MiniBooks Now Supports Estimates
Aug 31 2009
Despite a busy travel schedule in August, we’ve managed to crank out a huge update to MiniBooks. As of today, in addition to managing clients, invoices, and timers, MiniBooks now supports on the go estimates.
For those of you already sending mobile invoices, the new workflow will feel very familiar. With a few swipes of the finger, you can create a new estimate and send it to a client. Then, when you’re ready, convert the estimate to an invoice and soon you’ll be on your way to the bank (where, by the way, you can log your payment in MiniBooks).
Give it a try and let us know what you think.
30 comments
Matt McNett Sep 1 2009
Great Job! I love it and can’t wait for the next update. My two cent suggestion. Lets get rid of the toolbar menu system at the bottom of the screen. With more features coming I would rather have the app open to a main screen showing all the icons. To describe what I mean check out the new Facebook app. They moved to this idea and I love it. Thanks again. Keep us posted.
keith Sep 1 2009
I agree. We used the built in iphone tab widget because it allowed us to focus on invoicing, but it’s starting to show wear. Another design I like is the sliding tabs on etrade’s free application. We’ll try to implement a better solution soon.
Matt Sep 1 2009
Love the new update! This morning I converted an estimate to an invoice and sent it out before I got out of bed.
Matt McNett Sep 2 2009
keith:
Your awesome. It’s nice to see a company that applies and listens to it’s customers. I had another idea since your using the iphone tab widget. Can you add a edit button to the more section so it makes the tab customizable like the iPod app that comes with the iPhone.
This would be perfect because then each user would be able to customize the app to fit their needs. For example, I don’t use timers that much. so my tab would read left to right. Clients, Invoices, Estimates, Pending. Once the support tickets are added to this great application I would drop pending and put on support tickets.
I think this is the best solutions and you would could keep the default iphone tab.
Thanks for listening.
keith Sep 2 2009
That’s another change we’re planning (as an interim solution). There’s a few small tweaks we need to make for everything to work right, but it should show up in the next update or two.
Joseph Burger Sep 24 2009
I love the application and only have a few suggestions.
I think we should be able to create an invoice straight from the clients list once a client is selected (Maybe two buttons, create invoice and create estimate on the bottom of the clients information page). The reason for this is because when you have 100+ clients in your list, it is hard to select them from the organization input in the invoice section (since it is only scrollable and not searchable like the client list).
Another suggestion is when clients and/or invoices are in the archive folder, I don’t think that they should show up in the main lists on the phone. They are in the archive for a reason, to get out of sight and way from the everyday use clients.
And lastly the ability to see a clients current standing after selecting a client (the client’s current overall balances)
Otherwise, your application is second to none! Thank you for streamlining my business processes. I save hours and get paid quicker because of the quality programming that went into this application!
Michael Sep 28 2009
Looking forward to expenses!! Keep up the GREAT WORK!!!!!
Matt McNett Oct 6 2009
Any word on the next update?
keith Oct 6 2009
Matt,
I know it’s taken longer than expected. I want to include a fix for a subtle timer bug, but I’ve been having trouble reproducing the problem. If I can’t find it soon, I’ll submit an update without the fix.
Matt McNett Oct 7 2009
That’s ok Keith. Can you give us some hints on what’s coming in the next update?
keith Oct 7 2009
The big feature will likely be customizable tabs. We’re swamped at groovy squared, so for the moment, we’re in tweaking mode and our more ambitious changes (expenses and full project support) are on hold.
Andrew Oct 21 2009
Please oh please add support for expenses - having to use another, non-integrated, app for this is very difficult, hard to manage, and tedious - could be so much better/easier with your app
keith Oct 22 2009
Out of all the feature requests, this is the most popular. Thus, it is on the top of our major feature to-do list. The problem is it requires a solid chunk of time to do correctly, and we’ve been swamped with work. As such, the near term additions we’re adding are smaller, bite size pieces of functionality. For example, the next update allows tab-reordering (already submitted to apple). Hopefully soon we can set aside a large enough block of time to knock out expenses.
nico_vervliet@skynet.be Jan 16 2010
Hi,
I love the app!
But I miss 2 things..
- the abillity to see and generate invoices from your time tracking.
-the abillity for more languages (dutch) but this is probably an issue that has to be solved by freshbooks.
greetings! and keep up with the good work!
Matt McNett Jan 21 2010
any news?
keith Jan 21 2010
Hi Matt,
The editable tabs are out in the wild. I think we did the release a month or two ago. Expenses are almost ready. We did all the major work over the holidays when we had a little spare time. We just need to clean up a few bugs that popped up as a result of the newest iPhone OS. Hopefully you’ll be seeing the new feature soon.
keith Jan 21 2010
Nico,
Duly noted. We’re going to try to work together with FreshBooks to support invoices generated from time entries. This is a surprisingly complicated feature, and has no scheduled completion date, but will make it in *eventually*. I haven’t even considered adding additional languages, but we’ll keep it in mind.
Matt McNett Feb 1 2010
I know you were just waiting for this question. Any ideas for the iPad?
keith Feb 2 2010
No specific plans right now. As you can probably tell, we’re swamped enough keeping up with iPhone MiniBooks feature requests. I’m curious to see how it looks on the iPad out of the box.
Kalani Sanders Mar 4 2010
Just adding my vote in for invoices from time entries.
Baback Shahriari Apr 4 2010
I’m adding my request for an iPad optimized version of MiniBooks. Would be willing to pay an UPGRADE cost if this were to be released sooner than later! Thanks in advance..
Service BEE3 May 26 2010
All of our BEE’s second, third, and fourth the motion for minibooks for iPad!
Graham Freeman Jul 3 2010
Another vote for Minibooks for iPad, even if it costs money to upgrade.
Also, it’d be nice if the sync failures were less frequent.
thanks,
Graham
Mathias Mikkelsen Jul 7 2010
I’d LOVE Minibooks for the iPad as well
Make it a seperate app, and charge for it.
dale Oct 4 2010
I have two accounts on Freshbooks.com that i actively invoice from. I wish i could have two instances of Minibooks on my iphone, perhaps with a different colored-icon or something, each linked to a separate Freshbooks account.
Any way to do that?
kristen Oct 17 2010
Any chance of getting an Android version of Minibooks?
Ryan Nov 2 2010
+1 Just adding my vote in for invoices from time entries.
Any plans to get the app updated for iPhone 4 Retina display? It’s the only app on my home screen (and not hidden in a folder) that has an old, nasty icon
Thanks for the great app! Best $15 I ever spent.
nico_vervliet@skynet.be Dec 18 2010
hi,
any updates on generating invoices from the timesheet?
it would be awesome to see how many hours my staff/contractors and me have worked on my phone!
greetings and keep up the good work!
Greg May 25 2011
Are you guys still around?
I’d like to put another vote in like Ryan’s: Invoices from time entries and a Retina update. I use the app everyday, it would be nice to have and update - even a paid one.
Cheers
keith May 30 2011
We are in fact still around, but MiniBooks is no longer the day job, hence the lack of new feature development. I wished I could make a promise about when we can give MiniBooks the love it deserves, but our schedule is too hectic to make a reliable prediction. However, when we can, I can promise the invoicing from time entries feature will be high on our list as will an Ipad/retina display optimized version.