Top Tips for Taking a Taxi Abroad

Fri, Jul 22, 2011 At Plendi we see taxi receipts from all over the world. Foreign taxi receipts can be tricky. Currency conversions are a pain, and because they are often cash expenses, a lost taxi receipt means money out of your pocket. We shudder to think how much lost taxi receipts have cost us over the years.

Plendi makes things easier by storing your receipt safely and converting the fare back to your own currency.

This got us thinking about some of the other tricky stuff with foreign taxis. It’s not exactly like hailing one at home. Customs and habits vary from one country to another. Here’s some tips to help you on your way.

How Recognize a Taxi
New York, San Francisco and London Taxis are easy to spot, but it’s not that obvious in certain countries. Some taxis don’t event have a sign.
For example, you recognize taxis in Amsterdam by their blue plates.
In Ireland, a taxi can be any type or color of car, but the yellow roof sign is quite visible.
Taxicabs in Bangkok come in all colors, and all have roof signs.
German taxis are cream-colored with a black and yellow taxi sign on the roof.

Front Seat or Back?

This is the eternal question! It depends on the country, and on you.

In the UK and in Ireland, it seems that if you feel chatty you sit in the front seat and if you’re not in the mood, stay in the back, eyes on your phone.
In Germany, it’s common habit to take the front seat. It’s more friendly.
In Australia, the default is the front seat. If you sit in the back seat, it feels like you’re being chauffeured and it’s difficult to enjoy the conversation.
In Rio, there are no seatbelts in most of the taxis, so it’s safer to sit in the front

But… in the US, sitting on the front seat may be difficult as the taxi drivers have all their stuff on the seat. Also there’s often a divider between the front and rear seats. Maybe to keep the driver safe or to respect passengers’ privacy?

Should I Tip? How Much?

In general, tipping 10% of the fare is the right thing to do, but any attempt to overcharge you or take the “scenic” route cancels this obligation.

In Australia, a driver would be tipped if they initiate a good conversation.
In France, taxi drivers expect a 10% tip, but it’s not compulsory

But be careful..
Offering a tip to a Japanese taxi driver may be seen as an insult to him and his company since in most Asian countries, the correct amount to tip is absolutely nothing
In Italy and Turkey, taxi drivers may keep the change without you telling them to do so.

Should I take the first taxi in the line ?

It seems it’s an international thing. Even if the law says that you can choose whatever taxi you want, it’s normal to take the taxi at the top of line.

But if you want absolutely the big shiny red taxi, you have the right to take it. Other taxi drivers probably won’t be happy because the one in the front has been waiting longer, but C’est la vie!

Travel safe and enjoy your trip !

Plendi Customer Profile : Lord Ekomy Ndong

Wed, Jul 6, 2011

Lord Ekomy Ndong ☥

Rappeur français, Artiste, Producteur

Client chez Plendi depuis Janvier 2011
www.lordekomy.com
@ekomy

The interview translated in English can be read below.

Parle nous de toi et de ta musique

Je m’appelle Lord Ekomy Ndong, artiste et producteur hip hop originaire du Gabon, Afrique centrale.
Africain dans ses sonorités et ses thèmes, mon Hip Hop est celui d’un gabonais d’aujourd’hui qui s’interroge, recherche, réfléchit sur le contexte dans lequel il vit, son histoire, son identité, sa culture, son rapport avec le reste du monde…


Quelles sont tes influences?

Le rap old school, conscient, qui a bercé mon adolescence, m’a “formé” et a donné les grande lignes de ma propre musique aujourd’hui. Mais plus largement ; les contes et épopées africaines comme le Mvet du Gabon influencent considérablement mon approche d’écriture.

Tu es plébiscité dans ton pays natal, le Gabon. Quelques mots à ce sujet?

Le Gabon m’a vu grandir et pas seulement artistiquement… Voilà presque 20 ans qu’avec mon Groupe MOVAIZHALEINE l’on represente musicalement nos origines. Je pense que l’énorme reconnaissance que mon pays me renvoit me vient aussi de cela.

Un prochain album ou projet en préparation?

Mon nouvel album, long format est sur sa rampe de lancement… une dédicace aux grandes personnalités que l’histoire renie, une chronique de notre époque, un appel a l’integrité, le tout en musique.

A quelles fins utilises-tu Plendi et en quoi est-ce une solution qui te convient?

C’est un moyen simple de classer, ranger, trier les reçus rien qu’en prenant une photo sur mon téléphone. Avec la capacité de les retrouver à tout moment. C’est très pratique pour moi.

Autre chose que tu as envie de nous faire partager?

