Billing Manager Blog

Update (9:32AM 9/18/2009): We’ve fixed the performance issue and Billing Manager should be running as normal.  This means you should be having no trouble logging into your account and should be able to process your invoicing and payments like you have always done before.  Our team will also be introducing some improvements that we expect will make Billing Manager run even faster.  Our team is watching this issue very closely but if you have a concern or problem, let us know.

9/10: Billing Manager is currently having some performance issues and is running very slow in some key areas.  We know how many people rely on Billing Manager to invoice their clients and accept payments, so this is a serious problem.  Our team has been investigating the root cause of this issue, I am confident they will get to a solution soon.  Thanks for bearing with us and we will give you an update when we have more information.

We’re sorry for the inconvenience and will get Billing Manager running smoothly as soon as possible.

We are currently investigating fraudulent emails that were sent to some Billing Manager customers over the past few days. The email requests users to update their account information by clicking a link that goes to a fraudulent web site or may download what the email indicates is a “security tool.”  Intuit did not send this email–we never use emails to request personal information or update security tools. A copy of the e-mail is pasted below should you want to refer to it.

Here’s what you should do to protect yourself:

1. Be suspicious of any email that asks for personal information, requires you to download anything or requests your authentication information to access your online account.
2. Do not click any links in a suspicious email.
3. Do not download any tools from an email
4. Delete any suspicious email from your inbox and your trash bin immediately
5. If you have downloaded any programs related to the fraudulent email, delete them.  If you have provided any personal information, passwords, or logins, change your password to prevent unauthorized users from logging into your account.

Below is the fraudulent email for your reference:

Subject: NECESSARY TOOL

Body: Due to increased security measures our company developed a tool for secured access to the web-page. You should follow these instructions:

- download the tool click here

- install it on your personal computer

In case you don’t install this tool within two weeks from the moment of receiving this letter you will be denied access to services provided by our company.

We are here to support. We want to do everything we can to get you up and running. To contact us, or to view Frequently Asked Questions, please click here. Going forward, you can also click support at the bottom of any page or call us at 800-624-1465. (Don’t respond to this email; it was sent from an address that can’t accept incoming email.)

Best regards,

The Intuit Online team

The Intuit Security Team is investigating this message–please visit http://security.intuit.com/ if you have more concerns or would like more information.

Billing Manager is a completely free web invoicing solution–and tonight free got even better!  We’re committed to making Billing Manager the invoicing solution of choice for small businesses, and with our latest product changes, we’re taking a pretty big step in that direction.  We’ve made Estimates, Recurring Invoices, and PDF functionality completely free to all our users.  It’s no secret that there are plenty of invoicing apps out there—it’s actually a pretty crowded space, but one thing sets us apart from the pack—Billing Manager is free for any number of clients you have, any number of invoices you send, and now we have some other great new features available.

Here’s what’s new in Billing Manager:

• Recurring Invoices: If you regularly send the same invoice to a particular client, you can now schedule it with Billing Manager, helping save you time.
• Estimates: If you want to create estimates before billing your customers, you can have your customer approve an estimate and then convert it to an invoice.
• PDF’s: Our PDF feature is now available to all.  This lets you save invoices as a PDF and send them as PDF attachments to your clients.
• Payments & Sales Tax Report: A lot of our existing customers have told us that they’d like to add up the total amount that their customers have paid them for a certain time period.  Our new report solves this problem and is combined with our Sales Tax Report.

We still offer Intuit Merchant Service for Billing Manager if you need to accept credit cards, and nothing has changed here—there is still a monthly fee and associated transaction charges.  If you are currently signed up for our Premium Account, we will stop billing you.  Cheers!

If you’re a Safari user, we’ve got some good news for you!  We’ve fixed Billing Manager for the Safari 4 browser and all the issues we know about should be resolved.  After Apple released an update to Safari 4 in early June, we slowly started hearing feedback trickle in that some customers weren’t able to view their invoices.  We’ve fixed the snafu, notified Apple about this issue, done extensive testing to make sure it’s fixed, and our quality team is working diligently to make sure that Billing Manager works across all major browsers (IE 6+, Firefox 2+, Safari 3+, and Chrome).  If you had issues with Safari, we apologize, and the good news is that I’ve confirmed with our quality engineers that our update went out at 8:27PM Pacific tonight, so you should be fine moving forward.  Cheers!

Are you guys on Twitter?  Twitter was the topic du jour in Silicon Valley a year or so ago, and since the mainstream media has picked it up this year, the service has been growing like crazy—in the last year they’ve grown to about 23 million users.  I thought it was about time to revive the Billing Manager Twitter account—check us out at @freeinvoicing.  A lot of freelancers and micro-businesses that use Billing Manager are also on Twitter, so I thought it might be useful to share some tips that I’ve learned from Intuit (@intuit) and my own use of Twitter (@willhambly).  I’m sure we’ve got some experts out there so, I’d also like to open up a forum so we can share.

Here are some uses of Twitter that I’ve found useful:

1. Keep in touch with local media via Twitter. A lot of local reporters and bloggers are on Twitter and are always looking for good stories.  Connecting with bloggers can pay off if someone writes an article about your business.  Here is an example of an independent frozen yogurt shop that got written up in a local paper.
2. Use Twitter to connect with your customers and drive foot traffic. Because Twitter is all about real-time communication, you can use it to notify customers quickly about time-sensitive news.  A great example is a bakery based in the UK that uses Twitter to let customers know when their bread is coming out of the oven.  Check out @AlbionsOven.
3. Promote your website with Twitter. If you regularly update your website or have a blog, you can use Twitter to drive traffic to your site and notify customers when you have new content or new products.  A lot of news organizations use Twitter for this exact purpose.  Some sites get a ton of traffic from Twitter and have even begun to rival search as a source of visits.

These applications of Twitter might not apply to your business, but they could be worth thinking about.  If you guys want to share your Twitter “secret sauce,” go ahead and speak up in the comments, we’d love to hear from you.