The term “cloud” means different things to different people. Some people swear by it, while other are scared of it. Rather than explain what the cloud is, we thought it would be better to show you the benefits of the cloud. Check out this short video.

One-click invoicing

So you want to create an invoice with blazing speed? One-click invoicing is finally here! No longer do you have to create a ticket and estimate before getting to the invoice. Simply click the “Add Invoice” button from the invoices page.

One-click estimates

Same goes for estimates. You can now create a new estimate without first creating a ticket. This should save you time if you want to jump right into getting your customer a quote.

How it works

First, things have not really changed. We simply streamlined a few things. When you use the new one-click invoicing, the related items like the ticket and estimate are still there. They are just created behind-the-scenes for you. In addition, the ticket itself will be hidden since it will be set to the closed status. This way, the only active item you’ll have is the invoice.

How to use it

Simply browse to Transactions > Invoices or Transactions > Estimates. You will see the new Add buttons in the top-right corner.

Please Comment Below

So what do you think? Does this new feature help speed things up in your business? How would you improve it? Comment below!

Recording a refund in Mhelpdesk isn’t obvious, but it can be done. Below are the steps on how to issue a refund.

1. Create Refund item

1. Go to Settings > Drop-down lists > Products & Services
2. Create an item called “Refund” and set type to “Discount”. Leave the amount to 0.  It should look like this:

2. Apply the refund to an invoice

1. Go to the invoice that you want to apply the refund to
2. Add the item Refund to your invoice items.
3. Enter the negative dollar amount you are refunding (for example -100)
4. Save the invoice.

3. Adjust the payment.

1. If you are doing a full refund you can delete the payment. Alternatively, you can simply update the payment amount to $0 in Mhelpdesk and use the memo field for your audit trail. Then do the same for the Payment item in Quickbooks.
2. If you are applying a partial refund:
1. Edit the existing payment to reflect the true payment amount
2. In the Memo section add a note to reflect the change.
3. Save the payment

How do I keep Mhelpdesk and Quickbooks in check?

• If you already exported this item to QuickBooks, you will need to manually make the adjustments in Quickbooks for both the Invoice and Payment. Simply make the identical updates to both sets of records.
• When you first export the Refund item to Quickbooks, you will be prompted to choose an appropriate Chart of Accounts for your refunds. If you are not sure which to choose, ask your accountant.

Another minor release for our awesome customers! This time we pushed out some new features that you guys wanted to make life easier.

Status Changes + Send Customer Message Combined

When you update the status of a ticket, you will also be prompted to add a note to the customer. This is optional so leave it blank if you want to skip it.

Status Change + Customer Message Combined

Save Records With Less Scrolling

So far, I’m really enjoying this tweak. Now I can click that litte green save button on the left to save my ticket. It doesn’t matter where I am on the screen. No more scrolling to the bottom!

Invoice Due Dates Pre-Populated

The invoice due dates are now pre-populated based on the Customer Terms. So if the terms say the invoice is due 5 days from the date it’s issued, you won’t have to set it any more.

Invoice Due Dates Prepopulated

Invoices fit on 1 page

New Invoice Template

We’ve updated the master Invoice Template to fit on one page better. Keep in mind that your logo, customizations, and items can cause it to run onto page two. To get the latest invoice template:

1. Back up your existing template by copying it into NotePad or something
2. Click Reset on the template
3. That’s it! Preview your PDF to make sure it fits

Choose Google Calendar

You can now choose which Google Calendar you want to sync with when you set an appointment in Mhelpddesk. Just go to Settings > My Account to pick your calendar.

Choose Google Calendar

Mhelpdesk iPad Teaser

Finally wrapped up our first version of the native iPad app. This is waiting for approval from Apple but should be in the store soon. Here is a quick vid.

Lastly, Bug fixes

• Customer login instructions not sent when you disable logins
• Public custom fields now display on Service Request Form
• Subject and Description form labels on pubic form now visible
• Sorting the Invoices by Invoice ID corrected
• Tabs causing validation to fire corrected
• If messaging notification setting disabled, show warning that no email will be sent to customer

Important: Please comment below!!

