Inventory Item History Report
The Inventory Item History Report now has additional information and filters that will help you better understand your margins, average costs and cost of goods numbers. It includes:

• reporting of average cost
• reporting of margins
• gross profit margin for your entire sales
• the ability to export to spreadsheet/CSV
• the ability to filter by transaction type

Merchant Fees
Saasu has improved the handling of reconciling against fee items. If you have not nominated an account to record Merchant Fees against, Saasu will prompt you to do so in your bank account setup.

Fast Coding
The new Pending Transactions feature in Bank Feeds we released two weeks ago has been well received. Your Fast Coding screen in Bank Feeds now also displays pending transactions as read-only (greyed out). If Bank Rules are set up and applied to your transactions, Pending Transactions are excluded from this.

With hindsight we have found allowing our customers to reconcile Pending transactions to be more problematic than helpful. Accordingly, in our release last week we changed Pending transactions to be Read-only until Yodlee, our bank feed provider, updates them as finalised.

You can elect to view (but not reconcile) Pending transactions as an option on each Bank Feed you use in Saasu. By default this feature is OFF. You can turn this ON by going to View > Bank Account > Click on the Bank Account name to open it in edit mode > Tick the option Include Pending Transactions > Save the screen.

Not Getting Bank Data Fast Enough? Pending Transactions Now Supported
We have been feeling the frustrations that some of you have had due to the delay in getting finalised bank transactions via the Bank Feed. The reason was a number of banks had both a pending and finalised status of each transaction. The bank feed was only accessing the finalised transactions in order to remove the chance of duplicated transactions. We now have a way that will access the pending transactions in the next bank feed refresh and prevent duplications.

Payrun Matching in Bank Feeds Now Supported
If you use Pay Runs in Saasu and you’re not using our Bulk EFT file for processing payments, and instead paying your employees one at a time, you can now match these bank feeds transactions against your Pay Run.

More Banks Added to Bank Statement Importing
The new bank formats now available for bank statement importing include ME Bank (AU), Select Credit Union (AU), Berrima District Credit Union (AU), Southern Cross Building Society (NZ).

Remittances and Receipts

Remittances and Receipt Templates have been the highest requested enhancement through the service desk. They are now live and ready to help you get even more efficient in your business.

If you navigate to the Payment associated with your Purchase you will see you have new print options at the top of the screen. We have also provided a Receipt template for your Sales (which in essence is the opposite to a Remittance). If you are paying multiple invoices for a supplier Saasu will list all the related invoices and payment amounts in a single Remittance. Find out how to create a remittance in our help system

LinkedIn ID’s

Many of you have said you love how we store Skype names, Twitter ID’s and other Social Network data. However, you said “we need LinkedIn!”. So we have added it to the Contact Screen with an easy click and go link to navigate to the profile.

Bank Feed enhancements

We have been working on enhancements to our Bank Feeds area. This release allows you to:

1. Match foreign currency Sales/Purchase payments against local currency amounts in your bank account. We nicely handle the FX conversion for you.
2. By popular request we’ve changed the sort order of the bank feed to be newest to oldest.
3. Next update will give you the ability to match Pay Runs in bulk against the single bulk payment amounts in your Bank Feed data.

To use this feature simply choose Automate > Bank Feeds > More > Fast Code View

We spent a lot of time getting this to a minimal amount of keystrokes. It’s incredibly simple and ensures you keep your hands on the keyboard and off the mouse. This is important for speed, accessibility and simplicity. Sometimes systems get too cute with shortcuts that end up being longcuts and heavy amounts of mousing around. That’s not us. Keep it simple.

We have set ourselves high quality assurance and usability benchmarks and in our self assessment we don’t think we are there yet. We have thousands of very keen customers wanting access so this isn’t something we want to do but it is the right thing to do.

So we decided to be the ant and not the grasshopper. We’ll spend a few more weeks getting it just right and in January when everyone is back fresh from a break you’ll see the new Saasu.

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.

