The personal disquiet of

Mark Boulton

August 25th, 2006

Flow: A money manager for freelancers and small businesses

Flow: A money organiser for freelancers and small businessesA few weeks ago, I wrote about my dif­fi­culty man­aging an increas­ing amount of requests for work and cre­at­ing and track­ing the paper­work asso­ci­ated with this pro­cess. I decided to build some­thing in Expres­sion Engine to solve my needs, but it was far from per­fect. In fact, there was so much miss­ing from my pro­to­type, that it made sense to develop it further. 

So, without fur­ther ado, let me intro­duce you to Flow; a money organ­iser for freel­an­cers and small busi­nesses.

So, a couple of weeks ago when I pos­ted up the details about this little applic­a­tion thing I’d developed using Expres­sion Engine, a friend of mine Keeran, who is a Dir­ector at the Cardiff based soft­ware devel­op­ment com­pany Bean­lo­gic Ltd, emailed me about some­thing he was devel­op­ing which was very sim­ilar and maybe we should go for cof­fee and have a chat about it. We did, and Flow was born. 

So, what is Flow?

Without giv­ing too much away at this point, it’s sim­ilar to what I developed, but includes a whole load of other stuff in there to help your work­flow if you’re a freel­an­cer or the owner of a small busi­ness. It’s about estim­ates, invoices and cash-flow. That’s it. Simple.

Go on, sign up!

We’ve been work­ing on the applic­a­tion for a num­ber of weeks now, and hope to launch in the next couple of months (if all goes to plan). Cur­rently the land­ing page is a sign up for a launch invite, but a new site out­lining the fea­tures and bene­fits of Flow, along with screen­shots and a blog, will be along the next couple of weeks.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 25th, 2006 at 9:31 pm and is filed under Flow, News.

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35 Responses to “Flow: A money manager for freelancers and small businesses”

  1. John Beales said on: August 25th, 2006 at 11:29 pm

    Wow, this is mov­ing fast! 

    I have to be hon­est, when you first wrote about the applic­a­tion you were work­ing on I thought, “well, it would be nice but is it really that nes­si­cary?” How­ever this week I have spend much more time writ­ing estim­ates and the like and am start­ing to have some receiv­ables pile up and I found myself wish­ing that some­thing like your little app was avail­able.  Now it looks like it will be soon.  My E-mail is on the list.

  2. Ryan said on: August 25th, 2006 at 11:33 pm

    Awe­some!

    I can’t wait to see it…

  3. Joshua Brewer said on: August 25th, 2006 at 11:41 pm

    WOW! That was fast. I was quite inter­ested in how you built this, to the point that I down­loaded EE Core and star­ted try­ing to learn the EE ways. (Bit of a learn­ing curve, but not too bad — could use some more tutori­als out there in the blogosphere…) 

    Very excited and con­grats on your first “big thing” as a freel­an­cer. Can’t beat work­ing for yourself!

  4. James Daniels said on: August 26th, 2006 at 12:18 am

    I can’t wait. After read­ing your pre­vi­ous art­icle I was hop­ing you’d release some­thing like this. 

    Good luck and cheers!

  5. Ian Fenn said on: August 26th, 2006 at 7:13 pm

    With no short­age of work (lucky me — let’s hope it keeps up), the less time I spend on admin the bet­ter. I look for­ward to see­ing the res­ults of your hard work. All the best, Ian

  6. Kuswanto said on: August 26th, 2006 at 7:39 pm

    Wow!! I never thought the applic­a­tion go public. 

    Sign up! and Hop­ing for invitation :)

  7. Ingmar Greil said on: August 27th, 2006 at 12:03 pm

    That sounds very, very good. Tech­nic­ally, is this going to be an EE module? 

    Any­way, I have been des­per­ately look­ing for some­thing like this.

  8. Mark said on: August 27th, 2006 at 4:13 pm

    Awe­some. Is there any­thing in Flow that would limit it to regional use? Or is it all global concepts?

