In this release:

Statement of Outstanding Invoices
One of our most requested features is the ability to produce a customer statement detailing all receivables to date. This is a manual statement (as distinct from Automated Statements) and is accessible from the Reports >> Statement menu.

The statement provides filters for contact, date, sale or purchase, outstanding or just overdue, and currency. Any partly-paid invoices are differentiated by the amounts shown in the Total and Owed columns. The ability to click-through on any line item is also provided which takes you to the underlying details for that transaction.

This Statement of Outstanding Invoices has an inbuilt template and theme which you can customise further as required.

Bank Account Exception Report
This new report provides information on anomalies in the setup of bank accounts or bank transactions, such as a tax code being allocated to a bank account.

Enhancements to Bank Feeds
Additional banks are now able to be connected. To check if yours is available simply type its name into the “Connect to Bank Account” field in Automate >> Bank Feeds.We’ve improved the reliability of bank feeds with an additional refresh of the feed after connecting, and the ability to update your credentials from the main bank feeds screen to initiate a refresh as required.

API Updates
You can now pass all invoice types that we support through the API (this varies by zone). This now makes the API consistent with the invoice types available on the invoice screen.

We’ve also updated the API documentation to reflect this and other changes to the API over the last few months. For more details see our API help note here.

Laying Groundwork
We’re continuing to work on our infrastructure, bringing additional performance improvements. We’re laying the groundwork for our new user interface, with a lot of development work focussed right now around the new screens that are coming to Saasu. We look forward to sharing these with you soon.

Going forward we are announcing the releases before they occur so you can make yourself aware of changes prior to them occurring. In case you didn’t know Saasu does 2 week development cycles (what our engineers call sprints). We release the features and fixes from these sprints every 4 weeks if they pass our QA Engineer benchmarks.

In this release:

• Date Merge fields – You can now display dates using merge fields that can calculate. They do their calculations based on the Transaction Dates. Use them in Description and Summary fields. Also use them in Templates and Themes. Some examples are {Date+0D}, {Date+7D}, {Date+1M} and {Date+2W}. This is very useful if you bill for fixed time periods. e.g. If we have an Automated Sale invoice on the 10th of each month that will be recurring I can set up an Automated Sale with the Summary “For {Date+0D} to {Date+1M}” then it will display as “For 10Jan12 to 10Feb12″.
• Infrastructure upgrade – We get to deploy our new cloud infrastructure which enhances performance and redundancy of the Saasu Web Application. We manage your data in the USA, Hong Kong and Australia.
• Graphs for iPad – Dashboard cashflow graphs now display in your iPad and iPhone web browser. We have moved from Adobe Flash to HTML5 graphs.
• Security enhancements – We have removed the 16 character limit on passwords when signing up to allow you to use long form passwords. We have also added a password strength indicator.
• New Bank Feeds- Lots of new North American banks are coming online including: Chase Bank, Citibank, Wells Fargo Bank, Bank of America, Alpine Banks of Colorado and Toronto Dominion Bank. In credit cards GE Myer Visa and Amex Canada are now available.
• New Bank CSV Import Formats – We have added Macquarie Bank, Sydney Credit Union, Defence Force Credit Union and Summerland Credit Union.

Thanks for your business!

Trading terms

• Can now specify End Of Month (EOM) + X number of days for more flexibility.
• Contact, Sales, Automated Sales & Settings screens have all been updated to reflect the new trading terms options.
• Trading Terms details flow through to Invoice templates.
• Contact import/export (Saasu CSV format) also includes the trading terms details.
• The Webservices API allows trading terms details to be referenced.

What happened to the 7d 14d 30d links?

By design we have removed those selection options.

With the enhanced trading terms you can set default due dates for sales and purchases via Settings > Contacts > Trading Terms. In addition, for particular contacts you can override these defaults by setting trading terms at the contact level via Contacts > edit Contacts > Trading Terms. We’ve also added EOM + X days and COD options to allow fine tuning of the trading terms.

In effect this has made the old 7d 14d 30d redundant as you have more control over trading terms in this release.

Webservices API

• More detailed information within invoices is now accessible via the API.
  Specifically, “Total inc tax”, “exc tax” and tax amounts included in line items can be referenced.
• Merchant fee accounts on bank accounts can now be referenced.
• Merchant fees associated with an invoice payment can now be referenced.

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.

PayPal Automated Data Feeds
Connect your PayPal business account and transactions will flow straight into Saasu. We’ve also catered for the handling of merchant fees to save you time – Saasu accounts for the fees behind the scenes to an expense account.

