NetBooks pushes revamped small-business app suite

Startup NetBooks is making a second run at the nation's millions of small-business users with a new company name and revamped on-demand suite.

The San Francisco vendor's software, now renamed WorkingPoint, includes functionality for invoicing and accounts receivable; expenses and accounts payable; contact management; inventory management; financial reports; cash management and double-entry bookkeeping. Down the road, the company will add time tracking and an iPhone client.

A single user can tap the application's base features at no charge. Beginning Aug. 1, additional users will cost US$10 per month.

Users can store "as much data" as they wish in the service, which is hosted on Amazon Web Services' Elastic Compute Cloud, and there will never be a separate charge for data storage or hosting, according to the company.

NetBooks was first formed by Ridgely Evers, who is credited with playing a key role in the development of Intuit's popular QuickBooks accounting software.

The initial NetBooks software, released in 2007, was developed offshore and "unfortunately, it did not perform," said current CEO Tate Holt. Evers has since moved on from the company.

But there is plenty of continuity, as Intuit's cofounder, Tom Proulx, is chairman of NetBooks' board, Holt said.

However, the company has scrapped the old application code in its entirety, rewriting it in Ruby on Rails.

It was also necessary to change the product's name to avoid confusion with netbook personal computers, which have come into vogue during the past couple of years, Holt said.

WorkingPoint is not meant as a replacement for QuickBooks, according to Holt. Instead, the company plans to target the many brand-new companies formed each year.

"We believe that if we focus on companies that are just starting out, that is when a business is at its most cash-critical stage," he said. "Why not be free? Why have a barrier to entry?"

NetBooks is hoping to hook entrepreneurs with a no-charge product, and then gain subscription revenue as their businesses mature and they add users, he said.

WorkingPoint will grow along with them, with new features delivered every month, according to NetBooks. The vendor is getting plenty of suggestions from beta testers, such as support for multiple currencies and UPS/FedEx integration.

Meanwhile, NetBooks is aware of the challenge it faces in the days ahead, Holt said. "There are many, many people that have gone after the small-business market, and there's a big graveyard there," he said.

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