Throughout the 13 years of designing websites for clients, we noticed one thing. In terms of design approvals, presenting designs in different ways yields different results. The initial design stage can be a very draggy process, if you do not present your designs the right way, it can give you days or even weeks of headaches.

Presenting your design

We’ve experimented with many different ways:

1. Presenting the design in JPEGs over email with or without explanation
2. Zipping up the JPEGs and send over email, client views JPEG with their own image viewer (whatever it may be)
3. Embedding the design in PDF format
4. Embedding the design in Powerpoint format
5. Placing the designs in a centralized HTML layout with a repeated background, simulating the completed website
6. Placing designs in HTML with explanation write-ups in an overlay
7. Placing designs in HTML with explanation notes directly over JPEG image, labeled in sequence, eg. 1 – 10

Have you tried any of these? The list can go on. Except #7, most of the rest don’t work. If your client views your design in their image viewer, PDF or Powerpoint, the design will be scaled and may even be skewed in some cases. This causes confusion and misunderstanding when they view the completed website.

Getting your designs approved

Placing your design in HTML simulating the completed website seems to work well, but it does not give you a high approval rate – if you do not walk them through.

It is hard to make changes to a design if the site has been coded, at most times it is wise to have your client approve the design first before you proceed for coding. Most of us gets the green light verbally, or sometimes non at all! It all turns into a mind game, we wonder if we can “really” proceed for coding or continue wasting valuable time waiting for the client to say OK. Wouldn’t it be great if you can provide your client with an easy way to approve the design by clicking one button?

So what’s this all about?

We’re creating a new app to help you present your designs better and get a higher rate of approval. This app also lets you store all your designs and its versions in one place, making managing your designs a joy. We call it MockVault. Check out the site, signup, follow us and be amongst the first to know when it’s here!

It’s the new year, 2012, we hope you had a good start so far!

We’re writing this to let you know that our pricing will be going through some changes. We have been reviewing our pricing and the features we offer and realized that the price tag we put on this app doesn’t quite match up to the value it provides.

Almost all our competitors starts at a price much higher than ours, with limits. Whereas we offer project management + invoicing with no limits and at a much lower cost. We have no problems with that, but this low cost sometimes raises a red flag, it backfires and refrains some from even trying our app.

Hence after a long period of consideration, we’ve decided to increase the monthly fee by $5. The new monthly fee will be $19.99/month. If you upgrade to the annual subscription, it’ll be $199.99 (2 months free as usual).

This is still a low fee considering the number of useful features you can use to better run your business.

If you currently have an active subscription with us, don’t worry, your monthly or annual fee is locked in and will not change for as long as you stay with us.

If you’re currently on the free trial, you can lock in the old pricing just like our active customers by upgrading before January 17. This is the date where our new pricing will take effect for free trial users.

To recap, here’s what you’ll get for upgrading:

• Collaborate with team members or clients on projects, milestones, tasks and links
• Create and send unlimited invoices & estimates
• Automatic late payment reminders to your clients
• Recurring invoices
• Integrates invoices with PayPal payment gateway
• Receive Daily Report of impending project and milestone deadlines via email
• iPhone & iPad optimized web app / Push notifications via Prowl
• Scheduling emails to clients
• Time tracking
• Synchronization with your calendar of choice using iCalendar feeds
• RSS feed to keep track of team activities
• Supports creation of milestones, tasks and links via email
• Manage unlimited projects, clients, milestones, links and users
• Daily backups of your data to a secure remote location
• Data security with SSL encryption

Haven’t heard of Alfred? Alfred is an app launcher but it comes with so much more. They recently added a new feature called extensions, which truly opens up a world of endless possibility.

Note that in order to use the extensions feature of Alfred, you’ll need to purchase the Power Pack (£12).

Once you have Alfred running with the Power Pack, setting up the extensions is easy:

Step 1

Download the extensions. You’ll receive a zip containing two extensions, one for creating milestones and the other for creating links.

Step 2

1. Double click each extension
2. Alfred preferences will launch
3. Click Import

Step 3

In your SUBERNOVA account, go to Settings and copy your API Key as seen in the screenshot above.

Step 4

1. Paste your API Key into Alfred where it says YOUR_API_KEY
2. Click Save

This step should be done for both Milestones and Links extension.

Now you have the extensions setup and ready to create milestones, tasks and links via Alfred.

Create a new milestone or task via Alfred

Call up Alfred and type: milestone [Milestone name] ^[Date]

*More info:

• Dates: Just like creating a milestone in SUBERNOVA, you can enter dates in human language, for example, now, today, tomorrow, 5 days, next week, may 29, 29 may, 29/5, 5/29 etc.
• Creating a task: To create a task (without a due date), just leave out ^[date] in the line, eg. “Design of website to be completed”

Create a new link via Alfred

Call up Alfred and type: link [Link name] [URL]

*More info:

• You must include http:// or https:// in your URL to indicate that this is a link
• Just the link: If you want the URL to be the link’s name, just leave out [Link name] in the line, eg. “http://www.subernova.com”

That’s it. Hope you find this a useful addition to your workflow!

