Freckle is a joy to use, the syntax is easy to learn and the reporting and the “pulse” view is great. What that said, it’s always been kind of a hassle to take this info from Freckle and build my invoices, so I was thrilled to hear that the Freckle team had added invoicing to the service.

I’ve been using Freckle for a while and have a lot of time recorded in there, so I was pleased that I could choose a date and call items before my cutoff as “already billed.” This let me set a clean slate for billable time moving forward for invoicing purposes.

Creating invoices is simple and in true Freckle fashion you can just hop right in. No need to set up anything in advance — choose your project, click “invoice,” adjust the date options if required, and you’re set. You can add your company and client information during invoice creation.

When you create your invoice you can choose to include a full reporting of the time spent or just a total. I like having this choice as it lets me accommodate the needs of the client and our billing terms. For those clients where I can just provide totals the quick reports in Freckle have always let me pull up what I needed, and I could just enter that into my other invoicing app. It was when I needed to provide a full account of my time in detail that it became time-consuming, cutting and pasting line-by-line. It’s a joy to just get that data right onto my invoices now.

This is a first release, though, and still in beta, and while I didn’t have any problems with it, there are some enhancements I’d still like to see.

For each invoice created Freckle provides a link that I can send to my client, or I can easily print a PDF or hard copy. But that means that I still have to go and mail or email my invoices — I guess I’ve been spoiled by my existing service that just takes care of all of that for me automatically.

There is also no way to charge a mixed rate. My company offers different services that often bill at different rates — with Freckle the rate is entered once and applied to every line. An override for specific lines would be great.

Finally, there is no link to Paypal or other payment gateway. Most of my clients pay by check so this isn’t a deal breaker for everyone but there are some who prefer Paypal or credit card and that integration makes it so much easier for them — and I obviously like to make it easy for folks to pay me.

Overall, for the clients and projects that I can fit into its functionality, the addition of invoicing is useful, but I quite can’t get rid of my other invoicing apps just yet.

Invoicing is included with any paid Freckle account plan.

How do you manage your time tracking and invoicing?

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MiniBooks comes with the following features:

• Clients: Search for clients and contact them with the iPhone’s phone and email applications.
• Invoices: Create, edit, search, view and email invoices from within the app. You can also view the status of the invoice and record payments.
• Timers: Start and stop timers that can track multiple activities on one screen. Active timers will keep running even if you close MiniBooks.
• Estimates: Create, edit and email estimates that you can turn into invoices.

If you don’t already have a FreshBooks account, you’ll need to sign up for one before downloading MiniBooks. MiniBooks can’t synchronize taxes or give staff members access to FreshBooks, due to limitations on the FreshBooks backend. The free MiniBooks Lite version limits you to three clients, while the full version retails for $14.99.

Do you use a billing app on your phone? What do you use?

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WorkingPoint Highlights

WorkingPoint is like a user-friendly version of QuickBooks, without the unneeded trappings that make it complicated for the lone worker or small business. The slick and well-designed interface guides you through the invoicing and billing process without standing in your way. WorkingPoint gives you your own secure login URL, and serves up a home page displaying an easy-to-use and customizable dashboard.

You can import contacts from your email address book. If you have your products or services details in a spreadsheet, you can import that as well. The service can handle the popular Outlook CSV and vCard formats, and contacts from Gmail, Yahoo! Mail and Apple Address Book. One aspect of the Conatcts feature that needs work is that it’s tedious to delete many contacts, and I didn’t notice the “Find” feature to search contacts until WorkingPoint posted a blog entry explaining how it worked.

It only takes a few minutes to create your first invoice and add new bills. Like QuickBooks, you can add clients and vendors while you do the invoice or bill. If the client already appears in your Contacts list, just enter the customer or company name and WorkingPoint will find it. The intuitive interface doesn’t require you to jump around to create a single invoice, like some other applications tend to do. Just about any new user can get right to work with WorkingPoint with little frustration in trying to figure out how to make something happen.

WorkingPoint lets you create a company profile with a public listing in its directory, a feature not seen in other invoicing apps. You can limit profile viewing to your company or other people using WorkingPoint. The profile can integrate your latest blog entries, reviews from Yelp! and Twitter tweets, but if you already have a site it’s probably not that useful.

