I am Jan Walsh, a freelance wine, food and travel writer. More recently I’m also the owner and publisher of three niche content-based websites, supported by sponsor advertising.

It started small two years ago, with Birmingham Wine. With approximately six sponsors, billing was no big deal.

“Billing all my sponsors became a nightmare.”

After launching Birmingham Restaurants in 2007 and Birmingham Brides in 2008, the number of sponsors quickly grew to 72, and continues to grow weekly. Billing all these sponsors became a nightmare, because I’m mostly a one-woman show.

I already billed via e-mail and had an Authorize.Net account for clients to pay online, but I didn’t have a system for tracking payments, past-due accounts and renewals — other than a calendar!

“Finding FreshBooks was like hiring a bookkeeper for $27/month.”

I tried other software and web applications, but none were Mac-friendly enough to suit me. I couldn’t even log into some of them! Plus, my invoices are semi-annual, and many had no option for semi-annual billing.

Then I found FreshBooks. It was like hiring a bookkeeper for $27/month. This web application is perfect for my business. Every day I go online and see who was invoiced, who got a late notice, and who paid online.

“My favourite feature is seeing which clients have viewed their invoices.”

With one click I run reports showing everything from past-due accounts to recurring revenue. But my favourite feature is seeing which clients have viewed their invoices.

If they haven’t viewed it, they obviously haven’t mailed a check. So I “snail mail” invoices to these clients using FreshBooks. They print the invoice, put it in an envelope with a return envelope, put a stamp on it and mail it for a nominal fee.

Another feature that’s invaluable to me is their support team.

I’m a fast person, and I like quick answers to my questions. I don’t have time to look through a website for answers to my questions. I want to call and get immediate answers, which is just what I get with FreshBooks.

“A real live person at the FreshBooks office answers the phone quickly and provides immediate solutions to any questions I have.”

I don’t punch in my account number and listen to music while waiting, or have a machine ask me all the wrong questions. A real live person at the FreshBooks office answers the phone quickly and provides immediate solutions to any questions I have. They’re very knowledgeable, friendly, and most of all are helpful.

I even recommended FreshBooks to the company that develops my websites — they send me invoices using QuickBooks, but it isn’t Mac-friendly. Sometimes I can view an invoice, other times I can’t. And nothing is worse that a client having issues trying to pay! I rest assured my clients don’t have this problem with FreshBooks.

The dictionary definition of a “superhero” is a person or thing having extraordinary or superhuman powers, and an exceptionally skilful or successful person.

That describes how I feel about FreshBooks.

Being a freelance artist and illustrator I have spent most of my life creating superheroes and futurist universes, so it isn’t unusual for me to spend 8+ hours a day at my drawing table.

“Now that I use FreshBooks to assist with that side of my business I can see, at a glance, what’s owing.”

Before I found FreshBooks I could spend another few hours trying to make sense of the jumbled mess I liked to call my invoicing routine. Like most artists, I’m known for my art, not for being the most organized person in the world.

Now that I use FreshBooks to assist with that side of my business I can see, at a glance, what’s owing. The only “mess” now is on my art boards — right where it belongs.

A new year’s resolution you can bank on

Jaye Gipson, owner of bookkeeping service Impeccably Booked and new FreshBooks customer, has always been motivated to make positive change in her own life. As she puts it, “How do you grow without change? I’m always looking for ways to make myself better.” Three years ago she felt she should motivate her friends to follow her by setting a public example. She’s been blogging at Plus Size Diva ever since.

For someone so motivated, it’s no surprise Jaye is also an intrepid serial entrepreneur. “I’m always re-assessing the work I do,” she says, “so I have several businesses I run.” Indeed, she just launched Your Virtual Rock, a new virtual assistant service, to begin the year 2008.

“I’m always looking for ways to make myself better.”

To make Your Virtual Rock a success, Jaye has an extra new year’s resolution. “I really need to be on top of my finances so I am allowed the flexibility to pursue these businesses,” she says. She has resolved to shed all her debt by the end of the year and move to a completely virtual business existence.

