9 Essential Rules when selecting a Invoicing App for Small Businesses

Avoid the pitfalls

Today, we are going to discuss what the most important features of your invoicing app are and why they are important.

When you start using an invoicing platform it’s a bit like buying a new empty journal. Your new journal has lots of empty pages and your invoicing app doesn’t know about your customers or products yet.

But in the same way when you start to write in your journal, it becomes more valuable. Your writings and thoughts become valuable the more you write in it. You don’t want to lose it. The same occurs when you invest in an invoicing app. It takes time to set up products and customers, and many of the statistical features and analysis won’t have much data to feedback anything useful at first. But as you continue to use an invoicing or accounting app, it inherently becomes more valuable. It becomes integrated into the way you do business. The more you invest in it, the more critical your app selection becomes.

Like everything else in this world, there are pitfalls to avoid. Modern corporate free invoicing platforms need to generate a return for their shareholders and as such may construct their platform in such a way as to generate revenue. However, many people don’t mind paying for a service when expectations are met and the terms of business are understood.

We all object to platforms that intentionally make unsubscribing difficult, or employ dark patterns to confuddle us.

When you take into account that invoicing is generally considered a long-term activity measured over years and not months, making the right choice at the start is even more important. 

So, it’s critical when you are selecting an invoicing app to understand what you’ll be investing in. It’s more of a time & effort consideration than a financial one in the initial stages.  This is what this article is about.

In a nutshell, ensure your selected free invoicing platform has the following key features:

1. Easy to use when creating, modifying and previewing invoices
2. Works everywhere, on your laptop and your phone
3. Flexible enough to work the way you want to
4. Secure: allowing control of your data
5. Intuitive: more time doing & less time hunting around

Also ensure that your platform doesn’t do this:

6. Limitations: if the limitations are so severe, can you actually use the platform long term?
7. Ramping costs: do you know what the costs are if you exceed your limit?
8. Agenda: Is your invoicing platform vendor really for small businesses?
9. Sense: Is the vendor offering features that make sense for you

Conclusion

So, to the rules...

 

Rule: #1 - Easy to use when creating, modifying and previewing invoices | ⇧

This is often overlooked in the headlines. How easy is it to work the software?

We don’t create invoices for fun, it’s just one important task in doing business. Any professional business would want a platform to be structured in way that allows the creation of invoices in seconds. When looking at vendors, have a play with the invoice creation workflow. Not all apps are the same. Pay attention to what you have to supply in order to generate an invoice.

The best designs step you through the invoice creation process only asking for the minimum of information using meaningful defaults. At a minimum your invoice needs to know who is the invoice going to (your customer) & what products or services you have sold.

As a rule of thumb, if you are invoicing someone you have invoiced before, using products already defined and setup, your invoice should take seconds to create and not minutes.

Of particular significance look for these functions in your app.

1. Automatic invoice numbering
2. Overwritable payment due dates
3. Creating new customers and products on the fly
4. Saving as a draft invoice
5. Live preview of the invoice, so you can see exactly what you are sending.
6. An invoice notes field, so that you can write a personal message to your customer
7. Instantly convert invoice to a receipt for traders that get paid via a standing order or Direct Debit

 

Rule: #2 - Works everywhere, on your laptop and your phone | ⇧

I think it goes without saying your selected app needs to work on your phone and your tablet/laptop. Many vendors have a separate IOS/Android version of the app, which may not be as mature as the desktop version.

You don’t want to learn how to work the desktop version, only to have to re-learn how to work the phone version. Ideally, they should work in exactly the same way, look the same and have the same features.

The best trade-off would be for apps that work on a browser that are tailored for both phone and desktop. The best designs employ exactly the same process for creating invoices but use sliding panels to view all stages.

For mobile users, some apps can also work offline and automatically resync when connected to the internet. If you are quoting and building the quote on site as you go, this can be a very useful feature.

 

Rule: #3 - Flexible enough to work the way you want to | ⇧

The best app designs are not opinionated. If you want to just create invoices and download PDFs then that’s fine. Many small businesses like the personal touch of printing and sending invoices by mail. Your workflow is yours and your new shiny invoicing app needs to fit into that workflow. Not the other way around.

Unfortunately, some apps are quite opinionated, they do things their way. They require you to change your routine and jump through their hoops. It’s a good idea to get ahead of this before you invest any time with any new app.

An example is that some apps will create an invoice but only allow you to send it with a payment link. In our view payment links should always be optional. For many small businesses payment links don’t make much sense as their customer might be using payroll software to handle payments or prefer to use their own bank to send payments.  

The point is that invoicing is just one step in your business process, a process that you may have taken a lot of time to hone and get right. Any invoicing system really needs to complement your business and not hinder it.