Please comment below to let us know you guys are reading this stuff. Whether it’s a thumbs up or a thumbs down, let us know that these blog posts aren’t going unnoticed. If there is no interest in these posts we will stop doing them. Thanks again for your support guys and gals!

The Problem

The most common problem people have when integrating a Service Request Form or Mhelpdesk into their own website is that the content can be cut off.

Form fields and buttons are hidden

The Fix

Adjust the height attribute in the snipped of code we provide to you. By default, it is set to 500px. You can enter a number greater than this to fix the issue.

Enter a number greater than 500px

So last week we rolled out a pretty major release. Thanks everyone for helping us get the kinks worked out. This week, we managed to get some minor upgrades added for you guys.

New Transaction columns

We added the estimate amount, invoice amount, and the invoice balance to the ticket list. You’ll need to enable these on the “Customize View” page. The gist is that this will help you keep track of who owes you what.

Secondly, we got feedback that it’s hard to figure out who still needs to be invoiced. So on the ticket list, if you see that the Invoice Balance column is empty, that means you haven’t invoiced the customer yet.

Broke out some template tags

We broke out the Customer and Contact special tags so you can arrange them on your templates the way you like. We have also created a list of tags that can be used on the templates. Check them out here:

http://mhelpdesk.com/template-tag-reference/

Service Item details added to tickets

For everyone that uses Service Items (equipment tracking), we now display the equipment details on the ticket. You can also jump to the edit page from the ticket as well. If you don’t know what this feature is read more below:

http://mhelpdesk.com/category/service-items/

Moving forward

The major feature requests are still in the works. We want to tie up the loose ends that we have right now before adding any major changes. The next thing we are working on is One-click invoicing so you don’t have to create a ticket first. Once that is done, we’ll roll out the payments, and toggling custom views. We don’t have the order that we’ll be releasing these in set in stone yet. We’ll probably setup another Facebook poll to let you guys vote on what you want first. So don’t forget to like us on FB

https://www.facebook.com/mhelpdesk

These special tags are CASE-SENSITIVE and are used to create your printed tickets, work-orders, estimates & invoices.

Company Info

These settings can be found under Settings > My Company Info

Company Name (prints logo if uploaded)

_MyCompanyName_

Company Address

_MyCompanyAddress_

Company Website

_MyCompanyWebsite_

Company Phone 1

_MyCompanyPhone_

Company Fax

_MyCompanyFax_

Reply-To Email

_MyCompanyEmail_

Customer Tags

Customer Label (value in your dictionary)

_CustomerHeader_

Customer name

_CustomerName_

Customer Address (street, city, state, zip)

_CustomerAddress_

Customer Phone

_CustomerPhone_

Contact Tags

Contact Info (name, street, city, state, zip)

_ContactInfo_

Contact Name (firstname, last name)

_ContactName_

Contact First Name

_ContactFirstName_

Contact Last Name

_ContactLastName_

Contact Address (street, city, state, zip)

_ContactAddress_

Contact Phone

_ContactPhone_

Ticket Tags

Ticket (created, priority, status, due, type, assigned to, subject, description)

_Ticket_

Custom Fields (modified under Settings > Customize > Custom Fields

_TicketCustomFields_

Appointments
_Appointments_

Service Item/Asset (Prints service item details)

_Asset_

Estimate and Work-Order Tags

Estimate Terms (under Settings > Customize > Templates > Invoice)

_EstimateTerms_

Billing Name & Address (name, stree, city, state, zip)

_BillTo_

Line items (qty, name, description, rate, amount, tax

_Items_

Sub-Total

_subtotal_

Tax

_tax_

Total

_total_

Arrival Window

_ArrivalWindow_

Service Location

_ServiceLocations_

Service Location Notes

_ServiceLocationNotes_

Estimate Notes

_WorkOrderNotes_

Service Item/Asset (Prints service item details)

_Asset_

Invoice Tags

Invoice Terms (under Settings > Customize > Templates > Invoice)

_InvoiceTerms_

Issued Date

_IssuedDate_

Due Date

_DueDate_

PO Number

_PONumber_

Invoice Number

_InvoiceNumber_

Paid

_Paid_

Balance Due

_BalanceDue_

Notes

_Notes_

Service Item/Asset (Prints service item details)

_Asset_

The last few weeks have been super busy at Mhelpdesk. We’ve been working on re-engineering the foundation of Mhelpdesk to provide you guys with some performance enhancements. This will also set the stage for some exciting new features for 2012. At first glance, you should not notice anything different.

