Discuss: Better Invoices for Better Business
by Kevin Potts
- Editorial Comments
32 congratulations for the article.
congratulations for the article.
posted at 02:35 am on October 20, 2004 by diseño web
33 Custom Invoices
Brand new to iWork. I’ve been using MYOB software for a couple years and have been fairly happy with it. However, it has some limitations to custom invoice building and is also far more complex than what I need to operate for my sole-proprietor design firm.
With iWork, I have a singular issue I can’t get around. I am using the server addition with several clients loaded on freelancer machines. However, there doesn’t seem to be a way of building a custom invoice on the server side, and if I attempt to do so on the client side I get an error message that says the iWork client can’t find the “client “ in the address book because it’s on the server. How then can I build custom invoice templates if I can’t access either address book?
thanks for any help.
posted at 09:38 am on October 22, 2004 by Alexander
34 E-mailing Invoices
We’ve been e-mailing PDF invoices to our customers who order our software by purchase order (typically universities and K12, but also corporate customers). I used to mail them paper copies.
In my experience, e-mailing has been just as effective as paper. We’ve gotten paid from all our PDF invoices and in a timely manner. Maybe we just have great customers.
I agree with the comment about stale corporate invoices generated by Quickbooks (that’s what we use). I wish our invoices were visually snazzier. I don’t know that it would make any difference with respect to reputation or professionalism, though. In our case, the customer who orders our product is generally not the person who has to look at the invoice and pay it.
Jim
posted at 03:09 pm on November 4, 2004 by Jim Ferguson
35 Little trick to improve the design of your invoice
Hi!
I just discovered a small software that really helps improve the design of my invoices using Quickbooks. In fact it will help you create PDF files from every program that includes print command. The software is called DocuCom PDF Driver. More info [url=“http://www.pdfwizard.com/eng/product/driver.asp”]here[/url]. From Quickbooks (or any accounting package) you create an invoice template without any “fancy” things like border, etc. You just print the bare data (adresses, memo, terms, services, totals, etc) with the nicest font that you can from your accounting package. When you are done, you print with the PDF driver which allows you to set another PDF as a background or as an overlay. You could design this in Photoshop for example (then print it to PDF!).Great for producing invoices! Once the PDF is generated you can print/mail it or email it.
That works for me!Ciao,
Patrick Lafleur
posted at 02:01 pm on November 19, 2004 by Patrick Lafleur
36 Good article...
This is something I have been thinking about doing for sometime (really incoperating my identity into my invoices) as well as just a great article on inside practices.
Regards,
Tyler
posted at 08:21 pm on November 21, 2004 by Tyler
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31 Open Source stuff
I use NetOffice for project management and GNUcash for accounting billing and invoicing. Still trying to get my invoices to look nicer in GNUcash.
Both are great apps and you can’t beat the collaboration aspects of an online project management system where clients can log in and see the status of their projects, upload and download files, and approve designs.
For Mac users GNUcash is available thru fink http://fink.sourceforge.net
http://www.gnucash.org/
http://netoffice.sourceforge.net
posted at 02:52 pm on August 23, 2004 by Gary Ritchie