Float just got a nice little endorsement from Daniel at swombat.com as part of a discussion about the importance of design in new products. Here's what he said (please excuse the language):

Then I tried Float. Float looks kinda cute, but nowhere near as slick as Pulse. But it works. It pulls all the relevant data directly out of my FreeAgent account (link includes my referral id!) and so it requires almost no shit work. It doesn't look great, very beta, but I'll be paying for that one as soon as my trial expires - probably via the "founders' lifetime membership".

I wanted to pick up on Daniel's idea of, ahem, "sh*t work" - as it's something we think about a lot.

Maintaining cash flow spreadsheets involves lots and lots of mundane, repetitive work. Read this number from this piece of paper, type into this cell, add these cells up, realise you made a mistake, start again...This is the kind of boring work we have computers for! Cash flow statements are only interesting and useful once you can start thinking about what the numbers actually mean. What happens if December sales are half what I expect them to be? What if this invoice doesn't get paid?

This is why we are building Float. By automating as much of the "sh*t work" as possible, your cash flow stays up to date, and stays useful, with very little work. And with major improvements coming out shortly, including automatically categorising and budgeting most of your cash flow, the upcoming release is going to be even better.

And thanks to @RalphAshby it's starting to look a lot better too:

In Colin's October update he hinted at some of the changes we are making to improve Float's overall user experience, and we thought some of you may be interested in a bit more of a detailed run down of what we are up to.

Why?

The key to really getting your head around your business, and your cash flow, is to experiment:

• What happens if this project were to start earlier, or later?
• What if this invoice never gets paid? 
• What would happen if we all took a month off at Christmas and went on holiday?

As you ask these questions, and start seeing the answers, you can get a feel for how susceptible to certain events your business is - and you can start to know, rather than hope, that everything's okay.

But for this to happen, Float's interface has to be really fast, and smooth. You have to be able to make a quick change to something, see the effect on your graph, and then undo it again, in seconds.

The income forecasting screen was an initial attempt at enabling this kind of experimentation, but the big changes we are making now take it much further.

How?

The key to making this magic happen, is to move a lot of the cash flow calculations and modelling into your browser using JavaScript. This means that when you make a change, Float can recalculate the figures, update your graph, and show you the effect, all without having to refresh the page and wait for the page to load.

This shift to doing a lot of the heavy lifting of a web application in the browser is what makes applications like Gmail, Twitter and Flow fast, responsive and effective.

As an example, if you've ever changed one of your figures on the long-term cash flow screen, you know that it takes about 5 seconds for the page to reload and show you the updates. In contrast, in the new version of Float,  recalculating your cash flow in JavaScript and updating the graph takes about 5 milliseconds. That's 1000 times faster faster, and it's awesome! Suddenly experimenting with your cash flow is actually good fun.

The Techy Stuff

Since a lot of you are building bits of the web yourselves, you're probably intrigued to know what we're using to build this latest version of Float. Here's a run-down of the stack:

• Backbone.js - Backbone is a JavaScript framework that helps you build complex applications in the browser. Switching to using a framework like Backbone, and building the majority of your application in JS is a paradigm shift that's hard to get your head around at first - but Backbone is awesome once you get there.
• CoffeeScript - If your a web design/development company that ever writes any JavaScript, stop right now and read about CoffeeScript. It's simple to setup, and makes writing JavaScript a real joy.
• Rails 3.1 - The latest release of Ruby on Rails has recognised how important supporting JavaScript heavy applications is, and makes building them a lot easier.

And if you want to start building JavaScript heavy apps yourself, Alex MacCaw's book, JavaScript Web Applications is a fantastic read.

We're hoping to start running some user tests on the new version in the next few weeks, so give us a shout if you're interested in helping out with that.  We then hope to go live sometime over the next month or two.

As always, if you have any questions, or want to know more, just drop as an email, or give us a shout in the comments. 

JavaScript code photo courtesy of Dmitry Baranovskiy

Hard to believe its October already, and in Scotland, we've jumped through all 4 seasons in the space of a week. 

I thought I"d do a post on the story of Float, which actually goes back about 10 years now. 

After university I was in the process of setting up a web design business. My income was next to nothing and my overdraft was growing steadily!

