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One of the biggest struggles of being a freelancer or operating a small business is invoices. Love them or hate them, they’re a necessary part of doing this kind of work, especially if you want to get paid.
Normally, you’d have to make your own invoices from scratch, send them out, try to remember each of them, and then keep a record of what payments have come in. But that’s a hectic mess to organize on your own.
That’s why you need Invoicely. This service helps you through the entire invoicing process from start to finish, and it’ll surely become an integral part of how you do business.
Getting Started
Signing up for a free account couldn’t be easier, just head over to Invoicely’s website, give them your name, an email, password, and address, and you’re good to go. If you used to be an Invoiceable user, you can migrate your data over after creating this free account.
You’ll also need to create a Vanity URL that’ll direct to your Invoicely page in the format yourvanityURLhere.invoicely.com, but this can be changed at any time.
Once on the dashboard, you can navigate around using the left sidebar menu, or you can create Invoices, add bills, or add clients using the button in the upper right. If you need any help, you can send a message to Invoicely using the Help button in the upper right.
Customizing Invoicely
To have the best experience, you’ll want to customize both your interface and how your invoices look right away. Select Business Settings in the left sidebar menu.
Here, you can adjust all your defaults, which will make your invoicing life a lot easier. Set how you want numbers to be formatted, when invoices are due, what currency they’re in, and more.
One of the most important and professional change you’ll want to make is to add your business’s logo to your invoices. This can be done under Business Customizations. You can also adjust the color of your workspace here or even adjust what language your invoices are in.
Once you have everything set to your liking, it’s time to start invoicing.
Making & Sending Invoices
Head back to your dashboard and use the Add New button in the upper right to create an invoice. Everything can then be adjusted in drop-down menus or text boxes. Creating your invoice doesn’t involve any formatting — just fill it all in.
You can add as many lines as you need to keep track of expenses, items, mileage, or time — and you can rearrange those easily by just dragging the handle next to any one of them. At the bottom of the invoice you can even add in taxes, shipping, or discounts that will automatically factor into the total (no more calculator for you).
When you’re done, click Invoice Settings, Payment & Delivery at the bottom, which will allow you to customize how it gets emailed off to the client. You can use an email template or customize your email to them, and Invoicely will automatically send them reminders (if you want) up until the payment is due.
The client can then easily pay through the web using PayPal. Other payment options are available in the paid plans (which we’ll discuss shortly).
Keeping a Record
One of the biggest advantages of using this service instead of just making your own invoices is its ability to keep track of everything. Once you’ve been sending off invoices for a while, head to your dashboard to see an overview of all your stats.
This makes it super easy to see all your money coming in and going out, and it allows you to easily check on certain invoices or clients as necessary. For more detailed options, look to the left sidebar.
Under Invoices, you can see a list of every invoice you’ve sent out with options to sort by unpaid or overdue. If you’re doing consistent work for a particular client, you can even set up recurring invoices here. If you want to use Invoicely to keep track of your expenses as well, you can log those under Bills, which has filtering functions similar to Invoices.
However, to send estimates and track your time, you’ll need to upgrade to one of the paid plans.
Pricing
Invoicely has three tiers of paid plans: Basic, Professional, and Enterprise. Thankfully, most of the paid features become available just at the Basic level, except for using a custom domain. The main draw of the Professional and Enterprise tiers is the ability to have up to 10 or 25 team members respectively. The free plan doesn’t allow for team members, and the Basic plan only allows for two.
However, the free plan does offer unlimited invoices, billing in any currency, and support for multiple businesses.
Monthly pricing starts at $9.99 a month, but you could pay $95.60 yearly instead, saving about $25. For freelancers who are paid with PayPal, the free plan is probably enough, but small businesses might want to look into the Professional or Enterprise options, and freelancers who use other payment methods might want to look into the Basic Plan.
All of these paid options unlock the ability to send and track estimates (or quotes) as well as track the amount of time you’ve spent working for a client so that you bill them accurately. They also unlock more payment options: credit card (via Stripe), PayLane, Authorize.net, Mollie, and WePay.
If you’re invested in freelancing or your business for the long haul, this is a service that will certainly pay off simply in terms of how much time it will save you having to deal with invoices. Plus, you can get many of the key features without paying at all.
What Do You Think?
Invoicely is undoubtedly a convenient option for managing all your invoices. The free plan offers a lot of features, and the paid plans are reasonably priced. We highly recommend checking it out if you’re looking for an invoicing solution.
And while we’ve got you, check out these tips on blogging for small businesses and take these courses that’ll change your life as a freelancer. Or, if you’re just getting started, check out these tips on finding clients. Source: www.makeuseof.com
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