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I've been doing the startup and freelance thing pretty much my
whole career. To that end I'm always required to send invoices to
clients. This includes customers I'm consulting for and customers
for my own businesses. Moreover, being that my focus is early stage
small companies, I'm often CFO, CEO and Chief Janitor
simultaneously. Invoicing, expenses and client management
regularly fall on my shoulders.
Getting Started
InvoiceBerry is a web-based, free to try, solution that feels purpose
built to get me up and running quickly. After an almost frictionless
signup process with no credit card requirement, I was dropped into
a dashboard on-boarding environment that initially guided me to
setup my business then focused on the 2 key steps in getting setup.
There is also a quick find help center at the bottom of the welcome
page that was convenient.
Love This: The help center search has a nice auto-complete where
my very first query got a hit.
The actual help center for InvoiceBerry is chock full of highly
detailed how-to articles covering just about everything I could think
of. As someone who's begrudgingly used Quickbooks for years,
their search & help portal still leave me so frustrated just trying to
find some of the simplest answers. InvoiceBerry is certainly not the
giant corporation that Intuit is, but finding answers to my questions
and even giving me an opportunity to get help directly from the
founder was a welcome bonus.
The Product
InvoiceBerry, as the name suggests, is about creating and managing
invoices. But the product is more than that. It provides expensing
and client management tools, deep reporting, payment
management and a ton of customization options. As with any
accounting product, I needed to get my company and some clients
setup to begin using in earnest. In my experience with Quickbooks
and other solutions, there are often a ton of steps to just get going.
Invoice Berry simplifies this process into 3 quick steps.
This Was Cool: Clearly the product is built for US and international
use; I liked how at the invoice level I could set currency and
language as I frequently have overseas clients and I typically can
only set these params at the company level, not the invoice level.
Markup Made w/ Markup Hero
When creating a new line item, it is automatically stored for use on
future invoices. The interface allowed me to set a default quantity
and price, but I could also leave it blank. This speeds up workflow
when an item is usually the same QTY and price, but allows for
flexibility when I leave it blank and I'm always able to change the
qty and price in-line on the invoice directly. Moreover, the
description is also editable on the invoice so I can add more context
for a specific invoice when needed.
Getting Paid
By default an invoice offers bank transfer or other as the two
methods of payment. Even this is clever because I can include my
bank information so customers can setup a wire or an ACH transfer.
For most products I've used, I have to either add this to the invoice
template entirely, which means it's always there. Or I have to add it
one-off on the notes section, which means I have to type it each
time. InvoiceBerry takes another approach by allowing me to
enable/disable various payment methods for each invoice
specifically. So once I have the information setup for my bank
account, when I check that box, it immediately adds info to the
invoice. Note, I didn't see the information on the edit screen, just
that I checked the box. I saw it does end up on the final invoice
output.
Expenses
InvoiceBerry offers a clean and effective expenses solution. It might
not have all the bells and whistles as some dedicated solutions out
there do, but in my experience there are only a handful of things
really necessary to handle expenses for a small business.
InvoiceBerry covers those bases and it's included in the software so
I don't see a good reason to go and get another piece of software just
for that.
Annotate Images w/ Markup Hero
When adding line items, I can easily add vendors and categories on
the fly or select from my list with auto-complete. I can select
whether an item is taxable and upload supporting attachments
(images and other file types). Note that expenses aren't exactly
expense reports. These are company wide expenses, which speaks to
the vision behind the platform becoming a wider accounting
software for small businesses. In fact, the performance report (more
on reporting below) is a pseudo P&L that might be enough for a lot
of small businesses to use instead of a full accounting software.
Reporting
While InvoiceBerry isn't a full accounting system with the 100+
reports that I might get in a Quickbooks Pro for $299, it does have
some of the most important reporting needs for a small business.
This is refreshing because I know from experience that more isn't
always better. For many small organizations, less is more, and
InvoiceBerry seems to be shooting for what is "just right" for these
size businesses. Reports include: Clients, Payments, Expenses, Tax
Summary, Performance and Item Review.
The item revenue report is very useful. First select the line items I
want to view, then choose a date range and see how much I'm
making from each type of service I invoice for. The report lets me
filter by client as well as invoice status which gives even more
granularity. This is essential for business owners to make important
sales and operational decisions.
Callouts Made w/ Markup Hero
Would Be Nice: I would like to see some relative date ranges in the
reporting section: Today, Last 7 Days, Last 30 Days, etc. This would
certainly speed up my workflow and in most cases it's really all I
need.
Settings
Normally I wouldn't go into the settings of a software like
InvoiceBerry, but in this case there are a few things I liked that I
thought were worth mentioning.
Conclusion
InvoiceBerry has taken a hard look at the needs of small businesses
in the busy accounting/invoicing space and tried to build something
that really works for their customer. As someone who builds
startups and runs small businesses, I appreciate this thinking. The
software doesn't have a ton of bloat that makes workflow slow and
tedious. Quickbooks, as an example, is a total pain for me. It's
overkill in a lot of cases. I wouldn't be surprised if the average small
business using Quickbooks uses 10% of the features. InvoiceBerry is
attempting to slot their product right in that customer segment
where cost, complexity and operational overhead is front and center
for business owners. If you're looking for a streamlined invoicing
solution, with built-in payment options and just-what-you-need-
and-none-of-what-you-don't accounting features, then InvoiceBerry
is probably a great fit.