My name is Ariel Bernard, and I’m president of DesignByAriel, Inc.. We rely on FreshBooks to keep our business running, our employees organized, and our clients smiling.

“We found FreshBooks in mid-2006 and have been in love ever since.”

Before FreshBooks, we were using four different Web- and desktop-based tools to achieve the same results. Our clients were confused, billing was time-consuming, and projects were slow to start. The bottom line was our clients wanted a solution that was easy and efficient.

Our primary requirement for selecting a new accounting and invoicing solution was something Web-based. It was the 21st century and so few of the options were in Web-based billing. We’re a Web company, with employees and contractors all over the United States. We needed a Web solution for billing that worked.

We found FreshBooks in mid-2006 and have been in love ever since. Our clients find it easy, and our staff enjoy the efficiency of the time tracking and expense recording.

If we had to choose one feature that is truly groundbreaking, it would have to be one-click invoice mailing. We spent so much time in the past preparing monthly invoicing. Now we can send out 50 invoices in five minutes. Beat that, QuickBooks!

“There is nothing like getting to your desk on Monday to see that more than half of the invoices sent have been paid over the weekend by credit card.”

Payment is second on our favorites list. We find over 80% of our clients prefer to pay with a credit card. Our clients like to handle issues at their leisure; with FreshBooks, they can settle their entire account balance at 4am on a Lufthansa flight using their MasterCard. There is nothing like getting to your desk at 8am on Monday to see that more than half of the invoices sent have been paid over the weekend by credit card.

FreshBooks is much more than billing, we also drive our entire support ticket system through the same service. There are many Web-based support ticket systems out there, but if you want your clients to actually use the system you put in place, we’ve found that a consolidated service is the only way to go. In our opinion, FreshBooks is the best all-in-one solution available.

Since 2003, we’ve been developing innovative websites, interactive web-applications, forward-thinking branding solutions, and much more. With FreshBooks as part of our arsenal, we’re billing, support, and client-management gurus, too.

Littlelines is a small, friendly development team consisting of clean design and top notch coding.

Well okay, that’s the text from our homepage. Behind the scenes, we’re two brothers who have teamed up to create awesome websites. One is a designer — the other is a developer. We think it’s a good match.

Who are you?

Matt Sears is a software developer with over eight years of experience in developing applications for the Web. Prior to Littlelines, Matt was Technical Lead at LexisNexis, a global online search engine for legal and business documents. There he led large and small teams on enterprise application development projects.

Josh Sears entered the professional world as a Graphic Designer for Scott Hull Associates, the country’s top artist agency. There he honed his skills for a half decade until finally he was considered an equal of the nation’s top artists and designers.

Josh’s work has been celebrated in such publications as HOW Magazine, Print, 3X3, and honoured by associations such as American Illustrators and Graphic Design USA.

What do you do?

Simply put, we make clean, user-friendly websites.

What was business like before FreshBooks?

Honestly? We didn’t have a business before FreshBooks. It was one of our first choices when we started the company due to the fact that we wanted a simple, intuitive process of invoicing our clients.

What is business like with FreshBooks?

Things are going great. The system is easy and pain-free. Payments have arrived smoothly and everyone seems happy. We couldn’t be happier.

My name is Michael Dowling, and I’m a co-founder and developer of WeGoAll, the fraternity and sorority website design specialists.

“FreshBooks has helped WeGoAll to automate our entire client billing process.”

We’ve done the Excel thing. We looked into trying to use a built-in recurring billing feature in different payment gateways. We also thought about devoting valuable time and effort to creating our own in-house invoicing system. None of that was flexible, professional, nor cost-effective enough for our company. Then we found FreshBooks.

FreshBooks has helped WeGoAll to automate our entire client billing process. We have several different recurring billing schedules including yearly, monthly, and quarterly. With FreshBooks’ recurring profiles, we finally have an invoicing system that makes managing our accounts feasible.

To us, the most beneficial part of FreshBooks is the ability to send out snail-mail invoices.

“With the click of a button, FreshBooks can send out invoices to the client’s mailing address, including a return envelope to make paying their bill more convenient.”

Because our clients are primarily fraternities and sororities, our contact information for these organizations is always changing. The one thing that doesn’t usually change is the chapter’s mailing address. With the click of a button, FreshBooks can send out invoices to the client’s mailing address, including a return envelope to make paying their bill more convenient.

FreshBooks is a great invoicing system, and we recommend it for any business that wants to look professional and get paid on-time.

I have enough conflict in my life.

“I’ll be converting all my current client invoicing to FreshBooks and starting new clients there. FreshBooks, you rock.”

As a professional workplace mediator, executive conflict coach and conflict resolution blogger, I willingly walk into other people’s conflicts. A Red Cross blood-drawing nurse once slapped her hand on my forehead to take my temperature when she heard that.

In my line of work, I have to stay calm and centred, keep my approaches simple and straightforward, and make communication with clients clear and easy. And I want my business systems to do the same for me.

Yet when I switched to a Mac in 2006, I wasn’t feeling very relaxed about how much more complicated my client invoicing system got. QuickBooks for Mac didn’t meet my simple, straightforward standards and neither did any of the other options I sampled. None quite managed the kind of invoicing and time-tracking solution I hoped was out there somewhere.

FreshBooks came to my rescue and I’m such a fan I included it in my top 10 for 2008 list on the blog I write for my fellow mediators. Some mediators aren’t very comfortable with technology for business, yet I can comfortably recommend FreshBooks even to them because I know they won’t be overwhelmed by learning or using it.

When I first visited FreshBooks’ site and read the claim about getting paid faster, I have to admit I rolled my eyes at the apparent hyperbole. A week later I stopped the eye-rolling permanently when a chronically late-paying client had a cheque on my desk just a few days after my first FreshBooks invoice went to them via e-mail.

I’ll be converting all my current client invoicing to FreshBooks and starting new clients there. FreshBooks, you rock.