  9. Dave Jeffery said on: August 27th, 2006 at 4:26 pm

    Sounds great Mark! 

    When I go to sign-up for flow I get…

    bq. “The proxy server received an invalid response from an upstream server. The proxy server could not handle the request post /signup/create. Reason: Error read­ing from remote server”

  10. Graham Sanders said on: August 27th, 2006 at 6:36 pm

    Hi Mark,

    Glad to see you and Kee have finally hooked up to work on a pro­ject together. I’ve been ‘big­ging you’ up to him for many a year so it’s good that some­thing has finally come from it. With your UI and Kee’s mad pro­gram­ming skillz it’s destined to be a hit so good luck fella :)

    On another note, I have to admit I’m not too keen on the logo you’ve cur­rently used for ‘flow’. Could be nice to tie in the brand with a clever brand­ing device or at least use a nice lig­at­ure? Early days I know? 

    Also is ‘flow’ going to be just an EE mod­ule? or will it be a stand alone applic­a­tion? Would be more use­ful if it was the latter.

  11. Mag said on: August 28th, 2006 at 9:22 am

    I hope it would take just two weeks, please avoid any delays!

  12. Phil said on: August 28th, 2006 at 11:46 am

    Hi Mark

    Good luck with this. Have left my email address already on the site, as this is one web app I’m very keen to have a sneaky peak at!! 

    Cheers

    Phil

  13. Dave Jeffery said on: August 28th, 2006 at 11:50 am

    ah… everything seems to be work­ing again!

  14. Larry said on: August 28th, 2006 at 5:15 pm

    i thought this was based on EE…it’s great if it was… 

    Why use RoR instead of ee?

  15. Ingmar Greil said on: August 28th, 2006 at 5:23 pm

    Larry’s got a point there, actu­ally. I had been hop­ing for an EE mod­ule, too.

  16. Arvana Robinson said on: August 29th, 2006 at 5:20 pm

    I use a free online ser­vice—http://sidejobtrack.com/—which is reas­on­ably good at keep­ing track of fin­an­cials, as well as pro­ject and cli­ent man­age­ment.  I’m curi­ous what Flow might include that it doesn’t.

  17. Owen Gregory said on: August 30th, 2006 at 12:54 pm

    Excel­lent news, Mark. I’m signed up and look­ing for­ward to going with the flow!

  18. handbalda said on: August 30th, 2006 at 5:06 pm

    What do you think about purses

    Do u want to make your­self happy???

    Just one klikk and u r in

    LooK

    <a href=http://handbag-here.blogspot.com>Handbag</a>

    Don’t for­get to go here

    <a href=http://coach-handbag-here.blogspot.com>Coach Handbag</a>

  19. Lance said on: August 30th, 2006 at 6:20 pm

    Very awe­some. I just wanted to thank you for all of the great inform­a­tion and insight that you sup­ply, and now this. I wish you good luck devel­op­ing it, I can’t wait to read more.

  20. patrick said on: August 31st, 2006 at 3:32 am

    excel­lent. like music to my ears man. con­grats on the launch and im look­ing for­ward to an invite. chow

    patrick

  21. Simon Gray said on: August 31st, 2006 at 11:48 am

    I men­tioned to a col­league that being a cre­at­ive per­son, me and num­bers etc just don’t mix. It is a monthly trauma for me to invoice and chase jobs, money, add things up? I need a few days pre­par­a­tion to psyche myself up for the mundane office tasks asso­ci­ated with freel­an­cing — hope­fully this will be a good solu­tion — look for­ward to see­ing it.

    Cheers, Simon

  22. slkdbi0dlg said on: September 1st, 2006 at 11:23 pm

    oxlmv2d0jyzvt4ka <a href = http://www.200925.com/575330.html > xsrixum55y4fosv </a> 0qt3opa4kgfw9 c52ieuzjzk

  23. Keeran said on: September 2nd, 2006 at 12:54 am

    Simon, that is *exactly* what sparked this pro­ject off… 

    I’ve had enough of that ‘build up’ to doing the books — it goes against everything soft­ware devel­op­ment should be about. 

