Become a fan of WorkingPoint and get the latest news and information directly to your Facebook page! Simply click on this link, then click “Become a fan.” You’re all set. In addition to our monthly newsletter, we’ll be using to Facebook to keep you updated on everything that’s happening at WorkingPoint.

For more information on Facebook or to sign up, visit http://www.facebook.com/.

The WorkingPoint Team

In the early days of WorkingPoint (once upon a time called NetBooks), the team was faced with an interesting conundrum: while building a small business financial management tool for customers, what tool should the business itself use for managing their own finances?

Since our application wasn’t built yet, like it or not, we were going to have to use a competitor’s product. At the time, the decision was made to go with Netsuite. It was the least direct competitor to our anticipating product offering, and had the horsepower to scale as our business grew.

Over the past two years, though, what ultimately became clear — as our team grew, as the markets changed, as we evolved our product — was that, as a product, WorkingPoint had evolved to the point where our own product was, in fact, a much better fit for what we needed.

So, it is with a bit of ironic pride, that we happily claim one of our newest customers: ourselves!

Now the question is, what did we learn from recently undertaking the migration that we know so many businesses dread? Cathy, our accountant, and the woman who was responsible for the migration gives us her insights:

• Going from an extremely complicated system, like Netsuite, to a much more straight-forward system, like WorkingPoint, is actually easier than going the other way around.
• Running parallel systems for a few weeks may seem like a painful idea, but it’s a great way to make sure that everything is running smoothly before you cut the cord with the old solution.
• while cleaning up any and all out-standing questions in your old system is never fun, migrating to something new is a great chance for a clean slate. (This is particularly true if you’ve inhereted a solution from someone who was there before you arrived.)

Her best advice for a business looking to tackle the migration is, “Pick a point in time, and at least two months out, give yourself 2 months to run a parallel system.”

Of course, one of the biggest business reasons of all to make such a big switch is that — just like our customers — WorkingPoint is a business that has to demonstrate fiscal discipline as part of our daily life. And while Netsuite is a great, high-end system, migrating off of it has now saved our business nearly $20,000.00 per year in licensing fees.

But when it comes to the day-in/day-out management of business financials, Cathy’s found that there are plenty of benefits to using WorkingPoint:

• WorkingPoint is a great solution for a business that doesn’t have or need a full-time accounting team.
• In Netsuite, the system automation managed the float. In WorkingPoint, the business owner (or accountant!) manages it.
• Once daily activity is logged, reconciliation is real time and clearly visible on the dashboard.
• The easy-to-understand view of the dashboard makes communication between the accountant and the rest of the management team much simpler.

When discussing all of the reasons her WorkingPoint migration has simplified her accounting process, it’s sometimes the little things that make a daily difference. So what’s Cathy’s favorite “little thing” about WorkingPoint? “The way that WorkingPoint allows you to set up Chart of Accounts is very descriptive. It’s named Chart of Accounts, instead of a numeric code. That was really nice.”

And what does the man in charge think?  “I’m thrilled to be using WorkingPoint!  As CEO (and CFO, and HR Dude) of a company with only ten employees, NetSuite’s functionality was complete overkill and was like using a sledgehammer to drive in a thumbtack.  WorkingPoint is just plain easy to use.  The dashboard is terrific and the reporting capabilities are everything I need.”

The WorkingPoint Community is made up of small business owners, like yourself, and we want you to get to know each other. We’d like to introduce you to Actress/Singer Soara-Joye Ross:

“Soara-Joye Ross, previously known as Joy Ross, Joye Ross, Joy E. T. Ross, and also known as Soara-Joyce Ross (because of her name being misspelled) is a notable American actress and singer.

Her Broadway credits include Les Miserables the Revival and Dance Of The Vampires, where she made her Broadway debut…”

Don’t have a profile for your small business? Learn more or Sign up for an account and create your free company profile today!

The WorkingPoint Community is made up of small business owners, like yourself, and we want you to get to know each other. We’d like to introduce you to Jeph Farris of Custom Canvas Wholesale (ccw):

“Wholesale Canvas, Wood Panels and Custom Stretching Services. Always 40-50% Off Industry MSRP! Priced for Starving Artists, Produced for Professionals. Gorge Grown Canvas, Hand Crafted in the Pacific Northwest. Specializing in over sized canvas construction.”

