Reminder: If you have employees or contractors, there are tax forms due.

Posted January 22, 2010 by Bermster
Categories: Uncategorized

Rushing to finish 1099-MISCs and W-2s for contractors and employees?

Information you should know: The deadline to send independent contractors and employees their 1099-MISCs and W-2s is Feb 1st.

For you do-it-yourselfers, we know it can be a headache to gather all the payments, worker info, and do the calculations between year end and the deadline  (QuickBooks definitely helps with some of this remember). But, the 1099-MISC is especially troublesome if you’re filing manually because the IRS requires using a special paper form with red-boxes, which can only be ordered in packets of 25 or more – not very practical for those of you with just a few contractors!

We’re happy to share an easier way to finish these forms quickly and easily. A new service from our friends in TurboTax called Quick Employer Forms provides step-by-step guidance to prepare 1099-MISC, W-2 forms and e-file for only $2.95 each.

Bonus: If you finish your forms before 6:00AM PST on Jan 28, they will even mail them to your contractors and employees by the deadline. We hope you like it!

Check it out.

Comments: 1 Comment

Upgrade to QuickBooks Online and take your Billing Manager data with you!

Posted January 8, 2010 by abeo12
Categories: Billing Manager News, New Features

Hi, I’m Abe from the Billing Manager team. I hope you’re enjoying using Billing Manager for your invoicing!   We love you, don’t get us wrong… but sometimes we know you may need a bit more than just invoicing. 

If you have had that thought, consider upgrading to QuickBooks Online. 

What is QuickBooks Online?

It’s a complete online accounting solution in which you can:

  • Invoice your customers (like Billing Manager!)
  • Track expenses
  • Sync up your bank accounts and download transactions
  • Do Reporting (Profit & Loss, Balance sheet, many more…)
  • Prepare for Tax Time

We’ve made it super easy to move from Billing Manager to QuickBooks Online by adding an upgrade feature to Billing Manager.  With just a few clicks we’ll create a new QuickBooks Online account for you and transfer all your contacts, services and products, invoices (not draft or trashed) and payments. 

But wait! How much is this going to cost me?

Your QuickBooks Online account is free for 30 days, after which it’s just $9.95.  Try it out—we expect you’ll love the powerful features you get with QuickBooks Online, but if not, don’t worry. 

What happens to my Billing Manager data?

The data in Billing Manager will remain untouched, so you can go back to Billing Manager if you decide QuickBooks Online isn’t for you.

How do I do it…sign me up!

Look for the green button on the top of your Billing Manager page.  We like to call it a little green dog ear. Click and go!

Some last words

Now a few notes on the things we don’t export to QuickBooks Online when you upgrade (and some help for how to reenter them in QuickBooks Online):

1) Estimates – If you want to recreate any estimates in QuickBooks Online, select Customers > Create Estimate and re-enter the information.

2) Recurring invoice schedules – See this help page  for how to re-enter them.  However, be sure also to pause or delete the recurring invoice in Billing Manager when you do this so your customers aren’t billed from two places!

3) Logo – Check here for how  to add your company logo in QuickBooks Online.

4) Product units (e.g., “per foot”) – custom units are not supported in QuickBooks Online.

5) If you have Intuit Merchant Services (accept credit cards and e-checks online), refunds are not transferred.  Look here for how to enter refunds into QuickBooks Online.

Comments: 13 Comments

Thank You for a great year! We’re looking forward to the next

Posted December 27, 2009 by Bermster
Categories: Customer Learning, Feedback

As 2009 ends, the Billing Manager team would like to say “Thank You” for your loyalty, and to wish you, your family, and your business a happy and prosperous New Year. We are grateful for your continued feedback, and are excited to share improvements we’ve made based on it.

With your help, we introduced big product features in 2009, including:

  1. FREE: Hello FREE. We won’t accept your money, spend it on your business. Billing Manager is free
  2. Currency Localization: Where do you live?  We probably have your currency in Billing Manager now.
  3. Sales Tax and Payment reporting: Need some reporting? You can now click to see a list of your sales tax and payments.

We’re excited about the New Year and what’s coming. There’s a lot to look forward to!

Thanks for your loyalty and consistent feedback.   Please continue to tell us what you like, what you don’t like and what you want.

- Happy New Year from the Billing Manager team!

Comments: 6 Comments

Web designer? Improve your website conversion rates

Posted December 21, 2009 by Bermster
Categories: Bitesize tips and tricks

We know from our customer research that a lot of you are web designers using Billing Manager to invoice your clients.  The Billing Manager team just found a cool tool from google that offers a quick and dirty analysis of your website through the eyes of your customers.  Check it out.

http://browsersize.googlelabs.com/

Any other tools you want to share with your fellow web design community?

Comments: 3 Comments

Getting a white screen? Clear Cache

Posted December 11, 2009 by Bermster
Categories: Billing Manager News

A couple of you folks have been reporting that you’re getting a white screen when you try to log in to Billing Manager.  There is a quick way for you to fix that.

1. Just clear your cache and cookies (follow the article’s directions)

2. Close all your open windows in that browser

3. Try again.

Wait, wait, how do I clear my cache and cookies? Great question.  This article explains it pretty clearly.  Let us know if you have questions.

How to clear cache and cookies?

Bermster

Comments: 16 Comments

New Feature: Currency localization

Posted December 7, 2009 by Bermster
Categories: Billing Manager News, Getting Paid, New Features

All this time we thought “Hello” was the one universal language that people spoke. No, no, no. There is a second. It’s called getting paid.  Billing Manager has had visits from over 100 countries, using over 60  languages in just the last month!

