Original Post

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via freshbooks.com

Dear Freshbooks:

I don’t have a high volume of clients. But I’ll end up going over the account client limit after a while. I would like a feature that will allow me to continue to use freshbooks. I would like to pay my rate based on the number of active clients during a month. Clients that remain archived for the whole month don’t count toward my limit. However, if I unarchive one, even for a minute, it does count toward that months billable active account usage.

This keeps me from having to delete account records, which I need. It keeps me from abusing the archive system so you keep your appropriate revenue. It also makes sure your service is valuable and relevant by allowing me to pay only for the services that I use, and use on clients that are earning me money.

We all have clients that go dormant for extended periods of time. A SaaS is only worth a monthly when it is considerably more valuable than the cost. I’m not paying you monthly for storing data. That should be free, at todays storage costs. I’m paying you for the active services you provide that allow me streamlined, ever-accessible billing tools. Billing keeps the lights on. Storage of old client information and billed records is just convenient.

This proposed billing structure would maximize your value while maintaining a justifiable cost on my end. I have a feeling it will considerably improve retention of clients as they reach a longer term of use.

Scott

Posted via email from SwBratcher’s Posts

UPDATE

Here is the response I received from the freshbooks team:

Hey Scott,

Thanks for writing in.

You can keep on using FreshBooks when you go over the allowed clients – you
just upgrade to the unlimited package.

Archiving clients really only puts them on the back burner – they are
still active and you can still invoice them.  That’s why they count
towards your limit.  You can delete them, and they won’t count towards
your limit.  You can undelete them at any time and there will be no loss
of data.  This way you can cycle through your revenue generating clients.

That’s really the only answer I have.  I appreciate your thoughts on the
pricing on a per client basis, but it’s not in our interest right now.

I hope this helps!  Let me know if there is anything else I can help with :)

Thanks,

Ramiro from FreshBooks

*If you have 5 seconds or so, please fill out my feedback form. We’re
always striving to be better at customer service here at FreshBooks and
feedback is one way we are going about it *
https://freshbooks.wufoo.com/forms/fresh-ramiro-how-did-i-do/

It was kind of Ramiro to respond personally and I think it clears up something for me. I didn’t need to request functionality. However, there is a communication problem caused by the nomenclature within the application.

Delete means deleted, yet the freshbooks data for deleted accounts is being retained and can be restored. That behavior is described with the ‘archive’ label. However, Freshbooks ‘archived’ accounts are removed from the main view but can still be interacted with, therefore are billed for. That behavior is described with the ‘filed’ status. Archives are not handy. They are in the basement. Deleted files are gone, shredded, or burned. An adjustment to the named states of accounts could save some customer service dialogue, by allowing users to accurately understand what is being done to their data when they are using the application. Here is my recommendation:

DELETE: After a confirmation explaining that this data is gone upon deletion, the data is deleted from the system.

ARCHIVE: Allows the archival of an inactive account. While archived, an account cannot be interacted with and is not billed for. An account can be retrieved from archives without data loss if needed. (recurring billing is also paused in this state)

FILE: Gets the account out of dashboard-like views but it is still an active account that is billed for and can be worked with. (recurring billing is active in this state).

ACTIVE: The state of a newly created, or currently active account that has not been placed in one of the other three possible states.

This structure will make the management of accounts within freshbooks more intuitive, allowing users to anticipate state behaviors more accurately.

OR...

2 Responses to “Dear FreshBooks: Please bill for active accounts. Any active account.”

  1. Casey 2011/04/26 at 7:53 AM #

    Hi Scott,

    Casey from FreshBooks here… Thanks for reaching out and posting your thoughts. I have passed this feedback on to my team (and our CEO Mike) to consider.

    If you ever have any other feedback, feel free to drop us an email, phone call, or post another note like this on your blog. We’re listening on all channels :) .

    Regards,
    Casey McKinnon
    Director of Product & Design @ FreshBooks

    Reply
    • Scott Bratcher 2011/04/27 at 10:25 AM #

      Thanks, Casey. I added an update to this post based on further email dialogue.

      Reply