Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

In November we advertised a support role here at KashFlow and filled the role within a couple of days.

Patrick is still with us and doing a great job – but we’re still growing very fast and need more hands on the support deck. So we’re hiring again for a second support person to join our ever growing team.

The role is very much as originally advertised:

We’re growing ridiculously fast here at KashFlow HQ in London (SE1) with customer growth percentage well into the double figures every month.

The team has grown very quickly from just two people not very long ago to thirteen today.

We now need to hire a smart, articulate individual to join our customer support team.

Being a quick learner and being able to communicate well by email is much more important than any type of industry experience, so the role may be well suited to a bright school/college/university leaver. If you have an interest in a career in IT or accounting then this would be a great starting point.

This is an excellent opportunity to start your career with a fast-growing technology company. And you’ll learn more about accounting than you ever wanted to!

If this sounds like something you might be interested in please send a CV with covering letter to careers@kashflow.com

The salary on offer ranges from £12-18k dependent on your experience.

I can’t stress enough that enthusiasm and ability to learn is more important than qualifications or experience.

No agencies.
Our usual notice applies: If you are an agency and you call/email about this role anyway, then I reserve the right to include you in a future blog post about recruitment agencies who can’t read and can’t be any good anyway or they wouldn’t have to phone people who explicitly said “No Agencies”.

When KashFlow was first available back in 2005 it was a very, very basic invoicing tool. It produced invoices with sequential numbers and you could mark them as either “paid” or “not paid”. Nothing more. This was intentional. We (or “I” as it was then) didn’t want to make assumptions about what businesses wanted from what was to be a fully functional accounting software

The Approach

We were lucky with our timing. There weren’t any other web-based accounting apps worth mentioning at the time and we weren’t under the level of scrutiny new entrants in this market place are today.

So we took our time and asked our customers to tell us what they wanted added. Once we’d covered the main bases we’d only add new features it if they passed 4 tests:

1) Customers must be asking for it – so not just something we think would be cool to have
2) It mustn’t distract from the simplicity of the software
3) It shouldn’t remove any existing functionality
4) Wherever possible it should be off-and-onable, defaulting to off so as not to confuse or distract customers

Rule 4 can cause a problem as people taking an initial look at the software today can be fooled into thinking it doesn’t have many features when in fact there’s probably no other accounting app, online or offline, with the depth of functionality we now have.

This is why we tell people that if they think it can’t do something they need, they should get in touch with support as it probably does do it.

The Result

The result is that we now have an application that’s got lots of features that are of genuine use to small business owners, rather then lots of confusing menus full of jargon and options you never use – the main thing that put me off other programs available when we started.

We’ve kept our approach the same over the years; actively soliciting suggestions and sticking to the rules above. You’ve not let us down. We have a list of great feature requests and we’re constantly improving the software based on those suggestions.

Until relatively recently we’d pick the features we (myself and one other developer) were going to work on and just go for it. This meant we’d get new functionality released very quickly and this kept us ahead of the emerging competition.

And now

Now we have thousands and thousands of customers and a team of developers (they rarely let me touch code these days) we needed to implement a more methodical approach to developing the application. So this is how one of your suggestions goes from initially being received to being live in the software.

Your suggestions

The suggestions we receive from you are all logged on a database, nothing is discarded no matter how silly or complicated.

Once every 4 weeks I sit down with the development team and let them know which suggestions I want implemented over the next 4 weeks.

The way I decide what I want them to do is based on how many people are asking for a particular feature and how complex it is. I’d be lying if I said I don’t take into account who’s asking for it too. We have some Partners who spend tens of thousands of pounds a year with us and I’d be silly not to give more weight to their requests than I do to others.

They go away and develop the features on a development server we have in the office. Once they’ve finished, the new features are copied to a separate test server we have here and it’s tested by non-technical end users. Assuming the features work as planned they then go on to the “live” system where you get access to them.

This works really well and means we can still get new features out quickly and regularly.

The down-side is that if you make a suggestion for us, it’s virtually impossible for us to tell you how long it’ll be before it’s available. It may be a great idea and we plan to add it in the next development cycle. But as requests flood in each week, the list changes all the time so your suggestion may get put back if other requests become more popular or more pressing.

