Freckle – Freckle Time Tracking https://letsfreckle.com Easy Online Time Tracking and Invoicing with Freckle Tue, 25 Oct 2016 13:24:21 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.5.4 So I’ve logged all this time into Freckle… now what? https://letsfreckle.com/blog/2014/01/so-ive-logged-all-this-time-into-freckle-now-what/ Mon, 06 Jan 2014 17:23:13 +0000 http://letsfreckle.com/?p=2056 To help you start the new year right, we wanted to give you a real-world example of how you can use your Freckle data to make sense of your time and improve your business. I have a separate Freckle account for almost everything going on in my life. Working, going to school, and investing in the future is a lot to juggle — and Freckle helps keep me on track. As I think back on the semester, I can’t shake the feeling that I let the time get away from me. Rather than sit at my desk and guess where all […]

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To help you start the new year right, we wanted to give you a real-world example of how you can use your Freckle data to make sense of your time and improve your business.

I have a separate Freckle account for almost everything going on in my life. Working, going to school, and investing in the future is a lot to juggle — and Freckle helps keep me on track.

As I think back on the semester, I can’t shake the feeling that I let the time get away from me. Rather than sit at my desk and guess where all my time went, I’m going to take a cold, hard look at the past few months to find the answer.

Did I take advantage of my free time?

The Freckle Pulse is great for understanding where you spend your time each month. While a report can give you the hard numbers, the Pulse gives you a “sixth-sense” about your own habits.

In order to see if I took advantage of my free time, we need to focus on the dark purple sections (that’s my “Downtime” project) over the past few months. I’m going to circle every day that there’s a lot of time logged for the “Downtime” project and see if anything pops out.

all-pulse

Not only are there days filled with Downtime, the pattern is pretty obvious as well. I tend to binge when I’ve finished the school week and at the start of the weekend, which leads to a bunch of running around on Sunday.

But wait, downtime’s good, right?

Yes, but only when it’s quality downtime. There’s a lot of downtime logged here (around 245 hours) but when I reflect on it, I really don’t feel good about it. I watched a bunch of mediocre TV, spent way too much time idly browsing the internet, and just generally being bored. There’s nothing wrong with turning off your brain (sometimes that’s exactly what you need), but this year I want to start using that time more effectively or at least have more fun when I relax. 🙂

Is there anything else I can do?

It felt like I was always sprinting from place to place: drive to class, work, run some errands, make dinner. Surely that’s gotta be taking up a lot of time, should I try fixing that before I focus on my free time?

In order to answer this question, I need to scan the Pulse for a “normal” week, one where I wasn’t on break or some huge deadline was looming.

normal-week-on-pulse

Let’s run a report on this week so we get some hard numbers on where my time went.

report on a normal week

I’ve added up the time spent on individual projects into broader categories so I can see what a normal week looks like:

  • Productive time (School, Client Work, Devroutes, Exercising, etc.): 42.75 hours
  • Downtime: 15.75 hours
  • Overhead (Errands, Driving, Eating, Getting Ready, etc.): 23.5 hours
  • Family time (I went home for the weekend): 5.25 hours

When I divide these by the number of hours logged for this week (87.25), I get a percentage of how much time I spent on each category:

normal week breakdown

Honestly… that’s a lot better than I was expecting. I’d really focused on “trimming the fat” in my schedule by doing things like combining trips and staying on campus in between classes — and it seems to have paid off. Sure, it still takes up a quarter of my week, but I thought it was going to be a lot worse.

So: while I could try to focus my efforts on reducing that overhead, I think it would be much easier (and much more feasible) to focus on fixing the “Downtime binging” problem. It’s something I already want to do, and I could easily get 6% of my week back. And now that I have a better understanding of how overhead eats into my time, I can make better plans down the road!

Final Thoughts

I really wanted to show you how powerful your Freckle account is. By accurately tracking your time, you’ll find all the hidden gems you’d miss in the hustle-and-bustle of daily life. That’s why we work so hard to make logging your time dead-simple.

Hopefully you’re excited to dig into your own Freckle account and find these hidden gems!

