There’s no shortage of bookkeeping software applications for self-employed people and small businesses on the market today, but that’s not stopping startups and venture capitalists from trying to get a piece of that action with fresh products.
GoBootstrap was one of the startups taking a swing at catering to small-business owners with a dead simple, web-based tool that allowed them to manage their income and expenses while forecasting their federal and state taxes based on input data.
One look at the embedded logo will teach you that GoBootstrap is now relaunching under a different name, Outright, along with a vote of confidence and $2 million in venture capital funding from First Round Capital and Shasta Ventures, with additional investments from Jeff Clavier’s SoftTech VC and a number of (undisclosed) angel investors.
Outright is what it claims to be, dead simple, and this is why (U.S.-based) small-business owners and self-employed individuals should definitely give it a spin, as it only takes a little time to get used to the process and is bound to save them a lot of hassle and time on administration. They don’t have to get second thoughts about the cost either: Outright is completely free (for the time being). And if that’s not enough, Outright offers integration with the time-tracking capabilities of FreshBooks, which essentially turns Outright into a full-fledged finance management portal for micro-businesses.
The tool is currently still in public beta, but the company intends to open up to anyone in the next few weeks. In a later stage, Outright will start rolling out (paid) advanced versions that will include features like additional tax forms, multi-user access as well as add-on services for filing, payroll, and the likes.
When asked about competition, the company responded that they’re mostly up against Microsoft Excel and Word and the traditional “pencil & paper”, and I believe those are actually valid claims. Other online bookkeeping solutions that are comparable to Outright are Intuit QuickBooks, LessAccounting and Xero. I’m aware that there are likely many many more, so if you’re using one and you’re absolutely thrilled with it, let us know in comments.
I wonder if going international is in their business plan… would love to see more software like this for small businesses in Australia.
Yeah I told them to build a version for Belgium too, but somehow I doubt we’re a priority for them
We’ve been talking with customers from around the globe (more than 120 countries, actually) and want to add international support. The need to track income and expenses is universal, but it will take some time to support the different tax systems. But fear not, we’ll get there – even Belgium!
@Aulay: Check out Saasu.com. It may be just what you’re after. We do both invoicing and accounting, support Australian GST and payroll.
@Robin: Belgium is supported by Saasu! Tax codes fully configurable, and tax report is available as well.
I don’t understand what the difference is between Outright and Freshbooks. Where does one start and the other stop?
Great question, I asked them the exact same thing. Their response:
“Freshbooks is about front-office – it’s about getting paid – big pain point for self-employed people. Outright is the back office – you need to account for it at the end of the year.”
Merging both products (and even the companies) would make a lot of sense if you ask me.
I’d invite folks to try both products and see for yourself (FreshBooks has a free tier, so there’s no cost to try.)
In a matter of minutes, you can be invoicing your clients and collecting payment through FreshBooks, then have the income information automatically brought into Outright to give you a head start on your bookkeeping and taxes.
Kevin Reeth
CEO & Co-Founder, Outright.com
twitter.com/outright
I have to say, the interface is simple and slick!
Don’t forget http://freeagentcentral.com they’re the best for UK business finance and have an international edition too.
I was looking at tax section of the website and found that they have only tax form for sole proprietorship. I wonder if other forms can be available.
I have tried every other accounting system out there in the last year trying to shed ourselves of QB. IAC-EZ, Less Accounting, QB online, Money for Mac and enjoy Clarity Accounting from a Canada (Vancouver BC group).
Clarity is web based dead straight froward UI and has FB integration. https://www.cla...accounting.com/
Here are the 3 things most of these cannot do well, or do not do at all that eliminated them from our contention:
1. No Checking Printing to maintain this inside your checking accounts
2. Importing issues from CSV files from all banks (or NO CSV import)
3. QIF files still have issues. (If you are trying to knock off the biggest kid on the block, then make it easy for us to do it. )
If your target markets are small business, entrepreneurs, then enabling a seamless download and reconcile is important for saving time reducing bookkeeping costs.
