We're back in Toronto now, after our visits to the Intuit offices in Plano and Tucson.  Though we'll miss the TexMex & Mexican feasts and catching up with other Intuit Developer partners, it is good to be back home.  Based on the feedback we received from Intuit staff, Method is in for quite a ride over the next year, as the business problems it will solve for QuickBooks users are far reaching to say the least.

As promised, here is the next set of movie tutorials.   I broke it up into 3 parts, each about 10 minutes.

PART 1: Customization Overview
Introduction into the built-in features of grids, and overview of each customization area of Method:
http://www.methodintegration.com/blogmovies/MethodMovie2/MethodMovie2.htm

PART 2: Creating your own 'Customer Contact' table and screen
Here I create a very simple screen that tracks phone calls in from customers.  I show how to create a table and fields, and how to customize the screen it created:
http://www.methodintegration.com/blogmovies/MethodMovie3_CreateTable/MethodMovie3_CreateTable.htm

PART 3: Creating Actions for the Save button
This is where things get more fun.  In this movie I create an action that looks at which employee the Customer Contact was assigned to, figures out their email address, and sends them an email letting them know that a customer contact has been assigned to them.  This touches on "actions", what an "Action Result" is, and how to use the "Retrieve Value From Table" action.
http://www.methodintegration.com/blogmovies/MethodMovie4_Actions/MethodMovie4_Actions.htm

Good morning beta testers. 

I'm here in the Intuit sales and support office in Tucson, Arizona, showing the staff here what Method means to QuickBooks.  Eyes are bulging, as they can't wait to recommend this to QuickBooks users they support.  Finally, QuickBooks desktop data is available in real time, on the web (a.k.a. "the clouds"!).

I'm going to be doing my share by educating everyone on the power and freedom of Method by recording some informal tutorials / demonstrations and publishing them here on this blog.

The first one, about 10 minutes long, is about how Method connects to QuickBooks, and an overview of some of the main features of integration.

Click here to watch the movie:

http://www.methodintegration.com/blogmovies/MethodMovie1_QB/MethodMovie1_QB.htm

We’re ready!  You heard me right.  As of today, Method is springing into beta!  

“I can’t believe it, we’re finally ready” – words out of Paul’s mouth after giving the green light to start the beta.  All of us are thrilled to move into the next stage of Method’s production and our beta testers are going to play a key role over the next couple months.

Starting today, May 1st, we’ll begin sending out invitations to our beta testers who enrolled in the beta program.  If you haven’t signed up for the beta, send an email to method@alocet.com and we’ll get you enrolled in the beta process ASAP!

I can’t wait for everyone to see what we are so crazy about.  I can only relate it to purchasing a really cool gift for someone’s birthday.  Something you know they’ll absolutely LOVE and anticipating the moment they take the wrapping off and share the same excitement.  That alone makes all of the anticipation worth it!

Alright everyone, if you’ve signed up for beta, you’ll be hearing from me shortly.  If you haven’t, what are you waiting for?  

See you on the forums and can’t wait to hear your feedback!  

Be in touch soon!

Danny 

P.S. Can’t stress enough to sign up for our RSS (stands for – Really Simple Syndication) feed on our blog.  For those of you who are new to the world of blogs, an RSS feed is a format for delivering regularly changing web content.  We’ll be posting stuff here all the time and it’s a great way to keep in touch with the latest news on Method.

So like the title states, we’re almost ready to get started on our beta and couldn’t be more excited!  We feel that the changes made over the last couple months are well worth the wait and in the end, will make your experience more enjoyable.  

Now to explain how things are going to work over the next few weeks.  Firstly, we aren’t going to follow the traditional model of beta periods, because we’re not so traditional after all .  

If you have contacted us and requested to be on the beta list, you’ll be receiving an invitation code from us in order to access your Method account.  Now before you receive this invitation code, we will arrange a 30 minute demo with, yours truly, over the internet of course.  

So what’s the purpose of this demo?  Plain and simple, we want to make sure you have a chance to get started on the right foot, point you in the proper direction and answer some of your questions before getting your hands dirty.  Once we’re done, you can get started and provide us with your much needed feedback.  

If you haven’t participated in a beta period, here are a few things to keep in mind, especially in the case of Method.  

• Beta means beta.  What does that mean to you?  As much as we’ve tried our best to make Method as solid as possible, we expect there to be issues (bugs) and your feedback is going to make sure we get these issues resolved.  So it’s important that rather then get frustrated with something not working right away, let us know and we will work with you to get it resolved.  Can you think of a better way of designing something?  Great, we want to hear about it.  Communication is really the key to having a successful beta experience.
• ‘Stage 1’ of beta will be just a “QuickBooks” template, which is basically an online version of your QuickBooks data, built using Method.  In ‘Stage 2’ of beta (likely in mid March), we’ll start introducing industry-specific templates, with ‘Field Service’ and ‘Software Company’ as the initial templates, along with a “Method CRM” template.  Additional industry templates will be posted gradually, over the course of the beta period.  Therefore, you won’t see all of the industry specific templates available right away.  However, as they get published, we will make an announcement of their availability.
• Take full advantage of our help.  We want to make sure you use Method and tear it apart.  So if you have questions, ask!  Feedback, tell us! (good or bad of course).  As early adaptors of Method, your feedback and questions are crucial and we are here to help. 
  

