Blog : Intuit

Method CRM for Intuit Anywhere - Now Released

Method_Danny — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 14:32:00 GMT

Back in June we blogged about Intuit announcing a new way of integrating with QuickBooks called Intuit Anywhere (“IA”). Starting today, all new Method CRM for QuickBooks Online users will be using IA to connect to QuickBooks. IA provides QuickBooks users a great new experience of connecting your favorite apps, like Method CRM, in one place. Plus, you get a cool blue-dot in the top right corner of your screen when you login to Method directly showing all your App Center apps. Told you it was cool!

So what are some of the benefits of IA?

Fewer steps to sign in. Since you sign in from the normal Method login form, it is faster and less clumsy for your staff to sign in. By the end of November, we’ll be using OpenID so that if you want to sign in directly from workplace.intuit.com, you still can.
With Intuit Anywhere, your tokens don’t expire. So your Method CRM account stays in sync with QuickBooks Online for all users without your administrator having to constantly sync. Syncing happens automatically all day without any interaction by you.
Easier to invite new users. Users don’t need to be registered on workplace.intuit.com anymore, so there are fewer steps to get your team up and running.
No Intuit bar along the top of the screen. Instead there is a non-intrusive blue-dot that only shows up for the administrator. In time, Intuit plans on making the blue dot available to all users based on the apps they have access to, but this is a few months out.

We’re really excited to be one of the six developers to first work with IA. In addition to this, I'd like to note how impressive it is to see how quickly the Intuit team is releasing new data to developers for QBO. Check back on our blog and release notes for other regular updates.

- Danny

Still Emailing PDFs? Wake up and smell the new portals!

Method_Paul — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 13:37:00 GMT

With today's release of the new portals, I can happily announce: the days of emailing PDF invoices are over. They are dead. Stick a fork in them. Emailing invoices just creates a hassle for your customers.

When your customers receive an emailed invoice they think to themselves:

How do I pay for this? I have 2 minutes right now, is that enough to get this done?
If I have to call to pay it, will they even pickup the phone, or will I have to leave a message or wait on hold? Ugh....I don't have time to find out - I'll do it later.
My contact information is wrong. How do I change this, and how will I know it was really changed? Should I even bother?
I thought I paid this already. There's no billing history in this email. Do I have time to dig into this right now?
That reminds me, I need a copy of last month's invoice for my expense report. How do I request this? How long will it take them to get around to sending it to me? I need this now.
Darn! More money out of my pocket! (okay.....we really can't help with that one)

Bottom line: today's customers are too busy to call or email you. They are doing their business on the web and getting their tasks done INSTANTLY, on demand, without having to wait for email responses or having to pick up the phone. The companies they value more are the ones who make it convenient for them to get their tasks done.

The new portals give your customers convenience, help them pay you faster and make you look professional - BIG COMPANY professional. Even better - this is all available "out of the box" in Method, with no additional setup required. In fact, chances are, you are only minutes away from sending your customers their first invoice the new way.

Here is your new invoicing process:

Create your invoice in Method using the Customer Center > Invoices screen. Here, I am using our "Best 4 You Services" account, which has been customized with our own company logo and color scheme.
Make sure Email notification when saving? is checked.
Click Save & Email.
You will be BCC'd on the email your customer gets.
Notice that the email has a simple link to click, built using our new MIurl.cc short URL.
Once your customer clicks on the link they'll be taken to a sign in screen.
Note, only their email address is needed for authentication. This makes it easy for them to sign into the portal without any hassle.
After signing in the customer is taken directly to the invoice.
Here they can view or print a PDF, and pay their invoice online. Don't have a payment gateway setup yet? Get on it! Method currently supports Intuit Merchant Services, Authorize.NET and PSIgate. If you use Intuit Merchant Services, read my recent blog entry about how to setup Intuit Merchant Services for Method.

Other features of the new portals:

Your customers can view and modify their contact information. When this happens, both you and the customer get an email notification. Of course, the new information flows instantly into QuickBooks!
The portals now collect Social Media information about your contacts, such as their Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter user names.
If you are a Method Full Blown or CRM user, your customers can search existing solutions, which are your frequently asked customer service questions.
If you are a Method Full Blown or CRM user, your customers can create a customer service case.
It's all customizable!! You can modify the screens, and create your own screens to further enrich the customer experience!

What does this cost?

