Ideas

Themes in Accounting

September 23, 2009 By marc

Themes are about Saasu’s Community

Saasu has a long history of developing a mix of community ideas into our products. At the same time we like to apply some of our own ideas as an innovator where we see the opportunity. After all, we are a research and development company.

Introducing CrowdTheme™

Soon you will see stage one of Saasu’s CrowdTheme™.

CrowdTheme™ will support themes for your invoices and statements. You simply apply a theme to each template you have in Saasu (or create and submit your own). What’s more exciting is that this allows you to build a raft of workflow documents such as remittances, packing slips, purchase orders and print labels to name a few. Really it’s only limited to your imagination.

CrowdTheme™ will also be used to cover themes for Reports and Customer Self Service screens in a future release.

We will write about CrowdTheme™ in detail at our Product Blog in coming days.

Innovation background

At the moment Saasu crowd sources ideas from our blog, websites and application into our development candidate list. One such popular request was multiple templates for invoices. Many of our customers wanted to send invoices and quotes using more than one brand for their business. Slight changes between invoices and quotes for specific circumstances are another reason.

In essence the request we receive are what our customers want to do rather than how they want to do it. So this is where Saasu comes in with the innovation twist. We work out ways to solve the problem but at the same time create innovative approach that we think will add a whole new layer of benefit. We have to do this as it’s in our company mantra to create extremes in price relative to competitors while also creating extreme benefits.

Not wanting to let an opportunity go we decided it was time to use a themes approach we have wanted to put into Saasu that goes back to when we started blogging in 2003.

It was also a result of identifying that there is a vast complexity of international reporting and documentation requirements in accounting. We always felt that in the end only crowd sourcing themes and templates solves this issue. New document themes can be quickly added by the whole community and shared in a social service model and then applied to individual Saasu templates. This reduces the development cost and thus the cost of our communities Saasu subscription. More features for less cost = win win for all.

What’s this mean for the future of accounting?

We believe that Web3.0 is now starting to form it’s foundations. Companies like Saasu will increasingly allow users to design web applications by their use or by their own design (or a combination of these approaches). Themes are one mechanism that allow this. They will start to extend beyond Content Management Systems.

We also believe the web is becoming more and more organic as it gets a life of it’s own above it’s many tiny masters, the people who use it and the people who build on it.

Filed Under: Blog, Ideas, Online Accounting, Tech

Giant Perspective on Energy

August 27, 2009 By marc

One of the most important things we can do as a human species is take a step back or change our perspective when we look at a problem. In the movie Dead Poet’s Society, Robin William’s character, has his students stand on their desks in order to change their perspective.

This advert for the RWE found on Vimeo is another example of how the problems seem quite small but also the solutions are here and quite do-able when looked at from the giants perspective.

How could you change your perspective when looking at your business?

Filed Under: Blog, Ecosystem, Ideas, Marketing

Seeking Tips to Get Online?

July 13, 2009 By marc

Service Seeking is a Saasu customer who’s business is getting businesses competing head to head to try and win work from a buyer. Service Seeking produced a Start Up Online series of videos. Saasu was included in one of the videos – thanks Jeremy and Oliver for the mention!

Saasu use a couple of the tools mentioned in the video (below) which is the third in the series. It was nice to see we think alike. One tool is tech related but the others can be applied to most business models.

Got a video about what technology or services you use in your business? Let us know.

Filed Under: Blog, Customer, Ecosystem, Ideas, Tech

Web 3.0 Data Generation

July 9, 2009 By marc

Ever wondered what Web3.0 is shaping up to be? There are two things generally agreed in the technology industry. It’s not clear and it’s complex.

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

Web3.0 Data Generation

View more presentations from Marc Lehmann.

Filed Under: Add-ons, Blog, Data, Ecosystem, Ideas, SaaS, Tech

Generate Your Accounts

February 20, 2009 By marc

I often get asked how a business can minimise the time spent (and thus money) “doing” their accounts.

The first step is to get online to create access, convenience and remove tasks that you otherwise have to do such as backups, upgrades and installs.

Secondly, and more importantly, you need to change your thinking to “generating” your accounts. You accounts can be a smooth, automated pipeline of transactions. It doesn’t have to be data entered.

Many businesses I meet still “do” their accounts while they should be generating them. This is about connecting and automating your accounts using a variety of techniques that are NOT limited to bigger businesses. The reality is that there will always be an element of data entry but it can be massively reduced to a small fraction of your work-flow.

There really is only 3 ways of generating your accounts. Most other methods are a variation on these themes or a hybrid of them.

We are interested in our customers saving time so if you have any questions post a comment or get in touch. We are firstly in the business of selling time savings, secondary to that is the accounting software.

