Finance is the center of every business, and invoicing plays a vital role in the cash flow. Without proper cash flow/ payments, no company or individual freelancer can survive. Whether you are an individual freelancer, a contractor working remotely, or a small business, invoicing management plays a vital role. Email, face-to-face transactions, and hard copies are some of the traditional methods of invoicing. The conventional invoicing methods lead to several challenges ranging from the hard copy going untraceable to the payer losing track of payments to multiple freelancers/ contractors.
Thanks to the invoicing software providers invoicing is not a challenge anymore. Freelancers manage various roles, invoicing multiple clients, and following up for payments may get overwhelming to manage. Manual methods of raising invoices and making cash-based payments led to multiple challenges like erroneous payments and billing. The modern invoicing techniques like electronic transfers, card payments, and online invoicing help reduce errors and enable users to create professional looking invoices and thereby improve their branding and get paid faster.
Benefits and features of an invoicing software
Using online invoicing software can reduce late/ missed payments, fraudulent activities, and enable businesses and individuals to manage their professional image and streamline the accounting process. Customized invoicing templates, new invoice creation, multiple currency setting, invoicing, payment, and tax reporting are some of the salient features of invoicing software. An invoicing software enables users to generate invoices from any location, create invoices effortlessly, and more accurately and integrates the invoicing system with an existing business system. Invoicing software is available with online and cloud-based versions with tons of exciting features and suitable pricing plans.
Factors to consider when deciding on an invoicing software
There are several factors to be considered while deciding on invoicing software.
- Easy to use - Invoicing software is operated by a small business / individual freelancer to reduce the haphazard billing methods and reduce manual work. So the most crucial factor to be considered while choosing an excellent invoicing software would be whether it is easy to use.
- Fits your business requirements - Making a list of the challenges you face with invoicing/ listing out your concerns would be a great start while shopping for invoicing software.
- Features and pricing - There are several invoicing software providers in the market. Each of these invoicing software providers offers a variety of features and pricing plans. It is essential to list out the most useful features and choose carefully after ensuring that it will help you raise a professional-looking invoice and does not burn a hole in your pocket with its cost.
- Safety - It is vital to choose an invoicing software provider that has a good reputation for system security in the market because the invoices comprise essential data about your business and customer.
- Customer support - While most invoicing software providers offer training material to the users, it is essential to understand that bugs and other technical glitches usually accompany software technology. It is vital to choose an invoicing software provider with easily accessible customer care through a dedicated support team, tutorials, manuals, training materials, and webinars.
What is the best software for invoicing?
Numerous providers are offering invoicing software, and each one of them has some fantastic features that help users ease their pain of invoicing and other related tasks.
- Fresh Books is one of the easiest to use invoicing software, one of the best with its overall features. Square invoices is another invoicing software that is best suitable for low volume/ individual freelancers.
- Wave is another invoicing software which is not very pricey and offers accounting integrations.
- Xero is a complete accounting alternative.
- Hiveage is another invoicing software that offers the highest number of payment options.
- Quickbooks has excellent features and the best transaction fees.
- Sage is an excellent invoicing software with excellent reporting features useful for freelancers/ contractors with multiple clients.
- Zoho invoice offers excellent automation other than the invoicing features.
- Free-agent is another invoicing software that offers excellent pre-designed templates.
However, it is impossible to decide on the best invoicing software because it solely depends on the business requirements.
What is the best free invoice software?
There are many other free invoicing software providers in the market. Each has a unique feature that might be suitable for freelancers/ small businesses.
What is the invoicing software?
A software tool that enables individual freelancers/ contractors and small businesses to generate invoices for their clients' products/ services. Invoices are created in the invoicing software to the client through email, post, or any other chosen method. Pre-designed invoicing templates, customer records, new invoice creation, enables managing invoicing, payments through credit cards, multi-currency setting, and tax reporting are a few features offered by any invoicing software.
Does QuickBooks do invoicing?
Quick books enable its customers to record sales transactions and generate invoices to keep track of the accounts receivables. QuickBooks Online also allows a pay now button to help customers pay directly through the invoicing features. Quick books charge 2.9% plus $0.25 per each invoice paid online.
KS Digital, Digital Craft Co, Design Couch, K Glyphics, and many other top companies use invoice software for their invoicing, accounting, and taxation needs.
Some of the invoicing applications -
Let us look at the features, advantages, customers, use cases, integrations, and pricing for some of the best invoicing software providers:
Wave Accounting
Wave accounting is the easiest to use invoicing software that enables users to connect it to their bank accounts, manage payment reminders, stay updated on the cash flow, and helps expense tracking. Wave accounting works as excellent invoice software and accounting software that is best suitable for small businesses.
- Free Trial is available.
InvoiceNinja
Invoice ninja offers software with features for billing and invoicing, and payments management. Users can craft professional looking invoices available for their clients to both views online or print/ download on paper. Payments can also be made directly on the software through credit cards or other means of payments.
- Real-time invoicing
- Customized invoicing with logo
- Accept credit card payments.
- Create recurring billing/auto-billing
- Customized URL link
- Professional template design
- Forty-plus payment options
- A free trial is available.
- The free forever plan covers unlimited invoices, four templates for invoice and quotation, recurring billing and invoicing, branding with a logo, integration with up to forty payments gateway, time tracking based invoicing, alerts for invoices sent, paid, and viewed. Tax settings, accept payments, through credit cards and other modes of payments, real-time invoice creation, and google analytics.
