TeamworkPM's Engine Room

Teamwork Project Manager  //  Online Project Management and Collaboration App. www.teamworkpm.net

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Oct 19 / 10:43am

Billing Beta with Freshbooks Integration

by Daniel Mackey
Every once in a while we like to post up a sneak peek at what we're working on. As we're pretty close to a final version of the new Billing tab on a project, I'd like to give people the opportunity to test drive this new feature. In this round of Beta testing, we are looking for people who use Freshbooks.

Moz-screenshot-107

If you use Freshbooks and would like to export your Teamwork billable time and expenses, send us a Feedback message from within your installation and we'll enable the tab for you.

When we enable the Billing tab, you will now be able to turn on Billing for existing projects and any new projects you create.

Once you create an invoice and add time or expenses to it, you will be able to export it in various formats.

  • PDF
  • Excel
  • Freshbooks
Moz-screenshot-108

To connect with Freshbooks, you will need to enable the Freshbooks API in your Freshbooks account and grab 2 bits of information we need:

  • Your Freshbooks API URL
  • Your Freshbooks Authentication Token
Moz-screenshot-109

The first thing you will be asked when you authenticate successfully is to choose a client from your Freshbooks account. We'll pull these back and allow you to choose the client from the drop down. Once you pick the client the new invoice will be posted to Freshbooks. Simple and cool.

We are currently working on 2 more integrations:

  • BlinkSale
  • Harvest
Once we have finished this round of Beta testing, we'll release this to everyone and it will be available to all customers of Teamwork. We'll post up a full blog post of how it works and how best to use it.

Dan.

Filed under  //  Beta   Expenses   Features   Freshbooks   Invoices   Preview   billing  
 
May 27 / 12:07pm

New billing portal allows you to pay directly with your credit card without using Paypal

by Peter Coppinger

It's been 2 years coming - we reached the point where Paypal no longer makes sense as the only way to pay us. So for the last week I have been locked away adding support for monthly or annual payments directly from your credit card... and I'm delighted to report that it went live just last night.

 
How does it work?
Well you go to your Subscription page within your teamwork installation as normal but then you hit this upgrade button...
 
Upgradebutton2
 
...you are then taken to our new Billing portal at billing.teamworkpm.net:

 
Newteamworkpmbilling1
 
As you can see, we now allow you to enter your credit card details quickly and directly but still provide the Paypal option if you need it. The Billing portal is secured with 128 bit SSL security so you can enter your card details with complete peace of mind. We will debit your credit card every month (or every year) recurring until you cancel your account and you can easily switch between plans at any time.
 
(ps. I couldn't help myself, I had to add the Killer Monkey into the footer.)
 
Rolling it out - A Side Note
It was funny, I was there in the office after completing days of testing thinking that I'd love to roll this out to just 1 real customer to ensure that everything went smoothly, when I spotted a new feedback message come in. The message subject was "Unable to pay" and it read "Hi. I was trying to pay online and I don’t want to pay through paypal. Is there another way. Thanks Rick". Music to my ears, I sent Rick a reply...
 
Hi Rick,
 
I'm here late in the office finishing our new payment gateway.
 
How  would you like to be the first user to give it a go?
You'll be able to pay us directly.
 
Waiting to hear back from you.
 
Peter
 
From Rick:
That would be perfect! Just let me know what I Need to do. Thanks Rick.

I replied:
That's great Rick.
 
OK, I found your installation and I've enabled the credit card checkout for you.
You are our very first non-Paypal customer and this represents the culmination of a weeks work for me.
This is going to be historic.. epic even :p
 
Just go to the subscription page and you should see a credit card entry page.
 
I'll be holding my breath here...
 
Peter,
    Wow awesome. It worked perfect.  I checked my account and it shows as processing. Thank you very much. Anything on that Iphone app. Rick
 
Lol. Nice getting a response like that. Thanks Rick.
 

Why ditch Paypal?
Well we didn't ditch it, Paypal has been great for us and we will continue to support it. But many of our loyal customers have told us time and time again that they love Teamwork but hate being forced to pay us with Paypal, as you see above with Rick. For many more, Paypal is simply not an option for their organisation.
 
The second reason is ease of payment. Paypal adds a layer of complexity that is annoying for our customers and loses us business.
 
The third reason is entirely selfish... switching away from having Paypal as the default payment method makes financial sense for us. You see, Paypal is great for getting started with an online businesses because there are no set-up costs and it offers instant utility. Comparing Paypal to traditional Credit Card processing gateways, the gateways have a high initial cost and a higher cost per transaction while the number of transactions are low but as this graph (knocked up in seconds) shows, the number of transactions reaches a point when the cost of using Paypal becomes higher that the credit card gateway. We reached that point a long time ago.
Paypal_makes_sense_up_to_a_point
 
A note on Security
Just a quick note on  the new recurring credit card processing - for security we don't store your credit card details in our database. Instead we send them to our credit card processing partner and we get just back a code that represents the credit card. This means your credit card details are kept completely secure even though we process your payments every month.
 
Thanks for reading. Hope you all enjoy the new checkout.
I'm moving on, locking myself up again and concentrating on getting the IPhone app out the door before I hear any more screams about it. :)
 
Filed under  //  New features   billing   updates