{"id":153,"date":"2008-12-31T13:48:13","date_gmt":"2008-12-31T13:48:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/?p=153"},"modified":"2018-11-07T10:26:03","modified_gmt":"2018-11-07T10:26:03","slug":"clear-books-2008","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/clear-books-2008\/","title":{"rendered":"Clear Books 2008"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A summary by month of the progress\u00a0Clear Books has made in its inaugural year: 2008.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><strong>June 08 &#8211; Clear Books Concept<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I was\u00a0working at Arbuthnot Securities as a research analyst covering small cap stocks listed on AIM. I invited <a href=\"http:\/\/brenmcl.blogspot.com\/\">Brendan McLoughlin<\/a>,\u00a0an old\u00a0friend from Farnborough Sixth Form college, to\u00a0come in for a chat about his\u00a0company <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fubra.com\">Fubra<\/a> and go over some of the implications of floating on the stock market.<\/p>\n<p>Later that month I happened to be talking to Brendan&#8217;s business partner and also an old \u00a0friend from college, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pyrosoft.co.uk\/blog\/\">Paul Maunders<\/a>, about accounting systems. I had developed a simple web based accounting system based on the accounting principle of double entry\u00a0(debits and credits). Paul had developed an invoice driven\u00a0system for his brothers&#8217; construction business, Prospect Glazing.\u00a0We discussed sharing each other&#8217;s code to combine the systems.<\/p>\n<p>Paul and Brendan were in London later that month and invited me out for lunch. I half suspected it might happen but even when it did it surprised me.\u00a0They suggested I resign from my job immediately, set up a joint venture with Fubra and develop an online accounting system. I knew straight away that I would agree and after ironing out the terms, I did.<\/p>\n<p>The goals were two fold:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>To develop an accounting system which Fubra could use<\/li>\n<li>To sell the system\u00a0to small businesses in need of an easy and\u00a0simple to use\u00a0web based accounting system<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>July 08 &#8211; Company Formation<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Clear Books was incorporated on the 2 July 2008.\u00a0I was required to work a month&#8217;s notice so Clear Books remained\u00a0largely a mish mash of ideas thrown in with some development work in the evenings and at weekends.<\/p>\n<p><strong>August 08 &#8211; Development<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Work began in earnest to integrate the two original\u00a0systems and develop them further.<\/p>\n<p>We outlined ideas and concepts for the Clear\u00a0Books website design.\u00a0This was the\u00a0start of a lot of toing and froing with\u00a0web design company Do1. It eventually paid off with a clear\u00a0design we were really pleased with.<\/p>\n<p><strong>September 08 &#8211; Test User<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Prospect Glazing and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.marbleconstruction.co.uk\/\">Marble Construction<\/a> became our first full time test users. They helped\u00a0us ensure that the system worked\u00a0and catered for the needs of a small business.<\/p>\n<p><strong>October 08 &#8211; Web Design<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The web design\u00a0work was finalised\u00a0and could\u00a0now be integrated\u00a0into the system. The design overhaul brought the project on massively. Not only did we have a website that looked good, but the visual\u00a0elements\u00a0helped provide a framework for\u00a0the usability of the site.<\/p>\n<p><strong>November 08 &#8211; Charity<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>A month of intense coding.<\/p>\n<p>Our first charity, passingiton,\u00a0signed up.\u00a0We decided to offer Clear Books free to small businesses and charities (subject to usage limits).<\/p>\n<p><strong>December 08 &#8211; Beta Launch<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Fubra switched from their incumbent accounting system to Clear Books full time. As a result we launched Clear Books in beta to let other\u00a0organisations sign up\u00a0and trial the\u00a0system for free.<\/p>\n<p>The Clear Books blog was set up to provide a help resource for users.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Clear Books in 2009<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The concept for Clear Books began taking shape\u00a07 months ago. Amazingly, the development has been underway for just 5 months.\u00a0A big thank you is owed to\u00a0Andy, Steve,\u00a0Matt W, Matt G, Alex,\u00a0Mark, Joe, Brendan and Paul at Fubra and Ed and Matt at Do1.<\/p>\n<p>In 2008 we achieved\u00a0our first goal of developing a working\u00a0accounting system and getting Fubra\u00a0using\u00a0it.<\/p>\n<p>In 2009\u00a0we will focus on our second goal: the official launch of Clear Books.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A summary by month of the progress\u00a0Clear Books has made in its inaugural year: 2008.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ 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content=\"2018-11-07T10:26:03+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Tim Fouracre\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@timfouracre\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@ClearBooks\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Tim Fouracre\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Estimated reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/clear-books-2008\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/clear-books-2008\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Tim Fouracre\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/bbee69f33d20633f23e4570772def494\"},\"headline\":\"Clear Books 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