The last event of the season by Third Tuesday certainly did not disappoint. Saul Cole and Michael Mc?Derment talked about their success with Freshbooks? which is a software as a service company that provides online invoicing and time tracking.

They shared some of their successes in using social media to not just communicate with their customers but to pay attention to them.

Saul gave his views on “Karma Marketing“.

Part of new hire training at Freshbooks, is to answer the customer calls, an excellent way to hear what the real life problems. This does not end here and every employee answers the phone on a rotational basis!!!

Freshbooks has a very creative team that truely thinks outside the box and comes up with innovative ways to market their product e.g. the hangover kits that were hung up on the door knobs of a couple of hotels one night.

It was great to talk to Saul at the end of the evenign and get his input on some of the projects that I am working on.

Michael McDerment and Saul Colt from Freshbooks will be in Ottawa to talk about how they used social media to build a sense of community with their customers.

They had presented at Third Tuesday earlier in Toronto and that was one of the best rated sessions. So come on out to hear their story.

When: Monday June 16th

Time: 6pm

Where: Clock Tower Brew Pub, 575 Bank St., downstairs

Check out their SAS product, an on line time tracking and invoicing system.

The discussion was focused on software used by the different entrepreneurs for managing their invoicing and payments. The general consensus was that packages like simply accounting and quick books were not user friendly and had more of a focus on math. MYOB for mac was great however they no longer support Canada for the new versions.

Kristina Mausser, of Digital Word talked about her woes with the invoicing and payment world. She had problems with clients not paying and hated asking for payment. She had an excel spreadsheet that she used to keep track of the payments. She charged a retainer up front and the rest at the end of the project. Looking for a solution she went to the web and found various applications. The one that appealed to here was FreshBooks, from a company in Toronto. They are an online invoicing and time tracking service.

This is a great service and if you are just starting out you can use FreshBooks for free for 3 active clients per month. For $14 a month you can have 25 active clients!!! If your clients are not web savvy you can “buy stamps” and have the invoice mailed to the client. To test out thsi feature Kristina had a dummy invoice mailed to her and sure enough it worked. She received it in the mail.

FreshBooks have affiliations with other companies like paypal. Reminders are sent automatically by the system depending on the preference settings e.g. 30, 60 or 90 days. Time spent on projects can be tracked.

Some additional cool features

• quarterly report’s sent out by the system
• GST is calculated automatically
• currency conversions
• expense trackingdata can be imported into packages like Excel
• customer support is great

So for all the entrepreneurs out there, if you are tired of keeping up with the receipts, project tracking and invoicing, check out FreshBooks.