Acuinvoice

Over the past few days we have started to populate content for the AcuInvoice Help Wiki.  The wiki will soon be available in the “Help” tab in AcuInvoice, but since much of the content is already in place, and since it is in a publicly available directory, we see no reason to withhold it any longer.  We still need to populate content for the Reports tab, as well as the FAQ and API pages, but the overwhelming majority of the content is in place and in pretty good shape.  We think you will find it useful.  Also, if you have been an AcuInvoice user for some time, and know of some tips you’d like to share, feel free to contribute.  We would like to give a special thanks to Andreas Gohr, creator of DokuWiki, the software powering this support system.  We highly recommend Andreas’s software.  It is fast, efficient, and super easy to use.  

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Today we are proud to announce the release of the AcuInvoice Simple Store. We are releasing this lightweight PHP script free of charge to the AcuInvoice community as a means of providing a set of core classes that can be used in custom applications that interact with AcuInvoice via the API. We have prepared a zip archive of the AcuInvoice Simple Store  for you to download and install on your web server. As previously described in detail, the Simple Store can be easily installed on your web server and allow you to sell products–both digital and traditional goods–via a clean looking storefront. Order information is passed securely to your AcuInvoice account via the API, and customers are able to pay via any AcuInvoice payment gateway you have enabled. If you are selling digital goods (software, eBooks, etc.), these goods will be automatically delivered to your customer once the invoice has been converted into a closed state (either via a payment gateway or from a payment you have manually entered).  Below you will see a brief demonstration of the Simple Store installation process.  By the end of the week we will have a full demonstration of how to configure the Simple Store (you should be able to figure it out without the demo, we think) and how orders are processed.  Meanwhile, if you have any questions about the AcuInvoice Simple Store, please email us at support (at) acuinvoice (dot) com or submit a ticket from within your AcuInvoice account.   

Installing the AcuInvoice Simple Store

As the name implies, installation is easy, but it never hurts to have some helpful visuals.  This demo should help.

Technical Requirements

• PHP 5.0.0 or higher
• MySQL extension loaded (in php.ini)
• SimpleXML extension loaded (in php.ini)
• This is not a requirement but a recommendation: allow_url_fopen = 1 (in php.ini). If this option is turned off (value 0) you will still have a fully operational store, however every downloadable item and product image should be uploaded to the store server via the admin application. Linking to remote files and images will not be possible.

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This week we will be releasing version 1.0 of the AcuInvoice Simple Store, a PHP application that uses the AcuInvoice API to enable subscribers to quickly generate a standards-compliant web store where customers can place orders for products, services, and digital goods. Order information is passed securely via the AcuInvoice API to the subscriber’s account and invoices are automatically sent. If you sell digital goods (MP3s, images, software, etc), the items will be automatically delivered to the customer once payment is received and the invoice is converted into a closed state. The AcuInvoice Simple Store is an outstanding example of the power of the AcuInvoice API (it even uses a number of features and data elements that we have yet to fully document) and provides a large amount of sample code that will be useful to other AcuInvoice developers. Therefore, we will be releasing the AcuInvoice Simple Store to the AcuInvoice community free of charge as a means of providing a strong set of core classes with which developers can build custom AcuInvoice applications. We will be putting the finishing touches on the Simple Store early this week, and plan on releasing documentation and tutorials along with the script later in the week. This post highlights the features and benefits of the store, and provides access to a sample store containing some $0.10 items so that you can execute a couple of test transactions and let us know what you think.

Sample Store

We have posted “The Charlie Store“ so that you can see a preview of what the store looks like by default.  You can execute a test transaction (where you purchase a $0.10 picture of my infant son and have it automatically delivered) to test the functionality.  The script functions in the manner described in the “How It Works” section below.

