Image: tensafefrogs on Flickr

1st Line Digital distribute photographic lighting equipment under the Paul C Buff brand, and have managed to achieve global success from the comfort of their own home, with a little help from Saasu and one of our popular add-on products, Neto.

We caught up with Colin Smith, Director of 1st Line Digital to learn how Saasu helped boost their profit in Australia last year, and continue steady performance in the UK.

“My wife and I now only need to work 3 or 4 days per week and we have a lot of free time to enjoy. Previously, invoicing and processing orders manually would take about five times longer than they do now.”

Click here to continue reading the full customer story.

On a recent trip to New Zealand I was lucky enough to catch-up with long-time Saasu customer, Teza—brewers of premium iced tea.

I sat down with co-founder Daphne Raj to chat all things business, beverages and to find out what they loved most about online accounting software (read the full story for an answer to that).

It was great to hear how they’ve continued to grow and experience success in new markets, and that Saasu has been able to scale with their business development needs—and to sample their range, of course.

You can read the full story here.

We recently caught up with one of our great customers, vitality4life, to find out about their success with using Saasu to help manage their growing business.

Who is vitality4life?

Over the past 25 years, vitality4life have distributed quality living juice extractors for the Australian market. It was our founder Roger’s dream to make high-quality, healthy living products.

Today, we have expanded globally, servicing New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the rest of Europe.

As a leading business in the health and wellness industry, vitality4life developed the concept of living juice in association with Hippocrates Health Institute in Florida, USA. The company’s original belief that living food and pure water are the roots to improved vitality is still the fundamental core of the company today.

What is living juice? Living juice is created from fresh, raw vegetables and fruits in a way to draw out vitamins, enzymes and the entire volume of vital elements present when the ingredients are in their original form.

Why did you choose Saasu?

After using MYOB services for years, we made the switch to Saasu as a result of customer capacity issues and increased growth in the business. Saasu provided a solution to our problems, including the additional capacity to service our growing B2B and B2C base and the ability to integrate business systems.

In what way has Saasu impacted your business?

It has allowed us to move our accounting systems into the 21st century, catering for internal organisational growth. Its online platform has enabled employees to access the system anytime, anywhere allowing a greater amount of flexibility.

Do you integrate Saasu with any of your other business systems? If so, how?

We’re currently in the process of integrating Saasu with our CRM and inventory management systems. This will strengthen system automation, reducing manual error and encouraging faster operations throughout the business. It will also allow us to deliver quicker customer support and distribution processes.

What is next for vitality4life and Saasu?

There’s a lot going on behind the scenes here. We are currently integrating Zoho CRM, Magento inventory and order syncing with Saasu. With the introduction of the robust CRM program, and the new streamlined system automation, the outcome will be transformational for the company.

The automation of Saasu inventory with our Magento inventory system will allow us to feed data directly into Magento for our website sales and Ebay store. Saasu inventory will also be auto-synced with Magento, and any orders marked ‘processing’ will be fed into Saasu. This will reduce order processing time dramatically.

This integration will allow for automatic syncing of data in all departments, reducing manual data entry time frames and enabling our team to deliver rapid distribution to customers around the world.

Over the past few months we’ve been showcasing stories from our customers, to provide an inside look into the world of a Saasu user and highlight the flexibility of connecting Saasu to other areas of your business.

In many cases, it’s been out of their sheer enthusiasm for Saasu that we’ve been approached by those with a story to tell (a highlight for me would have to be Klaeton Sheehan’s song, Saasuland).

For those who have missed these updates, here’s a few of the latest stories:

Jodie Fox – Director of Fashion and Founder, Shoes of Prey

- Lumenec (Australia)
- Premier Sports & Leisure (UK)
- Reload Media (Australia & UK)
- Butterfly (Australia)
- Seychelle (New Zealand)
- Griffith University (Australia)
- Shoes of Prey (Australia)

As you can see, the list above is heavily weighted toward the Southern Hemisphere – we’d love to hear what those of you further north have to say.

But, wherever you are – if you have a Saasu story to share (maybe you’ve hooked Saasu up to you other business systems to automate processes, or use it on your iPhone or iPad when you’re on the road), leave a comment below or get in touch with us via media@saasu.com, and we’ll put something together to celebrate your success.

We recently caught up with Andrew Gibson, Managing Director of Lumenec, and asked him to tell us a little about his business, and how Saasu fits in to the mix.

What does Lumenec do and what makes you stand out?

Lumenec manufactures and imports LED lighting products – selling them to businesses throughout Australia. Our customers are predominantly in the retail and hospitality sectors.

We have specialised knowledge in LED controls, particularly DMX and colour control.

Lumenec installation at Mount Tamborine Brewery

Why did you choose Saasu?