Automated Bank Feeds for all Banks Globally
We’ve switched on all banks globally from our feed provider giving you a much broader choice of banks.  We’ve also built in a message to display when attempting to connect to a bank requiring multi-factor authentication (MFA).  We are working on supporting MFA in a future release.

Fee Handling for Automated Bank Feeds
Support for merchant fees in payments to bank accounts is now handled in Saasu.

You can now easily update a transaction directly in the feed to account for a merchant fee and Saasu will account for it behind the scenes to an expense account.

“Pending” Transactions in the Automated Bank Feed
We’ve received plenty of feedback on displaying pending transactions before they have been finalised. In this latest Saasu release the pending transaction behaviour has changed completely.

You can elect to receive pending transactions as an option on the back account (View -> Bank Accounts) but by default this is OFF. Also, due to the highly unstable nature of pending transactions and issues with reconciling against them, they are now displayed in ‘Read-Only’ mode and cannot be edited. They can only be edited once they are confirmed/posted. We have made them read only to ensure the data integrity.

“Quick Start”
We now have an easy 3-step setup for new subscribers.

This is a much more intuitive approach for new users, helping them navigate through the initial setup process for their files.

New Dashboard
The new dashboard allows for easy addition or removal of “dashboard widgets” by dragging and dropping the widgets into place.

This is part of our move towards a more customisable approach to the Saasu application.  For example you can now have a separate cashflow widget for each bank account.

Enhanced Bank Reconciliation Report
The report now supports the “clearance date” field in payments. This allows you to run the bank reconciliation report to generate historical reconciiations.

Update to Bank Feeds Screens
We’ve simplified the design of the inbox to make it more intuitive to use.

Direct connection to PayPal

We’ve built this as a direct feed. This means Saasu communicates directly with PayPal to get your data twice a day. It’s easy to setup in a few minutes. All you need is a business PayPal account, as personal accounts don’t have API access. PayPal offers free upgrade for Personal to Business accounts.

Fee handling

You can easily account for fees associated with your PayPal transactions. For example: a $97.80 amount received in your PayPal automated feed may relate to a $100.00 original Sale. You can now easily update this transaction to account for the fee by editing $97.80 to be $100.00 in the feed. Saasu will automatically account for the $2.20 PayPal fee.

Multi-currency is supported

The automated feed will also handle most common situations for multi-currency files such as those paying foreign currency amounts for goods or for billing people in foreign currencies and accepting payments via PayPal.

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).

• Co-branding – Subscription admins can upload your own logo in the footer area.
  
• Default trading terms in “days” per customer. You can also set this on the customers Contact record. Trading terms “methods” is coming soon.
  
• Easily remove “Powered by Saasu” for paid users in the Settings screen.
  
• Remittance Advice and Receipts – new merge fields for these templates.
  
• Import Shoeboxed CSV files. Shoeboxed will have an Add-on available soon that automatically pushes your scanned transactions into your Saasu file.
  
• Improved performance and search for Automated Sales and Purchase listing screens.
• New Settings screen to allow for new settings coming in our next major release.
• Bank Feed amounts for a pay run can now be reconciled to Saasu Pay Runs.
• Organisations – are now better supported via our API. Company UID.
• General Ledger report – print issues in some browsers have been resolved.
• Import CSV support for – Bank of Montreal (Canada), Adelaide Bank (Australia).
• Bank Feed support for – UBank (Australia).

The benefit of the OneSaas service is that it also links to many other web applications that you may already use in your business.

OneSaas integrates the main functionality of Saasu from Contacts, Invoices, Items, Accounts, Bank Accounts to Tax Codes. Connecting to Saasu is done through a simple wizard process.

We’ve been using OneSaas to manage our contact records synchronisation between system Saasu operations use including Google Enterprise, Campaign Monitor and Marketo. Traditionally we had been spent hours moving lists around and updating records and instead replaced this with a small payment each month to automate these activities. You all know we love automation

OneSaas was founded by fellow colleague and friend, Corneliu I. Tusnea.

Saasu loves pushing the boundaries on price and features in our industry. We are often perplexed by online systems that charge more than much older software products. We are fanatical about providing extreme value to our customers.

In this light we are announcing some pricing changes today given recent new features we have added to Saasu.

