I’d like to say that it’s been a pleasure serving you and we wanted to share some news with you. Some of you might have already heard that Issuer Direct Corp has decided to purchase the assets of Merchant’s Mirror and rebrand it into XAS Cloud.

What does this mean for you, the customer? Well, currently not a thing. Things will still proceed as normal operations while we work with the ID team to transition the technology. You might one day in the future see a different logo on the application, but it won’t be different and the payments and contractual agreements will continue as current.

The difference will be that Issuer Direct will continue development once this migration is complete while the Firelace team be on call as an advisory team. Under the resources of Issuer Direct, you’re likely to see some great feature improvements in the coming months.

It’s been a great three years and I’m looking forward to seeing the next evolution of Merchant’s Mirror to be a great one!

- Ben

This in turn will increase the speed of the product itself. Second, the size of the files have been dramatically decreased. This has been done through compression and some server magic that optimizes the delivery itself. That should increase some viewable differences in performance. Last of all, we’re beginning to see some improvements on some of the content. Due to some reports by clients where there were vast amounts of data being delivered due to the number of transactions, we’ve done something about the viewing window on that data. That in turn has taken the load off of both the client and ourselves.

Wish there was a breather window somewhere in there, but there’s always new things to do. If there are issues, feel free to let us know!  As usual, we’re always striving to be the best web based accounting product you guys can have!

And for those of you watching, there have been a number of features that have been quietly implemented into the current live system. As most know, they’re always done through requests of our customer base and they keep coming up with some great ideas! You can’t beat the ideas that are from the people that use the product.

Currently in the development chain that should be coming to a dashboard soon: recurrence. It’s something that has been personally bugging us, so we’re doing something about it. This is one of the features that hasn’t been requested but has been on our radar for some time. There are a few other fun things that are coming down the line.

We’ve also been working on a joint venture with another business. For now, we’ll just leave it at that. Let’s just say that there’s some expansion into other areas going on -hint hint-.

In other news, we have just gone through an audit and passed it with much nail-biting. We currently have a contract in that will have ongoing reviews on these to make sure that you’re protected and your financial records are up-to-date.

We would like to say that we wouldn’t be here without our wonderful customer base, and so this shout out is to you! You guys are the best and you make this application what it is today. We strive to answer all of your questions and feature requests as quickly as possible as a small firm and we believe that we make that absolutely transparent to you.

If you have questions, problems, or whatever else, feel free to contact us.

Because software is usually used for many years, it actually depreciates over time as far as the initial cost is concerned. But if there are annual fees or some sort of time-based licensing subscriptions, then the renewals themselves are considered as current assets. If however you’re using a SaaS service such as Merchant’s Mirror, then the product subscription would actually be an expense since you don’t technically own the software and the moment you quit subscribing, you no longer have access much like a subscription to a magazine or newspaper.

Definition(s):
Fixed asset, also known as a non-current asset or as property, plant, and equipment (PP&E), is a term used in accounting for assets and property which cannot easily be converted into cash. This can be compared with current assets such as cash or bank accounts, which are described as liquid assets. In most cases, only tangible assets are referred to as fixed.

In accounting, a current asset is an asset on the balance sheet which is expected to be sold or otherwise used up in the near future, usually within one year, or one operating cycle whichever is longer. Typical current assets include cash, cash equivalents, accounts receivable, inventory, the portion of prepaid accounts which will be used within a year, and short-term investments.

It depends on your company policy. Generally, corporations set a capitalization policy where a minimum threshold must be reached to consider a computer a fixed asset since some things depreciate so quickly, it’s better to treat them as an expense. Consult with your accountant on what a generally accepted threshold lies. We can tell you that if your threshold happens to be $500USD, then netbooks, and even some computers and laptops could be considered either an expense or fixed asset depending on what side the price fell.

Definition:
Fixed asset, also known as a non-current asset or as property, plant, and equipment (PP&E), is a term used in accounting for assets and property which cannot easily be converted into cash. This can be compared with current assets such as cash or bank accounts, which are described as liquid assets. In most cases, only tangible assets are referred to as fixed.

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In spite of people like us, whom look to provide a web based accounting product easier to use and simplifying many processes, at the end of the day the responsibility of the bookkeeping for your small business still relies on YOU.

That’s right. It’s amazing that in this business, we find that there are some businesses out there that still manage to go all year without entering a single entry until the end of the fiscal year where then there’s a mad scramble to fill in whatever entries there were for the entire year. Call us crazy, but that’s just nuts.

So with the New Year, perhaps one of your new resolutions for this fiscal year is to:

• Schedule out a set time slot every month to manage your books.
• Hold that schedule unless there isn’t any accounting to be done.

It sounds strange, but no matter how boring it sounds, or how difficult it may be to put in a few hours in the middle or at the end of the month, you’ll thank us later. Because nothing drives a person mad than trying to figure out whether or not the receipt from last January was part of a project expense or just a petty cash purchase.

Image via CrunchBase

In an effort to create more transparent support, and to just make it easier to answer questions about Merchant’s Mirror, we’ve decided to use Get Satisfaction as our support area. Get Satisfaction puts all of your support needs in an area where the power of the community weighs in. And since there are things coming down the pipeline that have to deal with community… (we won’t get into it here today although we can already here the half-hearted and playful boos), we decided that this was a good shift for us.

When you get right down to it, all small business is people powered, community driven, and the web 2.0 era has re-proven that fact. This allows both the corporate side to show that they’re listening, and not have to be repetitive with question answering which helps users find what they need, (maybe throw in some praise), and move on. The worst that can happen is when we hear about how some business shelled out hundreds if not thousands of dollars on accounting software to find that the company behind it never replies to emails or phone calls.

So if you have questions, comments, or whatever, just head over there and find out what you want to know. If you want to keep it private? There’s a place for that too.

Image via Wikipedia

I have to say that one of the worst things you can do to your company is to not use your own product.

When you’re using it (the product) in-house, there are many things that you encounter as a user that perhaps your own clients have not had a chance to yet use, or was not caught through usability testing. In fact, one of the keys to great interface design is using the product within your company.

With Merchant’s Mirror, we fill a specific need within our own organization by using it since there are things that we’ll be the first to admit… annoy us. And thus, we strive to change the way it functions for the better of our clients. You could almost say that we are our own client so if there are any complaints, we know exactly whose door to knock on and where to rant.

It’s part of the reasons for the minor upgrades that have dotted the development roadmap recently. When it comes to web based accounting, or any other software as a service product, you can never go wrong using it since if it bugs you, it’ll definitely bug someone else.

Image via Wikipedia

Interestingly enough, there are a few things that you can do to build trust in your small business. One is a time factor. The longer you’ve been around, means that you will probably be around in the future to support your product. This is one of the keys to getting a new product line out there for the world to use. But if you don’t have that? What do you do?

You network. Network, network, network.

As a small business, there are many events you can participate in, and all sorts of groups to participate in. I personally would recommend you take a look at Business Networking International (BNI). There are local chapters internationally and they allow you to not only sell your product to the group, but have the group help sell your product. It’s not for everyone, although I believe that the membership fee is probably one of the most worthwhile ones yet that I have encountered when it comes to bang-for-buck.

Overall, the real key takeaway is that you build trust from facial recognition. Even as a younger company, if your face is shown at multiple events, then it reinforces that you’re out to move and shake for your corporation. And if you’re willing to do that, then you’ll eventually build the trust in your business needed to succeed.