Potential candidates

After a little mooching about on the internet I came accross these online invoicing applications. Is it comprehensive? Probably not – but I figured that it was enough to be representative.

Initial list of online billing ppplications

Shortlist

Amazingly, I was able to reject almost all of these applications because they didn’t meet one or more of my mandatory requirements. Here are the ones left standing, with how they scored against my mandatory requirements (10 points each) and my nice-to-haves (5 points each).

1. KashFlow – 97%
2. Less Accounting – 97%
3. Free Agent Central – 87%
4. Freshbooks – 87%
5. Blinksale – 78%
6. Acuinvoice – 74%
7. Zoho – 74%

Many of the ‘rejects’ were simply not designed to do what we want to do. Most had no payment processor options outside of the US. Many were time-based project management tools.

However, the seven shortlisted applications appeared to meet all of my mandatory requirements – so i started signing-up for free accounts to test them.

No QuickBooks Online? I really, really tried to give this service a shot – honestly. I got as far as setting up a trial account and then noticed that I couldn’t import data from a UK version of QuickBooks – and I gave up after that.

Really, compared to some of the simple, clean sign up processes, QuickBooks show themselves up as a desktop company in drag in the online world,

If QuickBooks and WorldPay actually had an integrated, affordable, online service, I’d be using it now, no doubt about it – but they haven’t – so I’ll be reviewing my shortlist of contenders next ..

Next step: Price comparison of online billing applications

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