OE Companion Blog for QuickBooks Online Edition

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2010-03-27T21:07:00.001-05:00

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Happy Holidays from OE Companion

2009-12-23T12:08:00.002-06:00

This has been a wonderful year for OE Companion. This time last year, we were still writing code needed to create a marketable product. Now we have not only a solid product but also a rapidly growing user base.

We are working on a major overhaul of OE Companion. Over the first half of next year, we will release many of our most-requested features. We're also redesigning the user interface to make it much more user-friendly. Whereas 2009 was simply about getting a product into the market, 2010 is about making an amazing product.

Thanks to everyone for making this a great year, and happy holidays to you and your family!

QuickBooks Online adds Inventory Tracking!

2009-10-08T14:31:00.003-05:00

As I predicted, QuickBooks Online has added basic inventory capabilities. To try it out, go to the "Preferences" menu and choose "Products and Services." There you can turn on the "Quantity on Hand" option. The functionality is a bit limited, but I'm sure that more robust capabilities are not far behind. According to their product page, you can create purchase orders too, although I have not seen that in the product yet.

What does that mean for OE Companion? Nothing really ... maybe a few less sales in the short-term. It definitely doesn't change our focus. As I mentioned in that prediction post, OE Companion was developed with the assumption that QuickBooks Online would add inventory capabilities in the not-too-distant future. In that regard, things are going exactly as planned.

We are committed to being the best add-on for QuickBooks Online, and we continue working toward that goal. We've got some exciting things planned for the next few months. As always, please email me at neal@oecompanion.com if you have any questions.

Stacy Kildal webinar on inventory in QuickBooks Online

2009-09-30T08:07:00.006-05:00

Stacy Kildal is presenting a webinar Tuesday, October 13 about how to manage inventory using QuickBooks Online with OE Companion.

Stacy is an Advanced Certified ProAdvisor and also an Intuit Community All-Star. Her company specializes in the online version of QuickBooks. She has presented an Intuit Community Town Hall on QuickBooks Online Edition, and this week she is hosting Intuit's Ask the Expert forum about QuickBooks Online. Fortunately for us, she is also a big fan of OE Companion.

If you are interested in learning more about QuickBooks Online and OE Companion, you should consider attending this session. Stacy is always well-prepared, and I'm sure you will learn a lot.

Introducing Easy Edit for QuickBooks Online

2009-09-24T08:17:00.002-05:00

Today we released a beta version of our new “Easy Edit” feature. You can find it under the Data menu in OE Companion. I’m really excited about this feature, because it eliminates a major pain point of using both QuickBooks Online and OE Companion. If you’re wondering what the heck it does, read on…

Have you ever tried to add or edit a large volume of data in QuickBooks Online? Takes a while, doesn’t it? Actually it takes a while in the desktop version too. I’m certainly not faulting QuickBooks. They have made it about as easy as possible. There just aren’t a lot of good design options for data entry on thousands of customer records that have 50-100 fields each. Similarly, in OE Companion trying to update inventory counts for hundreds or thousands of items individually is quite cumbersome. What you really need is to use software that was built for editing large amounts of data.

So we set out to solve that problem, and we did! Easy Edit is the result. It is a 3-step process:

Download your data to Excel (or another program).
Make your adds/edits in Excel (or another program).
Upload your data back to OE Companion, which then sends it to QuickBooks Online.

It sounds ridiculously simple, and it is. That’s the point. It’s very simple and it’s very fast. This will save you a TON of time if you do lots of data entry with QuickBooks Online. If you are paying someone to do data entry (and I know many of you are!), this feature will save you money. There is no doubt about that.

Right now you can only use Easy Edit for items (products/services), but we’ll have support for other things shortly after we gather some feedback from our users about the way Easy Edit works. Please email me (neal@oecompanion.com) if you have any questions, and be sure to let us know what you think about Easy Edit.

Recent Improvements to OE Companion

2009-08-13T10:21:00.005-05:00

Those of you who regularly send us feedback know that we are extremely responsive to customer issues. We certainly don’t implement every suggestion that comes our way, but we do our best to incorporate your comments into the product. Here are a few nuggets we’ve added to OE Companion in recent weeks based on your feedback. Thanks again for sending it, and keep it coming.

