Need feedback on our service.

Hi! I represent a web service called Scred (www.scred.com) - I am working there as a summer intern and part of my job is to collect feedback on our service from theater groups. Excuse me for my asking but I would really appreciate it if you took a look at the website (www.scred.com) and let me know if the service would be useful for you? Scred helps groups manage their finances: you can create a group profile there for your theater or individual production and do money transactions through the service. You can also sell tickets, collect membership fees and actually set up your own webshop through the service. An account on Scred and all of its features are free but you're charged 1,5% from direct transactions done through the service (on top of PayPal fees). Thank you in advance for your help :)

My first thought is that there are no obvious policies listed. If you are dealing with the finances of a group, I want to know what your policies are when (if) things go wrong. What happens if the site goes down - can I still get my fees for tickets paid? Nothing about the first page tells me how the site works, it just says that it does. If it does all the accounting for you, can you export the data to somewhere else (ie. Excel or MYOB)? What makes this site more useable or useful than half a dozen other similar sites which were made specifically for Australian theatre groups? "Pay back debts to organisers" - how? Is it simply you type in a paypal email address and send an amount to them? In which case, that's not offering anything I couldn't do on paypal itself. ... Just some thoughts off the top of my head. Doing a google for your site suggests a lot of plugs, but not a lot of feedback yet. Even if I had an event coming up, I wouldn't use your service: I'd be very wary about whether or not it would actually be useful and about sharing my financial details (even if it is only a paypal account) with the site. Not to mention a lot of theatrical companies don't use paypal anyway.

Thank you for your feedback! This is really useful for us :) To answer the points you've raised: - In terms of our financial policy: Money is handled by PayPal, so Scred never even has the group's money, it is directly and immediately delivered to the people in question. So even if for some reason the website is down you don't need to worry about security of your money transfers. - As for exporting data to Excel or MYOB, there is no export at the moment, although it would not be difficult to add. Our goal is to make it mostly unnecessary to export, but we do understand there's a need for that. - How is our site more useful than local Australian ones? Without actual knowledge of what is out there for Australian theatre groups, I don't know. But more generally it is the ability with our service to attach both payments and accounting together seamlessly so even someone not so familiar with accounting can do things, while the more experienced will find things easier and quicker. I also don't know if others offer the combination of collecting registration fees, membership fees, an integrated webshop (with inventory), expense claims, payments and manual transaction entry. - Paying back debts of your group: With Scred this is integrated into the accounting backend. So an organiser can first enter in an expense claim, including a photo or PDF copy of the receipt, and other details. When the group wishes to pay that out they simply click a couple of buttons. The debt and the payment are recorded automatically, and there is no need to send separate emails and copy details into Excel, or track paper receipts via snailmail. Overall the service has been in development and is still in beta. We have now reached the point where we are contacting groups and getting in early users and developing forwards according to their needs - that is why we're collecting here and that's why your responce is so valuable!

