ScreditCrunch

Where do we start … it has been a long and arduous process to rebuild the old MiniCorp features which were in closed beta last year. Finally we are opening them up to the world with loads of new functionality. This is the future of Scred and the future of how to manage money.

And no, we haven’t forgotten our much loved release names. We held the latest name back for a special occassion, which this is.

The release is called: Best of Both Worlds.

In this announcement:

• What’s New
• What about the costs?
• The PayPal competition

What’s New

So let’s see what we are announcing:

• A whole new level of Scred money management for communities. It is based on the new PayPal X APIs and is now open in public beta for everyone!
• With the new Scred Groups you can get to grips with your community’s complete finances, in a really integrated and easy to use way. No accountants needed!
• Record expense claims (including attachments like receipts) and pay them out, send invoices, collect registration fees for events or memberships, sell items with your own webshop etc.
• Everything is integrated, tracked and accounted automatically. Income and expenses, profit and loss, and other reports are generated for you. You can forget about fiddling with Excel.
• Make payments directly from within your group’s pages.
• You can think of this as a kind of smart community-oriented online bank. Whereas a normal banking experience is just moving figures from one place to another, we provide a whole bunch of tools to make things relevant for you and your community. We add meaning to money.
• For bands, indie film crews, event organisers, associations, hobby groups, small businesses and I’m sure you’ll come up with many more.
• We have completely redesigned the look to our site.
• We have dropped the terms Pools and MiniCorps from active use. They are both just different kinds of Scred Groups.
• We have entered this into the PayPal X Developer Challenge competition. Please support us by voting for Scred (see instructions)!

Phew, that was a lot of stuff. Needless to say, we’ve been working incredibly hard to get all of this done. While this is still work in progress, we are immensely proud of it. The level of integration and the ambitions for this project are unlike anything attempted before in this area. We believe this is what all financial systems will look like in a few years.

Check out a short video of Scred’s new stuff

For anyone worried: shared expense groups will not be forgotten. We regularly need and use them, and they will be developed. However, we are very excited about these new developments, and we will be working hard to advance them onwards.

What about the costs?

For all money moved by Scred (using PayPal) we will charge 1.5% of the amount transferred (minimum $0.25 or 0.25 EUR per transaction) [1] [2]. This is our open beta pricing and is subject to change after the beta period, but we will keep things decent for our groups in the future too.

Voting in the PayPal competition

Check our earlier post for instructions on voting.

If we do manage to win, we will pass on any waivered PayPal transaction fees directly to our Scred Groups! That’s a total discount of up to $50′000 in fees to our customers. [3]

Tweet this link about voting: http://bit.ly/scred-paypal

Feedback

We would love to hear your feedback on all of this. Do not be afraid to click on the Scred feedback link.

Log into Scred to start using the new features.

[1] For payments in US dollars the minimum fee charged by Scred is $0.25 and for payments in euro 0.25 EUR. For payments in other currencies a value equal to 0.25 EUR is charged in the currency of the payment.

[2] Standard PayPal fees apply in addition to the Scred fee.

[3] Applies to fees charged by PayPal, Scred’s standard fees apply.

Scred has submitted its new group feature (announcement coming shortly) to the PayPal Developer Challenge competition, and we have been accepted to compete with around 50 other ideas. The finalists will be selected based on a community vote process, so we need your help! Please show your support and vote for us.

Here’s how (see pics below):

• Go to the PayPal X site and register. You can use your existing PayPal account. When asked to log in, the process will happen on paypal.com.
• Go back to http://www.x.com/ if not there already. Apparently you might not be put there after registering!
• Select Vote Now in the PayPal X Developer Challenge section.
• Click the Vote Now text on the next page. It looks like a title or heading, but it’s not!
• At this point you might be redirected a few times. Wait a bit.
• Search for scred in the search box (in the upper right hand corner).
• Click title for the details on Scred
• Hit Click to Vote. The checkmark should change from gray to blue.
• You can only vote for one entry in the competition.

The PayPal vote site is a bit, hm, funny. So you might need to try again from the start, after registering. Let us know if you’re having problems.

Your support is much appreciated. If we manage to win, we’ll celebrate in good style at our next Night of Code!