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A Support Team’s Guide to Better Emails https://letsfreckle.com/blog/2013/09/a-support-teams-guide-to-better-emails/ Mon, 16 Sep 2013 21:29:23 +0000 http://letsfreckle.com/?p=1824 Have you ever had “just one of those weeks”? When nothing seems to be going your way, and you feel a bit like you’re chasing your own tail just trying to keep up with your day to day activities. Well, last week was “one of those weeks” for the Freckle Team. But thanks to some awesome advice from customer support guru Chase Clemons, we were able quickly answer your Freckle support questions, AND continue our work on some sweet new features like the next version of the Freckle API and our upcoming mobile web app for all you iPhone, Android and Windows […]

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Have you ever had “just one of those weeks”?

When nothing seems to be going your way, and you feel a bit like you’re
chasing your own tail just trying to keep up with your day to day activities.

Well, last week was “one of those weeks” for the Freckle Team.

But thanks to some awesome advice from customer support guru Chase Clemons, we were able quickly answer your Freckle support questions, AND continue our work on some sweet new features like the next version of the Freckle API and our upcoming mobile web app for all you iPhone, Android and Windows Phone users (there’s a lot more where those features came from, but we can’t give away all of our secrets!).

Now, you’re probably wondering two things.

  1. Who is this mastermind Chase Clemons you speak of?
  2. And, How did you manage to stay on top of your Customer Support needs AND keep developing amazing features?

Chase Clemons is a support super hero—he works on the support team at 37Signals  and is the guy behind SupportOps. If you’ve never heard of it and you’re running or are on a support team, you should absolutely check it out!

We know that, like us, that many of you have small support teams of your own.

And just like us, you’ve probably experienced your eyes bulging out of your skull at the sight of an obscene number of support emails at least once or twice. It may be an influx of new customers from an article on that high profile blog, a bug that slipped through your tests, or maybe you’re just back from that vacation where you wanted to work but found the beach more appealing.

Today, we’re going to share with you a little gift SupportOps gave us that helped us through “one of those weeks” and kept us on track to getting you some cool features. 🙂

Here are four tips and tricks we learned from “A Brief Guide to a Better Email”, which helped us a ton during “one of those weeks”.

1.)  When you’re answering a customer’s question, be sure to explain in a way they can understand. 

  • If you’re explaining something technical stay away from complicated wording.  A phrase you’re very familiar with like, “clear your cache”, may be hard for you customer to understand.
  • Consider including steps for how to handle difficult issues on your help site.  That way you can streamline your responses by linking to the answer.

2.)  Stay away from the words like “inconvenient”.

  • If a customer is not happy with something, it’s a not inconvenient, it’s a problem.
  • It’s not an “availability event”, it’s your customer unable to see and use their own data, causing loss of money, time and nerves. Don’t use technical sounding “Serious Business English”, as you’ll sound like a douche bag.
  • No one likes getting emails from a robot. So let your customers know you’re human by being personable and understanding.

3.)  You’re definitely going to see criticism from customers—and that’s a good thing!

  • Ask what the person liked and disliked about your product/service/or whatever it is you do.
  • Getting feedback is key to understanding how your customers use your product or service and you can learn a lot from what someone didn’t like.

4.)  If you’re a small biz, like we are, your support team IS your sales team.

  • Be excited and thankful when someone tells you they’re interested in your product.  A little excitement can go a long way.
  • Let that person know all of the ways they can reach you.  Sell yourself support team, you ROCK!

We found Chase’s “A Brief Guide to a Better Email” super helpful (Thanks Chase!), and we hope you’ll take a look at it and find it just as interesting as we did!

Let us know what you think of these support tips and tricks by emailing Devon, your Freckle Support Super Hero, at support@letsfreckle.com. Or stop by the Freckle Lounge to give us some feedback!

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Increase conversion rates and avoid common A/B testing mistakes: an interview with Patrick McKenzie (patio11) https://letsfreckle.com/blog/2013/07/increase-conversion-rates-and-avoid-common-ab-testing-mistakes-an-interview-with-patrick-mckenzie-patio11/ Mon, 22 Jul 2013 14:33:03 +0000 http://letsfreckle.com/?p=1790 Frecklers, do we have a treat for you! Today’s interview is with one of the most pragmatic and successful conversion rate optimizers in the industry. After having to A/B test Bingo Card Creator to near-perfection, Patrick McKenzie has learned about what does (and more importantly, doesn’t) work in the complex field of turning visitors into paying customers. You may know from his blog or as patio11 on Hacker News or Twitter, where he regularly answers questions and gives out advice from his years of experience. Patrick is also teaming up with Brennan Dunn (who we interviewed last month) to teach […]

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Frecklers, do we have a treat for you! Today’s interview is with one of the most pragmatic and successful conversion rate optimizers in the industry. After having to A/B test Bingo Card Creator to near-perfection, Patrick McKenzie has learned about what does (and more importantly, doesn’t) work in the complex field of turning visitors into paying customers. You may know from his blog or as patio11 on Hacker News or Twitter, where he regularly answers questions and gives out advice from his years of experience.