Hum peut-être mon actualité musicale… :

Interview in English

Lord Ekomy Ndong ☥

French Rapper, Artist, Producer

Plendi customer since January 2011
www.lordekomy.com
@ekomy

Tell us a bit about yourself and your music
I am Lord Ekomy Ndong, Hip Hop artist and producer from Gabon, in Central Africa. My Hip Hop music is African in sound, it’s from someone who wonders, tries to understand and thinks about his life, his background, his identity, his culture, his relationship with the rest of the world.

What are your influences ?
Old school rap rocked my adolescence, which shaped me and gave me the roots for my own music. But more broadly, African tales and epics, like the Mvet du Gabon greatly influence my approach to writing.

You’re famous in your home country, Gabon. Do you want to share some words about that ?
Gabon saw me grew up and not just artistically. I’ve been writing about our history for almost 20 years with my band MOVAIZHALEINE. I think that’s where the recognition in my country comes from.

Are you working on something at the moment?
My new LP record is just about to be released… It’s a dedication to people that history is denying, a analysis of our time, a call for integrity. All of that in music.

What are you using Plendi for and how is it working for you ?
It’s a simple way to organize, tidy and sort receipts by just taking a photo with my phone. And I can get everything whenever I want. It’s really useful for me.

Anything else you’d like to share?

Hmmm… maybe my music news?

New iPhone App is Live!

Tue, Jun 21, 2011

Our new iPhone app is now available on the Appstore.

A few weeks ago, we released our new Android App. Now, it’s the turn of the iPhone app to get a makeover.
The iPhone app now has all the latest features, some bug fixes, and a nice new look.

When we asked our customers about the first version of the app, two big concerns stood out:

1. If they hadn’t come to Plendi.com web site before downloading the app they didn’t really understand how the app worked or what they were supposed to do.
2. The App didn’t communicate the process very well, and it didn’t reassure users that everything was working as it should be. “Where did my receipt go? How do I know you have it?” Was a common concern.

”

New features-Reminder

There is now on the new iPhone app a brief visual description of the Plendi process and some short help messages and instructions to guide people through.

We added a tracking screen which shows how many receipts you’ve sent, how many have been processed, how many are in the queue waiting to be processed, and the total value of all receipts in your Plendi receipt manager.

Every time you send a new receipt the counters refresh, and you can see at a glance the status of the receipts you’ve sent us.

Go ahead, try the new app and give us your feedback! We are always glad to hear from you !

Our first Kiva Loan – Jashon Kalanza in Kenya

Mon, May 23, 2011

Thanks to all of you who answered our survey, we made our first Kiva Loan !

Plendi is all about helping people manage and track their expenses so that they can focus their time on building their business and their dreams.

We’re committed to making small loans now and then to help business people around the world build their dreams.

Jashon Kalanza is 32 years old and married to Eunice, who supports him in his business.

He operates an M-PESA, which is a mobile money transfer operation. He works from Nairobi’s city center.

His business is very busy because most people, and especially those in business, use mobile banking instead of carrying around currency. He has been in business for the last three years.

This is Jashon’s first loan with KADET, which is The Kenya Agency for the Development of Enterprise and Technology (KADET) dedicated to economically empower its clients by providing financial services to improve living conditions of micro-entrepreneurs and their children across Keny.

Jashon plans to increase his floating capital that he gets from Safari.com.
He also wants to venture into the furniture business, so he plans to buy timber for making beds, chairs, etc.

Jashon hopes to have his own business premises instead of renting, which will grow in expense in the future.
He hopes from his returns that he will expand his businesses and give his family a better life.

The $975.00 Loan request has now been 100% funded ! Good luck to Jashon.

Plendi Customer Survey Results

Wed, May 18, 2011

Last week, we sent a survey to a group of our customers to help us learn more about how we could improve our Plendi.

We’d like to share a couple of results with you:

40% of respondents had heard about Plendi through word of mouth. We’re delighted to know that our customers are spreading the word about Plendi. Thank you so much, and keep up the good work!

People had a lot to say about pricing.

• - 30% of you thought Plendi should cost up to €5.00 a month.
• - Another 20% of you thought Plendi should cost between €5.00 and €10.00 a month.
• - Some of you thought Plendi should be totally free. We think that would be awesome too, but we can’t provide a useful, quality service without any revenue to support it. Sorry about that, folks.

We thought about what you’d told us, and decided to make some changes to our pricing. We’ve reduced the price of our “Light” monthly account to €4.95 and the “Classic” monthly account has come down to €8.95. You can see the details of the new accounts and prices here

We’re not forgetting the 10% you who said they had some issues with the mobile apps. We know it’s frustrating when stuff doesn’t work the way it should. We recently released a new version of Android which fixes a lot of the bugs and quirks you encountered. We have a new version coming for iPhone very soon, and our BlackBerry app is in the works.

