Garage

3 New Features: Invoice Scheduler + Email History + Bounce Notifications

Stefan Chachovski — Sun, 19 May 2013 11:09:58 +0000

Create more invoices in one day and Invoicebus will automatically send them thorough the month for you.

Invoice Scheduler – Send Your Invoices Later

We thought it would be great if you could create more invoices in one day and automatically send them later on a predefined date in future. This way you’ll save tons of time because you won’t need to login every time when your invoices should be sent out + you can make sure the client always gets your invoice at the right date.

The scheduled emails are sent out during morning hours 7 a.m – 11 a.m (your local time), when the chances your message to be seen are highest. Upon sending, we send you appropriate notification. You can cancel or preview each scheduled email from the Invoice Activity History.

All scheduled emails are marked with a small clock icon in the dashboard, so you can easily find/sort them.

This option is available for Quotes as well.

Email History – Preview Sent Messages

We know how frustrating can be when you can’t find an email you’ve sent, so we implemented an option for you to preview all sent messages directly from the Invoice Activity History. Of course, this way you can preview all sent reminders and thanks notes + all emails that are scheduled for sending.

Bounce Notifications

Even though Invoicebus guarantees 100% deliverability of your emails (all emails are anti-spam signed and verified) , many times errors occur during email delivery due to various reasons beyond our control such as typos in the email address, remote provider firewalls, remote server outages etc.
That’s why we implemented Bounce Notifications – notifications that are sent to you when some of your emails are not properly delivered to the final recipient. Bounce occurs when Invoicebus detects that your email cannot be delivered after couple of attempts. Then we send you a bounce notification email (similar to those which Gmail sends when your message is not delivered) and put a record in the Invoice Activity History with all details about the problem and possible solution.

I hope you’ll find these features useful. Thanks for using Invoicebus.

Questions or Suggestions?
Feel free to drop some in the comments below, would really love to hear from you.

Author information

Stefan Chachovski

Stefan is passionate about details, enthusiastic about coding and flexible about music. He occasionally writes on this blog about Invoicebus stuff as well as experiences related to web apps & online business. Say hello to him at Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.

User Engagement, You’re Doing It Wrong

Dimitar Stojanov — Mon, 13 May 2013 09:49:32 +0000

In running an online business building bridges with your users is a great thing, but you have to make sure it’s a two way bridge, otherwise it’s pointless.

Before we moved to our new payment processor 2Checkout we researched which payment processor could provide us the value we’re looking for. After some googling we found a tons of companies, some well-known and others minor players in that market. Although we already chose 2Checkout because it offered the best deal for us at the time, we stumbled upon one very interesting service, so I decided to give it a try and signed up.

They’re young startup, and I liked this service form the beginning, everything was so simple and user friendly, but unfortunately it was available only for US and Canadian based businesses, and because we’re located in Europe it was out of our reach.

Everything went fine, great first impressions, and after couple of days I started receiving emails from the founder asking me why I haven’t activated my account, and offering his help if I needed something related with my account. Although I knew this is an automated message I respected their time and dedication, so I replied with an explanation of the whole international thing, and asked him some other questions I was interested in. I know how founders busy can be (I’m founder myself) so I didn’t expect immediate reply.

But something unexpected happen, there was no reply on that email, instead I received email “disconnected” from the first one, again with instructions how I can start with collecting payments in just 60 seconds. I knew this was another automated message, and I wasn’t so surprised, as this message automation is known tactic for user engagement and communication. So I said to myself “OK, not a big deal, probably he didn’t saw my first reply”, and I practically copy-pasted my previous reply. What was encouraging in this message was the statement that his email address is for real and I should “feel free to respond to this email”, and he would “love to hear from me”. Finally I bravely hit the send button.

And… his reply was …(cricket sound)… you can guess it, nothing. But don’t worry their automated emails had no problem finding my inbox. So again in the third email he offered his help, and again stated that this message was send from real email address to which I can respond to. Yeah right, I’m not going to bite this time. My reply this time was somewhat harsh stating my two previous emails and the bad communication policy they’re doing. I don’t know why I bothered sending the last email, knowing from experience that it’s probably a waste of time. And “surprisingly” it was a waste of time, but I received fourth and last automated email from him, asking me for feedback, in which I briefly stated that they don’t accept international merchants. With that, all their unsuccessful user engagement finished.

I don’t want to sound too critical and I’m not going to tell people how they should run their business and what’s best for their business, but some of them should really start to care for their users even the one using their system for free. Let me tell you this, because of our one-on-one live support which you get only with our invoicing service Invoicebus we managed to fix critical bugs, and added super features, all in all we brought Invoicebus at a greater level.

