We’re very excited to announce this super handy feature which helps you get paid faster and easier than ever. By connecting your PayPal account with Invoicebus, a special “Pay with PayPal” button will appear on your online invoices so your clients can pay you directly with just a few clicks.

Connecting your PayPal account is very easy – just go to your account settings (see image below), enter your PayPal email address and… Voila!

The great thing is that Invoicebus will notify you immediately after your client sends you a payment. Plus it will automatically record the payment into your account, so you won’t need to do anything. Actually you may drink a mug of beer instead. Cheers!

COMING SOON

Another exciting feature that is coming soon is the Stripe integration – it helps you accept credit cards instantly with a single click. You may think of it like you have a credit card processor integrated on your invoices. Yes, it’s that awesome.

We hope you’ll find this features useful since we really want you to get paid faster. We’ll give our best to help you accomplish that.

Have some suggestions for us? Shoot them in the comments below, would definitely love to hear some.

Photo credit: FuFu Wolf

Author information

Stefan Chachovski

Co-founder of Invoicebus. Huge lover of nature, science, and chocolate cherry cordials. He occasionally writes on this blog about Invoicebus' stuff. Hello him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.

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I’m going to reveal some extraordinary numbers and facts for which even we weren’t aware of until we started preparing this post. Sounds crazy I know, but it’s true

Time Spent

We haven’t tracked our working hours, but our estimation says more than 5.700 hours so far, or approximately:

• 2.100 hours – design (Interface & UX, Mock-ups, Graphics)
• 1.500 hours – development
• 1.100 hours – copywriting
• 1.000 hours – testing

Longest & Shortest Times

• Longest time spent in the office – 19 hours
• Longest time spent working from remote locations – 6 months
• Longest time spent on crafting a simple sentence – 165 min
• Longest time spent on staring at a same interface with no idea what to do next – 18 hours
• Longest average time for customer support – 4 hours
• Longest server downtime – 40 minutes
• Shortest time spent on developing a killer feature – 16 hours
• Shortest time spent on writing a blog post – 20 minutes
• Shortest time spent on testing a new feature – 6 hours
• Shortest average time for customer support – 15 minutes

Best. Worst. Hardest. Easiest.

• Best decision ever made – The story behind our brand, the attitude, the mascot, the name
• Worst decision ever made – Not taking too much risks from the very beginning
• Hardest thing to do – Beat the blank state
• Easiest thing to do – Mess the read-write permissions of the blog folder

Source Code

For the codebase we are using SVN source control versioning system hosted on Assembla, and to date we count totals of 671 code commits;

We’ve written about 52.243 lines of code from which:

• 21.067 lines C# code
• 12.717 lines JavaScript
• 5.830 lines CSS
• 12.169 lines HTML and
• 460 lines in configuration files

All time system errors count – 130

Guys that Keep our Back Safe

These are few amazing services we cannot live without:

• Rackspace – hosting
• Sendgrid – sending transactional emails
• MailChimp – email newsletters, announcements and promotions
• Basecamp – collaboration, ideas sharing and bug tracking
• Intercom – customer engagement and communication
• Skrill – processing online payments
• Dropbox – file sharing
• NewRelic – server monitoring and analysis
• WordPress – our blog
• Google Apps for Business – Email, Docs, Analytics, Feedburner

Miscellaneous

• We’ve changed 2 different Cities and 3 Offices
• We’ve eaten about 30 jars of pickles and 56 super delicious “pizzas vegetarianas”.
• We’ve drunk up 1200 liters of water. No coffee at all yet.

Top photo credit: Kevin Dooley

Author information

Dimitar Stojanov

Co-founder at Invoicebus

Dimitar is co-founder of Invoicebus, an online invoicing tool for easy invoice management. He's passionate about creating beautiful and simple web applications and occasionally writes on this blog about web design, online business, and fighting the status-quo. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.

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This is a guest post by Izabela Stojchevska, the creator of the bus mascot. We kindly asked her to share some insights and experiences of the design process, including all exciting moments she spent to bring the mascot as alive as it’s now. She calls this a pleasant journey through the prism of design. You can read more about her at the bottom of this post.