Pricing

An observation. The basic invoicing tool we launched with cost £13.99/month. Since then, despite going from a basic tool to a full accounts package that’s winning awards all over the place, and spending 100’s of thousands of pounds developing the software and infrastructure, we’ve only upped the price once – to £15.99/month. And that was only for new customers. If you joined us back when it was £13.99, that’s what you’re still paying.

There are a number of changes to VAT on 1st Jan 2010. This is how we’ll be helping you to easily deal with them with the minimum of effort and fuss

Change to Standard Rate of VAT

The standard rate of VAT will change from 15% to 17.5%. If you’re VAT registered then a message should be showing on your Overview page which to take you to a page where you can click a single button and have your account added to the list we’ll automatically apply the changes to. If you’re on this list then the following changes will take place automatically for you at midnight on 31st December:

- If you don’t currently have 17.5% in your list of VAT rates then it will be added
- All repeat invoice, purchase or bank transaction templates set to 15% will change to 17.5%
- If your default VAT rate is currently 15% it’ll be changed to 17.5%
- Any Sales Types or Outgoing Types you have set to a default rate of 15% will change to 17.5%
- If you use the PayPal Importer service and have the VAT rate set to 15%, this will be chnaged to 17.5%

The data you’ve already entered wont be changed.

Change percentages on the Flat Rate Scheme

If you’re on the Flat Rate Scheme then the percentage VAT you pay may be changing. You can change this rate in Settings -> VAT Settings.
Where you’ll have fun is if the period you’re producing a VAT return doesn’t start on 1st Jan. In this scenario you’d have to pay the old rate on sales prior to 1st Jan and the new rate on sales after 1st Jan
KashFlow makes this very easy. If you tick the box in VAT Settings to say you’re on the FRS then you’ll see the settings to deal with cross-over periods like the above.

Changes to EC Sales Lists

In the past you’ve only had to declare sales of products (as opposed to services) that you make to customers in other EC states on an EC Sales List (ESL). KashFlow knows whether the item you’ve sold is a product or service based on whether or not you’ve ticked the box on the Sales Type page that says “This is a product (as opposed to a service)”. If the box is ticked then any sales of that item are declared on your ESCL

As from 1st Jan most services will also have to be declared on your EC Sales List. This is a simple change for us – we’ll just change the wording from “This is a product (as opposed to a service)”. to “Include sales of this product/service on my EC Sales List”

If you have any questions on any of this then please contact support@kashflow.com

After executing the plans laid out in my July blog post “Warning – this blog post may radically alter your business” – KashFlow has now been radically altered.

We’re now based in London and I’ve lured the CTO I’ve been after for years.

I’m now not allowed to touch any code myself and the development team, free of my interference, are turning out product enhancements based on your requests at least twice as fast as they were previously.

We’ve now got some pretty cool stuff that needs to be tested by a select group of actual customers before being released into the wild. First up (ready and waiting for you right now) is integration with FreshBooks. Soon our iPhone app will also need testing and I’m sure there will be plenty more to come.

So are you interested in testing some of these new features? We’d give you access to these new features before others get to use them in return for feedback on them, how we can improve it and if you can find any bugs.

If this sounds interesting to you (you sad, sad person!), contact support@kashflow.com with your username and let them know you’re interested in being a beta tester.

We’re growing ridiculously fast here at KashFlow HQ in London (SE1) with customer growth percentage well into the double figures every month.

The team has grown very quickly from just two people not very long ago to thirteen today.

We now need to hire a smart, articulate individual to join our customer support team.

Being a quick learner and being able to communicate well by email is much more important than any type of industry experience, so the role may be well suited to a bright school/college/university leaver. If you have an interest in a career in IT or accounting then this would be a great starting point.

This is an excellent opportunity to start your career with a fast-growing technology company. And you’ll learn more about accounting than you ever wanted to!

If this sounds like something you might be interested in please send a CV with covering letter to careers@kashflow.com

UPDATE: This role has now been filled.

No agencies.
Our usual notice applies: If you are an agency and you call/email  about this role anyway, then I reserve the right to include you in a future blog post about recruitment agencies who can’t read and can’t be any good anyway or they wouldn’t have to  phone people who explicitly said “No Agencies”.

A number of KashFlow customers have got in touch recently to tell me about an email they received from Sage.

Earlier this year we offered our online accounting software for free to anyone that could send us a copy of their boxed accounting software. A little video on YouTube demonstrating the future of boxed software got over 27,000 views and really helped fuel our campaign.

