We are delighted to announce the release of some nice new swanky banners for both Tradingeye & CannyBill which you can use on your site.

The banners come in a few different shapes and sizes and both come in two sets. One for businesses and one for web designers.

Do also stay tuned for our affiliate scheme which will be launching soon.

Tradingeye Banners

CannyBill Banners

Chicago, IL: June 3, 2010: SingleHop, Inc, the Chicago provider of dedicated servers and complex hosting solutions, today announced a key partnership with CannyBill, the highly regarded web billing system producer. The agreement allows for SingleHop’s Tandem server reseller customers to get 6 months of free access to Cannybill’s highly intuitive and adaptable billing system.

Wladimir Baranoff-Rossine, Managing Director of CannyBill, commented, “We are delighted to have joined the SingleHop Tandem Reseller Program. It’s one of the most innovative and exciting dedicated server reseller programs out there and CannyBill will be a perfect match. The power of CannyBill is the ability for users to manage every aspect of their billing process, from invoicing clients to collecting payments. Now, with the partnership between SingleHop and CannyBill, we are able to tightly integrate our two platforms and offer Tandem Partners a way to resell SingleHop dedicated servers, all via web based order forms.”

“Tandem is a one-of-a-kind program because it offers server resellers a three-pronged approach to helping their businesses succeed. First, they get access to datacenter-grade controls over their servers and a powerful and fully white-labeled control panel for their own clients. Second, VirtualWarehouse offers them a guaranteed and detailed list of highly discounted servers that they can choose to resell. Finally, they can take advantage of exceptional marketing agreements at no cost to themselves, agreements that connect them to the best providers in the industry that can assist them in marketing, security, and even billing such as our partnership with CannyBill”, mentioned Dan Salcedo, VP of Communications at SingleHop.

Tandem was launched in February of this year and offers resellers the ability to have more control, sell more servers, and earn better margins through a comprehensive list of exclusive benefits, including fully white-labeled control panels and marketing assistance, that resellers can use as tools for marketing or higher margins.

About CannyBill

CannyBill is a web based invoicing and billing solution for businesses and web designers. Users can easily create, send and manage invoices, and accept payments online via credit card. Users can also sell their products and services, using order forms that their customers can access, and even link to live API’s such as Plesk, cPanel/WHM, Geotrust, Enom, Basecamp and many more. www.cannybill.com

About SingleHop, Inc.

SingleHop, Inc., is a full-service, managed, dedicated hosting provider that was founded on the principal of providing reliable, cost-effective, dedicated servers. The company was founded by Zak Boca and Dan Ushman in 2006 and currently hosts thousands of websites from around the world. The cornerstone of SingleHop’s managed hosting is the a la Carte Server Management Program, which is a full-array of transparent management services designed and tested to allow business customers to tailor their level of support to their needs or expertise. www.singlehop.com

###Contact Information:

Daniel Salcedo.
PR@SingleHop.com
Tel: 312 447 2581
E-Mail: PR@SingleHop.com

By Gene Crawford, unmatchedstyle

CannyBill.com design project discussion with the client Wladimir Baranoff-Rossine and the designer Andy Clarke (@Malarkey) of stuffandnonsense.co.uk and creator of Hard Boiled Web Design.

We started off discussing the reasons behind why Wladimir chose Andy to be the designer for the new CannyBill and why Andy wanted to dig into this project. The main reasons behind the relationship aside from good mutual respect was the fact that Andy was allowed to do this project open to the public.

Here’s a nice quote by Andy from his blog wrapping up the CannyBill project:

It was a pleasure to work with a team of smart people who really get it. They encouraged me to push the design as far as I needed and went with me in using HTML5 and CSS3 extensively. As client‘s go, they are also some of the bravest in allowing their design process to be open to the public.

We discussed the Prices and plans page design a bit, really delving into this question Andy brought up on his blog:

When is it the right thing to do not to attempt to reinvent a well established, tried and tested design pattern or convention. This question has come up while I have been designing the CannyBill prices and plans page.

I happen to agree with Andy here, that it’s not so much about the design pattern itself as it is doing what’s appropriate for the website/project. In this case, the CannyBill audience is very similar to the 37signals products audience that riffing on the way they’ve done the basecamp pricing and plans page is rather appropriate. Personally i’ve always researched design patterns and I get into that aspect of web design very deeply. However, I can’t say that i’ve really considered them based on the familiarity the target audience has with a specific type of design pattern, like the pricing and plans style of page.