How It Works

When a customer places an order from your AcuInvoice Simple Store, all order data will be instantly passed to your AcuInvoice account. The data will be used to create a new contact (if the customer is not already in the database), and an invoice will be automatically created and sent to your customer at the email address provided during checkout. When your customer receives your invoice, they can pay via any gateway that you have enabled both in your AcuInvoice account and the AcuInvoice Simple Store. Once the invoice is paid, it will be automatically converted into a closed state. If the order contained any digital goods, the script will automatically send out an email containing an order-specific download URL. The AcuInvoice Simple Store allows you to limit the duration the download URL is valid, and specify a maximum number of item downloads.

Features & Benefits

Super Simple Installation

The AcuInvoice Simple Store is easy to install and configure. Simply unzip the archive, upload it to your web server, create a MySQL database, change a couple of permissions settings, and load the installer script in your browser. Your store will be automatically configured and should be functioning in about five minutes.

Clean Code

The AcuInvoice Simple Store utilizes clean CSS and produces valid XHTML 1.0 Strict for maximum compatibility with a variety of popular web browsers.

Simple Management of Content

The AcuInvoice Simple Store utilizes the TinyMCE HTML editor giving you the ability to style your store’s content using a familiar interface. TinyMCE is integrated by default into a number of applications and should be familiar to most users.

Fully Customizable

Your AcuInvoice Simple Store is completely customizable. You can make modifications to the storefront to suit the look of your site, and edit the store’s CSS via a simple web-based editing utility.

Standalone and Embeddable Mode

The AcuInvoice Simple Store can be used in either a standalone or embeddable mode. The standalone mode (default) produces a separate storefront page, while the embeddable mode allows you to insert your AcuInvoice Simple Store into any web page using a singleelement. Embeddable mode could be used, for example, to insert your simple store into pages dynamically generated by popular publishing platforms such as WordPress. 

Centralize Service Invoices and Store Purchases

You already use AcuInvoice to bill your clients, but if you sell products too, you might have to use another system for tracking those sales. Since the AcuInvoice Simple Store uses the AcuInvoice API to automatically enter customer and order information into AcuInvoice, all of your data will be centralized into your AcuInvoice account.

Automatically Delivers Digital Goods

If you sell digital goods from within your AcuInvoice Simple Store, these goods will be automatically delivered once the relevant invoice has been paid. Once payment is remitted and the invoice is converted into a closed state, customers will be sent an email containing a purchase-specific URLs that provides controlled access to digital content.

Plays Well With AcuInvoice Domain Mapping

If you have enabled domain mapping in your AcuInvoice account, all invoices generated via the AcuInvoice Simple Store will originate from your mapped domain, thereby giving you the option of providing a more carefully branded purchase experience for your customers.

Unbeatable Price

The AcuInvoice Simple Store will be released without charge to the AcuInvoice community. Please note that transactions completed through the AcuInvoice Simple Store will automatically pass customer information securely to your AcuInvoice account. Therefore, if you believe you will have a very active store, be certain to have a subscription level that will permit you to have a sufficient number of invoiced clients.

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Last night we applied some updates to the manner in which domain mapping behaves. If you have pointed yourdomain.com (or billing.yourdomain.com) to your AcuInvoice account, the following summarizes the manner in which invoice URLs and payment processing now occurs. These changes provide flexibility in branding your AcuInvoice account without sacrificing security as it pertains to sensitive data.

Invoices Sent From Mapped Domains

If you are logged into your AcuInvoice account using yourdomain.com and you send out an invoice, the invoice URL will be branded with your domain (e.g. http://yourdomain.com/someinvoice.php). Note that in this case the invoice is served over a standard http connection, due to the fact that there is not an SSL certificate installed on the AcuInvoice server that is valid for yourdomain.com. If a user clicks on the link for one of the enabled payment gateways, the transaction will occur over the acuinvoice.com domain, and will still have the benefit of 256-bit SSL encryption. In short, invoices can be viewed without SSL, but payments will be processed over an encrypted connection.

Invoices Sent From Your AcuInvoice ID

If you have a mapped domain, you can always login to AcuInvoice at https://your-acuinvoice-id.acuinvoice.com and send invoices. In this scenario, your invoices will be accessible and payable only over an encrypted connection.

