Once you have completed the project or achieved a milestone, the first thing that comes to your mind is sending invoice or a bill to the buyer for your services. Sending an accurate and a timely invoice means fast encashment of your payment.
On the basis of popularity, we have listed five Web-based invoicing tools, which are easy to use, cost effective and require no downloading. You can simply access them from anywhere across the world, track and manage invoices instantly.
The list under includes five popular web based resources to create, send and manage invoices. Some of them are free while some others charge nominal fee. Along with this, they also offer additional services like time tracking, saving as PDF, project management and available 24X7 from anywhere on any computer.
We have listed these tools over their pricing:
1. Billing Manager- A product of Intuit, billing manager offers hassle-free billing so that freelancers can focus on other core functions.
Special features
• It is a free-of-cost invoicing tool
• You can create multiple customized, professional invoices
• Send them by email
• Track payment history and status
Reviews- “I found Intuit Billing Manager a strong invoicer for the very small business. Getting started takes very little time, and it shows you the info you need when you need it.” Rafe Needleman, CNET news
2. SimplyBill: This tool offers simple invoice management to all. No spreadsheet, no complex accounting required, helps sending attractive invoices in minutes.
Special features
• Easily create attractive invoices
• Send them to your clients through email
• Create quotations and conveniently convert them to invoices
• Use your images on email messages
Pricing – Free trial -30 day, plans from $5 (25 invoices / month, upto 10 clients) to $25 (unlimited invoices and clients).
Reviews- “The interface is attractive and easy to use, with plenty of ajax goodness. Prices range from free to $25 per month. A nice little app.”Pete Cashmore, Web 2.0 strategy consultant and entrepreneur, Mashable.com/weblist
3. Blinksale- Winner of webware best 100 apps 2007, Blinksale is one of the coolest looking invoicing resources.
Special features
• Design your invoices using CSS (Cascading styling sheet)
• Importing your clients contacts from basecamp.
• Send automated repeating invoices through recurring templates.
Pricing – First 3 invoices free, plans starting from $12 (for 50 invoices monthly) to $49 (for 1500 invoices per month). Unlimited clients.
Reviews- “Blinksale tackles a simple need in a straightforward way” Michael Arrington, TechCrunch.
4. Cashboard- It is one of the essential tools for freelancers and small medium businesses for increasing productivity. The intuitive to use interface and advance features makes it significant web application.
Special features
• Track your working hours then create invoices
• Send PDF invoices
• Helps view performance estimates and receipts
• Accept payments online
• Track billable and non-billable hours for yourself, your employees, and contractors
Pricing – 30-day free trial with 2 active projects, plans starting from $6 (3 active projects) to $140 (with 10,000 active projects) per month.
Reviews- “There are lots of little touches here that make it obvious that Cashboard is being built by web workers for web workers”. Mike Gunderloy, Web worker daily
5. Freshbooks- This tool has been facilitating its clients with easy to create invoices since 2004. Their online invoicing application is helping small businesses better manage their finances.
Special features
• Snail mail invoices
• Time tracking feature
• Secure tool to save your data
• Professional designing of the documents/ invoices with your company logo, color etc.
Pricing – Starts with 3 clients with unlimited invoices. Plans starting from $14 per month for 25 clients upto $149 per month for 5000 clients.
Reviews- “focus on growing your business rather than worry about getting paid” Fox Business
Hope these invoicing tools help you get your payments faster than before. Experience them and invest your valuable time more in your business to make your freelancing career a great success.
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Another billing/invoicing tool worth checking out is Intervals, which incorporates these features into a project management app. The cool thing about it is you can track your projects and time, and bill your clients, all in one place.
Had a look at it, definitely interesting. Would keep this one for a follow up on this post, when we will review more tools.
Thanx again for the input here.
Hi, good post. I have been wondering about this issue,so thanks for posting.
Thanks for your input. Keep reading our blog section for more of such posts in the coming future.
You can now send snail mail invoices from most of the online services mentioned above, and from many more, by using PostalMethods, the Web-to-Postal gateway.
Follow the detailed tutorials published here: http://www.postalmethods.com/send-mail-from and send postal letters using Word Mail Merge, Dynamics CRM, Salesforce, Billing Manager, Billing Orchard, Cashboard, Google Docs, Harvest, QuickBooks, LessAccounting, Zoho Invoice and many more.
Nice post! I’m already familliar with FreshBooks. I’ll give the other tools a try as well.
Nice Post. You can try Zoho Invoice – another invoicing tool using which you can create, send and manage your invoices online.
The one i like most is Billing Manager. It s easy and very convenience to use it. I could let any staffs try it. Thank s for your site.