Small business owners and freelancers put a lot of effort into their businesses. They do it not just because they love what they do, but also because their goal is to make money.
In such work, no part of the work is less.
Getting paid usually means sending a customer an invoice. Of course, we can easily and quickly create an invoice using a word processor or a form, but sometimes you need to go a step further, such as making the invoice more professional, having a mechanism for tracking invoices, being able to alert customers Know when to get invoices you send and more.
Today, there are a large number of commercial, non-open source invoicing tools on the market. However, open source invoicing tools are just as good and even more flexible to use than closed source invoicing tools.
Let's take a look at four open source invoicing tools that are great options for cash-strapped freelancers and small businesses.
How to choose an invoicing tool
Not all invoicing tools are created equal. Some invoicing tools may have more or less functionality than most other invoicing tools due to reasons such as their own developers and technological sophistication. But in general, a good invoicing app should have all or a few of these features:
1) It should support network access function. This access feature can be implemented on your own website, or, if you are not technical enough to install and maintain this website, then it should have a hosted version that hosts it to other websites.
2) It should also allow you to easily customize the invoice template to get the look and feel you want. More importantly, the invoicing tool should not only have reporting capabilities, but also the ability to save your records into a table.
3) The invoicing tool should support multiple currencies and allow you to configure local tax rates. Support for multiple languages is an added feature.
4) Finally, the billing tool should be able to accept payments via PayPal or Stripe payment services. (ps: PayPal and Stripe function similar to Alipay)
"Easy Billing"
Despite the word simplicity in its name, "Simple Invoice" is not the simplest system application. And far from it. While Simple Invoice is easy to set up and use, it includes many useful features. Not only can it be paid via PayPal, but you can also connect "Simple Invoices" with a payment portal called eWAY.
Simple Invoice goes beyond ordinary invoicing tools. It can also track your inventory, generate earnings, estimates and quotes. Moreover, you can save your invoices in PDF, Word, Excel or text file format.
Before you download and install the Simple Invoice app, you can click this link to download it. You can also use a hosted version of it for $4 per month .
“Billing Ninja“
"Billing Ninja" incorporates a simple interface with a powerful set of features that allow you to create, manage and send invoices to clients and consumers. You can easily configure multiple clients, track paid and unpaid invoices, generate quotes and email invoices.
What sets Billing Ninja apart from its competitors is that it supports over 20 popular third-party payment platforms on the Internet, including PayPal and Google Wallet.
Download a version of Billing Ninja to your own server, or get an account for a hosted version of the tool . There is a free version here, the paid version costs $50 a year.
siwapp
While it's not a neat looking tool, siwapp compensates for this by making it easy on its own to create professional looking invoices. It just requires you to enter information into a few fields, and when done, you can click a button to send an email invoice.
Siwapp also comes with three modules that allow you to create and manage user records, assessments and products. Also, opening the siwapp box does not have a payment processing collection. If you're a PHP expert, you might be able to hack siwapp to include a payment link, just like users do with PayPal .
You can test using it before you decide to install it.
“Open Source Billing“
Described by its developers as "simple and beautiful invoicing software", "open source invoicing" really lives up to its name. It has the cleanest interface you've ever seen, which makes configuring and using this tool a breeze.
Open Source Invoicing stands out because of its control panel, which tracks your current and past invoices, as well as any amounts owed. That information is broken down into graphs, which makes the results intuitive.
Most of the configuration you do is on the invoice itself. You can add items, tax rates, customers, and even payment terms with a click and a series of buttons. "Open Source Invoicing" saves all new and old invoice information.
As we've seen with other tools, Open Source Invoicing has a demo to try .
Share your favorite open source invoicing tools with us in the comments below.