Billings?

[jaimejaime]

Does anyone have any experience with the invoicing software "Billings"?

I run my own freelance business and have been using "MacFreelance" for the past 5 years or so. It's pretty basic, and I only really use it to submit quotes, create invoices and track clients. It does offer me the ability to track expenses, I just didn't take advantage of that when I started and then got stuck in my ways.

Anyways, said bookkeeping has always been handled on my older Mac and I've recently upgraded my whole office. The only downside is MacFreelance doesn't appear to run very well in 10.8, so I'm checking out what the alternatives are so that I can switch my bookkeeping over to the new machine and finally put the old gal to rest.

Any feedback on Billings, or alternatives would be greatly appreciated. I'm looking for a standalone application here as well, not a monthly service like Fresh Books, etc.

Thanks!

 

[sce]

I'm a consultant who bills time hourly along with disbursements such as mileage etc.

Billings does everything I need very well.

Clients are added through address book, each client can have many different projects and for each project I can create a new time slip for everything I do for that client on a particular day. Time can be entered directly on to the time slip or by way of a running timer.

Time slips can be invoiced individually or grouped. Once invoiced, it will flag up overdue invoices and allow you to send statements.

The only criticism I have is that designing the invoices and statements is quite complex as it is so flexible. But once that is set up, the software is extremely simple to use and effective.

If you have any specific questions, let me know and I'll endeavour to answer.

 

[jaimejaime]

I'm a consultant who bills time hourly along with disbursements such as mileage etc.

Billings does everything I need very well.

Clients are added through address book, each client can have many different projects and for each project I can create a new time slip for everything I do for that client on a particular day. Time can be entered directly on to the time slip or by way of a running timer.

Time slips can be invoiced individually or grouped. Once invoiced, it will flag up overdue invoices and allow you to send statements.

The only criticism I have is that designing the invoices and statements is quite complex as it is so flexible. But once that is set up, the software is extremely simple to use and effective.

If you have any specific questions, let me know and I'll endeavour to answer.

Thanks for the detailed response, I appreciate that.

I don't work on an hourly rate, but rather day rates or general rates per job (I'm an editorial/commercial photographer), I assume you can input rates this way rather than hourly as well?

I need each client to be capable of handling a whole bunch of projects (magazine clients that assign frequently, etc), so I'm glad to hear that part.

Are you able to generate quotes/estimates do you know? That is one feature of MacFreelance that I've enjoyed, as simple as it is.

Your criticism is actually music to my ears. My current invoices are functional, and perhaps not ugly, but they ain't pretty. If they're customizable at least to the point where my branding can be integrated and (hopefully!) have control over font styles and sizes I'll be in heaven.

 

[sce]

You can input rates as timed (hourly), fixed, quantity, expense or mileage. For day rates or rates per job you could use fixed or quantity.

I have many different projects per client, so that isn't a problem.

It will create estimates, but I have not used that function. Looking at the in-built help, you seem to be able to convert quotes/estimates into invoices for easy billing. Design of estimates is the same as for design of invoices, so extremely customisable.

The invoices are customisable to include your branding, font changes, anything really. Billings comes with quite a few templates and I used one of those as a base and changed it to my brand, colour and font. There are companies online that will, for a fee, 'code' your invoice design for you.