FreshBooks

Freshbooks.com is an online invoicing and billing system. The application has been designed to meet the requirements of small businesses as well as big corporate. The concept of online invoicing is not new but freshbooks.com provides some additional tools like time sheets and teams which generates automatic invoices based on the time spent by the businesses on a specific project. This translates into savings in terms of time as well as personnel employed for this purpose. Since, normal mail feature is also supported; one can generate both traditional as well as online invoices. The personalized features like logo etc. gives professional touch to the invoices. Since the data is stored online, it is quite safe. This application has been in circulation since 2003 and has an employee base of twenty seven and operates from Toronto, Canada. According to the in-house survey carried out by the company in 2007, 60% reported collecting more money and saved 4.5 hours in one month. This application has some unique features. The most important is the mechanism which connects the time sheet with the automatic generation of invoices. This website is also flexible in terms of users and size of clients. From a client base of three, one can expand to five thousand and more. This can be advantageous where an organization is in a expansion phase and is adding clients gradually. The payment structure supports this gradual increase in client base. The application is easy to use and the interface is intuitive. One need not know much about the mechanics of the application and no prior knowledge of software coding is required. It is a simple application which can be set up in a short time and one can start using it immediately. The registration process is surprisingly very simple, considering the fact that it is a paid service. A free trial package can be registered in less than five minutes. There is no need to provide credit card information. Also there is no need for email confirmation or any such complicated procedure. One can therefore sample the application without fear of credit card frauds and such issues. The pricing for freshbooks.com is spread into several packages. Starting from a three client free account, one can scale up to $149 per month which supports 5000 clients. For those who want more clients to be managed, the company provides additional personalized support. It is a good application and specifically recommended for those who wish to offload invoicing and billing functions to a third party. It saves time and more importantly, anyone can manage their invoicing needs without the help of specialized staff. This translates into savings in terms of fewer staff.