Since there is as some gray area in how to account for certain things like hosting, development and a cottage industry creating a Chart of Accounts for all these programs would help.
So a VC fund, peer group, or investor could have the accounting system always be the same between portfolio companies.
I applaud everyone out there trying to develop a better system. Let’s face it, QB is a pain in the assets to use.
woohoo to helping people and small biz keep track of there expenses on the fly! bout to launch http://www.texthog.com at the chicago techcocktail, really stoked, i use it already for my own small businesses, having two coffee shops and a vintage shop in chicago i really did build this for my own personal use, looking forward, useful things yay, good post!
http://www.philcoextra.com
OK. Here we go. The debate about the VC model being broken is showing some legs. Notice this Series A is ONLY $2M with three VC firms and Angels.
btw – this looks like a promising offering.
I found there are quite a number of online accounting software. Is this another “me-too” trying this crowded space? I wonder whether the VCs are aware of the crowded space. I hope you have enough money to burn before breakeven.
@aulay Xero has a version for Australia with direct bank feeds from CBA, NAB, ANZ banks.
We have people using Xero in over 25 countries and loving it…
http://search.t...m/search?q=xero
People even say Xero is sexy, fun and addictive…
http://blog.xer...-and-addictive/
@Robin Xero is a complete front office & back office platform (invoicing, banking, expense claims, budgeting, accounting, reporting)
It would be great to have TechCrunch do a thorough roundup of the accounting apps. I really look forward to that.
Without wanting to sound commercial – cloudave.com is running an in-depth series of reviews, analysis pieces and guest-posts about SaaS accounting applications.
Check them all out under this tag – http://www.clou...e.com/tag/accy2
FreshBooks integration, cool.
Need Mint (w/bank & payroll integration) + FreshBooks + Outright = PERFECT for my company
Become the Mint for Small Business, and it’s golden.
While there are a lot of accounting software providers in the Web 2.0 space, I think each one offers something slightly different. Just think, there are 20 million small businesses out there with a wide variety of needs. I think it is good that many different types of accounting software are being developed to fit the needs of different types of businesses. There simply isn’t a one size fit all solution…
I think the future of Web 2.0 is integration. Which is why Outright and Clarity Accounting [www.clarityaccounting.com] have integrated with FreshBooks. This is just the beginning of a web of many integrated applications.
May Chu, Co-founder, ClarityAccounting.com
We have a fabulous SaaS accounting provider in Australia called SaaSu (http://www.SaaSu.com) which has not been adapted for other regions. It’s not as pretty as some of these other solutions but I think its stronger on the core accounting functionality, like providing automated payroll and so forth.
Oops should say “has been adapted”… It would be nice if you could edit your comments if one bothers to log in!
Converting the free users to premium users will not be evident as the features and functionality could be sufficient for many entrepreneurs.
As an actual, y’know, _paying_ user of accounting products I’ve gone through a number of the cloud solutions and ended up with boring old locally installed Quickbooks.
Cloud solutions which take a slice of the problem and sell a solution forget one thing. Cost. Cost and simplicity. Two things. (Sorry Monty Python).
Imagine a small company (such as mine) that needs Freshbooks plus Outright. Tote up the monthly fees for all of them. Whatcha got? Big number.
Quickbooks is ugly. Clunky. But once installed and configured it gets my job done. At a cost far lower than the monthly fees forever from the cloud vendors.
Then consider simplicity. Each vendor looks at self and says “Self, is this not the most Apple/37 Signals/Web 2.0-colors-and-rounded-corners piece of zen fabulosity you’ve ever seen?” Except it doesn’t work well for the customer. It’s isolated from Central Desktop/Basecamp/Whatever.com and plays poorly with the other things your customer needs and uses.
Translation: for the love of God, cloud vendors, think of the children ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H your potential customers.
Because right now you don’t.
I’m telling you that from the bottom of my wallet.
@philiphodgen
Well said Phil
Bottom line is cost
Why would i switch from Quickbooks
Dont see added value to switch
Nice cloud , but where is the reason to switch and how to make that painless ?