Common Problems:

• “It’s still asking me to register after I registered and clicked Vote Now” — The next page following the “Vote Now” button is quite misleading. There’s a text that says you need to be registered to vote. However that’s not an error! Above it there’s what looks like a title saying “Vote Now”. However, it’s not a title! It should be a link to get forwards.
• “I searched for Scred but didn’t find anything to vote on”. If you use the normal x.com search you will not find anything. You must press the Vote Now button in the Developer Challenge section on the front page. Then again click “Vote Now”. Only then can you search.
• “I get an error when trying to log in”. These pop up now and then. We don’t know why it happens and the only solution seems to be to try again later, or from the x.com frontpage. We’re sorry about this, but it is outside our control…
• Get in touch with us if you have other problems. We’ll try our best to help.

Before some bigger news we are announcing important changes to settlement payment:

• You can settle a complete pool balance with one click, even if you would need to pay several people!
• Settlement payments now incur a small transaction fee.
• Transaction fees to PayPal and Scred are paid by the sender of the payment. The people paid receive the full amount.

Previously it was possible to settle balances by clicking on ‘Settle’ and paying each balance one at a time. That was much handier than having to dig out people’s bank accounts and manually entering transactions. However we reckoned we could do better and have now built a way for you to settle your pool debt with one single click, and automatically sending the payment out to up to five members at a time.

So say your pool Trip to Mordor ended with you owing money to Aragorn, Boromir and Legolas. Instead of having to pay each one in turn, you can simply click ‘Settle’ by your balance and select ‘Pay All’. You will be brought to a PayPal checkout allowing you to pay everything in one swift go, and still make it in time to conquer Sauron, and stuff. After all you probably want to settle in good time as things might get a bit hairy up there.

To facilitate all of this magic Scred now takes a small fee of 1.5% of the payment amount (minimum $0.25 or 0.25 EUR) for each settlement (standard PayPal fees apply). Let us know what you think of this feature and how you might like it improved.

Log into Scred to start using the new features. We are using the new PayPal X APIs to provide this.

We will be announcing some larger updates shortly.

P.S. You can help us improve Scred by taking our survey.

Don’t panic!

As a number of you have undoubtedly noticed, Scred is going through a major upheaval. We have made strong changes to the basic look of the site and we are now running a new beta version of the old MiniCorps, with loads of new functionality (expense claims, invoices, collection of registration fees etc), with more to come.

These changes are still being developed, and while we still consider the features ‘beta’, they are available for all users now. We think they’re really cool.

The changes have also impacted on the old ‘pools’, which have received new styling. That styling process is incomplete and they will go through further changes quite rapidly, to bring them up to where we believe they should be. Take a look at the new groups for some idea.

Do not worry, we will be working hard to fit all the pieces into place in the upcoming weeks. We will also soon make an official announcement about our new take on everything, once things quieten down a bit. As always, feedback is welcome.

And yeah, we’re just passing 24 hours at the office. Been a tough one!

We are currently overhauling Scred’s MiniCorps feature based on early feedback and our own use experience. This is a process that has been going on for some time and while there is still work ahead, we may see an early release sometime in the near future. As a reminder, MiniCorps are a way to track income and expenses with your band, film crew, hobby group etc, as well as sell and receive income online — automatically tracked. MiniCorps are currently in closed beta.

The MiniCorp functionality is going to be greatly expanded and it will continuously become even more different from normal Scred pools. Both are solving money problems for groups and communities, but with a different set of feature. Pools are great for lightweight shared expenses (flatmates, travel groups, friends), MiniCorps for more “business like” features. Effectively like virtual companies. We are thinking about calling both of them simply ‘groups’, to reduce confusion, but they are different from each other.

So we would like your feedback. How would you separate them to reduce confusement? Do you like the terms ‘pool’ and ‘MiniCorp’, or passionately hate them? Did they muddle the user experience for you? Should we launch completely separate services? Drop one or the other completely?

Let us know in the comments here, by directly sending us feedback on the Scred website, or by tweeting to @Screditor.

At Scred we were so inspired by the many people pitching in with the ongoing crisis in Haiti, that we decided to do our own little bit to help the many nonprofit organisations out there. It is now possibile to add the charity of your choice to your pools, and to donate your positive outstanding balance directly to that charity. Now you can support a cause with your friends!