When the subject of copy writing was touched on, specifically the work Relly Annett-Baker (@RellyAB) has done for CannyBill. I asked what it was like working with a copy writer, in this case a freelance copy writer.

Andy’s approach is that you need the copy before you can really do a great job at the design and markup. So often he says that he’ll dig into creating some of the copy himself when he needs it, for several reasons. Just so he has it to work with when designing. I’ve always said that a designer who can write has a killer skill set. Andy also talks about the micro copy and the importance of paying attention to it as you design.

My bad jokes aside, this was a really wonderful discussion, one you don’t get very often with both the designer and client at the same time. Many thanks to Wladimir and Andy for taking some time out to talk with me.

The final product of the project, CannyBill.com:

We are pleased to announce some great new features for CannyBill. Custom form fields for options, the ability to send out invoices x-days before the due date and two brand new payment gateways!

Custom Form Fields

Within CannyBill you could already create custom options for your packages which consisted of a radio button or check box. Well now we’ve added the possibility for you to add custom input boxes too. These can be used for any additional information you wish to capture e.g. ‘Where did you hear about us?’ to custom data collection of your choice.

Admin -> Packages -> Create new option

Send invoice out x-days before the due date

We’ve added a great little feature which enables you to specify how many days before the invoice due date do you want to send the invoice out. This is especially useful for renewable invoices giving your customers advance notice when a payment will be due.

Admin -> Settings -> Invoice settings

SecurePay Payment Gateways

We’ve added two new payment gateways to CannyBill. Please note that although they are both called SecurePay, they are two totally different companies and have nothing in common.

SecurePay – http://www.securepay.com/
SecurePay Australia – http://www.securepay.com.au/

You can set these up by going to:

Admin -> Settings -> Payment gateways

We’ve added a bit of German flavour to our latest tool to help businesses with their billing.

Continuing with our quest to go global, we have made CannyBill available to our friends on the continent by launching a German language pack.

CannyBill is an online invoicing and billing system, which has been custom built for businesses and freelancers.

The pioneering package cuts down admin time in half by giving you a simple, robust billing system that integrates with your current process.

www.cannybill.com/german.php

We are extremely proud to announce the launch of our new CannyBill.com re-design. The site was built in HTML 5 and CSS 3 by author and speaker Andy Clarke with the copy by renowned writer Relly Annett-Baker.

The entire re-design process has been very well documented on Andy’s blog with 12 articles written from the research involved to browser testing.

A full recap on the re-design process can be found below:

http://stuffandnonsense.co.uk/s/1308

CannyBill redesign goes live

It seems like months ago (it was) when I handed over my design templates for the redesign of CannyBill.  Since then, the canny chaps have been working hard to implement the design and Relly Annett-Baker has been working her strange magic on their copy. Yesterday the new CannyBill site went live.

CannyBill’s previous home page

It was a pleasure to work with a team of smart people who really get it. They encouraged me to push the design as far as I needed and went with me in using HTML5 and CSS3 extensively. As client‘s go, they are also some of the bravest in allowing their design process to be open to the public.

With the site live, I thought it time to recap all of the entries that made up that open design process.

CannyBill open redesign project

http://stuffandnonsense.co.uk/s/1190

While open to the public redesign projects have lately been popularised by Mark Boulton Design’s work for Drupal and by Happy Cog‘s work for Mozilla, it’s rare to find a commercial company involved in an open project.

CannyBill redesign peer research

http://stuffandnonsense.co.uk/s/1193

I have to confess that when I’m designing, I often don’t take too much notice of a company’s peers or competitors.

CannyBill design process, package contents

http://stuffandnonsense.co.uk/s/1202

Liked most of my projects these days, I’m designing the next iteration of CannyBill‘s front of house site in a browser rather than making static visuals of page layouts. I know I’m in danger of sounding like a broken record, but I genuinely do find the process to be faster and better at scoping ideas and demonstrating them to clients. So I thought I’d share the start of this process and the files that I use.

Designing the CannyBill home page

http://stuffandnonsense.co.uk/s/1203

After two weeks on the CannyBill redesign project (one of which I spent traveling to Chicago for An Event Apart), it time for deep breaths as I talk about my design of the home page for the new CannyBill front of house site and ask for your thoughts and suggestions.