Bank Feeds

Saasu will be providing Bank Feeds, an easy way to get your bank data into Saasu automatically. This is a free feature upgrade on all paid plans even after the beta cycle completes this week. Your business file can also connect to unlimited banks for free subject to our fair play policy.

Enterprise Plan

Saasu has dropped the Enterprise Plan price dramatically by more than half it’s original price. We believe we have the best value serialised and assembly level inventory system in the world. We are talking about real inventory, with real accounting behind the scenes, not just prices list. Enterprise Plan prices are as follows:

AUD $89
NZD $89
USD $89

Saasu will remove the old $95 Corporate plan now that the Enterprise plan is cheaper. Customers on the Corporate plan will be automatically migrated to the new lower cost Enterprise plan. The next plan down called the Global Plan remains unchanged.

All Enterprise customers who paid for a one year subscription in the last 3 months will be given a free 3 month extension on their Enterprise files.

Saasu’s Enterprise plan gives you Saasu’s Advanced Inventory features and unlimited Payroll subject to our fair play limits.

Free Version.

To date Saasu has been very open and provided quite unrestricted use of trial features in it’s Free version. These include Group Payroll, Inventory and even API use. We have done this so customers can try it all out now but also in the future if they are thinking about upgrading. However many customers use these features in a commercial ongoing sense and accordingly we will be asking that these customers upgrade to the Professional version of Saasu or higher next month.

If you have any questions regarding this don’t hesitate to contact us via the service desk.

Weighing in at almost half the cost of its nearest competitor, the $16.50 per month ‘Accountants Edition’ version provides access from anywhere in the world to Saasu’s powerful automation tools, extensive reports, and contact management system.

Along with access to these core functions, included in the monthly package are 50 accounts receivable invoices, 50 accounts payable invoices, and 200 reconciled bank statement lines.

In comparison, Xero’s Small pricing plan ($29 a month) offers only 5 Accounts Receivable, 5 Accounts Payable, and 20 reconciled statement lines each month. This price is even more than the Saasu Pro plan ($25 a month) which includes unlimited invoicing and bank reconciliation, as well as a fully integrated inventory and payroll system.

Marc Lehmann, founder and Chief Executive of Saasu, says “We’ve always promoted Saasu as an affordable, scalable system for any business type, and this new release means just that for smaller organisations and sole traders.”

“To limit activity to 5 invoices a month is restricting for some businesses, and to charge as much as Saasu charges for its full-featured product for this limited service is extortion. Saasu is focussed on providing affordable time-saving solutions for businesses and their advisors, and now we’re making a stand against these prices. ”

Marc has long been a strong advocate for the Software as a Service industry, and goes on to explain that “online software shouldn’t just be easier for customers to use, it should be cheaper.”

“Although we take great pride in having the most feature-rich product on the market, we realise not all businesses require such a comprehensive accounting system. We saw no reason why these firms should pay for features they will never use, and instead of limiting usage of all functions across the product, we simply focussed on providing the essential features our smaller clients love.”

Not only does Saasu make managing financials simpler for smaller operators, but for the accountants that work with them too. Allowing real-time collaboration on files from any location, Saasu always displays up-to-date information, eliminating the issue of out-of-sync files.

Mike Chisholm, Chief Executive of Acclipse, said “this option is just what accountants have been asking for. Everyone has small clients who can’t justify paying the costs Xero and MYOB are charging. We partnered with Saasu because we wanted an online accounting solution that offered great value to both businesses and accountants, along with great performance and features. I’m really pleased that so soon after announcing our partnership we’re able to deliver this new version.”

After a series of successful roadshows across Australia and New Zealand, Saasu has been inundated by accountants wanting to incorporate the product into their practice. Of this, Lehmann said “we’re seeing more firms pass through our training programme than we have before. After all, Saasu is about saving both businesses and their advisors time, and it’s great to see our customers getting excited as they realise this.”

Australian accountants can find out more, and become a Saasu Accounting Partner here

New Zealand accountants can find out more, and become a Saasu Accounting Partner here

For more information contact:

Marc Lehmann, Saasu CEO
+61 2 9233 6629 | marc@saasu.com

Mike Chisholm, Acclipse CEO
+64 29 245 7091 | mike.chisholm@acclipse.com.au

ABOUT SAASU

Saasu is an online accounting software company with over 10,000 customers from around the world. With millions of transactions each year worth billions of dollars Saasu is a market leader in the Software as a Service accounting industry in the Asia Pacific area. Saasu is a comprehensive online accounting software system for managing business financials. Saasu has capabilities in sales, purchasing, inventory, payroll, ecommerce, CRM, point of sale, document and workflow management. Saasu’s strong online accounting API enables connection to hundreds of web applications, software products, payment services and banks. For more information visit the Saasu website at www.saasu.com

