Hi Teresa,

Can you let me know the support ticket number for any ticket(s) where you’ve not been happy with the support provided so I can look into it??

I agree Christina – I have been ‘trailing’ the software for a while now – and paying for the privilege – finding bugs all the time and struggling to get the support! This is from their linked-in profile: KashFlow provides accounting software for small business owners, with the emphasis always being on ease of use.

These are our aims:
To make your life easier and less stressful by keeping our software incredibly easy to use.
To minimise the time you spend dealing with accounting by automating as much as possible.
To provide a level of service that makes you want to tell everyone you know about us.
To always deliver more than we promise.
This has not been my experience! I am now spending 3-4 hours a night for over a week now trying to remove duplicate invoices and make my bank account balance – a 6 month trial would have been worth while for me as I would never have started to pay had I know how many issues there were!

Go back a few years to when software was delivered on CD-ROM and DVD from a shop or mail order, you didn’t get any free trial then, but yet strangely, people decided based on information and advertising whether it could work for them. If they thought it could they bought the software and discovered first hand the result, some it did work for, some it didn’t! To be honest there is more information around today what with the company website, independent web views, forums, product reviews in the magazines etc…

At the end of the day, 14 days is enough to evaluate whether the product interests you or not. This is not KashFlow saying we’re going to sponsor your business for 60 days! For those small businesses who are querying the decision, ask yourselves the question – do you deal with customers? do you release the goods/service to those customers once they pay? If the answer is yes to both, then why should your dealing with KashFlow be any different!!

Everyone wants something for nothing in todays world – and the sooner people realise the web doesn’t work that way, the better.

I’ve no association to KashFlow other than an interested and satisfied customer. To be honest if it takes me more than seven days to work out whether something has the potential to work for me then it obviously doesn’t. If it does, they i’m happy to pay to continue investigating. Personally I think KashFlow has filled a niche in the market and with the benefit of an online system (that I can access from my home or office), a mobile version (iPhone) and a programmable API all aspects are covered!

Given it only costs £15 per month if you want more than 2 weeks just pay £15 for a month and carry on.

Saying things like I need 60 days because I have to integrate everything seems bizarre. The trial period is to see what it can do. Once you start using and ‘integrating’ you should be paying.

The alternatives are a money back guarantee. (But some are suspicious of such) or a free version. Such as limited to 10 transactions a month.

My experience of selling software a free version tends to go down very well. But then you still get the ‘but I have to pay £15 to process 11 transactions’. That and free customers tend to need the most support.

Very difficult subject to tackle really.

Instead I have signed up for another trial, marketed as ‘limited to a maximum of 180 days’. They have hooked me in with the promise of a longer trial period.

For me, changing our businesses to new accounting software is categorically ‘non urgent’. Important perhaps, certainly risky, but not urgent. Your shortening of the trial period does not change that, apart from increasing the risk. I share Elle H’s view that it feels like pressure tactics, which I react defensively to.

I strongly echo the comments of Christina Spencer and Shane McCracken above. I have a particular set of requirements which will take time to evaluate, noteably with regard to API integration. 14 days is insufficient time.

The direct marketing I recently received, promised ‘two months free’. Your FAQs still promote a 60 day trial period:

Emotionally, I feel that you have reneged on an offer and I’ve become more wary as a result. Building trust is especially important, given that your published terms permit you to ‘make any variation to the Agreement with immediate effect’.

In writing this, I mean to give you insight into the thoughts and reactions of one potential customer. It’s an issue I have wrestled with in my own ventures. Though I disagree, I respect your reasons for making the change and thank you for sharing them.

James, IMHO your point is valid but needs expanding.
Don’t think anyone has an issue with £15.99 per say.
* These are people that are still ‘evaluating’, hence KF would be only one of many they are testing.

* Normally wouldn’t want to give their credit card details until they ‘feel’ a particular solution is worth their trust.

* Don’t think 14 days is enough to evaluate multiple solutions. Keep in mind it makes sense to run evaluations at same time, side-by-side.

* Hence if all accounting solutions require payment to continue evaluation after 14 days, the costs are multiplied. Not least credit card security.

HI Jennifer,

Comments like that really make my day – so thanks for taking the time to post it.

Do check out out our APIif you haven’t already – http://www.accountingapi.com

Jennifer

A 14-day free trial period doesn’t mean you only have 14 days to evaluate the system. It just means you have 14 days free and then need to commit to paying for a month of service to continue your evaluation for another 30 days.

If you haven’t got £15.99 (one month’s subscription) to invest in making the correct choice of business system then I would suggest you have bigger problems to worry about…!

