5 Great Free Tools For Your Invoicing Needs
Saad Bassi
Sending invoices and quotes to multiple clients is an everyday task in the life of a web designer. You will fall into hundreds of paid invoice applications while searching for the free one, each ranging from 5$/m to 30$/m and so on. Paid apps can be good for large corporations who earn a lot of money but they are simply a monthly expense for an average freelancer. That’s why we have prepared an article having 5 best free invoicing apps for your business.
1. Billing Boss
Billing Boss is a totally free invoicing application with pretty features. The user can easily keep track of billings and payments. Account at Billing Boss can be integrated with Sage Payment Services, Beanstream, or PayPal. In result, customers can pay your invoice online immediately. User interface of Billing Boss has been adapted in different languages. Further, the mobile version of web interface is also available to interact with application on iPhone or G1.
Billing Boss
During the Sign Up, the user fills up the required information like Name, Address, Logo, and Tax Information of business. The account can also be linked with some merchant services if required.
In next step, you need to create customers, which is simple enough. Then you can make a quote or invoice. I am creating here an invoice which is billing 1stwebdesigner for a guest article. Once you fill the invoice and save it, a preview of invoice will appear. In this preview, you can apply available styles, send or print it, or save as pdf. Below are the screenshots for the above mentioned two steps.
Creating a new client with Billing Boss
A preview of Billing Boss Invoice
2. Intuit Billing Manager
Intuit Billing Manager is also a free and intuitive online invoicing application. You can easily create and send invoices. The application gives you a review of what is overdue and what has been paid. The user can send reminders to customers if there is an outstanding payment.
Intuit Billing Manager
After filling login details, the user can create invoice immediately. I would recommend going on settings tab and modifying your details accordingly. You can alter business information like address and logo, default messages attached in outgoing email, payment methods and some other default invoicing parameters.
Intuit Billing Manager Settings
In the left side bar of the application, you can see “My Address Book” which is used to manage your customers. You can add manually or import CSV file of your business contacts at once. Also, there is a section in the sidebar titled as “Products & Services”. In this section, you can add what you are offering to avoid manual entry whenever you create an invoice.
If you create invoices infrequently, above mentioned steps can be skipped. The invoice creation process is straight. You can apply one of the invoice templates available. After filling the information, the invoice can be saved, previewed, printed, or sent by email. In print mode, the invoice can also be saved as pdf.
Intuit Billing Manager Invoice
3. Invoice Journal
Another Great and Free invoicing application is invoice journal which lets you create invoices for your clients. After signup, invoice journal give you a unique sub domain which can be used for login to your account. The process is very simple. You can create clients and after that start sending invoices for no fee. The application has a nice and very simple user interface which makes it great to use.
Creating a new client in Invoice Journal
Creating an invoice with Invoice Journal
4. BambooInvoice
BambooInvoice is a free and open source application to send and manage professional invoices. One has to install it on its own servers before using it. It is one of my favorite invoicing application as my point of view is that invoicing and your personal finances are sensitive case and you should not leave them to some one else.
Bamboo Invoice: Free and Open Source Invoicing Application
The open source software needs php5 and mysql 4.1 databases to work efficiently. It is build using code igniter and really have great user interface. BabmooInvoice is a very active project and you can also get support if you run into any trouble by accessing its forums here. Give it a try and you will love it.
Bamboo Invoice User Interface
5. Simple Invoices
Simple invoices is another free and open source invoicing system which you can use to get money from different clients. Like BambooInvoice, you have to install in on your own server to use. The open source application has been translated in to many languages and some developers have also built extensions for it. You can also email your prepared invoice as pdf. Simple invoices has comprehensive documentation so you can install it easily.
Free Simple invoicing
Have a look at the user interface of simple invoices. It has been enhanced with Ajax and java script.
Simple invioces User interface
We have covered some awesome free web apps that are best alternatives of expensive invoicing apps. Feel free to share your invoicing systems and let us know if we have missed something important.
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Carlos
Posted 3 days ago 46If you do a lot of sub-contracting for only 1 or 2 companies Freshbooks is great (and free). Anything over 3 clients cost which sucks, but if you sub-contract for only a few major guys you can just make a bunch of projects per client and it works out. Been using it for a couple months now, used to use BambooInvoice (which I also think is fine), but Freshbooks has a lot more features. Also allows for payments using Paypal, Google Wallet or even Authorize.net directly with a CC. If you want to go with hosting your own though, I def recommend BambooInvoice.
