What do you use to bill your clients?

I have been in business for myself in one form or another for the past 11 years. 8 of that was in the brick and mortar world with a transmission (automotive) business. There I used quickbooks, but once I started my web design business I went away from quickbooks since I felt the reporting was not needed at that level.

Fast forward 3 years and I have 30 or so clients that need to be billed monthly, quarterly or annually, along with 1 off billing of new and returning clients.

I had Microsoft Office 2007 installed, so I used Microsoft Access since it was handy. I don't like this system, I don't need all the overhead of this system, and to put it quite bluntly, don't want to 'build out' every form and report I try to access.

So, what do you guys use for billing and keeping up with your business money matters?

Thanks in advance!

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by RichardDa on January 5, 2010 at 3:15pm
We are using http://hostbillapp.com one problem is that we can install it on PHP hosting but works great. There is no SAAS solution.
Permalink Reply by depika k. on April 21, 2010 at 10:56am
In Greece most of the clients believe that is easy stuff to create a website. Especially when it has to do with an e-shop. Clients believe that is easy stuff adding products.

So, I use http://www.paymo.biz in order to calculate the time I spent per project and maybe per task. Then the invoice is generated automatically.
Permalink Reply by Eddie May on May 25, 2010 at 8:58am
Another happy Freshbooks user - for about 2 years now.

I like the timer device, so I know how much to charge clients for quick jobs that turn out to take a lot longer! I also like the repeat billing - some of my clients pay monthly & all the invoicing & reminders are handled for you.

Its also got a rudimentary support tickets & docs - not 'enterprise' but sufficient for most things.

It also has expenses which can be assigned to a client/project & automatically added to an invoice - very handy.

Be aware tho', Freshbooks it not an accounting system - its a billing system.

Ps - don't work at Freshbooks nor get any back handers, etc!
Permalink Reply by Nate Covington on December 7, 2010 at 7:43am
All of my online payments are done through my web site and PayPal (RSFom integrations, AEC Subscription Manager, VirtueMart). Once the payments are received, everything goes into QuickBooks (paypal, checks, etc).

So yeah, Quickbooks gets my vote. Very powerful, although as a one-person-business, I hardly use any of the features that it has (payroll, etc). Best feature is the "Send to Accountant" feature for end of year stuff. Easy!
Permalink Reply by Ian Nelson on June 2, 2011 at 4:48am

I use WHMCS


Not tried the others to compare...

 

It is fairly cheap and easy to use with what seems a lot of advanced features I haven't used yet.

It automatically links to domain selling accounts so I can use it to sell domain names and it handles the interface with Resellerclub for me and then creates invoices and repeat billing.

 

It can also be linked to CPANEL / WHM and create hosting accounts and again create invoices automatically.

 

It also allows for ad hoc services to be set up that can be invoiced.

 

I find it great to auto generate monthly invoices and manage my products with little effort on my part.

 

Happy to show you around it if that helps.

 

cheers

 

Ian

 

 

Robert Vining said:

Has anyone ever tried WHMCS or Client Exec? Seems the monthly cost is fairly cheap compared to online SaaS billing solutions mentioned above at only $18.95 per month.

The bonus is, it will automate my hosting accounts and monthly/quarterly/annual payments as well since I have a dedicated server that I host client websites on.

I'm heavily leaning toward one of these two options after doing initial research into the above mentioned solutions.
Permalink Reply by Robert Vining on June 2, 2011 at 9:48am

Thanks Ian,

WHMCS has been my choice now for over a year and I really like it! I have 26 clients that I bill monthly, quarterly or annually for hosting services and it's tied into 2 WHM/cPanel servers. It's so easy to add an hour of support to the monthly invoice when needed and I simply use a standard Paypal business account for payments that links directly from the invoice that's generated.

I also create all my site build invoices through there as well. It's a breeze. I actually leased a second copy to sell templates with on another site, but changed my game plan before launch to a subscription based model using AEC. It was easy to cancel the second one, since there's no contracts.

 

While I was building that second site though, I purchased the jwhmcs integrator that pulls whmcs into your joomla template and creates a joomla user at the same time. It's a nice little bridge, and I'm thinking more and more about using it for my clients to see a fully branded version of whmcs when they visit my site. This will push me to utilize the support desk feature and knowledgebase of whmcs that are rarely used at the moment.

 

Thanks for chiming in on this, and glad to see you here at ATAAW. Welcome!

Permalink Reply by Ian Nelson on June 2, 2011 at 10:05am

Cool

I may be in touch then to pick up some of the WHMCS features I have seen but not touched yet.

 

SO far I just find it very useful to have something auto generating invoices without me manually having to create word or pdf docs and remember to email them :)

 

Thanks for the welcome

 

Ian

 

Permalink Reply by Leo Lammerink on June 2, 2011 at 11:43am
We are using leased WHMCS, fully integrated in our Joomla-template (they provide that service and it takes you the enormous amount of US$ 35 to do so!........http://gws-host.com) , now for 3 years and are extremely happy with the flexibility in Billing and Payments......We use it in our hosting business but cannot use it in our Joomla Services business due to the business model we use in that division. Having said that we think the system is great and Matt and his Team provide excellent support and value for money.
Permalink Reply by Robert Vining on June 2, 2011 at 12:30pm
Hadn't thought about that service Leo, thanks for the tip! It's also good to see you again, hope all is well with you and yours. :)
Permalink Reply by Leo Lammerink on June 2, 2011 at 12:45pm

Never left Robert.....What they do is scrape your template-files with whatever tool and add this data in a  couple of "whatever.tpl" templates and it works wonderful. What is not working on those links is the SEO of Joomla of course since when you go to a link of WHMCS (client-area for instance) you actually get into a whmcs.php file which is wrapped into Joomla (not like  a Joomla wrapper!), simulating the template..... you can see this on this link https://www.gws-host.com/my/clientarea.php

It does not affects your ranking though (we are stll no #1 on Google " Specialized Joomla Hosting" and hardly anybody sees that this is no Joomla SEO so we are quite hapy especially for the value of money!

 

Robert Vining said:

Hadn't thought about that service Leo, thanks for the tip! It's also good to see you again, hope all is well with you and yours. :)
Permalink Reply by Ian Nelson on June 2, 2011 at 2:52pm

out of interest your link at the top hits a 404

http://www.gws-desk.com/packagesgws-desk-emergency-assist

:)

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