Hi,

I am starting a small business and am currently looking for a solution to keep track of customers, invoices, projects, etc. I am trying out Daylite and it looks fantastic, but after looking at the current Billings 2 beta I'm a bit confused.

For example, it appears as though that I need to import customers to Billings from Daylite so I can keep track of time, send invoices, etc., and then that client data is added to the Mac's Address Book? What's that about? In other words it appears that other than a couple of import routines, Billings knows nothing about Daylite and vice versa, and eventually I will have quite a bit of duplicate data running around my network and out of sync to boot.

So does anybody know if there is a chasm between Daylite and Billings simply because Billings is under developement and not finished yet, or is it by design? If it's the former then that's no problem, but if it's the latter then I will continue to look around for a solution that is a bit tighter and more intergrated.

Any thoughts? Thanks.

Hi,

I was half asleep when I wrote the previous post, so it may help to explain my question a bit further. One of the key features of Daylite appears to be the ability to link most anything to anything; contacts, tasks, workflows, reports - it's fairly easy to get a grasp of how these various topics relate to one another, and it's a wonderful thing.

Now that I have this mental model of how things should work - everything linking and relating to everything else - I now look at Billings. My confusion comes from expecting that invoices, fees, times, etc. would just be another "thing" to link back to contacts, workflows, reports, and so on. In fact I was half-expecting Billings to be a plugin (or add-in or module or whatever they're called) that sits within Daylite itself and not a separate application. From there I would be able to do things like select a Pipeline and view all associated invoices (regardless of the actual customer), or view all billings that come from a particular industry, and so on.

I don't really care that Billings is a separate application, but I seem to be -way- off on my other expectations. Am I overlooking something obvious? Is this sort of integration just not that important? Bueller? Bueller?

Thanks.

I am COMPLETELY with you. Here is what I posted on the Law forum of the DL board:

... I do want to express some of my concerns with Billings (I know this isn't necessarily the most appropriate place, but I think it might be a good discussion since the law business is a natural for this type of product).

First, like I said, I'm really disappointed that the product isn't multi-user. The way I see it, unless you're a solo practitioner, or your firm does strictly one lawyer per issue type of business, then Billings really isn't going to work. Maybe I'm missing something here, and if so, please inform me...

Second, I'm really turned off by entering the SAME data in multiple places. It doesn't matter if it's in DL, QuickBooks, Billings, AddressBook, or anything else, I just believe that this is one problem that computers SHOULD have solved by now but really haven't. Of course, I full well realize that my ideal is pretty Utopian, and I do realize that Billings has limited integration with DL, but I don't think it's very well done at this point and I do think it is at least SOMEWHAT fair to hope for that kind of interchange between products made by the same company (as an aside, I think this is one reason why I love Apple so much and especially OS X, everything talks to everything else [e.g. iMovie and iPhoto] which is exactly how it should be in my mind ). Don't get me wrong, I think that Billings is a very Mac-like and well-designed application when taken by itself, but it seems to me that it would be about 100 times more powerful if it was more like a plugin for Daylite. What say the rest of you?

Finally, like I said before, another significant problem that I see is efficiently getting data out of Billings. Essentially, Billings is kind of like a mini accounting program that only handles accounts receivable. (at least as I see it). While that's fine and good for some businesses (maybe even some law practices) I just don't see how I can split my accounting between this and QuickBooks. If I tried, I'm betting I would have a pretty unpleasant experience coming my way the next time the IOLTA auditors came by. However, it does seem to me that it MIGHT work if Billings could export transactions to a QIF (QuickBooks) file. That being said, I'm certainly not an expert in this field and I might just have a completely incorrect paradigm. If that's the case, I would LOVE it if someone could show me the light...

OK, so those are some of my issues. I really look forward to an education in this area if anyone can give me one...

Let me try to answer this.
Billings is not supposed to be a mini accounting package. It is not supposed to replace something like QuickBooks or MYOB (you can export from Billings and import into an accounting package).

Also - it is not targeted towards the same audience as Daylite. It is targeted towards individuals that need to send invoices that simply wouldn't use or buy Daylite.

We get a lot of people that are happy with Address Book and iCal, but just need something for estimates and invoices. Billings is for those people. Those same people wouldn't use MYOB or QuickBooks either - they would just pass the info from Billings to their accountant.

We have gotten a lot of flak about the gap between the two apps - we'll have to see what we can do about that. Multi-user time billings is very different than single-user time billing.

AJ,

Thanks for the explanation. I had guessed as much and I don't necessarily think that it's a bad thing that people have been giving you guys flak. I think it's only because a lot of us see so much potential in a billing add-on to Daylite (at least I do). I guess it's kind of a natural misunderstanding though, especially since Billings is advertised as having integration with DL. That said, I am hopeful that you guys might be considering some sort of more enterprise-level billings application...

I would like to add my voice to George's suggestion of integration between the two apps. It's not so much that Marketcircle have slipped up by differentiating both products but there is as far as I can see a HUGE opportunity here. I for one would definitely buy an integrated Daylite/Billings suite. Within the design/advertising space there really is no "killer app" for project manangement/invoicing/CRM. Most of us have to make do with a collection of applications from different vendors. The only product that comes even close is Studiometry which is plagued by bad support, an outdated interface and a lot of unhappy users.

It's similar to the situation a couple of years ago with Quark Xpress, an application that had a virtual monopoly on the DTP/Layout market. There simply were no other alternatives. Until Adobe created Indesign - since then the migration to Indesign has been huge.