Patrick is also teaming up with Brennan Dunn (who we interviewed last month) to teach you how to make recurring revenue a reality for your consultancy. It’s shaping up to be a pretty amazing experience, filled with actionable plans and the opportunity to directly contact and receive personal advice from Patrick and Brennan for 6 months. Sign up now, before all the seats are taken!

Patrick_1

Patrick speaking to a BaconBiz Conf 2013 attendee

Now let’s get started with this interview!

What do you focus on most when working to increase your conversion rate, and what are some “easy wins” you can almost always implement?

It depends on the particular context for the company. Generally you want to take a look at the business prior to just firing wildly. For example, grab documentation and screenshots of the current pages for:

  1. The home page
  2. The plans and pricing page
  3. The signup page
  4. The landing pages which have the highest spend associated with them, if there is paid advertising going on

It is generally also a good idea to get an idea of what your current numbers or historical numbers are, so that you know what you’re trying to beat. You can, of course, just do A/B testing without knowing what your current conversion rate is, but I like knowing the lay of the land first.

Alright, so we know where we are. Now what do we target first? Clear errors. Everyone always, always, always has them prior to starting optimization. Clear errors are:

  1. Lack of persuasive copy in key places, (for example: literally having “Plans & Pricing” has the H1 on the plans and pricing page). You should replace that with benefits-focused copy- do something like anchor the prices on that page, stomp an objection, or otherwise try to get people to click to the signup form.
  2. Calls to action which suck, like “Submit” or “Signup.” Replace them with more descriptive Call To Actions (CTA) which promise value, not pain. One formula which works well: verb, benefit, immediacy. “Get Started Now” is a classic for a reason. “Start Tracking Your Time Now” is another good example. 😉
  3. Particularly for home pages, it is often possible to have high-quality visual designs overwhelm the visitor from clicking on the CTA. You’ll know the way to address this when you see the context of the page, but in general, you want the CTA button to be the obvious next step.

What are some of the biggest missteps you’ve seen people make when attempting to increase their conversion rate?

Many people, including myself, are guilty of just throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks. While undirected hill-climbing WILL ACTUALLY WORK (surprisingly!), you’ll grow your metrics much faster if you have a theory of the mind of your visitor/customer, you develop hypotheses as to why they are doing the behavior you are seeing, and you design experiments to invalidate those hypotheses where you’re wrong. Then, when you start to get data which shows some of your thoughts on the Why question may not be wrong, you will have a much easier time developing “Hows” to optimize.

For example: One of my most effective optimizations by percentage ever was for Bingo Card Creator. It had a lot of moving parts to it, but the upshot was that it brought in a lot of customers in a non-traditional segment for me. Only after I realized that (after digging into data) did I figure out the easy, “obvious” two character (!) A/B test which ended up being worth tens of thousands of dollars.

When making a change focused on moving visitors “down the funnel” (from seeing your sales page to actually signing up) How do you differentiate between actual results and “false positives” (such as an increase in traffic) after you’ve made the change?

It is important, when possible, to test the entire freaking funnel. I know a lot of folks, particularly those with less traffic, will try to bootstrap by testing for a proxy conversion. (For example, testing for a click on a button on the home page rather than for a free trial signup.)

That will get you faster results, but you run the risk of getting bad results quickly. Example: I remember a time when a particular consulting client which makes a bug tracker accidentally became really, really efficient at convincing jealous girlfriends to bug their boyfriend’s cars via a redesign which cut out all description of what the product actually did. That did good things for early numbers in the funnels but did not exactly move the needle for their B2B software developer productivity application.

One way you can sanity check this sort of thing is to save what A/B tests someone has seen somewhere associated with their client accounts, and periodically review them. You can do this quantitatively (via e.g. cohort analysis of old A/B tests) but at low to moderate scale/sophistication sometimes just browsing through a single page in your admin is enough to flag the problem.