Added a discussion group (accessible via help menu)

Improved display of sub-items and sub-customers

Added estimated ship date to purchase orders

Added ability to display purchase order numbers on packing slips

Enabled an approval process for purchase orders

Added ability to customize email messages sent with POs, sales orders, and packing slips

Modified list screens so that they remember sort order

Improved structure of help menus

Modified purchase orders to include separate column for vendor part number

Added setting to automatically CC all purchase orders to a specified address

Added ability to specify that certain items should not synchronize with QuickBooks Online

PayPal Integration for QuickBooks Online

2009-08-10T07:27:00.002-05:00

We just released a beta version of a really cool new feature. We’ve integrated PayPal with QuickBooks Online in what we call our “PayPal Automation” feature. Here’s how it works.

OE Companion now has the ability to receive PayPal Instant Payment Notifications (IPNs) on your behalf and process them according to your instructions. You simply enable the IPN feature in your PayPal account and instruct them to send the notifications to us. Then fill out a quick form in OE Companion to tell us how to process them.

That’s it! Your PayPal account is now linked with your QuickBooks Online account. For example, now when you receive a PayPal payment, OE Companion can automatically generate a sales receipt and post it to QuickBooks Online. Even better, if you track inventory in OE Companion, the software can automatically update your inventory counts as PayPal payments come through. Think about that. No more manual data entry or manually importing transactions. Set it up and forget it!

As with all our new features, we’ve introduced PayPal automation in a “beta” phase, which means we need you to try it and give us lots of feedback on how it works. We’ve tested it internally, and we know it works pretty well. Now we need your help to polish it and take it from good to great.

If you’d like to try out our PayPal integration with QuickBooks Online, go to the “Admin” menu in your account and enable it. Or if you don’t have an account, sign up for a free trial today.

Update on OE Companion

2009-08-05T14:15:00.003-05:00

It's been a while since I've posted a general status update. Part of the reason is that we've been so busy with development work. Over the next few weeks we are going to be releasing some significant enhancements to OE Companion. And that's just the beginning. By the end of the year, you will be able to do things with QuickBooks Online that were just wishful thinking before. Be sure to subscribe to our blog feed, as I'll post more information when specific features become available.

Thanks again to everyone for your interest in OE Companion. Your input and suggestions help keep us motivated.

OE Companion listed on Intuit Solutions Marketplace

2009-07-11T21:36:00.003-05:00

It has been an exciting few days for us. We received the official word that OE Companion has been approved by Intuit for listing on the Intuit Solutions Marketplace. Here is a link to our listing: http://marketplace.intuit.com/AppID-3205-Overview.aspx

As part of this process, the integration between QuickBooks Online and OE Companion was reviewed by an independent testing lab. I'm happy to report that no bugs were found, and our our application was approved on the first try.

Thanks again to all our beta testers and customers who have provided feedback. We could not have done it without you.

Document Management for QuickBooks Online

2009-07-01T02:59:00.002-05:00

Can’t ever find the documents you need? Do you want to make the move to a paperless office? In either case, OE Companion can help. We just released the new “Docs” module of OE Companion to give you anytime, anywhere access to your files, organized by QuickBooks transaction.

Now you can upload files to OE Companion and link them to OE Companion and QuickBooks Online. For example, you could upload all of your vendor W-9 forms and have them linked to each vendor for easy access. You could scan purchase orders and link them to shipments. You are limited only by your imagination.

Currently the Docs module is in a beta phase, which means everyone can use it for free. It also means that we need feedback from you. We want to hear your thoughts so that we can improve the product.

Here are a few of the key features:

You can link documents to customers, vendors, invoices, sales receipts, purchase orders, sales orders, inventory items, or anything else tracked by QuickBooks Online or OE Companion.
Each document can be linked to multiple transactions, and each transaction can be linked to multiple documents.
All uploaded files are backed up regularly to a secure offsite backup.

Try it out for yourself. If you are already a subscriber, look for the "Documents" option under the Company menu. If you aren't yet a subscriber, what are you waiting for? Start a free trial today.

Rolling out new features

2009-06-15T10:00:00.002-05:00

One of the great benefits of using SaaS (Software-As-A-Service) offerings like QuickBooks Online and OE Companion is that you automatically receive any updates to the software. As a user, you are always using the latest version.

