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Ask HN: What do you use to invoice people?

3 points by andrewljohnson ↗ HN
Any answer would be good, but I am looking for something super simple. I don't plan to send many invoices.

I think I'm personally looking for an MS Word template intended for billing software development contracting. Anyone seen one of those? Or, if you have one, can you email it to andrewljohnson@gmail.com

4 comments

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gserafini
I've been using Freshbooks for quite some time and have recommended it to many people now. It is easy, simple to use, free for up to 3 clients. They keep on making it better over time which is quite nice too. I've made a lot more $ by having a system that tracks invoices, payments and all that (rather than the 'doing it by hand using Word' method I used to use). It also supports recurring billing which I've found to be great for automatically generating ongoing web hosting invoices. Creating a new invoices is very simple and intuitive.

Here's a link (referral) to check it out: http://www.freshbooks.com/?ref=e8ba201056138-1

trafficlight
I'll second Freshbooks. I have been using them since 2006 to send out monthly invoices. Most of my clients still pay by check even though they can pay with a credit card online. Freshbooks is super cheap for what they do and I don't have to worry about getting bills out every month.
waivej
Having been down that path, I would recommend an app like an old copy of QuickBooks, an online app like Freshbooks, or an open source equivalent. (eBay?) It makes it easy to be organized and establishing a good system early on gives you time to think about important things.
andyjdavis
It obviously may not be possible for your specific business but if it is I'd encourage you to try and arrange things so you don't have to invoice people at all.

For http://comfypage.com we have a small set of additional services we can provide. We used to invoice people but these days for most stuff people fill out a form and pay online then we get an email that says "person X wants Y done" No invoicing required and we get paid up front so there's no chasing payments involved.

We're probably losing a percentage of customers who don't like this process but the amount of time we spend on admin tasks is basically zero.