We last briefly looked at Invotrak in the Summer of 2007. The service is similar to Freshbooks, in that users can create and track invoices and timesheets for client projects and employees as well as some funky analysis of payment history.
Feature-for-feature, Invotrak and Freshbooks seem almost identical, though the latter offers a wider range of price plans, the former does seem to enjoy a cleaner and clearer design.
However, perhaps the ace-in-the-hole for Invotrak is its support for the iPhone, via a native App Store application, and its availability as a Dashboard widget for Macs.
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I’m a big fan of FreshBooks. I’ve written about and have used their easy Web-based accounting services site almost daily to manage my company’s invoicing.
Today, Freshbooks announced that it is releasing industry benchmark data as an added benefit to freelancers as well as micro and small business owners, arming them with information to better manage business revenue and growth. Based on the anonymous aggregation of data based on input from FreshBooks’ clients, the new reports illustrate billing trends.
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For the most part, the applications we cover on WWD are web applications. But every once in a while a desktop application comes along that’s worth consideration by dedicated web workers. Billings 3, the latest release of this time-tracking and invoicing application, is one such. If you’re using a Mac to do your work, and you need to track your time and create your own invoices, it’s definitely worth a look.
Certainly there are plenty of good web applications for this sort of thing, including FreshBooks, Zoho Invoice, Blinksale, Cashboard, and Harvest. But some people just don’t want to share their financial details over the web, no matter how much they trust a service - or they may want more flexibility and customization than most of the web applications provide.
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There are a multitude of invoicing options available for the web worker, and we have covered our share of them. A new entry that just crossed my desk is the oddly named CurdBee.
I gave CurdBee a quick run through and found that it covers the basics of invoicing and payment reasonably well. I was able to get up and running quickly and found it easy to get test clients and service items entered for my first invoices. It hooks into Paypal Standard and Google Checkout for payment processing and also supports multiple currencies.
Be aware that there are no time tracking features and the overall functionality is sparse compared to more fully featured services like FreshBooks or Cashboard. It is also missing a lot of the nice “usability touches” that a more established product will typically have.
But if your needs are simple and you just need to send out quick invoices to your clients, CurdBee might be a good option for you. Accounts are currently free with no apparent limitations.
Are you using an online service for your billing? Could CurdBee work for you?
Being a web worker just by its very nature (pun intended), helps keep our planet green. By working from home, we automatically cut the amount of fossil fuels consumed and carbon output that the daily commute involves. For more about how technology is going green and making the world a better place to live, read our sister blog Earth2Tech.
In the meantime how can we, as web workers, be more green?
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