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Ask HN: Review my startup: Bill On Site
14 points by DanHulton on Nov 3, 2009 | hide | past | favorite | 21 comments
http://www.billonsite.com/

Bill On Site is a web-based invoicing system, with a unique twist: you can use Bill On Site on your mobile phone, enabling small business owners to send invoices to their customers while still on their client's site. All you need is a semi-recent phone – one with a web browser on it – and internet access on your phone.

This used to be my part-time gig, but then I was laid off and have used much of my time and severance since getting it to "release-ready" status. I just released it the first of this month, and I'd really appreciate any feedback.




You should have a 'free plan' option. I use Freshbooks for all my invoices and I used their free plan until recently. Their free plan really sold me because I was able to use it for 6 months to make invoices, and when I needed to do more, then I was more than willing to upgrade to a paid plan.


Just took a quick look at the plan selection page, I noticed the following:

- The numbers for the basic and premium plans seem to fade into the background and are hard to read.

- The "Serious" name for the plan was a little off-putting for me. To me it implied that the other plans were for amateurs, which was even a bit more confusing since it is the middle plan. (I'm not really your target audience so take this advice with a grain of salt.)


These are all good points. I didn't notice the number fade until you mentioned it. I'll play around with the colours.

And I have worked quite some time at coming up with names for the plans - it's hard! I have competitors with plans names like "Time Machine, Limousine, etc." and I wanted something a little more professional than that. But on the flip side, I wanted something better than the traditional "Bronze, Silver, Gold".

Also, there's the pricing advice that I keep hearing, that you have a premium option so that people buying your middle option feel good that they saved money, and you have a cheap option so that people buying your middle option feel good that they're not cheap.

I think the first and last tiers I have are good, but yeah, the middle one needs work.


There. Hopefully that's a little less jarring.


small business

home office

on the go


I think that paraschopra is right in the determining whether there is an existing need for this. Though, my approach is - what's the application that this could be really great for? Whether it exists, or is exactly on-site billing at a client -I think the answer is - where is this a killer app? Isn't there a great application for pop-up sales events? Fairs, trade shows, etc?


Clickable link: http://www.billonsite.com/


Shoot - shoulda done that myself.


Just curious if you did a study/survey in your target market and found that the inability to bill at client's site is a big frustration point for your users. I don't know much about small business owner market but s this differentiator strong enough?


No formal studies of that kind, no, but I spoke with a few small business owners who thought it was a great idea and that they would love to have it.

I also did some market testing last December where I threw up a simple test page under what I was going to call the product: "Mobilliti". I ditched the name (seriously, look at all the i's and l's, it's completely unreadable), but kept the feedback. I spent $50 on Google Adwords, and got a several people who were interested enough to click through all the way to the "Sign up" button, and then fill in contact information about when the product would be available.


(disclaimer: i'm the author of a competing product - http://corduroysite.com/ which has an iphone/mobile interface in development)

i've also been told by my customers that a mobile interface would be great and generating invoices at a client's location would be useful, but i think the important thing is that it's just a feature of a bigger billing system. when they get back to their office, the normal web interface to the system still has all of the tools they need to work quickly.

do you see your product as being a company's only billing system where they do everything through a mobile interface or is it intended to be a small invoicing system that works in tandem with their existing billing system like quickbooks? i ask because your site is heavily pushing the mobile part without really detailing the rest of the system.


That's an excellent point. I've already got someone using it for the web interface despite the heavy mobile use I'm pushing, but I can see how my copy comes off as missing the "complete picture," as it were. Something I'll have to work on.

And no worries on being a competitor - there's tons of guys like us! FreshBooks, CurdBee, Ballpark, Ronin, The Invoice Machine, Cannybill - the list goes on. And Freshbooks has an iPhone interface, even.

This is - I'm told - good news. A large market with a fractured user base is a good place to enter, provided you can target a niche that nobody else has made their own... which is what I'm trying to do.


So what kind of information did you include as part of your market testing? I'd be interested to see what that looked like compared to what your product has (so far) actually turned out to be. Did your idea evolve much between then and now?


Honestly, I haven't done any formal market testing. My original test site explained the concept in about three paragraphs, and the concept hasn't changed very much.

The idea started simple and has stayed simple - i.e. it hasn't changed much. "Web-based invoicing that you can use from your mobile phone."

I anticipate changes in the future, though, as people actually get a good look at the idea and how it turned out. I'm thankful that I have a fairly flexible framework (Kohana PHP) and design philosophy for what that happens.


Hard to read the text in the footer. It also seems there is an extra box below your footer.


Browser? Operating system?

I'd love to fix it, but I can't see it in any of my configurations (Linux/Windows, Opera/Firefox/Chrome/IE.)


I get the same extra box.

Using Safari 4.0.3 on Snow Leopard.


Hurk. Don't have a Mac. I'll see what I can do, though. I have an idea what's causing it.


I was able to reproduce with Chrome 3.0.195.27 on Windows; it's happening because Clicky Web Analytics has an image inside of a <p>, and you've styled p in footer to have a background image. I was able to get it to go away by removing the style, or by removing the p around the image in the footer.


Which payment processor are you using ?


PayPal. Easiest integration.

Paying invoices works largely like Etsy's integration with PayPal, too.




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