We are about to release our bank feeds preview next week. I’ll be in New Zealand with Acclipse on a roadshow to give the industry a good look at our approach. I’m very excited about it as we are doing something quite special and ahead of the curve.

Our competitors have taken a bank feed approach whose idea came from a company I have a lot of respect for called Banklink. It’s an excellent method for Micro Business data creation and coding. It has a major catch though which it’s usefulness as a company grows and needs real time billings (often inventory based) and capture of payables for cashflow monitoring. Our approach is a leap ahead.

What is this difference? We believe Bank Feeds are only one piece of the picture we need as businesses have many real time sources of data that are more useful than bank data (which is a day or more old). As an example eBay and Trade Me traders have inventory based transaction and drop shipping automation requirements. We can manage most of their automation requirements by pulling data feeds directly from these systems. We were the first to launch a Trade Me connector only last week. We are talking about the basics here like sending a detailed invoice in realtime, not creating it a day or two later from a bank feed which only has limited information. That said, bank feeds are great for Micro Business and we will be announcing a Micro Business product available from your Saasu Accountant with bank feeds.

Data Feeds is how we are looking at this space. Bank feeds are a subset of Data feeds.

Merchant gateway transactions, ecommerce website data, transaction feeds from PayPal and shopping sites like eBay and Trade Me are very useful streams of real time data. It’s a much bigger picture we are addressing. Some will be direct connections built by us and some will be via data brokers like OneSaaS, Boomi, Yodlee and others which we won’t disclose just yet (I let the cat out of the bag too early once before).

People often ask us why we left building bank feeds for so long. Well the answer is simple. Sometimes in business it’s better to let others go first. Particularly if you have an approach you don’t want to them to know about. The second reason is we were more focused on Small Business, who haven’t been demanding the bank feed feature as much, it is typically a Micro Business or Sole Trader type feature request. Small businesses tend to create invoices and send them rather than create them from a bank feed. They also enter purchases they haven’t paid so they can get a feeling for their future cash position rather than finding out how much cash they have after they pay their bills. Bank feeds don’t give them a future cash position.

So now we are about to close out another point of difference and provide an offering for Micro and Small businesses. Most importantly at the right price. We have built Saasu methodically and efficiently over 10 years so that the price is right for clients.

We will be issuing a formal press release soon providing complete details including pricing. If you registered to be a beta tester you will be sent an email when your file is ready to try out the new preview release. We hope you enjoy it.