As you know, there is a universal need to collect money for the services and products that you sell.   And the currencies, which enable this, have been around since the Mesopotamian times. The face of it has changed from silver, gold, coins to paper money and so have the many symbols which represent them.

We’re excited to announce that today…Billing Manager has taken its first step to become universal. We are  including currency symbols in the product. Your invoice will now represent your currency. We have over 100 in the product, hopefully you’ll find yours!

How do I set this up?

It’s easy! Just go to your settings tab and change the currency. Almost every country has its own symbol, its own fractional unit, currency separators and formatting. We’ve spent  a lot of time ensuring these show up correctly and in all browsers.

In the comments, say HI and let us know what country you are from!

If you are US based and this currency update doesn’t apply to you, we are continously looking for product feedback. In addition, we’ll have one more release before the Holidays, so more stuff is coming!

Comments: 7 Comments

…and we’re back.

Posted December 6, 2009 by Bermster
Categories: Uncategorized

Thanks everyone for your patience. , During the recent downtime we successfully stepped up our game. We hope you enjoy the more tuned up Billing Manager!

Comments: 10 Comments

10 things to do while you wait for Billing Manager to come back online

Posted December 5, 2009 by Bermster
Categories: Uncategorized

The team is working hard and fast to make these maintenance updates successful. We’ll let you know when things have completed. But in the meantime…here are 10 things you can do while you wait!

1. Increase your reoccurring invoices and thus your profit. Learn how here.

2. Call a customer just to see how they are doing.  If you wait for customers to call you it’s like giving a 2 year old a can of red paint and putting them in a white room alone. When you check back later, you never know what surprise you are going to get!

3. Start using twitter and say hi to us. Your customers are on it, so should you be. Create an account and then update your status with 140 characters. Use @IntuitInvoice in your update to tell us hello! We’ll start following you back!

4. Relax. When your head is full with a to-do list your creativity decreases. (Proven fact! at least on the Billing Manager team). Take an hour and go for a walk, get inspired and energize

5. Check out the new Intuit App Center. This contains lots of business apps that help you run your business better. Most of them have free trials (and some are even completely free!!). Examples include web conferencing, email marketing, expense management.

6. Participate in the Love a Local Business campaign. This monthly contest awards local business big money just having loyal customers. Submit a story about your favorite local business (or get your customers to submit on behalf of you!).

7. Spend money. Yes, it may sound counter-intuitive but keep listening. If a new customer brings you $100 of new revenue…then you should totally fine paying up to $99 to get them in the door. (Now hopefully you pay a lot less than $99, but as a business just starting out, getting customers is the first task you have in front of you!)

8. Be inspired. Watch David Weekly (founder of PBwiki) talk about how to give your ideas ex-lax. It’s a funny and motivating talk!

9. Zen your desk. With a clean and pristine environment you can be more effective and organized. Take 20 minutes…dust it out.

10. Comment on this blog. What other things did you do today?

Comments: 2 Comments

Spa treatment for Billing Manager – Dec 5th: 8am to 5pm PST

Posted December 1, 2009 by Bermster
Categories: Uncategorized

Some times you just need to take a little break.  When you get super busy and stressed out, it’s healthy to take time to yourself, stretch, meditate and regroup. Billing Manager is about to take one of those breaks.

On December 5th we’ll be down from 8am PST to 5pm PST. This is a long time and we apologize for the inconvenience.

During that break, we’re taking steps to ensure we don’t have to go on break again.  As counter intuitive as that may sound, the team is working hard to ensure that our performance and uptime is best in class. To make that happen, there is a one time tradeoff off for an extended period to rejuvenate.  (We’re basically giving the app a boutique style spa treatment).

But wait…it gets better! We’ll also be releasing some highly requested features! You asked for it and we’re delivering.

But you’ll have to wait until Dec 6th to find out what these features are.   I know, we can’t wait to tell you either!

Thanks again for your patience.  We appreciate it.

Comments: 11 Comments

New Billing Manager engineer trades hip hop ringtones for coding

Posted December 1, 2009 by pestyfly
Categories: Billing Manager News, Customer Learning, Development Process

Hello world.

My name is Brian and I have been on the Billing Manager team for three months now. I finished my degree at Cal (GO BEARS!) this past spring.

When I graduated, a lot of things stopped:

  1. Skateboarding indoors
  2. Showing up to meetings 10 minutes late
  3. The 5 for 5 deal at Domino’s Pizza
  4. Ringtones featuring hip hop artists.

Thankfully, my passion to make applications of technology more available to people has not suffered the same fate!

I’ve had some intense college projects, but this is my first time on a project that impacts the daily lives of so many different people. There is no longer an ideal solution.  Each Billing Manager customer wants something different and the challenge is finding the best solution.

To do this, I make several designs for the same page or feature and track how many users access each one. Using the data driven tracking mechanisms along with customer councils, I can tell which design is the most popular and scrap the other ones.   It’s a great feeling to find out what customers want and then give it to them.

Making Billing Manager run faster is another important piece of my work.  Time is money. You know that, we know that.  To give you more time in your day, we have been working on algorithms to speed up Billing Manager. To do this, we:

  1. Get user information from our databases faster
  2. Send our pages to your browser faster
  3. Format those pages so that your browser can interpret it faster

This may sound complicated but the concept is pretty simple. Imagine you and your friend are talking. We’re talking it from slow motion to speed talking!

I am having a lot of fun using technology to create the best customer experience possible. Stay tuned to check out the cool new work that we’re rolling out very soon.

Comments: Be the first to comment

« Older Entries