Interesting conundrum.
The blog writers over at FreshBooks have written article about the seven ways that entrepreneurs are artists. Yes, it’s actually quite informative, perceptive and true.
Entrepreneurs do think on their feet, don’t sit around waiting for life to happen, nor do they rest on their laurels nor let other people do their work for them.
Which is where the conundrum begins for me. Why would a entrepreneur pay someone else a monthly fee to track time and invoice clients?
Surely the successful entrepreneur knows how to keep a calendar of events, hours, meetings, and emails?
Maybe their time-tracking skills are a little rusty, but any nine-year old knows that when they are paid by the hour and their name is at stake, they have to keep a structured, easy-to-follow-and-read spreadsheet of all that’s happened up to the point before invoicing the client.
Creativity & Artwork of Stephen Mitchell 
Hey Stephanie…what we’ve found is that successful entrepreneurs focus on their strengths. To do that, they try to save time wherever they can and FreshBooks helps them do that. The fact is Word and Excel are not designed for invoicing or time tracking and FreshBooks is. As a founder of FreshBooks and a former user of Word and Excel I know first hand how much time using them can waste on activities like invoicing and time tracking.
Let me turn this one around for a second. If I can save you four hours in a month, what can you do with those four hours? Can you bill a few hours to clients? Can you make some sales calls and generate new business? Maybe work on your website? We think your time is valuable and what FreshBooks does is help you save time and focus on what you love to do – your work!
Anyway, sounds like you have a good business going and obviously you have the choice to work the way you want with the tools you want. I just know I love the time savings FreshBooks affords me.
– Mike
Mike McDerment
CEO FreshBooks.com
416.481.6946, ext 222
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Thanks for your response Mike. Yes, I see your point, there would be many business owners who’d want to focus more time in their profession rather than on the finance end. That makes your product a great idea for that section of the market.
I’m glad you’ve taken the time to leave such an honest and professional response to my article. Thanks for visiting and reading my journal.
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Because tracking all of your time and client-related info on a spreadsheet is time consuming and cumbersome. I know because i’ve tried it. A web-based service gives an entrepreneur an established workflow to use for managing clients. The monthly fee is a small price to pay for the efficiency gained. It’s a lot faster to pull up client data using a web-based service than it is to interpret excel docs.
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Hello John, and thank you for your input.
Again, valid points, all quite convincing for any businessman wanting to utilise some type of software to help with the finances of their business. You are right, sometimes Excel spreadsheets can be difficult to discern!
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