Online Invoicing

Start making invoices online

December 8th, 2011

Jana

Tired of making your invoices in Microsoft Excel or Word? Looking for a better way to invoice? Why not look at an online tool or system that is going to help you create and issue quotes and invoices? So let’s get your business billing out of the dark ages and shed some 21^st century light on it!

Making invoices manually is laborious, costly work, consuming precious recourses and causing any sane business owner to strive to avoid it. Does any of this sound familiar?

Resource intensive: If you need to make and send invoices manually you need to set aside at least 15 hours a week to do this. You also require more staff members to handle the workload.
Mistakes happen easily: An accounting nightmare, duplicated invoices number or skipped or missing invoice numbers! This can very easily happen when invoicing manually often leading to hours of auditing trying to resolve the issue.
Time consuming: Those using Excel or Word for manual invoicing will be very familiar to copy and pasting line items and typing out product and service descriptions on each and every new invoice they make.

3 tips to successfully selling your services online

November 24th, 2011

Jana

Lots of SMME’s and freelancers would like to start supplementing their income by selling their products and services online. Expanding from a shop front to online sales can often times be tricky, but can, if done correctly, make your customers experience hassle free.

Have a look at the points below to see how online sales will work for your business:

No website required

So you think you need to spend money to make money. That is true in a sense, but when it comes to small businesses who want to sell their products and services online you don’t need to spend big bucks to get what you want.

Using a ready hosted online sales system will cut out the need for a pricey website and online shop software, while still giving you great results. Investigate your options and go for an online solution that offers you everything your business needs.

How to simplify your recurring billing

November 14th, 2011

Jana

So you have heard about recurring billing, but think it’s only for large enterprise level businesses. Did you know that you can apply recurring billing to your SMME to enhance your cash-flow and you’re your clients a truly hassle-free way to pay? Before we look at how recurring billing can benefit your business, let me walk you through a basic definition of what recurring billing actually is:

So, recurring billing, what is it? Recurring will charges an amount more than once to your credit card or bank account. The amount is usually the same and recurs on the same date each month. But recurring billing can also happen for variable amounts on any term or frequency on any date. Recurring billing is great for bills that never change amounts, for example: A monthly subscription to your favourite magazine.

Now that we know what recurring billing is, let’s see how recurring billing can make your business better:

Creating professionally formatted invoices

November 8th, 2011

Jana

Issuing professionally formatted quotations and invoices is an often overlooked way to create a positive image for your small business. If you do it right your quotes and invoices can instill trust in your customers and keep them coming back for more.

Layout and design

You don’t need to be a designer to make a correctly laid out invoice with correctly formatted logo, colours and layout to match. Search the internet for examples of how professionally formatted invoices look or invest in software or a system to automatically generate these invoices for you. A lot of web-based services will allow you to create invoices free of charge while some charge a nominal monthly or once-off fee.

Important fields

Whether you are creating tax or non-tax invoices it is vital to have all required fields present on the quote or invoice. If you are issuing tax invoices check your local tax regulations to make sure that all legally required fields appear.

Spelling

Don’t you just hate it when you get an invoice where the issuer has spelt your name or address incorrectly? Worse still is if there are spelling mistakes in product or service descriptions that appear on it. Incorrect spelling on invoices can go a long way to harm the image of your business. Almost all systems, applications, programs and software have a spell check function – use it.

Follow the three easy steps above and you will be well on your way to sorting out your online invoicing!

Recommended systems section launching soon!

March 4th, 2011

Jana

Check out the recommended systems section for outstanding tried and tested online invoicing systems.

The online invoicing systems list

March 2nd, 2011

Jana

As promised, below is a list of online invoicing systems with links to their free trial or demo accounts.

Most online invoicing systems offer a limited free account or a 15 to 30 day trial. I would encourage any business owner to test drive any online invoicing system first before making a final decision on subscription and usage. It is important to remember however that the FREE accounts offered by most online invoicing systems do come with limited functionality. Often times limiting the amount of clients and users you can add as well as invoices you can issue. Some of the more advanced systems also don’t include their best features in their FREE packages often times leaving out advance recurring billing , past due warning or support ticketing systems that may be avaialble on more advance packages. It is therefore also important to go through the systems documentation. features tour to see what you are missing out on.

Some of the more basic systems, or systems that are still in a beta state do offer completely FREE registration and usage. I’ll identify a few of these in a later blog post. Getting something for free is obviously a great thing, I love it! But sometimes you have to pay for a quality system. It’s best to determine what your needs are before diving head first into a completely free online invoicing system. You may just come up for air on the other side and find your self and your business limited by the constraints of the system if you haven’t done adequate research on the features it offers.

With that in mind have a look at the free account, demo’s and free trials that the online invoicing systems on my list have to offer:

Ball Park	Free Trial
Bill4Time	Free Trial
Billfaster	Free Trial
Billflo	Free Trial
Billing Boss	Free Trial
Billing Manager	Free Trial
Billing Orchard	Free Trial
BillMyClients	Free Trial
BillQ	Free Trial
Billy: The Billing Engine	Free Trial
Blinksale	Free Trial
BusinessOnClick	Free Trial
CannyBill	Free Trial
Cashboard	Free Trial
Chargify	Free Trial
Cheddargetter	Free Trial
ClearBooks	Free Trial
Curdbee	Free Trial

Welcome to the online invoicing blog!

March 2nd, 2011

Jana

Welcome one and all to the online invoicing blog!

This blog will act as a gateway to all the online invoicing resources I discover. The ultimate aim of this blog is to supply business owners and freelances with a one stop resource for online invoicing. I have already posted my complete list of online invoicing systems here. This should act as a great starting point for anyone looking for an online invoicing system. In future I hope to get price and feature comparisons up as well as reviews, system recommendations and insider news and information. But before we begin with all that, here is a quick breakdown of what an online invoicing system actually is.

What is an online invoicing system?

An online invoicing system is a web based, ready hosted application that allows you to at the very minimum generate invoices and issue them via email. You will be happy to hear that most online invoicing systems offer far more than just the basic invoicing features. Most offer the ability to manage clients, automate the sending of invoices and the reconciliation of payments.

Leading online invoicing systems offer advanced recurring and subscription billing, automated debit batch and credit card processing, automated payment reconciliation and advanced client management and secure data storage. There isn’t much that a leading online invoicing system can’t do, maybe not make the coffee? Although I wouldn’t put it past some of the cutting edge ones to offer integrated automated caffeine delivery systems.

A true online invoice systems requires no purchase, download or installation of software or updates. All data is securely stored and can be accessed online, anywhere, from any web enabled device. Most online invoicing systems therefore offer free accounts that allow you to test drive the online system. It’s always a good idea to make use of these free or demo accounts before choosing the right system for you.

I will compile an article shortly with links in to free trial accounts or demo accounts for all the major online invoicing systems. Feel free to check it out here when its posted.