Why do we need to generate invoice online?
There is an old saying “Keep your account sheet BALANCED”. Now, in our education system, finance management is not a compulsory subject. As a result, innovators and entrepreneurs land in situations where they know “How” to make money but don’t know how to manage it. A clean, trackable balance sheet of any company is like a Credit score of Baseball game. The stats have to be clear just like the game. Quite often freelancers, small and medium-sized companies are faced with several challenges whereas the problems arising from “poor financial management” are reported as the major causes of business failures. As an entrepreneur, you can’t afford to risk the chance that you might forget to send an invoice or follow up on those that haven’t been paid. With every business now going online, it is inevitable to have a billing and invoice system that is not only cloud-based but is also easy to operate for the not so “Geeks” of finance. For freelancers and SMEs, a seamless invoicing system is the key to more time for revenue building and hence more success. In this article, we’ll analyze a few top free online invoice generators.
1. Invoicetra
Invoicetra is a new invoicing solution in the market, designed, keeping in mind the invoice/expense related problems faced by freelancers and SMEs. It is not only very simple to use but also comes free with no hidden charges. Invoicetra lets you create, customize, categorize invoices, and expenses in a very professional manner without wasting much time. The GST and TDS have been taken care of in a way to assist users not to worry about them every time they generate invoice online. The payment gateways are secure, fast, and integrated thus reducing the whole payment odyssey. Invoicetra is a new improvised “free” online invoice and expense management system with a friendly user interface. You have a dedicated dashboard where clients can visualize all their stats and reports, invoices, expenses, and make payments directly through the portal. It has one of the simplest registration and login process that saves a lot of agony of unnecessary emails. Invoicetra is indeed the one-stop invoicing/expense solution for Self-Employed Professionals, freelancers & Small Business Owners.
2. FreshBooks
FreshBooks is an integrated platform for all your payment needs. A great interface designed to give you the double-entry accounting experience with support available for invoices, estimates, expenses, time tracking, and projects. FreshBooks has its solution compatible with Androids and Apple phones. The pricing starts at £11 but it does offer a free trial for 30 days. FreshBooks caters for recurring payment requirements thus saving a lot of time for small businesses. If you need to charge taxes, you can add, update and delete them in a section of your account in few simple steps: A great platform to put your business on autopilot for invoice and payments with facilities for report generation and powerful insights.
3. Zoho
The solution offers 16 invoice templates that are easy to customize. You can sign up with Zoho Invoice for free, no contract, and no credit card information required. Zoho Invoice supports invoice reminders, late fees, packing slips, and retainer invoices. Additionally, the software supports recurring invoices and can auto-schedule them. Zoho Invoice supports over 170 different currencies. You can also send invoices in 14 different languages. The forever free plan can be a great fit for freelancers and micro-businesses; however, several invoice limits may make it impractical for most small businesses. Payment Links in Zoho Invoice lets you request, accept, and record an amount from your customers quickly through online payments. Zoho calculates the GST returns but you have to manually upload the transaction details. Zoho has a great customer support service with good international options.
4. Xero
Xero solutions offer Invoicing, Payment, and Inventory management. This solution is more suitable for big business houses and comes with a 30 day free trial period. Xero comes with a packed up bundle of unlimited features including payroll management and individual bank connections for payment, expense, and project management and designing invoices from multiple templates available. It comes with mobile invoicing, automatic reminders, and online payments. Xero imports and categorizes your latest bank transactions. It assists you to generate online invoice, create expense claims, and log in from anywhere. Xero calculates the GST for each transaction line individually and the GST return uses your transaction data to calculate the GST liability.
5. QuickBooks
Quickbooks is again a great invoicing platform with facilities for customized, pay-enabled invoices. It does not offer any free services and the cheapest available plan is £5 per month which is also not that expensive viz a viz the services offered by them for unlimited pay enabled invoicing. It offers both income and expense management and comes with a cash flow planner. Quickbooks lets you generate invoice online and incorporate GST returns. It has excellent customer support. You can track your reports and returns with great visual graphs. It has an easy to use interface customized for multiple countries and currencies with tax return facility. A recently added feature in QuickBooks is an accountant- “only view” facility inside a client’s QuickBooks particular file that allows an accountant to confidently engage with their clients through access to selective client details for return filing, auditing, etc
6. Waveapp
With Waveapp you can create unlimited, customizable professional invoices, do payments, track expenses all for 100% free but it does not provide this facility to many countries. It has a simple model and a great choice for freelancers and SMEs but its restricted to only a few countries where it can offer this facility for free. The software does not offer many features but does take care of the basic requirement to generate invoice online and expense service which can save a lot of time for freelancers and help them understand their business functioning better. It is also available on Android and iOS and you can incorporate receipts into your accounting report and capture receipts when you are offline. With no hidden charges you can generate powerful reports on Overdue Invoices & Bills, Cash Flow, Profit & Loss.
Conclusion
All in all, there are many invoicing solutions available in the market but if you are a freelancer/SME or just starting with your business, Invoicetra would be the recommended choice for all your invoicing needs as it provides all the basic facilities that too free of cost thus saving your time and money to generate more earnings and take your business forward.