

Corduroy: A billing system for your startup (launched today) - there
http://corduroysite.com/

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markbao
Very nicely done. It'll be interesting to see how this stacks up against
Blinksale. The price is reasonable when compared with Blinksale and the like,
but you'll probably want to make this $59/mo unlimited or a high number of
invoices, and create sub-plans that, for example, with $10 a month, you can
send out x invoices.

Just some thoughts.

By the way, I've always wondered this. How do you reroute
subdomain.corduroysite.com? DNS things? In other words - how do you recognize
that _subdomain_.corduroysite.com is the account name? I haven't been able to
figure this out, but it's probably because I've been on shared hosting forever
:)

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there
thanks. judging from the comments here already, i think a lower-priced
restricted plan is needed. i'll work on that tonight...

for subdomains, a simple DNS wildcard is used to route
(everything).corduroysite.com to the same ip. a wildcard SSL certificate is
also needed, which is quite expensive unfortunately.

the application then checks the hostname that was passed from the web server,
finds the matching company record, and does its magic.

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eurokc98
There is a need for this. I was looking at some other solutions and gave up
and went with Zoho Invoice when it launched about a month ago. Using Excel has
worked over the years but I needed something that was a bit more reliable at
keeping all the info neat and tidy. The main factor for me was price, I would
probably not have signed up but the 5 buck a month fee was something that I
could take without feeling guilty or lazy. Anything over 20 bucks a month and
I would of kept doing things the same way as i only have about 8-12 re-
occurring invoices every month.

Good Luck!

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mattculbreth
Cool, I'm willing to take a look. I'm a very happy Freshbooks
(<http://www.freshbooks.com>) customer now though, is this better?

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joshwa
Another billing/invoice2.0 site? You picked a crowded market.

<http://mashable.com/2007/08/09/online-business/>

What is your competitive advantage? And from a customer perspective, what's
unique about your app?

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there
i guess i should start by saying i didn't pick the market. i started writing
this application years ago to run my own software development business because
i was unhappy with quickbooks, and i've been using corduroy as my sole billing
system ever since. i just recently added a few features and launched it as a
hosted service because of some outside interest in it.

looking over that list of accounting packages, nearly all of them are just
invoicing and/or project management applications. corduroy adds check writing,
online banking integration and transaction history, as well as customer login
support.

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thaumaturgy
The customer login support is a big deal for me. I've been trying to get away
from paper billing for a while, because it's slow and expensive and I'd rather
just send an email with a link. I've been doing that the hard way lately and
had been thinking about building something like your system. I'm glad you did
it instead.

At $59, it's on the far side of what I'd want to pay for such a system.
However, I would pay it.

One thing I'd like to see is a way to build custom invoices. I have a very
specific, and fairly unique, invoice design, and would like to hang on to
that. Switching to a generic invoice layout might be a dealbreaker. I know
that's a lot of work though -- sorry for adding on to the "please do this!"
pile.

~~~
there
i will be supporting the custom invoice design as a one-time fee for turning
your existing invoice design into code. i may also design some other basic
templates that can be used instead of the default.

my company's invoices that are generated through corduroy have a neat faded
background image and logo.

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thorax
A little pricy- push the cost down a tad and a lot more independent
contractors would use it. Some I know already use the open source
<http://www.bambooinvoice.com> ok their own servers.

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dc2k08
$59 a year would be reasonable.

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thinkcomp
That's hardly the case. Anything less than around $800 per year, which is what
the average CPA charges to do a small corporation's 1120 or 1120S tax return,
is reasonable. That equates to $66.67 per month. When you start to consider
how much time and hassle a good accounting package can save, the price could
even be higher while still providing value.

Accounting usually gets ignored in startup environments, but it's really
crucial to have a grip on things. Otherwise, who knows...you might end up like
Bear Stearns. Or Enron.

~~~
subwindow
This won't do your tax returns.

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there
update: in response to many suggestions, there are now 2 additional packages
that are cheaper but limit certain features.

<http://corduroysite.com/pricing/>

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xenoterracide
sql ledger is free. how does this stack up? I'd rather the product be open
source so I could install on my own systems and keep my records. Just a
security thing... financial data is important.

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initself
sql ledger is kind of gross.

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tyohn
Interesting but - $59.00 per month for the service?

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there
a 1500-invoice package from blinksale (which only does invoicing) costs
$49/month. harvest's business plan costs $90/month and is also geared towards
projects and invoices only.

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matthewking
I think its more the fact that you don't have different level packages..
perhaps add a lower one with more limits?

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mrtron
Independent contractor version that is much cheaper could be useful, and would
be necessary to compete with a spreadsheet.

In the past I have used spreadsheets that I export to pdf and send to the
clients that look almost exactly like this format, and manually managed them.

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randallsquared
I think simpler is better. A single price makes it easier to decide whether to
use the system at all. Of course, it shouldn't be too high, but I don't think
$59 is too high.

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mrtron
Simpler is better, but not for pricing. Look into variable pricing theory and
price discrimination, it offers higher potential profits. If you do stick to
fixed pricing, make sure you do at least a minimal amount of research to
determine the optimal price. YOU don't think 59$ is too high, but whats the
optimal price for profitability?

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randallsquared
Why is it, then, that services seem to trend towards all-you-can-use at a flat
rate? Even when there are lower levels of service (in whatever), they're
usually ridiculously less service for a bit less price, which seems to just be
a way to drive people to the One True Price that the provider really wants.

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thinkcomp
My company is charging $50 per month for 5-user licenses for Exponent. You can
see what it offers at: <http://www.thinkcomputer.com/software/exponent>

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initself
Looks really good.