And there is no way to import what you already have into this
Otherwise both products are well done
I am gonna try it now, we let you know if its useful.
It’s an interesting market at the moment.
At Liquid, we’ve been doing cloud accounting for 8 years now in various forms. We started with Enterprise Level stuff and engineered it down to the SME market. This means it’s not quite as pretty as some, but has more functionality than anything else out there. If you want to run international stuff, multi-currency, multi bank accounts have a look and take a free trial.
Cheers Richard at Liquid Accounts
I wish you the best of luck but its gonna be tough! I’m not sure if its possible to find a more crowded marketplace than this one; Blinksale, Less Accounting, Harvest, Freshbooks, Quickbooks, Quickbooks online, MS Small Accounting, Clarity, IAC-EZ, Zoho, Xero, Bamboo Invoice, Saasu, e-conomic, Invoice Machine, FreeAgent, Intuit Billing Manager, Simply Invoices and ourselves to some extent (billFLO)
Ian Sweeney
Having actually watched this market for a some time, I think May has the right idea, although I don’t believe that integration is the penultimate solution. At Merchant’s Mirror (http://www.merchantsmirror.com), we are focused more on an all-in-one type solution with integration for better scale. In the end, you can only do so much through in-house development unless you have an unlimited budget of which none of the above does.
Like Ian, I don’t see it as a crowded marketplace because each of the product lines that he’s mentioned actually have different focuses. You can’t pitch an all-in-one solution against an invoicing product because they’re different target audiences with varying needs.
While everyone contends that it’s a global marketplace in that it’s web-based, there are still certain localization ties by each competitor. Xero is currently tied to Australia region (although expanding), Kashflow in EU, are two examples. We all have clients elsewhere, but if everyone published their client lists, there would be a heavy concentration in one geographical area rather than another.
Fundamentally, each of us is here to serve our customer base – that’s the bottom line. Customers select Merchant’s Mirror because it meets their particular needs. Further, it doesn’t matter who the provider is as long as our goal never changes: to keep working at our own customer loyalty.
All the best to Outright!
Ben Hwang
Chief Strategy Officer, Merchant’s Mirror
saasu.com works in most countries too, we loved it so much as angel investors (for remote access to portfolio company accounts) that we invested in it…
Interesting disucssion. I’ve long felt that on-demand providers could make heaps more money by using data analysis techniques to offer a range of services that financial services providers, utilities and others would find immensely valuable. Accounting apps are in a unique position to provide that .
I would be interested if anyone has tried http://www.fastdue.com? Nice interface and it free too, but I havent seen it reviewed yet.
There are lot of accounting software. I haven’t been knowing all this stuff until now… I have been using numia a free online accounting service for these much years. Anyways thanks for the info.
Also try Fusion Accounts – online accounting with full currency and multi-VAT support.
Also try Fusion Accounts – online accounting with full multi-currency and multi-VAT support – http://www.fusionaccounts.com.
Great article! I am absolutely going to try Outright! I am glad that I came across this article because I have been looking around for some bookkeeping software! I’ll try it out.
Also, we are holding an event in New York City for entrepreneurs who are in the technology field and are looking to meet some VCs.
It’s be great to see some more great technology ideas have the success of Outright!
http://www.fund...m/PVC/index.asp
Great article and thanks again for the information. I’m going to retweet this article!
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Thanks!
Heather Coull
Marketing Manager
FundingPost.com
617-688-0440
Twitter: http://www.twit...creativelycoull
Facebook: http://www.face...com/fundingpost
iPhone app: http://www.Fund...Post.com/iphone
Outright does not even include a chart of accounts or the option to reconcile accounts.
Sorry to say this is useless to many businesses (even the smallest).
How do you keep track of expenses from different accounts? How do you reconcile accounts at the end of the month?
I’ve tried it and wouldn’t even use it for personal use. It needs many more options. For all the tools it gives I would HOPE it’s free.