There are two fundamental things any small business or freelancer must do in order to be successful:
- Bill your clients
- Make sure you clients pay you
Sadly since freelances and small business owners are always too busy doing the work they enjoy, the accounting side of things almost always never gets done, or done right.
A Successful Small Business is One That Hires an Accountant
I once had someone tell me that he started his business so he didn’t have to have his hands tied down by accountants–he’s now bankrupt. Certainly, having an accountant is a valuable resource; however, you may not be making enough revenue to hire an accountant, or your work is something that you are doing part time. The solution that I have found to this problem is simple: Freshbooks.
Not Only is Freshbooks Simple, It Works!
With Freshbooks, you enter your customer’s details, such as address, contact, email address, etc., and then you build an invoice, and click ‘Send Invoice.’ That’s it! You’re done. Your customer will receive the invoice in their email.
What Happens If Your Customer Doesn’t Use Their Email Much?
Simple. Freshbooks give you the option to have your invoices mailed to your customers. They will print an invoice for you, with your company’s logo, fold it, put it in an envelope, and mail it to your customer. All for just $1.39 per invoice mailed. And, this feature is great if you have reoccurring billing, your invoices will be mailed automatically every billing cycle.
About Those Customers Who Forget to Pay
Finally, in my opinion, Freshbooks killer feature is the reminder emails it will send to your customers if they do not pay. There’s nothing that seems to get your clients attention more than receiving an email that says, “Your invoice is overdue.” Since I’ve started using Freshbooks I have yet to have a customer miss a billing cycle. And all of this is one without my intervention.
I could talk endlessly about how great is the Freshbooks system–it seems like every feature, from the API, time tracking, to its dashboard makes the money side of business easier, but there’s one point I want to emphasize. If you’re trying to program your own billing system, forget it and just subscribe to Freshbooks. You are not in business to program billing systems, and what you think is an easy problem can get very complicated fast. Especially when one of your system tests accidentally sends your customers 100 invoices for $999 each.
Please use Freshbooks instead. It’s free to try for 3 clients.
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