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As part of our final push toward the AcuInvoice commercial release, we have implemented offsite backups to Amazon.com’s Simple Storage Service (S3).  Think of this a Time Machine, but for your AcuInvoice data. These backups store your AcuInvoice data and user configuration files for the past ten days. Backups will be for all accounts—both free and paid—so you can have confidence that your data is backed up on one of the most stable, secure, and redundant IT infrastructures in the world. If you ever accidentally delete data, or for any reason need to roll back to a prior version of your AcuInvoice account, simply contact support and we will be happy to recover your invoice data and user configuration files.

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As we near the launch of AcuInvoice 1.0, we have begun to update our development roadmap and set goals for the reminader of 2008. This post, which highlights features of the soon-to-be-developed AcuInvoice 1.1, is the first in a series of articles detailing our near term development goals and provides some insight regarding the direction of this service. Subsequent posts in this series will discuss (perhaps not in the following order):

• Plans for AcuInvoice 2.0, a major release scheduled for the second half of 2008
• Expansion of the AcuInvoice API and the release of an AcuInvoice-driven web store and
• Development of a CRM and project management module that integrates with AcuInvoice.

If you have any feedback on these, or any other, development items, please post a comment, start a topic on the forum, or contact us by email or phone.

AcuInvoice 1.1: An Update Scheduled for Late Q1 2008

The forthcoming 1.0 release marks both the conclusion of our initial development efforts, and the start of some important follow-on development. AcuInvoice 1.1, the first in a series of incremental updates, should be released late in the first quarter and will focus primarily on making the software more user friendly. Key features will include:

Dashboard Quick Actions

The AcuInvoice dashboard is ideal for scanning your invoices and identifying accounts in need of attention. However, working with invoices requires that you first click on the invoice, navigate to an invoice-specific screen, then select from one of several context-dependent actions. AcuInvoice 1.1 will include Dashboard Quick Actions, a series of functions allowing you to initiate context-specific actions from within the dashboard. You will no longer have to navigate to a particular invoice to receive payment, send a payment reminder, or deliver a thank you note; these actions will all be available via an intuitive dashboard interface.

Quick Reports

AcuInvoice has powerful built-in reporting features and allows you to customize reports. AcuInvoice 1.1 will extend this functionality by allowing you to quickly generate reports using a set of predefined input parameters.

Tag Editing

Tags are great for organizing your invoices and tracking various business segments. Though AcuInvoice’s tagging functionality is strong, it can be improved. The 1.1 release will allow users to edit tags and have changes automatically applied to all invoices.

Selective AJAX-ification

There are a few elements in AcuInvoice that can be improved through the selective use of AJAX. Expect minor improvements throughout the application in this regard.

Adios, Unnecessary Pop Ups

A few unnecessary pop ups somehow managed to remain in the current code (we’re actually not sure how they managed to get there in the first place!). They will soon exit stage right.There will likely be several other small items included in AcuInvoice 1.1. Significant new features, however, will be included in AcuInvoice 2.0 (scheduled for the 2nd or 3rd quarter), and will be unveiled concurrent with the alpha release of a CRM & project management module currently in the planning stages. More on this major release (AcuInvoice 2.0) soon.

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Having just announced the release of the final beta version of AcuInvoice, it seems appropriate to detail the new features and enhancements soon to be introduced in our 1.0 release. Our remaining to-do list for the 1.0 release is quite short, and most are backend items that won’t meaningfully alter the user experience. Still, a few are worth noting, and details are provided below. Posts describing plans for AcuInvoice 1.1 and beyond are soon to follow.

Incremental Backups Powered by Amazon Web Services

We’re sold on Amazon Web Services.  We currently use Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) as an offsite backup solution for our internal files and have decided to use S3 as a means of providing AcuInvoice subscribers an added level of security. Concurrent with the 1.0 release, we will be implementing a script that conducts nightly incremental offsite backups of your AcuInvoice database and configuration files to Amazon S3. This backup is in addition to, not a replacement for, the redundancy already provided by our server’s RAID configuration. S3 resides on one of the world’s most secure, robust, and redundant IT infrastructures, and we are happy to provide this added level of data redundancy to our subscribers.

