To all of our customers:

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

A. Usually.

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.

A. It depends.

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.

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.

If you’re an Internet based business such as our web based accounting, then you might already be leveraging your social media networks.

There are plenty out there from Twitter to Facebook, and all of them have different types of scenarios that you should be paying attention to since the audiences are actually somewhat different. For example, if you are leveraging Facebook, there’s a good chance that you’re trying to sell a product or service to friends and acquaintances that you’ve met along the ways. However, microblogging sites such as Twitter provide a different type of scenario where the audience is not only the people that are looking to follow you, but also the real-time stream of information going across like a river. If it passes at just the right time, when someone is looking, you’ll have gained more eyes on your marketing.

Now, there’s multiple reasons to do social media networks, and it truly depends on whether or not your segmented market audience happens to use these services. For us, many of our clients happen to be freelancers of all types and are very in-tune with social networks in general which makes it a great area to not only market to those individuals, but communicate and provide customer relations through those channels. I do not believe that all small businesses should use this as a shotgun blast type marketing since it’s way too broad and is very much dependent to whom you are catering. But if you do provide products and services to an Internet market? Leverage your social networks like there’s no tomorrow.