Very important changes.

• Everyone should log out and log back in to get the latest changes
• Website Integration – If you are embedding the Mhelpdesk Login or the Mhelpdesk Form on your own website, please grab the new code and update your pages now. You’ll find the website code under Settings > Customize > Website Integration
• Editing your Portal Content. If you need to edit your pages, please contact us at support@mhelpdesk.com to get your access link (Only applies to existing clients)

As with any major release, we anticipate bugs that we missed during testing. We’ve got developers standing by all weekend to resolve any issues that you come across. I’m also standing by Sunday (1/22/2012) to take calls at 888-493-5552. This line goes straight to me so please don’t hesitate to call to report issues.

Below are some minor enhancements

• Staff can now see the Invoice/Payment tabs, even if you’ve hidden financials from them. Set this under Settings > Customize > Turn On/Off Features
• Sort order on the Ticket List under the customer views are now saved
• Page size on the Ticket List under customer views are now saved
• Page size on the Invoice List under customer views are now saved
• Customer Search and Quick Find will now include Contacts in the results
• Reminder Rules added to Settings > Notifications
• Customer names appended to Appointment subject for Google Calendar
• When setting up login for a contact, their usernames will default to their email

Moving Forward

I know you guys are all anxious to get the new features we’ve been talking about on the forums. Some of you have minor fixes that you needed, and we have not forgotten about you. This last release was really a roadblock to us getting anything new done. Now that it’s over we can start building again!

Thanks again for all your support!

Vincent Wong
Co-Founder and CEO of Mhelpdesk

I just got a message from a colleague asking “I’m just wondering if you had any first hand tips you could give me about running a SaaS. Any problems or things you encountered that might not be obvious?”

So I won’t go over the obvious, at least what wasn’t obvious to me. This is what I’ve learned from launching and growing two SaaS companies over the last few years.

Deal with bottlenecks early

With the SaaS model, you’re constantly monitoring the performance of your app. As with any app there are always going to be bottlenecks. Bottlenecks in the database and bottlenecks in your code. When you do spot something performing below average, don’t tell yourself that you’ll deal with it when traffic is high. That day may come a lot sooner than you think.

We got caught off guard. For the longest time, we were aware of some code we integrated with that caused a 100% spike in CPU usage. It didn’t happen often, and only seemed to happen when we’d get a temporary burst in new sign-ups. A few months ago, the short bursts of sign-ups became a daily problem. A good problem but one we weren’t prepared for. We started to lose 1/3 of new sign-ups every day due to timeouts. Fortunately, our existing customers were unaffected.

Be agile when it comes to your hosting

When we started losing sign-ups, I didn’t panic much because we were on Amazon EC2 servers. EC2 allows you to quickly add resources to your “server”. In about 30 minutes we were able to near triple our computing resources. Had we been in any other data center, we could have had hours of downtime. It would have required much more work to scale up as well.

Scaling up in the EC2 environment was just a band-aid. The underlying problem was still a bottleneck in a component that we built on top of.

Make sure anything you use can handle it

When I first started building, I wanted to build fast. I didn’t want to reinvent the wheel. So things like User Management and Multi-Tenant Management were handled by 3rd party components. The problem was that these components were not designed to handle the amount of traffic and customers we had. To this date, I still don’t see any warnings in their documents.

We ended up re-writing these components from the ground up. If I had to do it all over again, I would not have used any 3rd party component without extensive reviews and feedback from others regarding performance under stress.

Have an expert DBA on hand

With SaaS apps, you can guess how your app will be used and where your database will get stressed the most. However, your users ultimately dictate what will take a beating. I’m not a great DBA and I consider myself a novice with SQL. So when I see a spike in memory or cpu usage, I generally just check on the processes to see that our database is taking a beating.