Optimize Invoice Printing

For those who snail mail their invoices, we will be implementing minor changes to the invoice print format.

Unified Search Solution

Our blog, forum, and marketing site are all powered by different technologies. Additionally, we will soon initiate the development of comprehensive documentation (possibly via another CMS), which will increase our need for efficient, accurate search. While each platform has an available internal search function, it would require some hacking to build a function that works site-wide. We are therefore implementing Google’s Custom Search Engine to allow users to locate relevant content regardless of its location on the AcuInvoice domain. Why hack when you can just use Google?

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Last Friday we updated the AcuInvoice code to the 0.4 release, the final version prior to the forthcoming commercial release. This update includes a number of feature additions, UI modifications, and minor bug fixes, the highlights of which are described below. User feedback continues to drive the rapid improvement of AcuInvoice, and we thank those who have submitted tickets, contacted us by email, or phoned us with constructive criticisms. Your observations and attention to detail help speed development and make AcuInvoice a better product for all users. As regards the timing of the first commercial release, this could happen as early as next week or as late as the first week in February. The uncertain timing derives from the expected arrival of a son (our first) in the coming days. Following his birth, I’ll be tending to things at home for several days, and will delegate most customer support duties my very capable and responsive colleagues. Lastly, there are several important blog entries we will post in the coming days, among them posts on pricing, plans for AcuInvoice 1.0 and beyond, the development of a CRM application that integrates with AcuInvoice, a funding announcement, expansion of the AcuInvoice API, and the forthcoming development of a web store script that utilizes the AcuInvoice API. Check your feeds regularly, and please post a comment, visit the forum, or contact us directly if you have any questions.

Highlights From the 0.4 Release

Invoice Notes

Several users requested the ability to add custom notes to an invoice. This feature is already being used to provide invoice recipients with additional payment instructions, VAT numbers and more. You can set a default note in My Account–>Preferences, and can easily modify the default note each time you create an invoice. If users have and additional feedback regarding this feature, please let us know.

AcuPort 0.3

With assistance from Luc Latulippe we have optimized the AcuPort code such that we can now import–with just one click–several dozen contacts and a large number of invoices rapidly and seemingly error free. As a reminder, AcuPort is a function in AcuInvoice that allows you to import all of your Blinksale data into AcuInvoice so that you can try our service risk free and without data loss. We have previously posted a more detailed description of AcuPort, and suggest this post if you’re interested in the relevant background information. If you have a particularly large Blinksale account and would like to give AcuInvoice a spin, please give us a call or email us at support (at) acuinvoice (dot) com and we will initiate the data transfer during off-peak times.

PDF Attachments

Linsey requested that PDFs be included as a supported invoice attachment file type. You can now attach doc, .pdf, .txt, .jpg, .png, and .bmp files to invoices. Please post a comment or submit a ticket if you would like to enable another (non-executable) filetype for attachment.

Coupon System

We have added a coupon script to AcuInvoice and will issue to our Early Adopters a code that provides a significant discount on paid plans. Coupon codes will be sent via email in the coming days.

Bug Fixes

Custom CSS & Template Parsing

Dean at ClickSolution observed a bug involving the use of custom CSS to design invoices and estimates; this bug has been fixed. Additionally, Dean pointed out a template parsing bug (also fixed in this release) and well as a couple of easily implemented UI improvements. Thanks for these great suggestions, Dean—we truly appreciate your help.

Safari/Amazon Payments

We identified an Amazon Payments bug specific to the Safari web browser. This has been fixed.

British Pound

This release includes the repair of a minor bug related to the display of the British Pound in the comments section.