On top of checking her credit report, tracking her spending, and even reeling in her Christmas shopping, we’re really proud Jaye chose FreshBooks to manage her billing. “This li’l system is one I can access anywhere, anytime. I like that flexibility.”

Why would a bookkeeper choose FreshBooks?

“I try to work no more than five hours a day. Anything that helps me collect payment as fast and simple as possible will help me free up my time and keep costs down. FreshBooks is very simple, very easy to use.”

“This li’l system is one I can access anywhere, anytime. I like that flexibility.”

Five hours a day to run two businesses? Awesome. What does she do in all her spare time?

“Nothing out of the ordinary. I want to travel more. Lose weight. Play my guitar.”

I’m a ninja — a web ninja. And a photographer too. I design for clients like OfficeMax, Hasbro, Disney and Sony and have photographed bands such as Nine Inch Nails, No Doubt, Matchbox 20 and other sundry troublemakers.

“I could go into the blah-ness of describing time tracking and invoicing with notepads and Excel, but why re-live that trauma?”

But my daughters sum it up best when they tell people “mommy just colors and draws”. They don’t know the various roles I play managing clients… their expectations, schedules, budgets and nutty ideas of what Web designers do with their time.

How were things before FreshBooks?

Black and white, but not the good Holga kind. I could go into the blah-ness of describing time tracking and invoicing with notepads and Excel, but why re-live that trauma? There was paper involved, stamps, salty postal workers — oh, the humanity! It wasn’t something I looked forward to, which is ironic because billing meant I had money coming in! How silly is that?

What’s business like with FreshBooks?

Shiny! Okay, first off it’s fun to use. Excel doesn’t flash “BAM!” when I enter my time and it never will. The time tracker feature is awesome. I find I have more billable hours because I tended to round down or “under-guesstimate” how long I was spending on projects.

My clients love being able to manage their budgets. They feel informed, and an informed client is a happy client. I don’t have to explain the bill because they have an awareness of it from checking in as the project moves along.

“With FreshBooks, I find I have more billable hours.”

Plus there’s a friendly formality to the presentation that feels bigger than just a lady at her computer in her home office. It honours the client and helps give me a more professional face.

And I’ll say, as someone who makes usability and user interface her livelihood, it’s very well-designed and easy to use. I jumped right on in, ran with it and have been happy as a clam ever since.

I don’t usually provide testimonials. I’m what you might call a difficult client; I build web applications myself, so I have high expectations. I don’t like when things don’t work the way I expect.

With FreshBooks, I’m enthusiastic about giving a testimonial. My business started to double every year at the point I started using it, and I’ve been able to expand my business more easily thanks to hooking up with FreshBooks in a serious way.

Flexible billing

My company has gone through several iterations. We started by charging flat rates, and the clients were killing us asking for extra features; we would end up working for next to nothing. So we switched to time-based billing, where we’d just work and work until the job was done.

When we made that switch, we came to realize many things we do are very valuable, but don’t take much time. We’ve built systems and tools for doing them more efficiently, so the real value of these features are much higher than the time they take to implement; we’re helping our clients make hundreds of thousands of dollars more annually. What we do is a big part of their bottom line.

So we’ve gone back to flat rates now. Our clients know they’re going to pay the same amount every month.

Flat-rate billing, time-based billing, recurring billing; there are a lot of different billing strategies in there. Any of them can be accomplished in FreshBooks with ease.

Globetrotter-friendly

For a while, I had a team split between Paris and Toronto, doing design and marketing for a big dance film in Vienna. I had anywhere from 3–6 people working for me; one in China, one in Iceland, and so on. You can imagine how hard it might have been to manage people’s hours. A full-time employee running after them, clients complaining about their bills, employees complaining about their paycheques; it would have required a lot of organizational infrastructure.

Instead, it all takes care of itself. I’ve got all my projects and tasks set up. If you want to get paid for something, you put it in FreshBooks. I can quickly look it over, put it into a detailed bill for the client, and send it off. It’s very easy to review and get it done.

With FreshBooks, I run an international company with ease. What used to take a full 12-hour day every month is now finished in two hours. That’s non-billable time; nobody’s paying me for that part. FreshBooks saves me a minimum of ten hours a month. That’s a lot of money.

