KashFlow goes free, becomes a PaaS player

It’s going to be a KashFlow day here so bear with me. Duane Jackson just announced (via Twitter) that KashFlow is free for the firast year to existing MYOB, Quickbooks, or Sage users. The offer runs through to 30th April. According to the Kashflow site:

Register for a 60 day free trial of KashFlow here
If you like what you see then send us your Quickbooks, MYOB or Sage product to our postal address, along with your username.
We’ll then upgrade your account to a paid subscription with an expiry date of one year after your trial expires. So in effect, you’re getting 14 months for free.
Just like all of our customers, you’ll get free support and upgrades for life.

I have my reservations about offering services for free but understand the logic. In talking with Duane the other day, he says the company is getting many inquiries from resellers. He also says there is a logic in his company paying the reseller to onboard new customers as opposed to simply applying a reseller discount on the first year’s subscription. The logic goes that by forgoing the first year’s revenue of £180 he’s providing an attractive alternative while keeping marketing expenses at a minimum. It’s a novel idea but doesn’t get away from the need for additional marketing activities. It also means that KashFlow will need a mechanism for rewarding resellers.

One advantage KashFlow has is that it is profitable. The incremental direct cost of making this type of offer is very small – perhaps £20 per customer per annum so is not a huge drain. However, if hugely successful, then it might strain the resources of what is still a small provider.

One direction that KashFlow could go is as a platform as a service (PaaS) provider in similar fashion to Salesforce.com. It is already in that position with the Solo and MyCake deals it recently struck. However, whether KashFlow has enough by way of functionality to become a more broadly based platform play remains to be seen. The fact KashFlow has ’skin in the game’ would suggest he’s got a shot at such a direction though my sense is that CRM is where people congregate.

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Tagged as: Accountancy, CRM, Duane Jackson, KashFlow, Platform as a service, quickbooks, Sage, Twitter