Billing Software

[Alessandro Machi]

I wanted to upgrade to newer software and am starting to get frustrated.

I bought Mac Freelance software and absolutely loathe it. Since I already paid once and didn't get what I wanted, I decided to check out some share ware billing programs. I tried two and both seem to be limited, lol, they don't work.

One said it was free but won't do anything useful unless I "register it", which I think means pay for it. I hate when I am told something is free but then I have to pay to get it to work right.

The other one wouldn't work right when I hit the return button. It would immediately jump to the next step! I couldn't even put my address into the billing program because it kept jumping to the next page anytime I hit return.

If I actually found a freeware billing program that worked, I would happily make a donation, but I'm not going to make the donation first and then find it has unacceptable bugs in it.

If I have to buy a program, I just want to buy one that people on this forum are already using and like. Thanks in advance!

[Paul Mailath]

if you're talking about accounts receivable then there are plenty out there or you could do your own in something like Excel or Access. I would recommend looking at something like Quicken or MYOB - a complete accounting package.

This will not only look after your billing but your purchases and expenses. I've used MYOB for a number of businesses and swear by it - I keep up to date on a daily basis and it does my wages, calculates tax - the lot.

[Alessandro Machi]

Thanks for the suggestion Paul.

For now I was looking at something a bit more simple. Just basic billing options.

[Shaun Roemich]

Alessandro: I own Mac Freelance as well and I used to loathe it, now I just have a spiteful working relationship with it. It DOES do what I need it to, but the user interface is awful and the user's manual virtually non-existent. Have you considered "toughing it out" for a LITTLE while longer? I'm 6 or so months in and use it nearly daily and it IS a useful utility for tracking my hours on any given project. Previously, I just used Excel and a template I built. That worked too but didn't allow for any tracking. You know best what you need to do your job, I'm just tossing hats into the ring...

PS. If you have SPECIFIC issues, PM me and I'd be happy to see if there is something I can do to help.

[Bill Davis]

Not to make things more complicated than they need to be.... but.....

Once upon a time (many, many years ago) when I was new to Mac, I faced the invoicing question.

Back then, there weren't a lot of solutions. So I decided what I really needed wasn't a dedicated program to organize THIS information (invoicing), and then a dedicated program to organize THAT information (inventory, or customer correspondence, or quoting, or estimating or whatever), but to learn a program that could organize ALL the information I was going to generate and need to track in my production business.

In short, a database. One that *I* could control.

I picked Filemaker Pro. (Actually, back then, it was Filemaker 1.0!) That was 23 years ago. I'm still using it today. For production estimating, for inventory functions, and yes, for INVOICING.

It took a bit of effort to learn how to "roll my own" instead of letting someone else build their idea of what an invoicing database should be then my having to adapt to what THEY designed, but looking back, it was one of the smartest and most useful skill sets I ever developed.

Organizing information is timeless, ongoing, and business mission critical. Generating invoices is one small part of that information flow. Why not look at a bigger picture and start learning something that will not only fix THAT, but a world of other issues you haven't even faced yet?

Just a thought, for what it's worth.

[Shaun Roemich]

Bill, you're an ANIMAL! <laughs>

If they hadn't built the RED One, Bill would have built it himself from parts he scrounged from around Roswell, New Mexico...

I wish I had your patience Bill. When I'm done shooting and editing, I just want to get paid. Kudos to you.

[Alessandro Machi]

Originally Posted by Bill Davis

Organizing information is timeless, ongoing, and business mission critical. Generating invoices is one small part of that information flow. Why not look at a bigger picture and start learning something that will not only fix THAT, but a world of other issues you haven't even faced yet?.....

I just want the money. (that was a joke).

You've been able to transfer your data over through every new generation of computer platforms, that is impressive. Over the years it would disappoint me that big companies would just go to a new computer data system and no longer have prior records. They could get away with it because they would make sure it coincided with the obsoleting of their previous products which they no longer supported.

I think I might have found something but I have to still try it out before I can bless it.