Don’t have a profile for your small business? Learn more or Sign up for an account and create your free company profile today!

Justin Stravarius at App Storm recently took WorkingPoint out for a spin. Here is some of what Justin had to report after:

User Interface

After logging in, WorkingPoint surprises you with a brilliant widgetized business Dashboard. With widgets to show expenses, reports, pending invoices, projections and banking account summary. In a single page, WorkingPoint’s killer of a dashboard gives an overview of your business at a glance.

Connecting to your Bank

Since WorkingPoint is not just another invoicing app, let’s start from a very interesting feature: connecting the WorkingPoint account with your bank or financial institution…WorkingPoint successfully ties this feature in with your bookkeeping in entirety.

Invoices

Being a freelancer for a couple years now, the biggest problem I face is when creating invoices. I have tried a lot of web bookkeeping apps and they all lack one thing or the other. WorkingPoint is the first app that perfectly fit my needs

Reports

I have said this earlier and now I reiterate once again: WorkingPoint reports are simply awesome.

Thanks Justin for taking the time to check out our application and share your experience. You can read the rest of the review here: Small Business Management Made Easy with WorkingPoint

I had an unsettling phone call last night with a prospective client. A mutual collegue had put us in touch so that I could help him with a new web and ecommerce strategy for his business.

I thought I was getting on a call to answer specific questions about the approach I was recommending. Much to my surprise, when we got on the phone, he wanted me to explain to him why he should want an updated web and ecommerce strategy, when he considered his current solution more than sufficient.

Needless to say, I was caught by surprise and had to make a quick decision: did I try to convince him that he does need a new solution, or do I merely explain why I would be a good choice to help him if he decides he sees value in a new solution?

I made a promise to myself when I started my business last year that I was not going to try to make people feel that their current business solutions were crap merely to sell my services as a solution. If a person is ok with an entirely manual process that takes two hours, I can talk to them about ways to automate a solution, but in the end, it’s merely an option, and may not meet their needs. I refuse to presume that faster or newer is automatically better.

So I held to my guns and refused to hard sell him on the idea that he needed a new solution at all. He outlined the reasons he felt that his current solution was rock solid in the areas that he considers most important (personal touch and security), and therefore any automated, highly transactional solution I could propose would only cost him more money than he wants to spend on something he doesn’t consider important.

When I got off the phone, though, I was highly rattled. He had clearly been very annoyed at the idea that I might be implying that he didn’t have a good solution (which, technically speaking, I didn’t actually do, since I’d been recruited by a member of his team to propose an update solution), and was then even more annoyed when I did not articulate (to his satisfaction) what was “wrong” with his current solution.

But it’s forced me to go back to my rules for sales. When I started my own business, I defined these, and I have not always been good about following them, but I think it’s time to dust them off and update them a bit.

Entrepreneur’s Sales Rule #1

• Original Rule: Do not sell anything for less money than it costs to do/build.
• Lesson: My time is not “free.” I’ve broken this rule too many times because “anything is better than nothing,” which is actually not usually true at all. That’s the voice of panic. Rational choices are hard to make when panic is ringing in your ears.
• Updated Rule: Do not sell anything for less money than it costs to do/build based on my standard and acceptable hourly rate.

Entrepreneur’s Sales Rule #2

• Original Rule: Focus on why my solution meets their need.
• Lesson: Defining “need” is fuzzy, inconsistent and highly subjective.
• Updated Rule: Focus on why my solution is the best fit for a need, not convincing someone of their need.

Entrepreneur’s Sales Rule #3

• Original Rule: Don’t sell something that I’m not 100% confident of my ability to deliver.
• Lesson: Confidence is something delusional, and I am no stranger to arroagance.
• Updated Rule: Build a network and project budget that provides opportunities to enlist subject matter experts into projects to cover areas where I am not the best expert I know on any given topic.

Over the past year, I’ve broken each of these rules at least once. And in each case, I learned an important lesson. Now that the rules are updated to be more meaningful and precise, I guess we’ll see how to I the next time.

For the moment, though, even though it meant losing the job, I’m glad I toed the line last night. Can’t wait to see how it unfolds next time it happens.

Seth Godin gave voice to something remarkable in his book, “Tribes.” It’s something that those of us who got online in the early days (pre-Windows, pre-web browser) found so amazing — if not outright addictive. And, it’s the thing that has helped us re-shape our lives ever since. It’s being able to find, relate and build relationships with like-minded people.