ABOUT ACCLIPSE

Acclipse is a leading provider of solutions to thousands of accounting firms in New Zealand and Australia, with expansion into the United Kingdom and India currently underway. Acclipse provides the tools and support to empower the business success of accounting firms. The Acclipse product range for accountants includes full workflow driven practice management, web management, document and email management as well as value-add client accounting (cashflow budgeting and benchmarking). For more information visit the Acclipse website at www.acclipse.com.au

Saasu has been working closely with OneSaaS to develop an integration between Saasu’s online accounting application and Trade Me’s shopping website. Removing the burden of data entry into accounting systems will transform the way Trade Me sellers do business.

The integration between Saasu and Trade Me automatically transfers transactions and buyer information into Saasu online accounting. This is very useful for businesses operating Trade Me stores and accounts. It effectively removes the data entry burden that used to exist where transactions needed to be data entered into an accounting system. Order flow and accounting is now becoming automatic.

Marc Lehmann, chief executive of Australian-based Saasu, said “the connector between Saasu and Trade Me is very liberting. It removes the shackles businesses have suffered for too long. Keying data manually into older style accounting systems has to end. Even bank feeds are insufficient for this type of business which demands real-time, inventory based transactional information  to process orders.”

OneSaaS, the developer, was very effective in developing a connector quickly after Trade Me’s formal commercial release of it’s API last week. It highlights the capacity of data brokers like OneSaaS to really connect business sales, marketing and transactional data to accounting systems like Saasu.

Corneliu Tusnea, chief executive of OneSaaS, said “The integration is a clear example of how a platform like OneSaaS can quickly add new integrations between data sets, in this case in a manner of days. We wanted to be first to market with a serious application connected to Trade Me. Acclipse and Saasu provided one of the biggest Trade Me stores as a data test to help make this process even easier. It allows us to see how the technology scales.”

The Trade Me connector extends the number of applications supported by OneSaaS to ten. Saasu being a founding application and equity investor in OneSaaS is joined with other applications such as Google Contacts, Basecamp, Marketo, Campaign Monitor, eBay, Adobe Business Catalyst and more.

Saasu’s connections are continuing even outside of the OneSaaS platform. Acclipse, a leading provider of solutions to thousands of accounting firms in New Zealand and Australia, is being connected to Saasu. Acclipse has popular online products such as Acclipse Web Manager and Acclipse iFirm for taxation. Mike Chisholm, CEO of Acclipse, and Marc Lehmann announced a partnership recently to create an Accounting Cloud Heaven. Both are believers in the “Automagical” way of getting data moving easily between systems for Accountants and their clients.

More details about the Trade Me Connector will be presented in the Saasu + Acclipse “Accounting Cloud Heaven” roadshow in October (dates below).

For more information contact:

Marc Lehmann, Saasu CEO
+61 2 9126 9600 | marc@saasu.com | Saasu.com

Corneliu Tusnea, OneSaas CEO
+61 410 835 593 | corneliu@onesaas.com | OneSaas.com

Mike Chisholm, Acclipse CEO
+64 29 245 7091 | mike.chisholm@acclipse.com.au | Acclipse.co.nz

ABOUT SAASU

Saasu is an online accounting software company with over 10,000 customers from around the world. With millions of transactions each year worth billions of dollars Saasu is a market leader in the Software as a Service accounting industry in the Asia Pacific area. Saasu is a comprehensive online accounting software system for managing business financials. Saasu has capabilities in sales, purchasing, inventory, payroll, ecommerce, CRM, point of sale, document and workflow management. Saasu’s strong online accounting API enables connection to hundreds of web applications, software products, payment services and banks. For more information visit the Saasu website at www.saasu.com

ABOUT ONESAAS

OneSaas is a cloud-based data synchronization, migration, data-merging and data de-duplication platform connected to some of the most popular Software-as-a-Service platforms. OneSaas allows you to maintain a unified set of information distributed across multiple SaaS platforms seamlessly synchronized. For more information visit the OneSaaS website at www.onesaas.com

ABOUT ACCLIPSE

Acclipse is a leading provider of solutions to thousands of accounting firms in New Zealand and Australia, with expansion into the United Kingdom and India currently underway. Acclipse provides the tools and support to empower the business success of accounting firms. The Acclipse product range for accountants includes full workflow driven practice management, web management, document and email management as well as value-add client accounting (cashflow budgeting and benchmarking). For more information visit the Acclipse website at www.acclipse.com.au

SAASU + ACCLIPSE NEW ZEALAND ROADSHOW DATES

Auckland 18 October 2010
Wellington 19 October 2010
Christchurch 20 October 2010

New partnership offers ‘twice the features for half the price’

A new trans-Tasman partnership promises to shake up the online accounting market.