For example, if you have Alternative A which is beating the stuffing out of Alternative B in an A/B test (with the goal to get people to the signup page), and you look at the most recent 100 accounts which sign up and see that they signed up under ABBABABBBABBABBAA…, you would quickly come to the impression that that test isn’t as useful as you might naively think it is.

When do you think is the right time to transition from adjusting a single version of your content to performing AB testing?

This is a great and under-appreciated question. If you just want a quick rule of thumb: if you’re A/B testing for a free conversion, like a trial or email submission, you’ll want to have 3,000+ visitors a month to the page directly upstream of that conversion. If you don’t have that, work on acquisition first.

More broadly: I’d focus on A/B testing when you have a product which works, you have customers for it, your customers are giving you qualitative and quantitative evidence that it is creating lots of value for them, and you’ve got some leeway to invest in the future. If you won’t make rent next month unless you get 10 new customers, then don’t do A/B testing — hustle, bang down doors, and find those 10 new customers. But if you’re at $20k a month and want to get to $25k, starting A/B testing is a GREAT idea.

What are some of the most common pitfalls you’ve encountered when running AB tests?

Overwhelmingly the most common problems are related to wanting to do A/B testing but not actually sitting down and running 1+ tests a week every single week. If you can’t commit to that for at least two months, don’t do A/B testing. (Don’t tell me you don’t have enough time — I did this for YEARS when I was working 90+ hour weeks at the day job. It literally takes 5 minutes to implement A/B tests to change a call to action or headline.)

More commonly a problem when doing client work: often times people want to declare a winner as soon as one looks like it is beating the other, without waiting for the numbers to actually come back. Some A/B testing tools even encourage the user to do this (looking at you, Optimizely) because it’s such a common user wish. If you do this, you’re not experimenting, you’re just reading chicken entrails and hoping to gain insights from them.

What tools would you recommend for performing AB testing?

Is the person who will “own” A/B testing in the organization technical? If so, use whatever tool works server-side on your tech stack. I like A/Bingo, obviously, because I wrote it to be the perfect A/B testing tool for Rails developers who were exactly like me in every way. 😉

If they’re not technical, two good options: Visual Website Optimizer and Optimizely. Both are roughly similar in terms of reliability, reporting, and UX. I personally prefer VWO by a smidgeon. I’ll caution you that, like many cloud tools for analytics, it is sometimes difficult to reconcile their numbers with ones collected by other tools or your own code. That said, it’s worth it for allowing your e.g. marketing manager or copywriter to be able to A/B test headlines without requiring bugging engineering several times a day.


We hoped that you enjoyed this interview! Do you have any burning questions or a topic you need to read about? Drop us a line, we’d love to hear how we can help your business!

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Friends of Freckle: Pigment & Punch https://letsfreckle.com/blog/2013/06/friends-of-freckle-pigment-punch/ https://letsfreckle.com/blog/2013/06/friends-of-freckle-pigment-punch/#comments Tue, 25 Jun 2013 10:10:42 +0000 http://letsfreckle.com/?p=1752 Ever wish you could track your time with Freckle on the go? Are you longing for a desktop widget that’ll keep you focused on tracking your time? Thanks to some good friends of Freckle, the wait is over! The awesome teams from Wrep and Fousa / Nilo have used the Freckle API to integrate their 3rd-party applications with Freckle. Pigment is a mobile app built by Wrep.  It’s available in the App Store for iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch. With Pigment, you can download all of your Freckle projects, work offline with an easy to use Timer, and even log incoming calls.   Punch for Freckle is a desktop app for […]

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Ever wish you could track your time with Freckle on the go?

Are you longing for a desktop widget that’ll keep you focused on tracking your time?

Thanks to some good friends of Freckle, the wait is over!

The awesome teams from Wrep and Fousa / Nilo have used the Freckle API to integrate their 3rd-party applications with Freckle.

PigmentAppPigment is a mobile app built by Wrep.  It’s available in the App Store for iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch.

With Pigment, you can download all of your Freckle projects, work offline with an easy to use Timer, and even log incoming calls.

 

Punch for FrecklePunch for Freckle is a desktop app for OS X, built by Fousa & Nilo.  It’s available in the App Store, and requires OS X 10.6 or later.

