Freshbooks is, to use their own words:

an online invoicing and time tracking service that saves you time and makes you look professional

To use my words, Freshbooks is darned impressive!

With my recent departure from paid employment to working for myself, I needed to sort something out to do billing and I had heard of Freshbooks so I gave it a go. Which is really easy to do as it's free to start off with.

Once you are in, you can customise the setup and start creating invoices etc. I in fact started off by doing an estimate for someone. It emails it to them and they can accept it online. Very cool, you get an email confirmation that they have approved it too.

Then, as you do work you can track your time spent. Which is pretty cool. Especially for iPhone users like me as they have a native application you can install on your iPhone that has a stop watch and lets you log time against projects.

From that time logged, or form the estimate you can create your invoices. The invoices are delivered by email AND by snail mail if you want. Which is really cool! Although being American they do send to the UK/internationally and the rate is reasonable and easy to understand.

I think this is so great! It just takes the hassle away from me. The moment I finish a job I create the invoice electronically and the invoice gets printed, stuffed in an envelope and sent by someone else. And it's pretty quick, couple of days to arrive, pretty much the same as if it was sent from the UK. Sure it's a bit more expensive (argueably), but there is ZERO hassle!

Once payment is received you can tell the system... or Freshbooks also allows your clients to pay online via PayPal. Then it records the payment for you.

They provide reporting of aged debtors and that sort of thing too, so that is great.

It is still early days with Freshbooks, and I am sure their is competitors out there (actually I'd like to check them out if you like to recommend one). But to date I have been blown away by Freshbooks. And in fact it's so great a client of mine actually commented on how cool Freshbooks is.

When was the last time someone commented about how cool your billing software was??

Anyway... I thoroughly recommend Freshbooks at this stage, and totally think they are worth a shot for your small business or "side project" billing.

Signing up is free and easy, all the features are available free, and you only start paying when you send invoices by snail mail or when you have enough clients to need to.

So go give them a try, you can sign up at https://lancewicks.freshbooks.com/signup/ and get started. (and yes there is a referral system so if you sign-up via the links in this post I'd appreciate it. :-)

Lance.

As most people who read this blog will know, I am from New Zealand, this post is a quick summary of some things relating to N.Z. I wanted to share.

Firstly and it is even more relevant given Obama's vistory in the USA; this weekend New Zealand goes to the polls too. Despite the fact I now live outside of New Zealand I (and you fellow ex-pat kiwi) are eligible to vote... and should do so.

It's pretty easy to do, and you can still get you name registered, even now! Just hit http://www.everyvotecounts.co.nz/ and sign up.

Voting is a really powerful thing to do, I think it was a friend of mines father who said something along the lines of

"..if you don't vote, you have no place moaning.."

. So get your butt in gear and get registered... it is not too late!

Speaking of friends, (and I think it was his father I mentioned above) my very very close friend Regan Morgan has a blog that I have started following. Regan is a photographer (amongst other things) and it's actually the only blog I follow that is so visual. In each post he puts a photo he has taken with a little snippet of text about it. It's a fascinating RSS feed. So far my favourites have been the Red Baron photos.
The other awesome little feature of his site I have found and think is genius is the "About Me" area. It is really fun, really informative and mostly (I think) really effective.

I don't think Regan and I have ever really sat down and discussed the web, blogging, online reputation, etc. But if we had, I would have suggested he tackle his website just like he has! In fact, I think I see some changes to my sites coming based on what he is doing.

Now the other thing I wanted to post about was NZEdge.com and the NZedge Blog I get their email newsletter and really enjoy doing so as it updates me to the great things we Kiwi's are up to and have done in history. So I do recommend hitting http://www.nzedge.com/register/ and signing up for the emailnewsletter which comes in every few weeks.

So there you have it, a Kiwicentric blog post for once.

Lance

So first up, my MacBook Pro is back and working lovely, thanks for asking.

It was interesting to spend a few days on the Zonbu. The Zonbu is a Everex laptop, running a optimised version of Gentoo Linux. What differentiates the Zonbu is what they call a "Cloud assisted OS" meaning that it utilizes Amazon's S3 storage to store your files and basically the laptop only holds a cache of the latest files you are using.

The machine works really well, and the battery life is awesome. Luckily for me, I also use cloud based backup as part of my personal backups. So I was able to get to all my files. Now the Zonbu has a limited range of applications on it.

All this said, I write this on my MacBook Pro and it's just a vastly superior piece of engineering. And OSX is wonderful. Very pleased to be back on my MBP.

