Question: What do the majority of business owners hate doing the most? Answer: Bookkeeping. Easiest quiz ever. That time-consuming data entry you have to stay on top of to truly understand how your business is doing—or at the very least, to satisfy Uncle Sam—is a pain. Well, buckle up because we at Cloudmanic Labs are pumped to announce a sweet new Skyclerk feature that will drastically cut the hours you spend bookkeeping: Snap!Clerk.
It’s easy: using your mobile phone simply snap photos of your receipts on the go—and Snap!Clerk does the rest. Your receipts will be instantly uploaded to the Skyclerk servers, analyzed, and accurately entered into your ledger. Pay. Snap!Clerk. Done. How painless is that?
If you are the control freak type (many of us are) don’t worry—you can choose a certain label or two, add a note, or select a particular contact, and Snap!Clerk will fill in the rest. Snap!Clerk is accessible via mobile and web interfaces, and you can even upload receipts by email.
The Cloudmanic Team is stoked to announce that Skyclerk just
got better and cheaper. And here’s the best part: in most cases you don’t need
to do anything except pay less than you were paying before. Lucky you! Let’s take
a moment to investigate the details together.
Better how?
We know how frustrating it is to make a decision when you
have too many choices. We also know that your business accounting needs change
over time. Because we are squarely in the simple is better camp, we have simplified
our pricing to a free plan and a paid Premium plan that includes unlimited
monthly transactions, unlimited contacts, and unlimited storage to meet your
business accounting needs whether they are small or big. And soon the paid plan
will include 50 scans a month to help you go paperless and stay organized.
How much cheaper?
A lot cheaper. For example, if you had the $99 a month
Infinity plan, you now get the same service for only $15. At that crazy low
price Skyclerk is one of the cheapest online accounting systems—most of our
peers start around $30 for an unlimited plan. In most cases the change to the
new Premium plan happened automatically. The exception—yes, there is one—is
that if you had a plan bundled with shoeboxed.com, the choice is yours. That
is, you can keep the bundled plan at the previous price by doing nothing. Or
you can unbundle and switch to the new $15 plan by emailing support@cloudmanic.com.
We’ve all seen them: The videos companies make to market their products. For some companies, videos explaining how and why to use their products really make sense (Apple, for example, does a great job at it).
But I have to admit I’m usually skeptical, especially when the video is for a small web start-up. What is the return on investment for one of these minute-long videos? Are they just spending money making these videos to show their VC investors that they are spending their money as fast as possible?
And of course, do people even watch these videos?
For the longest time, I never watched any of these videos when reviewing a product. It just seemed easier and faster to read the website and find out everything I needed to know about a company or product. However, recently I have noticed myself watching promotional videos even before I look at the company’s website.
If my usage patterns have changed, I’m guessing others are finding these types of videos useful as well. Or maybe others have always found these videos useful and I have just been behind the curve.
Either way, it’s time to take the plunge with video. Like most new things at Cloudmanic Labs, we are going learn this video marketing thing by diving right in. We’re please to share our first creation, a quick intro into Skyclerk.
One of the most useful features in Skyclerk when you are first starting out is the ability to import past ledger transactions via a CSV file. Most accounting systems, banks, and spreadsheets will allow you to export your transactions as a CSV file. Once you have a CSV file it is very easy to import your transactions to Skyclerk.
To import your ledger entries follow the instructions below.
1) Navigate to your Ledger landing page. From this page click on the “Import Transactions” link in the right column.
In a world where building the next social network or some random deal site is the hot thing to do, why on earth would a company choose to build an accounting system? Has accounting even changed in the last 100 years? Before I can explain how Skyclerk came to be, I should give some personal history.
I am a fourth-generation entrepreneur. As a kid, I watched my father keep his books by hand, using nothing more than pencil and paper. I watched him spend hours every day to keep track of the financials. He would wake up early, stay up late, or work all weekend long just to stay organized. By watching him, I personally witnessed how time consuming and labor intensive it is to run a small business.
Intuit to the rescue? I do not think so!
Finally, Quicken / QuickBooks was born. This seemed like such a game changer for my dad’s free time. But I’m afraid in terms of time, it never saved him much – it just created a brand new list of challenges: installing the software, keeping backups, figuring out all the advanced features, data entry, and so on. Life seemed easier but my father was still spending the same amount of time doing his books.
Now fast forward to 1998, when I started my first company. Just like my father, I had to keep books. I did what most business owners do: I purchased QuickBooks, installed it on my computer, and spent my nights doing bookkeeping. Every bookkeeping session just seemed more and more painful. The software was too complex, it never did what I wanted it to do, and input just took forever. I kept thinking the same thing over and over – there had to be a better way.
Taking Matters Into My Own Hands
In early 2004 I finally snapped. I had to build my own bookkeeping system. I had to speed up the process of accounting so I could focus on growing my company, not taking care of the books. Skyclerk was born from my frustration with the existing systems and my determination to find an alternative. From 2004 to 2010, Skyclerk was nothing more than an internal tool that I kept enhancing to make better and better.
It took a while to realize, but in late 2007 I finally concluded that if I hated other accounting systems, other people must too. Why not offer Skyclerk to other business owners? I have shaved hours and hours of bookkeeping time from my life. Time is too valuable. Why not share with the world?
Now people around the globe use Skyclerk. Accounting may never be “hot,” but Skyclerk is a valuable tool that saves people time so they can build their businesses, enjoy their families, or even browse their social networks.
The moral of my story, and Skyclerk’s story: Don’t just settle. There is always a better way.
We’ve always had a good relationship with Shoeboxed. It’s no wonder, really, considering we have so much in common: Efficiency, style, a deep hatred of loose pieces of paper.
Our partnership has been going so well, we decided it was time to take things to the next level. Shoeboxed and Skyclerk has seriously committed to each other. To celebrate this joyous occasion, we wanted to share the love.
Starting today, any Premium or Infinity Skyclerk user will get a free Shoeboxed account. Free! Here’s how:
If you don’t have a Skyclerk account, just register one and we’ll do the rest, from setting you up with Shoeboxed to linking the two accounts together.
If you already have a Skyclerk account, all you need to do is activate Shoeboxed.
If you already have a Shoeboxed account, we’ll transfer it over to Skyclerk. Don’t worry; we’ll pick up the tab so you only have one monthly bill.
Like any strong relationship, this one is based on a seamless give-and-take. When you have both accounts activated, your Shoeboxed transactions will be automatically imported to your Skyclerk account every day. How sweet is that?
Waltz on over to Skyclerk to get started. Ain’t love grand?
