Frequently asked questions about Bean Counter

Register interest

  • Bean Counter screenshots

  • How much does Bean Counter cost?

    Ooh erm… that's not quite been decided yet. There has to be some small charge because people will undoubtedly want a wee bit of support.

  • Can I host Bean Counter on my own server?

    Yes, that's what it's there for. You can customise it and put it on your own server, so you you can run it at http://clientarea.mysite.com/ and use CSS to style it to your branding.

  • Can Bean Counter be put in a subfolder on my site?

    No, it must be ran as a domain or subdomain, but anyone with a bit of PHP knowledge could customise Bean Counter to run in a subfolder

  • How long does it take to install Bean Counter?

    A few minutes (provided everything goes smoothly)… Read about the Bean Counter install process here.

  • I don't have PHP5 and/or MySQL5 and/or Apache on my server can I still install Bean Counter?

    In short no.

    PHP5 carries so many great advantages (from a coder's perspective) over PHP4 that it is simply a must-have.

    Many servers now include PHP5 and it's worth getting in touch with your web host and asking them if you ahve PHP5 and what you have to do to run it e.g. with oneandoen.co.uk you must make a minor change to your .htaccess file to run PHP5

  • How do I know if my server will handle Bean Counter?

    There is a test file here which is PHP file inside a zip file. Simply downlaod it and uplaod it to your webspace and it will tell you if everythign is compatible.

  • Can I resell Bean Counter?

    No.

    If you buy a licence for Bean Counter then that is just for you. You can by a license on behalf of someone else but you can't buy one copy of Bean Counter and sell the code onto hundreds of other people - that's not fair.

  • Is there a demo of Bean Counter?

    Yes, here it is: Bean Counter online demo

  • Can I help with Bean Counter's development?

    Maybe. Get in touch via the contact page and let's see what happens. There is no budget to pay people who help out with Bean Counter's development at this stage.

  • I can't get Bean Counter to work…help!

    Okay, there's bound to be a few people experiencing issues. If you're having trouble with Bean Counter not working first follow these simple instructions:

    • Did you check your server for compatibility first?
    • What is the problem exactly and on what section of Bean Counter is it happening on
    • Can you send a screen-grab of your problem?

  • How do I install Bean Counter?

    Check out the detailed installation instructions here.

  • How secure is Bean Counter?

    As Bean Counter is designed to be hosted by you - the security is therefore up to you to a certain extent. Care has been taken to try and make sure rogue data can't be added and that your clients can only see their invocies/quotes and that only you/your accountant can see your full cash flow data.

    It is advised that you put the Bean Counter on an SSL secured server e.g. https://clientarea.mysite.com.

    Bean Counter uses cookies to remember you so you don't have to login all the time. These cookies are 'salted' and you can make them more secure by editing the secret phrase in your config file. This will mean people won't be able to fake the cookie (without extreme effort) and login as you.