In a lot of small business offices, papers are sorted into piles and left around on (and under) tablea and desks and chairs. As I write this, I have a stack of papers to my left that include notes and ideas I have for future blog topics and projects I’d like to work on around the house. But among those stacks (at least in a lot of small businesses) is a pile of receipts that you intend to some day get around to inputting into IAC-EZ.
C’mon, admit it! We know you do. In fact, you can probably see it from where you’re sitting right now and recently you said to yourself “I really should input those”.
Well here’s the good news: Someone can do it for you.
Shoeboxed.com is a site that takes all of your receipts and business cards and scans them in for you. It works like this: You mail your receipts to them. They scan them in. Then you get the files (in PDF, Excel, CSV, and other formats) that you can use and save and upload.
That means you can:
1. Get your receipts from purchases
2. Send them to Shoeboxed.com for scanning
3. Get the files back from Shoeboxed
4. Import them intto IAC-EZ
Time spent? (Well, whatever it took to stick the receipts into an envelope and lick the stamp).
We called up our friends at Shoeboxed and asked them to make a deal for the very special folks who use IAC-EZ. They were happy to oblige and they’re offering you $10 off their annual plans plus 250 free catch-up scans (to help you get through that giant stack on your bookshelf).
So here’s what you need to do to get the deal: Go to http://www.shoeboxed.com and check out which plan is right for you. Then email or call and when you sign up for an annual plan, just tell them that you’re a client of IAC-EZ!
Jessica Routier, IAC-EZ
Web 2.0. You’ve heard us talk about it before. It’s a concept that has transformed the internet. IAC-EZ uses Web 2.0 concepts now (and our roadmap includes even more concepts for the future). So I want to answer the questions: What is Web 2.0 and How is IAC-EZ using it?
What is Web 2.0?
The first iteration of the web was all about bringing offline data online. Businesses would put up websites about themselves that have since been called “brochureware”. That is, the sites were one sided – businesses telling the world about themselves. The standard “old school” website is a good example.
With all of this information online and more being added every day, something needed to be done. Simply put, the amount of information was making the internet unmanageable. Not only that, businesses were realizing that they needed to do more than simply talk TO their prospects and customers… they needed to talk with them.
And that’s where web 2.0 technologies and concepts come in. While new information is continually being added, it is now being sorted, managed, and clarified through the wisdom of the crowds. In other words, it’s being used. A great example of this is a blog: An organization adds information (which might be its own information or it might be linked information or multimedia), and that information can be accessed though tags, it is commented on by others, and in some cases, it can be republished elsewhere and “mashed” (that is, reconfigured with other information).
At IAC-EZ, we love the web 2.0 concept. Some of these ideas and technologies incorporated into our site include:
- This blog, of course!
- You can tag your accounts with labels that will later allow you to observe their impact in your reports
- You can sync your IAC-EZ and your Freshbooks account so that invoices and payments in Freshbooks are reconciled in your bookkeeping.
- Even our design is reflective of web 2.0, which is marked by clear simplicity with a dash of lightheartedness!
What does tomorrow hold? If I were to gaze into my crystal ball and look into the future (or just look at the IAC-EZ roadmap), I can tell you that there are more web 2.0 features coming. We want to sync with other people, broaden the use of tags, labels, and categories, and allow you to not just put information into your IAC-EZ account but USE that information for your business? success.
We might not be there yet, or tomorrow… but we are getting there and hopefully will be ready the second ‘Web 3.0′ is released.
Best,
Heather Villa
You’ve probably heard of the term ‘Web 2.0′ – it’s a style and methodology of doing business on the web today. And to understand it, you need to consider its unnamed predecessor, which I will call ‘Web 1.0′. (Of course, we never actually called it ‘Web 1.0′ when we were using it).
Web 1.0 was all about putting stuff online that was once offline. So you ended up with lots of websites that could be viewed for information. Web 2.0 is all about interaction, collaboration, and communication. Think: FaceBook and Squidoo and Blogs and YouTube – and that’s just the beginning. At IAC-EZ, we’ve adopted that mentality with our long wishlist of great collaborative opportunities we’re pursuing. And our flagship collaboration is a powerful integration function with our friends over at FreshBooks.
FreshBooks is a leading, trusted web-based tool for invoicing and time tracking. It really is THE go-to site for entrepreneurs, small business owners, and freelancers who need to keep track of the hours they spend on a project and then need to bill for their time. (If you don’t have an account there, visit FreshBooks.com and check them out. Their service is great and they make time tracking and invoicing really easy. (Or ‘EZ’… which is what makes us such a great team).
But even with great services like FreshBooks for invoicing and IAC-EZ for bookkeeping, small business owners might find that jumping from one account to the other can feel like an extra step.
IAC Professionals and Becker Web Solutions (one of our web developers) have a close association with FreshBooks, so we’re proud to be able to introduce this premiere service: We’ve partnered with FreshBooks to enable your IAC-EZ account and your FreshBooks account to communicate with each other! Invoices created in FreshBooks appear in your IAC-EZ account so you can keep track of where your revenue has come from (and who hasn’t paid their bills yet).
Here’s an example of how it works: Let’s say you’ve done some work for a client and you send them a FreshBooks invoice for $100.00. When you log into your IAC-EZ account, the syncing process begins and your receivable account is credited with a $100.00 charge that is waiting to be settled. When the customer pays, FreshBooks updates IAC-EZ, adding $100.00 to your income and clearing off $100.00 from your receivables list.
Sounds easy, doesn’t it? Especially when you consider that you get that simple bookkeeping functionality with no extra work on your part!
