Since the early/middle of 2007 we’ve been hard at work on a new product. It’s something thousands of our customers will use every day, but not a single one of them will sign up for it or log into it. It’s a silent partner. It’s called Queen Bee.
What is Queen Bee?
Queen Bee is the name of our internal unified billing, admin, and stats platform. Prior to Queen Bee, each one of our pay products had a different sign-up process, a different billing engine, a different coupon engine, a different affiliate engine, and a different back-end admin. That was fine for a while, but last year we decided it was time to take advantage of economies of scale and unify.
How about an example?
Many of our customers have multiple Basecamp accounts. Some may also have a Highrise account or a Campfire account.
So, let’s say you have two Basecamp accounts and a Highrise account and you want to update your credit card because it’s about to expire. Before Queen Bee you’d have to log into each account separately, click the Account tab, click the “change card” tab, and update your card. But now all you have to do is pick any account to update and you’ll see a screen that look like this:
You’ll see that if you have multiple accounts with us on the same credit card you’ll be asked if you want to update all the accounts or just one (or two) of the accounts. This makes our customer’s administrative tasks (updating cards, for example) a lot easier. Hassle be gone.
What else can Queen Bee do?
Queen Bee can do a lot of good stuff, but we’re not completely finished porting all our products over to it yet. We just wanted to give you a quick peek at what we’ve been working on. Stay tuned for another taste of royal jelly as Queen Bee development rolls on.
P.S. Big ups to Jamis for his incredible work on Queen Bee so far. From many different angles it’s been our most complex undertaking to date. So many moving parts, so many criticalities, so many hooks and loops and connections. All things considered, it’s been incredibly smooth sailing. Well done Jamis!
Rick
on 28 Jan 08Will you open source Queen Bee, or is it so specific to your business that you cannot?
Thanks all for the interesting post.
DHH
on 28 Jan 08Rick, we have no intentions of open sourcing Queen Bee. It’s quite specific to our business.
Robby Russell
on 28 Jan 08This is great. It’s really interesting that you guys are doing this right now… because we’re rebuilding our entire billing system as well and it looks like we’ve made a lot of similar decisions in how we handle multiple applications with one central application.
Eric
on 28 Jan 08I am curious.
What is your average transaction size? $20? $30? $50? $70?
David Bednarski
on 28 Jan 08I assume this will consolidate many multiple transactions from same customer/credit cards using multiple services? Without being too specific, does this add up to significant processing savings?
Michael
on 28 Jan 08But can it bill advance dates NOW, a la Dreamhost? Now that would be flexibility in billing management!
Rick
on 28 Jan 08Does this mean that now, if I have 3 separate accounts but using the same credit card – I will be billed just once per month instead of 3x (for each account).
DHH
on 28 Jan 08Rick, not at this time. But it’s something we’ll look into. One complication is that some corporate cards have limits on how much they can spend in a single purchase. So if the limit is $250 and you have 3 subscriptions at $100 a piece, they’ll go through individually, but not as one charge.
Sonali
on 28 Jan 08Fantastic! we have a Basecamp, backpack and highrise account and it was such a pain to track each of those payments individually (especially since we couldn’t use our check card for Highrise, but could for the other two). A unified billing system solves those pain points.
Love the name too!
Scott deVries
on 28 Jan 08Feel free to delete this, but I just want to let you know the link on the product blog to this page doesn’t work – brings me to a login screen.
Jamie Huskisson
on 28 Jan 08I second the comment from ‘Scott deVries’, the links on both the pages and the RSS feed on the product blog just link to some admin log-in screen.
You know what would make Queen Bee 10 times more useful? Being able to point the invoices to an e-mail that isn’t the account creator’s. i.e. [email protected]
Matthew Bodaly
on 28 Jan 08billing plus unity plus stats
all in one. I’m excited by this. I have several accounts and this will help me out.
Chris Kampmeier
on 28 Jan 08I ran into this on Friday afternoon, when I needed to change the card for three of my four 37s accounts. It worked perfectly and saved me a bunch of time, and I was delighted. Thanks for that.
Josh A.
on 28 Jan 08Just curious: was Queen Bee formerly called Compass (I remember seeing something about a 37s app called that somewhere on your site).
Matt Radel
on 28 Jan 08Great idea. Personally I’m not a fan of constantly going to different apps to adjust settings & whatnot. Just do it all from one spot.
DHH
on 28 Jan 08Josh, no Compass is a different idea. But also one around centralization.
Rick
on 28 Jan 08Was the Compass project/idea accomplished with OpenID?
Jason Grigsby
on 28 Jan 08Does “product” mean something you are going to sell (software as a service I would assume like the other apps)? Or just something that you are using behind the scenes for your business?
Dhrumil
on 28 Jan 08I love royal jelly. Shit is mad healthy for you.
Great work guys.
JF
on 28 Jan 08Jason: Everything we build for ourselves is a potential product, but this one is specifically tailored to our own business so a public release as-is is unlikely.
Tom
on 28 Jan 08Maybe TMI, but I’m wondering if Queen Bee uses Authorize.Net’s new CIM/ARB capabilities?
Justin
on 29 Jan 08I’m getting the impression that Jamis is a literal Genius.
Rick
on 30 Jan 08Between this, OpenID and the whispers of “compas” on this thread I’m liking the theme of centralization. We use 37signals apps everyday and excited about the possibilities of data sharing between apps or a common dashboard. One can only wish…
Javi
on 31 Jan 08This looks like a great step forward. I wonder if other than billing you can integrate application features? Like adding Highrise CRM to Basecamp as well as adding the Backpack calendar to basecamp.
I am a fan of the simplicity of the individual systems but think how much everyone will benefit from an integration of the apps. At least I know our company would.
Can you imagine having a good CRM application, like Highrise, side by side with Basecamp? Wow, think of the possibilities. (Salesforce, here we come!).
Garrett Dimon
on 31 Jan 08Seems like a nice little surprise at the right time. It doesn’t appear to include Backpack accounts though. Is that true, or am I missing something?
This discussion is closed.