Sage then launched a campaign offering small businesses 25% off their software if they trade in a competing product.

The interesting part is that on their site they list “examples of suppliers that we offer our trade in discount against” for Sage 50 Accounts and list a number of products including Quickbooks and MYOB. But the onlyweb-based accounting software they mention is KashFlow.

When we ran our offer we received loads of software, including lots of copies of Sage. The total “value” of the software was over £10,000. I’m willing to bet Sage wont attract a single KashFlow customer with this tactic.

They can’t be getting much interest in the offer or someone would have pointed out to them that their link to the Sage 50 Accounts product actuall goes to a page for Sage 50 Payroll.

If you’re an international company  planning a US launch of a product, the UK is often used as a testing ground.

But what to do when the UK is your main market?

Sage released a dire web-based (and I use the term loosely) accounting system called Sage Live in January this year which was pulled within in a month of launch due to security issues with it that were flagged up on this blog.

Sage own a South African company called Softline which in turn own a company called Pastel. Pastel have a wide range of accounting products for the South African market and I’m told by the accountants we work with that they’re actually quite good.

In May this year, Pastel launched “Pastel MyBusiness Online“. They’re still working on improving the product and haven’t pushed the marketing boat out in any big way just yet. The design of the site shows traces of coloured abstract shapes Sage are using worldwide in their branding. If you have 10 minutes to spare, you can watch this video presentation from the launch:

I’ve not taken a thorough look at the software (I’ll leave that to Ben Kepes), but from what I can see it appears they’ve written it from the ground up specifically for the web. It has a nice uncluttered  interface and is available on a monthly subscription of around £12 per month (14o SA Rand).

In terms of functionality it seems pretty limited, especially in comparison to the many features in KashFlow, but it does cover the basics.

I’ve written on this blog before that Sage can’t do SaaS in-house because a) it’s not in their DNA – desktop programming skills and mentality don’t transfer to the web and b) it cannibalizes their existing business model. My proposed solution was for them to have a separate company set up specifically for developing SaaS. Fund it well but leave them alone.

It seems Sage already have that in Pastel.

So the only question remaining – why aren’t Sage taking Pastel MyBusiness Online and pushing it to the UK market? It looks like a half-decent product, true multi-tenanted Software as a Service and not the half-baked approach they’re using for SaaS CRM.

I suspect the answer is simple. In a company the size of Sage the left hand sometimes doesn’t know what the right-hand is doing. Perhaps Sage aren’t even aware that they already own a capable SaaS development team and an apparently respectable attempt at SaaS accounting.

I blogged 6 weeks ago about a series of events that caused me to put in place new growth plans for KashFlow. One of the important steps was moving our office from Basildon in Essex to central London. And now we’ve done it.

We’re now in our great new office at Magdalen House on  Tooley St, SE1 – opposite the Unicorn Theatre and just down the road from London Dungeons.

So if you fancy popping in to say hello, we’re now much easier to get to. You’ll have to excuse the mess for a week or so while we tidy up though (Oh, and don’t expect tea or coffe until we get the water sorted out!)

As soon as Rackspace give us access to our servers from the new location we’ll get the site updated with the new address and directions.

When you’re running a small business, it makes sense to engage with the media. They help get your story out there and can give you valuable free coverage in well-read publications.
The last few years has seen the rise and rise of the blogger – a variation on the traditional journalist but they can still get your company name in front of significant audiences – often more targeted.

Because anyone can start a blog at zero cost, the quality of blogs and bloggers varies dramatically – from the good to the bad to the outright odd. AccManPro, written by Dennis Howlett, falls firmly in the latter category.

The purpose of this post is so that I have a page I can point people at in the future when I’m asked why I’ve not responded to the whatever oddness Dennis Howlett chooses to write about me or my company in the future. If you’re not already familiar with AccManPro and my history with Howlett then you’ll probably want to stop reading here or just skip to the last paragraph as it’ll just bore you silly!

Howlett and I have always had an odd relationship. I have to begrudgingly admit we’re similar in some ways – we both like to make a lot of noise and be contentious in order to get noticed.

Other “proper” journalists in the industry and other heads of SaaS accounting firms have asked why he seems to be so obsessed about me and my company and writes a disproportionate amount of negative comment about us. In part it goes back to when he stitched me up on Twitter earlier this year.