I restructured the company about 18 months ago to reduce our overheads, and made the decision to use the cloud for business processes as much as possible. I was keen to do as much as I could from my iPad. At the time I was using MYOB, and a factor holding me back was the need for inventory management and foreign currency support. After looking at a number of options, I came across Saasu, gave it a trial and found it was a great fit for my business.

In what ways has Saasu made an impact on or difference to your business?

Previously, I was finding that a lot of my business processes were dictated either by the software I was using or the fact that it was locked to a desktop and a server. Saasu has freed the business from those constraints allowing me to adapt my business processes around the way I want to conduct my business – that is, a more mobile, responsive and fluid operation.

Do you integrate Saasu to any of your other business systems?

I am involved with another company (Bizlytix) which is developing web software to provide analytics on the Saasu inventory module.

As managing stock is a critical part of my operations, I’m beta testing this software with my Saasu file to give me more detailed information on what is going on with my inventory. It is showing a lot of promise.

What do you love most about Saasu?

The stand out best part of Saasu for me is the ability to work from my iPad when I’m on the road visiting customers. I use third party logistics to get products to customers Australia-wide overnight, so it is great that I can enter a sale directly in Saasu, generate the shipping slip and the invoice at time of entry, no matter where I am – whether pulled over to the side of the road between customers, in an airport somewhere, or at my desk in Brisbane.

I have also found the foreign currency in Saasu to be very good, making many of my USD transactions much easier than with previous software. The automatic bank transaction importing is also a fantastic time saver.

I don’t often need tech support as Saasu is very easy to use, but on those times that I have, I’ve found the support to be fast, responsive, and very helpful. This gives me a lot of confidence in staying with the product into the future.

What’s next for Lumenec and Saasu?

As Lumenec grows and changes, I’m confident that Saasu can keep pace with that growth and change.

While I switched as part of a change, I can’t actually see myself ever going back to a desktop/server based accounting system – even if the company grew substantially bigger.

This post is part of a series discussing the process we’re undertaking to redesign our user interface and branding. We’re sharing in the spirit of “designing in the open” with the hope that it might be of value to our customers and others in our community.

Our customers have always been at the front and centre in our approach to doing business. Since the early days a key part of our ethos is to listen to our customers and develop features that support their business needs.

As I mentioned in my previous post, we turned to our customers to help inform our the development of our brand values, new visual direction and user interface. We undertook interviews with a variety of customers—both small business owners and advisor partners—who we’d noticed doing some great things with Saasu. We asked them about what they valued about our service, how it helped them in their business, and what they valued in their relationship with our company.

Interviews are just one method that can be helpful in engaging the people we aim to serve in our design process. (If you’re interested in learning more about this method, the folks at Google Ventures have posted some great tips.) Feedback through our service desk and social media are another. We aim to expand our more formal engagement process over time, extending our user testing program, for example. And to run workshops at future Saasu events (such as our conference).

I recently had occasion to review my notes from some of the interviews I mentioned earlier, and a number of themes emerged from the anecdotes and stories that participants shared with us that I thought would be valuable in sharing. What we found was that our customers and partners:

• Are excited by being involved in small business
• Love a good challenge
• Want to see their own clients and customers succeed
• Seek opportunities to learn and grow
• Have limited time to learn new things
• Focus and rely on relationships
• Value flexibility
• Highlight how “live data” makes the accounts more valuable
• Are focused on integration and automation to improve their own, and their staff’s, productivity
• See Saasu and cloud-based tools as something that gives them back time.

While some of these insights were new, others were a reinforcement of hunches we had already developed. In the latter case, the interviews provided greater confidence and a deeper understanding of these themes, which is just as valuable.

I hope that you will see some of your own priorities and values reflected there—please let us know if so (or if not) as we’re always keen to learn more!).

We feel very privileged to have partners and customers that are so generous in sharing their thoughts, aspirations and passion for their work with us. And we will continue to do our best to honour that in how we develop the product into the future…

As part of Saasu’s increased activity in the UK, we’ve been gathering feedback from local customers in our efforts to identify how we can better improve the product to suit the market.

We recently spoke to the team from Premier Sports & Leisure, to learn how Saasu fits their growing business.

What does Premier Sports & Leisure do and what makes you stand out?

Premier Sports & Leisure is a UK based sports teamwear and equipment specialist, supplying the club and education sector. Over the last few years we have diversified into supplying school uniforms, trophies and offering online shopping to key customers. We offer a large range of leading brands to our customers – one of the broadest in the industry.

Why did you choose Saasu?

Flexibility was one of the main reasons we choose Saasu – it’s a superior solution to others on the market.

We had our businesses in two locations – each was using Sage separately and independently. At the advice of our accountant we decided to use Saasu to bring both units together in real time, this is something we could not do with Sage. Since I was never at any one location, Saasu gave me real-time access to the companies financial information. Using Saasu also allowed my company bookkeeper access to the same financial information in real-time as well.

