Tags are another recent innovation from the Saasu labs team. Tags are simply one or more words that mean something to you. The shorter the better we find.

Tags are a uniquely Internet centric way of labelling and filing information in multiple ways and multiple places. Tags have been around for many years on sites such as digg and del.icio.us but we think we are the first to bring them to financial management.

Tags can be found in the tag cloud, just one click will mark something (e.g. a customer) with the tag. You can also just type the tag in, if the system doesn’t know about that tag yet it will add it for you automatically and start tracking usage for you. The tag cloud appears on most add/edit screens plus of course on lists as a filter option.

Tags may be applied to any information, such as -

• contacts (e.g. customer, supplier, prospect, partner)
• activities (e.g. Project X, unassigned, critical path,
• transactions (e.g. urgent, delayed, Project X, Portfolio Q)
• employees (e.g. Project X, Skill Y, Location C)
• inventory items (e.g. Hot Seller, Warehouse A)
• investment items (e.g. Defensive, Review Due, Location C)

The power of tags lies in a the way they can be combined in infinite ways, e.g. how much did we spend on urgent expenses for project x last month? Include this tag, exclude those tags. You can start to see how powerful they are.

Key Benefits are -

• Tags can go on anything (for now we have enabled ten of our most popular add/edit screens, more to come)
• You can track how many things have that tag on them (in the tag list on the bottom of the main menu)
• Tags are super flexible, they can be combined in an unlimited number of ways
• Tags cross over everything, e.g. for a project you can tag Customers, Suppliers, Resources (Staff), Activities, expenses, income and more)

Here are some guidelines on the ways we think you should use tags -

• Keep them short, one or two words are best. Too many tags means the tag cloud can clutter up your screen (it automatically adjusts to prevent this but hey then you have to go digging in ‘more tags’)
• Use them for the important stuff, the 20% of projects that make the most difference to you, too many tags means more clutter and you are not focussing on the big picture
• Just because they are easy to add doesn’t mean you should, focus on the big initiatives that are important to you
• Ask yourself, are tags the best way to track this? In some cases they are good for problems that don’t have more structured procedures or solutions yet. For example tags work well for job tracking but is that the best way for your business in the long term? What will your data look like after you have months of jobs in there? Perhaps just track open work?
• Use tags for living data, i.e. stuff that is ‘in play’ and active such as orders due to ship or projects/jobs currently being worked on. You can also use tags for lots of other things such as traditional reporting but that is not their main benefit.
• Stay ahead of tag use in your team, agreed tag naming standards and stick to them, if you have a meeting agreeing to start a new project, setup the tag immediately and flag it as ‘popular’ so it always appears on the tag cloud that ensures it gets used, similarly if you decide to phase something out make it ‘inactive’ so it no longer appears in the tag cloud for Saasu users in your team.

Tags are available in our new release due soon, so try the preview or read more about tags.

We recently received a very kind note from a long term client. It shows just how we are helping people build great businesses and simplify life.

In 35 years of Accounting I have never come across a programme that is so simple yet comprehensive… I started with one client using Saasu.com Netaccounts and now have 25 clients having their paper work prepared every month… I have also put into place a system which will be starting this month with the potential to do many hundreds more clients. I have no hesitation in recommending Saasu.com Netaccounts and it is the ONLY programme that I use for book keeping.

Owner, Regional Bookkeeping Business
Mar 08

You can understand why we were so pleased. The full letter is below with explanatory notes for our international customers our comments are in [brackets].

18 Mar 2008

Dear Marc,

I am taking this opportunity to do a testimonial for your company and your staff and I apologise for the delay but I have been so busy with all the new business that I have been getting.

Firstly let me say that in 35 years of Accounting I have never come across a programme that is so simple yet comprehensive as Saasu Netaccounts.

I have been practising as an Accountant for over 30 years and have completed in excess of 50,000 returns from Individual to Company returns in that time.

Several years ago I decided to concentrate on Book Keeping work as I had more and more clients present who were in a mess and many who could have failed in their business because of outstanding Tax Returns.