The first 500 portal sessions each month are FREE. This is a lot of sessions, so for the vast majority of Method users, portals are now totally free.
Have heavy portal use? For each session beyond 500 a month you'll see 15 cents added to your bill. I think you'll agree this cost is an amazingly tiny little dot next to what it would have cost your staff to handle all those calls!
What's a "session"? A portal session is 5 minutes of continued activity, which is typically more than enough time for your customer to get in and out. What if they forget to sign out? Don't worry, if they use it for 5 minutes, leave the portal open all day, and then come back and use it for 5 more minutes, it only counts as two sessions.

Want to Learn more?

Make sure you sign up for Wayne's webinar next week. He's going to give you a live look at portals on Wednesday Feb 23rd, at 3pm Eastern / 12pm Pacific. Click here to sign up.

So, what are you waiting for? Get started on the new way of invoicing TODAY!

Paul

Your holiday gifts from Method: New Payments screen, new UI features!

Method_Paul — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 22:15:00 GMT

I started writing this blog post early last week. At the time, I was just writing about some new user interface ("UI") features that came out. But when I wrote the line "we haven't actually redesigned any screens - yet - but at least now we can." I woke up - it is certainly not in the holiday spirit to tease and leave Method users wanting more!! So a week later, here I am, back to finish my blog post, with more to announce.

We now have a freshly redesigned Receive Payment screen!

If you go to Customer Center > Receive Payment you'll see some new functionality, as well as an example of what is possible with some of the new design capabilities in Method. Let me explain...

New Functionality:

Balance in Received From dropdown - In another life, when I used QuickBooks directly to enter payments instead of Method, it bothered me that I couldn't see what the outstanding balance was for the customer in the dropdown - so we took the liberty of adding that to Method's version of the Receive Payment screen. Also, when you select a customer the balance outstanding automatically fills in the Amount field to save you time (which, of course, you can overwrite if needed).
Payment Gateway - You'll now see the Payment Gateway dropdown here. This lists all the merchant accounts you have listed under Customize > My Account > Payment Gateways. If you are not already setup, you'll have to first have an account with either Intuit Merchant Services, Authorize.NET (great for Americans) or PSIGate (great for Canadians). You'll also notice that we tied a Payment Gateway to a QuickBooks A/R Account, Payment Method and Deposit To Account to speed up data entry.
Process with payment gateway when saving? - Together with the Payment Gateway, when you save the payment you have the option to automatically charge the customer's credit card, give a "Payment Processed" or "Payment Declined" message, put the Order ID into the Reference # field, and send the payment to QuickBooks.....which I can report back as being *awesome* since we started using it internally a few days ago.
Email payment notification when saving? - Selecting this will mean that when the payment is processed all contacts on this customer's account who are setup to receive billing notifications will receive an email. The email template is something you can customize yourself, but you'll see the standard one already gives you a professional look. Tip: edit the Payment Notification email template and add your billing email to the CC (optional) field, so that you can receive a copy of each notification you send.

New User Interface:

Labels support HTML - You'll notice that the "Process customer payments that sync to QuickBooks......" label in the image above has a backcolor, bold text and a border. How did I do that? In the past, the labels were straight text. Now the labels support HTML content, and up to 4000 characters, so if you know a little HTML, or know how to copy and paste from an HTML editor, you have a lot of flexibility.
Sections have background color, border color and cellspacing - when you click Edit on a section header in the designer, you'll see a lot more options for styling the section. As you can see from the credit card information section above, it has been styled to have the same background as the inactive tab color, same border as the active tab color and some extra padding.

Buttons can be big or small - previously buttons came in one size, take it or leave it. Now you can adjust the font size of buttons to emphasize or de-emphasize buttons. In the example above, you'll see Save & Close has a font size of 12pts making it bigger than normal, and Cancel is a link with font size 8pts, making it smaller than normal.
Keep objects side-by-side - You'll see in the example above that Save & Close, or, and Cancel are all in the same cell, displayed side-by-side. You couldn't do this before. If you had fields and objects in the same cell you only had the option to stack them on top of each other. Now you can set this by editing each object in a cell and choosing the "Keep this side-by-side other objects in the same cell" option. Note: some objects like dropdowns and datepickers don't yet support this feature.
Objects can align left, right or center in a cell - Previously you could only adjust the alignment of buttons. Now you can adjust the alignment of most objects - which goes a long way when trying to match your design layout in Method to how you planned it in your head.