Now that we are out of beta OE Companion will typically roll out at least one release per week. Sometimes the update will be minor and sometimes major, but basically we plan to push out new features as soon as they are available. For example, last week we added packing slips. This week we made a bunch of usability enhancements.

On occasion, we might label a new feature as "beta." That designation is usually reserved for complex features that require testing from a broad pool of users. We love to get feedback from customers in general, but we especially encourage you to send us feedback on beta features. That helps us to improve them quickly.

As always, please email me if there are any features that you would like to see in OE Companion. Who knows? You might see it show up in next week's release!

OE Companion No Longer in Beta

2009-06-05T14:02:00.004-05:00

You might have noticed a subtle change to our website today. OE Companion is no longer in a "beta" trial. After a successful beta program, we're moving to an official release.

You won't notice any immediate changes to the service. Everything will still work exactly the same as it did before. The main difference is that each account will now begin with a 30-day free trial period. After that 30-day period ends, you will be required to pay a monthly fee to continue using OE Companion.

I would like to thank all of our beta participants. Your diligence and willingness to try something new have made OE Companion immensely better. I also encourage everyone to continue to send us feedback. We'll keep adding features and fixing bugs on a regular basis.

Strange user showing up in QuickBooks Online

2009-06-04T13:33:00.005-05:00

June 5 Update: I did hear back from Intuit on this (thanks for the quick response guys!). It appears to be an issue on their side and they are looking into it.

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Third-party applications (like OE Companion) are not allowed to access the user list in QuickBooks Online. That's a security feature put in place by QBOE, and it's a good one. Instead what happens is that the app is listed in the Connections List in QBOE. It's not considered a "user" like someone who logs in. It's considered a connection, which makes sense.

So imagine my surprise this week when my user list looked like the screenshot below. Somehow, a strange user had been added to my user list. When you click on that user for more information, it's clearly related to a third-party app (mine). Strange!

I have two QBOE accounts that I use with OE Companion - one for testing and one for the service business I own (the reason I developed OE Companion in the first place). This odd user only showed up in one of my companies, not both. I deleted the user, and OE Companion still works fine, so hopefully it's just a temporary glitch in QBOE. I have heard one other report of this happening to someone.

I contacted Intuit support to ask them what happened. I'll post here when/if I find out any details from them. If you have seen a user like this in your QBOE account, whether you use OE Companion or not, please drop me a comment or an email and let me know. At this point, any information would be helpful to figure out the explanation.

The good news is that it doesn't appear to affect either QBOE or the third-party apps in any way. It appears to be more of a curiosity thing at this point.

What if QuickBooks Online adds inventory and purchase orders?

2009-05-20T15:45:00.002-05:00

I get that question a lot when talking about OE Companion. It’s a good question. Here are my thoughts.

First, I assume that the question is “when,” not “if.” I would be stunned if Intuit has no plans to add those features to QuickBooks Online at some point in the future. So I’m proceeding on the assumption that they will.

What does that do to OE Companion and what would happen to your inventory data in OE Companion?

First, your data. If QBOE introduces inventory and purchase order features, OE Companion will give you the ability to export your existing inventory data to QBOE (assuming of course that QBOE allows us to do it). OE Companion sends all the data you need for inventory accounting to QBOE already, so it shouldn’t be a big problem.

Now, what happens to OE Companion? Keep in mind that inventory and purchase orders are just the first thing that was implemented in OE Companion. There is much more to come, and frankly the other stuff is much cooler! The bottom line is that OE Companion is a supplement to QuickBooks Online. If QBOE adds an inventory feature two years down the road (or whenever), then I encourage you to use it and I will do everything I can to support it. OE Companion will focus on other things. I assure you that there is plenty of functionality that we can add-on to QuickBooks Online.

10 Tips for Starting a Business

2009-05-19T10:05:00.004-05:00

I’ve started 5 businesses in the last 15 years. The first one didn't turn out so well, but the others have been successful. I’ve made a lot of mistakes during that time. Fortunately, none of the mistakes have (yet) been catastrophic. Here is a collection of some of the things I’ve learned the hard way. Please feel free to send me your thoughts. I’m especially curious to hear where your experience is different than mine.