In what ways has Saasu made an impact on or difference for your business?

Premier Sports have two business units at different locations. Since we started using Saasu the whole business is working on one system and the bookkeeping/accountancy tasks have been made a lot easier. We also use the live bank feeds, and that’s made it easy to reconcile our bank accounts – something that saves us a lot of time, effort and money..

What are your favourite aspects of Saasu?

We love the fact that Saasu is very competitive on pricing. It also allows us to change the look and feel of our invoices, receipts and statements, using HTML/CSS, to match our other documents. We also love that the Sales area in Saasu lets us add customer and internal notes helps to have a single point of reference about our customers and the conversations we’ve had with them.

What’s next for your company and Saasu?

We plan to develop a better understanding of Saasu’s built-in CRM feature – to maximise the way we use it.

We’d also like to look at wide rage of Saasu add-ons, and evaluate which ones are right for us.

As Saasu touches down in the northern hemisphere, we have been catching up with some of our UK customers – a number of which have been using Saasu since 2007.  Recently our UK Managing Director, Daljit Bahia, met with Reload Digital‘s Head of UK/Europe, Cara Whitehouse, to discuss how they use Saasu for their UK business.

what does Reload Media/Reload Digital do and what makes you stand out?

Reload Digital is a specialist digital marketing agency, working with a range of clients across the UK and Europe. Alongside Reload Media (our Australian head office) we help businesses grow by improving their online visibility, ensuring their sites and social media platforms are being found by, and resonate positively with, potential customers.

We live and breathe digital. It’s not an add-on, it’s what we do. We’re innovative, ethical, ahead of the curve and driven by a return on investment-focussed approach. We have a team of almost 60 staff around the world that bring decades of combined experience to the table.

why did you choose Saasu?

Reload Digital is the London office of the Reload Business Group. Reload has rapidly expanding offices in five different countries across the world—and staff across multiple territories interact on a daily basis. This means that we need effective and efficient cloud-based technology so that staff can access and share documents, emails and so on. Our accounts and invoicing is a logical extension of that. Our head office is in Australia, and by using Saasu’s cloud-based accounting application, it means directors and accountants from both sides of the world can instantly see exactly how each business is performing at any one time.

How has Saasu made an impact on or difference for your business?

Giving multiple people access to different levels of data has meant managers are more informed and have a better understanding of what’s going on at all levels in the business. It gives us fantastic flexibility and allows us to stay nimble as we grow. It also means that we can access information anywhere and at any time—which is important when we’re travelling between offices.

what are your favourite aspects of Saasu?

The obvious and massive bonus for us is the accessibility for all of our key staff. It has allowed us to centralise elements of our day-to-day global accounting, while still giving directors from around the world access and the ability to create or edit details if needs be. What’s more, unlike other systems which only allow a single user access at a time, several people can be in the system at once, from bookkeepers to the accounts team to management, across the three continents in which we operate.

Other great Saasu features include the clean and user-friendly interface, the regular updates and innovations (which roll in practically overnight rather than in annual batches that need to be uploaded) and the bank feeds – which saves a huge amount of time. Multiple currency support and the customisation available within the system has also enabled us to use Saasu as our one accounting hub throughout our international expansion.

Do you integrate Saasu to any of your other systems?

Yes, we use the API to integrate with our project management and reporting tool REMAPS. This allows us to clearly see who’s paid their invoices and also alerts our clients when invoices are due. This has been incredibly helpful in assisting with cashflow analysis.

What’s next for your company and Saasu?

It’s great news that Saasu is now on the ground in the UK. We’ve been able to easily modify its current capabilities to suit UK-specific needs, such as VAT rates (our equivalent of GST). But Saasu’s plans to further integrate UK tax reporting processes that will be compliant with Revenue & Customs requirements will help streamline our processes even further. We’re also in talks with the Saasu team about getting involved with testing for other UK functionality – and look forward to being able to maximise the benefits available from the system!

As you know we love it when our customers are successful, and when they win awards we love to celebrate. So a big congratulations go to Butterfly who are included this year’s BRW Fast 100 and a finalist in the 2012 Melbourne Design Awards.

When we recently got a chance to catch up with John Anderton, Director at Butterfly, he spoke about the part that Saasu has played in improving the productivity of a fast-growing, successful company.

Who is Butterfly and what makes you stand out in your market?

We are a website developer for mid-size organisations. We stand out because of our high levels of design and service. We do all our work in Australia and have 25 staff.

What are your favourite aspects of Saasu?

Being based on the cloud means that our bookkeeper in Ballarat can use our Saasu records just as easily as people in our office or staff on the road. The Automated Sale feature with automatic emailing of invoices to clients is what made us switch from Quickbooks. We also like the ability to have unlimited users.

Do you interface Saasu with your other business systems and processes?