I had the same experience – with very little money to spare, and being encouraged by a friend to give it a go, a trial of longer than 2 weeks was very helpful and convinced me to stick with kashfow in the long run – I do think a 14 day period is a little short… perhaps split the difference?

cHarlie

I’m sure the conversions will be better with 14 days as well as you’ll be seeing a drop in trial sign ups. So if this move is to improve your conversion rate then it’s a great one, however if its in hopes to increase the number of sign ups I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed.

I think the trial period was shorter back then too but it was a done deal once we found / got working PHP code to use the API. As somebody mentioned before, the key is import tools (importing manually was a bind) and any tools such as well documented API interface code freely available etc.. All of this will make migrating from whatever a lot easier and attract the API integration nerds too. IF you could find a bank or banks who would work with you to enable KF to be linked to their accounts via the API etc.. then this would be a BIG bonus… it is the missing link for smaller businesses with lots of customers.. automated reconciliation! (a dream).

You cannot see the amount of work saved within 14 days, it’s when the months start adding up and then it’s obvious that you’d better with KashFlow rather than with Excel or anything else.

What happens to affiliates if same prospect signs-up again, what time span now?

I was about to state the same thing.
The best way to get users of other systems has always been to make the process simple.
IMHO sort out migration tools for most popular ‘competitors’ before you reduce your free trial offer. Otherwise cart before the horse comes to mind 🙂

I also suggest being careful with statistics.
Conversion rates are based on percentages, which by nature can be misleading. Just look at bottom line order numbers. Having high conversion but less orders is not as desirable as low conversion but more orders overall. Apologies if I sate obvious.

Lastly regarding your link to previous stats:
http://www.kashflow.com/blog/how-we-use-google-analytics-and-website-optimizer/
Did you ever test my suggestions in the comments there, you mentioned you would?

I was recently considering coming back for my current business’s accounting platform, secure in the knowledge that I would have 2 months trial to get all of the computer systems in place to automatically generate and email invoices etc, as a busy web developer time is always short and 60 days (Probably + another 90 days paid subscription) would have worked brilliantly for me and been one of the big reasons for choosing to come back over your competitors..

However this news has already cost you at least one conversion as I wont be returning.

Our management was debating between lengthening our trial length as well, for my part I always had the opinion that KashFlow really are losing money on the longer trial, so it doesn’t make sense to do so. Good to see that this suspicion is confirmed. I also think this will further strengthen competition with people having to decide between features, not the length of the trial.

Personally, if i was going to recuce the trial i would take it down to 30 days, not 14. As you mentioned, thise not taking up the trial only logged into the software once or twice, why not give those that use the trial to the full extent the extended time period to really get them hooked on KashFlow so they find it harder to migrate elsewhere? That way its win win, you get A conversion a the end, and they get a couple of months grace in accounting fees when starting their business.

“having better (/ any) import facilities into KF from MYOB would have sealed the deal instantly – hours not weeks,” – that’s the key I think. Imports mean would-be customers can get up and running very quickly.

We’re working on it!

The first business was a different matter. I’d been a disgruntled MYOB customer for some time. It took me two goes / trials at convincing myself I could jump to KashFlow without impacting business performance too greatly. Even then I didn’t migrate the couple of years of history I had in MYOB but just cutover from one year end to the next.

To make that particular experience a true ‘no-brainer’ decision, having better (/ any) import facilities into KF from MYOB would have sealed the deal instantly – hours not weeks, 1-trial, not 2.

The ‘jump’ to KF use-case is – I think – the one that in my experience poses the biggest challenges for you with this move.

Best regards,

Gareth

We’re going to brave it out and let the numbers do the talking. First day in and conversion from web visitors to trialists certainly haven’t gone down.

We shortened our trial period from 2 months to 1 month back in 2004 and it boosted our conversion rate significantly. We measured it, but we haven’t published the numbers – we’re not quite as open as you.

I hope shortening the trial works for you too.

Steven.

I’m developing integration for a client – you’ve addressed the concern I had (I had expected to get the initial work done within the 60 day window I have) but was worried about the inevitable need to play again once live. If I can go round again with my dev email then that will nicely solve the problem!

I don’t like the tone of our current Expired Trial emails/messages though. We’re reviewing them to make them much “softer”

Maybe track emails from failed trials, the date they signed up and what’s changed since so if they re-register yoi can show them what’s changed or follow up to see if they need a bit more hand holding to get over the hump..

For myself I’m guilty of signing up for a trial, seeing that things need setting up, that I don’t have the time so I delay, then forget and the trial runs out. Case in point: Assistly… So being able to return when I have more time/motivation and not feel a door closed behind me last time is a real plus.

You get the idea…