The Inspiration Behind Quick File

The Inspiration Behind Quick File

By Glenn Drake - 22nd December 2010

Around 6 months ago today I started coding a simple program to help me manage my monthly invoicing routine, a routine I truly despised! Up until that point it was not uncommon for me to spend significant amounts of time scrabbling around every corner of my hard drive looking for missing invoices. Due to my shocking inefficiency, some invoices went months unpaid and unchased, and of course the longer you leave an invoice unpaid the harder it is to actually recover the money, especially in this climate.

As a software developer there had to be some way I could muster up the energy to solve this unrelenting problem. Asking all my clients to pay up-front unfortunately was not an option. So I reluctantly started work on a program to fulfil my own needs. And then it struck me, this is a very common issue and my efforts should be used to build a service for other freelancers and business owners, after all my current line of work put me in contact with such people. I can't be the only person plagued by these issues. A little bit of market research on Google Insights (A very useful tool by the way) told me that "invoice template", "Word Invoice Template" and "Excel Invoice Template" were very, VERY popular search terms. There were scores of people out there that didn't want to use labyrinthine accountancy software to solve this problem, they didn't want to fork out wads of cash or invest their precious time unravelling the workings of such software. It would appear that people genuinely wanted a quick fix solution. After a small amount of deliberation and deprioritisation of some other projects, I decided to build a dedicated invoicing platform that would solve my problems and those of other businesses in one fell swoop!

Realising that this was a huge undertaking and having a distinct lack of knowledge around the nuts and bolts of accountancy I decided to call my trusted accountant 'Joseph Chaer'. Joseph is not your traditional accountant. He is a huge advocate of technology to solve problems, something I have always thought runs contrary to the adopted mindset of most accountants...Shroud your craft in mystery and never teach the client to do your job.

Joseph instantly recognised the invoicing system as something that would compliment his work and the relationship with his clients. Empowering the client to manage the day to day routines and tapping in to the system periodically to grab the data and file the VAT returns and accounts. So with a clear direction and our combined enthusiasm we set about creating our all singing, all dancing invoicing platform...and so Quick File was born.