Choosing an invoicing solution
March 26th, 2008 by Robert
I recently started a couple web site projects for a client and needed an invoicing solution. I didn’t put much thought into it at first as I was more focused on the actual projects, then I needed to send an invoice and realized I didn’t have one!
The quick and dirty approach
The first thing did was fire up Open Office Writer and create a simple invoice. Nothing fancy. No logo, no colors or fancy fonts, just a simple table with the work done and cost.
While not the most professional looking invoice, it served its purpose and Open Office has a nice export to PDF for me to send it off to the client. Given that, I started looking for online solutions to my invoicing needs.
Lots of Choices!
A simple Google search revealed that there are quite a few online invoicing solutions with a variety of features and costs. I started looking at a few of them and liked what I saw. Then I came across a post on FreelanceSwitch that has a quick summary of seven online invoicing sites.
A couple such as Blinksale and SimplyBill I had seen already so I focused more on the others. Most of them have the modern ‘Web 2.0′ look and feel as far as colors and layouts. Some also have modern web application features like AJAX functionality, making the application more pleasing to use.
Features
My feature requirements were fairly straightforward. I wanted invoicing (duh), PDF export of an invoice and fairly inexpensive. The PDF requirement was a given in that I wanted to be able to send a document to a client for easy printing and distribution on their end. Unfortunately not all the invoice companies provide this capability and a couple said “just have them print the page to a PDF driver”. Uh, yea. Not everyone is savvy enough to even have a clue as to what that means and web pages don’t always print nicely as it is. PDF export is a must.
The more I looked at the offerings the more features I started to want. I liked the idea of a time tracker even though I don’t normally charge by the hour. I would still like to use it to keep an internal record of my time for each project. This kind of information will help in providing estimates for similar projects in the future.
Customization
Customization is a definite plus. Beyond a simple logo upload, the better solutions allow a lot of control over the look of your invoice. This allows you to really personalize your invoice to your company or brand. A quick thought here would to customize your invoice to match the look and feel of your website. Very handy.
Proposals
A few allow you to write up a proposal to send to a client, and then turn that proposal into an invoice with a simple click or two. May not be helpful to me for most of my work but it couldn’t hurt.
Misc. Features
A few of the offerings have the capability to integrate with Basecamp, which is an online project management and collaboration application, for importing clients. Very handy if you are going to use Basecamp for that functionality.
Cost
Most of the invoicing solutions I found are very reasonably priced, with plans well under $50 a month. Most of the offerings that I found had a plan in the under $20 range that suited me quite well. For the most part cost goes up as project counts go up or by invoices sent, etc.
Most also have a free version or at least a 30 day trial so you can try them out.
Which did I choose?
I haven’t made a final decision yet, but I’m leaning towards Cashboard. It seems to have more features that the others for a comparable or lower cost. They have Basecamp integration, great customization capabilities, a nicely time tracker widget and for my needs would only cost me a whopping $12 a month. Not too shabby.
Whatever your requirements are, you are sure to find a nice solution with the variety of online solutions.