Thank you very much to all of you who took the time to do the survey
As a thank you, we entered everyone who completed the survey into a draw for a €50 Amazon or iTunes gift voucher. Congratulations to Enda Madden – your entry was the one pulled from the digital hat!

Plendi Customer Profile: Caroline Smith

Mon, May 9, 2011

Welcome to Plendi’s first customer interview and profile. We have an amazing group of customers from all over the world. Each few weeks we’ll be interviewing one of them.

Plendi customer since February 12, 2011

Caroline Smith

Wedding, Baby and Portrait Photographer

Photos by Caroline – www.caroline.ie
@CarolinesPhotos


Tell us a little bit about your business and the services you offer?

I am a photographer specializing in baby and wedding photography. My main focus is on baby photography. I have an entirely portable studio so that I can do photo shoots in my clients’ home. This is very important for babies as they can be scared or upset by strange surroundings and they are likely to be much happier in their own home.

How did you get started?

I realized after I got married that I wanted to do something that kept me in the wedding business. After being engaged for 3.5 years it was hard to not be involved in weddings anymore. I was always interested in photography so I thought I might make a good wedding photographer. So I trained myself up, bought all the equipment and after a very short time I had more than enough bookings to keep me going. I love photographing weddings, the day is so enjoyable and I have such fun with all the couples.

Recently though I have decided to change direction slightly and concentrate more on baby and child photography. Personally I prefer it as it is less stressful and I think the job satisfaction is better. I have never had anything but positive feedback from my wedding customers but at the end of the day we all find fault with ourselves in photographs but nobody ever thinks their baby is anything other than perfect and the reactions reflect this!

What’s the biggest challenge in running your own business?

I think the biggest challenge is trying to juggle everything. I work full time in the IT industry, work part time as a photographer and I have a little 6 month old girl called Róisín (a husband and two dogs) to look after!

What’s the best thing about it?

I honestly think the best thing about my job is the reaction I get time and time again when people see their edited baby photographs for the first time. It is also brilliant to be able to take such nice photos of my own little girl.

Do you have a favourite photo you can share with us?

I have a million favourite photos mainly of Róisín, it’s hard to narrow it down to just one so I attached a little collage with a few!

New Android App

Fri, Apr 29, 2011

Today we released a new version of our Plendi Android App.

Our first Android App was very much a first attempt. We built the simplest app that we could so that we could get it into people’s hands as quickly as possible and work with users to find what they really needed and wanted from the app.

Customers told us two key things about the Android App.

1. If they hadn’t come to Plendi.com web site before downloading the app they didn’t really understand how the app worked or what they were supposed to do.
2. The App didn’t communicate the process very well, and it didn’t reassure users that everything was working as it should be. “Where did my receipt go? How do I know you have it?” Was a common concern.

The Good News

The new version of the App works to address these issues. We’ve worked in a brief visual description of the Plendi process and some short help messages and instructions to guide people through.

More importantly we’ve added a tracking screen which shows how many receipts you’ve sent, how many have been processed, how many are in the queue waiting to be processed, and the total value of all receipts in your Plendi receipt manager.

Every time you send a new receipt the counters refresh, and you can see at a glance the status of the receipts you’ve sent us.

The Bad News

The first Plendi Android App was built for Android OS 2.2 and up. It wasn’t very pretty but it worked well on phones running 2.2. We made a mistake and made it available via the Android Market to phones running Android 2.1

It behaved terribly badly on phones running Android 2.1. Bad App, bad! This caused some customers serious frustration, and we’re really sorry.

There are some significant differences in the development API for versions 2.1 and 2.2. The key ones, from our perspective, have to do with handling the camera settings and preview display.

We’ve tested our new app on a variety of phones running 2.1. It works perfectly on most of them, but not all. On a small number of handsets the image preview is distorted and rotated. The receipt image that gets sent to the Plendi servers is perfectly clear and legible, but the user can’t see that on their phone.

So, we’ve decided to make the app available in the Android Market only to phones running 2.2 and above.

We’re making the app available to people running 2.1 as a direct download, below. Our testing suggests that it should work just fine on most phones, but we can’t guarantee that it will work on all. We’re going to continue working on the 2.1 version, and we hope to release it for 2.1 via the market very soon.

Plendi Direct Download

What’s Next?

The iPhone app is getting the same treatment and a new version is coming up soon.

Our BlackBerry app is in development. We have an Alpha version working, and expect to start testing the Beta version in the next month weeks.

