Receipt Runner
Delivers your receipts for you
Since the beginning I've added a "Collected by Receipt Runner" section to the PDFs Receipt Runner generates, in the hope that some accountant or bookkeeper would receive the PDF, get curious, and reach out.
Today, that happened for the first time! Have a coffee tomorrow with an accountant who says she's ready to sing from the rooftops about how brilliant Receipt Runner seems. 🚀
Trying to figure out if I should give up on my current direction or keep pressing on making Receipt Runner, so I've set a deadline at 100 paying customers by 2021, or I have to quit this project and start something new.
I've made at least one classic blunder:
- Way too much time spent building 👨💻 instead of spending it researching, marketing, and selling to ensure I'm building the right thing
However, not all is lost. 6 people have willingly paid for this and are using it. Not too bad!. I'm using it. It works! There's at least some validation!
My current hypothesis is that it works for you if you:
- Have a lot of receipts by email, as you do most business expenses online
- Waste time finding and delivering those receipts for bookkeeping
- Do it in batches, instead of on the go (if you do it on the go, you probably won't use RR as it's currently set up)
And there should be more than 6 of those people out there.
Therefore: Until I've gotten the number to 100 or gotten enough learning from trying to do that to know what else to do, I'm going to spend all my time pushing the three things I should have been doing all along:
- Researching who this could work for, and what other product I might pivot to if it's too few
- Selling it and seeing what the response is
- Marketing it and seeing what the response is
And if that ain't working, I guess I have to pivot?
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- Site is currently down.
- Honest Feedback: Your ICP is anyone who doesn’t have a bookkeeper. Anyone that has a bookkeeper would never use you. Unfortunately, this narrows your market down a ton. For example, your whole product is just a tiny feature within Bench - they auto index receipts. This is common for any bookkeeper. B2C is your only hope, but then you’re up against Mint, Lunch Money (an awesome IndieHacker company), etc...
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The site went down? Phew! Seems to be up again now at least. It runs on Vercel Now, so should be scaleable.
That's super interesting feedback! Thank you.
A few questions, as we don't really distinguish between bookkeepers and accountants here in Norway. From what I can tell googling, bookkeepers are basically just correctly filing receipts you've delivered to them, right?
- Does a bookkeeper collect your receipts for you, or do you have to send them to him/her?
- If they collect for you, do they typically have access to your email so they can find receipts in there?
- Is collecting receipts to hand them over to your bookkeeper a hassle?
Typically the workflow would be something like this for my current customers:
a) Accountant/bookkeeper asks for a list of receipts based on a bank transcript from your credit card or debit card
b) You collect all you haven't already delivered and send the receipts over to them (this is where Receipt Runner can help you)
c) Accountant/bookkeeper files everything for youHow does it work for you?
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Hey Daniel,
Have you conducted the research to support spending a long amount of time building out an MVP? How much time are you currently spending on marketing and research?
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Currently, I've planned my time to 80-90% marketing and research until I reach 100 customers or am certain something about the product has to change to reach that milestone. The remaining 10-20% is for bug fixes and critical stuff only (or the occasional fun little tweak when I need it as an upper).
Previously I first did a few weeks and months of market research, etc. for a slightly different product 😬 before pivoting during that research for technical reasons to this one. I never REALLY did market research for this one, though I knew I could use it myself. (Not the brightest moment of my life).
In total I must have used 3-5000 hours on this thing now, and it's paid me all of 360 USD.
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Looks really neat. I think what would stop me from buying is the absence of paper receipts. While most of my receipts are digital, some are still not, and that would be annoying to switch. If you're interested check out https://paperflow.com/data-capture/ from danish guy Toke Kruse. They used to be called bilagscan, and does basically what you're trying to achieve. Just mentioning this, because there's def a market for this, and they made some good money on it. You could probably start out by using some simple ocr or just straight up a picture with some annotations.
Good luck, and don't give up, you seem to have a nice project here.-
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Thank you for very useful feedback!