Happy holidays,

Paul

Platform update - Intuit Merchant Service integration, Google Apps-Friendly Email Preferences and much more

Method_Paul — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 18:28:00 GMT

I love Fridays, especially when there is a big Method update to share with everyone. There hasn't been an update to the platform since the beginning of August, so we are long overdue - but I can assure you the Dev team has been extremely busy.

Overall, the focus of the Dev team's work was to prepare for a rework of some key areas of Method's backend to make Method faster and more flexible than ever before. It's been 4 years since we broke ground on coding Method and along the way we've had plenty of great feedback from you, our Method users and Method Solution Providers on where you want us to go. Yet, while preparing for the rework, they managed to get in many new features and fixes into this release - and in the coming months you'll start to see the true impact of their rework as we release more updates. Here are just some of the highlights:

New Features

Credit Card Processing now have Intuit Merchant Services and Authorize.NET added to the supported payment processors list!! This works just like the other credit card processors we have where you enter your merchant account information into the action, grab values from the screen for credit card numbers, addresses, and amounts, and get back an action result on whether or not it was approved.

We had a lot more planned that we wanted to get into this release related to credit card processing, but it will have to wait for the next update. Next update should have database field encryption, PayPal, Google Checkout, and most importantly a way for you to enter your Merchant account info under Customize > My Account so that a new version of the customer portal can use this for customer payments without you having to customize your screens. Next update.
Https green bar. Rather than being selective on which pages were https and which were http, we have made all pages https. There is a slight performance hit in doing this, but the Dev team found a way optimizing it so that it was minimal. Plus the green bar really does look cool.
SSL for Email Preferences - needed for Google Apps email integration, since it requires SSL.
Ability to mask characters. Certain fields you just don't want someone standing behind you to see you type into, such as a password or social security numbers. So we added a feature to use when designing your apps so that you can now add a mask to textbox objects. This feature is found in Step 1 of 3: Textbox Properties, under the Advanced Options area.
Color scheme - I love this feature. When designing an app before, the fields and colors you chose would look great in your environment......but when screens were copied over to someone else's environment it would look messy since they might have a green, brown or custom theme, while yours was, say...blue. Best example is the Field Service dashboard. When I designed the dashboard screen, my tabs and grids were all a shade of blue. So when I made my headings in the Field Service Dashboard, I chose a big blue font. I've seen Method Field Services on user's screenshots where their color code is different and my dashboard just looks UGLY. Next time I do an update for the Field Service Dashboard, I'm going to choose "Active Tab" for the color of my headings, so that no matter which account the screen is copied into, it will match their Active Tab color, not mine. Love it.
Similar to the color scheme settings on the designer, the color scheme and default logo are now available on all report templates. That way you can make a report template that will automatically adopt the user's logo and color scheme no matter what account it is imported into. To do this:

a) Drag a picture object onto a template, and set the Data Binding to Company.DisplayLogo:

b) Drag a color field onto the screen, such as Company.DisplayColorActiveTab.
c) Name the field something meaningful like "xrActiveColor", and set the field's Visible property to false.
d) (Advanced geek stuff, beware!) On the object you want to set the color of, edit the BeforePrint script for the object or the band the object is in, and put in the script:
xrYourObjectName.Backcolor = ColorTranslator.FromHtml(xrActiveColor.Text)
or
xrYourObjectName.Forecolor = ColorTranslator.FromHtml(xrActiveColor.Text)
Fewer/More Rows icons for grids (). This is so that you can temporarily increase the number of rows visible in the grid without having to permanently set the row count by customizing. Next time you sign out or sign in it will go back to the original row count. This is really useful if you normally just need to see 10 rows of CRM activities, but you are browsing through looking for a specific activity and want to see 50 or 100 at a time.
Time in a grid in HH:MM format is now editable. This is good for Field Service users, or anyone who tracks time. The best display for time is in HH:MM format, so that instead of 150 minutes it displays as 2:30. Previously this was read only, but now if you type "170" or "2:50" it would save and display as 2 hours and 50 minutes!
Multiple attachments in sending emails. Previously you could only attach a single attachment to an email in a Send Email Action. Now you can attach up to 5 attachments to an email, by clicking the "+" symbol next to the Attachment Location label.

