Free Resources for WAHMs: Invoicing Software

Posted by NessWorld on Oct 20, 2009 in WAHM | 0 comments

Many things are given away for free on the internet these days.  A great deal of these things that are given away for free, are useful. A great deal more of them, are of no use at all.

Therefore it is really great when you find something that makes your life infinitely easier!

As WAHMs we need every last spare second that we can squeeze out of the day, so when I found Paymo’s free Invoicing and Time-Tracking Software, it proved to be an absolute gem!

Image courtesy of www.paymo.biz

So Why Is It Free?

Paymo, state on their website that they want to support freelancers and small businesses, so the use of their service is free for companies with 3 employees/users or less. Once you need to add a fourth user, they begin charging for the use of their service at USD $ 3.99 (approx ZAR 24.00) a month per user. Please note if you have the need to produce more than three invoices per month (for those freelancers dealing with multiple clients), they have a very affordable $9.99 per month unlimited invoicing option, which is totally worth it!

That is still a bargain, given the scope and functionality of their product!

Image Courtesy of www.paymo.biz

So How Does it Work?

In a nutshell, the strength of Paymo, for myself in particular (as a freelancer) lies in their time tracking feature of their software.

Once you’ve signed up for an account and set up your details, you simply click on the tab (on their website that says) Time-Tracker. This opens up a handy little widget in a new browser window (Windows users) or in the Dashboard (Mac Users)  that you can click to say ‘start’ or ‘stop’ as you are working on your clients project.

Each client/project/task can have it’s own per hour billing rate. So for example, you could charge more or less depending on the who the client is, how difficult the work is etc. It is all completely customizeable.

Image courtesy of www.paymo.biz

Why Do You need it?

While Paymo, is designed with freelancers and small businesses in mind, the time tracking feature is just one of several that would come in really useful to any small business.

• It’s internet based, so you can log in to your Paymo dashboard from anywhere, and produce an invoice (snaps fingers) just like that!
• Clients can view their invoices online, eliminating the need for printing out invoices and mailing them (save the trees!) or alternatively they can be downloaded and emailed as a .pdf file.
• It will produce reports for you showing you how much time you work, and how much you ‘slack off’ if you enable the time tracking feature.  (This feature is nothing short of beautiful, since it colour codes each client/project differently too, showing you how much time you are spending on each one.
• It will show you which invoices are paid and which are not, because they’ve included a handy feature which allows you to enter payments from your clients etc. So while it is not accounting software per se, it’s certainly extremely useful when it comes time to show your accountant what you’ve earned, and for seeing which of your clients still owe you money and what for.
• The invoicing feature can either drop in information from the time-sheet, or if you’re are running a product/service based business on a by sale basis, you can simply type in the description, quantity and amount and voila! Impressive and professional looking invoice is ready for dispatch.
• It has multi-currency support, and I was pleased to see that it offered the ZAR as an option!
• Simply upload your logo, and away you go!
• It works on Windows, Mac AND Linux!

Do not underestimate the kind of time that this wonderful service can save you. If you are able to bill your clients in a snap, it makes getting the money in that much quicker and easier.  It’s been tried and tested by me based on photographic and graphic design clients to great success.

Have you heard enough?  Want to know more? We’ve linked you up below so you can click through to sign up.

If you liked this post, please use the ‘share this’ button to share it on facebook/twitter/technorati/stumbleupon/digg/delicious/blogger/wordpress and more.

No related posts.