Firstly, I’ve never imagined that I will write a blog post. Ever. Secondly, I’ve never thought that it will be about a process of me creating a mascot. And finally, I’ve never imagined that I will be the mascot creator who uses Adobe Illustrator. But, life can be surprising sometimes, and to be honest I love it!

In the upcoming post I’ll try to take you on a short journey through the creation process of the bus-mascot, how the idea was born, the obstacles I stumbled upon and all the things I learned along the way to get the remarkable look of our bus mascot.

Birth of the idea

More than a year ago, Stefan introduced me their concept about the coming soon page called ‘We Are all Waiting the Invoicebus’ – simple bus stop with group of people gathering and waiting the bus to come in a happy green environment. In fact, that was the moment when the idea about the mascot was born. The moving bus actually is a synonym of fast invoice, and at the same time transportation vehicle that brings up on board all the necessary options for creating and sending easy invoices all over the world.

Sketching

I used to draw years ago, but almost I had lost my sense of drawing. However, Stefan was big believer and encouraged me with motivation and inspiration. So, these are my first two sketches:

While watching these two buses, I realized that it would be awesome if the mascot could express some positive attitude, to be more friendly and a bit funny. Therefore, I quickly mocked up another one with more playful lines and edges, slight perspective and a bit skewed stance.

It looked just like a real cartoon character. I felt I’m on the right track, so I immediately jumped on the bigger task – Adobe Illustrator.

Meeting Adobe Illustrator

Next step was to convert the mock-up into a vector image. And the challenge was pretty big because I had to learn Adobe Illustrator (AI) for that. Although I had previous practice with the vector characters from the bus stop, this was much bigger challenge so I spent long nights watching tutorials, trying tool by tool, losing my temper from time to time. When I learned to work with pen tool, I felt I was a master.

I found the tutorials of Melissa Evans, Ian Yates, Scott Jackson as well as some of Lynda’s videos very helpful during this process. I’m very thankful to all of them.

The pen tool is very important and probably one of the essentials in AI. Next I was dominating gradient tool, gradient mesh tool and so on. As I was drawing the bus in AI, I was constantly facing something new to deal with. I wasn’t using any complicated methods while drawing and I must admit, I’m still learning.

This was the first manually retraced version in AI. The bus was flipped horizontally and the lateral text was removed.

Exhaust gas was next eliminated because it didn’t seem right. There was a color disturbance for my eyes while working with those bluish level, so adjusting the color was the next step. I tried a few options to see how they would fit. Yellow ochre, light blue and puce.

They look a little silly, don’t they? I didn’t like the yellow one, because it looked like a school bus. Definitively out! Light blue was too light, so I moved on with the puce.

Drawing and adding effects

Whereas the bus was flipped, a door was needed on the the side and I also added some color effects at the rear.

Next things that bothered me were the tires. I spent over 3 hours on them, adding bolts, shadows and gradients. So they’ve got a new look:

I was satisfied and happy while looking at them. Next thing was the front grille of the bus. It was a tough challenge, because this part should resemble facial expression of the mascot character, so can spread joy and positive vibrations.

Within a few days I made a couple of iterations to finally get the desired effect. Next, I drew the shadows beneath the bus:

It started to look alive, real and beautiful. I showed this to Stefan and he had that “but” in his comment. We needed something else. And I knew that the problem was the color.

And what about Green Grass?

YES! That was my true love. Stefan and Dimitar just agreed with me without saying anything else but “Bravo” and “Wow”. There was nothing more to ask. Besides, this variant perfectly fits the colors from the logo and additionally associates clean environment emphasizing the benefits of the paperless online invoicing.

The whole design process was such a great experience with lots of ups and downs, countless iterations and dozen of ‘Yuhuuu’ moments for every noticeable progress. After all, I found this journey very enjoyable, so if you have the felling that you can draw, don’t hesitate to try it, it’s a lot of fun and actually not that difficult. Besides, you can always contact me, so we can exchange some thoughts along the way.