In large, densely populated places like New York, finding like-minded people isn’t actually all that difficult. Close proximity to millions of other people mean that you literally meet new people every single day. The law of large numbers is in your favor, because the average person spends most of their waking hours out in “public.”

For the rest of the country, though, it’s more rare. We go from our home to our car (which we sit in alone) to a parking lot at work to a cubical and then maybe to lunch with co-workers (or, if you’re like me, eat at your desk while working — I know, I know), before wrapping up the day, getting back in your car (alone), and driving home.

It’s an existance in which it is possible to go weeks without actually having a real conversation with anyone new. Because in the suburbs, we are all taught to mind the invisible space around us, and not to breech other people’s. We don’t engage in actual conversation with strangers — hell, some of us rarely even manage to exchange pleasantries.

If you’re not socializing with new people, how do you find and build a tribe? And why should that matter for entrepreneurs?

Last Friday was an example of an event that was 100% about The Tribe of the Entrepreneur: Startup Lessons Learned Conference. Held in San Francisco, the event embodied the notion of tribes for two main reasons:

1. It was a self-selected group of technology entrepreneurs who have organized themselves around a specific operating and development philosophy when it comes to building new businesses.
2. It was simulcast around the world, to groups of tech entrepreneurs in other cities, who have also self-selected into that same philosophically driven community.

Due to scheduling conflicts, I was unable to attend, despite the fact that one of my most regular haunts here in Austin was hosting a day-long simulcast event (akin, in most respects, to a Super Bowl Party). Instead I watched Twitter with an endless fascination. Because my Tweetstream is made up of large numbers of technology professionals and entrepreneurs (and those who worship them), it was almost like watching Twitter or Facebook during the “the big game.”

The spectators became their own kind of sport for those of us not in attendance. And it made me consider the nature of the phenomenon I was witnessing in my rapidly scrolling Tweetdeck screen, and it brought my thoughts back to last week’s comment by Frank Peters: Do entrepreneurs build companies because they are trying to create their perfect tribe?

When I was growing up, my parents (and their collegues) had Active 20-30, Rotary, Kiwanis or Lions as a tribe-building tool for business. But it was an imperfect solution, because those groups were technically chartered to be service organizations. Business networking among professionals within a community was technically just a “perk.” But now there doesn’t need to be any dual meaning or conflicting agendas. If someone wants a business networking group, all they need is a web browser pointed at Meetup.com and a couple of quick search strings to see what’s going on in their neck of the woods.

Entrepreneurship can be a lonely road:

• People tell you that your idea is too crazy, too expensive, too impractical, too whatever.
• Your parents don’t quite appreciate that their childhood stories of “job security” are a thing of the past, and constantly encourage you to give up building your own business in exchange for a paycheck and health benefits.
• Your spouse is crabby because you work twice as many hours as you did when you had a J-O-B.
• You start counting taking a shower as your “morning break” and a trip to the gas station a major misallocation of time and resources.

Who on earth could possibly relate to that moment when you can hear two different voices in your head, one telling you to give it all up and leave the headaches to someone else, find a J-O-B and walk away… and the other voice scoffing at being told what to do and when, wearing a suit and sitting in a cubical?

A tribe of other entrepreneurs can.

I talk a lot about why I think we’re in an Entrepreneurial Age and why I believe that entrepreneurship is the new populism, and most of that discussion ends up being about technology. And it’s true, we wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for the tech. But the technology is just the pavement. Before our modern world, an entrepreneur needed a four-wheel drive to handle all the crazy off-road terrain. Now, even if all you’ve got is a skateboard, you can get started. And it’s because now there is pavement, where we used to only have dirt and gravel.

The really cool thing about it, though, isn’t even just how much easier it is for individuals to hit the road. It’s how easy it is to connect with other people on a similar journey. Along the way, without even realizing it, we end up building a tribe. After all, like any good salesman will tell you, success is always all about the relationships.

Do you know how to find your tribe?

The WorkingPoint Community is made up of small business owners, like yourself, and we want you to get to know each other. We’d like to introduce you to Carol Pecora of Call Carol Website Services:

“Carol’s website services include website setup, troubleshooting, optimizing and updating.”