In the ensuing row he kept on professing his independence so when I pointed out I knew he owned 10% of FreeAgentCentral, a competitor, he wasn’t best pleased. Especially when it supposedly led to him divesting his shares (although when I last looked, he was still listed at Companies House as a shareholder (see update on this at bottom of the post – his partner now owns the shares))

The nonsensical attacks on me and KashFlow have continued since. The most recent being incredibly misinformed and disingenuous. It resulted in one of the top guys at Freshbooks telling him his post was “confoundingly misguided”

Then recently two things happened that suddenly explained exactly why Howlett behaves as he does.

Firstly, someone pointed me in the direction of this post on CrunchNotes by Michael Arrington, founder of TechCrunch. I’ll quote the relevant extract (my bolding):

Recently Howlett asked me to write about a charity on TechCrunch. I Twittered about it (to hundreds of thousands of people) but never wrote about it on TechCrunch, it just wasn’t relevant. I guess that pissed Howlett off, because a few weeks later he was referring to me as a street hooker on Twitter. When I complained privately on Skype, his response was “I know - I do what I do as a ‘persona’ that people expect of me…gives me ‘ins’ to the ‘money.’”

Independent journalism at its finest. Don’t write about the charity he’s supporting and he goes after you with a stick, then says it’s all a persona to make money, and then writes a ridiculous legal opinion about something he knows nothing about

Scrolling down to the comments on that page shows other people with similar experiences of the man.

From Robert Scoble, a very well known tech blogger in the US:

You should see the kind of crap that Dennis writes about me. He’s the worst kind of “journalist” who does this crap just to make noise, which he thinks gets him deals. I don’t know where the idea started that you have to be an attack dog to appear journalistic. Totally agreed with your analysis of his writings and attitude. Keep it up Mike.

From Jeremiah Owyang of web-strategist.com:

Dennis tried to pick fights with me too, doing name calling, I just blocked him on Twitter over a year ago.

I’d like to have a civil relationship with him –if, and when he’s ready.

So Howlett attacks people via his blog as some sort of a way to get an “in to the money”? I know a number of software companies do pay him a sponsorship fee to be advertised on his blog and he never seems to give them anything like the level of negativity he fires in my direction. But surely it can’t be as simple and straight cut as that, can it?

Then the second thing happened. By some a coincidence of synchronicity, just as I finished reading the article above, Dennis Howlett sent me a private message via Twitter. Normally I would never repeat or publish any private messages I’ve received. But as Howlett has repeatedly shown he has no respect for discussions supposedly  ”off the record” or my private messages I have no problem with publishing this: 

If I hadn’t just read about his money-making strategy on CrunchBites then I’d have trouble believing what I was reading. He’d just written a totally ridiculous article about KashFlow which was promptly discredited by numerous commenters on his blog and by a senior industry figure and he’s now suggesting I pay him to help him better understand the issues? Has this guy really been attacking me and my business  for years with the sole purpose of trying to get me to pay him as some sort of consultant? It would seem so.

So in summary, if I’ve sent you this link to explain why I’m not bothering to respond to one of his future attacks, it’s as simple as this: he appears to deliberately write uninformed, misleading articles about me or KashFlow in a bid to get me to give him money. I have no intention of giving him any money, so he continues to write it. Engaging with him is a pointless exercise so from now on I’ll be following the example of the more experienced people cited above and just ignore him.

Update. As of 1/10/2009 it appears his shares in a FreeAgentCentral have been transferred to his partner that he lives with. A blatant contradiction of his comments that he has “no shareholdings either directly or indirectly (via trusts etc) nor management positions in any of the companies that I either write about or which sponsor this website”

TechCrunch have just published an article with 15 things to do whilst Twitter is down.

I’ve gone with #8 – Write your own blog post about Twitter being down.

As much as Twitter has become a part of my daily routine, so has the TechCrunch Europe site. It’s where I inevitably up whilst quickly munching a sandwich for lunch.

My only problem now is that I have nowhere to pimp this blog post as Twitter is down. I’m amazed how quickly it’s become a key part of my day.

I guess I’ll just have to go do some face-to-face interaction at the newsagents and buy everyone in the office an ice-cream.

Update: Apparently Twitter is suffering a DoS attack, according to their status page.