REAL TIME – Straight through processing

“Are you serious Saasu? I’m a consulting business, it can’t be automated.”

Even a consulting businesses where you would think it’s hard to automate you can achieve 60-80% automation of transactional work flow. If you think about it (look at your statements), you pay for the same things over and over. Mobile, phone, internet, rent, electricity, wages etc. Often the frequency is consistent and it may only be the amount that varies. These transactions can all be automated to the point where there is no data entry (constant amount) or a followup edit (change amount). Expenses on credit cards can be captured by importing credit card data and bank statements. You simply clear what isn’t needed and apply account codes to the remainder.

This is the best by far on a cost per transaction capture analysis we’ve done of the variety of methods. We call this “exceptions based accounting”.

Highly transactional business models should automate as much as they can using recurring Sales and Purchases for all your normal recurring revenue and fixed costs. If applicable, connect your point-of-sale (POS), e-commerce website, project management and CRM systems to Saasu via the API or using a Connector. Transactions can occur in real time automatically. Contacts can update across systems. New customers can be created, invoiced, payment processed and emailed paperwork automatically without human cost, resources and risk.

Saasu provides customers with shopping carts, software connectors and payment gateway connections to assist in creating a straight through processing business model.

NEXT DAY – Feeds and Import

This method works well for micro enterprise but starts to fall apart as you grow the business or as your business becomes more technically complex. e.g. inventory, time and project based businesses. It doesn’t scale for complexity or compliance.

Under this method you export you bank statement from online banking and import it into your accounting file. Nearly all accounting systems have this feature including Saasu, Sage and Quickbooks. Systems like Banklink and Xero have taken it a step further by providing a service to do this import step for you on a next business day basis or weekly basis. For micro a enterprise this is about an extra $360 per year above Saasu’s pricing. Bank fees may also be charged by your bank account on a per-transaction basis for data feeds. Feeds aren’t real time but they are convenient and close enough for micro businesses. To a degree you are trusting the bank or card company’s data to be correct.

DELAYED – Data entry

Data entry is by far the most expensive and unfortunately the most common. Data entry should be about exceptions so bookkeeper and accountant skills can be reserved for advice and higher level tasks. A good bookkeeper is the difference between order and disorder, fear and anxiety. Automate as much as possible and have your bookkeeper or admin staff be you assistant CFO to your business rather than spend your dollars on them just doing mundane data-entry that can be done by a computer.

Filed Under: Accounting, Add-ons, Automation, Blog, Efficiency, Ideas, Online Accounting

Wild FX Rates – Online vs Offline Shopping

December 13, 2008 By marc

One consequence of the Global Financial Crisis or as they now are calling it the Global ‘Economic’ Crisis is that Foreign Exchange (FX) rates are now very volatile. 10% movements are now common replacing 1% movements. This brings about interesting opportunities for consumers.

This was highlighted recently when I was looking around for Ben10 Watches for my two boys, Mr3 and Mr5. The US Dollar (USD) price I would have to pay when converted to Australian Dollars (AUD) at an e-commerce portal was almost the same. The two currencies were nearly equal. Within weeks the AUD had changed dramatically versus the USD by 40% as the commodity markets imploded. Accordingly my online price to buy in USD had nearly doubled when I calculated the AUD price equivalent that I would be paying.

At the same time the Kmart retail price in AUD’s was unchanged and on a currency adjusted basis was extremely cheap. So Kmart, the offline retailer, was giving consumers the opportunity to avoid that foreign exchange loss. You could be simplistic about this and say that Kmart buys and sells at the same price and is currency neutral but the reality is quite different. Kmart is in competition with online shopping e-commerce portals. While currency makes Kmart prices cheaper then consumers like me will buy in person at their stores but if the reverse occurs I wouldn’t hesitate to buy online via an e-commerce transaction.

Accordingly Kmart is allowing consumers to cherry pick their prices. It is the right but not the obligation to buy at the cheaper price. In essence, a free option while stock lasts. This produces a negative pricing environment as they keep giving away this free option to consumers. Maintaining static pricing in the face of volatile currency movements is now a significant issue for them. While currencies moved 1% it wasn’t noticeable.

The big problem for Kmart and others like them is two-fold. Firstly they need to decide how much currency they need to hedge against their purchasing. In effect they are increasing their activity in a non-core business called “currency trading” which historically most businesses aren’t all that good at. It’s not their fault it’s just not their core business.

The second issue is that the technology to deploy and implement price change on the store floor isn’t implemented in Australian stores that I know of. You can’t simply swap out millions of ~~RFID~~ Barcode prices attached to garments, CD’s and Ben10 watches.