Punch offers a small toolbar application that’s fast and out of the way. With Punch, just enter your project data and send it right to Freckle.

Working with the Freckle API?

Send us an email at support@letsfreckle.com and let us know!  We’d love to hear about what you’re doing. 🙂

Stay tuned for more “Friends of Freckle” posts down the road!

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Increase your rates and engage your clients: an interview with Brennan Dunn https://letsfreckle.com/blog/2013/06/increase-your-rates-and-engage-your-clients-an-interview-with-brennan-dunn/ Wed, 19 Jun 2013 15:20:28 +0000 http://letsfreckle.com/?p=1748 Hello Frecklers! Today we’ve got an interview with Brennan Dunn, and it’s all about how to make more money and build better relationships with your past, present, and future clients! You might know Brennan from his blog and newsletter, as the writer of “Double Your Freelancing Rate” and “Sell Yourself Online: The Blueprint”, as one of the teachers behind the Consultancy Masterclass, or the founder of Planscope. However you know him, you know how important customer engagement and good pricing are to him. As a bonus for being a Freckler, Brennan’s giving a 20% off discount for “Double Your Freelancing […]

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Hello Frecklers! Today we’ve got an interview with Brennan Dunn, and it’s all about how to make more money and build better relationships with your past, present, and future clients!

high_res_brennan

You might know Brennan from his blog and newsletter, as the writer of “Double Your Freelancing Rate” and “Sell Yourself Online: The Blueprint”, as one of the teachers behind the Consultancy Masterclass, or the founder of Planscope. However you know him, you know how important customer engagement and good pricing are to him.

As a bonus for being a Freckler, Brennan’s giving a 20% off discount for “Double Your Freelancing Rate”. Just use the coupon code: FRECKLE on checkout!

Since you’re busy using all the extra time Freckle helped you find, we’ll get right to the interview without any further introduction. 😉


Why don’t freelancers charge more? Why are their “excuses” incorrect?

Most people set their rates based on entirely selfish reasons: they reverse-engineer their lifestyle needs or their former salary, and come up with an arbitrary hourly figure. And while just about every freelancer would like to make more money, most are reluctant to raise their rates. Here are a few reasons why:

  1. Lack of justification: “I’m not worth $XXX.” Most freelancers are absolutely horrible at figuring out what net benefit we deliver to our clients. We think of ourselves as “designers”, or “coders”, or whatever you’re particularly good at. When you begin to realize and quantify how you can improve your clients business, it’s a lot easier to justify — internally and externally — a higher cost.
  2. Working is better than not working. The majority of freelancers aren’t in high-demand. So when a new lead shows up, they’d rather win the contract (at a lower rate) than risk being out of work. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs tends to trump business goals.
  3. Commoditization. If you label yourself as a “freelance Ruby developer” it becomes a lot more difficult to justify why anyone should pay your rates over a $5 an hour “freelance Ruby developer” who happens to live in a country with a lower cost of living. And this fear of globalization and commodity pricing keeps many a freelancer charging significantly less than what they’re worth.

What was the most important thing that helped you charge more as a freelancer?

When I started thinking less about myself and more about my clients. I realized that no one actually wants a website or a web app, but instead wants to solve some underlying business problem (e.g., the client wants more customers, more profit, less costs, etc.) This allowed me to re-shift my entire strategy — how I sold, how I communicated, and how I helped determine the scope of a project — around solving that problem. By increasing the likelihood that I would, in fact, solve their business problem, the client was willing to pay me more than my competitors.

How much more money was in the bank after you made these changes?

When I started freelancing full-time, I was at around $80 an hour. Now, depending on the type and length of an engagement, my rate ranges between $200 and $500 an hour.

The magical thing about charging more is that the caliber of client goes up, along with the respect and authority they show you. When you’re working with more serious clients who understand that you’re serving them as an investment vessel instead of as a commoditized expense (“my web guy/gal…”), you’ll be happier and will be treated with the level of professionalism you deserve.

How did you keep customers engaged with your business after the project was finished?

I once worked with a realtor who had me build software that would automatically setup a followup schedule after closing a client. He knew that in real estate, relationships and repeat business were everything. And he also knew that most realtors dropped the ball and never cultivated their past clients after cashing their fat commission checks.

