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.

It’s impossible to turn on the TV or radio without hearing about the financial crisis, “market downturns”, or the implosion of the worldwide economy in general. With so much fear in the minds of business owners on decreasing customer spending (with no end in sight), you would be forgiven for running a fine-toothed comb over your marketing budget.

The budget for creating, maintaining or promoting your online presence, however, should definitely not be given the chop. If anything, you should be looking to increase the online budget, and heres three reasons why:

1. It’s cost effective

Past economic downturns have taught us that during tough times marketing dollars invested wisely reap big rewards. Depending on your business and target market, it can be much cheaper to find a new customer online than through traditional means such as print (newspaper ads, flyers, brochures) or television.

Gerry McGovern makes the argument that the web is 14 times cheaper to have a customer complete a task online (such as buying a product or updating billing information) than via the phone, and a startling 35 times cheaper than face-to-face interaction. 

2. It gets ahead of the competition

Warren Buffet advised stock market investors to “be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful”, which is why he is now buying up stock during this shaky economic situation. You can apply the same principle to your marketing budget. For example, there is now a great opportunity to advertise your website with Google AdWords as big companies trim their online advertising budgets and ad prices begin to drop.

3. It creates opportunity for clever marketing

Those with small online advertising budgets are not left out in the cold during this economic winter. You have at your disposal a wide variety of online services that can bring new customers with little to no cost. Social networking websites are great for this, as well as social media such as YouTube. The smarter you can be when using these mediums, the better your chances at success. These are easy to get started with but difficult to master, and not a silver-bullet for all your marketing needs. In my opinion, using these mediums along with traditional advertising is a winning combination.

There is an interesting blog post at Smart Company on unprofessional web developer behavior.

“…needless to say, the design was messy, the e-commerce section (which we repeatedly said we did not want to go live yet) was incomplete as customers could not see prices next to items displayed, and to make matters worse, she held off removing inappropriate/incomplete material until we paid. We both felt that asking for the total of $9000 for a website that was incomplete and which we did not approve was not rational.”

It gets better:

“…I looked up our business name on Google and it led to her web design company and under our profile in her list of projects she states that the client (that would be us) “has been taken off line for their inability to pay their bills on time”.”

Unfortunately it’s an all to common occurrence for unprofessional web designers/developers to taint the online experience for the client. Many of the problems listed in the post could have been avoided by:

1. Agreeing on the scope of the project before work commences
2. Agreeing on the costs before work commences
3. The web developer behaving in a professional manner

I ordered a few hundred business cards for Phillips Design this week. I settled on VistaPrint after reading a few positive reviews in online forums. While I have yet to see the actual cards, the company has already left a bitter taste in my mouth from their in-your-face upselling techniques.

During the order process VistaPrint attemps to upsell various stationary with the customer’s logo plastered on it around 2-3 times, in some cases making the user scroll down an entire page with “special” and “limited time” offers. After skipping through these, a final attempt to sell the same thing at an even lower price was made.  After ordering the cards, an email order confirmation is sent with another dozen special offers.

In my opinion this kind of marketing poisons the entire user experience just to make a few extra dollars. It certainly made me think twice about referring any of my clients.

Upselling is an excellent way of giving the customer extra value and increasing business profit — just be careful not to overdo.