Fixes

There are numerous fixes too. Here are some highlights:

Calendar now supports displaying 24 hours, when customized. Previously it only supported 23 hours.
PNG images files did not preview for picture objects, unlike JPG, BMP and GIF.
Dropdown wizard in the designer did not always show the unique fields for the first dropdown field value. This was a little embarrassing .....it was showing fields that had unique values, rather than fields marked as unique.
In Step 2 of the grid wizard, columns with single quotes in their captions were rejected. Now they are happily accepted with open arms.
Export to Excel - previously the Export To Excel action for grids was a little lazy and exported everything that the grid was first loaded with, instead of the currently filtered values. It now exports what is visible, no more, no less.
Customize > Display color theme. Also embarrassing , when you changed your color theme, you had to jump through hoops to get the new colors to take on all your screens. For example, if you changed your theme from green to blue, it would be very common to have a screen with a blue grid, green tabs, and blue calendar, and green appointments on the calendar! Yuk. That is fixed now. Sorry.

Next update should be in just over 4 weeks. We're looking forward to releasing more great features then.

Paul

Method attending the Intuit Solution Provider Summit 2010

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 15:59:00 GMT

The Intuit Solution Provider Summit is less than 4 months away and we are thrilled to be exhibiting at the conference once again this year! The 2010 ISP Summit will be held in Los Angeles, California at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza hotel, from October 4-7, 2010. I’m sure past attendees will agree, that if you’re an ISP, you will certainly enjoy this conference.

The theme of the 2010 Summit is “Charting a Course to Success”, focusing on business and innovation, while showcasing powerful customer solutions. We’re excited to contribute to the summit by educating ISP’s about Method’s innovative abilities, which can play a considerable role in this course to success.

Last year we came face-to-face with many Method Solution Providers at the Summit, and also welcomed new MSP’s on board, so we’re already looking forward to the mix of familiar and fresh faces we’ll get to see in October.

Join us at the ISP Summit 2010 in LA, at an event that never seems to disappoint. We’d love for you to come by our booth and say hello to the Method Team. If you’re already “in the know” about Method, or are an MSP, we look forward to discussing our latest developments and receiving your feedback. If you have never heard about Method before, please take this opportunity to check Method out and ask other ISP’s about their feedback on the product.

The 2010 ISP Summit will be a great learning and networking opportunity, so we hope to see you there!

Katie

Method attending Intuit Solution Provider Summit 2009

Method_Danny — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 21:04:00 GMT

The Method Team is thrilled to be attending this year’s Intuit Solution Provider Summit 2009 in Chicago, Illinois @ The Fairmont Hotel. The ISP summit is a yearly event that is held for Intuit’s Solution Providers. This year’s summit is intended to be an intimate event, focusing on business and innovation.

I work directly with Method’s Solution Providers and there has been an overwhelming request for our presence at this event. I absolutely love the theme for this year’s summit - “Winning Together” - and when I think about Method’s Solution Providers and Intuit’s Solution Providers working together to provide complete solutions to Intuit customers, I see us “Winning Together” in our business visions. Using Method with QuickBooks allows ISP’s to capture more market share and seal the deal with enterprise level sales.

I welcome all ISP’s to come visit me and the rest of the Method Team at our booth at the conference. If you haven’t heard about Method before, this is a great time to check it out and ask other ISP’s for their feedback on the product.

Cheers,

Danny Do Couto
Method Integration

The future of web apps: end-user web platforms

Method_Paul — Tue, 12 May 2009 01:20:00 GMT

Since the launch of Method, I'm asked more and more for my thoughts on what the future holds for small business software. You might be surprised that I respond that the future of small business software isn't software at all! The future is customizable web apps, built on end-user web platforms.

During the last 10 years, I have had the pleasure of working with thousands of companies, learning about their needs, as well as the software they depend on.

When it comes to my thoughts on which business technology will push to the forefront in the years to come, my nod goes to developers that can truly (I mean truly) satisfy the demands of small business. Sound like a cliché? Of course it is. Especially when you look at what small businesses actually want.

So, what does every small business want? Across the board it's actually the same. They want something simple their staff can use. But they don't want to sacrifice on the features they need. Oh, and did I forget? It's got to be very affordable and it's got to be today! In other words they want to have their cake and eat it too…..and it should be no more than 0 calories, and it can't cause a tummy ache.

Wait, wait! Don't despair software developers…...there is hope! Those of us who have started to get their hands dirty with end-user web platforms can report back: "We've seen the future, and the future is friendly."

Let's do a short history lesson.

