Tips & Tricks
While Blinksale does a killer job at creating, managing and sending your invoices, it doesn't yet have a built-in time tracking feature. We've preferred to leave that to task to a few other remarkable services.
One unique new time tracking service you might not be aware of is Tempo. Tempo is a simple and flexible, but one of its more compelling features is the ability it gives you to enter your time away from your desktop web browser via mobile phone, SMS, email or Twitter.
And after you're done tracking your time you can use Tempo to create a Blinksale invoice in no time at all. We think this is pretty cool. Give Tempo a look.
Posted by Josh Williams
2008 Jun 03 in Tips & Tricks
Tips & Tricks
Free time-tracking service Time.onrails.org wins the prize for the first third-party time-tracking implementation for Blinksale. If you've been looking for a way to quickly add your time sheet data to Blinksale in order to invoice a client, your ship may have just come in.
We're excited about the future with Blinksale's easy to use API, and Time.onrails.org's time tracking implementation is just the beginning of the great Blinksale solutions that will be coming down the pipe. Great work guys!
Posted by Josh Williams
2006 Oct 06 in Tips & Tricks
Tips & Tricks
Inspired by Jon Hicks' Microformats Safari mockup, Left Logic has released a Microformats bookmarklet. The bookmarklet allows you to easily see a listing of all hCard formatted contacts on a web page, save those contacts as an .vcf file, then import that contact automatically in Address Book (if you're on a Mac). It's a pretty slick little piece of code, and it works just dandy with Blinksale (Blinksale supports Microformats, did you know?). Anyhow, the bookmarklet works in Safari and Firefox, but no word on IE6 support yet. You should probably check it out.
Just a hint: The best place to look for Microformats in Blinksale is your Invoice view (both client and vendor are formatted as hCard entries) or your People page (lots of hCards there).
Posted by Josh Williams
2006 Sep 25 in Tips & Tricks
Tips & Tricks
Currently Blinksale does not really have an official way to create credits for client overpayments. However, Blinksale subscriber Matt Thomas has just posted a smart way to handle them yourself. We love it when we learn about folks using Blinksale in creative ways, and Matt is no exception.
So if your clients are sending you too much money (a good problem to have), check out Matt's client overpayment tip. I think you'll be glad you did. Thanks Matt!
Posted by Josh Williams
2006 Jul 21 in Tips & Tricks
Tips & Tricks
A recent smaller addition to Blinksale that we haven't talked about much is Drafts. Previously, when you created an invoice with Blinksale it was a live, calculated invoice from the moment you saved it.
Now, when you create an invoice it is saved as a draft (and invisible to your clients) until you either A) send the invoice, or B) click the "Convert to Open Invoice" from your invoice page. Drafts are denoted with a purple label on your Invoices page, and soon we plan to add a Drafts table to your Dashboard.
Finally, many have asked what the little envelope and green check icons are on your Invoices page. Unsent invoices are marked with the open envelope, while sent (emailed) invoices are marked with the green check. One thing to note: invoices created before our 2.0 update last month will all be marked "unsent" by default as we were not previously storing this data.
Posted by Josh Williams
2006 May 10 in Tips & Tricks
Tips & Tricks
One of the cooler as-of-yet undocumented features of the new Blinksale is the ability to filter invoices by multiple tags. Many of you already know you can filter by a single tag in your Invoices page, but try this:
Next time, type in a string of tags like "tagname1+tagname2" or "tagname1,tagname2" into your input box. Using the plus sign (+) as a separator will pull only invoices with both tags, while using a comma will pull invoices with either/or.
This is particularly useful if you tag your invoices with a service-type and a salesperson's name. Want to know how many widgets Bob sold last year? Simply filter invoices with "bob+widgets". It's that easy. And powerful, to boot.
Posted by Josh Williams
2006 Apr 25 in Tips & Tricks
Tips & Tricks
Sending a client an invoice for a partial payment or deposit with Blinksale is easy. Here's how we do it:
After creating a new invoice within Blinksale, simply give the invoice an invoice ID that reads "Deposit" or "Deposit 1234" where the "1234" is your actual invoice number. Then create your invoice as you normally would, only using the deposit value for your service price as opposed to the entire value of the service. Once you have completed this, simply save and send.
Then, when you have received the deposit payment from your client, use Blinksale's Receive Payment action to apply that payment to your invoice. Now, converting your deposit invoice to a final invoice is as simple as removing the word "Deposit" from your Invoice ID field, and adjusting your service price to reflect the full price of your services.
The deposit payment received from the client will remain applied to the invoice and will be reflected when you send the final invoice out. It's as simple as that.
Posted by Josh Williams
2005 Aug 22 in Tips & Tricks
Tips & Tricks
We're currently working on a cleaner way to handle multiple currencies within Blinksale for those sending invoices to clients across the globe. However, you can create invoices with different currencies already in Blinksale. You simply need to go to your Settings page, select the currency you wish to use, then go create your new invoice. When you want to switch currencies, simply return to your Settings page again.
Soon, you'll be able to choose your currency when you create a new invoice. Until then, use this tip to make it happen. It's an extra click or two, but it'll do the trick.
Update: Many have asked about currency support. We'll be adding broadened support for more currencies than the current five very shortly. Stay tuned.
Posted by Josh Williams
2005 Jul 28 in Tips & Tricks
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