If you’re planning to engage your users with email messages, and offering help or even leave your phone number (I’ve noticed some CEOs do this) you should expect some of your users, to actually reply or even call your phone in case you provided one. So if you’re on the other side running a business, my suggestion for you is to reply on the emails and take the calls. You’ll be surprised how well people will react if you assure them there is another human being behind all that pixels on the screen. I can’t emphasize enough how important this is in the world of the online services.

Photocredit: Salim Virji

Author information

Dimitar Stojanov

Dimitar is co-creator of Invoicebus, an online invoicing tool for easy invoice management. He has passion for creating beautiful and simple web applications and occasionally writes on this blog about designing and developing tips, online business, and fighting the status quo. Follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his Facebook.

365-Day Double-Money-Back Guarantee

Stefan Chachovski — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 15:11:04 +0000

If we ever disappoint you – get double your money back. No catches. Seriously.

We believe in Invoicebus so passionately that we’ve decided to take all the risk onto our backs and make sure you take none. We’re super excited to introduce the iron-clad, 365-day double-your-money-back guarantee with no catches.

If at any time in the first 365 days you feel that we did not live up to our promises and you choose to leave us, we’ll pay you back DOUBLE what you’ve paid us up to the point when you cancel – no questions asked!

We’ve never offered this kind of ridiculous guarantee before, and we wouldn’t offer this if we weren’t 100% confident in our product.

How the Guarantee works:

You signup with us, kick the tires and pick one of our paying plans.
You decide Invoicebus is not for you.
You cancel your account with us within the first 365 days.
You claim your Double Money Back Guarantee.

The updated refund policy takes effect immediately.

Monthly, Annual and Biennial Subscription

Beside the money-back guarantee, we decided to give you the opportunity to subscribe for longer period on any plan and get reasonable discount in return.

Monthly Subscription – Regular Prices (billed every month)
Annual Subscription – 16% OFF on All Plans (billed every year)
Biennial Subscription – 30% OFF on All Plans (billed every 2 years)

Author information

Stefan Chachovski

2Checkout.com – New Payment Processor

Stefan Chachovski — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 18:27:18 +0000

In the past 14 months we were using Skrill as official payment processor, but it turned out to be real pain in the neck, so finally we’re saying goodbye.

From now on, all new paying subscriptions for Invoicebus will be processed by 2Checkout.com, Inc (Ohio, USA), which is authorized retailer for thousands of tangible or digital products and services worldwide.

How it works?
When you’re purchasing plan at Invoicebus website, you will be taken to the secure site of 2Checkout.com and brought back to Invoicebus upon completion of your order.

What are the benefits?

Super convenient – no need of creating account at their site (like Skril requires) in order to purchase Invoicebus plan
You can pay super-fast with
- - Any major credit card – Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover, Diners, JCB, and debit cards with the Visa and MasterCard logo
- - PayPal
You can easily access and update your billing details at https://www.2co.com/
You will receive clean and short receipts by email each month.

The existing paying customers will not be affected by this change. However, during the next 90 days, they will be asked to update their payment method voluntarily.

Author information

Stefan Chachovski

The Mechanics have just got a New Office

Stefan Chachovski — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 16:58:36 +0000

One year after we’d brought Invoicebus to the world, we made the much needed change and moved to a new location

Some of you may remember our previous office located in Skopje, and although we loved that place so much, it always felt like it was improvised place to work at. So, few weeks ago we finally got the office we always loved in the magnificent town of Bitola.

Yep, a real shiny office, not that boring corporate gray cubicle, but a place fulfilled with warmth and happiness, a real stress-free environment where creativity can flourish. We even hanged our happy bus mascot on the wall to remind us every day why we do what we do.

Here’re a few photos that Alek, the sickest photographer on the face of the earth, captured through its Nikon lens.

We really had a lot of fun and laughter during this photo-session. Here’re few more crazy shots of the day along with some behind the scenes material

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Stefan Chachovski

More Awesomeness – 5 New Features

Stefan Chachovski — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 12:29:48 +0000

Responsive Email Windows, Email Templates, Custom Placeholders, Email Preview and Multiple Recipients. Whew!

1. Responsive Email Windows

The old email windows were nice, but they felt a bit narrow when you were writing longer messages, so we decided to redesign them. Now when you open a window to send email, the whole area is bigger and cleaner with more space for writing and nothing squeezed-in.