That’s it!  Get ready to hear from me soon and in the mean time, if you have questions, comments, concerns, feedback, let us know on the forum!  Talk to you soon 

P.S. If you haven’t signed up for the beta yet, you can still do so by emailing us at method@alocet.com.

Danny Do Couto
Method Integration

Greg Lafollette, the seasoned and respected editor of The CPA Technology Advisor, has written about Method in his Blog.

We met Greg in Las Vegas in October, and as you'll see from his blog, Greg "gets it".

I think he sums up our excitement best, when he writes: "If they can actually deliver what they plan to deliver I predict a very quick uptake in the professional accounting market." 

Read his blog here:

http://www.thetechgap.com/2008/01/yes-there-is-a.html

Paul

P.S. yes, we are still on track for a beta later this month. :)

The short story: despite our intention to get Method out into beta in November, we have now moved the beta to start in January.

The long story: talking to the accountants and consultants at the Sleeter Conference last month revealed some interesting insights that caused us to sit back and make sure that when we do go into beta, we go in with the product you are looking for – right from day 1.  So we have been making a few tweaks!

Observation 1: Method isn’t just about industry-specific templates.  After talking to accountants and consultants, and hearing the pain points of their clients, Method to them can be the full blown management system we intended, but for others it can simply be a small utility that can extend core accounting functionality already present in QuickBooks.   I found this interesting since it is a departure from what our experience has been in the industry-specific software world for the last 9 years.

Observation 2: 3rd party logins wasn’t just a "nice-have", it was a fundamental.  In fact, it was the first thing everyone asked for at the Sleeter Conference.  Here are some examples I heard people tell me:

• “My client uses subcontractor sales agents in multiple states.   They just need to have them log in and see just the estimates and customers assigned to them.”   
• “My client is in New Jersey and needs to put Purchase Orders into her QuickBooks and have her supplier log into a website from Wisconsin and view and modify those Purchase Orders.”
• “Our client needs to have their customers book appointments on their website that automatically become QuickBooks estimates.”

3rd party logins (where someone logs into Method via a normal website, and only sees a small, restricted portion of Method) was something we had planned to introduce late into beta, not at the beginning.  But since this is so important, we have decided to add those features now, ready for the start of beta.

Observation 3: The general feedback from accountants and consultants was that QuickBooks Online was lacking.  For starters, the full blown feature set normally found in desktop versions of QuickBooks was not present on QuickBooks Online - which prevented large companies from moving to it.  But more often than not, it was the speed of QuickBooks Online that we heard complaints about.  It was too slow for data entry, too slow to switch from screen to screen, and no way to keep multiple screens open at once.  This, we found very interesting – since in many ways Method is an alternative to QuickBooks Online for those wishing to keep their QuickBooks on their desktop.  We had always designed Method to be fast.  Really fast.  But, after hearing how important speed was, we starting further tweaking Method with one ambition: Method isn’t going to just be fast, it must be the fastest web application our users have ever seen. 

Tweaks have set us back time-wise, but the results are worth it.  You’ll see that Method is the fastest web app you have ever seen.  Add that to your list of why Method blows everything else out there away.

In closing, we can’t wait to get this out there to you, and we really appreciate everyone’s excitement and passion for wanting to get going on the beta – but beta will begin in January, rather than November as we had originally intended.

It's our last day here in Las Vegas and what an experience this conference has been.  The amount of knowledge you can gain in a matter of three days is definitely worth the trip to Vegas and the convention.  You meet people from all kinds of backgrounds and specialties from all over the United States and Canada. 

I know myself and the rest of the team is headed back to Toronto, not only with a bunch of work to do to get Method ready for our Beta, but now realizing the amount of industries out there that don’t have software. 

On behalf of Paul, Peter and I, I’d like to thank everyone who came out to our booth and took the time to speak to us.  We are definitely going to be taking all the feedback we received into consideration. 

We’ll be in touch soon and keep an eye out for the Beta invitation. 

I've included a picture from the show of Peter and Paul answering some questions about Method.

P.S. In the mean time, if you have questions, concerns or just need some direction, be sure to sign up for the user forum and post away!

Danny Do Couto
Method Integration

Alright, so here I am writing my inaugural blog post and let me just say, it’s definitely not the type of writing I am use to doing.  Point being - bear with me on this.  I’m sure over time; it will only get better (and more interesting). 