We’ve had some great feedback and suggestions about how to improve the Plendi receipt manager and are working to implement some of them. We’ll update you on those changes and improvements soon.

Plendi and FreeAgent Get Together

Wed, Apr 13, 2011 We’ve just pushed FreeAgent integration live. Here’s the press release.

Mobile apps, web-based accounting, and a little bit of magic mean more money in your pocket.

Plendi and FreeAgent partner to save freelancers and small businesses time, money and tax.

Dublin, 13th April 2011 – Plendi, a Dublin-based mobile expense management company and FreeAgent, the award winning online accounting system for small businesses and freelancers, today announced a partnership.

“Everybody hates tracking and managing expenses. I talk to freelancers and small business owners every week who are overwhelmed with paperwork and losing money because of it. Together, Plendi and FreeAgent make it easy to track every expense and claim every VAT amount, no matter how small, so our customers can get out from under a mountain of paper and get back to building their businesses”, said Fergal Murray, CEO of Plendi.

Plendi takes the pain out of tracking out-of-pocket expenses. Customers take a picture of their receipts using Plendi’s iPhone or Android app. Each receipt is transcribed by Plendi’s data entry staff, and the image and transaction data are permanently stored in an online receipt manager.

The partnership with FreeAgent means that the transaction data, including the date, vendor, net, VAT, and total, along with an image of the receipt are “automagically” recorded in the customer’s FreeAgent account. If the receipt is in a foreign currency, it is converted and recorded in the customer’s own currency in FreeAgent.

“As of today you can send your receipts to Plendi and see them appear automatically in FreeAgent. There’s no tedious data entry, and the receipt is stored securely as soon as you take the picture. You can still claim expenses from a client or deduct them from your tax bill even if you lose the paper receipt. Because Plendi works globally and converts currencies it’s a great expense tracking solution for our customers in the UK and all around the world.” said Ed Molyneux, CEO of FreeAgent.

Florian Dargel, Investment Director of Silver Reel Partners and customer of both Plendi and FreeAgent said “FreeAgent makes accounting simple, and Plendi has been a godsend for getting a handle on my expenses. This integration boosts my productivity even further – it’s a bit of latterday magic, I think.”

Plendi mobile apps are available for iPhone and Android.  

The Plendi iPhone app is available for download at the Appstore
The Plendi Android app is available for download at the Android Market

-          Ends   -

UK VAT on Mileage

Mon, Apr 4, 2011

aka “How not to give an extra £124 million to the government each year”

Years ago I had a boss, Brenda, whose favourite catch-phrase was “It all adds up!”. She would gleefully pull the paperclip from an inbound letter and drop it into the paperclip container on her desk, saying. “It all adds up!” (She also brought in breakfast for the entire staff every Friday morning – she wasn’t miserly spendthrift, she just hated wasting money on the boring stuff.)

She built an amazing, successful business from the ground up. It was a great place to work and a huge amount of fun. And Brenda was right, it does all add up.

Here’s an example. In 2010 UK businesses failed to reclaim £124 million in VAT because they didn’t have receipts for fuel expenses.

£124 million! That’s a lot of paperclips! Or Friday morning breakfasts.

The rules from claiming UK mileage expense are a bit complex, but not impossible.

Mileage rates vary from 25p to 40p depending on the type of vehicle and the number of miles driven each year.

The rates are posted on the HM Revenue & Customs site here

The fuel portion of those rates varies from 10p to 23p depending on the size of the engine and the type of fuel. (Told you it was complicated!)

The fuel rates are updated around every six months or so and the current rates are posted here

You can claim VAT on the fuel portion of the mileage allowance. So…number of miles driven for business in a year * fuel portion of the allowance * 20% VAT = VAT claim on mileage.

But here’s the key thing. Even though you claim mileage allowance based on miles driven, and the fuel portion of that is pre-set, you cannot claim VAT on the fuel portion unless you have receipts demonstrating that you’ve paid at least as much VAT on petrol as your calculated VAT amount.

There’s a somewhat complicated explanation for this having to do with EU law and secondary legislation which the fine folks at Tax Assist UK explain. (That link answers a specific question about mileage claims for employees, but the rules are the same for self-employed/freelancers.)

In short, if you don’t want contribute to £124 million in unclaimed but otherwise eligible VAT claims, keep your petrol receipts. Each and every one of them. You not might need them all come time to claim your mileage expense, but better to have them than not.

We’d be happy to help you with that, of course

TechCrunch covers Plendi seed investment

Wed, Mar 30, 2011
TechCrunch has been pondering whether Plendi’s investors got a receipt.

They did. It was about twenty pages long and had 8 signatures.

TechCrunch: Can I Get Receipt For That? Plendi Secures Investment.