After an extensive search, Freshbooks seems to be the best invoicing app available for iOS. However, it comes with a steep price point if all you need is an invoice designer and archiver. $15 per month could work if you want to let Freshbooks be your accountant and book keeper.
I didn't. I just wanted a mobile invoicing app that I could use to invoice my clients right after a job. They get the invoice on their mobile immediately and can pay me right there.
Where did I find my solution? I came full circle: I found my solution in Numbers.
I've been using Numbers for Mac for years as my invoice designer. It's worked very well. I saved a blank one as a template then fill out the fields, share as a PDF and email it to my client. When I decided to go mobile, I found that working on the small iPhone screen would slow me down and I didn't want to invest in a short term solution. I wanted something elegant, that I could fill out a few fields in an iPhone friendly way and be done with it.
I came back to Numbers after seriously considering Freshbooks. When I looked closer, I discovered
Forms in Numbers. I rebuilt my invoice in Numbers for iOS, updated it with new info that I've been meaning to add for a long time and created 3 separate forms associated with the invoice spreadsheet:
Clients, Items and Paid.
When I want to issue an invoice, I open a copy of the template, Fill in the 3 client fields (Client name, invoice number, date) in the iPhone friendly Form page, and then move to the items tab and fill those out also in an easy to enter form. My spreadsheet is updated with all this info and automatically calculated. I can then share via e-mail in PDF format and I'm done. It's a very simple solution that looks great and is very simple to use.
As a client pays me, I open that invoice, go to the Paid tab, check the Paid checkbox and enter the Cheque number.For archiving, I can drop an invoice on another to create a folder, which I'll organize by Year.
This $9.99 solution sure beats the $15 per month Freshbooks and I was able to customize every aspect of the invoice to my needs. Mark this thread as
solved for me!
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If there are any Spreadsheet geeks out there, I'd love to hear from you regarding the following possibilities:
- Can Numbers handle
alerts? I want to set a 30 day period counting from the entered invoice date, after which time, if the Paid checkbox is still unchecked, I'd get an alert on that invoice icon (or better, a push notification).
- Can I set a property for certain elements on the spreadsheet to not be printed? I have my Paid checkbox visible at the bottom of the spreadsheet. Right now, I have it in a light grey with "For admin. use" above it, but I'd rather it not be printed into the PDF at all. Is this possible?
UPDATE: I've resolved both issues above. Numbers for iOS is incredibly powerful. Its simplicity is so deceiving. You can build a powerful invoicing app out of this if you go far enough in using formulas and sheets.
For those interested, I hid the Payment status and checkbox by creating a separate sheet tab for my administrative use within each invoice. This sheet contains a checkbox for Paid/Unpaid, a field for cheque number and date and then another set of fields that reference the first sheet to indicate the date the invoice was issued and a field for payment terms (number of days to pay) which then generates a due date.
Then on the first sheet (the one the thumbnail is generated from) I created an "IF" function that asks whether today's date is passed the due date. If it is, a large red bold type "OVERDUE" appears stamped at the bottom of the invoice. This is all generated automatically. In theory, I'll be able to see this OVERDUE in the thumbnail of the file if the thumbnails are generated without opening the file. If they're not, at least, I'll be able to see at a glance by opening each invoice if any are overdue.
This all sounds very complex -- and it was to design the invoice -- but the actual use is just a matter of filling out simple easy to use forms and letting all the automation in the spreadsheet do the rest.
UPDATE 2: I completed a few dummy invoices to see how invoice management would look. Here's how the thumbnails look when I open Numbers. As you can see, it's very easy to spot which ones are overdue (follow up with client), paid (archive in the year folder) or awaiting payment.
Image