I guess like many people I have a clear idea of a "dream application" for managing my business. Marketcircle have come very close by creating 2 applications with excellent functionality and interfaces. Throw in a GTD based workflow, tight integration between both products and Mac OSX and I think for a lot of potential customers it's a no-brainer.

Thanks for reading my ramblings. : )

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Liam Fitzgerald,

I agree with everyone here. I'm looking for a groupware package that will let us replace our Salesforce.com accounts with a better tool that has great integration with some sort of multi-user time-tracking system. I thought Daylight and Billings would be the packages to use, but without better integration in a multi-user environment, I'm afraid that I'm going to have to look elsewhere. Daylight looks incredible, but is just missing the stuff that Billings has. I would have thought that Billings would have been built as a module to Daylight first and foremost, then as a "light" package for single-user use after.

Brendan.

I'm also in agreement that Billings should be more integrated into Daylite. I've been trying the demo for two days now and so far, it's not been very easy to get what I want done.

Perhaps there should be two versions of Billings, one for the user that AJ described and premium version for Daylite users. A plugin module would be great or at least a version that has all contact info already added.

This is a somewhat old thread, but I'd like to chime in that I'm glad that there is a degree of seperation between the two. I have Billings2 and not Daylight, simply because Billings2 is *all I need* and is much less expensive than even a single user version of Daylite which would not do what I need to do anyway!

I can imagine Marketcircle creating the ability to link them better, but it'll be a sad day for me if or when Billings is no longer able to stand on its own.

Just a few pennies from the other side...

I agree with Michael. I haven't really seen Daylight in action, so I'm not sold on it the way I am with Billings.

Thanks again, as always, for this feedback. We've gotten earfuls on this subject and are working away...

Thx,

Daylite tracks projects. At the end of a money-making project, an invoice needs to go out. So, Billings2 needs easily work with Daylite.

Thanks for listening!

wow. I run a photography studio and have recently switched over to OSX. I am using Daylite and have am so much into it that I've spent hours throwing feedback at them (maybe they hate me now?). I wouldn't even bother with most MS software. Is there a way to give feedback to MS?

That said, I have read over these comments about Billings and Daylite. I have been trying out billings for a day or so and too have had the "what the heck?" moment when coming from such a cool program as Daylite. OK, OK, I understand they are disconnected products (with integration?) targeted at different markets. Billings is probably great for that simple user as noted in this thread, but Billings doesn't make much sense coming from MarketCircle after creating Daylite and I think that's where they are getting the flak from...

Imagine, if you will, Company A building an awesome tank; it can go anywhere, withstand a brutal attack, but doesn't have a weapon. Sure, it does alot of what you need, but having that turret would be a complete package.

Company A next decides to allocate its resources to engineer a new 9mm handgun. Now, you tank owners can buy the 9mm and use it while you power around on your two treads. There's a bit of integration there, but really, those people with the tank are going to wonder where the heck that turret design is which slaps onto their tank so nicely.

... This is not to say that MarketCircle isn't now on the road to building one heck of an accounting package for Daylite. If so, just integrate it. Plugins are less cool. This is what I want Daylite to assist my business at (and believe they can build it, too):

Enter a new CONTACT coming from a daylite-tracked MARKETING EFFORT that generates OPPORTUNITIES which spawn PROJECTS with TASKS along with APPOINTMENTS on my CALENDAR which I complete so I can INVOICE and wait for PAYMENT to add to cash from other current daylite-tracked LIABILITIES (loans!) so I can buy new daylite-tracked ASSETS which DEPRECIATE long after my daylite-tracked INVENTORY is all used up. At the end of the day, I will RECONCILE my bank and credit card accounts.

That's truly seeing the daylite. That's a tank with a turret.

Sean,

I love your analogy In any case, I completely agree with you. As a wedding DJ (one of my businesses) I can probably identify with a substantial part of your workflow.

Also, I thought I should mention that SyncServices (present in the beta version of DL) is at least one step closer to integration with QuickBooks (QB supports SyncServices for contacts, so at least I won't have to enter my clients twice). However, as I've said before, I think that MC has to walk a fine line when deciding where to take DL. For example, it probably just wouldn't be feasible to build an entire accounting package into DL. A simple package, maybe, but something as robust as QuickBooks would just never happen. With that, we would be better off having tight integration with a full featured product than a fully integrated but less functional package.

However, I do share your "what the heck?" response as far as Billings is concerned. It looks like a great program, but unfortunately it just won't work for my situation...

People use Quickbooks because it's a complete solution when it comes to accounting. Anything less for any business means you are putting yourself in the dark and open to holes/crosstalk/data loss. Quickbooks is nothing more than a computerized interface to the multiple standard accounting journals. Build a database (or better yet, use the awesome one at the foundation of Daylite), enter your data, work your math and you have quickbooks (minus all of the payroll and credit card hooks they try to snag on you). It's all basic accounting... Debits and credits, right?

When you integrate it, you can get a much more powerful scope of your company's health. You could see which contacts brought you the most revenue, from which marketing source these contacts came from, which contacts are paying you on time and who they are connected to, which types of projects you need to cut your expenses in, which projects have the best margins... I could spend hours thinking about the wealth of data this synergy could give the user(s).

When you have two or more sources of information, it's up to an intermediary (you) to integrate it into a useful picture. Look at the FBI and CIA disconnect that brought about Homeland Security...

Anyhow, why not have software connect it? Under one hood gives you everything and I think that with the programming skills and GUI geniuses at MarketCircle, they could pull this off and roll out even more revolutionary software. Once upon a time, the 9 modules in Daylite were probably 9 distinct software programs with users that had no idea the power they would gain by the combination. Before that, we used paper. It's evolutionary, and I think it could revolutionary for small business.