Asia shouldn’t be underestimated, it is growing so quickly that it will rival the power balance the West holds in this very generation. In this revealing video from TED India Hans Rosling depicts Asia’s Rise.

There is clearly a rise of infographics going on in the web. Just like meta data gives us information about data (data about data), infographics enhance what would otherwise be very vanilla looking graphs. Infographics appeal to humans because we are visual creatures.

In his video’s on GapMinder or TED you can see other examples of how Hans adds a new dimension of time to create dynamic infographics. The result is that he can get the data across in ways that static words and numbers can’t.

Every piece of communication you send to your customer demands their time. There is an equation that roughly says the more you demand then the less attention the customer will probably give your demands. If you annoy them too much, they stop listening and reading. So logically you can attribute a cost to each piece of communication. This attention economy is all about treating this attention like a commodity. Every single email, letter or phone call is an exchange of value. If you are selling something and not giving anything then you are spending a large piece of the attention dollar the customer affords you. If you give education then it is lower. If you solve a problem or save their time then you will probably be adding to the attention piggy bank you have with that customer. They will want more.

So you can design this relationship so both you get more attention and the customer gets more value. If you can monitor customer behavior and reaction so as to understand how they would like to relate to your business rather than how much, then you can grow the attention piggy bank. The customer will give you more time because you have created a bespoke or targeted approach to their communication needs, to solving their problems or giving them the actual information they want rather than fire the 12 gauge information shot gun at them. The catch is that this costs time or else money to automate it.

There are many approaches to move to a communications profile model and some very interesting business models are springing up to help businesses achieve this. Companies like Datarati are dealing with medium enterprise in this area using bleeding edge technologies like Marketo. It’s a data driven approach that at the end of the day will have a robustness above the implied or gut feel approach that most business owners currently rely on. Other simple things that can be done by small business are forms that asks customers what they want from your business when they become a customer. Many inexpensive email systems now have features built in to give you insight into customer behaviour so you can provide them with just what they want and when they want it without even asking them.

This is all about the customer deciding rather than the business. Put the customer first, then the business and sales will follow. Listen and watch their behaviour or ask them what they want rather then serve up an overload of communications and information.

All business will be done this way in the future so it really is just about how fast you get there.

Photo by See-ming Lee

The following presentation on this topic is from my talk at CeBIT Webciety this year. The topic was What web Web3.0 will look like. This is all about the "Data" and the "Data Generation". Concepts such as the Semantic Web, Data-on-Data and more recently the Datarati have evolved in recent years to deal with the concepts.

If you are interested in the data area and how to use your business data to influence your business then Will Scully-Power’s blog is a great read. Previously of MarkSydney (part of the M&C Saatchi Group) he is seeding a new business in the data space.

We generally upload our presentations to Slideshare. See ~ Saasu | Marc Lehmann | Peter Cooper

Commsec Securities Ltd is a leading securities trading operation owned by Commonwealth Bank Australia (one of the largest Australian Banks). Saasu released support for their account data formats last night. You will see Commsec as an option in the supported Formats drop down in the Import area of Saasu.

Have a format you would like us to support? Just let us know and we will support it free of charge as per our Bank Integration Guarantee.

Photo credit: Acid8000

ClickandBuy is a leading payment system used by thousands of merchants across 26 countries. They support 21 different currencies and 43 different payment methods. ClickandBuy, is used by Apple iTunes, MSN, Electronic Arts, Yamaha, UNICEF and more.

New Bank Connectors Released

• BancaSabadell
• Royal Bank of Scotland
• Lloyds TSB
• Victorian Teachers Credit Union

Which bank statement formats are supported by Saasu?
How do I add my bank to the supported bank list?

New UK/International Banking Support

Three new financial institution connectors are now included in Saasu for everyone.

You can import transactions in bulk from your online banking.

This is provided as part of the wonderful (and free) Saasu Bank Integration Guarantee (BIG) to all customers. If you have a bank you would like to be able to import transactions from please let us know.