This is how it works: Bill, Jill and Jane have a pool for sharing expenses at their apartment. They all love animals so would like to support an organisation helping them. Jill goes to the ‘Settings’ tab of their pool, and adds the charity, including a website link with information on how to pay to the charity. Jill has a positive balance, while Bill and Jane have a negative balance (they could settle by paying Jill). Jill decides to donate her balance and clicks ‘Donate!’, by her balance. Once she has donated that balance, she will have a zero balance and Bill and Jane will owe the charity money.

Bill can now settle his balance by clicking ‘Settle’ and going to the charity’s donation website and paying there. Once he’s done that, he can click ‘Done’ and his balance will be zeroed, and the charity will be grateful!

Give it a go, it is easy and fun.

You can also click on the charity in the pool member list to go to its Scred page. There you can see the total amount of donations it has received, from all the pools in Scred, as well as latest activity.

Go to Scred to start using the new features!

This is one of those ideas that just needed to be implemented. There’s a special smoke sauna in the yard of the Cable Factory which is going to be available until this Friday. We we are organising a special Night of Code on short notice which starts with a sauna in the yard at 18:00, followed by traditional NoC activities: coding at the Scred office, and any presentations, if people want to talk about something.

Bring your own towel if you want to try the sauna. Scred will provide some beer and refreshments.

Nights of Code are a chance to get together and exchange ideas, thoughts and enthusiasm for technology.

Sign up on Facebook, or add a comment to this thread.

It is now easier than ever to pay back debts and negative balances inside Scred. No fiddling around with bank account details and then manually creating transactions inside Scred. You can now do this with just a few clicks and the use of PayPal.

At the top of every pool you can see your balance. If you have a negative balance you can click on the ‘Settle’ button that appears. This will lead you to a page with a suggestion for how you could clear your debt. Now, by clicking the ‘Pay’ button by each person, you can easily pay that sum of money. The payment will be automatically tracked by Scred which will then update your balance. Dead simple.

This feature requires that the users have configured a PayPal account in their profile. Any payment details will only be shared with people in the same pool as you.

Other changes in this release (Beneath The Surface):

• Added Select All option on Scredding page for larger pools. Small pools have all members selected by default.
• Updated look of Scredding. Some Webkit specific detailing.
• Significant new core accounting model which will later offer more advanced types of transactions for pools.

We are still working on a more substantial major launch which will appear later, but a few more smaller updates may appear along the way.

Log into Scred to start using the new features.

Sorry for the short notice but Scred is organising a another Night of Code at the Cable Factory this Thursday 17:00->. Across the Ruoholahti bay Madonna will be playing a mega concert, so chances are we might see, or at least hear something from the Cable Factory roof.

If you are not familiar with our Nights of Code, they are small events where people can get together and code on their own projects, talk about new tech ideas, give presentations on things they are working on, or are interested in. They take place at our office in the Cable Factory (door E, 5th floor), Helsinki. We’ve had some fantastic presentations before, including a startup which was launched at the event!

If you are thinking about presenting on something you can decide at the event, or leave us a comment here. If you’re planning to come, comment here or mark attendance at the Facebook event.

So why is Madonna cool for startup entrepreneurs? Here’s a quote from Wikipedia:

An analysis of Madonna’s business acumen by academics at the London Business School presents her as a “dynamic entrepreneur” worth copying, identifying her vision of success, her understanding of the music industry, her ability to recognise her performance limits (and thus bring in help), her “sheer hard work” and her ability to change as key to why she has been a striking commercial success.

With the latest release (codenamed Bem) we are providing two important features which have been requested by our users:

• The ability to edit transactions.
• A list of direct balances is now present in the ‘Direct Scred’ screen,
  thus making that easier to manage.

Additionally a new version of the Java client for mobile phones has been released. With it you can now view transactions which have already been synchronised. Some usability issues on the website have also been fixed to provide more consistency. Finally the release contains several bugfixes.

How editing works

Unlike with some other unnamed services editing in Scred is non-destructive. Internally we keep a trail of all edits which have taken place with transactions. Currently the edit trail is not visible to users, but it will be available at a later date. The important thing for our users is that nothing is lost.

Scred running the ticket system for The Alternative Party

Continuing with last year’s successful pilot, Scred is behind the ticket
sales system used by Finland’s largest digital art festival, The Alternative Party. Scred automatically accounts items sold, provides users with tickets and manages payments. This year’s event is focusing on the interfaces between humans and machines and will again be showcasing some of the best digital talent around. Get your tickets here.

The Scred ticketing module will later be available to Scred MiniCorps.

Log into Scred to start using the new features.