I came across a couple of interesting web applications recently. The first is AccountingASAP.com.
Offering free invoicing is a great way to get their name out there and encourage users to check out their for-pay stuff. It reminds me a little of the free version vs. pro version model, but there are differences. They’ve pulled a small part of an overall accounting package and made it fully functional and available. There will certainly be people who use the invoicing and that’s all they want or need. It also shows off their programming and design ability, which may entice some customers.
The next is TrackVia. It’s an online database, but seems to be more than just that. I really need to get a few apps on the web so that employees around the country have easier access to them. For instance, we use Trac and Subversion, both of which offer a web-based front end. Trac is a bug tracker and Subversion is document management.
I have a few other Excel based apps that people would actually use properly if they didn’t have to VPN in and deal with using Excel over the VPN. I’ve installed Ruby on Rails and it’s all ready to start serving apps, I just don’t have enough time to port them from VBA to RoR. TrackVia, it seems, can do about 95% of what I want and it would take no time at all to set up.
I’ve got three problems with TrackVia. Their $250 per month plan isn’t big enough for my super small company. Their $250 per month plan costs $250 per month. And then there’s the matter of that last 5% of functionality I want. I watched the demos and I’m very intrigued by what it can do. If this kind of thing interests you, the 15 minutes of demo video is worth watching.
I recently signed up to FreshBooks and it’s fabulous. Not Excel-based, but a lovely tool for the small business.
Hi Dick,
Thanks for taking a look at TrackVia! I’d love to hear the missing 5%, as it’s probably either on our dev roadmap, or needs to be. As for our entry level pricing of $250/month, I understand that it can look too steep for some small businesses. One thing I’ll emphasize about TrackVia is that we provide astounding hands-on support. Seriously, we just can’t stop ourselves from doing everything we can to help our customers. We answer the phones here, we build apps, write formulas, troubleshoot the HTML of web forms, etc. We used to have lower entry level pricing and we found that our level of customer support started to slip. We’re just not wired to provide sloppy support, and raising the entry level price was our way of ensuring we can offer astounding support and make money too!
Chris
TrackVia
Thanks for the mention. Your write up was spot on. We of course want to attract people to our full accounting software, but there are a lot of folks just starting out who just need to create an invoice, and we are glad to help them get it done quickly with no hassles.