Dock Badge Counts

SUBERNOVA displays a dock badge count of all projects that are due today and tomorrow, as well as milestones that are due today and tomorrow, depending on which section you are currently viewing.

Growl Notifications

Receive growl notifications the moment an event is triggered. For example, your client views your invoice, reads your email, your quote is approved, members of your team add a new project, completes a milestone, starts a timer etc.

How To Create A SUBERNOVA Fluid App

Just enter SUBERNOVA’s login URL, name and leave the default Use Website Favicon for Icon. The app will pull the high resolution icon image from our server.

Then click Create.

You can now send an email to SUBERNOVA to quickly create a new milestone, task or link.

Here’s how:

Create a new milestone or task via email

You’ll need to send the email via the email account you used for your SUBERNOVA account. This is such that we can identify the right account to add the milestone or task to.

Send email to: milestones@subernova.com
Email subject line: [Milestone name] ^[Date]
Email body: This text will be used for the milestone’s description
Example: Design of website to be completed ^today

*More info:

• Dates: Just like creating a milestone in SUBERNOVA, you can enter dates in human language, for example, now, today, tomorrow, 5 days, next week, may 29, 29 may, 29/5, 5/29 etc.
• Creating a task: To create a task (without a due date), just leave out ^[date] in the subject line, eg. “Design of website to be completed”

Create a new link via email

Again, send the email via the email account you use for your SUBERNOVA account.

Send email to: links@subernova.com
Email subject line: [Link name] [URL]
Email body: This text will be used for the link’s description
Example: SUBERNOVA website http://www.subernova.com

*More info:

• You must include http:// or https:// in your URL to indicate that this is a link
• Just the link: If you want the URL to be the link’s name, just leave out [Link name] in the subject line, eg. “http://www.subernova.com”
• Link in body: You can also include the [URL] in the body instead of in the subject, and use the subject line just for the [Link name]. This is particularly good for emailing links when using iPhone’s Mobile Safari.

The coffee cup image will be replaced with your own logo if you’ve uploaded one via Settings > Logo.

It is now quick and easy to glance through what needs your attention today and tomorrow, as well as review yesterday’s activities.

If you use a Mac, you can track time right on the menubar!

Data Security with SSL

We’ve added SSL security to SUBERNOVA. The chances of a third party eavesdropping on your data when they’re being transferred to and from our server is reduced to zero.

SSL is optional, if you favor security over speed, just insert the letter “s” infront of “http” the next time you use the web app, eg. https://app.subernova.com.

You can also turn on SSL for the AIR and iPhone app by going into Settings > Others and checking the appropriate checkboxes.

To understand more about SSL on SUBERNOVA, read this post.

Improved Scrolling

If you have lots of data in your account, you may have some difficulty scrolling up and down previously. Not anymore, we’ve improved scrolling such that the content will only scroll when your mouse hits the top or bottom of the content.

Create New Client In Project Creation Window

Previously, you needed to go to “Clients” section to create a client first before you can create a project.

Now, you can create a new client in the project creation modal window itself without breaking your workflow.

iPhone App In jQTouch Framework!

We completely rewrote the front end code of the iPhone app in jQTouch! The app now loads and feels snappier thanks to JQuery and AJAX.

You’ll also see beautiful native like animations when you go from page to page.

View a video demonstrating the app.

Run SUBERNOVA On Any Site

Do you know you can run SUBERNOVA on any site? This is useful when you’re doing research and you want to save the page’s link, but don’t want to leave the current page you’re on. Just hit the bookmarklet and SUBERNOVA will load in that page, you’re now ready to add a new link to your account.

For instructions, visit this page.

How SUBERNOVA Started

Curious about how SUBERNOVA started? We wrote a post on the problems we encountered when administrating our business. You may be able to relate these problems to yourself and learn more about why SUBERNOVA is essential to your business.

SUBERNOVA Scored 9/10 On Web.Appstorm’s Review

Recently, we submitted SUBERNOVA to Web.Appstorm’s Quicklook.

81.4% of Web.Appstorm readers voted for SUBERNOVA to be reviewed on Web.Appstorm.

Thanks to their readers and many of you who participated in the vote, SUBERNOVA was reviewed on Web.Appstorm and scored a whopping 9 upon 10!

We’re extremely excited to bring you this essential feature, invoicing! You can now create and send invoices to your clients right in SUBERNOVA. Not only that, you can also create estimates and send it to your clients for approval where all your client needs to do is to click a button to approve.

We’ve made creating invoices and quotes / estimates as simple as possible yet as full featured and flexible as it can be.

*Expired accounts are revived for 10 days so that you can try this out!

How To Start Invoicing?

By clicking the existing “Quoted / Invoiced” checkboxes attached to every project item, you will be able to call up either the quote or invoice creation panel, depending on what you clicked.

User Interface

The quote and invoice creation panel looks similar to each other. For instance, if you clicked on the “Invoiced” checkbox, the screenshot below is what you will see.

You can set everything from invoice number, discounts to currency. You can also edit notes (pulled in from your settings) for each individual invoice.