We are fortunate to have an expert DBA on hand. If I see a spike in resources, he’s able to begin profiling the database to investigate the exact cause of the problem. In the past, he’s been able to pinpoint issues in a matter of minutes and implement a fix such as an index etc. If you are supporting thousands of users, you can count on that one guy that does something to bring everyone else down. Make sure you have a DBA to deal with it.

Build for performance on Day 1

Build your SaaS app with performance in mind. Performance should be prioritized higher than anything else. Don’t focus on building it and then doing clean-up after the fact. It’s easy to brush off performance as something you’ll deal with later on. I made the mistake of thinking you can simply throw more money on computing resources to fix things if they got slow.

Getting your SaaS app to perform well under pressure is a combination of throwing more money on resources and good design. So always consider performance up front.

Build the bare minimum

Before I started to build both apps, we did extensive requirements analysis based on how WE thought things should work. We didn’t have access to focus groups or feedback. We simply made an educated guess as to how the app should work. We built everything on our list of requirements.

This was a huge mistake. Again, ultimately your users dictate how things should work. If I had to do it all over again, I would only build the bare minimums. I’d ask “What does the user absolutely need to for this to be usable?” I wouldn’t spend more than 30 to 60 days on getting something out there. Then pay attention to what users are saying is missing. It’s better to build the basics and let real-world users tell you how to build the rest.

Don’t be afraid to charge MUCH more than you think you can

When pricing our apps, I asked myself “What is everyone else charging?”. However, I’ve learned that there is always someone ready to buy at whatever price you choose to do business in. The key is marketing yourself as to why you are worth your asking price. It costs you the same amount of TIME and EFFORT to support a client at $29.95 per month and at $850 per month.

Your Free Trial isn’t that simple

With our apps, the user gets a 30 day free trial. After the 30 days are up the user is asked to pay. Sounds simple, but there is so much more that goes into the 30 day trial. I’ve observed many different types of personalities that sign-up. Some signup and immediately start using it. Some convert their demos to paid accounts immediately. Some allow their 30 days to expire and then pay. Some signup and don’t even login. Some spend a few minutes before abandoning it.

A big mistake we made one day was deleting all the expired accounts during the Christmas holidays. We were getting flooded with sign-ups so this was an attempt to improve performance by pruning unused accounts. On Jan 3rd we got a flood of emails and tickets asking “Why can’t I login any more?” I didn’t take into consideration that a lot of these accounts expired while the user was on vacation. We’ve since implemented warning emails that are sent out before the 30 days are up.

I’m slowly adding marketing to our 30 day trial. I’m automatically sending out reminders, bonuses, etc and testing different offers. Tracking and maintaining communication with the user during the 30 days is something I’m refining to convert more sales. It’s no longer just a simple sign-up and forget it process. It’s getting them to sign-up for a free trial, then monitoring things until they convert to paying customers.

Conclusion

Overall, there hasn’t been a problem that we couldn’t figure out yet. Part of that is due to the fact that we have a team of very smart guys working together. I think the SaaS model is a great way to offer software to your users. Maintenance is simple, users are happy not having to manage things on their own, and with the available hosting options it’s a no-brainer. Feel free to comment below with your own experiences.

Intro

Happy New Years Everyone! Big thanks to all our customers that helped us finish out the year strong. 2012 is looking bright and we have lots in store for you. In this post, I’m going to share with you our new year’s resolutions for Mhelpdesk that we are all excited for.

#1 Expand Our Benefits

We want to expand the benefits of using Mhelpdesk to all our customers. We’ve taken your feedback and suggestions and will be implementing several new features for 2012.

#2 Expand Mobile App

In 2011 we introduced one of the first estimate, invoice, service and repair trackers of its kind. In 2012 we will continue to refine our app. We will be introducing new features and performance tweaks across all platforms.

#3 Expand Our Reach

As you already know, Mhelpdesk is one of the most customizable apps on the market. We are pushing to serve more customers across different service industries in 2012. We also know that you guys are recommending us to others. We’ll be creating an affiliate system to make sure you guys get credit for spreading the word.

We look forward to helping you do more in less steps, with less effort, and in less time. Happy 2012!