Online Billing Review

Online billing services provide a great accounting solution for consultants, freelancers and small business owners. These services can help you create professional invoices, bill clients, manage customer contact information and accept payments online.

What are the differences between online billing and billing software?

• Online services are always up to date.
• They do not require you to download software.
• You can access your accounts from any computer.
• Subscribers can pay month to month.
• Many online billing sites include customer portals.

There are many accounting solutions, so how do I know which one is right for my business?

There is a wide variety of accounting products available, ranging from simple invoice templates to enterprise-level accounting software. When selecting a billing solution for your company, you will want to think about how you plan to use the product and whether you need scalability.

Here are some possible scenarios:

You work by yourself from a home office and plan to continue working alone.
Either an online billing solution or billing and invoice software will work for you. If you sell product as opposed to services, you will need to look for a solution that includes an inventory module. If you mostly bill for time, services or by projects, you will want to look for a billing solution that has a good time-billing module. Invoicera and Harvest provide good time-billing tools, and ZOHO provides a good inventory module. If you combine your personal and business expenses, Quicken Home and Business is a good choice.

You work by yourself and are often on the road.
In this scenario, you will want to look for a good online billing solution that you can log in to from anywhere. You might also want one that can send alerts to your cell phone or one that can even create invoices through your mobile phone, such as FreshBooks or QuickBooks Online Simple Start.

You work by yourself but plan on expanding.
You need a product that will grow with you. If you do not plan on adding employees, an online billing service will work for you. If you might want to add employees someday, then you will want to look at something like QuickBooks Simple Start or Sage PeachTree First Accounting that can easily be upgraded to their more advanced accounting versions.

You work with a team of remote freelance consultants.
An online accounting solution would work best in this scenario. In this case you will want to look for an online billing service that can support more than one user or team, as well as one that has a good time tracking and project module. Both FreshBooks and Invoicera offer good time-billing and team or contractor management tools.

You have a small business with employees and inventory.
In this case you will want more advanced accounting software that includes an employee and payroll, inventory and tax modules. One of the best products we have seen that can help small business owners run their companies is Sage Peachtree Complete Accounting and QuickBooks Pro.

Within this site, you'll find articles on online billing, including "Do I Still Need Quickbooks?" and comprehensive reviews on services like FreshBooks, Invoicera and ZOHO Invoice, to help you make an informed decision regarding which online billing service is right for your small business.

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Online Billing: What to Look For

Many accounting solutions are now moving online. Web-based billing services can provide access from anywhere and a product that is always up to date, and they offer a good invoicing solution for many consultants, freelancers and small business owners. We really put these services to the test. We contacted their customer support departments numerous times and we created and emailed invoices. We looked at their item, customer, expense, time-tracking and project modules and evaluated their security protocols and payment gateways.

We used the following criteria to find the best online billing solution:

Online Invoicing
Invoicing is the most essential element of these types of online accounting services. We considered how well the service can invoice by time, by project and by item, as well as its options for customizing invoice templates. We also looked at automated functions like tax and finance charge calculations. The best online invoicing services make creating and sharing professional-looking invoices as simple as filling in a form.

Online Billing
The online billing features we looked at include how payments can be accepted as well as automated functions like recurring billing and automatic overdue statements. The best services can accept all types of payments, including payments by deposit or partial payments, and they have the ability to create and send out receipts.

Payment Processing
The best online billing services offer a good selection of payment gateways to their subscribers. The billing solutions that scored the highest in this area offer at least compatibility with PayPal and a good payment gateway such as Authorize.net. Keep in mind that payment processors and payment gateways require an additional fee, usually a monthly fee plus transaction fees and a discount rate.

Customer Management
All online billing services include a customer profile manager that can save a variety of information to make invoice creation fast and easy. The best services can save multiple emails and physical addresses as well as preferred payment information. The most high-end services also provide customer portals, which is a way for subscribers’ clients to log in and see their invoices, edit their contact information and make payments online.

Security
Since many services store sensitive data like credit card information and contact information, we contacted every online billing service we reviewed and asked them what security protocols they had in place to protect their subscribers and their subscribers’ client information. The most secure services encrypt all stored data and use a good payment gateway for safe online payments. We also gave extra kudos to those that employ good backup practices like geo-redundant storage and daily backups.

Ease of Use
Online billing services are designed to be used by those with little accounting knowledge, such as freelancers, consultants and small business owners, so they must be easy to use. Online accounting services at this level should be easy enough to figure out that most people can create their first invoice within minutes with little need for advanced knowledge of configuring or accounting terminology. We also gave extra consideration to those services that offer tools that make invoice creation easier, such as dropdown item and client menus.

Help & Support
We put the support team of these online services to the test. We sent them multiple email inquiries and utilized chat support if they offered it. We also looked at the help offered through the main dashboard, as well as the support documentation posted on their websites, including such features as FAQs, searchable knowledgebases, tutorials, forums and blogs. The best online billing services respond to emails quickly and post a good collection of helpful information online.

Online billing is becoming increasingly popular as people become more used to conducting all of their business online in a secure manner. We put these online accounting services to the test to find out which one offers the best features for fast invoice creation and the most flexible and secure payment options. The service we found that broke away from the crowd to take the number-one spot is FreshBooks; they received the highest score of four in five of seven of our ranking categories.