Allan Branch of Less Accounting: Less everything, more focus.

Steve and I started this adventure with a vision of being a product company. We, like many others, were inspired by 37Signals. In 2006, we started building our simple accounting software, and in 2007 we formed the company and launched the product.

Give me a few minutes to tell you about some of the opportunities we’ve taken over the years, why we took them, and eventually why we refocused on our core product.

Our Story

Over the years, as we clawed and scratched our way into profitability, other opportunities became visible. It seems the more revenue we generated, the more popular we became, and the greater the number of opportunities came within our reach. Speaking gigs, free tickets to events, new business opportunities and requests for mentorships became available to us. We were attracted to those opportunities like bugs drawn to the blue glow of an insect zapper.

Taking Opportunities Feels Really Good

In 2011, we opened a coworking space called WorkHappy in my hometown, Panama City, Florida. It was a small space shared by (at one point) 15 full-time members. The goal of WorkHappy wasn’t to get rich, it was to pay the bills, have a place for me to work, and make me feel more fulfilled by helping the local tech community.

People getting things done at WorkHappy, a co-working space.

Over the next two years, my local tech friends and I hosted free workshops on the weekends and had group lunches, all in the hopes of building a small community of designers and developers. By the end of this summer, the local tech community had grown a little and the coworking space was barely breaking even. For many people that might be a “success” but it felt unfulfilling and only distracted me from our business. In August we closed WorkHappy because it would be one less “problem to solve” in my head.

We could have certainly kept the space open, stopped hosting events and just made the space a simple place to work, but that’s not the type of coworking space we want to run.

Opportunities Are Easily Justifiable

In 2009, Steve and I decided to host a small one-day conference about web startups; we called it LessConf. Fast forward to April 2013 and LessConf had grown to three days of planned insanity. We had kangaroos at the pre-party, and we had a circus act teaching attendees knife throwing at the second party (at my house). LessConf had amazing speakers, crazy food, zip lines, go-carts, and it turned into an event for 250 people at $1000 a ticket.

A unique, on the beach session of LessConf

We made money from LessConf, around $55,000 to $70,000 annually. The profit LessConf brought us made it easy to justify the time and stress. The emotional toll from the stress of throwing an event like that is heavy and easily inflates your ego.

What’s involved in hosting an event like this?

• Venue contracts.
• Getting insurance properly set up.
• Inviting speakers and arranging travel.
• Coffee setup, lunch vendors, party spaces.
• Getting sponsors, arranging a hotel to give a discount to attendees.
• People breaking their leg at the party?
• The list goes on and on.

To make money with an event you must always be on the lookout for speakers, sponsors and attendees. You have to plan the event six months in advance and start selling tickets NOW for next year. If you host an event, you either turn it into a yearlong business or you lose money each year hosting it.

So this April we said LessConf is done and finished. We could certainly host a smaller event, one with fewer wild antics, but that’s not the type of event we want to throw. With LessConf over, it’s one less problem for our brains to process.

Core Focus

Over the past seven years, I’ve been slammed with things to do. I would have dozens of LessAccounting interface tweaks to make, but instead I’d be planning LessConf. I’d have customer support tickets I could be answering, but instead I’d be hosting another workshop at WorkHappy. Fortunately, LessAccounting slowly grew even though it was the redheaded stepchild of the company.

“Thru the quiet stillness you’re able to see better ways to handle your focused tasks. You’re able to spend a second to think about a problem space without another venture pulling at you.”

Steve and I put a halt to taking opportunities, and over the past six months I cancelled nine business trips to conferences.

Focusing on LessAccounting has allowed me to be really good at a few things instead of pretty good at many things. My job now is promoting LessAccounting and refining the user experience of the product.

A screenshot of the LessAccounting application

I’m no fancy-pants brain doctor, but I do know that your brain has a limited amount of space for storing, sorting, and analyzing problems. You can cram it full of things and you’ll be less effective overall, you’ll start forgetting things and feeling a little insane sometimes.

When you simplify things, ignore opportunities and focus, life gets simpler. Thru the quiet stillness you’re able to see better ways to handle your focused tasks. You’re able to spend a second to think about a problem space without another venture pulling at you.

So no more LessConf and WorkHappy, but what has happened to LessAccounting in this time? Revenue is up, the UI has improved, and new features have launched. We’ve focused our attention on the LessAccounting blog and traffic to it has soared. Imagine that, write stuff that your customers want to read and they’ll read and share it. Wild.

My life is quieter now, less frantic. I’m building lamps, and I’m able to spend evenings with new hobbies like rebuilding my Jeep’s motor. Will I be at the next tech event in your city? Probably not, but I did replace the universal joints and the rear axles in my 1978 CJ5 Jeep, oh and LessAccounting got a few more paid customers yesterday.

