New: Invitations for invoices and estimates

by Mike McDerment - June 30/2009

We've added more invitations to FreshBooks

A few weeks ago, we announced that FreshBooks accounts can talk to each other and that you can invite contractors to join your projects. I think the backstory for why we did this is kind of interesting.

Since the release I’ve been on the phone with a number of business owners who are using FreshBooks to manage their invoicing network and we learned they wanted more – they want to invite their vendors and contractors to invoice them, not just invite their contractors to track time on their projects. “Why?” is this a big deal you ask? I had the same question and I put it to every entrepreneur I spoke with.

What they told me was the benefit of receiving all their invoices in one format on one platform is enormous. Before they used to get 10 invoices a month from 4 contractors in many different formats (Word, Excel, PDF, hand written…). All these formats created frustrating inconsistencies, but all their invoices in FreshBooks takes the pain away, and it helps them clearly understand their cash flow. Most mind blowing of all to me is the contractors were grateful for the recommendation.

Another thing the entrepreneurs explained was that the ability to quickly receive estimates inside their FreshBooks accounts was a big deal. Thanks to FreshBooks they they can now quickly request, organize and evaluate multiple project proposals/bids/estimates/quotes from multiple vendors. FreshBooks takes the hassle out of collecting bids, and it makes it dead simple to accept the winning proposal and get on with the work.

After learning these things we hopped to it and made it easy to request other professionals to send you invoices and estimates. We’re pleased to announce that you can now invite people to invoice you or send you estimates. Here are some screen shots that show you where you can start the invitation process from within your FreshBooks account: