Outsourcing projects to freelancers comes naturally to small service-oriented businesses. But juggling multiple time sheets from different contractors and managing projects from a variety of freelancers can be a hassle. Collaboration between freelancers and small businesses is key in order to managing projects efficiently.
FreshBooks, a Toronto-based invoice startup, is adding a new networking feature to its software that allows freelancers and small businesses to work with each other directly within the program and share this information freely. Through the “Contractor” feature, FreshBooks users can create and share client projects across FreshBook accounts, with multiple users able to access different accounts. Formerly, FreshBooks users couldn’t collaborate on projects across the Internet.
Of course, there are privacy issues to managing a project online. Businesses may not want to show a contractor the markup rate they are charging for services to a client. FreshBooks maintains that you can share certain information (like invoices, time sheets, billing) but also keep privileged client information private on the network.
The Contractor feature also facilitates real-time project tracking, giving businesses visibility into a contractor’s progress on a project. FreshBooks, which we reviewed here, lets you create invoices, time sheets and estimates within the browser. FreshBooks has free and paid plans and has served 700,000 users since its launch in 2004. The startup has steadily added useful features to its billing service over the past few years, including benchmark reports on aggregated business data, an open API, and data mining from users. Competitors in the online billing space include BillMyClients and Blinksale.
Software As A Network from FreshBooks on Vimeo.
Interesting that certain aspects can remain private – that’s a nice touch.
OT: One of these ‘collaboration’ companies should buy my domain iCoCreate.com. It would be a great benefit to them.
Mike McDerment continues to be a great innovator. Glad to see you covering a real company with real customers and revenues.
Online billing isn’t “sexy” but it has utility that people are willing to pay for. I’d like to see more such companies covered on TC … it would lead to significantly slower growth in the dead pool.
Regards,
George
++
This is stupid, can’t we go back to just talking about twitter all the time?
Freshbooks is an amazing service. Very high quality, easy to use, but it’s best feature is the quality of the support. Every time I’ve called with a question, and some have been complicated, I’ve reached a “human” on the very first try, and they’ve always had the right answer.
^— sponsored post
^— useless post
(note clever adoption of prior pointer ASCII art)
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
freshbooks? meh. beyond obnoxious staff. helpful maybe but tired of the sun shining out of their arses.
have u seen their staff in a hiring video?
http://careers....m/#webdeveloper
hilarious!!!
Shameless plug:
I just recently launched an online billing service that competes in this space as well – InvoiceMore ( http://www.invoicemore.com ).
The main difference from all other current competitors (including those mentioned) is that InvoiceMore bases recurring billing on recurring items themselves instead of recurring invoice templates. That way multiple different recurring services can be generated onto a single invoice each month instead of multiple ones for each “invoice template”. It’s a slightly different approach that has been working really well for us so far.
A feature with real benefits . . . I like it. Although I am curious how this particular improvement got prioritized over others. Perhaps they have been listening to their existing paid customers and want to retain them as their customers grow. Good idea.
Awesome!
and the video is too funny… I think I know the invisible guy.
Love these guys. Always something new.
Great! Thanks for the coverage, we’ve been using FreshBooks for 2 years now and the service is invaluable. One of the best success story out of Toronto!
Great service. Thanks for sharing.
Great news from Mike and the crew. Proud to work with him on #mesh and to be a FreshBooks user too.
Brilliant! Nice work folks!
Great job Mike & Co. Very cool.
Great Job Mike! Keep kicking ass and pushing the fundamental small business space.
They said in their video and print that SaaS is outdated and that there new “SaaN” is replacing it. Where do they get off being that narcissistic? SaaS is a deployment method and isn’t being replaced. And their new feature is really just sharing between their customer accounts at different security levels. That’s not new either. Sure it’s a great new feature for their users but don’t try to pretend that you are replacing or better than a whole deployment strategy that’s ust straight up a lie.
Great to see a post about a real business on TC!
I dont know if Arrington has shares in Twitter, but I am tired of reading about it on TC.
I agree, 100%
Awesome. Freshbooks has a great team.