Hey guys,
I’ve been a paying customer of Cashboard for a few months now, and I love a lot of your feature set, but I’ve got to say—the last while I’ve been spending more and more time on Freshbooks, and it’s not because they’ve got superior features, it’s only because their interface is much more 1. responsive and quick-loading, and 2. intuitive.

If you guys adopted a cleaner, quicker-loading interface, you’d get folks flocking from Freshbooks, I believe.

Cashboard has better Basecamp sync, better time-tracking (OS X widget!), better project management tools, etc… You guys have a ton going for Cashboard and other Freshbooks people who I’ve show Cashboard or who I’ve seen talking about Cashboard have agreed you guys are superior in a lot of ways—but folks don’t make the jump, cause Cashboard seems clunky in comparison in terms of being fast and simple to use.

You guys already have a lot of the features Freshbooks users have been clamouring for. Update the UI and if it’s done right, it’ll be instant gold, I guarantee.

On a lesser note, I’ve seen a lot of Freshbooks users who want an expense ledger integrated. If you guys beat them to the punch… Shazzam! (But still, the UI is integral.)

The one thing I noticed about Freshbooks is that they don’t really add any new features that are helpful. The score card doesn’t really seem to me like a very helpful thing.

What I like about Cashboard is that it is pretty intuitive for the most part and pretty simple to operate. Things could be a laid out a bit better but again, for the most part I can pretty much figure out most of what I need. On occasion I’ll email support and ask how to do something. I do like how things are organized once I get the hang of it.

I totally agree having an expense ledger would totally rock! And in fact I believe it’s already on the plan to integrate. Take a look at the sticky in this forum.

Yeah I saw Expenses on the sticky, but it was down in the “stuff we’re contemplating for sometime in the possibly distant future” column, so I thought I’d bring it up as something they might want to put more of a priority status on.

Hey Optimus…welcome to the forum. I might go off on a tangent here, so hang with me ;)

Usability versus Design

We’re always refining the UI and performance – but don’t expect to see any drastic visual changes in the future. We aren’t out to copy the design of Basecamp, Freshbooks, Blinksale, or any other web 2.0 service out there. That’s not how we roll.

I like that we have a unique and interesting design – and the majority of our customers agree. There is a vocal minority that would like for us to copy another service’s design – but that ain’t gonna happen. ;)

However – if you or anyone else have any specific gripes with the layout of items, usability you find confusing, etc – I’d love to listen to them. I’m constantly moving things, changing, updating to make certain screens easier to use.

When you say things like “cleaner” – to me that’s pretty vague. A lot of people will say “cleaner” meaning, square corners, lighter colors all over the app, etc. The decision was made on our default color scheme to go with a darker layout so that you can focus on the content of the application in the white area.

I chose the design on purpose – to be the anti-Freshbooks. I hate their UI with a passion (well, their old UI…their new one sucks less, but it still sucks IMHO). One of the main reasons I created Cashboard was because their usability was poor, and the design looked like a 1997 intranet app. I couldn’t stand to use it for my billing…Oh and at the time they didn’t do estimates – they stole that from us. :)

Ours is a different look than most of the web applications out there – but we aren’t really afraid to take risks.

Cashboard’s usability is measurably better. You can navigate around, perform operations right where you need to, and barely have to read any help text. As Tony mentions, customers can ‘pretty much figure out’ things, and once they’re past that learning curve – using the software is a breeze.

We field little to no questions about how to perform certain tasks – mostly our questions just have to do with feature requests. I’d say that’s a really good indicator of how usable the application is.

Performance

Keep in mind that Cashboard is 100% protected by bank-grade SSL security – which does slow things down a touch. There are some performance concerns here and there that we are addressing constantly – and expect the speed to evolve as the product does.

We’ve only been live for 7 months now. Freshbooks has been around I believe 4 years. Look what we’ve done in the short time up, verses what they’ve accomplished. Give us a little time…we’re already beating them in most areas. Imagine what Cashboard will look like 6 months from now.

Expenses

This is definitely on our minds – but realistically don’t expect to see anything on this front until end of Q1 next year. We have a ton of other things planned first which will make it really easy for users of other services to make the jump!

I have switched completely from freshbooks. Overall, the things I like about cashboard totally out weigh freshbooks with the exception to the mailing of invoices, which I know and hope that it will be addressed soon.

As far as the UI goes, I would like that certain things be quicker to do, not load. For example, when you try to add time, if you want to add to a project that does not yet exist you have to switch pages and the same goes for tasks and other items. I would like it to be some sort of AJAX approach that lets you add items and go back to what you were doing without switching pages.

Yes, more Ajax would be excellent. Slow times inputting my data is an issue for me where Freshbooks has an edge.

But yeah, it’s true that some things about Cashboard are really remarkable, and especially considering, as you say, that you’re only 6 mo’s as opposed to 4 years. Which was a big part of why I started this thread. I think Cashboard is brimming with a lot of potential. Thanks for your reply, Seth.

I’ll think about what specific interface changes might make things more intuitive for me. I just find I have a hard time locating things, even though I’ve been using Cashboard a fair while longer than Freshbooks.

I ‘m in agreement with Seth. I hate the FreshBooks UI. I’ve only been using Cashborad for about 3 days and already it’s easier for me to find stuff than in FB.

I do have a few places where I get lost, and I think a few well-placed links would really speed up usability.

I’m going to be doing some more intensive evaluations over the next couple of weeks, and I hope to have a few suggestions for what I think might be ways to improve the flow between tasks.

Overall my impression is that Cashboard is an extremely well thought out application that, due to the responsiveness of its developers, will only get better!