Desktop Software Programs
The 1980's and 1990's saw desktop software jump on the scene. The model was simple: find a core problem for similar companies in an industry, and sell as many one-size-fits-all products as possible. For small businesses, it was certainly a lot cheaper and painless than getting a custom program made. But with desktop programs the famous Henry Ford quote comes to mind when selling his Model T car: "Pick any color - so long as it's black". Contrary to the desktop software model, companies in the same industry are not all that similar. So, in order to sell more products, developers over-complicate their programs by jamming in as many features as they can in an effort to say "yes" as often as possible. Ironically, this gave them the illusion of being useful, but ended up having the opposite effect.

Web 2.0 apps
In the 2000's, business apps started moving to the web, in the push towards Web 2.0. The big "ahh-ha" for web apps was that it became completely acceptable to produce a simple solution and stay simple. In fact web apps proved that smart, streamlined design made systems more useful than complicated desktop software. The best example, and a company I'm a big fan of, is 37Signals. They built an incredibly successful company on the idea of creating products that "do less than the competition — intentionally". Web apps were made to be simple partly from necessity: browser-based websites using html and JavaScript just have a hard time doing the fancy things a desktop program can do. So rather than try to mimic the desktop, successful web apps focused on being the opposite of everything desktop programs stood for, and used the browser based constraints to their advantage.

The other reason the web apps were successful was that they had the advantage of learning from the mistakes of desktop programs - since web apps are sold on monthly subscriptions they don't have to jam in features to justify selling annual upgrades. Companies like Salesforce.com built empires on being the "anti-software" based on this reason.

End-user web platforms
A shortcoming of Web 2.0's model of keeping it simple, though, is that a well disciplined web developer must say "no" much more often than "yes" to features requests, and must turn away users who start to outgrow their apps - otherwise they'll fall into the tangled feature trap that desktop programs fell into. This, of course creates friction with end users who justifiably can't be expected to appreciate the bigger vision that developers have for their apps, and get frustrated from hearing "no" to most of their feature requests.

Web 2.0 apps have taken us a long way. But they are no match for the next generation technology I refer to as end-user web platforms. Imagine you are an end-user and you have two, nearly identical apps to choose from. Which of the following would you choose?

Web App A: Developed by a programmer using code. Updates are made by feature requests only.
Web App B: Developed by a non-programmer on a platform. Updates can be made by users using drag and drop tools.

Of course you would choose Web App B! The platform app would always win. Web App A is a simple, useful app that solves today's core problems. But Web App B is a simple, useful app that not only solves today's core problems; it also imposes no limitations on solving tomorrow's problems - whatever they may be. Perfect for small business! It's like taking Henry Ford's Model T, clicking a button on the production line to paint it red, and then a month later clicking another button to add a sunroof, and then the following month clicking another button to add a rear spoiler! Who wouldn't want that?

I'm going to clarify what I mean by an end-user web platform. Unlike regular web-platforms, which are designed to be used by programmers, in an end-user web platform the user must be able to design and create a system themselves, without any programming knowledge. Users must have the same tools available to them as the developer that built the app.   In other words, here’s the big test: it must be possible for end users to re-create an entire web app themselves from scratch using drag and drop tools. No coding.

Now, that's a whole new way of thinking isn't it?

Method Integration - Suite of Apps
When we created Method, we weren't trying to start a revolution. We actually stumbled upon the idea of creating an end-user web platform. At first, it was a platform we created for ourselves so that we could create a suite of simple QuickBooks apps that enabled users to develop and share their own features. It was our solution for not having to put new features into our desktop software every year, thereby preventing it from getting more and more complex! So for the problem we were trying to solve, the solution that later became known as "Method" just made sense.   We had to create our own end-user web platform since, at the time, such a thing in the web world didn't exist.

Now that we have a platform, we can rapidly churn out useful, integrated apps for QuickBooks. Later this week, we'll be putting out Method Warehouse, which is an inventory management app for QuickBooks. It's amazing how simple inventory management can be when you strip it down to its core. It's all about knowing where your inventory is (locations and bins), how they got there (transfer orders), and how much material you need to build and purchase in order to meet finished good deadlines (MRP). The entire app is in one single "Warehouse Center" tab within Method. How were we able to make it so simple? Because the Web 2.0 world taught us to strip the problem to the core, solve the problem and nothing else.   But since it is built on an end-user web platform, users can keep it simple by adding only the features they need as they need them. Nothing less, nothing more.

Given the optimal solution provided to small businesses, tomorrow's web apps will be built more and more on end-user web platforms, so my advice to everyone is to hop on early and enjoy the ride.

Want to spread the news? Click here to Digg this article.

'till next time,

Paul