Miko Larsen
Posted 19 days ago 45THank you very much for this great article, I woudl also add to this list application used by our organisation which is KPI http://www.kpi.com
Donaldinos
Posted 56 days ago 44Because i’m always in terrain and i will not use always only my notebook, then i can create and send invoices for my partners comfortable from my mobile and therefor i use daily https://qunamobile.com/
Rajeev M
Posted 60 days ago 43If I may recommend one more online software… CaseFox is a cloud based easy to use software that is designed to help attorneys, accounting and other professionals with their practice management, billing, invoicing, trust fund management, case management, client management, tracking billable time, non-billable time, expenses, payments, etc. Highly intuitive user interface, rich feature set. Please visit CaseFox blog
Rajeev M
Posted 60 days ago 42If I may recommend one more online software… CaseFox (http://www.casefox.com) is a cloud based easy to use software that is designed to help attorneys, accounting and other professionals with their practice management, billing, invoicing, trust fund management, case management, client management, tracking billable time, non-billable time, expenses, payments, etc. Highly intuitive user interface, rich feature set. Please visit CaseFox blog at Http://www.casefox.info
David R
Posted 77 days ago 41As a freelancer I’ve tried many web-based invoicing services but I always wanted a completely free option without a bunch of restrictions. I couldn’t find one I liked so I created Scoreboard. Scoreboard includes a completely free unlimited plan for individuals. We also offer reasonably priced plans for small and large teams.
Start invoicing for free
invoice
Posted 88 days ago 40Thanks for the list. May we know what type of OS does this programs works? Do they have versions for Linux and Mac?
Jaco
Posted 371 days ago 38I would personally recommend the automated billing system SnapBill (http://www.snapbill.com) for all recurring billing and online invoicing. SnapBill is perfect for service providers and provides a completely automated billing solution.
Sithuraj
Posted 426 days ago 37Good list. Thanks for sharing it. I use http://numia.biz
John Smith
Posted 444 days ago 36Grabbed a CurdBee Black Friday sale bundle and enjoying the price reductions. Woot! http://curdbee.com/big/
Giorgos
Posted 483 days ago 35Hello,
Actually I think billing boos is far better than the rest because it can acceots payments through pay pal. If you want to pay you can either connect it to other payment gateways. The rest are just invoicing systems.
cheers,
Giorgos
Nazmul Alam Zico
Posted 542 days ago 34Hi we can add working point in the list. It is also a great tool for not only invoicing, rather the total project management.
URL: http://www.workingpoint.com/
machbio
Posted 559 days ago 33the list is good.. but we need more of open source apps.. that can be hosted… can u do a list of that
Jana van Wyk
Posted 570 days ago 32Check out SnapBill – http://www.snapbill.com – It’s a proudly South African online invoicing, billing and service provisioning system. They provide a free forever account!
SnapBill was created in South Africa and is perfect for all businesses especially those, providing services, requiring automated recurring or subscription billing.
SnapBill automates your businesses invoicing and billing related tasks. Saving your business time, money and resources while at the same time ensuring you get paid.
Liz
Posted 616 days ago 31@Chris W – Thanks for signing up for Billing Boss! Hope it has saved you time, allowing you to concentrate on your core business. Let us know if we can do anything to help! http://twitter.com/billingboss
Liz (from the Billing Boss team)
Liz
Posted 616 days ago 30Thanks for the mention! I’m from the Billing Boss team.
We’ve recently launched our mobile payment app, Payment Boss, and we’re super excited about it! It allows users to collect payments while they’re on the road through their mobile phone.
In summary:
- Real time processing, real time confirmation
- Users key in credit card info, customer contact info, and amounts
- Invoices are automatically created when payment is collected, and invoices are emailed to the customer.
- Customer contact information is stored, which can be later exported to other programs. Useful for marketing campaigns, or whenever one needs to reference customer’s contact info on the road.
- Complete integration with Billing Boss. Accountants/bookkeepers/users can track payments accepted through the mobile phone, as all payments and invoices can be tracked through the Billing Boss interface.
Mobile payment solution is at http://www.paymentboss.com
Full Disclosure: This author has been compensated by Sage.
Karen Lee
Posted 626 days ago 29Is there such a free program that I can send my client a quote for services, and if they accept it, they click on a button, it automatically generates an invoice and transfers my client to paypal and makes a payment. All my clients are prepay and this would eliminate a lot of emails and time.
Jeannie
Posted 300 days ago 39Karen I am actually looking for a program like that…I saw your comment and was really hoping that someone responded back. That would be ideal for sure!!