Invoicing, billing, tracking employee time… what a hassle. Don’t you wish there was one program to handle all of this? Actually, there is one program out there that does all of that. Freshbooks is a new and intuitive way to get you invoicing up to date.

Freshbooks is an online program which allows you to send invoices, set recurring billing and track employee hours. It has a user friendly interface and is an inexpensive way to make a small companies look like they are part of the Fortune 500.

One very cool feature in Freshbooks is the ability to link directly with credit card companies (i.e Authorize.net) and other merchants (PayPal). Once linked to a processor, Freshbooks allows you to easily set recurring payment plans which are great for continuity programs and all around “set it and forget it” processing. All you need to do is set the date for the invoice to be processed and the customer credit card is automatically charged and an invoice is sent via email, snail mail or both. Email delivery is free and invoices sent via snail mail have a nominal fee attached. Invoices are also customizable and can have a company logo, name and address.

Another great feature is the employee time cards. Employees can input the amount of time they worked on each client and link it directly to the project invoice. This way you and the client know how long a particular project took to complete and who was working on it. This is handy if you have an employee working on multiple projects simultaneously.

Freshbooks also offers expense tracking. Here you can track all project related expenses (i.e. travel, lodging, food). All expenses can be linked directly to the customer invoice.

As an accountant, I think the coolest feature of all is the reports section. Freshbooks tracks all information you enter to the system. So, if you have 50 recurring transactions scheduled over the next four months you will be able to create a revenue map sorted by monthly schedule. This is a great feature to predict future cash flows, which all companies should be looking at. You can also specify a time period for which revenue was collected and break the reports down by project or client. Other reports in Freshbooks include accounts receivable aging, tax summary, expense by client, project, categories and staff, task summaries and employee time sheets.

Freshbooks memberships range from a free membership, the Moped, where you can maintain up to two customers, to the Time Machine which allows you to maintain up to 5000 active clients and 20 employees for only $ 149 per month.

All accounts come with customer support (which I’ve used) who are always available and very helpful. So if you are tired of spending hours on the tedious accounting and bookkeeping of a small to medium size business, give Freshbooks a shot, I’m sure you will love it.

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This article is one of the “Featured Articles” in our Print Newsletter, “MDC Monthly.” This article was written by John Russo, one of the many expert marketers (like Stephen Pierce, Anik Singal, George Brown, and Omar Martin) that write for our newsletter along with Mike Filsaime. You can get a free trial copy shipped to your door by clicking here.

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