Don’t spend too much money. That seems blatantly obvious, but I can’t tell you how many companies I have seen do fundamentally ridiculous things. Early on you should scrutinize every expense and ask whether it is really necessary.
Don’t go broke. The first step to success in business is staying in business. Make sure you have plenty of cash reserves. In my experience, it always takes more than you think.
Start small. You can always add more people, equipment, etc. as the business grows.
Listen to your customers. They will tell you what direction to go. I don’t necessarily mean ask them directly, as they might have their own agendas. But their actions (and their dollars) speak loudly about what you should be doing.
Combine tips 3 and 4. As you grow, adapt your business to what your customers want.
Focus on your competitive strengths. I would rather be #1 in one or two categories than be #5 in ten categories.
Whatever your strength, drive it home in the mind of your customers. You are generally better off reinforcing a strength than trying to overcome a weakness.
Advertise to get the word out, then let your customers do your advertising for you. Have you ever noticed how the very best businesses, especially small businesses, do very little advertising. They don’t need to advertise, because their customers are telling everyone else about their products.
Put your ego aside and treat customers the way you want to be treated. Most customers aren’t out to cheat you. If they are complaining about something, do your best to fix it, even if it is their fault.
Start!!! That’s the hardest part – taking the plunge. Beyond that, you can plug numbers into a spreadsheet all day, but you won’t know if it will really work until you try.

Quick Update on OE Companion

2009-05-11T08:45:00.002-05:00

The beta trial is going well. We have not run into any major problems. I expect that we will end the beta fairly soon and have an official "launch." Barring any unforeseen problems, that should happen within the next month or so. Remember that beta testers receive a 50% discount on the first three months of service after launch. If you wish to receive the discount, you only have a few days remaining to sign up.

You have provided many excellent suggestions for additional features and enhancements to OE Companion. Thank you for those, and please continue to send them. We are working hard to implement as many of your requests as possible.

Have a great week!

QuickBooks Online Edition now available on Mac, Safari

2009-05-06T08:25:00.003-05:00

Mac users ... the day has finally arrived. QBOE is now available on the Mac. As you are likely aware, and as others have noted, that will provide a key set of missing functionality for Mac users of QuickBooks. Specifically, multi-user access is now a reality. Of course due to limitations of QuickBooks Online, inventory management, purchase orders, and other features are still not available.

In the shameless plug department, OE Companion works great with Safari. If you are a Mac user trying out QuickBooks Online Edition and you need inventory management or purchase orders, try OE Companion.

Charts and Graphs for QuickBooks Online Edition

2009-04-22T00:55:00.005-05:00

You can now use OE Companion to create charts and graphs of your QBOE data. Previously the only way to see your QBOE data in a chart was to export your data to Excel and then manually create each chart. Now you can do it in two mouse clicks with OE Companion. Here is a screenshot of a pie chart using data from QuickBooks Online Edition.

Right now the following charts and graphs are supported. If there are any more you would like to see, please email support@oecompanion.com.

Expenses by Category
Income and Expense Summary by Month
Accounts Receivable by Customer
Accounts Receivable by Days Aging
Sales by Month
Sales by Item
Accounts Payable by Days Aging
Accounts Payable by Vendor

OE Companion is Online!

2009-04-17T02:53:00.005-05:00

The beta version of OE Companion is now available. To create your free beta account, go to http://www.oecompanion.com/.

This release includes mainly the inventory and purchase order functionality of OE Companion. Other features will be added as soon as they are available.

The beta trial will last somewhere between six weeks and several months. As described in a previous post, a monthly fee will be required to continue to use the service after the trial ends. Active beta testers (those who send us feedback) will receive a 50% discount on the first three months of service after the beta trial ends.

Certainly I want to eliminate any bugs or errors in the software, but most importantly I want your feedback on how well OE Companion works in your business. Your input will drive the future direction of the product.

I can’t wait to hear your feedback.

Pricing for OE Companion

2009-04-15T11:25:00.002-05:00

As we approach the beta release, I want to discuss pricing for OE Companion. It will of course be free until the end of the beta trial. However, I don’t want to ask people to be beta testers without at least some idea of what the final, released product will cost.

I’ll be honest. Pricing is hard. Most companies that will use OE Companion are small businesses, and it must make sense financially. Having owned a small service business myself for several years, I am very sensitive to the financial decisions that small business owners make on a daily basis.

