Have been struggling with a string of half-baked invoicing solutions for our (very) small web design business for the last 12 months, and was wondering what other solutions that similar small players might be using?
My requirements:
-Invoice generation (preferably quotes as well, but not critical)
-Expense tracking (preferablly against a specific job/invoice)
-Income allocation against invoices (mark them as paid/part paid etc)
-Basic reporting: Invoices outstanding, invoices for period etc.
-Multiuser access (2 of us from many different locations and machines) (not local client based)
-LOW cost.
Have been using:
bambooinvoice : Have been using this the longest. simple, and reliable, but does not handle expenses. One man development team - so not likely to have extra features in a hurry.
Quicken Online: thought I'd step up to a mainstreamplayer that my accountant can access. But for the money (substantial per user annual fee) it is bloated, cumbersome, slow, expensive, extremely hard to customise invoice layouts etc. and unreliable - has had significant downtime at least 6 times in 6 months. I went back to a shoebox and bambooinvoice (and note I have done configuration of SAP Finance modules in the past, so I'm not a noob at setting up accounting systems.. it just sucks).
Drupal Storm module http://drupal.org/project/storm - looks promising, but I need to spend a lot of time configuring to suit my workflow. Tried it for a while, then went back to bambooinvoice. I need to sit down for a day and try storm again I think.
vTigerCRM http://vtiger.org/ - Just installed this on a shared host last week - very impressed, but again does not handle expenses out of the box: Does have a $200 plugin that will add that function though... and I'm very tempted (only a quarter of what I wasted on Quicken Online!)
Have even looked at Ubercart and Commerce - but not sure that they really suit my usecase, where I dont need an online cart - just the invoicing piece.
What are people in the real world using?
Cheers
Comments
Back in the day when I did
Back in the day when I did freelancing, I used freshbooks.com. It's a SaaS type thing, and its very good value/easy to use (lots of ajax type stuff). Has all the normal things you'd expect, invoicing, expenses, timesheets, reporting, multi user, clients whom can login, etc. Highly recommend it.
If you're looking for a similar thing in Drupal, then CiviCRM might be the way to go, but it will take some time to setup, I'd say.
GL.
I have been using Billings3
I have been using Billings3 (Mac). Pretty happy with it, I think it does what you need, but it's not perfect.
Will do quotes etc.
http://www.xero.com - totally
http://www.xero.com - totally awesome and worth every last cent.
Xero seconded
We've moved to Xero this financial year.
Not only is it awesome, but your accountants will love you too.
Xero
Xero looks very interesting. thanks for the heads up.
Marcel
EDMEDiA Australia
A free alternative
A free alternative that I have found overall pretty good is allocPSA
http://www.allocpsa.org/
I use billings3 pro for my
I use billings3 pro for my invoicing, but as soon as Xero supports my bank I am going to start using them for the accounting side of things.
--
Gordon Heydon
Ohhh dear...
Ok.. I just looked at all the option above that have been posted. Not a great list by any means for what you are looking for.
We are a 2 person business similar to what you have, and have gone down every garden path looking for alternatives till one
day another freelancer that I was sitting on the plane with to South Africa told me about Zoho.. Now I couldn't wait to get
off the plane and check it out. we arrived in Kuala Lumpur and then we went to the Quantas lounge where we logged on to
the net. My new found partner had run through Zoho with me... I was blown away at how easy it was to do everything you
require from your list above.
https://www.zoho.com/invoice/
Not only was it Free, but it allowed me to create customised invoices, track expenses, print out around 30 different types
of reports and the list goes on. Now they have blessed the software with an iPhone app in which i now create my invoices
create new items and setup receipts on the fly while visiting a client. I love the recurring invoices for things like web
maintenance monthly, hosting, all sorts of things... I love the pay now button it creates on your invoices to get paid right
away through PayPal.