 

Rule: #4 - Secure: allowing control of your data | ⇧

When you create invoices, quotes, customers and products on any platform, it typically creates data rows in a central database on some server somewhere. You as a user of the platform need to be assured your data is being properly managed & secured when using the app. Typically, adding, editing or deleting invoices generates a communication from your computer to the vendor’s platform infrastructure. This communication needs to be secured with encryption at minimum.

Additionally, one of the most important features of any invoicing app is the ability to delete your data. This might sound straightforward to do but app vendors are surprisingly reluctant to do so. Many vendors allow you to remove invoices in the app, but in the background only mark the record as deleted and not removed.

Insist that when you delete data, it is actually deleted (removed from a database).

You should also be able to download any invoices you have created. Some vendors may insist you upgrade your subscription to enable that feature.

 

Rule: #5 - Intuitive: more time doing & less time hunting around | ⇧

Your selected invoicing application is only as good as the designer that created it. Have you ever spent an age completing an online form &submitted it, only to receive and error, where you have to re-enter all your information again. This method of data capture signifies that the vendor has not kept pace with current technology, and is using a very old-fashioned methodology, that is frankly not good enough for modern apps.  The better designs apply validation as you type. Validation is important as getting the wrong data is typically worse than no data.

Another issue we’ve seen many times is when the input form is so large with so many fields that it needs to scroll to fit everything in. If any problem occurs with the invoice validation, you end up hunting for the field with the wrong data which may require you to scroll to find it. Not great design.

The best designs keep everything on one page and use a stepping technology to advance the user through the invoice creation process. These designs ensure that any data inputted is validated before proceeding to the next step.

 

Rule: #6 - Limitations: if the limitations are so severe, can you actually use the platform long term? | ⇧

I think we all understand that invoicing vendors need to earn some money. It’s just how they do it that can be problematic. If you do a search for free invoicing for small businesses, you’ll instantly notice that most of the results are not free at all. They have a free tier, which means a cut down version of the subscription.

The question you really should be asking yourself is:

"Can I live with the enforced limitations of the free tier".

Dependant on your business model you may be able to. For many businesses however, this  just won't work and the vendors know this. A better bet would be to select a pricing subscription that offers unrestricted access, which would grant you a better view of your real-world invoicing costs.

The better apps offer a free platform that is entirely unrestricted and then offer paid enhancements (or add-ons) to enable specific features. This model works best, as no two businesses have the same requirements.

 

Rule: #7 - Ramping costs: do you know what the costs are if you exceed your limit? | ⇧

You are allowed to create five customers in your free tier invoicing app. What happens when you want to create a sixth?

Check the small print with your vendor. Whilst some vendors will just disable functionality if you reach your tier limit, some will automatically enrol you into their pro subscription tier. Creating invoices and managing them is a cumulative exercise and you should be realistic regarding your requirements at the outset.

If you are using the app and you like it, its perfectly reasonable if you are using it more to be charged. It's just better if you know up front if that will occur.

 

Rule: #8 - Agenda: Is your invoicing platform vendor really for small businesses? | ⇧

Invoicing app vendors are businesses too, and they can use tactics to entice you to use their platforms. But when their website headlines are predominantly about “payment processing fees”, maybe it’s time to re-assess if this vendor is actually what they say they are.

Some vendors are quite misleading in their message. If (say) their core business is providing “payment gateway services", then offering free invoicing maybe entirely appropriate to generate more business, but is their software really tailored for small businesses as they claim or are they just about generating more payment links?

When selecting an invoicing vendor, check their website and read what are they offering as their headline feature. If it mentions online payments, then that’s their focus, not invoicing software.

For small businesses we think invoicing vendors should be more interested in offering a simple, reliable and intuitive invoicing workflow. Its main focus should be how quickly it can get you “up to speed”, not how to sell you other services.

 

Rule: #9 - Sense: Is the vendor offering features that make sense for you | ⇧

 

Have a look through the features of the top five best free invoicing platforms; you’ll be surprised at what they can do. However, ask yourself a question:

"Do I really need to track time and expenses for my invoices?",

Isn’t this feature just extra work for small businesses? Agreed most features are optional, but it may give you an insight into how the app is being sold and its suitability to you. Most of the time features are nothing more than headlines designed to offer a value proposition. It’s an example of feature bloat we see all the time, auto billing, Kanban boards, custom templates and currency conversions to name a few.

It might sound great, but is it useful? Will I use it?  Maybe not if you are just starting out in business or have a simple business model.

 

Still confused? | ⇧

I’m not surprised, selecting an invoicing vendor can be a challenge, but it needn’t be.

Envoyce is a free & open invoicing platform that is focused on its ease of use and efficiency. At Envoyce, we have no shareholders and our primary desire is to improve the invoicing experience. We offer an unrestricted base platform with paid add-ons as you need them. 

Try Envoyce today, sign up here.