Top-notch support

The application is absolutely fantastic, but what makes the difference is having such a fantastic and gifted support team available by telephone. It’s the best support team I’ve ever run into.

I spend so much of my time troubleshooting and filing bug reports for our clients that when I use an application, I don’t want to go through that process — I just want to use it. FreshBooks is self-explanatory most of the time, and when I run into trouble, there’s somebody there to help me immediately. Not only are they nice, but they understand the application, and how I want to use it.

Most companies only do e-mail support. I think the fact FreshBooks picks up the phone adds a whole lot of accountability to what they do. They have developers on the front lines, and they really know their stuff. They help every step of the way, which is a wonderful thing. It saves potential hours of frustration.

FreshBooks support is the best I’ve ever run into.

I have used FreshBooks for a few months now. I’m billing faster, getting paid faster, and feeling more in control of my projects. But I’d like to write about another aspect of FreshBooks that makes a big difference to me: the words.

You see, I write marketing copy and help systems for a living, so noticing how businesses express themselves is my professional obsession. From the start, I’ve been impressed with the way the FreshBooks team have used clear, friendly language, not just on their website but throughout the application, in their blog and in the forums.

Self-documented.

Have you noticed how FreshBooks is largely self-documented? Next to most of the form fields, there’s a short, clear explanation of what the field is for and how to use it. Link text tells you in plain English where the link leads. There’s seldom any need to click the Help button. It’s common sense, really, but I’ve seen too many web applications sacrifice clarity for style.

Quirky.

Sprinkled through FreshBooks, surprising and quirky language enhances the sense that you’re using an application with real people behind it. I like the random phrases that appear in the task timer when you log hours, and the kooky names for color schemes.

Accessible staff.

The staff members don’t hide their personalities behind feigned “professionalism.” Their blog and forum entries reassure me that the people behind the application are accessible and answerable to their customers, not hidden away behind a wall of corporate PR consultants.

FreshBooks has become an indispensible tool for my business, and I use it every day. Any other high-quality application I’d only keep using until something better came along, but through their words I’ve come to feel like I know the FreshBooks team. I feel good using their product, I’m loyal, and I want to see them do well.

Wouldn’t you like your customers to feel that way about you?

I am the editor and founder of FreelanceSwitch, a resource for freelancers. Our site is a blog with more, so as well as articles, interviews and how-tos, we have resources, a job board and podcasts. FreelanceSwitch gets around 500,000 visits a month and caters to primarily web and graphic designers, followed by programmers, photographers and writers.

“FreshBooks has automated everything for me so I don’t even need to think about advertising most of the time.”

I need to keep track of many different advertisers who all need to be billed at different times and for different amounts. I was getting calendar reminders almost every day to invoice one of them, and often they needed chasing up for payment. So as you can imagine, it was pretty hectic and took me away from other important tasks.

“I save at least 5 hours per week on invoicing . . . I don’t know why every blog doesn’t switch to FreshBooks to manage their advertising.”

FreshBooks has automated everything for me so I don’t even need to think about advertising most of the time. When a client signs up, I simply create a recurring invoice and leave FreshBooks to do it’s work. I check in once a week, but there really isn’t even a need for that. FreshBooks collects monthly payments for me and I don’t need to lift a finger. I’ve even set up my automated emails to give my clients all the information they need in case they need to make changes to their ads.

I’d estimate I save at least 5 hours per week on invoicing and client liaison thanks to FreshBooks. I don’t know why every blog doesn’t switch to FreshBooks to manage their advertising.

At a tactical level, with FreshBooks, I’m more efficient. I bill faster, get paid faster, and have more time to take on new projects. And for my business as a whole, FreshBooks has become an important piece of the puzzle.

“I bill faster, get paid faster, and have more time to take on new projects.”

From a strategic perspective, it’s important that a company has a level of automation to all of their business processes. A well defined policy, or “process strategy” as I would call it, is essential to have in place for all fundamentally important areas of your business including, but not limited to, marketing, product delivery, customer support, and billing.

The difference between a million dollar business owner who slaves 12 hour workdays (plus weekends) and a business owner who can leave his company to go on a 12 month vacation (and still make the million dollars) is in my opinion: process automation. And that’s why I love FreshBooks so much — it has automated a key process for my company.