[[https://www.zoho.com/invoice/]]
Once I had created everything I wanted, I had started using it... WOW!! it was the easiest solution and so So SO powerful
all at the same time. I now pay for the basic version because we have more clients. The basic version will be more than enough
for what us small businesses will need. Basic version is $8 month..
Free gives you unlimited customers and 5 invoices a month and the zoho logo on the invoice..
Basic gives me 25 invoices a month and removes the logo. I cannot imagine sending out more than 25 a month right now.
The next upgrade is Standard version which gives you 150 invoices a month at $15...
I have now stopped using my WHMCS for creating the invoices, I use it for client management only now. http://www.whmcs.com/
To be perfectly honest, if I could affiliate this I would. I believe in its strengths for delivering a great product that is easy to
use, and handles all I require for the tax man. I will have no issue if you need some help to set this up through team viewer
and skype. if you like, add me to skype: cmwwebfx
I'm the author of
I'm the author of http://drupal.org/project/erp
We use it for everything:
6000+ invoices, 4800+ payments, 6300+ jobs, 2400+ po's & goods receives, 160,000+ stock items, 10,000+ current stock items across 3 stock locations.
http://stratoserp.com/quick-start is the quickest way to try it out.
--
http://singularo.com/
Fantastic feedback
Thanks to all for the fantastic feedback, and the list of new options that I had not considered.
I'm now having a closer look at a number of these options. I had another look at zoho invoice (thanks cmwwebfx!): I run google apps, and with the close integration this is looking really good, and we might currently squeak under the 5 invoice per month free account limit - so the price is right!
Singularo - I'm really interested in your erp project as well, I'll plan to set that up and have a closer look in coming days. Thanks.
Xero looked good too, but probably a bit pricey for my basic needs - I will look at a trial though - interface is sexy.
Thanks for everyone's comments!
I'll update in a few days with any outcomes. Cheers
xero
I switched from my own invoices and database made in OpenOffice to Zero last July. I save more than an hour a month using Zero so it is worth the money.
A couple more suggestions
I use SimpleInvoices for my stuff it is simple and it does the job. Justin, the author is based in Melbourne and welcomes feedback from users. SI is a good example of an open source product which does one thing and does it well.
A client uses Harvest which is really nice to use. The timers make time tracking a breeze. It also supports billing, but I haven't had to use that part of it. The pricing is pretty reasonable too.
Try also
also check out http://saasu.com - it similar to xero, but I think it is better. It is also an australian based company if that matters to you.
There are definitely lots of other options though:
Freshbooks
LessAccounting
Blinksale
Cashboard
BillingBoss
WorkETC
Open source options: simpleinvoices.org, bambooinvoice.org and pbooks.org
--Ryan
Ryan Cross
Drupal Development Services
ProjectPier project management and collaboration software
saasu
I had a look at saasu. I don't have much of a clue when it comes to accounting so I went with xero even though it cost more.
GNUCash here, as I have it
GNUCash here, as I have it integrating very nicely with my bank transactions, I can easily see my personal spendings versus income
http://dgtlmoon.com
Invoice Machine
http://invoicemachine.com/
30 invoices $12.00 per month
Quote > time > invoice > journal entries
Nice comparison of cash books at http://petermoulding.com/cash_books. Something is missing in each. Thanks to singularo for the link to the Drupal based ERP.
Web based is my first requirement because I do not always carry my server in my backpack.
Drupal based is nice because I can enhance and contribute. PHP is the next choice. SQL access is the next choice for me. GnuCash has some nice sounding features, the latest release is supposed to work on a database, but I could not get it out of XML mode. Simplebooks or ERP or similar offers me the most opportunity in the future.
They all import from whatever you are using now but few export to anything useful and none of the ones I tried export to the accounting application used by my accountant. Drupal based modules are somewhere I could create an export if it does not already exist.
Some of the online systems do not give you an export for use elsewhere. I think that should be highlighted for all saas products. Can you leave them without retyping everything?
