Heaps! Online Personal Finance Software

Heaps! Personal Finance Software

Lot’s of people need to be better at managing their money so they can live the life they want and get out of debt, and New Zealand needs a much more financially strong country of people. Enter online personal finance software Heaps!

Heaps! Intro Video to Personal Finance and Budgeting

Why Heaps!

Helping people save money and set a budget they stick to is hard work. Some people are ready, already budgeting and ready for a smarter way, and others need it to all just be a lot simpler, more fun and about the goals they want to get in life. So over the last few weeks we’ve been rolling out online personal finance software heaps! to the first round of Kiwibank customers, checkout the Heaps! Intro Video, if you’re interested sign-up here at heaps!

Who is behind Heaps!

Heaps! is brought to you by Kiwibank in partnership with Social Capital

Disclaimer - I (Tim Norton), am the owner of Social Capital so along side partner Kiwibank, am behind Heaps! so already think it’s pretty cool and love it to bits!

Heaps!

Heaps! Online Personal Finance Software

Heaps! is an online personal finance software tool that heps you save money, set budgets and goals, and get more out of life. Brought to you by Kiwibank in partnership with Social Capital.

Accelerate 2010 - The Business development event of the summer

The business development event of the summer is shaping up to be in the sunny Hawkes Bay on Wednesday February 17.  Local legend Rod Drury and global marketing guru Andy Lark are doing a full day with business owners wanting to accelerate their business.

When & How: Wednesday Feb 17 - Register Now!

Accelerate 2010 - The Best Business Event of the year!

This will be tight game raising stuff

If you’ve had your time making plenty of mistakes and starting businesses and now want to get into serious and focused growth mode, then Accelerate 2010 is set to make sure you start 2010 with a fresh growth focus from people doing it well right now.

With Rod and Andy Lark leading the way, this will be a no BS, straight up, put into immediate action day that helps you raise your game and sets up an increasing network of senior entrepreneurs who know how to build and sustain successful businesses. Register up at 0to60.com.

Then the day ends with an Open Air Concert At Black Barn, where Kiwi music legends Tim Finn, Bic Runga and Dave Dobbyn will again take the stage together! Choice…

Event Backed by Xero and promo site which looks hot designed by Mogul.

MinuteDock Time tracking - Turn your time into Money!

A pretty cool Time tracking tool called MinuteDock has recently launched out of Wellington and it plugs beautifully into Xero so it makes it faster and easier than ever to, turn your time into money!

If you charge out your time, and are familiar with super simple social media tools like twitter, then you’ve just found the fastest and most easiest way to turn your time into money.

Here are 2 Big things Minutedock does to hit the bottom line and increase profitability and ability to scale for billable hour and services businesses.

Micro-bill lots of clients in Parallel

Because you can quickly log every piece of work you do in MinuteDock, it’s much easier to allocate and bill for small amounts of our time over many clients, enabling you to support more clients in parallel. And with no overhead, you can now knock out a dozen 15 or 30 minute jobs, and make them profitable! Key when you’re in the services game.

Customers know EXACTLY what they’re paying for

With Minute Dock, there’s no scurrying to pull together invoices for clients or having to tally up and detail whats been done at the end of a month. Instead you’ve got a simple clean audit trail so you and your clients can see exactly what chunks of value you’ve delivered - Chunks of value = cash. Also great if you’re managing a team and want everyone working on things that can be billed everyday.

The Crew Behind MinuteDock

MinuteDock has been designed, developed and is backed and supported by some pretty smart cats Nik Wakelin & Oliver Clarke from Code to Customer and James Nisbet from Bandit Design and a partner of mine in Challenge for Change.

The Xero Sales Machine Oils up with Xero Personal

Well behind on the posting sorry! But Xero announced it’s move into Personal finance and is launching to market early 2010 with Xero Personal. Xero have been working away on Xero Personal for sometime no doubt, and announced they will be working initially in partnership with the BNZ before going out to the rest of New Zealand at some point in the future, then beyond.

Small Business and Personal Finance direct link

The rest of the world aside, as a country powered by small businesses, New Zealand alone has over 400,000 business owners, and depending on what numbers you get, around three quarters of these are sole traders - 1 man bands or couples. To many of these people, the family money and budget are based around the business, and all financial decisions in either business or personal completely effect each other.

