Invoicing and Timetracking 2.0 with Freshbooks and Basecamp
FreshBooks is an online invoicing and time tracking service that promises to save you time and make you look professional (Aparently being perceived as a Fortune 500 company is attractive to SMEs). Today, FreshBooks announced integration with 37signal's Basecamp product.
For those of you who need a 101 on FreshBooks - Check the features it promises:
- Easily create, send and manage invoices
- Track time (for you and your staff) Totally Redesigned
- Send invoices by US post or email
- Accept payment with PayPal, Authorize.Net, & more
- Automatically send invoices & late payment notices
- Create robust reports and import/export your data
- Peep this screencast if your too lazy to demo the product.
For those of you who need a 101 on Basecamp, it is a project management and project collaboration tool that is easy to use, cost effective, and doesn't try to overdue things.
OK. Now that you are in the know -- let's evaluate the Basecamp Integration.
1) Basecamp customers can generate an invoice for Basecamp projects based on their time entries and/or their To-Do lists.
2) Basecamp customers can import projects into FreshBooks where they can use them to track time. The Basecamp project becomes a FreshBooks project and when someone creates To-Dos in Basecamp, the To-Dos will appear in FreshBooks as tasks. Then, whenever a user wants, they can invoice for a project like a normal FreshBooks project.
Tight.
I like Freshbooks. And it is not 't just because they are Canadian (although that helps). It is because they know what they are good at, and they know what they are not good at. Instead of duplicating Basecamp's functionality into their own product, they are deciding to be EXTREMELY good at one thing, and leaving the rest.
APIs have long been the Buzz of the new social web, but most of the progress we've seen up until now are 'neat' mash-ups with no business models. Freshbook's Basecamp API Integration, is an example of how to really drive value to their clients. Value that their clients are willing to pay for.
