21 Quicken Premier Home & Business?

I’ve been using this software since the 2003 version, and just upgraded from 2004 to 2005. The invoice customizer kind of sucked balls through 2004, but I’ll post back with 2005’s, since a lot of the rest of the program is very much improved.

I prefer to use a program that will track invoice numbers, customer IDs, etc. for me, since other options don’t really scale well as your business begins to grow.

posted at 12:39 pm on August 12, 2004 by Jeremy - exibus industries

22 Quicken Premier Home & Business? (cont.)

Nope, still sucks.

posted at 12:44 pm on August 12, 2004 by Jeremy - exibus industries

23 Good guidelines

The company I work for uses OCR to convert their suppliers invoices into digital form. Not surprisingly alot of companies dont know the value of having clear and concise invoices. I know for a fact that companies that somewhat follow the guidelines you have stated in your article get less hassle and paid quickly.

posted at 02:11 am on August 13, 2004 by Emmanuel Ay

24 Other biz considerations..

On a semi-unrelated point, in the US, is there a benefit to being either a freelancer or set up as one’s own business (s-corp etc..)? I have been freelancing for several years, and really don’t know what the heck i’m doing in terms of the biz end of things.

Are there any good tutorials or reference sites out there that I might find helpful?

posted at 08:44 am on August 13, 2004 by Jonas C Otter

25 Studiometry good

Studiometry is a great app for invoicing and time management with loads of features and very responsive author.

What’s really cool is that you can export your invoices as an XML file, and then import the XML into an InDesign template. All the number crunching and admin is automated by Studiometry and the end result is a beautifully designed InDesign document – check it out!

posted at 09:00 am on August 17, 2004 by harry Jones

26 Is this relevant?

I think it’s worth highlighting that this article is specifically aimed at Americans.

Whilst an interesting read, I fail to see how outlining American business practises is going to help the rest of us. There’s no mention of referencing any Purchase Orders you have (I have no idea if you have them in the US), I for one wouldn’t start any work without one, and it’s far more important than laying out your invoice correctly, as it’s your only guarantee of payment.

Anyway, a couple of general points

Under contents:
No mention of any local sales tax. Value Added Tax (VAT) in the UK must be broken down to the client, and the rate of tax must be stated if you are a VAT registered business, for example. I’d imagine this is true in other countries.

Under timing:
“No one wants to pay for unfinished work.”
Yes, they do.
Especially if they want to get the work paid for in a particular month or tax year because of budgeting.

I suggest UK folk take a look at this article, which includes a nice example of a UK style invoice.

http://www.fastlinksolutions.co.uk/invoicin.htm

posted at 01:42 am on August 18, 2004 by John

27 Software that makes it all easy

I loved your articles on Invoices. I used to run into so many pitfalls when trying to create invoices for my clients. Most of the time, the biggest issue was that I hated how to invoice looked.

I don’t mean to sound like a cheap promoter, but I built some PHP / MySQL software to handle all of my invoicing, it’s called TypicalInvoice.

I was bought by another company who is now selling it, but the software is still very helpful in my opinion.

You can check it out at http://www.typicalgeek.com/demo/tiv2/ or you can e-mail me and I’ll send you a free trial copy. :)

Keep up the good articles!
Jeremy

posted at 10:50 am on August 19, 2004 by Jeremy Hubert

28 other info to include

add your legal fine print to the bottom of every invoice (e.g. terms for late payment, recovery of legal expenses in case of non payment, etc…) It can save your ass in court.

posted at 10:15 am on August 20, 2004 by Mark

29 Mailing Invoices??

I never thought about how some people might think it’s more professional to mail an invoice. I’ve just been sending invoices through email using QuickBooks. I might start sending invoices through the mail for Web Design / Programming and then still use email for reocurring web hosting invoices.

posted at 12:05 pm on August 21, 2004 by Brent

30 Well Summarized!

Not many business owners think much about the invoice process and it is about high time that changes. In the SMB space it is all about cash flow so your tips are awesome! Now if I could trackback to this..

Anne

posted at 06:21 pm on August 22, 2004 by Anne Stanton