
Using FreshBooks for your web application’s billing - _pius
http://www.freshbooks.com/blog/2008/08/15/using-freshbooks-for-your-web-applications-billing/
======
sunir
Hey folks. I'm the guy who product manages this part of FreshBooks. If you
have any questions or concerns about web app billing with or without
FreshBooks let 'em rip.

You can also email me at sunir splat freshbooks dot com.

~~~
bradgessler
I have a few questions:

1\. Does Freshbooks do more than just Invoicing?

2\. If somebody buys something from our website, do we have to send them to
one of your landing pages to processes their payment or can we interact with
Freshbooks via a RESTful API? Its very important for us to have full control
over our checkout experience. No third-party vendor ever gets this right with
their landing pages.

3\. Why in the hell are so many "invoicing" services popping up, but nobody is
stepping it up a notch and tapping into small business bank accounts, payroll
systems, etc? Think "Mint for small businesses" or a "Quickbooks killer". What
are your plans around this? You guys seem like you're just another web
invoicing company.

~~~
sunir
1\. We are billing oriented. We do time tracking, expense tracking, support
ticketing, and estimate/quote management because they all relate to the
invoice. However we also integrate with dozens of other apps to make it easier
for you to run your whole business on the cloud.

<http://community.freshbooks.com/addons>

2\. You do need yo send them at least once to an recurring invoice so we can
grab their credit card. After that we don't need to be in the way.

3\. This is the Internet. You can't be successful without a ton of competitors
popping up.

3.1. SaaS is about small pieces loosely joined. Companies are building what
you want in chunks. See <http://thesmallbusinessweb.com>

~~~
bradgessler
You may have misunderstood my last point; I wasn't suggesting that you take
100% market share and "kill competitors" literally, I was referring more about
how you're going to at least match the features that these products offer. I
say that out of frustration of not being able to find a full-featured small
business accounting application. It seems like online invoicing applications
are a dime a dozen; Freshbooks seems to be better poised to kick it up a notch
and offer a full-featured small biz accounting package.

On your last point, 3.1, I feel like there's room for something more full-
featured inside of one product. When I first saw Freshbooks, I was excited
because it looked like you had a full featured small business accounting app,
but then I was quickly disappointed because its basically the same as
Blinksale.

~~~
sunir
Blinksale is focused on generating an invoice, which is why they charge per
invoice. FreshBooks is a full billing app for service businesses, which is why
we charge by client. It's similar (roughly) to the difference between a paper
receipt book and a cash register. Each good for different use cases.

For small business accounting, try FreshBooks + Xero.

<http://community.freshbooks.com/addons/view/xero>

------
ConceptDog
Smart folks with a good product.

