nifty social crm features that allow you to track individuals within companies and choose which people you want
to be notified from when they update something on twitter or their blog. Oh, and if we forget have a safe bonfire night!
Not literally, but almost bonfire night so excuse the pun! We've had an amazingly productive few weeks, so much so we've added the CRM side of things much earlier than we
anticpated. Using inPractice CRM you can now add staff to your company profiles, record communication with them, attach files, create reminders, see invoices for that company &
generally take full control of your CRM needs. But that's not all, we've got some awesome email & social network integration coming next!
We think you are going to love this, we've just added in today the new Company record card - shows you a nice map of where they are, the staff that are
at that company (as many as you ruddy well like), record communication with those people, set up reminders, see invoice history - oh yes, we are getting there!
We were just about to clock off and we thought it would be great to record the date and time when your client recieved their invoice by email. So we
did it! Any invoice you send by email will now record the date and time when the client opens it. Lovely!
We've made a great addition today in the form of automagic help bubbles when you first start to use the service - you can turn them off (or back on) at any time by going to 'My Settings'
We've spent the last two days completely overhauling the user interface and also bringing the free online invoice tool under the stewardship of our
parent company, inPractice.org as we've been experiencing a massive amount of signups (thanks!). inPractice has been providing secure online applications since 2004
to very large instutions like Cardiff University & Trinity College Dublin so you're in very safe hands!
Yes, it's live for your zero hassle, automatically creating pleasure. Got a bunch of clients you bill each month for the same thing? Well now you can just create one recurring invoice and our free online invoice tool will do the rest for you and you can go and lie down :)
Ok, we're almost ready with our Fantastic Friday Update - This week is....Recurring invoices! (It has to be ready by tomorrow as I Fallout New Vegas is out and I've got some downtime planned with the PS3!)
Fed up of creating the same invoice every month for your regular customers? Fed up of the cut and paste action only to forget an old date?
Then worry not, the wait is over, recurring invoices will let you create a single invoice and have that invoice be created automagically
every week, month or even year. inPractice will create it for you, put it in your unsent list and even send you an email to let you know. Awesome!
We added a Trash invoice feature today, which means you can Trash invoices - but more importantly you can
resurrect them again by clicking them out of the Trash. Nice!
The way you present your invoice can make a huge difference to your clients, especially if it's the first time
you've invoiced them. It can also impact on your cashflow so it really does pay to get it right. Once you've billed a client a few times then you're usually over the main hurdle, that is
you've been paid before, they like what you've done and want you to do it again. Awesome, that's what you want!
However, the first time you invoice the client you need to make it really easy to pay you.
Using a free tool like inPractice to create your template invoice can really help and here's why!
Make sure your invoice layout is simple and incluttered
Make sure the main parts are easy for you client to see, these are
Your name and contact details, give them as much as you can in case they need to query something
The date, sounds obvious, but just make sure it's easy to see when the invoice was sent
The order number or buying instruction should be easy to see if you have one
A clear description of the items being billed - with corresponding price, quanity and discounts applied
The subtotal, any tax and total should be clearly identied at the bottom of the billed items
Your payment instruction should be easy to see and understand - this is vitally important.
If you don't want late payment you need to say so here, give you clients lots of options to pay!
There are lots of other things you can put on your invoice, such as marketing messages (see below),
but you need to make sure you get the basics right in order to keep your cashflow going.
Use inPractice's Free Template Invoice tool to get it right first time!
If you think about it, your invoices are probably the most common communication you have with some clients,
especially if they're ones you send a recurring invoice to. Which means that you are potentially missing a chance
to let them know about other products or services you could sell to them!
It won't work for all clients where the person that sees the invoice is not in a position to place an order,
i.e. the larger companies that have an accounts payable department or staff member.
But it doesn't cost you anything to add a little marketing message to your invoice (or envelope) so you should explore it,
especially if you can make it relavent to the current invoiced content. Perhaps
there is a complimentary product or service that you could relate to it, e.g. perhaps you sell web design services,
why not try offering SEO to your recurring clients?
Email Marketing
If you send out your invoices by email, why not add a marketing message to your emails - it's a great & free way
to get your message out!
Awesome - really happy with progress. You can now sign in and start using Free Template Invoice to create, send, email and generate PDFs!!
Next up to be added: automatically generate recurring invoices!
If you've a client you bill regularly for the same amount (e.g. a retainer or a hosting service) then this is exactly what you need.
You just create your invoice and then tick the "Oi what's recurring?" tickbox and let us know the frequency you want them created e.g. weekly, monthly, etc!
Yep, we want you and everything you've got to say about our Free Template Invoice service! When you login you'll notice a "feedback" tab on the far left of
the screen. You can send us a message at any point if something's bugging you and we'll get back to you as soon as we can - that's right, a real human person
will get back to you.
That's right you lucky lot! We are giving this away to a the first beta user we pull out of our magic witches hat on Halloween!
Follow us on twitter @templateinvoice for our secret beta trial signup key.
A few people have asked us why 'inPractice.org' - well, we've had the domain for a while (since 2003!) and it seemed a great fit for our Free Invoice Template product as we thought of the 'Invoice Queue'.
Here at free invoice template H.Q. our mission is to provide a free invoicing tool that is simple, secure and always free.
Our business is based on the single principle that a small business needs to invoice its clients and keep on top of late payments.
We wanted to provide an amazing free solution for this need and our belief is that if we do this brilliantly and for free then
as those businesses that use us grow then we can offer them fee paying solutions when they eventually need them.
More simply put: we want you to see what we can do for free and then imagine what we can do when we're getting paid!
We also wanted to provide the quickest, fuss free invoicing solution in the World. There's no setup wizard, in fact their are no wizards
involved at all. They belong in Lord of the Rings.
Using our Free Templace Invoice tool you can login and send an invoice in under 15 seconds!
A few people have emailed to ask what is the free product and also will it always be free?
The first part I want to answer is will it always be free? and the answer is absolutely!
The second part of what is the core free product is a great question and so this, if you like,
is the manifesto for inPractice's free template invoice product!
Template invoice will always have a free product
Template invoice will allow you to create unlimited invoices for free
Template invoice will allow you to create automatically recurring invoices for free (e.g. monthly retainers)
Template invoice will allow you to send invoices by email for free
Template invoice will automatically send you weekly reports on which invoices are outstanding
Template invoice will automatically learn your settings as you go along so no tedious setup! e.g. address, logos, tax, currency!
We will be accepting new signups starting this Friday, the 8th October 2010
Today we started our first version of our free Template Invoice tool.
It's a free, fully standards-compliant CSS template invoice designed by inPractice
Our first version will be everything you and your business needs to start generating great looking invoices for free. We will over time add lots of
great new features, some of which will be premium items which will require a fee to use, but the core set of template invoice tools will always be free.
We will be accepting new signups starting this Friday, the 8th October 2010