The new ones are -

• Lloyds TSB for all our UK customers
• Paypal.com personal accounts for all our US and international customers
• Paypal.com merchant accounts for all our US and international customers

Improved PayPal support

PayPal started in the US and now have 200m+ users in over 100 countries. They were acquired by eBay a few years ago but you don’t need an eBay account to receive or pay money with PayPal, you just need an email address and the simple features are free.

Saasu support 50 zones, so with the bank import announcement above we think we have at least one financial institution for almost everyone.

PayPal lets anyone receive payment with just an email address link on your invoice. Use saasu settings sale section.

PayPal merchant accounts enable additional features like simple but secure checkout links with your logo on invoices, web pages or blogs so your customers can bay with credit card or PayPal funds or even direct debit.

Payroll Improvements

Payroll processing has been upgraded to run faster for single payroll and bulk payroll processing. So you save just a little more time if you have one employee or hundreds.

Tax table updates for end of Australian tax year have also been completed and set up for all Australia zone customers on all plans in time for the end of financial year on 30 June.

Add contacts on-the-fly during bank reconciliation/import

Sometimes the first time you deal with a new customer is when they have dropped funds into your account.

Now you can add new contacts dynamically ‘on-the-fly’ from the bank import screen as you are looking at each transaction that has some in from your financial institution.

Safari speed freak

The Saasu labs team each did some informal tests across a range of functions recently and here are the results, fastest to slowest. 1st:Safari, 2nd:Firefox, 3rd:Internet Explorer.

So don’t just assume your browser is best, trying others might be worth the 10 minutes it takes to download and install.

Firefox version 3

For our customers using Firefox browser, a minor print preview issue in the latest version has been released.

We released about 200 new features earlier this month and here are another fifteen time savers for you.

External Notes for Invoices and Automated Invoices
You have wanted to say “YOU OWE ME MONEY” for quite a while now.

Attachments in Activities
Handy for sales documentation, 3rd party docs and the like.

Catch language enhancements
Saasu Catch is the quick way to catch todo’s contacts, transactions and other info on the fly. The Saasu Catch bar is at the top of the menu after signing in.
Saasu’s Catch Language now supports “to do:”, “do:”, “h:” and “help:”.
Examples -

• h:importing – list of help items about “importing”
• do:call myles – create a To Do Activity in my Activities list.
• s:happiness – search Google for “happiness”

Audit trail
Improved accountability for multi-user businesses. All edit screens now show the basic audit trail of last change date and time, who made the change and when it was originally created.

Bank of New Zealand importing supported
As we build out our NZ feature set we quickly added this for a New Zealand customer.

Tags in lists
Some list screens (like activities) show the tags applied in-line (in the list) to save you drilling down, a simple powerful time saver because you control the tags you use.

Line focus
Handy line shading has been introduced so it is easier to read across wide reports and lists, you can see an example above.

See more on contacts
Just one click will show the sales, purchases and statements for a contact.

A little known existing feature also lets you research your customers, partners, employees and more on popular web based Professional and Social Networking (PSN) sites. PSNs cover around 200 million individuals now and include Linkedin.com (an independent site), Myspace (owned by News Corp), Bebo (owned by Time Warner’s AOL), Facebook (independent with links to Microsoft), and Orkut (which is owned by Google).

More speed
Our top transaction screens have been accelerated, even with the extra features they now run 20-25% faster than before on common functions.

Easier lists with easy dates
Getting a date (or a range of dates) has never been easier. Lists now show you the recent info to save you time. Most have a simplified date picker to choose common ranges with 2-3 clicks as well.

Wouldn’t you love to pay lots of bill at once?

Saasu has released our Direct-to-Bank File (DTB) payment feature. Simply (a) tick all the unpaid purchases you would like to pay in your Saasu Purchase List, (b) create and save your payment and (c) click the icon/link that becomes available to create the direct to Bank File and save it to your desktop.

In the video below the DTB file is Australian and is called an ABA file. Every zone is different so let us know if you would like your zone direct-to-bank format supported. Send us a sample payment file, else the documentation your bank has made available. (Note: don’t send us anything with personal access information).

Save hours of online banking data entry!