This is what Travis Van, the founder of ITDatabase had to say about Zoho Invoice.
ITDatabase is a San Francisco based start-up, founded in 2007. It provides
analytical tools for dissecting coverage related to specific tech
topics, competitors, and
other parameters - and helps tech companies
get the aggregate views they need to make important marketing and PR
decisions.
Here are some excerpts from our conversation with Travis Van.
How did you come up with the idea to start ITDatabase?
The
real problem we wanted to solve was that for nearly any tech topic, there are
hundreds and often thousands of people writing about it. New authors -
especially bloggers - pop up every day. Authors that wrote about
netbooks and other consumer electronics yesterday are today writing
about Cloud Computing or some other enterprise tech. It's very
difficult to keep up with the changing focus for publications and
authors - and we felt that there was an opportunity to index all this
content in a much more organized way than anything that was available.
And after years of using every other available tool in the industry we
felt that there was an opportunity to build a tech media research tool
that was much more compatible with PR / marketing folks' every day
needs.
How did you become a Zoho Invoice user?
I
did a web search for
online invoicing software. I had quickly learned
that in our sales process, some customers enroll immediately, while
others have much longer approval processes. It became sort of a mess to
keep track of who is at what stage, and it was a bit overwhelming. So I
wanted an easy way to keep track of all of the outstanding invoices,
and I also wanted some reporting to be able to see historical customer
win and renewal dates.
What do you like the most about Zoho Invoice?
For
me it's really the simplicity. You hear software developers describe
minimalistic design as the hardest goal for any product to accomplish.
I think Zoho Invoice accomplishes that. It doesn't impose a bunch of
unnecessary features or configurations on the user. It provides the
perfect tool for the person to get exactly done what they want, and as
a result it is extremely efficient to use. It takes 2 seconds to create
a customer and 2 seconds to
create an invoice and send it out to them
and then you have a paper trail of when you sent the invoice to the
customer, when its due, etc.. When they pay you, you can add the
payment and have a receipt sent to them instantly. For someone like me
with no background in finance, who is casually floating in and out of
looking at what our outstanding invoices are, what kind of revenues I
can expect in the next 6 months or 3 months - it's just very nice to
use an invoicing tool that is so straightforward. With Zoho Invoice I've never had
a question as to how anything works, it is extremely user friendly.
The
price I'm paying for keeping my
invoices tracked within Zoho isn't much
compared to the time it saves me. Zoho Invoice has really helped me cut
out the time I spend on accounting. I would rather spend that time pursuing other features and improvements for our product.
So what is Travis Van all about besides work and ITDatabase?
With
a two year old kid and a start-up, I'm not exactly the most exciting
profile in leisure time activity. But when I'm not working or spending
time with my family, I like to golf or surf. I'm not very good at
either, but that doesn't stop me. Probably my favorite is just hanging
out at home and trying to cook something new.
You can also share your invoicing story with us, like Travis did.
Write to us now!
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