It’s long been a fascination of mine as to why people go into business for themselves - I’m a student of this entrepreneur’s leap of faith, and it’s something I always dig into when out to dinner with FreshBooks customers.

Why do freelancers go solo? Their reasons vary: some are pushed into it, some are pulled into it and some have never known another way. But any way you slice it, striking out on your own is risky and it takes courage. Here are the four reasons I’ve learned that people strike out on their own:

Early this morning we released version 4.6 which includes some new features we hope you will enjoy.

What’s new in this release?

A Redesigned Generate Invoice Page

Your generate invoice page has been redesigned to be even easier to use. In addition, you can now choose which details you wish to display or omit when generating invoices from your timesheets.

An Improved Search Interface

Your search tool in your account has been upgraded from a pop-up window to a slide-down interface which will hopefully save you even more time when searching for information inside your account.

Here’s a great little tip for you shoebox accounting types out there.

Problem: when you look at your bank statements, it’s hard to remember where your income comes from. For example, maybe you deposited $1500 on July the 3rd. If you have 9 cheques for $1500 in your FreshBooks account, how do you know which on is which?

Solution: when you deposit a cheque, don’t give it to a bank machine, give it to a bank teller and ask them to “add a credit memo” with your client’s name (”ABC Corp”) or an invoice number (”Inv #2122″) when they enter the deposit. This makes it really easy to look at your bank statement and know who/where the deposits came from, especially at the end of the year when it’s hard to remember the details of your deposits.

People think they are smarter to purchase from big public companies with millions of customers and hundreds of products. It’s not true. Here’s why:

Misalignment of interests
Your interests are not aligned with the interests of big companies. To a big company, you are a number, but to a small company, every customer counts. Ask the CEO of a large company to take a moment to speak with a solitary paying customer, and they probably won’t make the time. Their customers are analysts, shareholders and partners. How does that align with your interests? It doesn’t.