Anyway, I wanted to share with you what happened here in Vegas today….

So we all go throughout life, having milestones that you set out to achieve and most importantly, hope that in the end you are proud with the end result.  Today, I feel Method met a major milestone and let me tell you, it feels REALLY good when other people can share in your success and excitement. 

After spending 19 months working so hard envisioning, planning, programming and all the rest of that good stuff, we no longer had to be quiet about our newest edition to the Alocet family.  (Just to clear up any confusion, Alocet is actually us, the company behind the creation of Method)

At today’s show, I know Paul, Peter and I weren’t exactly sure what to expect.  That’s the truth.  What we did know was that we had something really good here and really exciting and wanted to share it with the world!  Okay, maybe not the world, but at the very least everyone attending the Sleeter Conference. 

Well…..after the first wave of consultants visited our both, we all looked at each other and realized we had a tough job on our hands.  How do we explain what Method is?  Sounds like an easy job right?  WRONG!  How do we explain that Method can do anything they want it to do?  That it’s not the typical boxed product you would buy and a different way of looking at software. 

After a couple of hour’s worth of conversation at the show, trying different angles to approach how to explain it, we all quickly realized one thing and came to the same conclusion.  Everyone has a client that doesn’t like some aspect of their current software product (that is if they even have a software product right now).

BINGO!  Once we realized this, it made our lives so much easier.  Scratch the idea of trying to explain what the product IS and instead tell them how it will solve their current issues. 

Oh yeah, we were on cruise control.  The rest of the late morning and afternoon today felt like a breeze and we were on a roll.  After Paul’s 20 minute presentation, it felt great to see so many people come back to our booth and be as excited as we were about our vision.

Day 1 of Method’s introduction to the world has definitely been a huge eye opener. It’s been a long day, but definitely worth all the effort.  I’m off to chit chat with some of Intuit’s developers. 

Danny Do Couto
Method Integration

And so it begins…

Hours from now we will finally be able to tell the world about what has made us so excited over the last year.  Well, maybe not the whole world, but at least all the accountants and consultants attending this year’s Sleeter Conference in Las Vegas.

Our www.methodintegration.com website does a good job explaining what Method is, but admittedly there isn’t much mention of who we are as a company, and why we embarked on this never-been-done-before mission of ours.  It makes no mention of our deep experience with QuickBooks integration, and our hands-on knowledge of the small to medium sized business market.  So, what better topic for the first Method Blog post than to tell you who we are and where we are going.

Company background
A long, long time ago, in far away land….well actually, back in Toronto in 1999, we founded our software company Alocet Incorporated.  We began by developing a product called “LM Software”, which was an industry-specific scheduling product for landscaping and lawn maintenance companies.  LM is still around today, but in 2001 it was quickly overtaken by our next generation product “QXpress”.  With QXpress we recognized two things:

1. Nearly all of our users were also users of QuickBooks.  So rather than trying to get them to convert to the accounting system we had developed in LM, it was a far smarter idea to use QuickBooks for accounting, and QXpress for scheduling and invoicing – and have seamless integration between the two products.  Not just a cheesy QuickBooks “link”, but true QuickBooks connectivity that WOWed users.  This worked well.
2. Also, we found that there were many industries similar to our original lawn maintenance and landscaping industries, and by making a few tweaks and increasing the flexibility, we could dramatically redefine the market of who could use our product. 

So, QXpress took off.  There are over 2000 companies using QXpress daily.  However, as great as QXpress is, it is still a “boxed”, off-the-shelf product.  It is limited by the same restrictions that face ever other traditional industry-specific software product.  These restrictions really all focus around the previously unavoidable “90/10” rule.  Industry-specific software is built on the premise that all companies within an industry are the same.  When in reality, all companies are different in some way.  The 90/10 rule is: your company’s needs are 90% similar to your industry peers and 10% unique

The idea for Method
In spring 2006 we began brainstorming on how to solve the “90/10” rule.  The idea evolved over time to be something bigger than any of us here could have imagined. 
When I say big, I really mean it.  Method will be able to tailor itself to any small and medium sized business, no matter what industry they are in, no matter how simple or complex their needs are.

It solves problems not just for the end users, but also for the accountants and consultants who are charged with the task of recommending software to their clients.
 
Also, in creating Method, we stumbled upon an even bigger realization.  We are not the only software company looking for a solution to the 90/10 rule!  Everyone is looking for that solution.  Therefore, why not open Method up to developers and let them take advantage of our research and development?  Our ambition for developers is to allow them to recreate their industry-specific program using Method in about a week – and get all the benefits of an AJAX-enabled, web-based app with the added bonus of real time QuickBooks synchronization.
 
Method is a big deal.  We are excited and passionate about what we have created.  During the Method Beta period (November 2007 through April 2008) we trust that you’ll get excited too.
 
Vegas, here we come.  Finally.
 
Paul Jackson – Founder