I accidentally found your programme on the net whilst searching for a pure book keeping system as opposed to the “one fits all businesses” as most businesses tended to buy.

I found many businesses with a computer being used by their teenager with the accounting package still in its shrink wrap package up to 4 years after being purchased.

One business had never lodged a BAS [Australian sales tax return is called a Business Activity Statement] and only contacted me on recommendation from a friend after the ATO [Australian Tax Office] issued a “lodge or else” type notice with very little time to comply.

Saasu.com Netaccounts enables me to get the shoebox or semi-trailer of papers and enter them into a situation where the BAS can be prepared accurately and the figures then given to the Accountant for the other Accounting work including the BAS to be completed.

I started with one client using Saasu.com Netaccounts and now have 25 clients having their paper work prepared every month.

I have also put into place a system which will be starting this month with the potential to do many hundreds more clients.

This would have been impossible using any other system.

The support staff and Marc Lehmann in particular have always been available to help and have also been prepared to change things in the system if suggested and worthwhile.

I have some clients who just require the basic book keeping to get information to their accountant for Tax Returns through to those that need information for Payroll preparation and other reports for their financiers and banks.

Some of my clients are very basic skilled on computers but the ease of access makes record keeping simple for them and access to reports also very easy.

I have clients in Wollongong, Sydney and Newcastle and have no trouble communicating with them how to retrieve reports or information.

I very rarely have to see my clients face to face which means much less travelling and no lost work time for them.

I have no hesitation in recommending Saasu.com Netaccounts and it is the ONLY programme that I use for book keeping.

Yours sincerely

Tony Cunningham,
Nationwide Bookkeeping

Here is a way you can Catch all those great ideas you have for your business. Saasu helps you apply a system to them, making sure the right ones get used in your business. It’s all too easy to inadvertently add complexity to your business.

Saasu Activities - An IDEAS Framework

In the new release of Saasu (see preview) we have Activities. Activities are all kinds of things; Meetings, Notes, Milestones etc. One Activity types is an Idea. We included this feature for our own use and because we felt other business probably have the same problems as we have in dealing with lots of ideas for improvement, change, new markets and the like.

This feature can help your organisation capture ideas from your employees and advisors who have access to your file. Once your management structure has reviewed the Idea convert it into another Activity type called a Procedure. Your could print or publish your procedures and you have your procedures manual. You can build up your set of business procedures organically over time rather than dedicating fixed resources. Create rigour in your business execution, create some control in the change process. Simply being a little more systematic and could save complexity being added to your business through Ideas which aren’t approved or tested before being actioned.

An Idea in Saasu could be a single sentence or an entire proposal. The key is that you all have access to it in a controlled environment. Someone owns the idea in Saasu and it can be added to todo lists. have date deadlines applied and more.

Saasu IDEAS framework

There are many ways you could use the tool we are providing but here’s one example where we have created.

An idea has a life-cycle just like sales, business models, markets and products -

1. IDEA - it starts as just that ‘an idea’, your thinking around opportunities, efficient process, intellectual property and the like.
2. DOCUMENT - get the idea down. A brief version or the detail as a brief, white papers, business plan or whatever you feel is appropriate for your documentation phase.
3. EVALUATE - all ideas need scrutiny, if you never put them up for scrutiny they don’t exist (except in your head). Allocate your Idea to a new Owner who will make the call or review it for discussion.
4. APPLY - all ideas that pass the tests of evaluation need to be applied to real life situations that they were thought up for. Convert the Activity type from an Idea to a Procedure in Saasu
5. SYSTEMATIC - Ideas can be re-worked moving back and fourth through the cycle.

The evaluation step is key. Ensure the right person is controlling what passes, what goes back on the shelf and what’s removed. This person should have a keep it simple mentality. They should be wise and knowledgeable enough to evaluate the ramifications and the advantages of applying ideas to the business. It could be a committee, a board of directors or a CEO. You will need to work this out for your specific industry and organisational structure.

