Eric Cantona on financial meltdown and the revolution
Eric Cantona, infamous for his kung fu kicking ability, has now aimed a punch squarley at the Banks. (You may remember him playing football for a little known team in Manchester). In this video "King Eric" suggests the way to start...
Steps to redundancy – 4. Customer generated backups
The fourth step to redundancy is to allow Clear Books users to create their own backups of their databases. Clear Books users can generate their own backups of their account database and email it to their registered email address. This...
Steps to redundancy – 3. SQL backup dumps
We take backups of our Clear Books database and other site files hosted by CatN on a new schedule. All of our backups are stored on Amazon S3. We use the EC2 Slave to perform all of our backups to...
Steps to redundancy – 2. MySQL replication
We have adopted replication methods for our database hosting that adds numerous layers of redundancy. In the CatN replication stack used to host Clear Books we use one Master server and two Slaves. The Master and one of the Slaves...
Steps to redundancy – 1. Hardware
We have carried out a hardware refresh and have consolidated to purely HP servers from our previous mixed hardware. This includes all our database and application servers and virtualisation hosts. The previous infrastructure contained numerous brands with slightly different configurations...
Champagne breakfast
Some clever person decided to film our Champagne Breakfast moment as we celebrated reaching 1,000 customers. For the record I am not in the habit of hitting employees! Read More
Software Satisfaction Awards 2010: Clear Books
Earlier this year we had a fantastic response when we asked our users to complete the Software Satisfaction Survey to give Clear Books a shot at winning an award in the SME Accounting and Finance category. At the time some 20%...
Personal back ups are back and restore points too
We are making great progress with our 6 point plan to massively improve the security of your data on Clear Books. This is a quick note to let everyone know that you can now personally back up your own data. When...
Newsletter July 2010
There has been a lot going on behind the scenes at Clear Books this month. With new developers on board we will hopefully see new features rolling out very soon such as better invoice customisation and automatic Paypal imports. Here...
UK Accounting Software Market Report
In keeping with our open approach as a business, I am pleased to unveil our UK Accounting Software Market Report. For a copy please click here: UK Accounting Software Market. If you would like to use this report or quote from it, you may do so providing...
Clear Books Accounting Software Small Business Survey 2010
Clear Books accounting software undertook a survey of 8,816 small businesses a week before the election to find out their views on the the economy; half of those that took part in the survey were one person businesses, with a large proportion...
Labour support only 11% in huge online poll
ClearBooks.co.uk has announced the preliminary results to one of the most comprehensive surveys on the UK economy on the day of the 2010 final leaders' debate. The "2010 Election Survey: Business and The Economy" has been completed over the last 24 hours by 33,279 members of...
Furnish.co.uk using Clearbooks
Up until relatively recently, I'd always done my accounting using a Microsoft Access database I'd knocked out years ago. It was pretty basic and 100% manual, but it worked. The alternative was using off-the-shelf accounting software, which all reminded me...
Clear Books Customer Support
We like to think that Clear Books has from the very beginning made every effort to engage with you about your ideas, questions & problems and to feedback what we are doing about them. As we continue to grow we...
MPs Offered £100 000 Worth of Accounting Software To Publish Their Expenses
MPs Offered £100 000 Worth of Accounting Software To Publish Their Expenses London (04/02/10) - Every MP has been offered free online accounting software to publish their accounts publicly on the Internet. All 646 MPs are being offered a term's...
Starting a business from scratch
Starting A Business From Scratch (Part 1) This is one of a number of business startup guides that will be posted over the coming weeks thanks to Duncan Accounting. Today's post is the first of two posts on the basics...
End of year accounts
End of year accounts will be filed by many accountants on behalf of small businesses across the UK over the coming months in what is commonly known in the accounting world as 'busy season'. This coincides with the fact that...
Snow proof accounting software
Clear Books is accounting software that defies winter's icy grasp. If you live in the UK you will no doubt have noticed that it has been snowing; some people are saying that it is one of coldest winters since 1963. If...
VAT changes
VAT is changing on the 1 January 2010 with a return to 17.5% from the temporary rate of 15% imposed since 1 December 2008. This will affect VAT registered Clear Books users in the following ways. Normal Invoicing We have...
10 tips for speed networking
Clear Books experiences and tips from taking part in some Speed Networking whilst at the Business Start Up Live Event in Olympia, London.
Companies House Webcheck built into Clear Books
Today we are pleased to announce that we have worked with Companies House to make their webcheck service available right inside Clear Books. This means you can order from a huge range of official documents that have been recorded with...
Online accounting growth story… write your own chapter
We've had some interesting questions raised about our growth plans. It's important for prospective interns and employees to appreciate where we have come from and where we are going. It may be interesting to our users too. I was nine months into my...
Online VAT returns recognised by HMRC
We are pleased to announce that our online VAT returns system has been recognised by HMRC. We are now listed on their 3rd party VAT software page: HMRC Recognised VAT Software We currently support online submission of VAT 100 forms (the...
Clear Books Accounting Software: New Design, Record Users, Free Your Time!
Clear Books accounting software has revamped its online accounting website. The fresh design coincides with flying through 100 paying users and a new company slogan, "Free Your Time". Free Your Time "Free Your Time" is about empowering small business owners...
50 paid-up online accountancy software customers in the first month? You bet-cha!
(Aldershot, UK) Online accounting software company Clear Books has secured 50 paying customers in its first month, spurred on by a bet between the founder and a former colleague. Launched on the 1st of July 2009, Clear Books is a...
Clear Books accounting software is accredited by The Institute of Certified Bookkeepers
Clear Books online accounting software has been accredited by The Institute of Certified Bookkeepers (ICB). Validating Clear Books It was important for us to get Clear Books accredited by the ICB to give our users an independent, third party validation of...
Multi-currency accounting beta
ClearBooks supports multi-currency invoicing and multi-currency bank accounts. This is an early beta feature. Whereas the core ClearBooks accounting system is still in beta but has been extensively tested, multi-currency accounting is at an early release stage. We would invite our...
Accrual dates and flat rate VAT scheme
Here is a list of new features and updates released today. Accounting Accrual Dates: In Organisation Settings accrual dates can be switched on for advanced users. This reveals an additional field on invoice forms which allows invoices to be accrued...
What Clear Books accounting software is all about
Today I was asked in an email what Clear Books is all about. Here is my answer: What is Clear Books? Clear Books is an online accounting system for small businesses. Goals of the accounts system Clear and Simple: We...
PDF invoice template
New PDF Invoice Template Getting Started Note on Updates New PDF Invoice Template Our new pdf invoice template has been integrated into Clear Books. We wanted a professional invoice design that was conservative on ink usage. The invoice retains features of our previous invoice template...