Invoicing is a part of every self-employed or freelancing individual’s life. Many of us are still using clunky old Word templates and those strange antiques known as printers—but why go to all the hassle, when there are so many web applications that offer reliable and efficient alternatives?Digital in
voices eliminate so much time and hassle that it’s unbelievable. Eliminating the need to go to the post box and send off an in
voice gives you ten more minutes to spend reading lifehack, or even ten minutes to do something productive!
PayPal - For the Minimalists
Every PayPal account has access to a feature called Request Money. It allows you to quickly fill in the recipient’s email address, the amount of money you need, the email subject and an optional note. This is probably the simplest and quickest way I know of to send an in
voice.PayPal does provide an in
voice feature, which can also be accessed under the Request Money tab - it only takes slightly longer to fill out since you have to provide in
voice details and itemize everything. I suggest sticking with the invoicing tool over PayPal’s Request Money tool unless you’re familiar with the recipient and know they’re fine with being billed that way.
Blinksale
Blinksale is a common choice for online invoicing, and it’s what I (and most of the lifehack team) use personally. Blinksale is a full-featured choice that far surpasses PayPal’s simple minimalism—unless minimalism is what you want.For some, the attraction of Blinksale over PayPal is the greater control over the look and feel of your in
voice. You can use Blinksale’s fantastic templates or even code your own if you’ve got a good handle on CSS.Another great benefit of Blinksale is its integration with other popular services. You can import your contacts straight from Basecamp, and it’s easy to receive your payments with PayPal—just tell Blinksale your PayPal address in your account settings, and it’s a matter of ticking a box on each in
voice you send out. Blinksale has every organizational tool I’ve ever wanted for my in
voices.Unfortunately, Blinksale’s not free. There’s a free version, but it does limit you to 3 in
voices per month, and there’s no secure data encryption or option to send in
voices as PDFs until you start shelling out. Still, the prices are quite reasonable for the variety of features offered.
Zoho In
voice is another option. I can only really suggest this one if you use the Zoho suite of online applications; the free version does five in
voices a month, but doesn’t offer multicurrency support. Since I’m an Australian who does work in America too, this was an instant no for me. I realize that it’s perfectly reasonable to charge for a feature like that, but I’ll never pay for a web service like this without first giving it a trial run.If you have had a good experience with Zoho In
voice, let us know in the comments—it does look like a promising option, especially for Americans working only in American dollars.
FreshBooks
FreshBooks seems to be quite a popular option, with the tagline painless billing. The distinguishing feature of this application is its time tracking features, which make it easier to track your hours and turn them into a dollar figure at the end of the job.FreshBooks’ free option may be more suitable to some people than Blinksale’s: you can send unlimited in
voices, send in
voices with your logo on them, import and export data, and it comes with the SSL encryption that Blinksale lacks (plus firewall protection and data backups). The downside to the free account is that you can only manage three clients and it only allows one member of staff to access it; if you’re a freelancer with two or three regular clients, this may be the perfect choice for you.HealthTop TipsNutritionLifestyle
Invotrak
Like PayPal, the appeal of Invotrak is that it doesn’t cost a thing. Invotrak doesn’t have the full range of options that Blinksale, Freshbooks or Zoho offer, so it’s good if you just want a simple and digital way to manage in
voices. If you are an American with clients overseas, or work with overseas clients from any country, you may want to skip Invotrak as it doesn’t offer multicurrency support.
A Few Related Apps
Sending and receiving in
voices gets to be a pretty confusing Business if you try to balance everything in your head. These web tools aren’t for invoicing but they will help you track and control your money.Wesabe allows you to track all your income and expenses (and more)—invoicing clients or paying in
voices becomes much simpler if you can see where all your money is going and coming from.XE is a great tool for currency conversions—it calculates based on up-to-the-minute rates, so if you’re like me and don’t have a single client in your own country, it’s a very useful tool.
Some Quick Tips on Invoicing
Without knowing how to deal with in
voices effectively, these tools aren’t going to save as much time as they could. How do you make them really effective? I’ve got a couple of short and sweet tips that have proved useful for me.File incoming in
voices immediatelyEvery time you receive an in
voice, file it—don’t just leave the email (or snail mail) sitting around to get lost; it’s so much quicker to track your expenses or do tax deductions when you keep in
voices meticulously organized.Keep a calendar of outgoing in
voices or even use one of the above tools to set up an automatic invoicing schedule. Nothing’s worse than missing an in
voice and realizing that you’ll have to go the week without food.Keep a template if you don’t use these tools; if you’re creating in
voices from scratch each time, then you’ve just found an extra thirty minutes in your week you can make more productive. Even if you do use these tools, keep an up-to-date template on your hard drive—you never know when they will inconveniently go down for maintenance or even go bust.
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