Now that the payment system is up and running Kachingle engineering is working on the next couple weeks’ round of enhancements.

High on the list is an improved administration tool. The beta version of Kachingle had such a tool, but because of the complete rewrite of the site in php, that admin tool no longer functions. The new admin tool will have the same functionality as the previous one, with some enhancements. As always, we learn a lot by experimentation!

We are also implementing Kachingle’s  first automated Twitter tweets. I’ve been experimenting by doing manual tweets of various information at a variety of intervals. I’ve learned a lot about what makes sense and what  is news versus noise. Our first automated tweets will be sent by Kachingle itself when a new Site signs up  — we will welcome each new Site with a tweet and a blog post.

So far the new kachingle.com website and payment system has performed flawlessly without a single moment of downtime or any bugs. There are some quirks and we are working on them. Please let us know if you see anything that doesn’t seem right or is annoying (send to customercare *A*T*  kachingle.com).

By the way, we have a terminology to describe the four phases of the money flow through Kachingle:

  • Pay-In: Kachingler’s incoming monthly $5
  • Payment: Monthly distribution of a Kachingler’s $5 to the sites they support
  • Statement: End-of-Month for Site Owners (showing them how much they received)
  • Pay-Out: If the Statement was $100+*, the movement of money to the Site Owner’s PayPal account

*We are planning to lower the Pay-Out threshold to $50 due to input from client sites (thank you Robin!) — AND since quite a few Sites are already above that threshold the first Pay-Outs will be occurring soon.

And because we are all about money (and yes, prestige and building a real-time online persona — but in our case, money makes these other things happen), we are also working on an enhanced easy-to-read truly beautiful combination end-of-month and real-time statement for our Sites.  Here’s a mock-up of the Site Statement Page:

Site Statement


[1] – Sort By should include DATE, PAYMENTS (short for Incoming Payments), and PAY-OUTS

[2] - DATE sort should be the default when the page loads, and sort order should default to newest entry first

- PAYMENTS sort order should default to largest amount first

- PAY-OUTS sort order should default to largest amount first

[3] – ITEMS PER PAGE should default to 20 (site-wide standard)

[4] – CURRENT BALANCE should have a $ sign, instead of “USD”

[5] – Add “History:” to the front of this line, make the content Kachingle Green (#81C441), and remove the mention of fees (they’re shown in the chart)

[6] - Add this line, centered and in Gray (#BBB).  (This is so we can leave $ signs off the chart itself for clarity.)

[A] – Column headers should be centered

- The following column headers clickable to sort by that column:

- Date (this is the default sort for the page)

- Incoming Payments (upon click sort “down” — largest $ to smallest $)

- Your Pay-Out (upon click sort “down” — largest $ to smallest $)

- Add a carrot to indicate which column is the current sort, and which direction it’s been sorted

- Each click of a sortable column header reverses the sort (first click: A-Z, second click: Z-A)

- When these sorts occur, the “Sort by” pulldown menu in the navigation bar should change to reflect the section

[7] - Carryover Balance column to clarify where Site Owner is starting that month ($0 if paid, balance if Payments didn’t meet $100 minimum)

[8] - Incoming Payments — what the Medallion has earned that month

[9] - Balance Due column to show the amount in the account before Pay-Out

[10] - Transaction Fees (moved from previous location on to better “show our our work”: Balance Due – Transaction Fees = Pay-Out)

[11] - Your Pay-Out (instead of “Amount Paid”)

[12] - PayPal Transaction ID — remove the “(s)” from this field name

[13] - Most recent row should be bold to help draw the eye

- This row should be live data, updating both Incoming Payments and Balance Due as Payments

[14]

– Carryover Balance, Incoming Payments and Balance Due should be links to the Payments page, taking Site Owners to the individual payments

- Dollar amounts should be justified right (if making everything in the chart justified right is easier, that’s OK too — except for the headers)

[15] – When there is NOT a PayPal Transaction ID, this field should have an explanation why

- This text is Italics and Gray (#BBB) to help keep reduce “wall of text” effect & focus the eye on actual $$

- For the active month, the explanation should read:  (cycle ends Apr 06, 2010)

- For the months that didn’t reach Pay-Out threshold, the explanation should read:  (minimum Pay-Out is changing $50)

[16] – Transaction fees should be (in parentheses an Gray (#BBB))

[17] – Payment-related info should be in Kachingle Green (#81C441) and Pay-Outs should be (in parentheses)

- PayPal Transaction IDs should have capital letters, so they look like they do at PayPal

[18] – Any zero balance should be just a “0″ (not 0.00) to help reduce “wall of text” effect and clarify the chart

[19] - SORRY, DUPLICATED THIS INFO — For the months that didn’t reach Pay-Out threshold, the explanation should read:  (minimum Pay-Out is $100)

[20] - Add Terms, Definitions & Details section — Content can be found in mockup referenced at the top of this page: