Recently I came across Intuit’s Billing Manager. It is a VERY simple way to invoice your clients and keep track of payments. Did I mention it was free? It lets you send unlimited invoices to unlimited clients. Seriously, you can sign up and have an invoice sent out in less time than it will take to you to read this post.
Billing Manager lets you (for a fee) make use of Inuit’s Merchant service to accept credit cards, and you can even seamlessly upgrade to Quickbooks online. Pretty slick of them.
Seriously, if you need basic invoicing and payment tracking ability, you should check this out.
I am UTTERLY immersed in technology. I love it. I use technology for my job, my finances, and now even reading. It’s amazingly useful to me. I am, however, painfully aware that technology is FAR from perfect. I experience the pains and frustrations of getting some device or program to behave just like anyone else does.
I spent several maddening hours the other day trying to get a firewall to do what I wanted. Unsuccessfully, even! I have been working on firewalls for longer than I want to admit, and I couldn’t make this stupid thing act right.
This exercise got me to thinking about all the folks out there that are dependent on technology for their businesses and even their lives who have to struggle with this sort of thing on a daily basis. What is your biggest pain point around technology? If I could give you magic computer pixie dust and solve your greatest problem, what would it be?
I am very interested in hearing what you have to say. Post in the comments or email me at dave.purdon [at] gmail dot com.
Serendipity is an amazing thing. I just happened to read these two blog posts back to back. I read both of these blogs regularly and I find myself nodding as I read them many times. Today though, by some chance I read them sequentially and it really set off a firestorm of ideas.
The first was by Seth Godin, speaking on getting referrals. He postulates, “The only thing that will make you remarkable is being worth remarking about”. So that’s on the front side. Getting people to refer business to you is all about being worthy of their efforts on your behalf.
The second post was by Steve Curtin, speaking about customer retention. He says (quoting from Exceptional Service Exceptional Profit) “Individual customers are irreplaceable”. Once you lose a customer, he’s gone for good. You have to know how much a customer is worth to you over a lifetime and then treat them accordingly.
This all came together in a very concrete way because DirecTV has been trying to get me to come back to them for months. I switched to cable because I got lousy service. Plain and simple. Even before I ditched them, they continually tried to get me to sacrifice my friends and family to their vengeful god by offering me money and discounts. Honestly, if they had just treated me fairly, I would still be with them. (I’m lazy. I don’t change unless I have to.) If, heaven forbid, they had treated me well, I would have told other about them. FOR FREE EVEN!
Don’t be DirecTV. Be fair and you won’t lose irreplaceable customers. Be excellent and your work will spread beyond your reach.
This installment comes to us courtesy of a colleague and a gentleman, Steve Lacey. He sent me over the link and I really thought this was cool. Allow me to set it up a bit.
I have been called an idea hamster. I admit it. I get jazzed up on some concept, think about it and plot a bit, and then move on to the next one. Execution has been a struggle for me in some ways. I just can’t ever seem to foc…hey, look! Ooooh, something shiny!
Anyway, this software is called PersonalBrain. I’m not sure that it will help out with my execution problems, but it WILL let me think of ideas much FASTER. WOOT! Take a look:
It may not look like much to you, but this is one powerful tool for visualizing what’s important to you. A few things I think are just killer:
- You can copy OR link to files on your computer (and network!).
- You can link to web sites and even configure how many links deep you want it to go.
- The search/indexing is amazing.
- “Show Forgotten Thoughts” is like a recycle bin for your thoughts, which I think is pretty nifty.
The pay versions of this package are a little pricey, $150 for Core and $250 for Professional, but it seems to have a lot of functionality in the free product. If you feel like you don’t have enough ideas in your life, I guarantee that this will spark some new ones!
