Our Tasks functionality just keeps getting better – we’ve listened to your feedback and we’re pleased to announce that you’ll now find two of the most requested additions now available to help you manage tasks.

Task Cloning

It’s very common to keep around a template or skeleton project from which others are cloned. This may be because it’s a common set up in your client work-flow or maybe because you provide a similar service to a large set of clients. Ronin has provided Project Cloning for a while now, but since today, you’ll find that Project Cloning will come with an optional switch to also clone Tasks.

It’s dead simple to use – turn it on or off as you clone your Project and your Tasks will follow along as you choose!

Task Editing

Tasks can also now be edited. While this might seem like a no-brainer feature, we actually spent a good amount of time making sure the usability was up to par before turning this on. You’ll find a new “pencil” icon next to your Tasks. Click it and you’ll be able to edit your Task as easily as you were able to create one.

With these minor additions we’re hoping to deliver a better Task tracking experience within Ronin. These changes would not have been possible without the feedback from our users, so don’t hesitate to speak up with feedback. We’re always open to learning more about our customers’ businesses and work-flows and how we can make Ronin a great experience.

Not yet on Ronin?

Tasks is just one of many ways Ronin can help your business. Give our awesome Invoicing and Time-tracking app a try and we’re sure you’ll be amazed. Try free for 30 days.

We know we’ve got quite a few friends across the pond.  So, we’re excited to announce that along with PayPal and Authorize.Net, Ronin now offers a third payment integration option: Sage Pay a leading Payment solution provider in the UK and Ireland.

With Authorize.Net available largely only for US-based merchants and PayPal being somewhat expensive beyond the US borders, Sage Pay integration offers our UK users a more cost-effective way of receiving online payments by credit card.

For those that are interested in setting this up, make sure to carefully follow the set-up instructions – integrating with Ronin requires a minor change to your Sage Pay account settings.

If you’re like many small businesses, you’re likely already using Google for productivity purposes: email, docs, spreadsheets. You’re also likely using Google Apps to host your domain along with your email and calendaring. Well, we’ve got a great announcement for you: Ronin is now taking our awesome invoicing and time tracking app to the Google Apps Marketplace. Add Ronin Now!

Single Sign On

With Google Apps integration, you can now access Ronin without memorizing another password. If you’re logged in to your Google Apps account, you’re as good as being logged in to Ronin.

The neatest part about this is that for existing Ronin account holders, the Google Apps setup flow will allow you to link your existing Ronin account. This provides another quick way to access your Ronin account where you might already have your other critical apps. (Also check out our Chrome App which gives you one-click access to Ronin from within your Chrome browser.)

For new users the Google Apps Marketplace offers a quick way to get started – we’ll import your basic information from Google Apps and your staff will automatically created when they login to Ronin from within Google Apps for the first time. It makes starting with Ronin even easier than before.

It takes just a few seconds to get setup, so give it a go: Add Ronin to Google Apps.

Not yet on Ronin?

Google Apps integration is just one of hundreds of ways we can help your business. Give our awesome Invoicing and Time-tracking app a try and we’re sure you’ll be amazed. Try free for 30 days or add Ronin to your Google Apps now.

We’re excited to announce that the Ronin iPhone Time Tracker is now available in the iTunes AppStore! It’s a sleek, simple app that syncs to your Ronin account and helps provide that much-needed on the go mobility that many of you have been asking for.

It’s a first foray into the mobile space for Ronin so we’d appreciate any feedback, suggestions, and of course, bug tips.

Download it now!

It’s a new year and we’ve got some really exciting things planned for Ronin. Instead of keeping it all to ourselves, we want to share some of the things we’ve been working on. Our new year’s resolution is the same as it is every year: keep getting better. Here’s a partial roadmap for 2011.

Now, these are just some of the big items we’re working on, but please feel free to send over feature suggestions to us via email, twitter, or facebook. We’re always listening for better ways to improve Ronin’s fit with your workflow.

iPhone App

We get lots of questions about this and it’s been something that’s been in the works for quite some time now. We’re dipping our toes into the mobile frontier with a companion time tracking app for Ronin. It’s gorgeous and it’s simple. It’s everything you need for quick, on-the-go tracking of hours when you’re away from the office so you don’t lose a minute. And, pending Apple’s review, it will hopefully be available for download soon. Take a look:

Ronin API

We want to make your data available in anyway you want to use it, whether it’s for integration with third party apps or for custom integration. On top of that, we understand that Ronin is a lego piece in your workflow. There’s no better way to fit with your workflow than to fit with all of the apps you work with.

We’ll soon be making almost all of our data layer available through a RESTful/REST-like JSON API. In fact, our iPhone app was built on top of our API, so it’s already tested in the wild. We’re also looking to work with any and all third parties who want to leverage our API, so make sure to contact us (hello@roninapp.com) if you’re interested. Or, send us integration suggestions and we’ll reach out to third party companies to see if they’re interested in integration.

For a preview, try this cURL:

curl 'https://{yoursite}.roninapp.com/invoices'
-u {youremail}:{yourpassword} -H 'Accept: application/json'

Ronin Affiliate Program

Are you a business consultant, accountant or advisor? Do you often work with businesses or clients who could use some help with their invoicing and time tracking? Do you spread the gospel of Ronin and wish there was some way for Ronin to give back? We want to help you help us.

We’ll soon be releasing an affiliate program to anyone who is interested. Unlike other affiliate programs, Ronin will pay you for the entire lifetime of the referred account. You’ll get paid everytime we get paid. It’s that simple. For now, we are working with select partners so contact us (hello@roninapp.com) if you’re interested.

That’s not all

A year is a long time, and this is just the tip of the iceberg. This coming year promises to be an exciting year for Ronin and for all Ronin users. Here’s to a great 2011 to you and your business!