The most awesome thing is their resizable and responsive nature. For example, you can change the size of the window to any dimension and all underlying elements will adjust accordingly. Also, at the top right corner there’s a little “Maximize” button that puts the window in full screen and lets you focus only on your writing. The white space is plenty enough so you can read easier with more enjoyment.

BONUS
We redesigned the window for entering payments as well. Now, it looks more appealing with beautifully organized data. Here it is.

2. Email Templates

Previously, you had the option to save default messages for your invoices, quotes, reminders and thanks notes, but the option to save the subject lines was missing. Now, we’re introducing the amazing Template feature that allows you to create complete templates including the subject, the message and the attachment.

There’re 4 different templates you can create, one for each email type:

Invoice
Quote
Reminder
Thanks Note

To edit the template, click the “Edit Default Template” link from the bottom left corner of the respective window.

Please note that from now on, the info that was auto added to your emails (see image below), can be customized from the Template.

3. Custom Placeholders

Placeholders are used when you create default template, such as email template, where Invoicebus should replace the variables with actual data from the document. You can also use them when you send non-template (unique) messages and need to include invoice data within the message context.

There’re many different placeholders you can choose from: client name, document number, total price, due date, outstanding balance etc. To insert a placeholder, just type “{“ (Left Curly Bracket) and the list with available placeholders will show. Ta-da! You don’t even need to scroll the whole list – we implemented search-as-you-type. Yay laziness.

4. Email Preview

We thought it would be awesome if you could preview the emails before sending, so we created the amazing real-time preview. You can even use it in the middle of your writing, preview the message and continue writing again, without losing a bit of your focus. To toggle the preview, just hit the “Show/Hide Preview” link and the panel will slide in/out (see image below).

5. Multiple Recipients

Also, we re-considered the option for sending document to multiple recipients. Now you can specify up to 5 comma separated recipients and send the document to all of them at once, just like you do with conventional emails. For example, into the “To” field you enter: fred@flintstone.bed, barney@rubble.bed, dino@dinostore.bed (see previous images).

We hope these features will improve your invoicing experience and make it more pleasant and enjoyable. And if you think there’s something else we are missing, don’t hesitate to give us a shout – we’re all ears!

Thank you so much for using Invoicebus.

Author information

Stefan Chachovski

Invoicebus Fun Facts

Dimitar Stojanov — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 14:19:18 +0000

After the great birthday celebration and catching a little breath, I want to share with you some interesting facts collected during our startup journey

I’m going to reveal some extraordinary numbers and facts for which even we weren’t aware of until we started preparing this post. Sounds crazy I know, but it’s true

Time Spent

We haven’t tracked our working hours, but our estimation says more than 5.700 hours so far, or approximately:

2.100 hours – design (Interface & UX, Mock-ups, Graphics)
1.500 hours – development
1.100 hours – copywriting
1.000 hours – testing

Longest & Shortest Times

Longest time spent in the office – 19 hours
Longest time spent working from remote locations – 6 months
Longest time spent on crafting a simple sentence – 165 min
Longest time spent on staring at a same interface with no idea what to do next – 18 hours
Longest average time for customer support – 4 hours
Longest server downtime – 40 minutes
Shortest time spent on developing a killer feature – 16 hours
Shortest time spent on writing a blog post – 20 minutes
Shortest time spent on testing a new feature – 6 hours
Shortest average time for customer support – 15 minutes

Best. Worst. Hardest. Easiest.

Best decision ever made – The story behind our brand, the attitude, the mascot, the name
Worst decision ever made – Not taking too much risks from the very beginning
Hardest thing to do – Beat the blank state
Easiest thing to do – Mess the read-write permissions of the blog folder

Source Code

For the codebase we are using SVN source control versioning system hosted on Assembla, and to date we count totals of 671 code commits;

We’ve written about 52.243 lines of code from which:

21.067 lines C# code
12.717 lines JavaScript
5.830 lines CSS
12.169 lines HTML and
460 lines in configuration files

All time system errors count – 130

Guys that Keep our Back Safe

These are few amazing services we cannot live without:

Rackspace – hosting
Sendgrid – sending transactional emails
MailChimp – email newsletters, announcements and promotions
Basecamp – collaboration, ideas sharing and bug tracking
Intercom – customer engagement and communication
Skrill – processing online payments
Dropbox – file sharing
NewRelic – server monitoring and analysis
WordPress – our blog
Google Apps for Business – Email, Docs, Analytics, Feedburner

Miscellaneous

We’ve changed 2 different Cities and 3 Offices
We’ve eaten about 30 jars of pickles and 56 super delicious “pizzas vegetarianas”.
We’ve drunk up 1200 liters of water. No coffee at all yet.