Wouldn’t you know, consulting is another business where relationships and repeat business matter… a lot. I started setting up followup schedules for each of my past clients. Every few months, I’d call them up and see how they were doing and how our project was working out for them. Were they making more money? Had it offset the cost of hiring us? If not, is there anything we could do to fix this?

By taking a vested interest in the long term success of my clients, rather than just whether or not their invoices would clear, I ended up building a lot of trust. And because I was constantly talking with past clients, we were at the front of their minds — which came in handy should they be asked, “Hey, I’m looking to redo our website. Any recommendations?”

What do you think are the best ways to keep in touch with existing clients while reaching out to new ones?

I think newsletters are a fantastic idea for your past clients and your current prospects. What I don’t think is a good idea, however, is constantly touting your company.

If I’m going to be getting a newsletter from someone, I care about me and the time I’m going to invest reading these emails. I want to make sure I walk away from a newsletter having learned something that helps grow my business.

We’ve successfully reengaged past clients (and engaged active prospects) by promoting events we were going to be hosting. From “Startup Nights” to free business seminars, we were constantly promoting events that would help grow businesses — all the while, centering these events around our company.

One last type of event you might want to consider: Kickoff parties. When you successfully ship a project, invite your client, your past clients, your (future) clients, and the community at large. It’s some of the best money you can spend (beer and finger foods) for the return you’ll get. Dropping a few prospective clients right in the center of a celebration around your ability to get things done can be the sort of social proof you need to win someone’s business.

How should I approach contacting existing clients in order to sell them other products which might benefit their business (such as retainer agreements)?

I wouldn’t sell retainer products at scale, because there’s rarely a one-size-fits-all retainer agreement. You could try delivering a series of emails to your past clients that talk about ways to continuously optimize and mitigate risk, and include a blurb about how you could help them via a custom retainer. This way, you’ll let your past clients know why they should be considering an ongoing relationship with you before you contact them directly.

You could also think of ways that you can produce the sort of results your clients pay you for, but without the overhead of you physically dedicating your time and attention to their project.

Consider the following: You’ve worked on a number of different projects in the past, which gives you experience and know-how that other people might want. You could package case studies, industry trends, and step-by-step instructions on how to apply the knowledge you have into a transactional product — an ebook, screencast, or a paid newsletter. These products could be sold to your existing clients by providing them with additional understanding they might not have already. But more importantly, these products can allow you to sell to new customers and serve as lead generation and a steady stream of cash.

Not convinced? Think about it this way. When a client hires you, they’re buying your knowledge and your time to apply that knowledge. For every client who is willing to hire you, there are hundreds of people who might be interested in learning how to apply that knowledge themselves and are willing to pay to get there. And just because a business owner might want to learn a thing or two about design doesn’t mean they have the desire or the time to execute themselves — your product could ultimately be a sales vessel for you and your company (and allow you to justify a higher cost — clients who come to you through your products won’t want to work with anyone else but you!)


We hoped that you enjoyed this interview! We plan on doing a series of these in the future, each one focused on how to grow your business and earn more. Do you have any burning questions or a topic you need to read about? Drop us a line, we’d love to hear how we can help your business!

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The Freckle Lounge https://letsfreckle.com/blog/2013/06/the-freckle-lounge-2/ Mon, 17 Jun 2013 16:31:43 +0000 http://letsfreckle.com/?p=1743 Got a question you need answered sooner than later?  Have a concern about your Freckle account? Weekdays between 10 am and 5 pm ET visit the Freckle team in the brand new Freckle Lounge! Even if you don’t have an immediate problem, stop in and say ‘Hi’ to us. 🙂 Get directions to the Freckle Lounge here. Who might you find hanging out in the Lounge? Amy Hoy: Co-Founder and Freckle Designer Thomas Fuchs: Co-Founder and JavaScript Guru Devon Kreider: Resident Support Super Hero Thomas Cannon: Awesome Programmer and Freckle Intern If no one is in the Freckle Lounge to […]

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Got a question you need answered sooner than later?  Have a concern about your Freckle account?

Weekdays between 10 am and 5 pm ET visit the Freckle team in the brand new Freckle Lounge!

Even if you don’t have an immediate problem, stop in and say ‘Hi’ to us. 🙂

Get directions to the Freckle Lounge here.

Who might you find hanging out in the Lounge?

