The Acquisitions Begin
I’ve had a few conversations with people inside the SaaS accounting industry in the past few weeks and there is something of a crescendo of voices predicting the next couple of years will see a real consolidation in the space. There are so many vendors, many of whom haven’t got clarity around their monetisation strategies. […]
A New Acronym, But This Time It’s (Maybe) Justified
FreshBooks (CloudAve coverage here) have just created a whole new acronym, SaaN or Software as a Network. While I’m kind of ambivalent about the nomenclature I’m totally excited about what it means. FreshBooks has noticed something among the way its 700000 or so customers work and that is that data, in their cases invoices, hop […]
*Superstars* of SaaS
I woke at an ungodly hour yesterday morning my time (2am from memory) in order to take part in what was dubbed a session with the superstars of SaaS. Of course being merely the moderator I wasn’t included in that group – but I was privileged to be able to moderate the session that included some […]
Shameless Plug – Hitting the Airwaves
Tomorrow morning (lucky I checked – I had it in my calendar for the day after!), I’ve been asked to co-host a SaaS special on VoiceAmerica. Here’s the details from their site (and no – I didn’t suggest the “leading authority” part). Saas Special – The World’s TOP Experts! As noted at the recent 2.0 […]
billFLO – Helping the World Communicate
It’s a big week for product launches – and a busy week for those commenting on the accounting software space. billFLO is this week launching its offering which it claims is the first low cost solution providing electronic invoice exchange for small businesses. Think of it as EDI for the rest of us… billFLO was […]
Get Real With Pricing
Since beginning my Accounting 2.0 series I’ve reviewed dozen of accounting applications from lightweight invoicing numbers through to fully fledged systems. I’ve also seen a bunch of different price point thrown into the mix – from free through to many thousands of dollars per annum. The two ends of that spectrum can be safely ignored […]
The Small Business Web – The Rising Tide of Integration
I alluded yesterday to some stirrings in terms of small business SaaS ecosystems. I didn’t post specifics yesterday as the initiative was somewhat stealth. However at the SXSW conference, attendees were advised of The Small Business Web, a cooperative currently made up of the following vendors. BatchBlue Software Social CRM for Small Business FreshBooks Painless […]
Finding a Babel Fish for Data
I guess the Babel Fish won’t mean much to the new generation of readers of this blog. In the 1981 series The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the Babel Fish was a creature that, when placed in ones ear, allows anyone to understand anything said, no matter the language being spoken – (see video at […]
SaaS Model Proven? Time to Focus on Revenue?
We’ve seen some fantastic figures in the last month or so that would seem to announce once and for all the validation of the SaaS model and by extension Cloud Computing. To quickly recap; Xero achieved 33% increase in aid customer numbers in 50 days FreshBooks crossed the 700,000 user mark Mint adds 3000 users […]
From Shoebox to Paperless, 22nd Century (?) Expense Management
This is the time of the year many of you inevitably spend a weekend or so sorting the box-full of receipts you had collected throughout the year – you need to re-read them, try to remember details, categorize, sort, in preparation of either preparing your own Tax Return, or handing them over to your accountant. […]
Some Things Are Best Shoved Into a (Shoe)Box – FreshBooks, Outright and Shoeboxed
I’m something of a realist – we live in a digital age but for whatever reason, be it audit control, risk aversion or ease of use, we all accumulate a mountain of paper receipts over time. I like services that help move the physical world into the virtual one. I was stoked then to hear […]
FastDue – Searching for Some Secret Sauce
There are two distinct product strategies that SaaS office productivity vendors can take. One is to encourage third parties to build complementary solutions to their own, and in this way create a multi-vendor ecosystem. In the business realm FreshBooks is a perfect example of this strategy. To succeed with this strategy, vendors need to have […]
More Integration from those Charming Canucks
I reviewed a little while ago IAC-EZ a start-up SaaS accounting offering that leverages the relatively huge and sophisticated FreshBooks customer base. Hot on the heels of that integration comes news that Clarity Accounting, another Canadian SaaS accounting company, has finished it’s integration with FreshBooks also To celebrate, those friendly FreshBooks people are offering Clarity […]
Bootstrap/Outright – Review
Accounting 2.0 at CloudAve In an ongoing series of reviews and analysis pieces, CloudAve will be taking a deep look into accounting software for the new world. See the other posts at this tag Introduction & Background Bootstrap was created in mid 2008 by Kevin Reeth and Ben Curren a couple of software guys with […]
Imitation May be the Sincerest Form of Flattery, But All You Need Is Love
The other day I noticed a number of comments on different CloudAve posts from someone purporting to be a user of a new invoicing web application. Upon further inspection I discovered that in fact the purported “independent user” was in fact an employee of the company. Suffice it to say that I’ll not be spending […]
