I completed the Seattle Ghost Marathon Thanksgiving day weekend in 3:07:59.

Rahul and I ran the first 14 or so miles together, but his recurring Achilles injury flared up and he wisely decided to stop around mile 20. We’re planning on another joint attempt on Feb 19 (http://birchbaymarathon.com/)

I’ve been able to run half-marathons pretty fast (ran my fastest a few weeks prior: 1:29:23), but have generally faded after the first 15-18 miles. I faded in this run also, but the fade was much less pronounced - go figure training works.
The event itself was great. With only ~200 runners running a mix of halfs, fulls and ultras, and starting at a mix of times (they allowed non-qualifying runners to start early), there always seemed to be a runner in sight. The course is a nice flat out and back along Lake Washington (actually, a double out and back) and only rarely separated from the water.

One runner attempted an Olympic qualifying time, and unfortunately just missed it by a couple of minutes. This added to the general excitement around the event - word would pass among the other runners about whether she was on pace, etc.

I loved having my family there for the run though. My sister and her husband were awesome supporters before and during the race, making sure I was eating pasta and drinking water the night before and banging pots and pans for the runners. I think this was also the first time my dad saw me run which made it extra fun for me.

Sophie is also just beginning to understand the concept. When I would go for training runs, she would say ‘Daddy is going to run. With Uncle Rahul’. And when I returned she’d say ‘Daddy is all sweaty. He needs to shower’. My sister made Sophie a sign and she cheered for Rahul and I. Later in the day she recounted the morning:

I cheered for the runners! I said ‘Go Daddy Go’ and I said ‘Go Uncle Rahul Go’. And I held a sign.

a

My general bias is for web-based solutions for everything admin, so I never considered desktop solutions. Once you have a finance department at your company your needs will be different. My objective is to build our business as large as I can without needing a finance department (or person). SAAS-only solutions make it a ton easier to engage accountants, bookkeepers, etc. helping further delay the need for a finance person (overhead).

Paycycle (now Intuit Payroll) for payroll
I can’t recommend Paycycle enough. In fact I would make any this service the central component of your accounting decisions. While I was initially lukewarm on the service, I have rapidly grown to consider it essential.

Maybe ADP compares, I haven’t looked at it and their pricing isn’t on the web. But, I’ve rarely seen an offline company offer a better online solution than an online-only company.

Few first-time entrepreneurs really understand the web of tax and payroll issues that they need to deal with when starting a company. There are monthly payroll filings and tax payments to the IRS. There are 2-3 quarterly payments likely required by the state, often to different agencies (payroll tax, unemployment tax and maybe workers compensation). And there is a whole slate of annual payments.

Paycycle files and pays nearly all of those taxes. If they can’t pay and file, the calculate the numbers for you. Deductions, vacation, bonuses, holidays, commissions … handled.

Expensify for expense reports
While a corporate business card is the single best way to handle all expenses at a super-early stage company, invariably you end up needing to pay cash for cab rides, etc. Once you begin adding employees, you’ll need to handle their expenses as well.

Expense reports suck and Expensify makes them way more streamlined. Creation, submission, approval and payment of reports is super-easy, and smart phone apps let you easily upload photos of receipts. Not to mention the benefit of having digital records of all of this.

On the downside, the Expensify UI can be a little clunky. While it is way better than most business services I’ve used, it feels disjointed at times and I’d like to see them focus more on raw usability. Exporting the data isn’t as smooth as I’d like, but my gut tells me we can improve on our setup (and writing this tells me that I should make sure we investigate that ASAP). With that being said, I haven’t found a better solution.

QuickBooks Online for accounting
Sigh. QuickBooks is the swiss army knife of accounting solutions. It can just as easily support construction businesses, retail storefronts, condo associations and your startup. But it is really heavy, bulky and slow. The web version attempts to emulate a desktop app, and breaks nearly all web usability guidelines. I find it takes me way too long to pull out standardized reports, as well as do things that feel that they should be simple.

Still, a stunning 71% of startups use QuickBooks according to this BestVendor infographic. That is a higher market share than every other service including stalwarts like Salesforce, Google Apps, Google Analytics, etc. That 71% is compared to 5% who use Excel and 4% who use Xero.

Why?

Every third party financial service integrates with Quickbooks. One of the most time consuming aspects of accounting is getting data into the system so integration with every other service you use is critical. Even new services like Xero try to integrate with files exported specifically for QuickBooks (and do a poor job at it).

Not to mention that many of the competitors have lame limitations that severely impact their utility. For example, Freshbooks won’t email invoices (they’ll email links to invoices, but not the actual invoice).

We’re starting to reach the limits of what QuickBooks Online can do (deal with foreign currencies), and I’m definitely worried about the additional overhead we will inherit when we switch providers.

EarthClassMail for handling checks
If you are selling to enterprises, you will likely have to accept payments by check. Dealing with checks is another hassle that I’d prefer not to have to deal with. Among other annoyances, it requires the mailing and/or depositing of checks along with a paper trail to record the transaction history. Not to mention the hassle if they just get lost along the way.

EarthClassMail is a great solution to this problem. They provide a lockbox-like service that automates the receipt, scanning and deposit of checks. Just provide your customers a different billing address and checks hit your bank account faster than you could manually do yourself. The scans of checks and their related payment information also creates a perfect digital paper trail.

Nearly all banks provide lockbox services, but my experience with the ‘analysis checking’ services provided by banks has been universally miserable - they just have terrible UI. I can’t speak for all banks, so maybe there is a gem out there.

a