We do all of our accounting through Saasu. We haven’t integrated it with other software yet, but we intend to next year. We have been able to improve our business processes with Sassu in a number of ways.

Firstly, because Saasu is available everywhere and easy to use, a wider range of staff and people not based in our office are now able to use our accounting system in real time. For example, we used to have one staff member do all the invoicing, but with Saasu we have 9 staff who now do invoicing – this speeds up the invoicing process, and removes the need for duplication of effort. We have also been able to outsource bookkeeping tasks such as a daily bank reconciliation and debt collection, with specialised contractors able to work from their offices with the up-to-date accounting information instead of an old copy or print out.

Secondly, we do a lot of recurring billing for hosting and support. Saasu supports that really well with Automated Sales. Previously with Quickbooks it was quite an ordeal every month to process and send out the Memorised Transactions, but now with Saasu it is all automatic. Furthermore, because we can create our own user accounts we have created a special level of access for our technical support staff to review billing information for hosting and support – that would have been cost prohibitive with Quickbooks and problematic from a file management point of view.

What is next for Butterfly and Saasu?

I am looking forward to enhanced custom reports being available in Saasu. We are also building a CRM that will interface with Saasu’s API, which will enable us to streamline our business processes even further.

haul is an award winning design brand upcycling old advertising billboards into iPad cases and laptop bags, among other things. They originally started life in a garage, turning used number plates into journals and photo albums and selling them from a card table at Salamanca Market in Hobart, Tasmania.

Recently we spoke with owner and creative director, Scott Kilmartin, about the role that Saasu has played as they have grown from the card table to the global marketplace.

what does haul do and what makes it stand out

haul was one of the first of its kind to be green certified in Australia.   We’re not really a tree hugger brand — the punters who buy our stuff appreciate the eco aspect to the product, but it’s the fact that because of what was originally printed on the billboard, no two products are ever the same. So if you walk up the street in Shanghai, Sydney or Stockholm you’ll never see anyone with the exact same accessory as yours.

That’s what really makes us stand out.

We’ve now got multiple arms to the business — online, physical retail, wholesale and corporate.

We employ 6 staff and some part timers, have an office in Indonesia and a retail store in North Fitzroy. We refer to the North Fitzroy store as our ‘winery cellar door’ — you can buy the products in the front and and watch them being made out the back. Not too many people get to see the inside of workshop these days so we’ve made that part of the experience.

In 2008 we started talking to the large outdoor advertisers about making products from their billboards once the campaign had finished.

That part of the the business has grown rapidly with companies keen to extend the reach of their advertising campaign, keep the billboards out of landfill and have great products ‘embedded with their brand’ to kit out staff and customers as promo products. The client list include: SEEK, RMIT, AGL, Carlton Draft, McGrath Real Estate and Mount Franklin.

who is the Gus we always hear about

As part of our marketing my dog @GusTheBoxer has inadvertently become the cheeky spokesperson for the brand, in between greeting customers and snoozing in the front window.

why did you choose Saasu

Back in 2009 I researched a bunch of accounting packages before deciding on Saasu. They beat the others to the punch in being cloud based, which was what the business required having staff in various locations and travelling.

Also paying by the month instead of the traditional model of buying the software package was appealing, and helped with cashflow.  Saasu being Australian based was important, but the fact it could also handle international currencies and tax schedules was also impressive.

Integration with our web platform and inventory was key. Saasu integrates well with other online platforms, like our website and CRM package, and the ease of the API was appreciated by our developers doing the integration.

in what ways has Saasu made an impact on haul

The same thing that makes haul’s products unique also presents some challenges.  We photograph each and every product that goes on our website — we have more than 5000 individual products in our online store.

Being able to have unique product IDs in the thousands and also track sales across ranges was a challenge but one that Saasu was able to handle.  The fact that we are both a service and product based business also wasn’t an issue for the Saasu platform.

The integration provided via the API between our website, CRM and accounting platform has saved considerable time and money on double data entry.

Saasu has also allowed staff to understand the state of play of the haul business via the “access anywhere” capability — via a computer or iPhone, locally or overseas.

what are your favourite aspects of Saasu

There are lots of things we like about Saasu :

• Ease of Bank reconciliation
• Multiple pricing options for products
• Different currency options
• The iPhone app for quick overviews on the fly.
• Great support from knowledgeable staff. We managed to delete a bunch of invoices by mistake a while back and having our hand held in retrieving that data was heart attack saving.

what’s next for Haul and Saasu

We are going to be opening more experiential retail, where people can see and feel the unusual materials haul uses and to touch the manufacturing process.

There will also be expansion of both our online and physical offerings, including international markets such as UK, Japan and USA.

All of this means more multiple currency revenue streams.  This will require additional help in the accounts area and Saasu’s easy to use interface should make training new staff a quick process.