VerticalResponse Integration

The service has teamed up with VerticalResponse to integrate email communications with your WorkingPoint account. But really, the two act as separate applications. The only real benefits from the partnership are the ability to move back and forth without leaving the site and the 200 email credits you get with the Basic WorkingPoint account (500 for an upgraded account).

If you think in terms of email newsletters, those credits won’t last long. But the companies envision the email service integration as a way to help WorkingPoint customers connect with their own clients. Despite the integration, you still need to register to use VerticalResponse and it doesn’t grab email addresses from WorkingPoint, nor does it let you select a contact in WorkingPoint to send an email through VerticalResponse.

VerticalResponse also offers postcards, surveys and mailing lists. Not all of these features are free and the service doesn’t explain the costs before you dive in. The surveys do require a subscription after taking a free test drive. The WorkingPoint and VerticalResponse partnership is new, so more features may come down the pike to help these two apps work in harmony.

Costs and Final Thoughts

The service offers one free plan, and three paid plans ranging from $10 per month up to $80 per month. The basic plan allows one user to access the account. Paid services add statement of cash flow, customizable chart of accounts and branded emails plus others depending on the plan. The paid services will come with banking integration and e-commerce integration in the future, which could be important for some folks.

WorkingPoint has the tools to do the job of invoicing and managing bills. Those who want time tracking included in their invoicing app won’t find that here. Instead, you can count on the web-based app to let you do your billing tasks without frustration.

Have you tried WorkingPoint? Let us know what you think of the app in the comments.

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You can find scores of articles talking about the dire state of the economy leading big businesses to pay late and collect fast and people struggling to keep their businesses afloat. We’ve provided some tips on dealing with non-paying clients previously, but here are some techniques used by businesses that have have collected payment without breaking knees or relationships.

Before Starting the Project

• Add clauses to the contract: Writer Laura Bergells of Maniactive picked up this tip from an editor. “In the contract, state that you own the copyright up until the point of final payment, at which point the copyright transfers to the client. The threat of a copyright lawsuit is often stronger than a suit for non-payment of services,” Bergells says. Since you can’t predict whether a client will be late with payment, cover yourself by saying the service you provided remains yours until the payment is made.
• Build relationships: If you work with an organization rather than a couple of people, work on building relationships with people in the organization from the get-go, as those people can step up for you. “When a late payment becomes a serious issue, key people inside the organization will fight for you to get paid immediately. I’ve been known to send a large bouquet of flowers just to say ‘Thanks for going to bat for me.’ Acting like a jerk may get you paid once, but acting like a professional will get you paid consistently for the long term,” says Nestor G Trillo, an interactive strategist at Ava Niu. Trillo’s company will stop working with clients who consistently pay over 90 days late.
• Use a credit card payment system: After losing $5,000 in payments, Chief Executive Officer Matt Scherer of Scherer Communications started using a credit card payment system that works well for him. I can hear some of you saying you don’t want to give the credit card company a percentage of the money you earned. Scherer works around that with a contract template that includes a one-time charge that covers the credit card fees. Another option is to add an item to the invoice to cover the credit card rates.
• Outline the project or product at the start: At the start of a project or before selling a product, outline the specs, time frame, payment time frame, the cost of not paying on time and a discount rate for paying quickly. The helpful thing about this set-up is that it covers the project or product — not just payment. Have the client sign off on these requirements binds them and the penalty and discount part can be a powerful motivator.

After the Project is Complete

It’s best to be proactive before starting the project to ensure you receive payment on time. But it doesn’t always work out that way.

