So what's new?

Quite a lot really.  This update has been all about improving the basics and making the user experience even better, more intuitive or faster.  Here's some of what's new in version 1.5...

Pin Sharp Logos

Now all of your printed documents can benefit from super sharp logos, even when printed from screen.  PDF documents also feature super sharp versions of your brand.  Note: existing users - upload a new, larger version of your logo to benefit from this new feature.

Draft Invoices

All invoices are now fully editable in Draft status until you send them to your client by email.  No more frustrating typos.

New Documents

We've split the New Sale button so you can choose the document you want to create faster.  Simple, and less confusing.

Better lists

Document lists have been tweaked to show more relevant information and be easier to use.  All outstanding invoices are now grouped in one filter.

Invoice trails

We've added more detail about your invoices, including when you sent them, and to whom.  

Document Menu

Keeping track of the hours you bill is a constant challenge.  I have tried a range of time tracking apps that allow me to ’start the clock’ on my work and tell me to the second how long I spent on every task. Despite some being really slick and well designed the problem is that I either forget to ’stop the clock’ and end up leaving them running for hours while I make some more coffee and get distracted with incoming emails, or they don't integrate with my billing software so they end up not being used.

For anyone who needs a simple system for logging and billing their time Salestastic can be a real time saver.  Here's how you can get up and running in a few simple steps:

Step 1 - Log in or sign up to Salestastic

Salestastic offers very simple pricing: the Free for Life plan will get you started, or the Pay monthly plan will give you unlimited everything.  Once you are set up and have added some clients you are ready to go.

Step 2 - Create a new Estimate

Salestastic provides the ability to create unlimited estimates on all plans that can later be transitioned into invoices in a couple of clicks.  When you start a new project for a client it's really easy to create a new estimate, which in this instance becomes your time log as you work.

Step 3 - Log time as you go

As you work on your project it's quick and easy to update the estimate with the work completed, adding the  hours worked and the appropriate rate (you can use the header lines to add a date above your individual line items to keep entries grouped by date). With this approach you are logging time and building your final invoice at the same time.  This can be a real time saver when you come to billing your client at the end of a project.

Easy access

With Salestastic being web based you can access your account wherever you are working so you never have to carry anything else around (or remember which notebook you wrote your last note in).

Easy progress reports

Once you have created an invoice it's easy to send out a progress update to your client at the drop of a hat - just log in and email the estimate, knowing that it is up to date and nothing has been missed.

Expand your project

We have created a simple yet really useful year planner or calendar. Mark key project dates, people's birthday or whatever.

We haven't plastered our logo all over it. It's simple and unclutted. It's black and white too. So if you only have a black and white printer that's OK.

Download the Free 2013 Calendar (PDF)

And if you need last year's calendar for the remaining few weeks of 2012 you can find that here:

Download the 2012 Calendar (PDF)

The Sales timeline on your Dashboard is designed to show you the following:

Search period. 

Total expected turnover.  This includes all of your invoices, plus any active estimates you have sent out.  It is the maximum you could earn if every one of your sales transitioned to an invoice.

Total estimates.  This is the stuff you are either working on or pitching for.

Total invoices.  Have you been paid? The overdue invoice report in the section below will tell you.

Graph data showing monthly/daily breakdown.  Hover over these to get totals

Using the Sales timeline

In this screenshot of the timeline the graph is showing data for All Users for the last 6 months (see filters at the top).  These filters can be set to show individual users, or all users in your company and will be set to show your individual sales for the past 30 days by default.  This setting will work fine for you to see your sales go in over the course of a month but to get a better idea of your business you will want to change this to show past 6 or 12 months (or use the custom date range to enter any time period - e.g. your business tax year).

Your sales pipeline

One of the neat things about the graph (and something I use a lot) is that at a glance I can see if I have done enough estimates in the past month to feed me next month.  Looking at this graph we can see that there are more estimates in the last month, which is a good sign that the pipeline is still flowing.  Of course this all depends on how you work; some companies will have varying completion phases and some may not even create estimates before you bill your client.

With the graph showing sales from the past six months we see that there are estimates from every month that are still open (i.e that have not been transitioned into invoices).  This would suggest one of three things:

These sales are taking longer than expected to complete

They are no longer active but have not been marked as rejected (any estimate can be marked as rejected to clear it our of your reports - it can be reinstated at any time).  

These sales have been completed but not invoiced

For me this is valuable information that allows me to check the status of each one of those old estimates and do something about it.  This could mean chasing a client to speed things up, chasing a potential client to make sure we win the work, or changing the status of a few estimates to Rejected to get them our of my graph (rejected estimates don't get counted in reports - you can reinstate them at any time so it can be better than deleting them)

I have picked up many jobs that in the middle of everything else I had forgotten to bill (it's easy to do!) and several times an email to the client has prompted them to pick up the estimate I sent and suddenly I have the job.  

When I started as a freelancer things were pretty simple.

Although it's one of the most crucial parts of any business, I used to loathe the time I spent quoting for work and then invoicing everything at the end.  When I started freelancing I used Microsoft Word and Excel, laboriously writing everything and saving dozens of files in folders for date, client and many other systems.  This worked fined until I found I had saved over a previous invoice, or my folder inadvertently moved itself to a secret location, meaning wasted time.

As I progressed on to more complex projects I needed a better system. Not only to save me time but also to help me actually do my pricing.

Busy little beavers that we are, we've just released the latest version of Salestastic for everyone to enjoy, which contains some bug fixes and improvements.  

Every now and again we wonder if implementing a Project scope in Salestastic is really worth the pain.  We have literally sweated, argued, dreamed about and incessantly babbled on about this feature more than all the others in the app put together.

But thats just because we care about it so much. 

You see, in our business we run a whole bunch of different projects, jobs and straight sales.  Some of our guys work on a project for months and need to sweat the costs and profit margins and others in the team just crank out sale after sale not caring a jot for profit.  Our accounting software couldn't cope with project based cost allocation and took too long to get any kind of sensible report out of.

We needed a system that could do both.  Salestastic was designed to group sales documents and allow each user to track both costs and time spent on each project.  This means that our guys can work out the profit in a project even as they are putting the initial estimate together and edit the income and expenses of each project as they progress.