Author information

Izabela Stojchevska

Izabela is passionately curious pharmacist with computer and internet addiction. She loves inspiring music, stand-up comedies, walking in nature and magical sunrises. She says: "So many movies so little time". You can reach her on Twitter or Facebook whenever you like, she enjoys communicating.

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One of the most interesting stories told about some company are those about their start and beginnings. This probably should have been the first blog post on Invoicebus Garage, because here we are going to introduce ourselves and tell the story of how it all began.

Short Bio

The Invoicebus Leadership Team are IT experts who pour their passion for inventing, creating, programming and designing into a product they’ve called Invoicebus.

Follow @dimitarst

Role: Creator of Invoicebus

Education: Master’s degree in electical engineering and information technologies.

He said: Over time our human nature lean us toward status quo. We have to fight the hypnotic comfort we feel otherwise there will be no progress.

Trivia: Dimitar entered in the world of computers through video games in his youth and in college he learned that software design and development is one wonderful art as he really like games, from video games to casino games he can play at suomikasinot.fi. He tends to bring his crafts and ideas in the wild.

Credo: If you can’t make things simple, make them simpler.

Stefan Chachovski
Follow @chachovski	Role: Creator of InvoicebusEducation: Bachelor’s degree in computer science and engineering.He said: The virtue of simplicity is not only into the simple matter itself. It’s also into the capability of making the complex appear simple.Trivia: Stefan wrote his first lines of code for calculating square root of a number at the age of 11 in the programming language GW-BASIC. Almost two years later, in the mid-1997, he created his first web site. Since then he’s been passionately peculiar enthusiast for things related to the cloud. Credo: Less software, more focus on purpose.
Dimitar Stojanov

Stefan and Dimitar met in college during their studies of Informatics at the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics in Skopje, Macedonia, 2003. Soon thereafter, they realized that are pretty good team, so started working on numerous projects, ideas and concepts together, then eventually built a business with a focus on having diversity work environment.

The Invoicebus Project

Invoicebus project began from scratch in October 2010 as a challenge for creating an ultimate web-app that breaks traditional web paradigms and goes beyond today’s web rules. A kind of experiment with genes of a desktop app injected online; a hybrid that use the best of both worlds. Invoicebus is a single page web-app that we believe is evolution away from the classical page-redraw model for which browsers were originally designed for, thus making their reload and navigation buttons completely obsolete, while providing the users with immense wealth of user interactivity, possibly to a degree never achieved before in online invoicing.

We’ve had a notebook full of project ideas and concepts for online businesses; however, in that time we realized that we need online invoicing tool which will comply with our criteria for simplicity, thus we decided to tailor it by our taste, under our roof. And if your business needs mechanically assembled 3/4″ Grade 80 SGG Alloy Chain Sling, you can check out these ratings of chain loads here for your references!

We’ve also considered to:

• Share our way of thinking, our business philosophy and knowledge.
• Encourage other people to start their own online business.
• Show that a small enthusiastic team with just a couple of assets can produce well rounded product that could make even bigger companies jealous.
• Connect with like-minded people from all over the world.
• Learn more.

Our workplace

Photo was taken few weeks before the official launch of Invoicebus and shows Dimitar’s appearance while he was solving an optimization problem

Usually, we spend most of the working hours in our office in Skopje, a calm place where we brainstorm new ideas, discuss and write new code, draw mockups and design. However, we are very flexible and mobile, so many times could happen to work from different places, different cities, and sometimes even different countries.  That gives us plenty of time for thinking independently and making better decisions. We consider this as one of the greatest benefits in running an online business.When the work starts to hurt, we hire people on demand / per job. Therefore, while we were designing our bus mascot, we requested help from this lady; when we need photos, either we ask help from a photographer like this one or we try to improvise by ourselves (like the photo from the left).

What does it take (us) to build an online product?