This interview is with the one-and-only Matthew Smith of Greenville, South Carolina. Matthew first reached out back in July when Kin launched, but we’ve been familiar with his work for far longer. Matthew embodies what we see as the complete designer; he gets well beyond visuals and digital interactions. He’s passionate about designing experiences, and lately he’s been focusing on the employee experience he and his coworkers have at Relay Foods, where he’s currently Art Director.

Who are you, what do you do, and what’s your role at Relay Foods?

I “do” a lot of things, but mostly I try to be a reasonable human being and keep a decent and colorful prayer life.  My personal life and my design life are congruent – they inform one another. The way I parent and the interfaces I design come from the same core beliefs and the same core hopes.

“What’s your role?” It’s hard for me to answer this question in some normal way – whatever that is. The best I can say is that currently I’m employed at Relay Foods to Art Direct. I get to work around the smartest and least self-important people I’ve ever known, and it’s one of the greatest privileges I’ve ever had. Not to mention we have an ambitious goal of being part of a movement of entrepreneurial businesses that aims to disrupt an entrenched food system that I think is killing us inside and out.

The Relay Foods team making a special delivery.

My job is to build and maintain a team of people to be focused on simplicity as a service. Relay Foods is a grocery store, but in truth you can feed yourself from the local QuickyMart. We don’t just want to feed you. We want to make our customers the heroes of the food movement, connecting them intimately to the producers that grow, butcher, bake and bring the local foods that heal and grow local economies. We want to make our customers heroes at home, as they are more able to give their family healthy foods affordably. This is as fun as it is impossibly challenging. I love it.

You’ve talked about designing the employee’s experience at Relay Foods. Can you share your vision, your thought process, and any immediate plans?

[MS] There are so many businessy things I could say here, but the thing that gets me to CoWork (most of my team works in a different city) in the morning is building a product and a service that gives people more time to be with their families by cutting grocery shopping time in half, and building a product that helps our customers feel smarter about the food they eat by being more transparent about all our foods—where they come from, who made them, how it affects our bodies—and how the hell to cook something weird like BokChoy. We’re serving people with our design, code, content, great ops, and love of incredible food.

The trick then, is how do I get this sincere feeling to be something that everyone at Relay feels, so that everyone at Relay is motivated by these realities and not just by a boss’ requirements or the paycheck at the end of the week. It’s hard but these are the things I’ve been working on to make that happen:

• Practice making the vision and goals clear to everyone. For Relay the thing I keep driving home is that “Simplicity is the service.” This informs all our decisions.
• Give people more opportunity to act on those goals. The only thing stopping them is lack of clarity and lack of competence, both can be assessed and remedied.
• Assess your team’s work and performance weekly and monthly, not daily. Allow time for mistakes and improvements, encourage critique by consensus on your team.
• Build a team and a culture that doesn’t need you to be there for it to work.

I’m currently obsessed with David Marquet’s book Turn This Ship Around, and Dan Pink’s book To Sell is Human. Both have shaped my thinking about company culture and leadership.

One of Relay’s many local farmers / producers preparing an order

What are some core principles a team should employ to ensure knowledge, culture, and camaraderie remain vital and accessible to everyone at a company as it grows?

[MS] I’d say:

• Collectively, everyone should be clear on what the customer should think, feel, and do. If they know that by heart, it answers 95% of all questions about how to handle a given task. It can solve arguments.
• If you hire Class A people, you can all respect each other and come to the table with something to learn. Stop fighting for pole position – that’s where the brand and your goals belong.
• Develop a culture of questions, instead of delegation. Learning over knowing.
• Use as many smiley faces and gifs as possible. Whenever you can, compliment someone, because you will most certainly have a moment in the future when you need to let them know they missed the mark.
• Communicate your ass off. Let people know what you’re doing, when you’re doing it, when you’ll be done, when you’re late, when you’re early. Knowledge in a growing company is powerful.

“For Relay the thing I keep driving home is that ‘Simplicity is the service.’ This informs all our decisions.”

My friend and our CEO at Relay Foods, Zach Buckner, loves to tell the anecdote about FedEx before they had shipping labels. Apparently they used to have obscene amounts of customer service calls daily because people wanted to know where their packages were. Packages may have been minutes away or may have been late, but customers didn’t know the difference – so they called. When FedEx introduced shipment tracking that you could look up online, it changed everything. The simple communication of where your package was allowed people to know how they should shape their day, whether to change their plans, and if a package was going to be early or late. Communication is key. I’d rather know bad news early, than no news at all and have to find it out for myself later on.