Time recording in most is a pain. dotProject has the best free open time recording. Storm has a good start. I would like to see time recording as a separate project in Drupal, upgraded to a dotProject level, then shared by other modules.
Recording actual against billable is really useful but most of the options I tried for a lot of products come down to recoding actual non billable as billable with a cost per hour of zero and no way to calculate the $1850 it cost to quote for a $795 theme change or the $6500 it costs to answer all the "it does not work in my browser" questions.
The next big step is to create a quote, an easy conversion of the accepted parts to projects and tasks, then add actual time including non billable time, then an easy conversion of the completed parts to invoices for progress payments. Those $10 per month services do not cover the range and will not let me enhance their code. ERP has nothing in the license to say I cannot enhance it!
The last point I would look for, and this swings back to a Drupal solution if available, would be to use some useful parts of existing Drupal modules, the payment system connections already in Ubercart and eCommerce, the mail, print, and PDF already in the print module. Perhaps we should start a separate discussion just on the Drupal modules, ERP and Simple Invoices.
petermoulding.com/web_architect
Intervals
http://www.myintervals.com
Intervals does everything requested except for quotes, but you can export milestones and tasks to CSV/Excel
The only drawback I have (and likely all these solutions) is integration with MYOB to keep the accountant happy,
Data export to QuickBooks is provided.
MYOB integration - not all accountants need it
There are accountants which work quite happily with/for you without MYOB.
For those of us who really don't care for Windows environments, that's particularly good.
But it can also be handy when looking at SaaS services.
So if you just feel stuck because of your current accountant's requirements, perhaps it's time to tell them about your needs, and start interviewing (yes) other accountants.
Cheers,
Arjen.
Active Collab
I found intervals was too restrictive in terms of invoice generation and since their API couldn't access invoice information it was therefore a no go for me.
I also tried workflowmax which was very good (better than intervals too), but it is a bit pricey for many users which was a concern for me.
I also built my own solution in Flex with a PHP/MySQL backend which was great as an exercise but in the long run wouldn't be worth it.
Some other studios I know use Streamtime but that is way too expensive (IMHO) for what you get.
I finally settled on Active Collab which has a one off fee and you can self host. As it is built on PHP and MySQL it is very easy to customise for dev people and to extract / import data from. It's project management features are also excellent and the timer program (start / stop time against tasks) makes time entry smooth and simple as silk.
seeing as though this thread
seeing as though this thread has seemed to diverge into time tracking/project mgmt too, Feng Office ticks the box for me on that front - also doubles as fairly efficient bug/issue tracker, you can cloud host but I prefer the community download (GPL) running on my own server
Update - Invoicing tool of choice
Just thought I's round off this thread with an update.
Firstly, thanks to all posters - some fantastic feedback, and plenty of leads that I have followed up.
For my particular use-case, I have now settled on Zoho Invoice.
Based on it meeting my original requirements:
My requirements:
-Invoice generation (preferably quotes as well, but not critical)
-Expense tracking (preferablly against a specific job/invoice)
-Income allocation against invoices (mark them as paid/part paid etc)
-Basic reporting: Invoices outstanding, invoices for period etc.
-Multiuser access (2 of us from many different locations and machines) (not local client based)
-LOW cost.
AND the additional value-add of Zoho Invoice integration with Google Apps.
This is really the kicker - this integration provides a "footer" section on the bottom of my emails (google apps webmail) that gives me - on any email from a client - current account summary, and link to any open invoices. It's a simple thing, but just makes it very easy.
The downside if the limitation of only 5 quotes or Invoices per month, on the free account.
At the moment, that is OK for us.
But we will probably outgrow that at some stage.
Will reassess at that time - and look or cheaper alternatives again, or justify the investment in a paid service (most likey the case if I need to pumping out that many invoices)
Thanks again everyone.
what are you're thoughts on erp
What is it that you do not like about erp?
Does it do everything you wanted on your list minus the google Apps?