One evening I decided that if I was going to manage running a business, I seriously needed to get a grip of my personal finances. I realised I needed to figure out where I was overspending without constantly getting a nasty shock when visiting the ATM at the end of each month.

Seeing the Light

I tried keeping a note book of my spending each month.  This wasn't easy, there was a lot of repetition and I quickly realised that a spreadsheet would be a much much better way to do things. And after running the spreadsheet for a few months I realised I could now see the impact of spending patterns and project this into the future.

Now if I was consistently spending £100 more than I brought in each month I could see my bank balance in 12 months time being £1200 more overdrawn than where I started out. It helped me the realise how important it was to draw a consistent salary from the business, and it proved to be a good discipline for the business too. 

Next Steps

After a while of running this spreadsheet, I realised that I could probably use the spreadsheet with a few adaptations for our business - so after a few hours knee deep in Excel, soon we were using it for our tax and Vat returns too.

This system carried on for a few years and the spreadsheet for business grew in complexity. It began to be quite a task that needed completed each month, and there were often many mistakes in data entry that took an infuriating amount of time to find and fix.  The problem was now,  that this was very much “my” spreadsheet.  Although I tried to explain it or delegate it to others, it had it’s quirks just like any piece of code that has expanded over time.

Building something people want

In 2009 I had the privilege of going to Y-combinators startup school in Berkley, CA. The motto there was “build something people want” and Paul Graham gave a fantastic lecture on advice from startup founders. http://www.paulgraham.com/really.html I felt like if we could solve the same problem my spreadsheet was solving for other businesses that there would be something valuable in that - and so the vision for Float was born.

For some reason we applied and got accepted for mini Seedcamp in London in the summer of 2010 which was another great experience and pretty much provided the validation we needed to start taking it seriously. 

We incorporated the Float Yard in October 2010 and got our first Founder member the first day we started accepting payments in July this year.  That was a happy moment!

The journey continues...

We also got crazy and made a video which you can see right here!

Let us know what you think of the new importing features...

I've been really encouraged over the past 2 weeks at the support thats been shown from signups. So far everyone who has subscribed has gone for the yearly plan or the Founders Plan options with the Founders Plan being the most popular by far! So its great to see that group growing. Its going to be an exciting journey over the next years and Founder members get front row seats!

We have a few things to talk about in this email. The main one being the new import and reconcile workflow. This has consistently received the most feedback as something that needs work, and we've been painfully aware that it wasn't quite right.

So today we're relaunching that process, and I'd like to talk you through it.

New reconciliation method with FreeAgent

Our goal with Float has always been to let your actual transactions replace your forecast projections and by doing so you end up with a forecast that is accurate and up-to-date, but also historically useful too.

New Transactions Tab: now instead of the "Update Data" tab in the main navigation. You will see a tab labelled "Transactions".

This will take you to a new page where you now have access to your past transactions, and also bills and invoices.

Here you can allocate transactions to what we are calling "categories". You'll also be able to hook up bills and invoices which are part of recurring sequences and make sure they aren't being counted twice.

NEW: Categories...

In the new version for Float, now instead of matching up projections and transactions, you can just categorise them using a drop down menu, and Float will allocate the transaction against your projection.

Reconciling transactions like this should make everything much quicker and easy to edit too.

[Remember: You don't have to allocate every transaction, invoice or bill. Only if they replace or are part of a recurring projection. If you don't categorise something it will be placed automatically into the "Misc" Category for income or expenditure. This makes life a lot easier as you don't have to wade through everything. ]

When you categorise a transaction, invoice or bill, Float updates your forecast with the actual amount in the transaction.

Example: Your projected phone bill is £35 per month, when it comes in as a transaction of £35.74, Float updates this amount in your forecast, and no longer expects the original £35. Your bank balance is updated and your forecast is more accurate.

Soon we hope to allow you to map categories from FreeAgent into Float. This features also paves the way nicely for budgets...which are next on the list.

Importing new data from FreeAgent

When you import data from FreeAgent, we've now set this process work in the background, so you can keep working on your forecast while the new data is pulled in.

When the import is complete a notification banner will prompt you to view your imported transactions, invoices and bills.