Would you be willing to walk me through your workflow? Where would you like Receipt Runner to step in?
I guess for me I use three apps: One for gathering my paper receipts (standard take-pic-of-receipt), one for gathering my email receipts (Receipt Runner) and then my accounting software (Norwegian Fiken) does the scan-to-data feature on both the email and paper receipts for me.
For me, Receipt Runner is all about just getting the damn things, not necessarily processing them. It should make the job of finding them easier.
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Hey @DanielJackson, some thoughts on next steps (refining your message before pivoting):
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existing customers - they chose Receipt Runner -> why? what was their consideration process? how do they describe pain they have to solve? what are the alternatives they've considered? how do they talk about their life before / after? are they all in the same niche (all freelancers? small business owners? same location? anything else in common?) -> run customer interviews, and get that data
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what's going on with the website traffic? if you get plenty of visitors, are they not your target audience (wrong traffic source), or is the website not doing a great job of converting your people (copy / design / argument -> run user research sessions or ask IH community for help)?
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if you want better paid traffic results, go all out on competitor research, do competitor messaging, see what their story is - and how you can stand out in comparison to them?
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re: traffic - how can you get in front of the right people? Personal finances blogs? Small business accounting blogs? (guest posting is a time suck, but you get in front of the right people - assuming you figure out who they are)
Hope this helps!
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Thank you for excellent advice @EkaterinaHoward!
I'll do all of those.
existing customers - they chose Receipt Runner -> why? what was their consideration process? how do they describe pain they have to solve? what are the alternatives they've considered? how do they talk about their life before / after? are they all in the same niche (all freelancers? small business owners? same location? anything else in common?) -> run customer interviews, and get that data
Currently doing interviews for this. This is fantastic advice.
what's going on with the website traffic? if you get plenty of visitors, are they not your target audience (wrong traffic source), or is the website not doing a great job of converting your people (copy / design / argument -> run user research sessions or ask IH community for help)?
Few visitors at all except for the last two days due to this post and some other stuff I've done. Gotten 5 downloads and 1 sale as well (so now 7/100).
I think the website is doing a decent job converting to sales (roughly 0.5% visitors -> sales last time I did a campaign, higher when excluding traffic from channels like IH)
if you want better paid traffic results, go all out on competitor research, do competitor messaging, see what their story is - and how you can stand out in comparison to them?
Good advice. Currently I'm not running paid ads until I know more about the market and the message.
re: traffic - how can you get in front of the right people? Personal finances blogs? Small business accounting blogs? (guest posting is a time suck, but you get in front of the right people - assuming you figure out who they are)
Not sure, but I'm sure trying to find out!
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Love it.
I am a freelancer / business owner of 25 years and receipts all over the place. The ones I miss are the ones that get sent to my email. I have an open banking credit card I pay for most things on and photograph the receipts from within their app which then updates Xero. However I am left with big gaps because of stuff I miss via email (Digital Ocean, Uber etc.) My bookkeeper is analog, she is happy to trawl through a bin bag of paper to find the receipts but would never look into my emails, she emails me tells me what is missing and what to look for in my 5 email accounts. I have tried all sorts as, to be honest, trying to find receipts gives me anxiety to crippling levels (silly I know) .
I am going straight into a paying customer of this product.
Really happy to talk, I run a digital transformation agency without all the bullshit. I look for products that fill niche problems for clients. Its mostly digital transformation for middle aged business owners too scared to change but can't see a way "out" without transforming/automating some of their work(s) processes.
I may be of some help, you never know.......
Also happy to be a tester for you here in the UK - its a genuine offer, no strings attached.
Cheers
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That's so cool! I would love to make Receipt Runner work for you and get your feedback.
How would you like to communicate? Not sure if there's a private message function here, but hit me up on the chat at https://receiptrunner.com (or directly at https://go.crisp.chat/chat/embed/?website_id=f8f89c9d-a87e-4077-bf91-62d8c9b19da1 ) and we'll get in touch :)
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Slick website and app. You are talented! Maybe pivot this to consumer. As mentioned, business is saturated. The tool you have built is a digital locker. There may be a market for receipt tracking for consumers regarding product warranties, home insurance disputes, bills and so on.