Saasu, the online accounting software leader in the Asia Pacific area, is joining forces with Acclipse, a leading Australasian accounting practice supplier. Under the deal, the companies will launch a jointly-developed accounting partner programme which will bring accountants and businesses together at a competitive price.

Marc Lehmann, chief executive of Australian-based Saasu, says the programme will allow accountants to offer real-time advice to their clients. “Australasian businesses will get an irresistible deal on their online accounting system, a comprehensive system that includes fully integrated inventory and payroll functionality. There’s even a fully integrated point of sale module available as well”

Acclipse chief executive Mike Chisholm says the partnership is great news on both sides of the Tasman. “Price plans cost about half that of one of our major competitors – and you’re getting a fully mature, feature-rich product from a company that has been in the online accounting business for over ten years, a big contrast to the online offerings from MYOB and Xero” Chisholm says. “This means accountants and their clients are getting twice the features for half the price.”

Saasu’s simple to use and speedy online accounting system will be integrated into two of the New Zealand-based company’s popular products: Acclipse Web Manager and Acclipse iFirm, the online practice management system designed specifically for Australasian accounting firms.

Development has started on a single Saasu login within Acclipse Web Manager – which means businesses can login to their accountant’s website to access both their Saasu accounting system and any confidential documents and files their accountant wants to share with them in a safe and secure manner. Development is also underway to integrate Saasu with the Acclipse iFirm suite, including a ledger for accountants to provide year end accounts.

The partnership is not your average joint venture – Lehmann is joining the Acclipse board, while Chisholm is joining the Saasu board. “For me this is about the pursuit of a dream,” Chisholm says. “I’ve always wanted to build the ultimate solution for an accounting firm that truly connects the firm with their SME client – and with Saasu I believe we can achieve it. I personally consider Saasu to be Australia’s best-kept secret.”

Full details of the partnership will be revealed at roadshows in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane in September and New Zealand’s main centres in October.

For more information contact:

Mike Chisholm, Acclipse CEO
+64 29 245 7091 | mike.chisholm@acclipse.com.au

Marc Lehmann, Saasu CEO
+61 2 9126 9600 | marc@saasu.com

ABOUT ACCLIPSE

Acclipse is a leading provider of solutions to thousands of accounting firms in New Zealand and Australia, with expansion into the United Kingdom and India currently underway. Acclipse provides the tools and support to empower the business success of accounting firms. The Acclipse product range for accountants includes full workflow driven practice management, web management, document and email management as well as value-add client accounting (cashflow budgeting and benchmarking). For more information visit the Acclipse website at www.acclipse.com.au

ABOUT SAASU

Saasu is an online accounting software company with over 10,000 customers from around the world. With millions of transactions each year worth billions of dollars Saasu is a market leader in the Software as a Service accounting industry in the Asia Pacific area. Saasu is a comprehensive online accounting software system for managing business financials. Saasu has capabilities in sales, purchasing, inventory, payroll, ecommerce, CRM, point of sale, document and workflow management. Saasu’s strong online accounting API enables connection to hundreds of web applications, software products, payment services and banks. For more information visit the Saasu website at www.saasu.com

ROADSHOW DATES

Brisbane 15 September 2010
Sydney 16 September 2010
Melbourne 17 September 2010

Quote voucher code SAAS-WEB3 if you want an extra 10% of the 31 March early bird deadline price.

The Webciety pavilion focuses on web-based society. It features SaaS web applications like Saasu, mobile web, wikis, web communities, blogs, microblogs and other interactive Internet services which are making our lives increasingly digital and ever easier.

Webciety is a major success born out of CeBIT in Germany. All the Webciety participants are speaking at some point over the 3 days at the Webciety Pavilion. See the webciety speaking program for details. I’m speaking at 11:00am on Thursday the 14th on the topic of:

What will Web3.0 look like?
Web3.0 is in early stages, but the picture isn’t clear. Web3.0 is bigger than the sum of it’s parts and accordingly we have trouble seeing what it is.

