Saasu Global uses a design and engineering approach we call "full display mode". Full display mode is when we display all information rather than hiding something from our customer in a hover, click, pop-up or dialog box. Sometimes things need to be hidden because the noise and complexity created by not hiding it exceeds the speed of access and information availability benefits.
Full display mode is great for accessibility and in general for facilitating an aspect of the speeding up the web movement.
The new foreign exchange (FX) currency converter in Saasu that we have built (shown below) uses this approach. You can see FX rates in both directions in transactions, enter rates yourself in either direction or load a feed rate from a feed source. In this case xe.com.
We hope you like it.
Tick to automatically get the xe.com FX rate to load
Otherwise manually type the FX rate
Hi Marc
I see you’re comparing the solution you’re working on to the multi-currency solution that’s available in Xero.
I think you’ve pinpointed one of the key differences between our two apps: we take the approach that information overload should be avoided, instead we give the option for instant access to deeper levels of detail as needed.
I’d love for customers to compare the two solutions (once yours is released) and get their feedback on these two different approaches.
Cheers.
Philip
Head of Design, Xero
Comment by Philip Fierlinger — June 25, 2009 @ 11:42 pm
Hi Philip,
Actually I was referring to Quicken/MYOB products. I haven’t used your product so not sure how it feels to use. Generally speaking though web app developers “over-mouse” their screen designs and “under-keyboard” them in my experience.
Thanks for your thoughts!
Marc
Comment by Marc — June 26, 2009 @ 12:45 am
My main concern right now (having tinkered with both Xero and Saasu) is the availability of historical data – “Rate data in Xero is available back to 1 January 2007, so if you are setting up your organization or entering transactions on a date since then, an XE.com rate will be available.” but for Saasu I wasn’t able to get rates prior to around 27 June 2009 – there’s 2.5 years of historical currency data “missing” that would be incredibly useful for entering last year’s expenses in various currencies. That said, historical data is not free and between the $15/m option and GST, Xero will shortly be a whisker over double the price of Saasu GLOBAL ($70.40 vs $35.00).
OTOH Xero doesn’t (yet) support multi-currency in its expense claim feature which misses a key use case – employee travel expenses! Perhaps this can be achieved by entering expenses as purchases, and I’m not sure Saasu even has a streamlined expense entry feature (which would be awesome).
In any case it’s great to see you guys comparing notes and I hope you do examine each others’ products for inspiration more in future!
Comment by Sam Johnston — September 16, 2009 @ 11:28 am
Saasu can you please include rates prior to June 2009? Apart from that it’s great!
Comment by dave rosen — January 4, 2010 @ 8:33 am