Engineer your business better by going back and documenting existing processes and put them through Saasu IDEA. Removing any deadwood you find and improving existing ideas to create efficiency and advantages.

In summary, start filtering your ideas with the rigour of a framework and ensure the right ideas are added to your business.

The reality of small business is that despite lots of automation, importing and connecting tools there will be times you need to enter transactions. The world is progressing to the point where a company can share invoice and other information which Peter our CEO recently wrote about. However, there remain companies who use older style accounting software that simply aren’t connected to the Internet.

The Internet is a pre-requisite to extinguishing data entry intelligently.

When designing Saasu we consider keyboard lovers

Keyboard lovers are those people who like to leave the mouse untouched (as much as possible). Those who pride themselves playing the Internet piano with mastery. And of course, short-cut junkies. I have seen many bookkeepers and accountants do their keyboard work and to see those dexterous fingers write up an invoice with speed and mouse independence is very cool.

Enabling enter and spacebar keys to add invoice line items

When you tab across a line in an invoice to the plus icon you can now use the spacebar or enter key to create a new line item. You should never need your mouse to enter an Invoice if you don’t want to.

It might seem like a small change and it is certainly not rocket science but it adds a lot of usability. Mouse independence is often dramatically undervalued in designing online business productivity systems. Overly slick Web2.0 design often denies people the ability to do things in fast, practical and simple way.

Imagine you process 100 sales per month along with corresponding payments and customer data and that you waste 1 second going to and from keyboard and mouse each time two or three times per item. Delaying your customers who may be waiting is not great. Adding to the overall pressure of delivering customer service excellence is worse. Wasting (100×3x3×2=30) up to 30 minutes on something trivial like that is just not on.

This is in our new release along with nearly 200 other improvements.

Typing is faster than mousing. However, data creation via automation and direct connection trumps them both.

Clone, Connect, Automate - saving time and reducing errors is just the beginning.

One the of great things about SaaS is the ability to opt-in permanently (or on a transaction by transaction) basis to information from a counter-party such as supplier, customer, employee or other legal entity you ‘trade’ with in a broader sense.

We call this automated exchange of information ‘Transaction Cross-Docking’ or TCD, just like the traditional cross-docking of pallets of physical materials in warehouses (more…)

See Video on YouTube.com

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.

(more…)

Here’s a purchase we no longer need to enter in our business. We just tick it off during reconciliation each month. You can see how it’s entered and automated from the screen shot. So let’s keep this post short and simple, Saasu style!

I spoke at the NSW.net ICT cluster last week to a bunch of potential and current Microsoft Partners (we work on all operating systems for your information). I gave our 5 minute pitch and as usual during Q&A there were lots of questions (SaaS is a hot topic at the moment). We always get a security question and my answer is always the same, it’s a bunch of questions that effectively return the challenge. I only asked a couple of these but I’ve listed some others I often ask as well. (more…)

Bulk ‘Big Company’ Salary Handling For The Rest Of Us

This blog entry has been two years in preparation, we think we have solved a major issue for most businesses in a very elegant way.

Interested? You should be - we decided to make a system that normally costs tens of thousands of dollars free for all our clients, at least for now.

Paying salaries and time based reward-for-effort in any size business is a time consuming task.

We have this need here at Saasu.com for our own team and pretty much all of our clients face the same issues - it is a long wish list but if you are a business owner I am sure most of the items on it will resonate with you.

We think the most important point is doing all of the things on the list while keeping it simplified for the average business to setup and use in minutes so it pays for itself today not next year in reduced time, hassles, training costs, errors and in so many other ways including a happy team that gets paid correctly and on time.

That is the hardest thing to do, the reason we are blogging about it is we have just released Saasu Advanced Payroll.

Top 12 Payroll Tips - Making The Right Decision

These are our tips - consider them a check list when deciding on your next system -they represent what a good scalable but simplified payroll service must cover at a minimum.