“FreshBooks was like buying a complete and end all solution to managing billing & invoices.”

With FreshBooks, for me it was like buying a complete and end all solution to managing billing & invoices. It’s another level of automation in my business I can integrate into the “big picture”. Now I have the advantage of being able to more effectively tackle the current workload and focus on being strategic.

“I actually enjoy invoicing clients now.”

I actually enjoy invoicing clients now, because the moment their invoice is generated I know that the client will promptly receive it, view it, and hopefully even pay it online. And as much as this may sound goofy, invoicing with FreshBooks is fun.

“Signing up for FreshBooks is like gaining access to the brain power of a focused team.”

Many businesses make the mistake of “trying to recreate the wheel”. Signing up for FreshBooks is like gaining access to the brain power of a focused team who has already spent an enormous amount of time and energy figuring out how to most effectively invoice your clients. Ditching your old tedious process for a particular area of business is an easy decision when you can leverage this type of power.

I am the owner of Supportus Maximus computer support and web design in Hollywood, California. I am also the host of FatFreeFilm, the indie film podcast.

“Thanks, FreshBooks for helping me be a ‘breath of fresh air’ to my clients.”

I have been using FreshBooks for a little under a year and it has made conducting business so much easier. Here’s an example:

I was at a client’s house and I pulled up FreshBooks to enter in data about the job I was on. The client, who is a very successful business man himself, was looking over my shoulder and said to me, “What is that?” I said to him, “It’s my fancy-schmancy record-keeping, invoicing system that I use to organize my business.” He said, “Wow, that is fancy-schmancy. You know, I gotta tell you, you are a breath of fresh air.”

I have to give you guys credit. Thanks, FreshBooks, for helping me be a “breath of fresh air” to my clients.

Being a small business owner, computer tech, website designer, podcaster, actor and filmmaker, I don’t like to waste time. FreshBooks helps me have the time to do all the things I do, and keep it all in order.

Hello, my name is Heather Villa and I’m the founder and CEO of IAC Professionals. My company is a single source solution for businesses needing help in accounting, taxes, legal, company set-up and administrative services. We have teams of professionals in each functional area and can help a business with one or multiple areas of their organization.

“FreshBooks really is the perfect solution!”

We have offices in Miami and the Dominican Republic and a global base of clients. Because we work virtually, we never hand our clients an invoice. Billing by mail is time consuming and expensive. Morever, without incurring additional expenses, it’s hard to verify delivery. For this reason we made the decision that we would fully commit to electronic billing.

“I earnestly began my search for the perfect online billing solution. Although I found many vendors offering the ‘perfect’ solution, FreshBooks really met our needs.”

I initially started looking for an email certification program. My thought was if I could verify email delivery, all of my problems would be solved. Ha! It wasn’t as easy as I thought and I realized that I had other problems that needed to be solved. In the past six months my company has rapidly expanded. Our international client base has grown significantly creating the need to add staff and space in the Dominican Republic. As I brought in accounting staff to manage data entry, I quickly realized that having accounts receivable and payable on the same system was not going to work.

It was important for me to segregate these key functions. We were also experiencing the very practical difficultly of multiple people needing to work in the same file at the same time. So I earnestly began my search for the perfect online billing solution.

“We have used the system for five months and there have been absolutely no problems!”

Although I found many vendors offering the “perfect” solution, FreshBooks really met our needs. FreshBooks was the only provider to offer a fully functional trial. I tested FreshBooks and two other systems simultaneously for one month. I had to pay for the two other services but I wanted to ensure I was making the right choice.

FreshBooks had three key selling points for me:

1. It’s customizable allowing me to add my logo and colors.
2. It has a user friendly interface. I don’t have to hunt for things and neither do my clients.
3. The time clock is integrated into the billing system.

We have used the system for five months and there have been absolutely no problems! Our clients require no training, they’re able to log on and easily review contracts, pay bills and upload documents. Best of all, I never have to worry about invoice tracking. The automated reminders take one more task off of my busy to-do list. FreshBooks really is the perfect solution!