Xero Sharpens it’s Sales Strategy

So along side the massive and increasing opportunities in personal finance, Xero is stepping into a very strategic position with small business owners and will be able to capture these people as customers through either their business or personal finances, then convert them into a customer on the other… a well oiled machine…

For a quick video teaser of Xero Personal

Wellington Xmas Party on a Boat

Last Christmas, Silicon Welly threw a huge boat party to end a massive year for everyone. This Christmas, we’ve hooked up with Summer of Code and Unlimited Potential to throw a Xmas party at Tugboat on the Bay. Its shaping up to be a great night, starting with meeting in the Beach Bar from 6.30pm, a yummy Christmas dinner will be served from 7.30pm, then letting loose in the “Engine Room” after dinner.

The deal is:

Jump on the Summer of Code website to register. The party is open to all Summer of Code companies, students, staff, guests and members of Unlimited Potential, Silicon Welly, Made From New Zealand, WYP or just Wellington businesses in need of a Xmas party. The meal is $50 per person and there will be a cash bar. (Check out Summer of Code for payment details.)

For a bit of reminiscing about last Christmas, watch the video of our boat party last year…

Brand New Zealand on Cover of Inc Magazine

Ponoko on cover of Inc Magazine

The world’s easiest making system - Ponoko and CEO David Ten Have, have taken their business, Wellington and brand New Zealand to the front cover of Inc Magazine in this months global edition in an expose titled The Future of Manufacturing.

The headline says it all - and Dave, Derek and the crew at Ponoko are carrying brand New Zealand and a couple of our key attributes of green and innovative.

“The future of manufacturing is alive in a five-person shop in Wellington, New Zealand. Think cheap, quick, green, and global. And everything’s made to order.”

Inspirational leadership from Ponoko, they’ve opened doors for all of us

10,000 Businesses on madefromnewzealand.com

Over the last 9 months we’ve been pumping along promoting and connecting New Zealand Business and have just in the last week hit 10,000 Businesses on madefromnewzealand.com. We have dished out over 50,000 outbound links/leads to member websites, with quality visitors coming from the US, Australia, UK, China and more. I chatted bright and early yesterday morning with Corin Dan on TVNZ’s NZIBusiness Show about systematically growing New Zealand’s Exports, and our journey so far.

Tim Norton, entrepreneur and co-founder of Made From New Zealand talks to Corin Dann on the NZI Business Show.

The Friday Show Episode 7

From digging a 50 metre fern sculpture on Oriental Beach to the Job Summit, The Friday Show Episode 7… Sorry so late on this and behind on posts, so many good things happening in the community, stories from people & businesses I’ve been told about and haven’t covered on here, my apologies, as much as I love to do both in parallel, sometimes you just gotta stay quiet, work with the team and get down, get stuff done and get ahead! Have a great Friday and weekend, hope all is well : )

The Friday Show #7 - Part 1

The Friday Show #7 - Part 2

To the finest people in the world…

I can no longer be excused as a young punk in my twenties, today I’ve walked around the corner to 30 and look back smiling at the years gone by.

I have been fortunate to have sunk everything I’ve got into helping make some of the things I think need to happen in this come to life, from PlanHQ, Silicon Welly, Made From New Zealand, Challenge for Change, StartUp and The Naked Trainer, and tried to turn the ideas and the things I love into businesses, so I can spend more time helping and working with people who love making stuff happen. Some of these ventures have gone great and are firing, others just starting, others simmering and have brought more lessons than money so far, but all of them have brought amazing people and the experiences that define a full life and the platform to do anything going forward.

I am surrounded by people who love, care, think, try! People who do what they do because it means something to them, because they have a vision for where they’re going, a fire in their belly that gets them up in the morning and keeps them going through all the challenges and into the night… Some are right next to me, some are around town, and the country, and world, they’re all part of the community that makes my life and the things I’m involved in happen… Everytime my face shows up somewhere, there is a world of people making it happen, everytime I launch a new site.. a world of individuals and their passion, their time, their hard yards… I am part of a community that makes things happen.

When I look around I see people I admire… proud to call my friends… and privileged to roll with as a crew. We rock it out working together on everything from running a entrepreneurial co-working space, developing New Zealand’s global business community to chatting to the Prime Minister. If you see us from the outside, you get a glimpse of what we’re upto, if you chant in person, you’ll start to se a story that runs deep into the viens of enlightened souls who will risk anything to move the world in the ways it needs to be.

And when it comes time for my birthday… While I don’t expect anything, I come and find the office filled with baloons, and the smiling faces of some of the great people in my life, happy to share another great day together.

Thanks to everyone who has helped me out over my life, and to everyone in the Silicon Welly who has heped me out, backed me up, hooked me up with people, stuff, confience and good vibves.

It’s early days, but we’ve all made a good start together, we will change the world, coz it’ll just be way better…

Enjoy your days and make the best of it.