- In terms of our financial policy: Money is handled by PayPal, so Scred never even has the group's money, it is directly and immediately delivered to the people in question. So even if for some reason the website is down you don't need to worry about security of your money transfers. Maybe that's something that needs to be clearly explained on your site. Many people who would sign up to these types of sites are not likely to ask the question, but would assume that you retain some sort of info about them in regards to their finances. A privacy policy is pretty boiler-plate for any website, but especially so for one dealing with finances. - As for exporting data to Excel or MYOB, there is no export at the moment, although it would not be difficult to add. Our goal is to make it mostly unnecessary to export, but we do understand there's a need for that. I don't see how it would be 'unnecessary'. Many groups have different needs at any given time: a small independent theatre company may have one show in a venue where the venue has their own ticketing system, and another show in a venue where they must run their own. In such a case, it's likely they'd have more use for your site in one situation, and several months later want to export and import the data from your site into their own bookkeeping system which tracks all of their events. In fact, if you're looking for reasons to set your site apart from the rest, I'd suggest that having an export function is actually quite a good thing. - How is our site more useful than local Australian ones? Without actual knowledge of what is out there for Australian theatre groups, I don't know. But more generally it is the ability with our service to attach both payments and accounting together seamlessly so even someone not so familiar with accounting can do things, while the more experienced will find things easier and quicker. Well, you posted your request on an Australian-only theatrical website. We've had a number of people come here and advertise similar services, including accounting and payments, so in that sense, the only thing setting your site apart from theirs is that you're not targetting the Aussie audience. What I'm saying is that perhaps they have an accounting system that includes certain Aussie-only taxes in their financial set-up, or other such things. Which makes their site more useful (I haven't looked at them myself, I'm just trying to make a point). I also don't know if others offer the combination of collecting registration fees, membership fees, an integrated webshop (with inventory), expense claims, payments and manual transaction entry. Not to be too blunt, but isn't that something you should do? Like all other businesses, websites have a look around at the competition, see what they're (not) doing and then find a way to either make it better or offer something new. (Personally, I'd also see whether or not the competition is also making money out of it. I can't see any of these websites making a profit) - Paying back debts of your group: With Scred this is integrated into the accounting backend. So an organiser can first enter in an expense claim, including a photo or PDF copy of the receipt, and other details. When the group wishes to pay that out they simply click a couple of buttons. The debt and the payment are recorded automatically, and there is no need to send separate emails and copy details into Excel, or track paper receipts via snailmail. I have no idea how that works. If you're simply hooked into Paypal, basically what you're offering is the ability to upload a paper trail (ie. receipt), and when you want to pay, you then click a button (which presumably is simply telling Paypal to pay that amount out of their account into another account)? Is that right? My main concern is privacy: who wants to upload information about someone else's payment details into a website? Even if it's paying via Paypal, adding a receipt may include private information, which could be hacked and/or stolen. As a customer, I'd want assurance that that wouldn't happen. Secondly, I still can't see how that is better than just logging into Paypal. (Assuming that the person you're paying even wants to be paid via PP. Can you pay direct deposit to someone else's bank account, when that person doesn't have PP, via your site? Can you pay by cheque? Can you do BPAY (an Aussie payment through the postal service)? Etc etc) Overall the service has been in development and is still in beta. We have now reached the point where we are contacting groups and getting in early users and developing forwards according to their needs - that is why we're collecting here and that's why your responce is so valuable! Without creating an account for myself, this is all I can say about your site. At the moment, I don't have time for that, but I wish you luck anyway!

> Paying back debts of your group: I have no idea how that works. If you're simply hooked into Paypal, basically what you're offering is the ability to upload a paper trail (ie. receipt), and when you want to pay, you then click a button (which presumably is simply telling Paypal to pay that amount out of their account into another account)? Is that right? Yes, a paper trail and related bookkeeping. > My main concern is privacy: who wants to upload information about someone else's payment details into a website? Even if it's paying via Paypal, adding a receipt may include private information, which could be hacked and/or stolen. As a customer, I'd want assurance that that wouldn't happen. This is a valid concern, and one we should address as best as possible. Naturally hacking and stealing is a concern with any online website. We have audited our service for security and continuously keep that as an important issue. > Secondly, I still can't see how that is better than just logging into Paypal. (Assuming that the person you're paying even wants to be paid via PP. Can you pay direct deposit to someone else's bank account, when that person doesn't have PP, via your site? Can you pay by cheque? Can you do BPAY (an Aussie payment through the postal service)? Etc etc PayPal does not track the initial expense claim, it does not link to a bookkeeping engine so any payments made with PayPal (or any other service) must be manually recorded into separate bookkeeping software — both the initial expense claim, and also the reimbursements. We combine all of that into one. We have started with PayPal at the moment as it is global and offers good APIs, although we do realise there is a need for other payment systems in various countries.

Oh, by the way - thank you for taking your time to look at our website and give us some quality feedback ;) My boss is very pleased!

Is it just me or does this seem a bit strange? Surely if they want feedback they'd ask existing account holders not randomly asking a group of theatre forumites. I have a bad feeling about this. ahahhaa It's not a Wolf, It's an Alaskan Malamute.

It's not that strange. People who run websites usually do alpha and beta tests, much like those who make computer games. Research is better done beforehand, but asking around on relevant forums is fairly commonplace. (I say this having done it myself for a start-up dot com) Whether or not the site is useful, legit or anything else has no relevance to them asking for feedback.

I realize that my request for feedback seems somewhat out of the blue given that I am not a member of this forum and I do not belong to a theater group myself. Part of my job as a summer intern in Scred is to collect feedback from our current users as well as from new target groups. The reason I addressed my request here is that I want to find out how people who are not familiar with the service at all see it. I am not trying to sell anything here - my communication in this forum is purely to find out opinions about Scred and gather some useful comments to improve our service.