Invoicera
Invoicera
Invoicera is another new application which has cropped since I did our preliminary needs analysis.
Invoicera (watch out how you spell that – it’s easy to get too many vowels in at the end) – also purports to handle multiple currencies and bank accounts. Given our new requirements to do just that, I gave it a quick spin.
Unfortunately, I didn’t get very far – as the above screenshot shows.
Most of the new cuddly web 2.0 accounting apps I’ve been playing with allow you to jump straight in and create an invoice with very minimal setup required.
No clients listed? No problem, create one on the fly – using the data you enter into the invoice.
No products or taxes set up? – no worries, we can handle those too.
I could have persevered with Invoicera – but I didn’t. For me, there are other apps out there which are easier to get to grips with.
The clincher for me was not being able to set up a specific currency per bank account either. I’m guessing that means that it works the same way as KashFlow – you can invoice in any currency you want, but there’s are no back-end reconciliation features to assist in coping with fluctuating exchange rates.
One final gripe, our business doesn’t produce estimates – ever. Yet Invoicera has an ‘Estimates’ tab cluttering up the interface. By comparison, Freshbooks lets you customise which tabs are visible so that you can tailor the app to your own business needs.
Not a biggie, I know – why not just ignore the ‘Estimates’ tab? However, details like these make the difference between a good app – and a great one.
21. December 2010 at 10:02 pm :
I was simply amazed when I came across your article. Hearing your thought process, the similarity to mine was like as if I had written it myself. Great work and very insightful.
We have been researching online invoicing/ accountancy systems over the last month on behalf of the UK printing company http://www.xpressivesolutions.co.uk . We have looked at and considered all the options you have presented. The main criteria include the ability to send out invoices that can be paid via a UK payment gateway other than Paypal. Ideally this functionality would occur in a system which also deals with accountancy.
If Clear Books or Free Agent included a payment gateway such as Sagepay they would be the only online system currently combining invoicing, UK payments and accounting. I have spoken to both http://www.freeagentcentral.com and http://www.clearbooks.co.uk who have confirmed that this is very much something of interest and something they are looking into.
If you are prepared to live without the accountancy feature for the time being and have this as separate, then the only invoicing system I have found which syncs with a UK based payment gateway (sagepay) is http://www.invoicera.com. I am currently testing their service and find it very suitable. I have presented a few ideas to their customer service via a live chat facility and within minutes they had spoken to their tech team and decided to integrate them within a week. This kind of customer support is invaluable. It’s like having your own invoicing department working for your company.
The only negative is it not having the full accounting aspect (profit and loss, balance sheets etc). Therefore if Free Agent or Clear Books were to act quickly and give a time frame I would hold off in anticipation. If we don’t hear anything back promptly I will present http://www.invoicera.com to http://www.xpressivesolutions.co.uk.
Regards
Arron