I've started playing around with a hosted website solution BigCommerce. It looks very reasonably priced and powerful enough to do what I want. And quite simple to use to boot. Fingers crossed it has everything I need (it does the kits that I've desperately been wanting!). I have some skill in this department, but not enough to do it all myself. I'll still need to enlist the help from a web designer to get things sorted. To get the payment facility sorted you need a merchant facility with a bank, and a payment gateway service (eWay, PayPal etc). Once I have the T'c and C's sorted with my legal team, along with the product info and a front page, the bank will review and subsequently approve the merchant facility. I'll get a payment gateway account and then get that connected to BigCommerce. From there I can start taking orders and we're in business (again)!
We're getting serious now - I've just set up a company structure, and will start using that as of next week. Mentally that has been a big milestone for me. I've always wanted to have my own company! It's a real line in the sand too - it marks where a little entrepreneurial venture has turned into a real business. No turning back now, too much time and money is at stake! BAS statements, GST, Tax Invoices - here we come!
I'm also setting up to use Saasu - an online accounting package. The IT geeks call this type of service "SaaS" (Software as a Service) - a subset of Cloud based computing. Hence the name Saasu. Saasu has some pretty nifty features, like Aussie banks account feeds, aswell as the ability to connect to eBay AND BigCommerce through connectors (cloud integrators do this for you). At the end of the day, I can check all my accounting stuff online, no matter where I am. And if I need to share access I can just grant a level of access commensurate with the bookkeeper's/tax agent's requirements. The cool thing about all this is that all of my order data from eBay aswell as from the Webstore will be funneled into Saasu - one place to view everything. Fingers crossed it all works out! I'll keep you all posted on the progress here!