It’s very common practice to apply discounts on invoices to reflect a negotiated discount rate or apply existing credits. Ronin has always supported discount implicitly – negative line item amounts were always taken into account properly. However, they have never been presented in a very pleasing way in Ronin, causing potential confusing.

We’re happy to say that we’ve updated the system to treat discounts as a first class citizen on the display end. Here is an example:

As shown in the screenshot, Ronin now displays negative amounts in parenthesis, which is standard practice and also exposes the total discounts as a line item in the invoice summary.

Using a custom template?

You can use discounts in your templates as well! You’ll find {{ invoice.total_discount }} and {{ invoice.total_gross }} available for use. Take a look at our default invoice template for sample usage.

Not using Ronin yet?

Time to ditch your current billing system and give Ronin a spin. 30 days trial. No commitments, just invoicing joy.

Use your own logo on Ronin for Invoices and Estimates

Did you know you can customize the logo on your Ronin account to reflect your company or brand? This is the simplest way to customize the look of your Ronin account. The custom logo will also be used on your invoices and estimates, providing the easy branding. This is by far the most important step for taking your online presence to a professional level.

Changing the header background

We’re also excited to announce the much anticipated option to customize the header area with your own background image or background color. This is the perfect compliment to a custom logo and is now available for all paid accounts. Accessing this straightforward and you’ll find it within the Account Settings area.

Not a Ronin yet?

Ronin will help you give a professional impression. Give our awesome Invoicing and Time-tracking app a try and we’re sure you’ll be amazed. Try free for 30 days.

The end of October marks the start of another year for Ronin. Two years ago, we “launched” (by our definition of the word) by opening up our services to our first paying customers.

Here we are two years later, and we couldn’t be more delighted to share the news of our awesome growth over the last 24 months with a sneak peek at our weekly application usage trend:

Here’s the same graph zoomed in for just the last year, which is where most of the growth has happened:

We like where things are going and we’re really excited about the future of our business and the prospect of helping many more businesses grow along with us.

If there is one lesson to be distilled from the last two years it is that there really isn’t a shortcut. This isn’t exactly a new message and it’s been said by many, but it bares repeating. Overnight success takes years. Every success is the result of years of hard work and steady growth.

More web companies should embrace this fact and optimize for the right kind of growth. Instead of front-loading the development process and trying to bust out of the gates to instant success, companies need to take time to refine and sculpt their product through the lens of iterative feedback. Treat this race like the marathon that it is and not the quick dash to riches that too many hope it to be.

In our case, instead of worrying about how to get X users on day one, we wanted to figure out how to get user one to stay X days. By thinking about the product in that way, the questions we ask ourselves are always aligned to benefit the user: “How do we refine the product? How do we reduce friction? What functionality should be add? What nuisances should we kill?” Growth becomes much easier when your product is something you’re proud of. Quality is the multiplier to evangelizing a product. That’s what we focused on two years ago and that’s what we still focus on today.

In fact, one interesting bit of Ronin history is that we never really had a traditional launch. There never was a day where a big button was pressed and champagne was popped.

The reasoning behind this is simple: A traditional launch is basically celebrating the release of a product that probably sucks. That’s because every product that hasn’t had its chance to get in front of users is probably not very good. Products only become great when subjected to real usage and feedback. Instead of a traditional launch, we hand picked an initial audience of people that were in our target market and contacted them. These were our first users and some of them are still our customers.

This gave us a chance to control the initial experience and the number of people exposed to that experience. From the feedback we were able to hone and refine the product, the pricing, the market, and even the message. Only when we got our first paying customer did we really feel like the product had been launched.

Two years later, I’m really proud of where we stand. And, I hope that more companies take our approach to launching (and growing) their product. Launch day is a flash in the pan, but growth and true success takes years.

We’ve just rolled out an update to our system that adds simple searching capabilities to Ronin. Attentive customers would probably have noticed that we’ve had client and contacts search for some time now, but since we’ve released that, we’ve received a lot of requests to move that functionality over to invoices, projects, and estimates.

Search is pretty much straight forward. For invoices and estimates, you can enter your document number, subject, or client name. For projects, you can enter either the project name or client name and the relevant items will show up. For the most part, searches are instantaneous and will return results to you immediately, even with partial keywords.

Give it a go – we really think this small but important update will help everyone kick more invoicing ass.

We’re excited to announce our latest, much requested feature: Autobilling with Recurring Payments. Autobilling allows you easily and securely store your client’s payment information with Ronin, which you can then bill on a recurring basis. This feature will be available for all accounts with Authorize.Net integration enabled. It’s perfect for businesses that are using Ronin to manage weekly, monthly, or yearly contracts.

Also, like every core Ronin feature, it’s absolutely dead simple to use.

Easy Management

You’ll now find that every client has an easily accessible Payment Profile section. You can add credit card information and it will be safely stored away in Authorize.Net’s Customer Information Management system (Authorize.Net integration required).

You can manage multiple Payment Profiles for every client.

Straightforward Billing

Putting a client’s stored Payment Profile to use is as simple as using our Recurring Billing functionality. From any invoice, or from scratch via Recurring Schedule, you can now choose Autobill as a recurring action. Just set it and forget it: Ronin will take of the rest. When successful charges go through, you’ll be notified by email and your client will receive a receipt for payment automatically. When charge failures happen (due to expiration, lack of funds, etc.) Ronin will also let you know and create a draft invoice so you can manage payment manually.

We hope this will really make recurring billing management easy for a lot of Ronin users.

Not yet on Ronin?

Autobilling is just one of many ways Ronin can help your business. Give our awesome Invoicing and Time-tracking app a try and we’re sure you’ll be amazed. Try free for 30 days.