    Flow isn’t going to just be a place you visit when you need to pre­pare your paper­work for the account­ant — that’s just a fea­ture — the goal is that man­aging finance-oriented work­flow becomes part of your ruot­ine like check­ing mail in the morn­ing. It’s all simple.

    I’m really excited about put­ting the soft­ware live just so I can see how much of a pos­it­ive effect it has on my work­ing life and more import­antly, find­ing out how many oth­ers will feel the same way! 

    See you soon, 

    Keeran

  24. Ingmar Greil said on: September 2nd, 2006 at 6:16 am

    “Flow isn?t going to just be a place you visit …” 

    Does that means it’s going to be a hos­ted service?

  25. Keeran said on: September 2nd, 2006 at 12:23 pm

    Ing­mar: Absolutely!

  26. Larry said on: September 2nd, 2006 at 6:20 pm

    hm…it seems the ee mod­ule isn’t going to happen :)

  27. Keeran said on: September 2nd, 2006 at 6:50 pm

    Larry: don’t rule it out ;)

  28. Ingmar Greil said on: September 3rd, 2006 at 7:35 am

    Well, hold­ing off for that mod­ule then. I have no prob­lem with pay­ing for soft­ware, obvi­ously, but some­how I have this strange urge to keep my private data on my serv­ers, and run soft­ware loc­ally. But that’s prob­ably just me.

  29. Larry said on: September 3rd, 2006 at 6:20 pm

    Yes ing­mar, agreed, infact how many web2.0 applic­a­tions out there espe­cially on a hos­ted ser­vice? Prob­ably this one is some­thing ori­ginal and a trendsetter… 

    I per­son­ally owned base­camp, blink­sale, almost a back­pack, and other to fol­low … flow is another one … hehehe…

  30. Noel Perlas said on: September 4th, 2006 at 1:48 pm

    I hope you will have free option for this.  Or hope­fully it will be com­pletely free. ;)

  31. Ben Bishop said on: September 5th, 2006 at 10:30 am

    Really look­ing for­ward to this, espe­cially as a fel­low Brit!

  32. Gabs said on: September 6th, 2006 at 5:42 pm

    Look­ing for­ward to it..

    Your get­ting spammed all the time by that digg lot.. 

    This is what hap­pen to DP (its one of the biggest for­ums on the web) 

    http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/donate.html

    Might be worth adding a donate for your own server…

  33. Mark Boulton said on: September 7th, 2006 at 5:32 pm

    Apo­lo­gies every­one, I’ve been on hol­i­day for a couple of weeks so I’ve not had chance to respond to these comments.

    Ing­mar Greil: We thought long and hard about an EE mod­ule for this. EE was the soft­ware I used to build the pro­to­type (really as a proof of concept) but it doesn’t make com­mer­cial sense, at this stage, to tie your­self into one par­tic­u­lar tech­nical solution. 

    Mark: Yes, Flow will be regional, not just UK based. At the moment, we’re still defin­ing the scope of that though. 

    Gra­ham Sanders: Take your point about the logo, although it cur­rently does use an fl lig­at­ure. I really wanted to avoid any ‘clever’ ‘flow­ing’ logo device in favour of some­thing a little more soph­ist­ic­ated and time­less. We’ll be stick­ing with the type I think ;)

    Arvana Robin­son: Side­job­track is a good bit of soft­ware. How­ever, Flow is some­thing entirely dif­fer­ent. As Keeran has hin­ted at the com­ments, there are aspects of the Flow applic­a­tion which are much more about integ­rat­ing the fin­an­cial aspects of your busi­ness into every­day work­flow so it doesn’t have to be this chore you have to endure every month/week.

  34. Willo said on: September 9th, 2006 at 9:54 pm

    awe­some! i can’t wait to check it out.

  35. Marko Mihelcic said on: September 10th, 2006 at 5:38 pm

    Can’t wait to see it , hope I get invited! :)

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