Acuinvoice

Today we are pleased to announce the initial public release of AcuInvoice. AcuInvoice is a web-based application for estimating and invoicing clients and is ideal for small office/home office environments. Though we will soon have multiple product plans, we are inviting the public to sign-up for our free Early Adopter plan. Though work remains to be done, we feel pretty good about the current state of this application and look forward to constructive criticisms from the public. Early Adopters will have complete access to this application until at least January 1. 2008—possibly longer. When AcuInvoice reaches a 1.0 state, subscribers will have the option of either switching to our free plan or going to one of several affordable paid plans. We ask for your patience over the coming days as we add new features and implement some last minute changes to the marketing site.

Many Thanks

Before I go into an overview of AcuInvoice’s features and our plans for the near future, I’d like to thank several parties for their support. First, I would like to thank the Kentucky Science and Technology Corporation (KSTC) for having the confidence to see value not only in AcuInvoice, but in our broader development plans as well. This effort would not have been possible without KSTC’s guidance and financial support; we look forward to working with them on subsequent development efforts. Next, we would like to thank the individuals who have participated in the private beta testing of AcuInvoice. Your feedback has been valuable and has helped keep us focused on our top priority: our customers. In particular, I would like to give a big public thanks to Ronald Heft, who went out of his way to provide quality feedback on AcuInvoice. Ronald, we appreciate your help and will be working diligently to address the outstanding issues you have identified. Last, I’d like to thank the entire AcuInvoice development team. It has been a real pleasure working with all of you and I thank you for your efforts.

Key Features of AcuInvoice

AcuInvoice is feature-rich, so I’m only going to point out the high level features.

1. Simple invoicing and estimating. AcuInvoice is fundamentally a tool for managing invoices and estimates. It has a simple interface for managing the full life-cycle of an invoice.
2. Integration with PayPal, 2checkout.com, and Authorize.net. Simply enter in your account information for one of these services, and you will be able to receive payment via credit cards. Once payment is received, invoices will be automatically retired by AcuInvoice.
3. Track receipt of invoices. If you’ve been in businesses, you’re familiar with the “I didn’t receive the invoice” line. AcuInvoice has been designed in a manner that allows you to detect the actual receipt of invoices. We believe this will help speed the receipt of payment.
4. Organize invoices. Invoices are categorized into one of several states (estimate, draft, open, closed, past due) and can be labeled with one or more tags to help you stay organized.
5. Manage contacts. AcuInvoice is outfitted with a user friendly contact manager. You can add contacts individually or import them en masses through a structured CSV file. We will soon be adding support for the vCard format.
6. Design your own invoice. CSS gurus can play around with our sample CSS file to create custom invoices. Upload your logo to AcuInvoice to have it included on your invoices and estimates.
7. Multiple users. AcuInvoice has Master and Junior level users, thereby allowing you to delegate tasks to colleagues without giving them access to your account. Our beta tester plan currently supports two additional users.
8. Reports. AcuInvoice comes with several reporting tools built in. We plan on strengthening this functionality considerably over the coming weeks.

Forthcoming Features

1. Domain mapping. Let’s say you are running a consulting business and would like to maintain tight control over your brand. Domain mapping will allow you to point yourdomain.com or billing.yourdomain.com to your installation of AcuInvoice. We think this feature will be useful for those who want to present a more integrated look with their invoicing application.
2. An API and PHP client library. We actually have this developed already, but are finishing up the documentation and sample code. Look for this API in the very near future.
3. Multi-language support (MLS). Again, MLS is already engineered into AcuInvoice. We simply have to finalize the textual content of the application and marketing site, and have the actual translations performed. Our initial goal is to launch in Spanish, French, and German. If you have additional language requests (or if you would like to assist in translating into another language), please contact us at support (at) acuinvoice (dot) com.
4. A more robust tax system. We will soon be launching a flexible tax system that will significantly improve upon that which our competitors offer.
5. Support for services such as Google Checkout, Amazon FPS, and others.

We could go on and on about the features of this application, but at this point, we think it best to simply let you use the software and let us know what you think. If you have any issues, you can either email us at support (at) acuinvoice (dot) com, or submit a ticket by clicking the “report a bug” link in the upper right hand side of the application. We thank you for your interest and look forward to earning your business.

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