Name: Noam Birnbaum
Company: MacCentric Solutions
Phone: 877-luv-macs    
Date: October 11, 2006
Email: noam [at] maccentricsolutions [dot] com
Web Site: http://maccentricsolutions.com/

1. How would you describe your business?
We are a computer consulting firm specializing in Macintosh. We work with small businesses and not-for-profits that have more Macs than any other platform; we do work with PCs (the ugly stepsisters) but Macs are our specialty.

2. How many clients do you have?
About twenty monthly recurring clients and any number of one-off clients. Over the last 8 years we've worked with over 100 customers.

3. How did you find FreshBooks?
I was referred to FreshBooks by someone who already used the service. We were talking about business stuff and invoicing came up. He said I had to try FreshBooks; I did and quickly became a convert.

4. What needs motivated you to look for another service?
QuickBooks worked fine when the business was small, but then we expanded and got busier. As soon as I wasn't the only point of contact for clients, they, for some reason, started paying late and that created cash flow problems.

5. What were you using before FreshBooks?
QuickBooks, and then printing and mailing or emailing invoices to clients.

6. What were you looking for when you found FreshBooks?
A way to keep track of cash flow and accounts aging, and keep all of the billing centralized.

7. Why did you switch to FreshBooks?
QuickBooks was okay but there's so much going on in QuickBooks that I found it a little distracting. FreshBooks is very targeted in what it does so it's much simpler to accomplish what you need to get done.

8.    What have you found since you switched?
We get paid faster because it's easy to see what needs to be paid and then get in touch with those clients. Everything is in one place and it's easily accessible. Plus we've had great responses from customers.

The ability to send reminder emails has made a huge difference. The first reminder is very friendly and the second reminder says we're now assessing financing charges (whether we actually do or not) - then the payments start to come in! This definitely helps with cash flow. The ability to pay by credit card and PayPal help this too. Not many people use it, but those who do pay quickly.

The ability to send an invoice by mail has also improved the rate of payment. I've found that some people don't respond well to email, so being able to send an invoice through the mail means those clients can put it into their finance systems and get it paid.  We have one customer with whom we worked only briefly, and emailed them just one invoice, on which they were delinquent for six months without a peep, despite repeated email reminders.  But as soon as we mailed them a paper invoice, their accounts payable department was calling us apologizing left and right and promising immediate payment.

9. How does FreshBooks compare to accounting software?
FreshBooks is so much simpler because it doesn't need to do everything in the world for every kind of company. I chose it because it does a few things really well; its functions are limited to specific goals which it achieves. The layout is simple and easy to use for both us and our customers.

10. What is the biggest difference for you from what you were using before FreshBooks?
Ease of use is the biggest thing. It's so well designed compared to QuickBooks. My accountant told me my use of QuickBooks was the most creative she'd ever seen - and she didn't mean that as a compliment! FreshBooks doesn't need any tweaking, long user manuals, or hours spent looking for answers in an online forum.

11. How much time were you spending each month invoicing before FreshBooks?
A lot more than before FreshBooks.

12.    What are the key benefits of FreshBooks?
Ease of use, ability to get invoices paid faster and improve cash flow and saves time.

One of the things I do that saves a tremendous amount of time is using the "Documents" feature. Often on a client's invoice there will be a general "computer consulting" line item. I used to have to detail the breakdown of this on each invoice, using different lines for each description. Invoicing took days every month.  Now I just put a note in the invoice for the client to look in their Documents section, where I've included a PDF file of the work detail, exported straight out of our work logging system.  So it's separate but still close by, and it saves me a ton of time, which translates into money because my operations manager doesn't have to spend as long composing the invoices.

13. What do your clients say?
We've had good feedback with a lot of exclamation marks. Here's a recent example from someone who works in a large company and is very busy: "This link to the invoice was truly a beautiful thing". That kind of brief comment from someone whose attention is very hard to get makes me feel confident that Freshbooks is a great system for our customers.

14. What words would you use to describe FreshBooks?
Simple, effective, powerful, elegant, cost-effective (great pricing), and flexible.

15. If you were to recommend FreshBooks to someone else, what would you say?
It's really helped me get a handle on my cash flow and helped my customers with getting their accounting straight.

16. Any comments on the "view invoice status" feature?
Thank god. It's really essential to me. Something new that I really like is, from the list of users, I can go straight to the list of their invoices. It gives me all the information I need on how to track them if they're late; that's the important thing for me.

17. Is having the invoice as a link better than having it as an attachment? If yes, why?
Ideally, I'd have both. Some people are a little confused by the link at first, so it would be good to have the document, but then they get used to it. The link is also good because it doesn't require customers to log in.

18. What improvements would you like to see to FreshBooks?
One big one, which is almost a necessity for me: I need more than 4 types of tax. Around the Bay area, for example, each county can have its own tax.  I'd also like to be able to label each tax field with a longer name since the current limited characters don't look very elegant on an invoice.

The second thing which bugs me all the time is I wish there was a preference to set how many lines of invoices/users/etc. are displayed on any one screen.  When I'm looking for a particular invoice or a particular user, I want to be able to scan the entire list at once.  It's annoying to have to click the "all X pages" link every... single... time.

[Daniel from our support team responds:

Hi Noam,

Thanks for the great feedback.

With regards to the need for more than 4 types of taxes, currently the
FreshBooks system is limited to 4 taxes.  We may consider adding additional taxes in a future release of FreshBooks.  For the time being, my only suggestion would be to create a second FreshBooks account to govern the separate county.  We typically allow our clients to share client/staff limits with their other accounts so you do not need to pay for a separate account.  If you are interested in this option, please send us an email about how many clients you wish to transfer to your new account and I will be happy to assist you with that.

With regards to your second concern on the number of lines for 'invoices/users/etc/' that appear on one screen, currently there is a preference you can set that can customize how many items appear on one screen.

To modify this preference:
1. Click on your "Settings" link on the top right corner.
2. Click on your "Preferences" link under "Step 4".
3. Update the number next to "Items Per Page".
4. Click on your Save button.

I hope this helps.]

19. What incentives to use FreshBooks would be of interest to other people in your industry?
I almost want to say with the free trial and the current pricing, you're doing great.

However, in my industry there are a lot of computer geeks. And from that point of view, the FreshBooks API is limited from a programming perspective. We like to build web sites for our clients that allow them to log in; at the very least I'd like to be able to build an interface that allows the client to log in to my web site and have that act as a login to FreshBooks as well, so they don't have to log in twice.

20. What web sites do you visit on a regular basis?
www.news.google.com is my home page; www.macfixit.com, www.tuaw.com

Thanks Noam!