You're a small business owner who wants to streamline invoicing. What's the best tool for the job?

1 What is an invoicing tool?

An invoicing tool is a software or app that automates the invoicing process and eliminates the need for paper, spreadsheets, or email attachments. With this tool, you can generate invoices with your logo, contact details, and payment terms, and send them via email or SMS, or share them as a link. You can also track the status of your invoices and get notified when they are viewed, paid, or overdue. Furthermore, you can accept online payments from various methods such as credit cards, PayPal, or bank transfers. In addition to sending reminders and receipts to your clients, you can manage your clients, products, services, and taxes. Lastly, you can generate reports and insights on your cash flow, sales, and expenses.

2 Why do you need an invoicing tool?

An invoicing tool can be extremely beneficial for your business. It can reduce the time and cost of creating and sending invoices, help you get paid faster and more consistently, and make your invoices look more polished and professional. Furthermore, it can simplify your accounting by syncing your invoices with your accounting software or app, and providing you with reports and insights to monitor your business performance. All in all, an invoicing tool can save you time, money, and effort.

4 How to use an invoicing tool?

Once you have chosen an invoicing tool for your business, you need to learn how to use it effectively and efficiently. To begin, you should set up your account and profile by adding your business name, logo, address, phone number, email, and website. You should also create a signature and a footer for your invoices. Additionally, you should add your clients and products to the invoicing tool by entering their names, contact details, and billing information. After that, you can create and send invoices to your clients by selecting a client, product, quantity, and date for each invoice. You can also track and manage your invoices by seeing their status or payment confirmation. Finally, you can generate reports and insights with the invoicing tool to see the summary of cash flow, sales, expenses, trends of invoicing activity and performance. This will help you make better decisions and plan ahead.

5 What are some examples of invoicing tools?

Invoicing tools come in a variety of forms and offer different features. For example, Invoice Ninja is a free and open-source tool that allows for unlimited invoices, clients, and users. It also provides online payments, recurring invoices, auto-billing, custom invoices, and multi-currency support, as well as integration with over 40 payment gateways and platforms. FreshBooks is a cloud-based tool that starts at $15 per month and offers online payments, recurring invoices, time tracking, expense tracking, and project management. It has an integration with over 100 apps and platforms. Lastly, Zoho Invoice is a web-based tool with a free plan for up to 5 clients and a paid plan starting from $9 per month. It includes features such as online payments, recurring invoices, multi-language support, invoice templates, and client portal. It integrates with Zoho apps and platforms.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?