• Adding tax as an option when adding an expense.  Users asked for the ability to track tax separately when entering a new expense as some countries like the UK want this.  Tax is also show separately on the main page when viewing expenses as well as in your expense report.
• Fixed an error when trying to enable Tripit integration.  Users reported getting a 500 error when trying to add a connection BEFORE connections were enabled on an account.

We have many more updates coming so please stay tuned as we get this updates wrapped up.

Thank you!!

Derek Sivers gave probably the best 2:58 talk at TED Conference that I have ever heard.  Take the time to view this presentation from Derek, listen and pay attention.  This may be the best way to spend 3-minutes, ever.

My immediate thought was, this is awesomely inspiring.

The information Robert is referring to, and is spot-on, with all of the details one needs to consider when purchasing a web application.  This checklist goes beyond the legal stuff and negotiating a price but talks about what to do after the actual sale takes place.

Anyone interested in the details of all the things needed to do go give “Business Checklist for Selling a SaaS Application” a read.

Expens’d is an application that does a specific task and does it well.  As we all know as business people we need to keep track of our expenses, not a glamorous job but one that needs to be done and Expens’d makes it easy.  We plan to make it dead simple as we grow Expens’d in the coming months.  Please watch here for announcements of updates.

In the meantime, some bit of details about the deal as announced on the ADS blog this morning:

WINTER PARK, FL (January 18, 2010)…Atlantic Dominion Solutions (ADS) – a leading project management and custom development firm – today announced the sale of its popular expense tracking application, Expens’d, to Still River Software. The move advances strategic objectives for both companies and bolsters their respective positions in the highly competitive market for technology services.

For ADS, the sale of Expens’d reflects the company’s shift toward more personalized, consulting-based services and demonstrates a strong commitment to this new area of focus. Yet, as CEO Robert Dempsey explains, the impact to end-users was an important consideration in finding the right buyer.

Still River Software was the ideal partner to work with on this transaction,” said Dempsey. “We wanted to ensure a seamless transition for Expens’d users, with no down time, to a company capable of delivering responsive support and developing smart solutions to key business problems. Still River was the clear choice.”

The acquisition also marks an opportunity for Still River Software to expand its offering of innovative applications designed to resolve pain points and meet specific needs. In Expens’d, the company gains an already successful product with an established customer base of more than 2,500 users. Still River founder Robert Bazinet affirms Dempsey’s assertion that the move will yield an advantage for these users.

“We’re thrilled to add such a widely used application to our roster,” stated Bazinet. “It addresses an important need by simplifying expense tracking and management, and ADS has always developed excellent products. But we also see great benefits for current users – not only will they continue to enjoy uninterrupted performance and support, they’ll also be introduced to the other unique solutions we provide.”

For more information on services offered by ADS, please visit www.adsdevshop.com to learn more about Still River Software, Expens’d or any of its other solutions, go to www.stillriversoftware.com.

About Atlantic Dominion Solutions

Based in Winter Park, Florida, ADS specializes in developing custom, web-based applications that enable people to simplify their lives, build successful businesses, engineer new ideas, and otherwise turn visions into reality. We use Ruby on Rails to build flexible, database-backed applications that can be deployed quickly, scaled easily, and maintained with minimal effort. Our approach is founded on a commitment to constant communication with our clients through a variety of traditional and technological channels – that’s how we ensure ADS delivers exactly the solutions our clients need, down to the very last detail.

We are perpetually active in the application development community; our founder and CEO, Robert Dempsey, is a frequent speaker at conferences nationwide. For more information about ADS, please visit www.adsdevshop.com.

About Still River Software

The Still River Software Company was founded in 2006 by Robert Bazinet. Rob is an industry veteran with well over 20 years of software development experience. The company specializes in helping its clients find the best solutions to the problems they face every day. For more information, please visit www.stillriversoftware.com.

For more information about Expens’d, please visit the Expens’d web site where you can sign up for a free account or review any of our paid plans which offer a full 30-day trial.

Over the past years I have mainly been a customer of Paypal, taking direct payments for purchases, but also setup a Paypal Pro account to directly take payments. The process of writing code to utilize the Paypal API always seems to take a lot of time and it can change over time.

So for two upcoming software-as-a-service products, we decided to standardized and pursue a gateway which used Authorize.net so we had a standard gateway and could change processors without changing our software.

Our initial foray through Authorize.net led us to a processor who was for high-risk accounts. I don’t know why we would be considered high-risk, Authorize.net could not tell us either. I think it is very important to know the terms and fees associated with a particular payment processor because they can be high. Without going into particulars, the fees we faced were astronomical and included a very high monthly fee, high transaction fee per transaction plus a high percentage as well as high minimums and high chargeback fees. Notice how I said ‘high’ a lot, which was the deal breaker. Read the fine print too, the fee for terminating with this processor was extremely high and was the #1 reason we chose to not sign up with them.

I came in contact with a small company, MerchantPlus, LLC, who was recommended to us. The initial attempt at the merchant account with MerchantPlus resulting in a declined account, because we stored data on Amazon S3 and the underwriting bank saw that as offering third-party services. The news was very disappointing indeed. The process of trying to explain to our customer service representative who then passes it on the the bank is a tough process. You would think that banks today would be used to Internet-based businesses and be able to at least understand somewhat the details. This is the problem with our banking industry, they are just too brick-and-morter to be very effective.

So, to my rescue, I received an email from the MerchantPlus President Zachary Smith indicating he would be working on getting us approved that day.  It took a couple days but he was successful in helping us get the account we needed. This my fellow business owners is how great customer service is done.  They could have just as easily tossed our application in the trash and moved on to the next applicant, but they didn’t, they went the extra mile to make me happy and it worked.  Oh, and I am now talking about my positive experience here.

Anyone needing a merchant account I would not hesitate to recommend MerchantPlus, LLC.  Their dedicated and personal support sold me.  Oh, I forgot to mention, their rates are fantastic too.

So, this is the very first blog post for our little blog and our little company.  It is also a new year and things are happening for us in great ways.

Plans

We some really exciting things going on here that I would love to tell you about them today, but sadly I cannot.   The time is just not right yet but very soon indeed.

I can tell you this, we will be announcing some new products over the next couple months that I think will add value to the lives of the people who use the tools.

The Blog

So why a blog and why now?  Well, it’s pretty simple..I want to have a place to discuss running a small software company.  I am sure there are many folks going down the same path as I am and if my pain can help others, great.

I plan to talk about a wide variety of topics from basic business concepts like merchant accounts to more complex ones such as social media used in marketing.   I hope this will become a valuable tool for small business owners of all types.

Talk to you soon.