David Pickett is somewhat of a renaissance man, a 'scatterbrained master of extemporaneous creativity' as he likes to put it. A successful entrepreneur, artist, and sky diving porcupine hunter with a penchant for eBay and online software. David runs Ars Arboris and one of Outright's founders, Kevin, had a chance to ask him what he thought of Outright and jumped at the opportunity to learn as much as possible.
"I'm a new-software junkie, so of course the first thing I did when I started my new business was download a demo of every credible-looking accounting program to which I could find a link, as well as cast a wide net for likely small business accounting web apps. I generally prefer client applications based both on security concerns and smoother, faster, and friendlier interfaces.
As it turned out, though, I chose Outright's web-based small business solution, based on several factors, some of which surprised me."
So you're drawn to client applications or traditional software; most people still think of software as only that which they can buy at the store and installed on their computer, but the internet is changing that convention. Outright is online for a number of reasons including security and stability. What drew you to Outright over other options?
"Naturally, the web-based applications beat the client-based applications on portability. This is more important to me now than in the past because I've been doing a lot of my business-related work via a netbook running Ubuntu. I was willing to keep my bookkeeping tethered to my Windows box if circumstances dictated, but freedom is definitely a plus."
The fact that you can access your records anywhere
"I was impressed by the security Outright offered. In this area, I mean not only what I consider the minimum acceptable web security (SSL etc.), but also data backup, service reliability, and data portability. Outright actually backs up their data *hourly* -- which is approximately 650x as often as I back up my computer -- and allows you to export your financial data to a .CSV file, either as report data or raw transactions, whenever you want. I have yet to encounter an outage of service, and given the ease of data export as well as Outright's rising star, I'm not terribly worried about company stability."
I'm really pleased that you looked into our security and stability. One of the reasons we took Outright, exclusively, online, is that the vulnerability of installed software is a much greater risk; your computer is prone to viruses and hard drive failure. Besides considering that software has files that need to be backed up, exported and shared with bookkeepers and office managers. We're doing it on all online, through the interface which can be shared with your financial professionals.
"I've never previously evaluated software where any web-based application's interface beat all, or even most, of the available client-based applications (except, of course, for inherently network-based software). A tight interaction loop, lack of latency, and vastly superior client UI capabilities give client-based software an almost unbeatable advantage."
Fantastic - wait till you see what we have coming! Technical considerations aside, you're working through ebay, you have your own website, I imagine other channels; what of the experience itself? Your diverse business needs could make for a complex set of records. What do you think about using Outright.com?
"Outright offered the only solution I could find that presented the critical financial feedback -- income, expenses, and profits, for the month, the quarter, and the year to date -- in such a way that it's always easy to know *exactly* where my business stands financially. Outright also provides what might be my favorite feature, the "Taxes" tab, which wraps up your profit, approximate tax owed, taxes already paid, and suggested estimated tax payment, all in one tight delicious bundle."
At the end of the day, that's all that matters isn't it? Our goal is to make your back office so simple that you can do what you love and let us worry about the work.
"Also naturally, free applications have a slight edge over fee-based applications, and Outright's basic service is free and pledged to remain so in the future. However, I was looking for an application that was both vital to my business and that required the *absolute minimum* interaction with what I consider by far the most painful part of running a small business, bookkeeping and taxes. This meant that the edge that "free" offered was razor thin."
So we should start charging...? *grin*
"This is the first time in my memory where a field of competitors was dominated by a web-based application. It's not that Outright uses amazing web voodoo, because you don't. You have done something even more amazing: provided an interface that offers exactly what I need, and no more, in an extraordinarily easy-to-use and easy-to-understand way. The company has a laser focus on a specific market, the small business owner who files a Schedule C for taxes, and you've done a fantastic job of serving exactly that market -- me, among others -- with exactly what we need in a lucid, coherent, simple bookkeeping application."
You can find David and some of his work on eBay today. He's just getting started with Etsy and we're looking forward to his experience.