Once you save the invoice, clicking the “Invoice” checkbox again will show you the same panel, but this time you’ll be presented with the “Permalink” and “Download PDF” buttons.

Similarly for quotes, you can edit the terms & conditions and currency for individual quotes. Not every client is the same so we provide this flexibility where you can set different terms & conditions or currency per quote.

PDF Invoice Design

We designed the PDF to look as professional and appealing as possible. Here’s how it looks:

Permalink – Online View

The online version looks almost exactly like the PDF, but with some added functionalities. You’ll get notified when your client views the estimate or invoice.

The screenshot below shows how an estimate will look like in the browser.

Also view a sample invoice permalink – http://app.subernova.com/billings/view/o1q6XxK1wlU91tYVeREnrMy5MrgiBf

For estimates, your client can approve it by clicking the green “Approve” button. An email receipt will be sent to both you and your client confirming the estimate. If you have a Prowl API registered in SUBERNOVA, you’ll also get a push notification.

What’s more, your client can also view pass estimates or invoices from a dropdown menu.

Automatic Late Payment Reminders

SUBERNOVA will automatically send email reminders to your clients to inform them that payment is late. This is done every 30, 60 and 90 days from the issue date of your invoice. Once you mark the project as “Paid”, no more reminders will be sent. Reminders will be halt too if you set the project back to “Quoted”.

Also worth noting is that email reminders uses your custom message and email signature in your Settings. So please remember to set them!

Your Settings

The settings panel has undergone some re-design.

You can find your new invoicing settings here. First up, upload your logo! Your logo will appear on the PDF and the online viewing page.

If you don’t want your proposals to be named “Quote”, name it “Estimate” or anything else. The same goes for invoices.

The “Invoice Reminder Message” will be used for the existing automatic late invoice reminder feature. Your client will be reminded every 30, 60 and 90 days of unpaid invoice with this message.

Quotes “Terms & Conditions” and “Invoice Note” are templates where you can edit later when creating or editing a quote or invoice.

Custom Domain Name

This is a pretty rare feature among other popular online invoicing tools. When you send an invoice or estimate from SUBERNOVA, instead of using SUBERNOVA’s domain name for these links, you can use your own. This can be done by setting a custom domain name in your Settings.

For example, our domain name is hex.sg. I created a CNAME record in my zone file on my hosting server’s control panel naming it “admin”. I point this CNAME to “subernova.com”. Back in my Settings, I enter admin.hex.sg without “http://” or trailing slashes and save.

Once you set up your own custom domain name, try accessing it. If it was successful, all your invoices and estimates will be using this domain name. You can even use this address to log in to your SUBERNOVA account!

Upgrade Now Before Price Increases

To sum things up, SUBERNOVA has grown into a full fledged online project management tool to keep you more organized, collaborate and manage your staff and co workers, track your time, notify you of due projects and milestones, schedule emails to your clients, available on the web, desktop and iPhone. Now you can even create invoices and quotes.

You can find these features elsewhere, but not usually in one application. As a result, your processes are not streamlined, having to manage different applications that looks and works differently. Not mentioning the high combined cost of all the subscription fees.

The worst thing is that even if you’re a paying customer, you get to only manage a limited amount of projects, limited amount of invoices etc.

In SUBERNOVA, you get unlimited everything and everything in one.

We will be increasing the subscription fee to only $14.99/month or $149.99/year (save $30 or 2 months free!). Still a low fee if compared to existing web apps in the market that only offers a little of this and that.

The Good News:

• SUBERNOVA customers: As promised, you will get to keep the original pricing.
• Current trial account users: Upgrade with the original price before your account expires.
• Expired accounts: Revived for the next 10 days! Upgrade before the extension finishes to lock in the original price.

*All uses who upgraded with the original price will lock in this price for as long as you stay with us!

Thanks to everyone for sticking with us, we hope you had a good start to the new year and the following years to come!

We want to take this opportunity to thank every single one of you who have tried SUBERNOVA and also those we have become SUBERNOVA subscribers!

Here’s a BIG THANK YOU! We have just pushed out a new update and rest assured that there will be more updates (and BIG ones) to come!

24 Hours Only Black Friday Discount!

We have just enabled yearly subscriptions ($59.99/year) that will save you $12. To thank our users, we further lowered the annual fee down to $49.99/year, saving you even more!

Upgrade your account within 24 hours to lock in this mega discount forever!

Expired Accounts Has Been Revived!

Your trial has expired? Don’t worry, we have just extended your SUBERNOVA account until Dec 2nd! SUBERNOVA has evolved so much since it started, we want to invite you back to try out SUBERNOVA again!

Power Sorting Options

We have added a new dropdown menu on every section that will enable you to show projects, milestones etc by certain criterias. For example you can choose to display milestones that are due within 1 week, or projects that are quoted, invoiced or paid etc. There are now many options to display your project data making SUBERNOVA extremely flexible for you to manage your projects and stuff.

Notes in Clients

You can now enter notes for your individual clients. Record notes on where you meet who, what you said to who, how you want to follow up with the client etc. Speaking of following up, don’t forget you can schedule emails to send to your clients at a later date!

Happy Thanksgiving and have a great weekend!