From its inception Mclowd has been practicing what we preach, leveraging crowdsourced resources for all of our internal development activity and eliminating all unnecessary overheads and other costs.

In fact we now use resources found in the Mclowd Marketplace for our internal accounting. Mindspace Outsourcing – which has a long history of working with Australian-based SME clients – can be found on the Marketplace at a cost of US$8.00 per hour.

(On a personal note SMSF accounting support at the Porter Super Fund is provided by another Marketplace Professional – Geetha Srikant – at a cost of US$20 per hour).

Click here to see the impressive list of service providers now available.

Platform Update

Ongoing development of the free SMSF accounting Platform is ramping up with Version 1.4 now live, including these new reports:

  • Comparative Reports – Users can now compare their Statement of Financial Position and Operating Statement at different points in time
  • Investment Movement Report – this report shows investment movements over a nominated time period.

Release notes are available on the website, and as promised in our last Newsletter we have now published a detailed Product Roadmap, which provides longer-term visibility to upcoming releases.

Based on your feedback, we have also scheduled a number of usability improvements for the New Year, including an upgraded dashboard-style interface, and other reporting features.

Marketplace

We’re very excited to see non-SMSF professionals like Mindspace joining the Marketplace in increasing numbers.

It was always our intention that the Marketplace expand beyond self-managed super to become a global source of professional services. So if you know someone running a small-to-medium enterprise please tell them they can now use Mclowd to drive down the cost of their accounting by up to 90%.

The Mclowd Marketplace has also been significantly enhanced, with the following new features now live:

  • Milestones for Fixed-Price Tasks
  • Feedback and Ratings
  • Enhancements to the messaging system

The ability to publish feedback in relation to completed Tasks will be an important tool for ensuring high quality outcomes are maintained.

Congratulations to the Marketplace Product Team for laying the foundation for rapid growth in the New Year.

Community Forum

We have seen a fantastic response to the Forum.

Trustees can now get answers to their SMSF-related questions and reach out to Marketplace Professionals for ongoing support. Click here to take a look.

As a tool for communication and knowledge-sharing the Forum will also complement the SMSF Wiki (to be launched in early 2014), which will provide a more structured database of information, as well as free document templates contributed by the Crowd.

Like everything that happens at Mclowd, the Forum and the Wiki are designed to contribute to a step-change in the level of empowerment amongst the Trustee Community while at the same time driving down costs.

Advisory Board

I am also very pleased to announce that Gretchen Alt-Cooper has joined the Advisory Board.

Gretchen brings to the Mclowd Community a wealth of SMSF experience, and will play a pivotal role in guiding the ongoing development of the Platform.

We are also looking for additional Trustee Representatives so if you are interested in taking a greater role in the Community please contact me at ashley@mclowd.com.

As this will be our last Newsletter for 2013 I would like to wish everyone a safe festive season and thank you again for your continued support of our efforts to improve net returns for investors.

Kind Regards

Ashley Porter

Managing Director
Mclowd Pty Ltd

M    +61(0) 402 117 935
E     ashley@mclowd.com
W    www.mclowd.com