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Sorry, not sure I know what a digital locker is... 😬
To the best of my knowledge there is no other app that does what Receipt Runner does, that is - that searches your email for you to find receipts. (There used to be one called http://paperworks.io/, which found all receipt-like things without matching them to your files, but it was shut down by Gmail API rules changing).
All the others are focused on paper receipts, or you forwarding emails. Many need you to even printing the emails as PDFs before uploading them.
When you say the market is saturated, which apps did you think of?
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Well with a physical locker, you put the paper work in right? But this is cumbersome when you want to find something. The Digital locker is what you have; scan, import and file receipts etc.
The saturation part is regarding accounting and when self employed/SMBs need to retain receipts for bookkeeping/accounting expenses etc. The big apps such as quickbooks and so on have this scan and file receipts aspect already in their mobile apps which is the current use case right?
So perhaps a pivot to consumer may be less competitive and more fruitful. The end goal would be to eradicate paper receipts altogether thus you have a digital locker :)
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Thank you for your feedback!
For me, Receipt Runner is all about just finding the damn things, not necessarily scanning or filing them. It should make the job of finding and delivering email receipts easier (after all, email receipts are already "scanned", so to speak)
I guess for me I use three apps:
- One for gathering my paper receipts (standard take-pic-of-receipt from my accounting suite. Also scans-to-text/data.)
- one for gathering my email receipts (Receipt Runner)
- and then my accounting software (Norwegian Fiken) stores them for me and does the scan-to-data/text feature on both the email and paper receipts for me.
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Nice website, looks facebook inspired. One thing I find weird is that the pricing page has a huge promise for refunds (great!), but there is this test-refund button which seems to be making a mock of it by throwing out some random cash images. I know you wanted to keep it fun, but it seems to be belittling your refund promise. Might consider.
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Thank you for the feedback!
I love the little button. It might be a darling for me. (It is a darling).
Anyone else wants to chime in? Keep the wiggly thing or drop it to be professional?
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As writers say, "Kill your darlings".
This button is distracting from the action you want your website visitors to take (aka sign up & pay you), and refund guarantee is taking up a lot of space (vs focusing visitors on the 1 goal -> download + set up + save time on painful paperwork)
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My thinking was to make sure you got the message about the refund. I don't much mind people taking a detour to click it.
For me, it's a part of the personality of the product, but I see that it might be too whimsical for parts of the market. I guess it's another thing to pivot on (branding from playful to serious) if it doesn't work out!
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What are you doing currently to acquire customers? How did you get the 6?
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The first 6 (7 really, one has churned) was acquired in january & february in three main ways. Unfortunately I didn't track things too well, so I'm not sure exactly how they split, but I think it's something like this:
- Gmail Ads (0 customers, few visits. Way too much money per click)
- Facebook ads (0-2 customers, hundreds of visits)
- Facebook posts and hustling in different forums (2-4 customers)
- Reddit posts and hustling in different forums (1-2 customers)
- IH posts (0 customers, hundreds of visits)
- Slack channel hustling and outreach (0 customers)
I spent about 1000 USD on ads in that period, but I don't think the ads are what got me the results.
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Six paying customers is amazing. Do you know of the term "long slow SaaS ramp of death"? If this is something people actually want you should persist with it but change your expectations to "slow growth" and experiment with different marketing tactics. You should cultivate a foraging mentality. If there's not much to do while growing the user base and you're itching for more, you can always start a second project in parallel to satisfy the development/exploration urge. Good luck!
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Foraging mentality! I like it.
As soon as I reach roughly 5.5k YRR the product pays for itself (biggest, by far, expense is the bank connections in northern europe, costing me 4k yearly). That's about 100 customers, and is part of the reason for that number.
I'm funding this by freelancing, so I can easily cover those costs, but if it's going to grow at the current rate of 6 a year then it's probably a little too slow a ramp of death...
