Fresh Books and the blind community

I recently wrote a short little article that I thought my readers would like about a company I heard about through the Twit network among other places. Below you’ll find the article.

Corrected a couple of spelling mistakes I just found.

Fresh books, its usage as a person using access technology

I’m Jared Rimer. I’ve been using Fresh books, a system that allows you to bill clients and get paid easily with over 11 different methods of receiving payments. They take everything from paypal, to various different type of credit card processing systems. Its a nice system, and I currently am paying for the service since I have more than the minimum of 3 for the free service.

My first days

Since I had never used Freshbooks before, I was curious to see what it was about. I had heard about the service through the Twit Network and All About Focus podcast which I do not think is running any longer. I signed up under my own and decided to check it out. I had noticed some accessibility issues with the service with some of the edit boxes not giving the right labels. I had given them some tips on how to fix this slight issue as some of the buttons were not labeled right as well with alt tags on their image buttons. Overall, I was impressed. I spent two hours on a Monday talking to a girl by the name of Amanda which was a nice experience for a free service. Usually a company who offers free services such as Topica, Yahoo, and mailman list manager do not offer free support except through forums, mailing lists, or E-mail if you’re lucky.

Some good words of encouragement

Fresh books has bent over backwards when i’ve been stuck, showing me how to use certain features such as profile billing where I can have an invoice generate on the same day of the month with various items in it to have billed. I have a number of those already. They recently as of the 1st of October, changed my default terms and updated my profiles to reflect these. This is a company in which I love to do business with.

At the beginning of September, my computer was down for a week. Someone called me some time ago letting me know that someone wanted to talk to me, and how they wanted to start paying back money that I had let them borrow some years ago. I told them about the billing system I am using, and how easy it is for him to pay. He didn’t need a paypal account, but found that it was easier to sign up for Paypal to pay the invoices as he was having trouble. No matter. I set up the recurring profile for the day he selected, and knowing my PC was out of commission, I was not worried. After a week of figuring out what was wrong, I came back to my E-mail to see that Fresh Books sent my invoice, and I got paid while I was gone.

I don’t know of any other billing software and company that is worth the money that you may have to pay should you need to. Everyone is knowledgeable in the platform, and is willing to help. There E-mail turnaround time is quick during the business day.

I’ve been a member of Fresh Books since March 25th 2011, and formally billed my biggest client that next month on the scheduled billing date that was established. I became a paying member a month later, because I had already reached the limit as discussed above. I was doing it by hand, and learning as I went. Since I signed up, several clients have approached Fresh Books for information on accessibility. I can say for the most part it is accessible, but you may need a bit of help and they are willing to help, in any way they can.

conclusion:

Thanks Freshbooks for all you do, and I will continue to recommend your product to the disabled community as long as you continue to remain accessible, and help if we get stuck.

Want to sign up after reading this? No problem! You can use this referror link and if you become a paymember, and stay, that is a good thing. Its all up to you, but I highly recommend it. If you call or write, I don’t think they would mind that you mention that I sent you. I think they would appreciate it.

Fresh books contact information:

FreshBooks
2770 Dufferin Street
Suite 201
Toronto, Ontario
M6B 3R7 Canada

Toll Free (North America): 1-866-303-6061
Toll Free (UK): 0808-101-3408
Toll Free (Ireland): 1-800-949-046
Phone: 416-481-6946
Fax: 416-481-3800
Email: info@fres­hbooks.com

Office Hours
Monday – Friday: 9am – 6pm ET
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