- The Ninja Pro subscription costs $10 per month and $100 when paid annually. All the features in the forever free plan are available in this plan. Password protected client-side portal, personalized branding, unlimited - quotes, clients, invoices, watermark removal, auto-reminder set up for recurring invoices, multiple customized invoice design, reporting, and client statements are all a part of this plan.
- The enterprise subscription costs $14 per month for up to two users.
- It costs $26 per month for up to five users.
- It costs $36 per month for up to ten users and $44 per month for up to twenty users.
- All the Ninja pro features are available in this plan. Additional users, access permissions, quotations, and attaching third party files to invoices are also a part of this plan.
Zip books are excellent free invoicing software for small businesses, individual freelancers, and contractors for their bookkeeping and invoicing needs. The software enables users to accept payments, helps to get payments faster through credit cards, time tracking, expense tracking, recurring invoices management, and much more on a single platform effortlessly.
- Free accounting software
- Accounting reports
- Expense tracking
- Integrations
- Analytics & reporting
- Real-time billing with time tracking
Hiveage is an excellent choice of invoicing software for small business owners and individual freelancers. Personalized invoicing templates enable improving branding, payment reminders, recurring billing and invoicing, and payments through multiple payment gateways.
- Online invoicing
- Estimation
- Time tracking
- Recurring billing
- Expense tracking
- Personalized invoice templates
- Financial reports
- Multiple payments gateway integrations
- PayPal, Stripe, 2Checkout, quick books online, Zapier and integrations with tons of other platforms are available.
Invoicera is an excellent choice for small businesses, freelancers, and contractors. Online invoicing, recurring billing, time tracking, automated workflows, and much more are all made effortlessly.
Automated billing, expense tracking, recurring billing, reporting, time tracking, instant payments, estimation, payment reminders, and multi-language and currency support are some of the best features of Invoicera.
Advantages Use cases Customers- G Spotter Antennas (Australia)
- Mindig Company (Netherlands)
Invoicely is a cloud-based invoicing software that works well for freelancers and small businesses. The free plan allows for unlimited invoices and customers. Billing/ invoice creation, payment reminders, time tracking, expense tracking, multi-currency, and accounting management are all a part of Invoicely.
Expense tracking, billing and invoicing, estimation, customized email, automatic payment reminders, multi-currency support, sales tax, reporting, and accounting integration are some of the salient features of Invoicely.
Advantages Integrations Use casesSmall Business
Customers Integrations PricingQuickBooks
QuickBooks is complete accounting software that enables users to manage multiple accounts. Allows users to stay updated on the taxation, enable time tracking and expense tracking, help users to keep their cash flow intact, raise professional looking invoices, and get paid faster. QuickBooks is a complete business/ project management software for all sizes of business.
- Bank reconciliation
- Automated recurring billing
- Expense tracking
- Cash flow management
- Payment reminders
- Accounting
- Budgeting
- Time tracking
- Analytics
- Finance firms
- Marketing/ advertising firms
Conclusion
With a significant part of the workforce moving towards freelancing and contractor type of employment, taxation, accounting, invoicing, and much more mundane activities takes up a lot of time and become overwhelming for individual freelancers to manage. Thanks to a variety of invoicing software available in the market, invoice creation, payments acceptance through credit card, keeping track of recurring invoices, payment reminders, time tracking, accounting software, and much more are all made possible with out any hassles. A different set of providers initially managed accounting software.
Billing and invoicing are the primary features of the invoice software. Accounting software merged with the invoicing software helps users manage all the reporting, taxation, cash flow tracking, time tracking, bank reconciliation, and many other account management features. It is a perfect blend of invoice software and accounting software. Some of the invoicing software available in the market is best suited for small businesses and individual freelancers looking for simple billing software to ensure they get paid through a credit card or any other payment gateway.
Some of these providers also offer a mobile app that enables users to create an invoice on the go. The invoicing software has features like automated recurring invoices, time tracking, payment reminders, and multiple payment gateways that enable users to get paid faster. Using invoice software with a mobile app/ mobile invoicing allows users to create invoices on the go. It allows users to get paid faster. Some of the invoicing software providers offer a pay button for the clients to make payments. The pay buttons accept credit cards and enable users to get paid faster.
The software has multiple features like a pay button, invoicing on the go, real-time invoice creation, and much more that ensures the users get paid on time. Small businesses and freelancing individuals who are keen on using invoicing software for a limited number of clients can even use free software; however, if you are a growing business looking for billing and invoicing software with tons of features. The features like payment reminders, project management, mobile invoicing, time tracking, getting paid instantly, and much more, then the free software may not be a great idea since it offers limited features.
There are tons of invoicing and billing software in the market, and each of them offers exciting features with some of the best pricing plans. Using the best invoicing and billing software enables a business to get paid faster in multiple currency settings, send invoices in real-time, automate recurring billing/ payments, project management, and accounting & tax management. A Business can manage their tax and accounting with a provider like Quickbooks online. Invoicing, accounting, taxation, reporting are all made easy with a few clicks when a business uses QuickBooks online kind of software.
Some providers even enable users to customize the features and pricing plans as per the users' business needs. However, the providers have the rights reserved for the original set of features offered by them. Small businesses and individual freelancers/ contractors make the best use of the invoice software. Invoicing and billing help to improve the cash flow of every business and play a vital role. Using the best invoicing and billing software helps a business/ individual get paid faster and manage their accounts and tax effortlessly.
Questions asked while looking for invoicing software:
Caroline is an editor and contributor to Wikipedia articles; loves writing around food, wine, and small business. For a short time, she also worked for the Polish marketing consulting firm.