It’s simple to set up and completely automated once you’ve set it up. Here’s how to do it:
First, go to your FreshBooks account and get your API URL and Authentication Token:
Click on your white ‘My Account’ link in the top right corner.
Click on your ‘Freshbooks API’ sub-tab on the top right.
Click the checkbox next to ‘Yes, I agree to the API terms of service.’
Your ‘API URL’ and ‘Authentication Token’ will become visible on your screen.
Second, go to your IAC-EZ account to input that information.
- From the Headquarters page, view ‘Account Information’.
- Click on ‘Company Preferences.’
- Then scroll down to the bottom of the page and you’ll see the FreshBooks integration fields:
Simply fill in the API URL and authentication token that you’ll get from FreshBooks. The integration is set up! That’s all you have to do. Now give it a few minutes to synchronize (or a bit longer, if you have a lot of information).
Want even more details than that? Click here to read the knowledge base article.
This communication makes it even easier for freelancers and entrepreneurs… and it makes IAC-EZ an obvious choice for users of FreshBooks who want to make sure that all the various ’silos’ of effort (from invoicing in FreshBooks to account settlement in IAC-EZ) are working together. It’s faster, it eliminates error, and it makes any entrepreneur’s job that much easier.
Dear EZ Supporters,
I want to thank all of you. I know it has been quite a month for everyone. With the holidays, tax season around the corner, and IAC-EZ changing the way you do your bookkeeping, for some it was a breeze, for some it was really time consuming, and for some it was just downright stressful.
Our goal is to make it easier! If you find something that does not work for you, something that you need, or something that you don’t understand, please email us! Support@iacez.com is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and we will respond!
After a thrilling launch, we transitioned from version 1.0 to version 1.1, implementing improvements along the way. Here are some of the highlights:
FIXES:
12/02/2008: Error when deleting bills
12/02/2008: Incorrectly importing balances of partially paid Freshbooks invoices
12/04/2008: Deletion of accounts currently in use
12/04/2008: Recent activity on Invoice page not refreshing
12/04/2008: Missing Invoice Number space in some browsers
12/04/2008: Organization of Invoicing Sub Tags
12/06/2008: Manual entering of Invoices
12/07/2008: Allocation of bills defaulting to master expense account
12/07/2008: Entering a bill from an employee (rather than just a vendor)
12/08/2008: Pulling Client’s full details from Freshbooks vs. only client list
12/10/2008: Date on bill payments
12/23/2008: Ability to add new chart of accounts with empty category
12/23/2008: Page redirect after entering a new account
12/28/2008: Various Navigational Issues.
FEATURES:
12/06/2008: Cleaner sub-tab layout under ‘Invoices’ main tab released
12/06/2008: First Article added to our knowledge base regarding linking your FreshBooks account with IAC-EZ.
12/06/2008: Support Desk Open – now email your support request to our support desk and track it online – or enter it online at support.iacez.com.
12/07/2008: Better layout of employee details screen released
12/07/2008: Password reset (sorry for the delay, we were hoping nobody forgot theirs the first week)
12/10/2008: Sales Tax Totals Imported from FreshBooks as Liabilities (still working on itemizing multiple sales tax units on FreshBooks imports)
12/10/2008: A whole bunch of little FreshBooks features, such as making sure that any changes to clients, invoices or payments are synched with your IAC-EZ account!
12/13/2008: Breakdown of multiple ’sales tax’ accounts from FreshBooks are now unique, rather than all lumped together under Sales Tax Payable.
12/17/2008: Referral Links are now up and working. Start referring people now; you will get commission later!
12/17/2008: Add Contacts while you are adding an entry! No more needing to add your contacts to your database first; now you can add them while you are entering your data.
12/21/2008: Reference a Check/Reference Number when paying a bill!
12/23/2008: Don’t worry about changing your data in FreshBooks – our system now reconciles all changes – even edited payments on invoices — every time IAC-EZ and FreshBooks synchs.
12/23/2008: Implementation of Roles and Permissions System for Multi User Accounts. Next Step: Ability to enroll multiple users!
12/28/2008: Time Zones! We now support time zones, so that your dates and data will be specific to wherever you are located. If you have already signed up and selecting your Time Zone was not an option in the sign up process, make sure to go in to your HeadQuarters, Subtab: Account Information, and edit your company to select your time zone!
We could not have done all of the above without our users! Your feedback has been crucial and the most valuable part of our development. Please continue to report anything and everything to support@iacez.com or on our forums.
Now – on to what’s to come:
I am stuck between a rock and a hard place: All of my colleagues and associates say “Don’t let people know what you are planning”, but at the same time I hear my customers, I read the FreshBooks Forum, and I see that you guys just want to know!
So I figure, at least for now, we can find a nice common ground. I won’t release the entire road map and I will only release the things that are so close to release our competitors can’t roll it out before us anyway!
You can look forward to the release of 1.2 prior to January 31st 2009 and some of the really awesome things that you will see in this new release are:
- Multiple Users
- A user-friendly ‘reconcile to FreshBooks page’ that outlines exactly what was brought in through the last import.
- Shortcut help steps for new users just signing up, to make your experience even easier.
- Ability to see all shareholder liabilities under tax estimations and not just yours.
- Send your expenses to FreshBooks (FreshBooks opened up their expense API! Yay and Kudos to them!)
- Auto-recall previously entered transaction tags
- CSV Importing and Exporting
- PDF Export for Reports
- A bunch of really nifty features for our international users
- And more….
We are working hard to make your life easier, to make our system better, and in general to make everyone super happy!
If you are happy with our application and our service, please send us a testimonial to support@iacez.com, with your logo or photo and we will put you on our front page with our fanatics!
Until Next Time,
Heather Villa
CEO & Founder of IAC-EZ
