At it’s core, Freshbooks is a service that allows the managing of estimates and invoices via a simple web interface. There’s a lot of other great features such as time-tracking, recurring invoices, and invoicing via snail-mail. However, I use the estimate and invoicing functionality about 95% of the time, and this is what it does best.

Of course, Freshbooks and online invoicing in general isn’t suitable for every business, but for mine it’s perfect. I can quickly draft an invoice, send it to the client via email where they can log-in to Freshbooks and print off a PDF, or forward it to the accountant. It’s a simple process, and much more intuitive than creating an invoice in Word or Excel, saving it to a crowded Invoices directory, printing it out and dropping it in a post box.

I’ve had a Freshbooks account for almost five years, and since first signing up the team have made a number of improvements to the service. A favourite of mine is the quarterly ‘Report Card‘. The Report Card shows you how your business is performing compared with others in your industry. It compares statistics such as number of invoices sent, average invoice size, average time to collect payment, etc.

Example Report Card

For me, the only missing feature is the ability to group items on an invoice. As far as I’m aware it’s not possible to create an item (i.e. Web Development) with sub-items (i.e. Cross-browser testing, WordPress installation, etc).

There are other invoicing services, such as BlinkSale and Invoicera that offer similar services but Freshbooks is the one I’m most familiar. Overall I would definitely recommend small business owners check out Freshbooks for their invoicing solution – it’s a simple, inexpensive and time-saving service.