So the online stores have a distinct advantage over the offline stores born out of their capacity to adjust prices quickly as FX rates change. The online stores will continue to out-compete Kmart and the likes in volatile FX markets by facilitating this retail price arbitrage now made possible by e-commerce.

What does this mean for your business and what it is that you sell?

Filed Under: Blog, Ideas

Edge of the Web

August 28, 2008 By marc

If you’re a business owner I recommend attending conferences. The trick is to pick the eyes out of them. I only go to about three a year as either a speaker or a sponsor. So ruthless choices are required. My picks are Barcamp, Edge of the Web and CeBIT.

Edge of the Web is coming up in November (Perth, Australia), brought to you by the Australian Web Industry Association (AWIA). It is designed for business stakeholders trying to create next generation business practices that utilise the web. The people behind Edge of the Web recognise that technology and the web are an integral part of the business model. So often I see business people who think their business is “what” they do rather than “how” they do it.

Nearly all businesses are hybrid technology businesses these days,
they are part technology company and part product or services. The “how” is all about technology.

I’ll be at the conference talking on SaaS (Software as a Service) as an Ecosystem for businesses to operate in. Having your business in the cloud is becoming an integral part of an effective “how” component in your business. Some smart cookies (and coincidently good friends and customers of Saasu) will be there also such as the Madpilot, Myles Eftos and Millstreams, Adrian and Rosemary Lynch. I also hear that Jordan Brock and his 5 Senses Coffee with be there. 5 Senses was at a recent Barcamp, and the coffee experience just made it ultra-pleasant between sessions.

If you are not sure if this applies to you then consider a sole trader services business as an example who has a large portion of what they do dependent on technology. Getting the books done, preparing marketing material, email, franchising, scheduling, managing inventory, procurement, network marketing etc. It’s all about technology.

If you want to get to Perth then Saasu wants to pitch in and help by subsidising the trip a little through a cheaper Saasu subscription. Just use voucher code AWIA-EDGE when you renew or signup to Saasu NetAccounts. We will add 3 months to your business file renewal date once we confirm you have registered for the conference*.

Edge of the Web is on 6th and 7th of November, Perth WA. AWIA members $395, non-members $450.

ASIDE: If you aren’t already an AWIA member then get on board. Saasu did and never looked back. We are now on their committee and can honestly say it has been a great expereience dealing with some amazing web savvy members and receiving so much businesses through our membership.

If you have multiple business files in your subscription it will be pro-rata calculated. Offer ends 6th November 2008. One voucher at a time sorry. This offer can’t be used in conjunction with any other offer.

Filed Under: Australia, Ideas, SaaS, Tech

Idea tsunami

February 27, 2008 By marc

Sources of quality ideas and ways to manage them

Are you starved for new ideas or do you find yourself seeing so many ideas out there that sometimes you feel the information floods over you? Either way, there are idea sources and filtering techniques that can help.

Do you find yourself so time poor that you can’t spend 2 hours reading a high quality book on a new concept or global trend? In 20 minutes with the right material (there is some right here) you can get the same outcome.

Any idea or piece of information can be slotted into three clear realms or stages of knowing that a gentleman called Plato did some groundwork on without the benefit of technology to accelerate his learning:

What you know you know
What you know you don’t know – or know a little about but not enough to be of much use
What you don’t know you don’t know – blind spots to which you are completely oblivious

Opportunity exists in that final point, we would like to share some quality sources with you.

Solving Blind Spots

TED – Supported by BMW. It is the university degree that doesn’t exist yet, snippets of greatness. Leaders in their field give you emotional and passionate slide show and video dumps in 20-30 minute waves. Their life is devoted to ideas and theories. Fascinating describes TED well. These people are consumed by their passion for an area of life or business. You will learn about cutting edge ideas changing our lives and the next generation’s too. For example visual technologies, organic design and other potentially profound concepts that will alter your thinking and maybe reconsider your business model and outlook on your industry or even your life.

Slideshare – You will need to do some surfing but there are some fantastic presentations in this website. One example on brand management is a ‘must read’.

Are you information efficient? Apply a ROI test to your information gathering

How many of your books, magazines, blog reads fall into this last category of filling you blind spots? This is a time saving filter we can all use to decide what we read and don’t. Reading content you know about is still important because occasionally you hit the blind spot needle in the haystack. You do pay a higher price to get it, your time.

Be critical, assess what you read regularly, assess what you attend in terms of conferences and the like. We are very quick in business to apply measurement to assess spending money on projects, advertising and marketing. This applies equally to time, valuable time spent on learning, reading and watching.

Filed Under: Blog, Efficiency, Ideas

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