Invoicing and Accounting Solutions
Invoicing and Accounting Solutions
(OP)
This is a topic every year or two, but it seems worth asking again because there's some moving targets on the cloud side of things.
I have never had more than one or two clients in a year and haven't really thought about invoicing or accounting too much as a result. I'm ramping that up slightly, but not too much. I'm concerned, though, that if I don't set up a usable system now I might accidentally end up in a situation where it's hard to do it later because I've entrenched myself into something that isn't scalable.
I am not good at being administratively organized, so I have two goals:
1) Quick set up of clients or projects and invoicing
2) Structure
If it stays fast and easy, then I'm more likely to get it done, but I don't want to create a headache down the line by just shifting the pain.
Quickbooks seems like the typical answer. Is that the right thing?
We're talking a sole practitioner doing half their time for a large consulting firm and half of their time elsewhere. Tracking invoices and payments is a big deal, dealing with business expenses and the odd subcontractor as well. Time tracking would be nice but I can do it outside if necessary. I'm more of the twenty hour type of project person, rather than the eight hundred one hour projects in a year type of person.
I am wary of cloud stuff, because a service shutting down would be a giant pain. That being said, I won't have anything complicated enough that it's really a big deal, so maybe I'm overthinking.
I don't love that quickbooks is subscription only for the same reason, but it's been around long enough that there's obviously going to be some path forward from someone if they ever decided to depreciate it.
What are other people doing.
Oh, also I'm in Canada which biases me towards the couple of solutions that build in Canada specific stuff.
I have never had more than one or two clients in a year and haven't really thought about invoicing or accounting too much as a result. I'm ramping that up slightly, but not too much. I'm concerned, though, that if I don't set up a usable system now I might accidentally end up in a situation where it's hard to do it later because I've entrenched myself into something that isn't scalable.
I am not good at being administratively organized, so I have two goals:
1) Quick set up of clients or projects and invoicing
2) Structure
If it stays fast and easy, then I'm more likely to get it done, but I don't want to create a headache down the line by just shifting the pain.
Quickbooks seems like the typical answer. Is that the right thing?
We're talking a sole practitioner doing half their time for a large consulting firm and half of their time elsewhere. Tracking invoices and payments is a big deal, dealing with business expenses and the odd subcontractor as well. Time tracking would be nice but I can do it outside if necessary. I'm more of the twenty hour type of project person, rather than the eight hundred one hour projects in a year type of person.
I am wary of cloud stuff, because a service shutting down would be a giant pain. That being said, I won't have anything complicated enough that it's really a big deal, so maybe I'm overthinking.
I don't love that quickbooks is subscription only for the same reason, but it's been around long enough that there's obviously going to be some path forward from someone if they ever decided to depreciate it.
What are other people doing.
Oh, also I'm in Canada which biases me towards the couple of solutions that build in Canada specific stuff.
RE: Invoicing and Accounting Solutions
I'm in the process of transitioning to BQE Core. It's expensive, but I was able to negotiate a discount given the size of my firm. It's feature rich (more than I need), and developed for the A/E industry originally. It has time tracking, resource management, project management, full accounting functionality, CRM, invoicing, and payment processing all in one place. In terms of scalability, it's hard to beat. I think Factor is their primary competitor as far as budget options go.
RE: Invoicing and Accounting Solutions
Quickbooks works for me. I use it to generate invoices, track cash flow, and keep track of my mileage. Some of the reporting features I use for taxes and such. It's probably way more powerful than I need, but it can also be dead simple if that's how you use it. I also *think* there is some feature which would allow me to give access to a book keeper or accountant if I ever get to that stage.
Subscription fee is what it is. I'd rather pay $20 a month and have a dead simple, semi-pro way of doing things than trying to save that cash and building my own system. They moved me to the Cloud unit this year because the desktop version stopped being updated or something. I haven't noticed a difference other than I hate having to enter passwords and I couldn't access anything at home today because the power company was doing maintenance on the lines. Oh well, no work day.
I don't time track regularly and I really should. When I do, I use Toggl and somehow make the two systems jive manually.
RE: Invoicing and Accounting Solutions
BQE and Factor would be overkill. We only recently started to use Factor after hiring a few folks and tracking time and expenses in Excel was obviously going to be a waste of our time. We first tried to use Harvest for some light project management but it’s only really good for tracking time and expenses. The limitations on tracking subs was frustrating so we had to switch to Factor. I didn’t enjoy how the BQE rep treated us, and they were more money, so we figured we give Factor a shot. So far so good.
RE: Invoicing and Accounting Solutions
If I was only billing a few per year, I would probably find another way.
RE: Invoicing and Accounting Solutions
RE: Invoicing and Accounting Solutions
RE: Invoicing and Accounting Solutions
BQE does look interesting, but yeah it's definitely overkill.
RE: Invoicing and Accounting Solutions
RE: Invoicing and Accounting Solutions
I mainly need to make invoices and track expenses for tax time. I don't like a monthly fee of QuickBooks or other options and I am leery of free online options. I feel like they could become a bait and switch.
RE: Invoicing and Accounting Solutions
RE: Invoicing and Accounting Solutions
RE: Invoicing and Accounting Solutions
RE: Invoicing and Accounting Solutions
RE: Invoicing and Accounting Solutions
We were also paying Wave to file our quarterly taxes which you typically pre-pay 3 months in advance, so we paid for Jan - March up front and we cancelled our service with them before the next period (toward the end of period 1) to keep from having to pay for another 3 months that we wouldn't be using them and they decided not to file, nor pay our taxes, but did take the money out for taxes and kept it sitting in their account. By the time we noticed we were hit with penalties and contacted them and at first their response was since we cancelled before they filed (within 15 days after said period) then they didn't file, but then they realized that we did pay for them to file that period because you pay ahead and that they had taken the money out of our account already for these taxes; so they went ahead filed the taxes, however they refused to reimburse us for the penalties. Hopefully they have addressed their processes since.
RE: Invoicing and Accounting Solutions
That is about what mine charges also including the quickbooks license. I do all the invoicing and receivables so she does not have much to do.
RE: Invoicing and Accounting Solutions
Freshbook has payment options including instant and Credit Cards. Money usually arrives in my bank in less than 3 days, so I haven't used the instant payout option (which has a fee).
I use ManicTime for my time tracking since I am lazy... The nice thing is ManicTime can be imported into Freshbooks pretty easily.
RE: Invoicing and Accounting Solutions
RE: Invoicing and Accounting Solutions
RE: Invoicing and Accounting Solutions