Best Five Invoicing Tools for Freelancers and Small Businesses
An important part of being a freelancer is managing yourself as a one individual business. Now I remember a while back when I told a friend that together with my wife we're a business of two people… myself working on projects and my wife managing things. And the guy said something like "What's she managing? You?" We had a laugh back then, but I knew exactly that managing things and projects was a full time job. A crucial thing for any successful small business or freelancer is getting money in. Let's say you completed the project successfully, got client's agreement on everything… Now what?
To get the money into your account you need to do one more thing: issue an invoice and send it to the client. That, of course, if you have a very nice client who pays the invoices as soon as they get in. If you have other kind of clients, you'll have to track them down, agree a payment schedule and send a bunch of kind reminders to actually get them to pay your invoice. I'm sure some of you know what I mean. But lets not get into many details and focus on the invoicing part for the moment.
Fortunately we live in times when there're all kinds of apps to make our lives easier. As for invoicing for small business and freelancers… there's an app for that. Actually there are a lot of apps for that. Let there be gone the times of invoicing using a word or excel file and welcome the times of using an app that makes invoicing for small businesses and freelancers easy and painless. So we'll just point out for you five apps that will sort your invoicing needs.
Freshbooks
Freshbooks will save you hours of your precious time each month by helping you send and manage your invoices online. Freshbooks makes invoicing online easy and it accepts online payments with Credit Cards, e-Checks or Paypal. You'll be able to send automated reminders so you won't have to bug your clients to pay you. Also you'll be able to send invoices personalized with your logo and colors and the system will help you better track your time on a project via your computer or mobile device.
Zoho Invoice
Zoho Invoice allows you to create, track and export your invoices online and get a clear image of your finances by recording expenses regularly. The application offers the ability to design your own invoices using their invoice templates and it is integrated with the popular online payments systems. Zoho Invoices allows time tracking and it offers support for multiple users with different permissions.
The application offers an accessible price plan and it is free for 1 User / 1 Project / 5 Customers.
Billings
Billings is a beautifully designed app for Mac users that offers time-tracking and invoicing services with a pay/month plan or a one time fee for the app. If you decide to get the application you'll have a easy time-tracking using a convenient menubar timer. Your invoices will look perfect as Billings combines powerful features with stylish design. You can choose from a variety of customizable templates or create your own design with the built-in editor. You'll be able to send your client an invoice for specific tasks or a consolidate invoice for all completed work with an easy click of a button. You can also send statements to your overdue clients or schedule a recurring invoice that you need to send every month.
CurdBee
CurdBee is a simple application that makes billing a breeze for Small Businesses and Freelancers. Say goodbye to your paperwork and use CurdBee to send price estimates and invoices to your clients, track time and expenses for yourself and accept online payments. You'll be able to easily survey your finances and see the hours you've worked, the money you've made and who of your clients have still overdue invoices. The free plan offers great features (also the monthly fees are great, btw, if you choose a more complex plan) and you'll even be able to bill in multiple currencies and have your data backed up automatically.
Invoicera
Connected to all the major online payment gateways, Invoicera will help you manage all your invoices in a snapshot and keep track of payments from your clients, all in one place. Invoicera is a simple to use, but more complex application targeted especially to small businesses. It offers multi language and currency support so you can better relate to your clients and your data is backed up to ensure complete safety. Invoicera help you keep track of time spent on projects and send invoice to your clients directly from time sheets. It also offer your clients multiple payment options with some of the most popularr and widely used online payment systems.
