‘Product Support’ Category

Greetings all Mac users! Because 1place is a website and not software installed onto your computer, you the customer have the ability to run your business accounts from any Internet-enabled computer in the world. This means Mac and PC are catered for.

This sounds great right!? There is one catch, and that is the choice of program you use to access the Internet with. There are two main options on the Mac: Safari (comes standard), and Firefox. We are on version 1 of the 1place website thus far, and have tested the site on Internet Explorer & Firefox. We haven’t yet tested Safari. We have heard from a couple of users that Safari doesn’t always work perfectly (and we would expect that because it’s not tested).

Therefore… we are currently recommending Mac users who are using Safari to switch to Firefox. We are going to have a Safari-tested website up and running as soon as possible, and will let you know when that happens through this blog.

Download at the Firefox download page

Any questions please contact us

[Tags are entered the bottom of a New Invoice. You can see them under My Customers > Tags. Tags are never placed on an invoice]

Many of you have probably not used tags before. They are a fantastic way of organising the type of work you get. When you create a tag, you are creating a key word or words against that invoice and customer. After you install them into an invoice, you can then search them for all relevant invoices.

The reason why we create a ‘tag’ and not a ‘category’ is a category requires a structure. Tags are similar to how you search the web – searching for key words. Imagine if the Internet was categorised into a structure. It would take days to find what you were looking for!

Example on how to use tags:
I’m an electrician, and I do work in the Tauranga, Te Puke, and Kati Kati areas. I do light commercial & residential work. My tags could look something like this…

Tauranga
Te Puke
Kati Kati
Commercial
Residential
One-off customer
On-going customer
Referral from a friend
Referral from yellow pages ad
Referral from a past customer

There is a lot in this list – you might only have 3-5 in yours. Now, as an electrician I can view all invoices created in Tauranga, residential and referred from a past customer to quickly find out what worth they are to my business. No more guess work – now I can target the work that makes the most money, or is easier to get to.

Give it a try! Also, send us feedback on your thoughts about tags.

Support Article

To effectively bill your customers for selling them a product or a service in their name you need to give them an invoice. Below is some tips to do that effectively…

TIP: When in Customer, Item code & Item name fields, click the space bar on your keyboard and all entries you have available for that field will appear

Click on Enter Invoice on the dashboard quicklinks, or go to Invoices > Enter Invoice

Enter Customer. When you first start, you won’t have any customers loaded into the system. To create a new customer, simply click on “Enter Customer”. From here fill out the details you have on that customer. Preferably you would have the customer’s mobile number and email so you can email invoices and send TXT reminders if required.

Due Date. Enter the due date. We have provide common due dates (eg. 7 day invoice), but you can also enter a custom date that the invoice will be due on.

Enter Items. To create a new item, enter the item code you would like to use. The system will automatically remember this item. Next thing, enter the Item Name, then quantity, then price and discount (leave blank if no discount).

From here you can either enter the extra fields (below) or click “Save”

Congratulations – you have created an invoice!

Extras. You can save the invoice with comments (to go on the invoice), and also save it with tags. The tags are for your own purpose to help categorise different types of sales. For example, a builder might put the tag as the referrer of the work, or the suburb. You can view tag reports through My Customers > Tags

More Options. On top of the standard choices on the invoice you also have the opportunity to track it the way you want to. Here you can setup recurring invoices so you only have to enter the invoice once, send email & TXT reminders to the customer if the invoice goes overdue, and also remind yourself if there is a problem with payment.

Sending. After saving the invoice, you can now send it. You have the choice of emailing it, or saving it as a PDF file to then print it. Email is the easiest way of sending invoices. Just a note about email – it’s like the post. Emails can get ‘lost’. Whether it be a wrong address or someone’s email system marks you as ‘junk’, it’s not 100% reliable – just like posting it! TXT reminders can come in handy to ensure your customer knows about the invoice.

Notes about invoices
An invoice is a legal agreement that the amount shown was the amount agreed to. As such, if a product or service isn’t paid for you can take that invoice and create procedings against the person or company that owe you money. The invoice can be disputed (eg. the customer says “I received 3 items, not the 4 that I was charged for”). If this is true, then you will need to adjust accordingly.

For those starting out in business, or for those that leave all the admin to accountants – here is some basic information about what, why and how to use a cashbook. We call it “My Money” for simplicities sake, but the common accounting term is “Cashbook”

WHAT
A cashbook (we call it My Money) is a place to record your bank account transactions, and code them for your accountant. For example, here is a bank account entry:
“1/4/2007 Warehouse Stationary $56.90″

The cashbook will take this entry and add the appropriate categorization for your accountant:
“Stationary Expenses”

WHY
With a cashbook you and your accountant can keep track of your expenses in a way that categorizes them for tax & performance reporting. If you don’t do this now with a software product or manually you will be paying your accountant to do this.

The key thought here is that if you spend less money on accountancy that does your cashbook entries, you have more to spend on good advice. Your accountant is a big part of your business and your budget isn’t unlimited so the more you can do on the admin side before your accounts get to him / her the more strategic & coaching advice you can receive.

HOW
With the advent of a more advanced Internet, we can now have a cashbook the Internet instead of requiring PC-based software (expensive, hardware dependent, only accessible in one location). The potential for automation is also enhanced through links to your bank to get the bank information and automatically code it for you. This can happen when you aren’t around! No need to have a computer on… Hello flexibility! Also, you save money through a subscription based service instead of a large upfront fee plus a support cost. We are working on an automatic bank link feature -will keep you posted.

If you sign-up to a 1place account, you will get a cashbook feature (and can trial if for free). At the moment you are required to download your statement from your Internet banking account and then upload it to 1place cashbook. This takes about 2 minutes for someone familiar with their Internet banking. You only need to do it once a month or whenever you need to check on paying performance.

NEW USERS. TRIAL IT WITH 1PLACE!
If you have a 1place account already login and you will see the “Cashbook” tab. Click that and load your statements on

Also
It links to your invoicing on 1place. This means you can link not only expenses but also deposits to your customers. This way you can keep track of customers accounts and not have to use two systems (one for invoicing & one for accounts)

Useful Links:
www.startrungrow.co.nz
www.biz.org.nz

You can also contact us to get more information on the 1place cashbook product.

See our pricing page 

Okay so you have signed up to 1place.co.nz to have a try-out and see if works for your business. You like it and are getting into your one month free. The next obvious question is what do you get charged after that? Well here is some info for you below.

As you will see we are more than competitive with PC based systems that charge more for monthly support than we charge for the entire package!

Here are some numbers: Includes both Invoicing & Cashbook functions

Free- 5 invoices, No cash book functionality
15 buck package – 15 invoices, 10 txt messages, 1 user (about 1 invoice a day)
25 buck package - 30 invoices, 20 txt messages, 2 users (about 3 invoices a day)
35 buck package - Unlimited Invoices 50 txt messages, unlimited users Additional users (your staff): $5 per month per user

All packages include unlimited emailing & printing of invoices