What's (Not) Inside CompassBill

Do it simple, do it quick, and do it well

This is the core philosophy for our apps here at CompassWare. We develop tools to make the small business owner's day easier, because we are small business owners. We have enough to worry about without a clunky and complicated application preventing us from conducting business.

Because of this, our applications may not have every feature a business owner could want at any time in their businesses development. For example, CompassBill is centered around our needs for an invoicing system, not the hypothetical needs we (or a customer) might have at some point in the future. The features that are there are there because we needed them, so we are sure how they should work.

Even if a feature is useful, that doesn't mean it should be in the application. The feature may be way too complicated, canceling out whatever benefit it may have. In the worst case, it may even completely mess us the ease of use of the entire app.

An example of this were late fees. A feature for handling late fees was useful, and was something at one point we intended to include in CompassBill. However, once we got into it, we realized implementing the feature as good as we would want it would add additional complication, with only marginal benefit. In addition, we were fast approaching our go live date, and were left with a bad choice. Either finish the late fees and sacrifice other areas (such as PDF invoice generation), or delay the launch to implement a complicated and shaky feature.

Instead of taking either of those bad paths, we decided upon a third route. We decided to completely leave late fees out entirely. It wasn't a core feature of our application (unlike PDF invoice generation), and delaying our launch was unacceptable. It wasn't the easiest decision to make, but it was the best, and we have no regrets doing this.

Might late fees someday be part of CompassBill? It's possible, especially if our own needs make it a necessity. But if we do decide to implement late fees, it won't be done without keeping to our standards of usability and quality. That's just the way we do it here at CompassWare.

What's Inside CompassBill: Products and Services

Because billing is a task that should take as little time as possible. If more time is spent on sending invoices, keeping track of overdue accounts, and recording charges, less time is available to spend time on your actual line of work. Minimizing the amount of time spent on billing is crucial to our business, and is the core principle behind CompassBill. This is the basis for the Products and Services area of CompassBill.

First off, lets be clear what Products and Services in CompassBill is not. It isn't an inventory management system. If you are in need of this feature, there are many other great applications out there for that purpose. CompassBill is for invoicing, and our experience comes from a service business background.

So what is the purpose of Products and Services? Quite simply, to make entering customer charges quicker.

For example, say you are a web developer. Assume for the purposes of this example that you have already added a couple of services, including one which is "Ultra Deluxe Starter Site". You've just finished a UDSS (your company likes using a lot of acronyms), and want to charge AngelFish, Inc. for this. On the add charge screen, you could type this in manually, add the price manually, and apply any taxes that are applicable manually. This doesn't take long, but if you are doing this many times a month, it can get tedious.

Fortunately, you took the time to set up a list of your products and services. Just select the item from the "Product" dropdown menu, and it will populate the other fields for you. At this point, you can update the fields as necessary, and save the charge. With two clicks, you have saved the charge. Now, you can get your billing done sooner, and get to work building a great site for Angel Fish!

Coming Soon to a CompassBill Near You

We are proud of our initial version of CompassBill. It is a powerful yet simple application that reduces clutter and time spent on billing. In its current state it is a very useful tool for any small business.

However, we are always looking to make the product better and more responsive to the needs of today's busy entrepreneur. As the owners of a small business, we realize how many things have to be accomplished in a very limited amount of time. Time spent on an overhead task like billing can't be used for generating new clients, or finishing a project.

Accordingly, we have decided to focus our latest development on automation of the invoicing process and developing an iPhone app. Automation will decrease the amount of time spent each month on invoicing to mere minutes. Building an app for the iPhone is an important step in making CompassBill friendly for businesses who operate in the field and need to post a quick charge for a client, or to retrieve a client's billing info quickly.

We are currently in the process of developing these additions to CompassBill, and will be regularly updating on the progress of these exciting projects on this blog. Please check back regularly, and be sure to keep an eye on CompassBill.net. As always, we welcome your ideas and feedback on CompassBill.

www.compassbill.net