FreshBooks‘ motto says it all: “Still Using Word or Excel? It’s time to evolve.” If you are still using Excel or a PDF template or even if you still use something like the ridiculously-named Microsoft Office Accounting Express 2009 to handle your invoices… there’s something better out there.
Online invoicing systems, while not always compliant with an accounting system (if you use one), can provide you with access to invoice review/creation from wherever there’s a computer as well as an easy-to-use interface that’s far better than any of the aforementioned methods.
There are four different invoicing systems I wanted to briefly cover so you can quickly get an idea for which one is best for you.
First up is Blinksale. Blinksale is actually the invoicing system I started off with when a slew of Web 2.0 invoicing apps first emerged. Sign up for a free account and you’ve automatically got an easy-to-remember location at which you can manage your invoices: yourname.blinksale.com. With the free account, an unlimited number of employees can send 3 invoices a month. I know… that seems 100% backward but it’s worked for me until now. (Step it up a notch to the $12 plan and the same number of employees can send out up to 50 invoices per month.) In fact, the free plan has you covered with all of Blinksale’s features with the exception of SSL encryption and the ability to send invoices as PDFs.
Blinksale offers almost everything you’d come to expect from an online invoicing suite including the ability to create draft invoices, send invoices by email or export those invoices to PDF (the two premium plans allow you to send the PDFs directly from your site), mark collected invoices as paid, etc.
As of May 2009, BlinkSale’s pricing structure and overall feature listing is as follows:
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Next up is FreshBooks. FreshBooks is the big dog of this group, no doubt. They offer pretty much everything you’d need coming from Blinksale in addition to tight integration with a number of different payment authorization companies including 2CheckOut, PayPal, Authorize.net, etc. Plus, while Blinksale only grants participants of their free plan the ability to send a measly 3 invoices per month, FreshBooks allows you to send unlimited invoices… but also throws in the following 2 conditions: only 1 employee can access/send invoices and you can only manage 3 clients.
That’s only on the free plan, of course. If you’re willing to shell out some dough every month, those numbers increase. As of May 2009, FreshBooks’ pricing structure and extensive feature listing is as follows:
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Now we come to the entry with the sweetest name (hey, that counts): Ronin. RoninApp.com probably offers the most flexibility in terms of pricing options. They, of course, have a free plan (quite similar to FreshBooks’ free plan – only you can manage just 2 clients instead of 3) as well as four other plans starting at $6/mo. The $6/mo plan, dubbed “Solo,” allows you to create an unlimited number of invoices, recurring invoices and open projects for 15 different clients. Of the three systems mentioned thus far, this is probably the best-priced option for freelancers with just a few clients under his/her belt. Of course, you’ll have to jump up two plans to get integration with a payment auth service… which, in this case, is PayPal Express.
As of May 2009, Ronin’s pricing structure and overall feature listing is as follows:
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Alright, the last one in the showcase today is the one with the weirdest name: CurdBee. Of all the apps we’ve explored, CurdBee is probably the most friendly to penny-pinching (those who are forced to bee and those who choose to bee – delicious pun very much intended) freelancers. CurdBee, unlike the others we’ve covered, offers just two plans: a “standard” (or “free”) plan and a “pro” plan priced at a very pleasant $5 per month. Both the free plan and the pro plan enable you to create an unlimited number of invoices for an unlimited number of clients – which is something we’ve yet to see anywhere else with a no-cost plan.
Like all of the others we’ve covered, CurdBee offers a great and intuitive interface with a great set of customization options available on either plan. As of May 2009, CurdBee’s pricing structure and overall feature listing is as follows:
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In addition, CurdBee allows you to extend your plan even further using $5/mo “modules.” For instance, a freelancer or small business offering monthly, quarterly or yearly web hosting services can purchase a “recurring billing” module at an additional $5/mo. This module, according to the site, “allows you to specify the amount, frequency, duration, and payment method of your recurrent invoice, letting you forget about it.” In addition, you could purchase a 2CheckOut module for an additional $5/mo to supplement that recurring billing feature. That is, of course, if the built-in integration with PayPal Payments and Google Checkout doesn’t suit your fancy. (The latter two merchants are enabled on BOTH the free and pro plans… yet another way that CurdBee stands apart from the pack.)
I’ve personally always been a big fan of the add-on/module structure of paid sites (it’s the same reason I prefer Firefox as my primary browser) which is yet another reason this particular company rose the ranks to become my favorite online invoicing system. So, for those of you just getting started with online invoicing, I definitely recommend CurdBee.
Indeed, the world of online invoicing systems is vast and we couldn’t cover all of them in-depth so we just picked the four that impressed us the most. Here are some others that you’ll want to check out if you plan on signing up for an account in the near future: SimplyInvoices, Tick, Harvest and SimplyBill.
Know of some others we should have covered? Let us and your fellow readers know about it/them in the comments.
Testing new comment spam prevention plugin… Pls disregard.
Hey All
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Cheers!!!
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Testing.. I am a spammer.. :) Kidding..
Check out http://www.workingpoint.com/invoice-your-customers/ – We also do invoicing and bookkeeping. Thanks much!