Can anyone suggest an invoicing app with a simple and clean UI for Windows? It should be low priced (free is OK too).

For Mac OS there seems to be quite a few such apps available. Not including anything remotely similar to QuickBooks. Doesn't even need time tracking/counter features. Mainly just something to create the invoices and track them, being able to mark them paid, send copies out via email, print, etc...

Examples of Mac software:

Profit Train (Formerly Billable): http://clickablebliss.com/profittrain/
Billings: http://www.marketcircle.com/billings/ (ok, this one is a usability nightmare even though it looks pretty enough in screen shots.

After using [url=www.freshbooks.com]Freshbooks[/url] for about a year now, it would be very difficult to sway me toward something else. It's yet another cloud service, and there's a monthly fee, but I've definitely found it to be worth the investment.

I'm not very familiar with invoicing software, though. I never really looked for it when I was deciding which direction to take with my invoicing. Plus, now that I'm switching back and forth between Windows and OSX, it's nice to not be tied to a piece of installed software.

I don't think my buddy will be into a cloud-based, software-as-a-service solution unfortunately. But I'll definitely mention it to him.

That would be unfortunate. It has so many advantages.

I interact on a regular basis with other small business owners. Any time that invoicing has come up, I have only heard of people using one of two solutions: Quickbooks or Word/Excel. I haven't even met another person doing invoices on a service like Freshbooks, they all pretty much use Quickbooks.

Quickbooks gives me headaches, although I feel like I should be using it. Although, if I did use it, I'd probably use the cloud-based version

QB is an awful piece of software. It's what he has right now, but I'm not sure he's been using it long. It miht have been what he used for his full-time business previously. The thing is, he's no longer operating the business full-time and is only doing occasional jobs on the side, which is why I didn't think he'd go for the service thing.

Does Freshbooks have a pricing table anywhere on its site? I can't find one. In fact, while the site is pretty, I find it very opaque in terms of what the service offers and how much it's going to cost. I hate that.

EDIT: Had to use Google to find it. http://community.freshbooks.com/support/how-much-does-freshbooks-cost-2/

Way too expensive for his needs, IMO.

That's what I used -- well the LibreOffice version, anyway, along with the file system. An invoice was just a template that I filled out, and saved to a PDF. I didn't keep every invoice as individual pages, or anything like that. Then I put the PDF in a "pending" directory, moving it into a "paid" directory when I cashed the check.

Ditto. Except we print the pdf, and then do pretty much the same process with the paper copy instead of the pdf. Works fine for low volume invoicing, but wouldn't do for any kind of retail volumes.

Bruno,

I agree that on the face of it, it sounds too expensive for your friend. It's not too expensive for me, since I rely on it so heavily for a large number of clients, but if you're not doing this full-time, it's overkill.


If he's just going to do the occasional invoice, it's not that hard to use one of the built-in Word templates to write one up and attach it to an email. Much more than that and I think I'd go crazy with that system.


One more thing about Freshbooks, Bruno. What quantity of invoices/clients does he plan to have at any given time? You'll notice that the free version lets you send invoices to up to three clients. Clearly this isn't really enough for most businesses (unless you have a VERY small niche), and is meant as a trial service. However, if you're doing this as a side thing, it can be enough. The reason is that once you're done invoicing a client, you can delete that client and create a new one, and it won't count against your total. All deleted clients can be restored at any time. That way you could have as many clients at a time as you wanted, but you only get three to work with at any given point.

I understand, though, if this is more complicated than it's worth. It's the reason I'm signed up for the $30/month plan (second to highest, since I don't need other people to access my invoicing). I have unlimited clients.

But yeah, I can see that it wouldn't work for him. There's another free service (or at least it was when I was using it) called Curdbee.

I'll go over it with him next week or this weekend if I have the time. He's also a bit computer-shy, so I'll guide him through the setup to see if it will fit.

Thanks again.

I only really had one client at a time.

I just ran across these, after stumbling onto turnkeylinux.org with an unrelated search. Although running a VM just for invoicing is a bit overkill, it might be an option, if he's more comfortable with the idea of a web-based solution, but wants to keep it off the cloud.

If either of those web apps are any good I can install them somewhere on my web server and let him access them securely. Thanks.

So far Simple Invoices looks like the better tool. The other one screamed "fail" to me as soon as I read the word "root" on the first screenshot.

I think that's "root" as in "part of the plant that's in the ground", but I haven't played with it...

I will hopefully show my friend some of the alternatives this week. If he chooses Simple Invoice I hope it's an easy install. Because I'm the one that's going to have to do it on my own server.

Is there some reason that the entire site for Simple Invoices is in English, yet the demo is entirely in French? That's a little jarring and makes it kind of hard to try out their software. I have no problem with offering a French demo, but wouldn't it be a better idea to give potential users an option for which language they want? Weird.

Anyway, it does look like a nice, clean, straightforward system.