Here are some of the essentials we found useful:

Ideosphere

• Mindset. Vision
• Huge backpack of enthusiasm
• Great discipline. Persistence
• Nerves. Lots of them
• Motivational fuel
• A little bit of creativity and logic
• Decisions. Every day. Every minute
• Craziness about details. Pixel to pixel. Byte to byte.
• A faith

More or less knowledge in:

• Math
• Programming Algorithms. Software Architecture
• UX (User Experience) / Design (Photoshop, Illustrator and Paint :))
• Web programming. Security. Optimization
• System administration
• Project Management
• SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
• Writing / Copywriting in English

Other assets:

• Two laptops (the one occasionally baked), one white board and approximately 300 white paper sheets for mockups and notes.
• Internet connection. Couple of online services. Google.
• Money for food, transportation and bills.

We didn’t need:

• Sky-high budget
• Functional Specs
• Cutting edge technology
• Big team

And that was a brief introduction of the team who builds and runs Invoicebus. If you want to read more about our principles, consider reading our manifesto.

Author information

Invoicebus Team

We're a team comprised of a few die-hard code freaks, lovers of beautiful design, stewards of simplicity, and passionately dedicated to the user experience. Invoicebus is a great vehicle to express what we do best. Click here to learn more on our business philosophy and how we actually do it.

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We are very happy to share how this little piece of garage working outfit looks like.

Because we are small team, each one of us is tempted to do different kind of jobs/tasks during the Invoicebus manufacturing process. It means, during one working day (or night), we mentally reframe our brains into different moods to handle different situations and jobs. To better organize these jobs and make them look even more interesting and natural, we came up with an idea to wear different kind of shirts, depending on the particular job we’re doing at the moment. For example,

We wear Panther black t-shirt when we work garage mechanic’s greasy jobs like:

• Sysadmin stuff;
• Programming/debugging;
• Security aspects;
• Software architecture.

And the Perl White t-shirt when we deal with:

• Interface Design / User experience;
• Quality Assistance, Testing, Validation Control;
• Brainstorming new ideas, approaches, principles;
• Search Engine Optimization, Marketing Tactics, Social Media Relations;
• Preparing and writing blog posts;
• Legal stuff;
• Support.

We also introduced some behavior restrictions to amplify the concentration level and maximize our efficiency during working hours. For example, a person that wears Perl White shirt is not permitted to verbally disturb other person who wears Panther black shirt and vice versa. In this case, communication is only allowed via IM/Skype/Email even we are located in the same physical room. When all of us wear the same color shirt, verbal communication is permitted at any time.

Author information

Invoicebus Team

We're a team comprised of a few die-hard code freaks, lovers of beautiful design, stewards of simplicity, and passionately dedicated to the user experience. Invoicebus is a great vehicle to express what we do best. Click here to learn more on our business philosophy and how we actually do it.

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Data Storage Security

In our case, data storage security refers to the way of keeping and managing customer’s data within the database: invoices, quotes, clients, company details etc.

These kinds of sensitive information are kept in a form that is encrypted by the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) – first open symmetric-key cipher approved by the National Security Agency (NSA) and used by the US federal government for storing secret information.

The human way of showing how this thing works is by the picture below:



We use the words lock, unlock as a way to visualize the meaning of encryption, decryption process of the powerful AES algorithm respectively.

The security key is kept encrypted (with RSA algorithm) in a separate, isolated place (on a different server protected by other security mechanisms and firewalls). Every time when AES needs to lock/unlock data, it requires the decrypted form of his key.

Hypothetically spoken, if security breach happens to the database server, the attacker would not be able to retrieve any meaningful data without this key, unless he has Dan Brown’s TRANSLATR at home.

Other aspects of Data Storage Security

Backups and redundancy are closely related to the Data Storage Security, but will be covered in the upcoming part 5 – Hosting Server Security.
Part 4 and 5 of this security talk series will be continued after the Invoicebus launch.

Author information

Invoicebus Team

We're a team comprised of a few die-hard code freaks, lovers of beautiful design, stewards of simplicity, and passionately dedicated to the user experience. Invoicebus is a great vehicle to express what we do best. Click here to learn more on our business philosophy and how we actually do it.

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For storing passwords Invoicebus uses something called one-way encryption with salted hash functions. Why is it called one way? Because it can not be decrypted ever, actually it’s not even an encryption. It’s a hash that is completely different thing. In fact, this is one way ticket algorithm for which there is no returning path. This is too awkward explanation of hashing and it might sounds like a rocket science, so with a couple of diagrams we will try to explain as simple as we can what it’s all about.