1. Standard Payments Should Take No Extra Time - Setting up standard payments each week, fortnight or month, additional staff one an existing scheme or in an existing group should add no extra time to the regular pay run.
2. One Off Exception Payments Should Be Easy - Handling all those exceptions from the standard pays with minimal fuss for just the next pay but not other pays
3. Entitlement Tracking Should Be Automatic - Tracking and accumulating holiday leave entitlements and other entitlements depending on where/when/how they are working
4. Time Based Pay - Tracking time and paying employees based on time worked as well as invoicing based on time
5. Groups (Also Called Batches or Runs) - Minimising effort for similar categories of employees by grouping them together for processing by type or location or grade or something else
6. Payslips & Tax - Distributing payslips or salary confirmation sheets to individual employees who are often geographically dispersed - email is best for payslips. At end of year the production of taxation certificates (also called group certificates in many countries) is also essential
7. Banking - Getting the instructions to the bank with the right employee account details (often at other banks) - an automated bulk transaction file is best.
8. Approvals & Controls - Making sure it all happens without errors - so you need some sort of draft approval process
9. Fast - Making sure it all happens in a timely way so the money hits employee accounts when they need or expect it - must be highly automated
10. Zones - Handling the vast variety of different conditions and calculations around the world in different jurisdictions (we call them zones) - must be configurable (we are just supporting Australia for now but other countries will be rolled out progressively based on demand).
11. Integrated - No duplicate information - it must share records with existing HR or employee tracking systems and timesheets and expense handling systems.
12. Self Service - Your team must be learn the system themselves without paying for training and be able to enter their own time or see their own payslips - online via the web when ever they want

We didn’t add ‘Make sure it is software-as-a-service not old-style-on-premise-software’ because it goes without saying

The Best Bit

• Get It Now - You can have efficient payroll in your business in just minutes with Saasu Advanced Payroll
• Free - We are providing this service free to existing business subscribers and new clients who join before Christmas on our standard business plan - just tell us and we will turn it on for your business.
• Already Proven - we have already processed thousand of salaries this way (paying tens of millions of dollars) and it has been a very smooth experience.
• It Is Unique - There are a few other services like this out there but we believe there are no others at this price point and none as simple to use.

Update From Service Team - After One Week Of Free Offer…

Advanced Payroll Is A VERY Popular New Feature, we have had a rush from clients looking for access and using it in their business. Thanks. It is nice to know people like our stuff!

Just to repeat -as a reward for existing business clients (and new business clients who join before Xmas) we are offering this new module free.

The offer of free access will run until at least March 2008, thereafter advanced payroll will be part of a higher subscription plan (probably called business plus although we are still deciding plans and their names).

Pricing has not been determined but we expect the difference won’t be very large at all, it will depend amongst other things on the service/support costs we incur for an average client using the new module.

This price setting is part of a complete plan review to introduce lower plans with reduced price and functionality for entry level and higher plans for corporates - all of which is part our ongoing efforts to deliver great value software as a service to simplify your business life.

By using plans we can stage complexity (and hence simplify use for you) according to the scale of your business.

Payroll entries made via standard payroll and advanced payroll will be accessible for all payroll users (business or business plus if you will). So if you decide not to use advanced payroll later that is fine, you can still see all payroll the in the same consistent way, you just can not process them in bulk.

And of course we always ensure you are protected with the saasu.com satisfaction guarantee.

The team in Saasu Labs are working their tails off. The move to international is going nicely, check out the geo beta coverage we are getting from just a partial list of participants looking at just one server with the new stuff - 111 cities from 30 countries - wow !!!

Imagine what will happen when we formally launch and actual start serious marketing… We are trying to focus on features though and getting synergies between new and existing so the current clients get the new features first (as a reward I suppose).

We also cut the initial Saasu Zones list today. Saasu Zones are the new flexible equivalent of legal jurisdiction and/or country and/or state and/or domicile and/or residency and/or a couple of other things in old style software.

The aim obviously is to enable flexibility because we can configure a new zone with components from other zones so the more features we enable for more countries the faster we can do the next country. All that high end corporate and private banking experience in the team is starting to payoff and our clients will benefit.