Well it’s been another busy few months. We’ve got a lot of news to share with the world, but right now not quite enough time to share it all. As a company we’re expecting some serious growth. There’s a lot of very exciting stuff happening.

To make things easier as we move forward, we’ve been making some changes – simplifying things. September heralds a new beginning in many ways. One of the changes we’ve made is switching our accounting from Xero over to FreeAgent. Why?

Before I say anything else I just want to say Xero is a great accounting package. The team there can clearly see what’s needed and are working very hard to provide it. The amount of funding they’ve received is a testament to their commitment and has no doubt impacted hugely on the quality of the product and its overall feature set.

But for us, it’s just too much. As a small business with very simple needs, there are some features we don’t need and never use. And then there are some things that Xero just doesn’t do and probably never will. Things like time tracking.

A business of any size ought to keep track of employee time. For a small business that charges by the hour, it’s crucial for calculating profitability, estimating deadlines and projecting costs. Even on a fixed-price jobs, time-tracking is necessary.

Personally, I believe that time-tracking should be linked with accounting. While we use Basecamp for project management, the time-tracking features of FreeAgent are in my view far superior. Being able to turn Timeslips into Invoices is a massive win.

FreeAgent’s UI is also a mega bonus. Xero was clearly made for accountants. FreeAgent on the other hand has been designed with real people in mind. The helpful hints and clear buttons and menus make it easy to navigate and do what you need to do.

The layout of the menu is especially interesting:

Notice how, going from left to right, you deal with each aspect of money management as it happens: create/update Contacts (customers and suppliers) first, then assign Estimates, Project, Time, and Invoices to clients (money in). After that is money out – Bills, Expenses and Taxes. Then all of your financial reports for that retrospective look over your accounts. It’s a flow – and it’s in a logical order.

It really is a joy to use. It also plays nicely with other apps such as Basecamp. Add to this other key features such as adding attachments to bank reconciliations (i.e. PDF invoices), Estimates, automated VAT return in the UK and automated invoice emails.

The fact that they’re based in the UK too means they understand what it’s like to run a business here. Xero is based in New Zealand and other services tend to be based in the States (e.g. FreshBooks).

I initially tried FreeAgent a while back, but because we were happy enough with Xero at the time, I kept quiet. The trial account expired and I needed to pay before I could use it again. As I hadn’t really used the account, I just asked the guys nicely if they extend my free trial. Amazingly they did! So customer service is well up there too.

FreeAgent suits us very well as a company. It’s focussed around time-tracking and project-level work, which is our bread and butter. The fact that it’s primarily a web app is important to us. We could use desktop packages such as Billings, but we all feel they impose limits on when and where we can do our accounts.

All round we’re thrilled with FreeAgent. It’s making all of our lives a hell of a lot easier. As we move forward as a company, we believe that services like this are key to our growth. There are some things that need a little work, but the team is showing real interest in their community by working on features that their users are requesting. So FreeAgent, keep up the fantastic work!

Now I know you disagree… all you have to do is become exposed to gamma radiation and get real angry, right? Wrong. You are not Bruce Banner, and you’ll never turn into the Incredible Hulk. Plus you don’t play with gamma radiation do you? Be honest now…

That’s not the kind of green I’m talking about. It seems for the past couple of years a lot of people have gone crazy about being eco-friendly, saving the planet, greenhouse gases and whatnot.

Here in the UK, the government has set up and continues to fund the Carbon Trust and various green initiatives (which we should have been doing years ago). For most consumers this means changing lightbulbs from incandescent to fluorescent, with obvious benefits all round.

But there’s an even better solution to CFLs: LEDs. That’s right, those little plastic light bulbs you messed about with at school! A lot of research and development has been put into manufacturing LED lamps that match the usefulness of fluorescent bulbs.

There are some amazing benefits:

1. They last even longer than fluorescent bulbs (much longer than the old incandescent ones)
2. They give off a better quality of light, brighter and whiter
3. They come on immediately
4. They give off very little heat
5. They consume a quarter of the power of fluorescent bulbs
6. They don’t buzz
7. They don’t contain any mercury
8. They are 100% recyclable

Now I don’t care who you are, that’s amazing! These are the ideal. So what’s the catch? Well at the moment they’re ever so slightly more expensive… but once you’ve got them, you’re saving money!

For commercial environments (particular suspended ceiling office spaces) this is a big winner. Couple these babies with some intelligent lighting systems and you might never have to change your bulbs!

Saving money + planet = the thrifty super hero… still not quite the Incredible Hulk though!

This is all from research that I’m doing for a new client. They’re into supplying, fitting and testing these bad boys. More details coming soon!

Dear Dorothy,

Small-ish software houses (like the one I work for) suffer terribly when we get a big project. You see when a company is started, the guy running the show (my boss and MD of the company) usually knows how to manage everything himself. He has all fingers in all pies.

However, this poses a problem when you then have to start sharing knowledge and resources, creating stable, trackable communications, testing and reporting. Even worse when the client gets all “hands-y” and is all over you like last Sunday’s gravy accident.

The key factor above all else is cost. For a small business it’s just not an option to go out and spend thousands on just-what-we-need bug tracking, centralised communication system with permissions-based remote access, project management software. Even if you can piece these bits together from really handy ‘freebies’, it’s still at a cost of time – installing, configuring, and getting all these separate and disparate parts to work together.

So how does a small business manage? Muddle through with emails, recorded phone calls, and endless reams of jotter pad scribbled on and gently growing in the bin?

NO! Use Basecamp you dummy. That’s what we’ve done. Adapting it to our needs has been particularly easy. Ok, so it’s not the most efficient method, but it’s still better than the alternative. Actually for a small team it works really well. And the client has access too, which is a real bonus.

If you need somewhere to collaborate, please save yourself… use Basecamp!

Dear Joan,

I know IE8 came out a few weeks ago as a public developer preview – and yes I’ve been “testing” it out – but I’m finding it hard to justify the shift!

I think the IE8 Dev team are suffering from the “Microsoft approach”. Yes it’s still only beta software, but even the stuff that used to work (and work within acceptable limits) doesn’t anymore.

For instance: there is an “Emulate IE7″ option available to allow those of us who are too frustrated with IE8’s rendering issues to switch back to the browser we’ve slowly but surely been persuaded to adopt… but even this doesn’t work like IE7!

How do you build on top of something that you know works and still manage to break it? How hard can it be? Does the IE Dev team redevelop from scratch every time?

Regardless of the teething problems though, all looks set to make IE8 the best version ever, with more focus on making the job of developers (like me) that much easier. Standards compliance is the way forward!

To catch up on the key features of IE8 have a read