• Give discounts: Offer a discount on the invoice if the client pays within x days. “One thing has worked well for us — giving a 2 percent discount if they pay in 10 days. And, to note the discount and savings on the invoice,” says Michelle H. Wallace, an independent consultant. She has seen success with this set up for both clients and vendors. “The tradeoff between waiting for the full amount and improved short-term cash flow was a no-brainer. Plus, my company got to buy more hours, and improved responsiveness on our payables. It was win-win.”
• Use Priority Mail envelopes: Have you tried calling and emailing your late paying client? Michelle Dunn, a credit and debt collection expert, has a solution that she reports works 98 percent of the time. “Go to the post office and get a cardboard red, white and blue priority mail flat rate envelope. Put a strong collection letter in the envelope send it out with delivery confirmation and wait for the check to arrive.  Make sure the letter you use, has specific amounts, and the date you need to receive the payment by,” says Dunn.
• Send Postcards: Cliff Stepp has a creative solution to the “old past due notices being shoved aside” problem. So he started sending his client colorful retro postcards with a humorous twist. “After the second postcard, the 120 day + bill was paid in full!” Stepp says.
• Use a letter template: Melinda Mallari sends a letter with the following message, “We are unable to find a record of payment for Invoice # dated ___. Could you please send a copy of the canceled check or a credit card statement verifying the payment transaction so we can update our files? We apologize for the inconvenience, and appreciate your kind assistance in this matter.” This works 80 percent of the time.
• Explain the impact: Tell your client straight out how your business works in providing a product or service. Mary E. Davis, author of “The Entrepreneurial Mom,” finds this process pays off and shares an example. “I remain business-like, but explain that ‘I am a small business. And when I have even a few clients who let their accounts fall behind, that it impacts me in a tremendous way.’”
• Withdraw payments with automated clearing house (ACH) network: CPA and Director of Development for Treasury Software Glenn Fromer explains that collecting payment through ACH, businesses won’t have to deal with credit card merchant and processing fees. Small and medium businesses can use the service, which is available from commercial banks.
• Take the nice approach: Laura Posey, vice president of Dancing Elephants Achievement Group, struggled to get a client to pay after being 120 days late. She did what many do: sent email or called the client every few weeks. Then she moved on to the next step and emailed or left a message for the client on a daily basis while letting the client know she was concerned, not angry. “By the second email, the client sent me an email telling me that she had had an unexpected death in the family and she had let lots of things slide during that time. She apologized profusely and sent the payment right away,” Posey says. She received a reward for her gentle handling of the situation and landed more projects with the client.

How do you collect late payments while keeping the client relationship intact?

Photo credit: Jeinny Solis S.

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At first glance, using the press demo supplied, it appears to be a very nicely put together web app. The UI is clean and pleasant, with a typical shades-of-gray-with-soft-edges Web 2.0 color scheme, and a blog-style navigation tree under the header. If I have to be making up invoices, at least I don’t have to be doing it via an ugly interface.

Dashboard

The dashboard is a dashboard in the true sense of the word. It presents the vast majority of important information you’d need on any given day in a very readable, intuitively laid-out style, while at the same time making sure that frivolous or infrequently used features don’t clutter up the space. Only recent invoices, clients and projects are visible via the dashboard, but convenient links under each subsection will direct you to your full lists.
You can also quickly create new clients, projects or invoices with the click of a button, and a handful of helpful navigational links in the right sidebar give you access to more actions, and account and team information. Across the top, you get a quick breakdown of hours worked, unbilled hours, and your total invoices for the month.

Function and Features

Your client list can be as simple or as detailed as you’d like it to be. Personally, I prefer to keep things light for invoicing purposes, so I just enter an organization name and I’m through. If you want, though, you can enter detailed billing information, and additional profile information. This is probably very handy if you’re in a multi-user environment or could potentially be handing over your records to an employee.

Each client can optionally be invited to login and view project and invoice details pertaining only to them, so that they can track what you’re invoicing live, instead of just receiving an end-of-month bill. It’s a nice feature, but one I have a feeling most of my clients wouldn’t ever bother taking advantage of.

Projects and invoices offer similar customization options, with the option of tying projects to a client, though it isn’t required when setting them up. I appreciate that, because I do a lot of quick, one-off projects that don’t merit the time associated with setting up a new client profile. You can also select between a flat or hourly project rate, and edit the default currency, which is a great feature for web workers, who often work with international clients. When you’re invoicing, you just type basic client info directly into your form, saving time in the long run. On your invoice, you can customize everything you need to, including tax rates, issue and due date, invoice number, etc.

Extras

Ronin offers some very nice extra features that should appeal to web workers working alone or as part of a larger organization. You can easily add members to your staff, and Ronin takes care of all the administrative details, like setting up passwords and sending emails. You can also create recurring invoices and prepare estimates using the app, so it really is an end-to-end billing solution. The only thing I missed with Ronin was any kind of automated reports generation, which I would like to see to show client invoicing history.

Finally, you can optionally set up PayPal or Authorize.net integration, so that customers can pay their invoices directly using Ronin. This is a very nice plus for simplifying the billing process.