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This morning we applied a major update to the AcuInvoice code and are designating this the 0.3 release. We have managed to stay on track with our development calendar, but held off on this release until we were able to get all of the languages files updated appropriately. Thanks again to Charles Jean for his outstanding translation services. The 0.3 release includes a number of significant updates, most notably an improved sales tax system and support for Google Checkout and Amazon Flexible Payment Services (Amazon FPS). With the release of these features, we now have only minor updates to apply prior to the initial commercial release of AcuInvoice. We expect these updates to be completed throughout the remainder of December and into the first week or two of January. As a reminder, subscribers who sign up prior to the initial commercial release will be entitled to a subscription plan that will not be available to those who sign up after the 1.0 release. Details on 0.3 can be found below.

Google Checkout

Perhaps the most obvious update in the 0.3 release is the integration of Google Checkout and Amazon FPS. For those who may not be familiar with these payment options, both Google and Amazon.com have recently entered the online payments market and are offering extremely competitve rates for payment processing. Google Checkout currently has the simplest of fee structures: FREE. Payments processed through Google Checkout are completely free until February 1, 2008, after which they will charge 2% plus $0.20/transaction. Additionally, if you advertise on Google AdWords, Google will credit your Checkout account for the processing fees on charges of up to 10X your monthly AdWords spend. For example, if you spend $100 with AdWords, your first $1000 of Google Checkout processing is free (a $20 savings in this example). Lastly, non-profit organizations will not be charged any processing fees for donations processed via Google Checkout until 2009.

Amazon FPS

Like Google Checkout, Amazon FPS offers advantages that are likely to accelerate its adoption. First, since every Amazon.com customer already has the ability to make payments through FPS, Amazon FPS enters the online payments market with an astounding 70 million accounts. Second, as Paul Stamatiou has very keenly noted, Amazon FPS is an ideal solution for micropayments and will be the only economical choice for businesses selling a large number of low cost items.

Improved US Sales Tax

The current release includes expanded support for sales tax, with an emphasis on US markets (for now). Subscribers can specify sales tax rates for different states and can even create different tax rates at the city level. The improved sales tax system is located in My Account–>Sales Tax. Please try out the system and let us know what we can do to make it even better.

Please Kick The Tires!

The overwhelming majority of the improvements to AcuInvoice are attributable directly to feedback from our users. We love hearing from you and strongly encourage you to contact us at support (at) acuinvoice (dot) com if you find something that doesn’t look quite right or if you have constructive criticisms of any kind whatsoever. Thanks again for your support.
Regards,
The AcuInvoice Team

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On Friday we released AcuInvoice 0.2. This update includes multi-language support, translations into Spanish, French, and German, several minor feature updates, and a handful of minor bug fixes. Additionally, we have finished programming our improved tax support system, though (for reasons described below) it is not included in this release. We’re considerably closer to a 1.0 release than the 0.2 nomenclature suggests and are targeting early January for the initial commercial release of our service. Additional details on this release are below.

Multi-Language Support

The most significant feature of the 0.2 release is multi-language support (MLS). Though MLS has been programmed for some time, the textual content of AcuInvoice has been evolving so much that it would have been impractical to have translations performed prior to last week. MLS is quite simple; just click on the flag indicative of your language of choice and the new language file will be loaded. These icons are found in the header area of the site and application. Our server logs indicate that many of you have already discovered as much.

What Gets Translated?

The application, the static portions of the AcuInvoice marketing site, and certain application email templates. The email templates we have translated are those that are system generated, not those that are editable by an AcuInvoice user.

Item Numbering Updated

When adding items to invoices, you can now have things such as 1.50 hours. This might get tweaked a bit more in the future, but for now it should provide the additional flexibility that many of you have requested.

AcuPort 0.2

We have updated AcuPort to include some bug fixes, minor changes, etc. This will probably be released as a standalone PHP script, a desktop application, or both in the coming months. Prior to releasing this, however, we have more features we will be adding.

Tax Support Finished

We have finished programming our improved tax support system. A minor consequence of our new multi-language platform, however, is that it is necessary to have language translations performed in advance of new feature releases. Therefore, we need to hold off on releasing this until such time as we can have translations of these new screens performed. We’re going to bundle these translations along with a few other forthcoming feature releases (Google Checkout, etc.), thereby minimizing the amount of work required by our translators.

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