Relly Annett-Baker guests on And All That Malarkey.

Bribes, ripped trousers and writing copy for CannyBill

http://stuffandnonsense.co.uk/s/1204

Write now, I’m cooking with Chef-O-Matic

http://stuffandnonsense.co.uk/s/1207

A fascinating look at Relly Annett-Baker‘s process of writing copy for CannyBill and finding its voice.

Prices and plans design patterns

http://stuffandnonsense.co.uk/s/1209

When is it the right thing to do not to attempt to reinvent a well established, tried and tested design pattern or convention. This question has come up while I have been designing the CannyBill prices and plans page.

A top down look at the CannyBill redesign

http://stuffandnonsense.co.uk/s/1210

With the first phase of the CannyBill redesign process drawing to a close, I would like to say a huge thank-you to the CannyBill team for encouraging a public, open design process and to everyone who has commented and tweeted their helpful suggestions.

CannyBill redesign browser testing screenshots

http://www.flickr.com/photos/andallthatmalarkey/sets/72157622528064392/

A complete set of browser screenshots on Flickr.

What does browser testing mean today?

http://stuffandnonsense.co.uk/s/1214

Before we send over our design files to the chaps at CannyBill, first a run through of the browsers that we have tested in the new design and some musings about what browser testing actually means today, in the face of an ever more diversified browser and device landscape.

CannyBill makes Monday morning admin easier

Relly Annett-Baker on first draft copy for CannyBill.

http://stuffandnonsense.co.uk/s/1220

The redesigned CannyBill home page

Head over to CannyBill to see the final result for yourself and of course, your comments are still welcome.

Mathew Patterson, Campaign Monitor

About Mathew Patterson

Coming from a web design background, Mat is well positioned to help designers get the most out of Campaign Monitor, and make sure it meets their needs. With only one ‘t’ in Mathew, he is also well positioned in vanity search results.

By Chris Bowler editor @WebAppStorm on December 6th.

There are some applications that focus on thing and one thing only. Then there are others that focus on a few items, giving you the ability to manage multiple facets of your business in one tool.

CannyBill fits into the latter category. And we’re giving away three memberships today.

About CannyBill

If you’re unfamiliar with the service, CannyBill is focused on automating your invoicing and billing. With the app, you can allow customers to pay for your products online with a credit card. And you can even sell SSL Certificates and Domain registrations.

Even further, CannyBill makes it easy to set up order forms to sell your products and services to customers. Add in the robust API and integration with industry mainstays like Basecamp, Campaign Monitor and Quickbooks, and you’ve got a full featured business tool.

How to Enter

We’re going to award three contestants today. To get a copy, leave a comment on WebAppStorm and mention your business. What kind of product or service do you offer and how will this tool help you? The winners will be announced at the end of the day!

http://web.appstorm.net/general/giveaway/christmas-giveaway-day-6-cannybill/

We are pleased to announce a new FreshBooks import tool for www.cannybill.com. Simply export your customers and transactions from FreshBooks then import them into CannyBill in a few easy steps.

Login to FreshBooks -> My Account -> Import/Export

From this page download your Clients CSV and Invoices CSV.

Once the above 2 CSV’s have been downloaded and saved, login to your CannyBill admin -> Settings -> Plugin Modules -> Data Management (Import/Export)

From this page select the FreshBooks CSV from the Import Customers and Import Transaction screens and hit the import button. That’s it, you’re all done!

Web designers from across the globe flocked to Newcastle to pick up tonnes of top tips from internet boff Andy Clarke.

Internationally-renowned designer and author Andy, of Stuff and Nonsense, took a trip to toon to host a one-day workshop on advanced CSS styling last month.

And we were on hand to make sure the day was rounded off in style when CannyBill sponsored an evening socialising soiree.

A total of 27 companies, from as far afield as America, Canada and Hungary, attended the masterclass at the Copthorne Hotel to get to grips on pioneering CSS techniques, developed by Andy.

In the evening, the guests were treated to a bit of warm Geordie hospitality at the recently revamped Salsa Club, giving everyone the chance to unwind, exchange ideas and digest the day over a few beers and nachos, courtesy of us.

Check out pictures of the night at:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dpivision/sets/72157622613902331/