Cost and Conclusion

While Ronin does offer a free version, it’s a greatly hampered one. You can only have a maximum of two clients at any time, with one contact per client, and only a single staff user. PayPal and Authorize.net payment options also aren’t available on the free version. Paid plans range from $12 to $48 per month, and offer a lot more clients, contacts and staff users than the base plan. You’ll have to pay at least $24 per month for PayPal/Authorize.net features, which is entirely reasonable given that it probably appeals mostly to established businesses, anyway.

Overall, Ronin is a very capable online invoicing app, and the free version could be a great option for independent freelancers who just need something that gets the job done quickly and easily, and can be accessed remotely from any computer. FreshBooks is still probably a more attractive option for most, but Ronin offers another option worthy of consideration, at the very least.

Have you tried Ronin? Let us know what you think of the app in the comments.

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The idea is simple: If you’re already keeping track of the hours it takes you to work on specific projects in Google Calendar, the invoice creator can use the RSS feed from your calendar to automatically create invoices from your tracked hours. It’s easiest if you have a separate calendar for each project — rather than keeping all your projects and appointments on one calendar — but adding a new calendar to Google Calendar is a simple process.

Google Calendar Invoice Creator uses the titles of your specific “appointments” to group hours onto invoices for each project. It’s important to consistently use the same project names to keep your invoices updating correctly. As the application receives new information, it calculates the total hours you’ve worked on each project and generates an invoice for that project. You can create your invoices as either text or HTML files. In the HTML version of your invoices, you can control the layout for a more professional look. You can also create a summary report of how you’ve been spending your time.

There is certain information you’ll want to add to the system before you start creating invoices, like your hourly rate and your client’s details. Once that information is in the system, the application will be able to turn out invoices with minimal effort on your part. You can just attach individual invoices to an email in order to pass them along to the appropriate client.

There are some drawback to using Google Calendar Invoice Creator: It’s meant for just one user, so if you’re trying to generate invoices based on several people’s hours, it’s probably not the best option. Similarly, billing different tasks at different rates can be a bit tricky. More complex invoicing applications do have more features, such as the ability to send invoices directly from the application, and easy availability from any computer. It is also worth noting that this application is not an official Google product.

On the plus side, Google Calendar Invoice Creator can run on a variety of operating systems. It doesn’t take long to learn to use, unlike many more robust bookkeeping applications. As long as you’ve already figured out Google Calendar — not a difficult learning curve — coming to grips with Invoice Creator is easy. It’s also free to download and use. If you’re in need of a quick tool to crank out invoices, this application can be quite useful.

What invoicing tools do you use?

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Not only does this mean that you no longer have to upgrade or downgrade plans as your client base or team changes size, but it’s also cheaper than comparable offerings from competing products like Harvest and Freshbooks. Hopefully, other web apps will take note and follow suit.

What do you think of Cashboard’s move to dynamic pricing?

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Bowness used the apps in his business for about a year each, and his in-depth, insightful observations of the merits and issues with each of the services are based on long-term, real-world usage and worth noting.

Especially interesting are his notes of problems or quirks with each of the apps, which could be very handy when it comes to picking the right service for your business. According to Bowness, Freshbooks’ time tracking is “difficult when you have multiple employees,” its project management is “dismal” and its reports “suck.” Blinksale, meanwhile, offers neither integrated time tracking nor the ability to integrate with a payment gateway, he says, and cannot create estimates. Harvest is similarly unable to create estimates or integrate with a payment gateway, according to Bowness, and recurring invoices are not handled that well. And he finds it “ridiculous” that SSL support is only available with the $90-per-month plan.

Freshbooks is the most feature-rich, Bowness notes, but while it does everything, he says that it “doesn’t do anything particularly well” and its interface is not intuitive. And Blinksale is perfect if you are a freelancer, but not if you have staff. Bowness’ personal favorite is Harvest, which delivers simplicity while boasting a substantial feature set (although not as complete as Freshbooks’).

Which do you prefer: Harvest, Freshbooks or Blinksale?

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The price is unbeatable for lone freelancers and business owners, with a $0 price tag. If you work with a team that will need access to the software, it’ll cost 30 euros ($40) per user per month, with the first user free. Should the out-of-the-box package not have everything you need, Severa has add-ons available for a fee.

Severa succeeds in standing out from the field with one-click access to common features. The Dashboard (in the screenshot below) has a clean layout with good color contrast to help with quick scanning.

