Banks: A) do lend B) don’t lend C) help or hinder?
It was superb to see Clear Books getting national press coverage in The Telegraph last Friday (16th December 2011) in an article by Richard Tyler Banks: A) do lend B) don't lend C) help or hinder? This was a result of my blog...
How banks need to change to support credit easing
The purpose of my original post Banks aren't supporting credit easing for small businesses was to share our experience applying for a bank loan. Based on this experience I want to set out how I believe priorities need to change to support...
Banks aren’t supporting credit easing for small businesses
On Tuesday 29th November 2011, the day that Chancellor George Osborne announced in his Autumn Statement that small firms are to get £40bn credit help, Clear Books had a £1 million small business loan application rejected by Barclays. The government's initiatives...
Goodbye Zendesk and Get Satisfaction
Following on from the recent announcement that we are making changes to our support systems, Clear Books has now stopped using Zendesk and Get Satisfaction. These two applications have served us extremely well as a startup. They allowed us to get up and...
Managed DNS – a new DYNasty
Clear Books is pleased to announce that we have switched to a managed DNS service provided by Dyn. DNS? What's that? DNS, or the Domain Name System, is effectively the Internet equivalent of a telephone address book. To continue the...
Yodlee and HSBC automatic bank feeds
When we first launched our automatic bank feeds integration with Yodlee it was disappointing to hear from our customers that HSBC was not properly supported. We owe a huge thanks to one of our customers, Perry, who has been tirelessly...
Sage to Clear Books volunteers needed
We've developed a tool so that Sage users can import their accounting data into Clear Books. We would like to test this with more varied data sets. So if you are a Sage user and would like to give this...
Next steps to a stable platform
Following the recent explanation about our downtime we are determined to take significant steps forward with our hosting infrastructure. As a growing business the CatN vCluster we have been hosted on has served its purpose, but it's time to move on....
Downtime explained
After several sleepless nights we now appear to be on top of our downtime crisis so I can dedicate some time and explain what happened. Clear Books is a startup - it's exciting and we are adapting all the time...
Update on downtime
Dear Customers, I wanted to provide a quick and immediate update to the problems we have been suffering with our service. The problem we experienced on Friday resurfaced last night and this morning. Our engineers have been working to resolve...
Apologies for downtime on Friday
I was on holiday last week and it ended badly with a phone call on Friday afternoon from one of our developers telling me that Clear Books was down. There is nothing that makes my stomach turn more than unexpected...
Changes to our accounting software support
We are making some important changes to our support process. Providing timely and helpful support is a key goal for the team at Clear Books. One customer recently summed up our support saying, "sometimes you guys are awesome and respond instantly and...
The stages of a startup through its office space
This post gives an insight into how Clear Books has moved through the different stages of being a startup as defined by the office space we've occupied. Working From Home If you are starting out as a one man band...
We’re doing something worthwhile
I'm really proud of Team Clear Books because today we flew past the 2,500 customer milestone. At the end of this month we will close off our third financial year so the entire team is thrilled to be ending on a...
Accounting system status
A quick post to let customers know that Accounting System Status is operational and provides customers with updates on scheduled and unscheduled maintenance at Clear Books. Follow the RSS feed to be kept fully up to date. Read More
Clear Books Network fully launched
The Clear Books Network is live. We're really pleased with the uptake with over 650 small businesses listing their details. If you want to be nosey then switch to the Network module (dropdown menu in top right hand corner when...
Automatic bank feeds live to all customers
We have now made our automatic bank feeds feature available to all customers so please navigate to the Money section of the system where you will find a new menu option called Yodlee. From the feedback we received whilst automated...
Open Payroll launched providing simple payroll software
Clear Books Limited is pleased to announce the official launch of Open Payroll, an online payroll software for small businesses that is tightly integrated with our online accounting system. Since the first line of Clear Books code was written 3 years...
Network launched: Connect with smart businesses
The Clear Books Network provides a platform to connect with other users, people and businesses who are also using Clear Books. More than that you can promote your business and find products and services. The Network is a free service...
PHP London hackathon
Hackathon? Eh? For those scratching their heads the wikipedia definition of a hackathon is "an event when programmers meet to do collaborative computer programming." The development team at Clear Books has exploded over the summer which is fantastic news for...
Clear Books Labs
There is a plethora of exciting announcements queuing up to be revealed over here at Clear Books HQ this summer. We got the ball rolling recently with our announcement that Clear Books is the first UK based online accounting software...
Yodlee bank feeds update
We have had a fantastic response to our automatic bank feeds announcement and now the wait is over. Here at Clear Books HQ we bank with Barclays. We have been successfully importing our bank statements this week, all from within...
Automatic bank feeds is a UK online accounting software first
We are thrilled to announce that Clear Books is the first UK based online accounting system to support automatic bank feeds. What this means for our customers is that doing your accounts on Clear Books will now save you even...
Happy Birthday Clear Books
Over at Clear Books HQ we celebrated our third birthday with a spectacular home made cake courtesy of support superstar Usij (or rather his girlfriend who is now becoming our regular birthday cake supplier). More pictures here. Officially Clear Books...
BE Broadband routing issue
To BE Broadband or not to BE Broadband? Not, at the moment If your broadband is provided by bethere.co.uk then there is a possibility that your access to Clear Books is currently somewhat hit and miss. If this is the...
Graduate? PHP web developer? In London?
Clear Books is on the search for awesome graduate developers skilled in PHP, mySQL and jQuery to join us in our spacious office on Hammersmith Road in West Kensington, London. We're always on the look out for cool people to...
Scheduled downtime this weekend 29 Jan 2011
In order to continue to provide a robust and reliable hosting service, there will be a maintenance window over the course of this weekend. This window will be used to install new high speed Brocade routers at Telehouse North and...
New Clear Books office
On Monday we completed on a new lease that will see the Clear Books team move into 1500 sq ft of office space. We're currently housed in two small rooms at opposite ends of a serviced office so we are...
SageOne accounting software has landed
Another day and another new online accounting system is vying to make an impact on the UK market. **Yawn** nothing new there then. Good luck to them! These young guns will have lots of hard work ahead of them: features,...
4th January 2011 VAT increase
On the 4th January 2011 the headline VAT rate in the UK will be increasing from 17.5% to 20%. As a Clear Books user you don't need to worry about this change as the switch over will be automated. Standard...