Password Creation

This process happens every time you enter new password, you sign up, reset or change your password.

• Step 1: Generating random text called random salt, unique for every user.
• Step 2: Generating hash value from both your plain text password and the salt. The hashed salt will be stored in the database (DB) for validating the password in future (at login).
• Step 3: Generating hash value of the concatenated hashes from the previous step. This is the final password hash that will be stored in the database (DB).

The entered password is transformed to a binary value which looks like random gibberish, and nobody, absolutely nobody can retrieve the original plain text back, at least not with today’s technology.

What if two users choose exactly the same password? Will their passwords be represented with same binary values in the database? – No! That’s what salt ensures, unique and hardened passwords, so every password is absolutely unique in the database. Even if you try to reset the old password by entering a new one that is exactly the same as the old password, its representation would be completely different in the database.

Example:
Old password: invoicebus123 —–> generated as: 8de0c3c519
New password: invoicebus123 —–> generated as: bc9fe98a12

Password Validation

Let see how the password is validated during the login process.

• Step 1: Generating hash value for your plain text password. Retrieving the stored salt form the database for that particular username.
• Step 2: Generating hash value of the concatenated values from the previous step.
• Step 3: Comparing the final hash password from the second step with the final password retrieved from the database. If they match the user is authenticated to access the system.

If ever happen to forget your password, Invoicebus would be unable to retrieve it in its original plain text representation. That’s why an email is sent with a link where you can enter a new password.

Be aware of online services that retrieve your password in plain text when you try to reset it. That indicates they don’t use hashing; probably they have some poor password encryption or don’t have an encryption at all. And even hashing is used, it’s a good advice to always choose unique and strong password for every online account you own.

Author information

Invoicebus Team

We're a team comprised of a few die-hard code freaks, lovers of beautiful design, stewards of simplicity, and passionately dedicated to the user experience. Invoicebus is a great vehicle to express what we do best. Click here to learn more on our business philosophy and how we actually do it.

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• Data Transfer Security
• Password Storage Security (upcoming)
• Sensitive Data Storage Security (upcoming)
• Payment Processing Security (upcoming)
• Hosting Server Security (upcoming)

Author information

Invoicebus Team

We're a team comprised of a few die-hard code freaks, lovers of beautiful design, stewards of simplicity, and passionately dedicated to the user experience. Invoicebus is a great vehicle to express what we do best. Click here to learn more on our business philosophy and how we actually do it.

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Researching the opponents

When you start online business it is likely there are bunch of services similar to yours in the Internet jungle. That’s why before we had started to draw wireframes for the product, we browsed some invoicing web-apps as a reference to see their way of creating and managing invoices.

Some of the players that caught our attention in the field were:

• Freshbooks
• Blinksale
• Zoho Invoices
• InvoiceMachine
• (and a few others)

We truly liked some of them, however that haven’t changed the fact how old fashioned they are. Beside, in some of them, we discovered flaws in their architecture design causing tremendous chain reactions triggered by the linkage of their system. For example if you delete a client every invoice and quote with that client will be permanently deleted; or if you change your company name, all invoices, even the old ones, will be modified. However, the bigger handicap we found was not having natural flow of creating invoices. Come on guys, invoicing software is not an online address book for God’s sake. It’s not about managing items, taxes, clients, charts etc; its about managing INVOICES. Don’t get me wrong, items, clients and taxes should be managed, but in a totally different way (get redirected here if you need help with this).

Web technologies – up and up

In our professional carеer we’ve followed the progress of web technologies from the early stages, or more accurately since 1998. However, the big waves in the web industry have started to happen more intensively in the past few years: cloud computing, powerful Internet browsers, faster and smaller personal computers, mobile platforms, easier access to the Internet, more bandwidth available. All of this make us realize how powerful weapon Internet have became, an invisible axis which holds the fundamentals of world economy, business, health and lifestyle, as for example you can go online and get things like a beautiful male masturbator and relax yourself if you want to. The whole planet is going online, so the world of stand-alone desktop applications and so-called ‘programs’ is going to vanish slowly. Explore additional resources and tips at stiiizy.com.
There will be no more programs with minimum system requirements, no security patches and updates, no cracks. The question is how long it would take to happen? This is what we call transition era, period where people are becoming aware of the online benefits.