All of the fields, pages and drop-down menus are customizable so you can remove those you don’t need or add more options. Severa does a nice job of ensuring its forms display key information and limit the number of required fields.

You can search your data with keywords and limit searches to just one part of the application. Advanced search has a long list of columns to use as filters for searching. The right-hand side of the app holds a calendar and quick help box that changes based on where you point your mouse.

Viewing an account displays all of its contacts, cases and invoices. Like the rest of the app’s pages, the “Case” page avoids presenting too many fields. Cases come with a useful “Internal” tab for non-billable or internal work so you can track non-revenue producing activities. However, adding tasks to a case feels crude, as you can see in the next screenshot. It’s easy to make a mistake by not getting the format right. Those tasks are important when it comes to doing time sheets. The tasks will show up as an item so you can enter the time worked. This ties in with the invoice, which will reflect the time worked and the rate.

As an example, I created a new account called “WebWorkerDaily” (client) with Mr. Simon Mackie as the primary contact. I used this assignment in creating a new case from within the WebWorkerDaily account and referred to it as “Severa Project.” Adding the tasks came next, followed by entering my time for the assignment. So far, so good.

However, I hit a roadblock with the “Invoicing” and “Fees” sections. It took some experimenting before Severa finally spit out the invoice with the right information as it appears in the next screenshot. Once over the hump, I breezed through the application.

Severa has a sleek interface that lets you dive right in. It has a couple of minor obstacles, but so do most applications in this space. The CRM will suit those looking for a well-integrated and even-keeled solution, without feature overkill — it also sports LinkedIn, Facebook and Google Maps integration. Having CRM, project management and invoicing all in one app will make a lot of sense to many web workers.

The Finnish company’s software supports English (both U.S. and UK varieties) and Finnish.

What do you think of Severa’s CRM, project management, time tracking and invoicing solution?

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Overview

Timewerks creates invoices and tracks billable hours and materials used on a per-project basis. You begin by creating projects. The application contains five primary screens: Projects, Invoices, Clients, Work Items and More. The features in More include Data Export, Help and Invoice Color, while the Clients section integrates with your phone’s Contacts so you don’t have to enter contact information twice.

Using the Timer

In my test, at first I thought that the timer had a bug. As you’d expect, you tap Start and Stop to manage the timer as you work on a task. After stopping the timer, you can associate the hours with a work item. The problem I had was that the work items I added when setting up my projects didn’t show up as an option right away. Eventually, the items did appear in the list of tasks — but it’s not clear what made that happen.

The Project Summary screen provides a clean overview of the project, complete with time spent, billed and unbilled items and direct access to that project’s invoices.

Create and Customize Your Invoices

You can invoice by hourly rate or by item and create items for expenses and materials. To include your company’s information on invoices, go to Settings on the iPod Touch or iPhone and look for the green Timewerks icon. The only customization option available (through Invoice Colors) is the background color of the invoice. I’d recommend leaving it as the default white, as the limited color choices don’t really improve the invoice’s look. For example, here’s a wheat-colored invoice.

When you create the invoice, you can add the tax rate, if applicable, and email it to your client. If you need to accept credit card payments, Timewerks integrates with Inner Fence’s Credit Card Terminal. The credit card application is a separate product, but at least you have a way to accept credit card payments as part of the invoicing package.

Export Your Data

Data Export gives you the ability to export Timewerks data to use in another app. You can access the exported Comma Separated Value (CSV), or a Tab Separated Value (TSV) files from any web browser connected to the same network as your phone through an address provided by Timewerks. It took me a little fiddling to get this feature to work. The app provided http://localhost.local:8000 in my test, which didn’t work. I had to use the following steps to get my local IP address:

1. Go to Settings on your iPhone or iPod Touch.
2. Tap Wi-Fi.
3. Tap > next to your network, under Choose a Network.
4. Copy the info next to IP Address, typically something like 192.168.1.1.

To get your data, open your web browser and enter the IP address plus port 8080, for example: http://192.168.1.1:8080/ (include the backslash).

The exported data can be imported into a spreadsheet or another billing app, as many accept CSV and TSV files.

Sorth, the company behind Timewerks, provides documentation and screenshots so you can get a detailed feel for the app before deciding if it’s right for you.

If you love portable solutions, you’ll dig Timewerks. It’s available at the iPhone App Store for $4.99.

What business apps do you prefer to use on your cell phone or handheld device instead of on a computer?

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