New Invoice Software: A Cautionary Tale
Posted: 17/05/08
A few weeks ago I had to draw up an invoice for a client regarding a DJ gig. Wanting to look a bit extra professional, I tried out this new service called Blinksale which I must’ve found through some advertising on business website.
It was easy to use, and was complete with that full Web 2.0 polish as seen in sites like Basecamp or Vimeo. But after giving it a shot, there were two things that made me uncomfortable about using the service.
The first problem was that the invoice I sent to my client went into his spam folder. That’s sort of funny since I’ve had plenty of email communication with him in the past, except that the invoice got mailed out by a website which his email server deemed to be spam. You can toss out any of my emails, but please don’t toss out my invoice!
The second problem was that I realized that even though there are services out there to help out with various tasks in our lives, sometimes you’ll want to be careful about who you’re signing up with.
I’m sure Blinksale is totally legit, but would you want to take a chance on handing even more personal information, especially regarding your income and what companies you are working with, to yet another company?
I know a lot people are skeptical about Gmail, but I do trust the service. One could say that handing sensitive information over to Blinksale is no different, but at the end of the day I’m not sure my clients would be comfortable with me inputting their information into a site that they might deem to be random.
Besides their email server didn’t trust it to begin with!