  • Amy Hoy: Co-Founder and Freckle Designer
  • Thomas Fuchs: Co-Founder and JavaScript Guru
  • Devon Kreider: Resident Support Super Hero
  • Thomas Cannon: Awesome Programmer and Freckle Intern

If no one is in the Freckle Lounge to help you, send us an email to support@letsfreckle.com

It’s no fun without you, so stop in and send us some love! (And yes, problems count as love)

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Get Paid With PayPal Integration! https://letsfreckle.com/blog/2013/01/get-paid-with-paypal-integration/ https://letsfreckle.com/blog/2013/01/get-paid-with-paypal-integration/#comments Tue, 29 Jan 2013 15:26:18 +0000 https://letsfreckle.com/?p=1692 We’re super excited to introduce to you the newest friend of Freckle, PayPal! Now, when you create a invoice in Freckle, you have the option to allow your client to pay via PayPal. And since you only need to enter what you need, when you need it, it’s still just as easy to invoice your client as it was before.  All you need to do is choose the currency that’s right for you, and enter your PayPal email address in the ‘RECIPIENT EMAIL’ field. Freckle has even generated a long list of potential currencies for you to choose from that […]

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We’re super excited to introduce to you the newest friend of Freckle, PayPal! Now, when you create a invoice in Freckle, you have the option to allow your client to pay via PayPal.

And since you only need to enter what you need, when you need it, it’s still just as easy to invoice your client as it was before.  All you need to do is choose the currency that’s right for you, and enter your PayPal email address in the ‘RECIPIENT EMAIL’ field.

Freckle has even generated a long list of potential currencies for you to choose from that match those supported by PayPal (not all of Freckle’s currencies are supported by PayPal, so double-check before you save the invoice!).

Screenshot of Invoice Template

Just like before, you’ll get a link to share with your client.  Only now, Freckle will show you when your invoice is awaiting payment from your client, when the payment is pending and when your invoice is paid!  

You can even view a real time detailed payment log of your PayPal account during and after the transaction. And Freckle will do all the work for you, immediately changing the status of your invoice without you needing to lift a finger!

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When your client receives the invoice, they’ll be able to pay you in a few simple steps!  When PayPal payments are enabled by you, the invoice has a ‘PAY WITH PAYPAL’ button for your client to click on.  

By clicking on the shiny new PayPal button your client will be immediately directed to their own PayPal account.  Then all they need to do is choose their method of payment, click ‘PAY’ and be on their merry way!  Note that if your client does business in another country or chooses to pay you via bank transfer or eCheck, the payment may take a few days to be completed (as usual with PayPal).

Just check the list of invoices in Freckle for the current status. If your client pays you with a credit card or via a PayPal balance, the transaction will appear almost immediately.

Of course, PayPal will always send you emails about the status of any payments.

Screenshot of how to Pay in PayPal

Once the transaction is complete, you and your client will both see a fancy ‘PAID’stamp in the right hand corner of your invoice.  Go ahead, get all warm and fuzzy inside when you see that stamp, that’s what it’s there for!  

And don’t forget to download your invoice as a PDF or print it out for your records.  Cause when you create an invoice in Freckle, you’ve got options, baby!

Screenshot of a Paid Invoice with Stamp

Let us know your thoughts on what you’d like to see Freckle invoicing do–we’re constantly working on improving and tweaking what Freckle has to offer you!

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New and awesome developer docs! https://letsfreckle.com/blog/2013/01/new-and-awesome-developer-docs/ Tue, 08 Jan 2013 18:47:26 +0000 http://letsfreckle.com/?p=1674 Nerd alert! This article is about our new developer documentation. 🙂 Want to integrate Freckle with an app of yours? You’re probably aware of our API, and now we’ve a shiny new developer website available as a guide to you! Next to listing all the API functions and showing examples with JSON and XML (your choice!), we’ve also whipped up a fully interactive site where you can test various API calls to our API test account as well as real Freckle accounts (thanks to Hurl, here’s our fork). The new developer site is open source and on GitHub—in case you […]

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Nerd alert! This article is about our new developer documentation. 🙂

Want to integrate Freckle with an app of yours? You’re probably aware of our API, and now we’ve a shiny new developer website available as a guide to you!

Next to listing all the API functions and showing examples with JSON and XML (your choice!), we’ve also whipped up a fully interactive site where you can test various API calls to our API test account as well as real Freckle accounts (thanks to Hurl, here’s our fork).