Top photo credit: Kevin Dooley

Author information

Dimitar Stojanov

Happy Birthday Invoicebus!

Dimitar Stojanov — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 11:30:16 +0000

The team behind Invoicebus is pleased to announce we’re officially one year old

I can’t describe how happy we are today after one year of operating and supporting Invoicebus. In one year of ups and downs, struggles and hustles we managed to finish our first year with positive news. After one year of working we have grown at stable pace with thousands of happy users, and I can’t tell anything but we’re very satisfied with the results.

For anybody who doesn’t know what Invoicebus is, I’ll give you short history about it:

In October 2010 Stefan and Dimitar gathered together and started with brainstorming a product which will ease the creating and management of invoices.
In November 2010 the development started and in meantime we put our teaser web page announcing the arriving of the “bus”.
After one year of development and testing we launched our product on 30^th November 2011, and that is how Invoicebus was born from our ideas, creativity and hard work.
Today we’re celebrating our first birthday.

As a young product this is a big achievement for us, and this motivates us even more to continue building Invoicebus in the future. We hope with the love and support of our users we’ll bring the invoicing closer to the everyday people, the freelancers and small businesses.

And what is a birthday without a surprise so we prepared one for you, just stayed tuned in the coming weeks. Oh, and if you don’t have account go on and create one, it’s completely free. Well I’m done for today and going to grab a piece of that cake and start partying

Photocredit: Will Clayton

Author information

Dimitar Stojanov

Brief Updates

Dimitar Stojanov — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 10:31:18 +0000

The Garage was closed for a month now and the reason for that is we just like to work behind closed doors. Just kidding, the real reason is we were super busy improving and enhancing our invoicing platform Invoicebus

You already know about the migration of the database in the cloud and the real-time updates of the activity history, but that is only a scratch on the surface in comparison what we’ve done in the last couple of months. Most of the updates are not noticeable for our users so maybe some will say, “guys, you haven’t done anything new”, and I can’t blame them for that. Anyway we made this changes and improvements because we believe they’ll give the end user more painless experience in his invoice management.

The biggest change we’ve made is in our marketing site so after few months of hard work we’ve reworked the site copywriting, and gave the site layout the simplicity it was begging for. The old saying goes “A picture is worth a thousand words”, so I’ll spear myself from explaining the changes and tell you to visit Invoicebus right away and I’ll be waiting you here. I won’t go anywhere, I promise. In case you haven’t saw our new tour and pricing page go on and see them too. Another change we’ve made is with this blog you’re reading right now. As you can see the design is reworked to be compatible with the rest of the site, and we decided to “rename” it to just Garage.

OK, enough for that. Now I want to tell you something very interesting, and that is… prepare yourself for celebration and cake. Did I have your attention? Hm? Well, both we, Dimitar and Stefan are very excited to tell you we’re celebrating one year of Invoicebus… yup this is true, we’ve made it. On 30^{th^{November 2011 we officially started the engines on our invoicing software Invoicebus, and after one year we’re very pleased to tell you where we’ve got with the bus. But I’ll leave the interesting stuff for the next post and if you’re afraid of missing the next post subscribe for news in the box below.}}

Photocredit: shawncampbell

Author information

Dimitar Stojanov

Scheduled Maintenance

Stefan Chachovski — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 14:05:39 +0000

We’re upgrading the database servers, so we expect about 2 hours of downtime at Saturday, November 3th, 2012 12:00-14:00h CET

Date: November 3th, 2012
Downtime: 2 hours (12:00 – 14:00h CET)
Reason: Infrastructural upgrade + Software update

Infrastructural Upgrade

Invoicebus’ database servers are growing up! We’re super excited to announce the migration of our conventional MySQL database to Cloud Databases, a high performance database on the cloud that brings speed, redundancy and scalability as primary values.

The new Cloud Database service delivers faster applications on the first relational database service built on OpenStack. Furthermore, to protect the data against hardware failure, it has redundant storage with built-in data replication.
Very exciting fact about this technology is that it scales incredibly easy and fast. Practically, a few seconds are needed to scale up the server and apply the new configuration. Pure gold!

Software Update

We’re introducing the real-time Activity History timeline. We believe that negotiating with your client in real time has a crucial meaning. Therefore, instead to wait notification in your inbox, we implemented a way for you and your client to be able to leave comments and track invoice’s activity in real-time. You can call it a live invoice because it looks like a sort of chat. Also, all other actions related to activity history will appear in real time.

Photocredit: Drupal Association

Comments or suggestions? We’re eager to hear from you.

Author information

Stefan Chachovski