Whilst in the Apple store I looked at the new MacBook Pro. And... I don't actually think I like it. Looks nice, I guess. But it's got the old MacBook keyboard. And I am not sure I like that. For a start, the enter key is the same as on the old 17" MacBook Pro (roughly a 7 shape). I went with the 15" MBP basically because the enter key is a nice large rectangular key. Hard to miss, and given how often you press it, I think that matters. I dunno, what do you think?
UPDATE - Nov 12, 2008: Apparently Ovid agrees with me about the awful enter/return key on the new MBP. http://use.perl.org/~Ovid/journal/37844

What did look tempting though is the MacBook Air. It is just too sexy! Of course so is the iMac. Almost grabbed a wireless Apple keyboard too, they are sexy also. Maybe that's the migration path? Wireless keyboard first to get used to the layout and then onto the new MBP.

All that said, DAMN they cost alot!
The Zonbu is only $479 and too be frank it works fine. If they came out with a laptop that looked as good as a MBP, I might go that way. Or perhaps I'd just buy a sexy looking Laptop and put Ubuntu on it?

Anyway, quick update on life/work... now I am out of the world of being a wage slave, I am a man under my own steam, and it's coming along pretty well. I have clients, which is always a bonus!

I spent today getting my business affairs in order, so sat down with accountant, sorted out business banking etc. I got some great business administration advice and basically had a good day.

My much loved MacBook Pro died today.

For a few weeks now I have been having intermittent keyboard and trackpad failures. I have up to now been able to use a USB keyboard and if I shutdown and rebooted, the problem went away.

Until today...

This morning it went funny again, and I shut the thing down.
I did take the box apart and reset all the connections, no joy. So I took it to the local Apple Store and let the Genius bar take a look at it.

They took it apart and I think they plugged in a keyboard/trackpad from another unit and it worked ok, so they have ordered me a new one. So I am without my lappie for a few days (hopefully). The plus side is that they replace the entire upper part of the machine, which is a little damaged, so that should look better than it does now.

I'm writing this on the Zonbu laptop I bought my wife as a gift sometime back. It's a 15" Everex box and a bit clunky. Apple make wonderful hardware! It is also running a heavily optimised version of Gentoo Linux, which is nice. I far prefer the Zonbu desktop (20 Watts) machine we have though.

The sad thing with losing a machine is that you realise how reliant you are on it. I have backups, I have alternative machines, but still I feel lost without "my" machine. Interestingly, given my reliance on "the cloud" I can do most things from any machine.

Anyway... forgive me if posts are infrequent for the rest of the week.

Lance

Hi All,
well it is Monday morning and I am sitting at my desk, is what was/is "The Dojo". Those of you who have visited my Dojo will know that it is not the warmest place on earth; so I shall need to type fairly quickly to delay the onset of frost bite. ;-)

So this week, I have quite a bit to do again, self employment is like that, or so they tell me. But the sun is shining and I have a little money left in the bank so I am happy.

This weekend my family & I took a trip north to visit "ThomasLand" which was great fun for us all.

On Saturday we went to "Cadbury World" however. Along with being the quickest way to fill up on calories ever, it was actually really inspiring for me.

Cadbury, for those of you not aware of them. Is probably the biggest Chocolate manufacturer in the UK and is a household name. Cadbury World, is a... theme park come museum built into part of the companies home in Bournville, near Birmingham in the UK.

Cadbury, was started by one John Cadbury, who was a grocer back in the early 1800's. Chocolate was a pretty big thing seemingly back then with the rich and starting to spread to masses.

Cadbury was a Quaker, and the history of the company is fascinating stuff, you can read more about it all over at www.cadbury.co.uk

Anyway... shan't bore you with all those details, but Cadbury (and this comes from Cadbury, so I shall be ready to hear an opposing version of history) was pretty innovative and treated his factory workers better than was normal for the time.

In fact the factory in Bournville was built entirely to have a "Factory in a Garden". They did not want to have it in the City with the noise, pollution, etc etc. So Basically built a town for the factory and their workers.

Anyway... this is not what really got my mind firing as I drove back from Birmingham last night. It was the concept of this man and his vision, how his leadership and belief has created a lasting legacy.

I recently listened to Seth Godin's "Tribes", and found it a good listen. Lots of what he described hit home when I considered it in the Cadbury context. Cadbury and his descedent's yes ran a company and made money, but (if you believe the stories) were also trying to change the world around them. They were providing an alternative to teh "evil" of alcohol (being Quakers) and also trying to improve the lot of those people that worked for them.

They were also technology and marketing innovators. They were the small start-up battling to stay afloat. And they were trying everything to win. They created new products that used the latest technology. The marketed their products in ways nobody else was. They were leading the way, they were breaking convention.

I came away from the place really buzzing... perhaps that was just all the sugar and chocolate? :-)

So this week I am feeling pretty pumped up and ready for the week.
I have some great ideas to pursue and will be doing so with gusto!

Talk later,

Lance.