The new developer site is open source and on GitHub—in case you find an issue we welcome any fixes and clarifications and additions (for example, if you have a new Freckle client library, feel free to add it via a pull request!).

We’re also working on a V2 of our API that will introduce a lot more functionality as well often-requested features (like access to the Freckle Timers). If you’ve feedback, questions or requests, please head over to the API documentation site and use the feedback & support form (or write to support@letsfreckle.com!). We’d love to hear your thoughts!

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Lookin’ back: the dashboard mini-pulse https://letsfreckle.com/blog/2012/12/lookin-back-the-dashboard-mini-pulse/ Thu, 20 Dec 2012 19:36:30 +0000 http://letsfreckle.com/?p=1665 You probably love the mini-pulse on your Freckle dashboard, which shows you which days you’ve worked on (and how much and on what) for the current week. We’ve added a new feature to “look back” on the last 7 days of work—so you can quickly see if you have some more time tracking left to do for last week as well: In true Freckle spirit, the mini-pulse automatically remembers your preference when you go back to the dashboard later, all without configuring anything. We’re looking forward to you looking back!

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You probably love the mini-pulse on your Freckle dashboard, which shows you which days you’ve worked on (and how much and on what) for the current week.

We’ve added a new feature to “look back” on the last 7 days of work—so you can quickly see if you have some more time tracking left to do for last week as well:

In true Freckle spirit, the mini-pulse automatically remembers your preference when you go back to the dashboard later, all without configuring anything. We’re looking forward to you looking back!

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4 Years of Freckle… 31 Days of Freelancer Gifts! https://letsfreckle.com/blog/2012/11/4-years-of-freckle-31-days-of-freelancer-gifts/ https://letsfreckle.com/blog/2012/11/4-years-of-freckle-31-days-of-freelancer-gifts/#comments Fri, 30 Nov 2012 22:27:07 +0000 http://letsfreckle.com/?p=1660 We can’t believe it, but we launched Freckle 4 years ago this month. It’s been one helluva crazy time. A lot has changed! And a lot hasn’t changed at all, too: Our #1 mission is still to help you kick more ass in your business, whether you’re a solo freelancer or consulting agency. That’s why we’ve grown our team this year, and why we’re pouring more of our resources than ever before into creating awesome, actionable tools & educational materials for you. Great software helps, but it’s only one ingredient in the recipe for your success. Surprise… You are the […]

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We can’t believe it, but we launched Freckle 4 years ago this month. It’s been one helluva crazy time. A lot has changed! And a lot hasn’t changed at all, too:

Our #1 mission is still to help you kick more ass in your business, whether you’re a solo freelancer or consulting agency.

That’s why we’ve grown our team this year, and why we’re pouring more of our resources than ever before into creating awesome, actionable tools & educational materials for you. Great software helps, but it’s only one ingredient in the recipe for your success.

Surprise… You are the person who can do the most to grow your business! 🙂

And that’s why we’re celebrating our birthday with presents for you.

Every day in December, we’ll send you a worksheet, checklist, or other actionable goodie designed to help you get more out of your business in the new year. That’s “Freelancember” in a nutshell: Free gifts for freelancers, consultants, & agencies.

Oh, and it’s free!

So, if you’d like to learn how to…

  • raise your rates
  • attract your ideal clients
  • get great testimonials
  • get busy with your long-term goals
  • market without tears
  • and more…

Then you’ll want to sign up for free Freelancember goodies today:


Why are the Freelancember goodies so good? Simply put:

Between us, we’ve got over 25 years of consulting experience, so we know what we’re talking about. And we brought in a guest expert, Brennan Dunn, to boot!

Plus, we believe Serious Business doesn’t have to be drab and boring, and I (Amy), Thomas and Devon (our customer ambassador!) worked our little tails off to bring the same level of joy & fun to Freelancember as we do to Freckle itself.

So don’t miss out on a single day. Just drop your email in the box below and we’ll send you nothing but Freelancember freebies:


Enjoy your free gifts, and please feel free to share them with folks you know who could use them! Our goal is to help you succeed in business while staying sane and happy!

And, once more: A BIG thank you goes out to all of our customers, friends and family—we couldn’t have done it without you! <3 Happy Holidays and joyeaux noelle!

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