Clicking on this link will take you to a list of all the imported items, where you can categorise them and complete the import process. Remember that you don't have to categorise all of them, its fine to put things in to the "misc" category.

We think this is going to make life a lot easier. But let us know what you think and any suggestions...

Get your 35% discount before your trial expires!

Thanks to all the people that have signed up so far - especially to our amazing founder members... We are only accepting the first 100 into this plan, and we expect it to fill up fast once we launch fully. The 35% beta user discount for all plans is only available until the end of your 30 day trial. Once that expires the ability to get that discount will be lost. So don't miss out on an amazing opportunity! See plans and pricing now.

Also new in this update...

Let us tell you about a few others things we've been working on...

1. Full support of manual payments from FreeAgent:

A frequently requested feature. We now support manual transactions made in FreeAgent. Though if they are in the future, they won't be counted in your bank balance today. (obviously!?)

2. New faster modal windows across the whole app:

Adding quick one-off projections, entering your FreeAgent password, have all been moved to modal windows to make things much faster.

3. Dashboard

There are some nice changes coming to the dashboard soon. But for now, we've changed the text on the balance displays to make them easier to understand. "Cash available Today" has become "Total Cash including overdue income & expenditure"

4. Coming Soon & Bug fixes

- We removed the recurring income tab, as all the functionality is now available in the Long Term View

- Added a drop down menu with the ability to navigate 2 years into the future in the Long Term View.

5. Our Knowledge Base begins!

Phil wrote a handy guide for setting up recuring projections in Float. Check it out here!

If I remember correctly we turned up at the practice pitch, and got absolutely slated for our poor presentation, which was very helpful, and saved us from making a hash of it in front of a roomful of very smart people the next day!

Seedcamp was a great experience, we met some awesome people, and getting through to the second day, really consolidated our belief in ourselves and the product, and was definitely a turning point.

After that, in August Phil took a big risk and came on board for 3 days a week, and we worked hard to let our first beta testers into a pretty rough cut first draft. 
Thankfully, we had some amazing alpha testers who stuck with us, and really helped us refine and build Float into what it is today. 

In November we hit 200 subscribers, won an innovation award from Edinburgh University, and Phil handed in his notice to start working on Float full time in the new year.

January to March was a slow process of some deep dives into the code and really wrestling with the complexity of  a growing product.  
We released a new wizard to help people signing up for the first time, and that definitely increased the number of people who went on and set up an active cash flow forecast. 

April.  We felt we needed to come back to basics and simplify Float back to the core functions.  At the end of April we launched a significant new release v0.8 and also were busy preparing to present at EIE11.  

Jun. We launched v0.9 of Float in preparation for opening up our beta.  The feedback was great, and we knew we were close to something that was simple but powerful enough to do accurate projections. 

July.  We released our payment plans for our beta users, and received our first revenue!  Since then we've had a great take up of our plans, specifically our Founders Plan.  Which is a special early adopters club, limited to 100 people for a life time subscription.  Its been a huge success, and we have a great bunch of people who we'll share a little more closely with and give a higher level of support to.  For us it helps with our own cash flow, and provides further validation that we're building something that people want. 

The Future:  Right now we're just working on tidying a few things up in the app before we launch fully. 
We'd working on making the reconcile process much quicker, adding budgets and a few other secret ingredients.

So its definitely been a happy birthday, and we're excited about where we'll be this time next year...

Colin

PS 
Some wise words from Steve Jobs about looking back.

If you are a reader of Accounting Web, you may have spotted a nice little article they wrote about Float earlier this week. It was a nice surprise, and a good reminder that a lot has happened since we last blogged.

As Accounting Web mentioned, we are now closer than ever to being live. We currently have more than 170 users on our closed beta, and are wrapping up development of a major new release which will launch us into open beta.

Improvements you can expect to see soon include:

• A quicker and easier first time setup experience.
• Simpler importing of your recent transactions, bills and invoices from FreeAgent.
• An overall simpler interface.
• Sexier, interactive, animated graphs.

Here's a quick preview of what's on the way. And finally, if you would like to be added to our beta waiting list, and stay updated on our progress, sign up for our mailing list at http://floatapp.com