But don’t forget to play. I love to start meetings with bad jokes. For instance: What did the green grape say to the purple grape? “Breathe dammit, BREATHE!”

“Whenever you can, compliment someone, because you will most certainly have a moment in the future when you need to let them know they missed the mark.”

By Alex Yohn

Nov 12, 2013

If you’re a Google, Outlook, or Apple Calendar user, you can now subscribe to the Kin calendar. This is a great way to overlay vacation, holidays, and anniversaries atop of other important dates like project deadlines.

This feature is available to every user in Kin and will help everyone make well-informed decisions about taking time away from work (i.e., when it’s really busy, of course!).

Sync your Kin calendar data with your team’s favorite calendar app.

Here are some quick tutorials showing you how to get your calendar set up.

 Apple Calendar on Mac OS X

Steps to subscribe:

1. Copy your webcal:// URL from Kin (at the top right of the Calendar page, click “Subscribe to Calendar”).

2. In Apple Calendar, click File, and select “New Calendar Subscription.” Paste in your webcal URL from step one when prompted.

3. Choose any configuration information when prompted, such as iCloud sync and refresh interval.

 Google Calendar

Steps to subscribe:

1. Copy your webcal:// URL from Kin (at the top right of the Calendar page, click “Subscribe to Calendar”).

2. In Google Calendar, click the arrow next to “Other Calendars” in the left-hand column of the page. Select “Add by URL” and paste in your webcal URL when prompted.

Note: Google appears to refresh automatically every 24 hours. To the best of our knowledge, there is no way to increase the frequency of refreshes. Patience, friends, patience. 

 Outlook for Mac and PC

Steps to subscribe:

1. Copy your webcal:// URL from Kin (at the top right of the Calendar page, click “Subscribe to Calendar”).

2. In Outlook, select Tools from the top toolbar then Account Settings.

3. From the dialog box that appears, select the “Internet Calendars” tab then click on the “New” link and paste your Kin calendar URL into the field. Select “Add” when finished, add a custom name for the new calendar, and click “OK”.

4. Now, click on your regular “Calendar” link in Outlook to view your default calendar. Your Kin calendar should now be available to select!

Note: The web version of Outlook (Office 365) doesn’t support the syncing of a calendar subscription to the Outlook desktop application. 

What’s the .ICS download for?

Most modern calendar apps will support the URL subscription. Some older apps won’t. The iCal (.ICS) download is for those older ones. The downside? The .ICS will not automatically sync up to Kin like the URL subscription does.

Enjoy

We’ve had calendar integrations on our mind since July. Our original thought was to pull data in from other calendar sources and overlay it in Kin. Thanks to the recommendations of a practical-minded customer (Thanks Tyler!), we decided to do the opposite: push Kin calendar data out to other apps. Enjoy!

By Alex Yohn

Nov 6, 2013

All too often founders focus solely on the business impacts of change at their companies, but overlook the effect change has on employees. It’s critical to consider how each team member will be impacted by big changes, and to craft a plan to help them both participate in the change and adapt.

Without considering team sentiment during such a change, employees feel powerless and left in the dark. These feelings turn into apathy and detachment, which ultimately can result in turnover. On the flipside, considering changes from their perspectives can turn employees into change-champions who help others get on board.

Below are five steps founders and business leaders can take to create a roadmap for organizational change. It all starts with clarity and transparency, and ends in employees championing your company’s changes.

The example we’ll use is a company that has just won a big new client, and that means the team needs to grow.

1. Know (and be able to explain to your team) what is changing and why. Then consider closely how and when to share the news.

2. Anticipate the obvious impacts and create a chart like the one below to solve the “easy” problems:

3. Go a step deeper and consider how the impacted people will feel. How will the designer who has to work from home a few days a week feel? How will the person whose workload has doubled cope? What can you do to reassure them that these are transitional accommodations, that a better solution is coming, and that you value their adaptability and commitment? Extend your chart to include the new information:

4. This is important: be honest with your team about what you know and don’t know. You don’t need all the answers; you just need to be honest. Communicate transparently and frequently.

5. Invite your team to help figure out the open issues. Include representatives from different areas and levels of your organization in completing this exercise. You can’t always include everyone in all decisions, but you can extend to the inner circle in most cases and empower employees to shape the future.

Start planning at the first signs of change, and you’ll find you have a team at your back and not against the wall. It’s critical to a smooth transition and satisfied employees. Planning for the individual impacts of change should be a part of your growth strategy and business plan from the start, and an area of focus during periods of change.

Change is rarely easy, but thoughtful change can be the difference between evolving as a team and bewildering the people that’ve carried your company this far.

