In this ongoing series, we’ll demonstrate why FreshBooks is the smarter, faster alternative to small business accounting software.

How to create an invoice: four easy steps

FreshBooks has always been great for e-mail invoicing and time tracking, and this week we unveiled an all-new interface to make things even easier. To highlight our brand new design, we want to show you exactly how to create an invoice, from start to finish.

You can even e-mail the invoice to your client when you’re finished.

Watch how easy it is to create your first invoice!

1. Add yourself to FreshBooks

First, go here and add your company to FreshBooks.

Don’t worry, our free online invoicing service doesn’t have any silly time limits or missing features! We let you try everything at no cost.

Just enter your company name and e-mail address, and you’re ready to get started.

2. Enter your company’s information

The first thing you’ll see is your one-time setup page. This is where you enter the address that will appear on your invoices, and the currency you’ll be working in.

When you’re done, we’ll ask you what you’d like to do first. Go ahead and choose “create a client.”

3. Add your client’s details

Just enter your client’s name and e-mail address, and let us do the rest. If you’d like their mailing address to appear on the invoice, be sure to put that in there, too.

Now go ahead and save your client. We’ll let you know if anything needs to be changed.

Assuming all is well, you’ll immediately be asked what you’d like to do next. Choose “create an invoice,” and you’re nearly finished.

4. Create the invoice

Now for the fun part—getting paid!

Go ahead and enter the charges on the invoice. Each line gets a description, a quantity, and a unit cost, and you can have as many lines as you want. We handle all the math for you, so once you’re done entering the charges, just choose “save as draft” at the bottom of the page.

Take a look at the “print preview,” and voila—

Your first invoice!

How easy was that? Go ahead and print the invoice, because you’re all done.

With one more click, FreshBooks will even e-mail the invoice to your client, or send it to them through the postal service. The choice is yours.

Online invoicing is fast and easy with FreshBooks!

If you’re still creating invoices with Word, Excel, or some enormous accounting package, be sure to try FreshBooks! We’ve already got thousands of happy users, and we’re sure you’ll love it too.

Remember, it’s completely free to try, with no time limits and no missing features. So what are you waiting for? Create an invoice for yourself, and you’ll see just how easy it is.

Happy invoicing!

After countless hours of testing, we’re pleased to announce the total redesign of the FreshBooks interface.

Highlights of the new release include:

• account statements;
• lighter, faster pages;
• a colour picker that is really fun to use;
• support ticketing has received an interface update;
• and again, total interface redesign.

We’ve affectionately named this release “Sexy Beast” (Daniel bought us the cake to celebrate the release… and yes… it’s an ice cream cake).

We’ll be spending today taming the beast (read: squashing any bugs we may have missed in our testing) and generally tweaking things. You can expect more tweaks and improvements in our upcoming release. As always (and since this was such a big release), if you come across something we should investigate, please send us a note. Otherwise, we would love to hear what you think of the new design — please comment below and let us have it.

Quick! To the Batmobile!

Err… well… not exactly… Ben, Sunir and I all entered panel submissions for the SXSW conference in Austin, Texas next March, and we need your help to get those panels approved. I spoke at SXSW last year and the conference was amazing. Austin is a neat town, the conference is well run and the social activities run all the way around the clock.

We’re hoping to take most of the team to the event and we’d love to see you there, but we really need you help to get our panels approved. So please:

1. Go to the panel picker.
2. Create an account.
3. Search for FreshBooks (so you get our panels).
4. Vote us in…yeeeaaahhhh!

We need your help, so thanks everyone, and hope to see you in Austin in 2008!

A few years back I spoke with a sales guy at PC World about buying some advertising. Every month since we’ve received a copy of PC World and every month that we do, I am reminded of that sales guy, PC World and buying their advertising. That’s the power of leaving something behind.

We built FreshBooks to help manage our design, development and internet marketing agency. When we ran that business we used to have to present/sell to new clients, frequently at meetings and I know many FreshBooks businesses do the same. Whenever you have the opportunity to present, be sure to leave your prospects with something tangible that reminds them of the value you add. We used to leave a one page sheet of case study summaries. The summaries included the client name and website URL, the percentage amount we helped them improve their online selling capabilities and how long it took for the project to achieve its ROI - usually measured in months. We also included a short testimonial with a contact name who was willing to endorse our services. The summaries were food for thought, demonstrated our value and surely left the prospect pondering what upside they were missing if they did not work with us.

So if you are meeting people, strategize about what you want to leave behind. If you go to a conference, does your business card communicate your value, or does it just offer your contact information? Think about it.