We have launched a new Saasu Product Blog in order to help our customers and followers get the specific content they want from Saasu. You can find the Product Blog at productblog.saasu.com (subscribe). Our soapbox opinion and ideas around business, technology and simplification in life will still be found in our Simplify Life Blog at saasu.com/blog (subscribe).

The Saasu Product Blog Will Contain

1. New features and upgrades
2. Voucher Codes for Saasu and Partner products
3. How to’s
4. Connector previews
5. Case studies
6. Using Saasu in the web ecosystem

Why not just have one blog?

Blogs and their content are becoming targeted so consumers of content can choose exactly what streams of information they want to receive. It’s a time poor world we live in. If you want all the Saasu content then just subscribe to both using your Blog/RSS Reader of choice. (What is RSS? | Don’t have a reader?)

Saasu was one of the Top 10 Web 2.0 businesses mentioned in Smart Company magazine and website.

It’s always always nice to get a mention but when it’s along side some great companies we look up to like Atlassian and RedBubble it feels great.

The article points out Saasu’s strong growth in new business from offshore. Australia is where we began but as we internationalise to support more zones this is changing very quickly to be an global software as a service business in online accounting software systems.

Back in 2000 we drew up some plans to make an accounting system a bit like a Monopoly board. The idea being that as your business assets grew you would see an image of you factory grow. Your sales pipeline would expand into a bigger pipe as revenue grew. We wanted to bring some fun to accounting which can otherwise be a tad boring.

Due to the conservative nature of accountants (a good thing, they are just trying to protect their customers in many cases) we decided to hold off on that approach. Another reason was the difficulty in dealing with animation in web interfaces back then while meeting targets on load time for screens. We were also trying to avoid pagination. Pagination is where you show 1-50 of 7,000 transactions as an example and then provide buttons or links to show transactions 51-100 etc. Pagination can be really annoying for customers as we discovered during our user experience surveys.

In 2004 we started using AJAX (it didn’t actually have a name back then) which gave us the speed and flexibility to create a more designed interface and a better perceived speed experience for customers. We still use AJAX extensively in Payroll where editable data sets are smaller but you won’t see it as much in screens that have large editable data sets because it begins to become cost rather than a benefit in load times. The customer experience might be nice but if the screen load is slow the customer will just want to throw the computer out the window.

AJAX still has issues in this area but they are slowly being worked around. New browser like Google Chrome will allow AJAX to be used right across data heavy applications as it is a very efficient in dealing with JavaScript (the J in AJAX).

Being a fan of WordPress for blogging I really like their spam removal experience. When you click delete it turns red (like slaying the spam dragon) and then slides away off the screen. The destroy feeling is quite good. Gamers amongst you would like it. We implemented this idea back in 2005 into our Payroll and Invoicing modules (without the blood effect).

We are started to work on some UI design changes to give customers a bit more fun in the screens but as always the accessibility will be the controlling factor given our mantra of ensuring the keyboarders aren’t compromised in anyway.

If any of you have suggestions or examples of animation for deletion, creation, edit etc. just post a comment as we will be working up our changes to reports and transaction searching/listing over the next few weeks.

Photo credit: Cowbite

A big thanks to all the customers and partners who have helped us build an even better application over the last year. Your subscription dollars are hard at work in Saasu Labs.

What CeBIT had to say

The Software as a Service business model swept major categories in the prestigious CeBIT.AU Business Awards 2008, taking the most contested categories and marking SaaS as the hot technology currently in the sector. Saasu.com was nominated for three awards and won the CeBIT.AU Business Advantage Award – arguably the most prestigious of the event – with its Saasu.com accounting package. Saasu.com was also a winner in 2007, with its integrated Net-based financial system that has seen enormous growth since the company exhibited at CeBIT Australia last year. Full CeBIT press release.

More SaaS ecosystem winners

Our friends over at eWay took the CeBIT.AU Excellence in Technology Services Award. eWay is a payments gateway provider. Congrats to Matt Bullock and his team. The eWAY payment gateway service provides secure Online payments and Mail Order processing of credit cards in real time via the Internet.

IPscape won the CeBIT.AU Excellence in Communications Award. IPscape has a Software as a Service product for contact centres. Congratulations to Simon Burke and his team. IPscape provide a SaaS product for contact centres typically less than 100 seats. Like Saasu they take care of upgrades, hardware and maintenance. Services that simplify the way contact centre technology is priced, delivered, and supported.