By Alex Yohn

Oct 29, 2013

Over the last month, we spent time with customers designing ways to improve Kin’s time-off tracking. Then we sat down and got busy coding. The result is a more accurate, informative, and flexible way to manage your team’s vacations, leave, holidays, and accruals.

Time-off projections

For companies using Kin’s time-off accrual feature, users now see a projection of how much time-off will accumulate during a year. This is handy for employees requesting time off in the future, so they understand how much time they will have as opposed to only showing what they currently do. It’s handy for managers too; they can make a better informed decision when approving/declining requests.

Kin now shows a projection of earned time off.

Work schedules and break time

Tell Kin your standard office hours, and Kin will factor them in when calculating the duration of a time-off entry. Bonus: enter in break time (for lunch breaks, etc.) and Kin will deduct them from the time-off request’s total.

Work schedules are configured on a per-policy level, so you can create a work schedule (and related time-off policy) for your night-owls and one for your early-risers.

Kin calculates time off more accurately with work schedules.

Improvements to time-off configurations

If you’re an HR Manager, you’ll notice a few nice improvements to the time-off policy configuration process. These updates are all based on customer feedback, so here ya go:

Policy start-dates

You can now specify a date when a new policy should be activated. Previously, Kin would automatically look back to the beginning of the year or to an employee’s date of hire (whichever was first). This little detail helps Kin more accurately assess and assign starting time-off balances when companies deploy a new policy.

Custom renewal date

If your time-off policy refreshes on a date other than January 1st each year, or on an employee’s anniversary, you’re in luck. Kin now offers a custom renewal date for your policy refresh. So, if your fiscal year starts on March 1st, well, enter March 1st as your refresh date. Cake.

Expire carry-over time

Lot’s of companies allow time off to carry over into the new year (or past a hiring anniversary). Well, up until this release, that carry-over time would be there until the employee either used it, or the employer removed it manually. Kin now offers the ability to expire carry over time off on a specific date.

Exclude company holidays from time-off requests

When you set up your company’s work schedule, you can also tell Kin to take company holidays into account. That means when an employee requests time off that bridges a company holiday (when the office is already closed), Kin will automatically deduct those days from the total so they don’t come out of the employee’s balance.

Export your data for payroll

Lot’s of companies need to share their time-off data with their payroll service to ensure employees are getting compensated accurately. We’ve made this a whole lot easier with Kin’s new export feature. Kin can now export any time-off policy’s data (requests, balances, etc.) by date range to match a specific pay cycle.

Export time-off data changes for more accurate payroll.

Onwards!

This isn’t the last you’ll see of the Kin team improving the time-off feature. But it is for a little while. We’ve got a lot of great stuff cooking right now in the direction of new-hire onboarding, and just like with this round of updates, we’re excited to work side by side with our customers to build a better tool, process, and ultimately, employee experience.

By Alex Yohn

Oct 19, 2013

For lots of companies, the new year means time-off balance refreshes and carry overs. It’s a good idea to do a quick spot check in Kin when the new year rolls around to make sure the house is in order. Here are a few suggestions to help you along.

Policies refreshing?

If you have time-off policies refreshing on January 1st, you’ll want to do a quick spot check in the new year to make sure everything looks good. If you notice anything peculiar, drop us an email and we’ll help you troubleshoot.

Does your time off carry over?

Does your company carry over time off balances? You’re lovely. Per the previous tip, do a spot check of a few employees’ profiles to ensure your accruals or refreshes are looking good. Kin’s calculations are correct, but sometimes they’re different than what we humans are expecting.

Date of hire anniversaries in 2014?

Some companies grant more time off the longer an employee stays with the company. If you have different time-off policies in Kin for each “tier” of time off, well, 2014 is the first time you’ll need to move employees between those policies in Kin. Here’s the most accurate way to move an employee between policies:

1. Set up the new policy if you haven’t already done so and add your eligible employee(s) to it.

2. Next, identify any existing time-off events that are booked to the ‘old’ time off policy and move them to the new one. You can do this by clicking ‘edit request’ within an employee’s time-off entry.

3. If there are existing time-off entries that ‘span’ the renewal date (anniversary or otherwise), you’ll need to split them into two entries to ensure the employee’s balances are being debited correctly. The first will go up through the renewal date and will remain on the old policy, and the second will be booked to the ‘new’ policy and will round out the rest of the time off the employee originally requested.

4. After all requests have been updated, you can remove the employee from the old policy and you’ll be all set. Note that even though you remove them from the old policy, their activity and history will still appear.

Don’t go it alone.

If you need a second pair of eyes to review your employees’ balances, or if you’d like us to look behind the scenes at how Kin is calculating your time off, please get in touch with us at any time by writing TheTeam@KinHR.com.