Don’t have a profile for your small business? Learn more or Sign up for an account and create your free company profile today!

The WorkingPoint Community is made up of small business owners, like yourself, and we want you to get to know each other. We’d like to introduce you to James Sola of Health Mania Natural Foods, LLC:

“… a Northwest companies with a passion to produce Heart Healthy bakery products high in fiber, protein and Omega 3.”

Don’t have a profile for your small business? Learn more or Sign up for an account and create your free company profile today!

Today is the Central Texas Entreprenuer Funding Symposium here in Austin. This is an interesting event for up-and-coming ventures trying to figure out how to navigate the waters of funding in order to get their ideas off the ground.

It’s been an interesting day, and there are a couple of interesting and obvious observations that come to mind as we head towards the home stretch of today’s activities.

Estrogen-Free Zone

I have always been the only girl in a boy’s clubhouse in my career. I was a woman in tech. I was the only woman managing a team of network and system engineers (the software world has TONS of women compared to the hardware world!). As an entrepreneur, even though women own a large number of businesses, once you start getting into the more formal entrepreneurial community, there are very few of us. And, today, surrounded by Angel Investors, Venture Capitalists, and the rest of this community, I can count the number of women here in my fingers.

There is a ton of speculation about why this is — ranging from theories on women’s prediliction for lifestyle businesses, to the idea that female-owned businesses tend to be more cash efficient than their male counterparts, to the idea that good old-fashioned sexism is still alive and well, even among the tech meritocratic communities of super progressive places like San Francisco, New York and Austin. Mostly, I just find it staggering to walk around a conference with more than 200 people, and only see about ten other women.

Web Is Not the Center of the Universe

Every once in a while, I get these strange pangs that I am making crazy assumptions about the people around me as a result of having lived in the web world for too long. I think that people know what FTP is (and how/why to do it), I think that people know what a VPN is (and what it’s for), and I think people understand what the software development lifecycle and have a methodology preferece (Waterfall vs. Agile).

I’ll get a random inkling that my assumptions are wrong, but since I seem to know very few people who don’t live in the same universe that I do, I rarely encounter evidence to confirm my nagging suspicions. Until today. Apparently web isn’t king. Biotech is. Even more interesting to note is that, for however hard I may think it is to raise money for a web startup, I am grateful that I am not facing the challenge of trying to raise money for a biotech startup in the pharma space.

Just listening to a handful of Fast Pitches about new ventures building biomedical devices for things like early cancer detection was simultaneously cool, confusing and optimistic about the future of medical science.

Having Your Back Against a Wall

During the morning’s keynote, entrepreneur, Angel investor and podcast radio host, Frank Peters made a comment that struck me for a number of reasons. When discussing the early stages of his software company formation with his brother, he commented that the appeal of being an entrepreneur was that he never fit into Corporate America. When people used to ask him why he wanted to start his own business, his response was: “Because then no one can fire me!”

As a result, Frank discussed how he had his back against a wall. While entrepreneurs — especially new, first-time ones — will often talk about their passion and drive, Frank identified the correllary to that being a sense of having no choice but to succeed. Not “fitting” into a traditional job was a huge motivator for him to make his business successful.

This makes me wonder: How many of us start our own business in order to create a place where we fit in?

Investors Are Nervous About the Dodd Bill

Investors like investing. Even when they lose money, they invest because they love it. And the idea that the Dodd Finance Reform Bill may radically change the qualifications of accredited investors — drastically reducing the number of investors who qualify — is something that is making many people anxious. A great many of the Angel Investors who are currently accredited investors are close to the borderline to meet the asset and/or income requirements. The inflation adjustments proposed by the Dodd Bill are going to have an enormous impact.

And entrepreneurs who are eager to find investors are just as nervous. (I wrote about this recently, if you are interested in a bit more details about this issue or finding out what you can do to help prevent it.)

All in all, it’s been an interesting day.  There is quite a bit of valuable information flying around, and I always enjoy seeing a group of excited entrepreneurs who are trying to make things happen.

But Frank Peters words are still ringing in my ears, and I’ll need to think about it some more.  Because the more I think about it, the more I think he’s not the only one whose business was a vehicle to find a professional home for himself while trying to earn a living.  And, truth be told, I think that’s probably a pretty damn good reason for many of us who can’t help marching to our own drummer.