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by atria 3577 days ago
Nice. I'm forever looking for any viable alternative to QuickBooks. I've even thought about writing my own invoicing application.

Looks great, but I personally don't like the collaboration tools mashed into the dash board. It looks cluttered. It also wasn't clear what information the client's would see. If they saw dollar amounts, it's a deal killer-- I work with too many clients and am assigned to work with other non-management employees.

Also, for reports -- I only saw a graph. I need to see who's behind and take action to get paid, and follow up with phone calls, emails, and letters.

I'd also like to see the ability to print invoices to mail them to clients. Some clients are overwhelmed with email, but a paper invoice gets paid.

My complaints with most projects in this genre I've evaluated -- they seem to be written by freelancers who've never had bad clients, never had to chase people down for payment, or never been in a relationship that turns sour.

Work for one bad client, and it will change you, and how you do business.

2 comments

I've been checking out a few invoicing app alternatives:

* InvoicePlane - self-hosted, open source (PHP). https://invoiceplane.com/

* Invoicely (formerly Invoiceable): http://invoicely.com

* Hiveage: https://www.hiveage.com

I've mainly been using Invoicely (free if you just create invoices and send them as PDFs), but now feeling bad about it because: https://medium.com/@prabhaths/invoicely-a-hiveage-rip-off-b9... I really like free, though, so thinking about switching to InvoicePlane.

There's actually an alternate view of the dashboard if you don't like the current one. It's hard to see in the demo (I need to work on that), but I can show you if you email me.

It's pretty easy to see whose behind, but I agree, it can be improved. One thing I really want to add for myself is a daily email from the system giving me a list of late invoices, tasks due that day, etc.

Invoices can be downloaded as PDF and then mailed. You can download them or the client can.

Also, the demo let's you log in as a client. Just use the options in the bottom right corner. Every client can see everything about their projects, including dollar amounts. Obviously any info related to another client's account can only be seen by admins.