The concept

That’s why we invented a whole new architecture of how online invoicing is implemented, the main reason why Invoicebus is referred as a concept, not only as a product.

By utilizing some of the most advanced techniques for web programming today we built а desktop-style web application. Actually Invoicebus is the first online invoicing software in the world that changes the perspective of how people should see on web invoicing, or even on web software in general. In fact, it makes perfect tier between desktop and web applications. This innovative approach has also inspired many businesses and app development companies melbourne to focus on creating user-friendly digital solutions that seamlessly combine performance, accessibility, and modern design.

We haven’t invented hot water, however what we invented is the ‘focused speedy flow’ of the water through the pipeline. If you get it, you probably are among the growing group of savvy people who has signed up at http://invoicebus.com and impatiently wait the bus to arrive.

Author information

Invoicebus Team

We're a team comprised of a few die-hard code freaks, lovers of beautiful design, stewards of simplicity, and passionately dedicated to the user experience. Invoicebus is a great vehicle to express what we do best. Click here to learn more on our business philosophy and how we actually do it.

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It took a few years to find our hammer, our courage amplifier called 37signals, a great company that sells web-based software. Actually, the upturn point in our professional lives was when we discovered and read their first book called “Getting Real”, written by the founder Jason Fried and their partner David Heinemeier Hansson. In the book they talk about principles of building web application and running a service based online business. Every essay from the book was like a mosaic of words specially written for us. Most important, the book makes us realize that doing what we like is freedom, and liking what we do is happiness.

The wealth of principles exposed in “Getting Real” is so immense that melted our scepticism and provoked us to start thinking of how to implement some of them in our own product. Actually Invoicebus is a product conceived with their blessing. That’s the part of Invoicebus story we call enlightenment, one of the key points of how we got real.

We gladly embraced some of those principles like: to build less, to keep the product simple, to fund ourselves, to ignore the details at early stages of development, to scale later, to personify our product, to make the interface before implementing the logic, to use the epicenter design for building.

One of the best advice was to ignore the functional spec and directly build the real thing instead. Actually, that raised our creativity to its majestic peak. Also, we’ve felt on our own skin the thesis that a small team is more agile and efficient than a bigger one, more organized and more productive. Indeed, a member from a small team can wears different hats in different situations creating a distributed wave of knowledge for all parts of the product equally.

Other remarkable thing for the book is the writing style used to express their attitudes. No formalities, no abstractions and generalizations, direct and straight language just like from a true friend.

Shortly after we had discovered Getting Real (it was published in 2006, we heard about it in early 2010) we found out that they plan to publish another book, more business specific, called “Rework”. We read “Getting Real” online for free, however we were thrilled from it so we bought “Rework” in printed version. In the first week of sale, “Rework” became a New York Times bestseller. This book is no less brilliant than the first one, full with their simple but powerful approaches, making it a must-have for every business, no matter how big or small it is. It provides valuable insights into being a good entrepreneur and navigating the complexities of the business world. If you’re looking for more perspectives, consider checking out reviews of Invest Diva for additional insights and recommendations.

Those books launched us far beyond the boundaries of disbelief and doubt, on the place where motivation grows as a plant seeded with enthusiasm, belief and goodwill.

This blog post is kind of tribute for them, 37signals, a gratitude for the great work they’ve done by writing and publishing these 2 golden treasures.

Thank you guys for the pure awesomeness you exposed in that 171 pages of “Getting Real” and 280 pages of “Rework”.

Author information

Invoicebus Team

We're a team comprised of a few die-hard code freaks, lovers of beautiful design, stewards of simplicity, and passionately dedicated to the user experience. Invoicebus is a great vehicle to express what we do best. Click here to learn more on our business philosophy and how we actually do it.

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