With that background, here is the general idea of how pricing will work for OE Companion:

There will be a monthly service fee based on the modules to which you want to subscribe. For example, if you subscribe to only the inventory module you will pay less than someone that subscribes to all the modules. I specifically designed the software that way. I don’t want people to have to pay for a lot of stuff they don’t need.
Just like QuickBooks Online, each OE Companion company will include access for up to 3 active users. Each user in a company beyond that limit will require an additional fee. That constraint is really more about making sure people don’t abuse the service than it is about making money.
Some number of SMS alert messages will be included with the subscription. There will be a limit though, and you will be charged for any messages over your limit. Pretty standard stuff there.

I have not finalized the monthly fees yet. To give you an idea what I’m thinking, the base monthly fee will be somewhere around … drum roll please … $19.95 per month.

Here is how I look at it as a business owner. In my company we have somebody doing data entry work 10-15 hours per week. That’s around 50 hours over the course of a month. By using OE Companion, I am extremely confident that I can cut that number at least in half, perhaps even by 75%. Also, we use other software-as-a-service solutions that I can eliminate when all the features of OE Companion are done. Those are all hard dollar savings. Now when you also factor in my own personal time savings as an owner, the ROI of using OE Companion is ridiculously high, even if you allow for some additional modules or extra users.

In the end my goal for OE Companion is to build the most useful service possible for businesses using QuickBooks Online Edition. I really believe it will add value to your company.

Demo of Inventory for QuickBooks Online

2009-04-13T00:52:00.002-05:00

Click the link below for a video demo of the inventory functionality in OE Companion. Let me know what you think.

http://www.oecompanion.com/inventory.aspx

I'll post more details later this week about the upcoming beta release.

Inventory and Purchase Order features are done!

2009-03-19T23:49:00.004-05:00

A couple of hours ago I finished coding the Inventory module of OE Companion. Certainly there is still some polishing to do, but all the major functions work. Here are some of the key things you can do:

Track inventory items and assemblies
Issue purchase orders and track shipments
Create sales orders and convert them to QuickBooks Online invoices
Value inventory using weighted average, FIFO, or LIFO methods
Receive automated email or SMS alerts when inventory gets low
Automatically update inventory counts from QBOE invoices and sales receipts

The most important feature of all is the deep integration with QuickBooks Online. That was the primary design goal of the software.

So what's next? Soon I will release a beta version of the inventory module with the features above. If you are interested, please sign up to be a beta tester. The major work left to do is to set up the infrastructure required to support the beta test. I need to provision a server, enable user sign-ups, create documentation, etc. I don't have an exact date yet, but it should not be more than a few weeks from now.

For those of you waiting on the other features (PayPal integration, data import, etc.), those will be rolling out over the next few months.

QuickBooks Online has a New Look

2009-03-15T03:32:00.002-05:00

The FireFox-compatible version of QBOE is now live! There is also a nice new look-and-feel. I have only played with it for a few minutes, but it looks great so far. What do you think?

Quick Status Update

2009-03-09T22:26:00.002-05:00

As you have probably noticed, I have not had a lot of time to post on the blog lately. I have been focused on getting the beta version out the door, and we are still on schedule there. I am very excited about the way the QuickBooks Online inventory and purchase order functionality works so far. I hope you will be as well.

Over the next few weeks, you will see much more information here. I am also planning to resume my series on tips for using QBOE. As always, please drop me a note if you have any questions. The next few months are going to be very exciting!

Questions on OE Companion Beta

2009-02-23T11:12:00.003-06:00

Sometime in late March or early April, we will make the beta trial of OE Companion publicly available. (If you are interested in participating in the beta, sign up here.) The initial beta release will contain primarily the inventory and purchase order functionality of OE Companion.

The remaining features will be phased in over a period of a few months. During this time that the software is in a "beta" phase, you are free to use all the features of the software at no charge. We just ask that you provide feedback to help us improve the software.

At some point in the future, once we feel it is ready, we will move from a beta phase into a commerically available phase. At that point, the software will cease to be free, and it will require a monthly fee. Beta testers will receive a discount for an initial period, to ease the transition. Pricing has not been announced yet, but it will be announced before the beta begins.

I hope this helps to answer some of your questions. Please contact us if you have further questions. We will continue to provide additional information as it becomes available.