How's your slow ramp of death going?
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All of my ramps have a gradual decline. Somehow I keep coming back to try again. :D
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I don't see why you're just picking an arbitrary number as a yardstick of how validated your idea is.
You know your main bottleneck as a startup is distribution, right?
Meaning if you can find 10 people who love your product, you'll probably be able to find 100 or even 1,000, assuming the market size is sufficiently large.
Startups are mostly a marketing optimization problem.
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Thanks for the feedback.
I guess I want some yardstick to keep me honest so I won't continue doing this indefinitely if there are other things out there that I might to that would give more traction.
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It’s good to get some KPI you have to reach and take decision based on that, but why 100? Just don’t give up if you don’t reach a random number, if you get paying users learn from them until you make it..
Focusing on marketing early is key.
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Perhaps...
I'm spending a lot of time on this project, and it's a lot of fun, but there are other projects out there that might get better reception.
I need about 1000 sold seats to live 100% off Receipt Runner at my current pricing.
Of course, if it feels different in January and I have 25 customers but a promising different path to profitability, then sure! But at some point, I have to cut it out and go for something new :/
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Hi @DanielJackson,
Just browsed your product page and what came into my mind was “i would try to increase the prices at least 3x, seems a a cheap product for the problem it solves”.
Also, how are the other KPIs of the project?
Best
José
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Had the same idea when I started needing to get the invoice receipts to my bookkeeper. Never got around starting it. So nice someone else did it! One niche that might find this useful are digital nomads, I guess.
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This comment was deleted 6 years ago
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Designed from scratch, though it uses a little bit of Ant Design (http://ant.design/) for icons etc. to keep it aligned with the app itself.
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After testing with the first three customers and getting rid of (hopefully) most bugs and idiocies, I've been procrastinating getting the word out... 😬
So I made a bet!
I texted my friend and said: "If I don't have 20 more customers by Sunday I owe you 50 USD"
The race is on! First step is a video ad on Facebook, targeting:
- Small business owners
- Who are early adopters
- Who are interested in accounting automation
- Who use Gmail
The ad can be seen at facebook here:
https://www.facebook.com/receiptrunner/videos/2616567771963457/
Excited to see what the ROI is, or even if it will convert at all...
Just got my first paying customer!
I launched http://receiptrunner.com/ very softly yesterday, trying to get it to 1-5 early adopters that I can follow up on and make sure are happy before I spend more time trying to hustle more people :)
So far the customer seems happy! Also had one sign up who couldn't connect his bank yet, so will fix that one bug 🐛 and I might just get two customers!
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did you develop it by your own or hired a programmer?
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It's 95% my own code. While coding it I didn't always know how to do stuff, so I've hired people to help out with some things that I later rewrote or dug into to understand. I've also hired someone to coach me on coding skills. :)
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It's even someone I don't know personally (though we've met professionally).
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This comment was deleted 6 years ago
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Thanks! Let me know if the app works for you or not :) It's very early stage, so all input is really appreciated.
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After fighting for a year and almost destroying my keyboard at least once, Receipt Runner 1.0 is now out for Windows, Linux and Mac 🚀🎉🧾🏃♂️!
Check it out at http://receiptrunner.com/ !
Next week I'll start pushing it, but I wanted to drop it here first as IH has been a huge inspiration to make me go through with this!
Why build it?
I've been freelancing since 2008 get a lot of receipts in my Gmail 🧾 ☹️ . Every two months I deliver receipts to my accountant and have to locate the right ones, print them to PDF and deliver them. That was too tedious, so two years ago I built a simple version of this tool to help myself automate it.
Receipt Runner simply does the exact same work I would have to do manually, only it does it automatically. It's pretty magical 🦄
It's been so useful to me that I've spent the last year learning a lot more to be able to make it into a product. It's been a journey!
Hopefully Receipt Runner can help a few of you avoid the big receipt work as well 🎉
Let me know what you think!
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