Personal finance tracking site Mint.com added a bunch of new budgeting and trending features today. Mint presents consumers with a financial dashboard based on spending and income data from their bank, credit card, and other financial accounts. It expanded its charts to include spending over time, income history, asset allocation, and net worth over time.
You can now plan for irregular expenses such as property taxes, auto insurance, or vacations. Budgeted items can be rolled over into the next month if they haven’t been used up, and Mint now figures out your income based on your paycheck. It takes all of this data and projects your savings or shortfall over time.
All of these new features will be appreciated by Mint’s 1.4 million registered (and 550,000 active) users, but they also point to a new direction for the site: bookkeeping for small businesses.
Outsourcing projects is a natural function of the work of freelancer or a small service-oriented business. But juggling multiple time sheets from different contractors and managing projects from a variety of freelancers can be a hassle. Collaboration between freelancers and businesses is key in order to managing efficient projects.
FreshBooks, an 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 over a network 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 within a network.
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.
FreshBooks, a Toronto-based invoice startup that formed back in 2004, has released a set of aggregated business data to the public. The data allows businesses to see how they stack up against other companies in their fields on a number of criteria, including the amount of revenue generated from new versus recurring clients and overall invoice totals. Professions available for reference include Engineering, IT Services, Legal Offices, and some more obscure professions like “Musician”. FreshBooks intends to release these reports on a quarterly basis from now on (you can access the current report here.
FreshBooks generates the reports based on opt-in information the service began asking for in 2006. As an invoice service the company has been able to accrue data on over 500,000 members, which gives the data credibility. That said, the basic reports presented seem to be very general – it would be nice if you could hone in on reports from a specific state, as rates for many professions vary widely in different regions.
Online invoicing service FreshBooks has launched an open API.
Freshbooks sees the new API allowing application designers, businesses, services companies, and users to integrate FreshBooks’ billing platform into a new category of products, features, and solutions for enhancing and streamlining productivity, workflow, sales, CRM, project management, and invoicing.
Possible uses of the API including adding to existing products to extend functionality, including timers, project planners, and desktop widgets. Sites with an existing sales infrastructure can use the API to add a billing component.
There are a lot of possibilities here and Freshbooks really has nothing to lose by offering an open API service. The API is an open invitation to innovation and should keep Freshbooks in could stead against competition including BillMyClients and Blinksale.
Previous Freshbooks coverage on TechCrunch coverage here.
Online invoicing service FreshBooks released a new version of its software yesterday and included an interesting new component that I think is a sign of things to come. Users are now asked if they would like to identify what industry they work in and contribute to aggregate data collection by sector. Participants will be able to see how much other web designers, for example, are charging per job, how much they make per month and are how quickly invoices are being paid. Those who participate will be able to access their individual averages over time and be notified whether or not their performance is improving relative to others. FreshBooks will find the top users in various fields and interview them for tips on their success.
From gambling site PicksPal to the talent hunt that viral video is becoming – leveraging the value offered by top users of any system is becoming an important trend.
Toronto based FreshBooks is approaching 100,000 registered users and will allow users to identify themselves as belonging to 86 specific sectors across 12 different industries ranging from web professionals to financial services, non profit and health care.
There are a lot of data mining possibilities here and the company is exploring options beyond invoice size, monthly income and turnaround time. I really like this idea and by making it opt-in I think the company is really doing it right. You can imagine a larger service provider making industry identification mandatory, selling that information to outside parties and generally making a mess of privacy and other concerns.
This new feature joins other interesting value adds to Freshbooks, including an API and integration with pay-as-you go CRM service PipelineDeals. We first wrote about Freshbooks here. See also competitors BillMyClients and Blinksale.
There’s a number of lightweight online invoicing services available, but one Toronto’s FreshBooks is seeking to differentiate itself with some interesting integration with other services.
FreshBooks, formed in 2004 and formerly called 2ndSite, today began allowing users to automatically send invoices to customers by US Postal Mail. Customers who have said they prefer not to use online billing will receive their invoices by first class mail with a window envelope inside for easy payment. The service has in introductory price of $1.09 per US invoice with bulk discounts. Customers receiving invoices by snail mail will be encouraged to go online for dispute resolution and to switch to online billing. BillMyClients is another online service that offers a postal mail delivery, but currently charges a higher per piece rate.
FreshBooks has also released an API for integration with other software and web services. Using the API, new client relationships and invoices can be created inside FreshBooks directly through other sites. Unfortunately the current API doesn’t allow for recurring billing to be set up, but FreshBooks says that’s on its way in the next API release. Competitor Blinksale (our coverage) is also working on releasing an API soon.
Finally, FreshBooks will soon offer integration with PipelineDeals, a pay-as-you go Salesforce competitor.
FreshBooks doesn’t compete with Blinksale by price, but integrating with other services including the good old physical world may be the new area of competition for this and other sectors of small business online.
