Question regarding invoicing/proposals/contracts...

Stu Wilkie

Stu Wilkie

New Member
Hi guys,

I'm a freelance Graphic Designer. I was wondering if any of you have any recommendations for tools (online or offline) that handle things like invoices/proposals/contracts etc all in one place. The thing is, at the moment, I use Illustrator for all my materials as I am really picky about appearance and aesthetics in general.

Also, I have a hard time even researching solutions on Google because I don't know what search terms to enter. I end up entering terms like 'graphic design invoice contract proposal app', or something equally ridiculous.:icon_clapping:

Any advice would be very welcome.

Cheers!
Stu.
 
Hey Stu, I'm not sure if it's exactly what you're after, you might find FreeAgent useful. I mainly use it for keeping track of expenses and invoices since it's accounting software (and allows you to easily submit your tax return to HMRC when you need to which had me sold), but it also allows you to track time, manage projects and estimates, send invoices and set up recurring payments. It has a monthly or yearly subscription model, but if you use my referral code (43fnulbr) you get a 10% discount.

I tend to send out PDF invoices myself as I have my own design set up in an InDesign document. Each page is basically a new invoice where I edit the relevant details and export that page and send it to a client. You can upload your invoices as a PDF to FreeAgent though to keep a record their too.

I also use Billings Pro to track time on projects. It's handy as it's cloud based so I can track projects across multiple machines, though if I'm honest I only really use it because I paid for it at one point.
 
Hi Paul,

Thanks for the reply. How do you find FreeAgent in terms of document customisation? How much can you edit the invoices/proposals or contracts in terms of aesthetics? For instance, if you look at something like Motiv, they seem to give you a good platform to customise your documents, but it doesn't seem as robust as something like FreeAgent in terms of functionality (tax returns etc).

Thanks again.
 
Plus 1 for free agent to keep track of invoices and create estimates/quotes. However you couldn't use it to generate a substantial proposal for prospects so I now use quoteroller for that. I still use freeagent for small quotes for clients, though. You can also sync contacts between the two.
 
andybdesign said:
I looked at a whole bunch of these. I finally went with Ballpark (10% off here). It was what I wanted and had nice invoices.

You can see my spreadsheet that I put together to compare them all here:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AqBSLagwJJowdE9XUWE0WThLODBTRVE2ZzlNMzBCdGc&usp=sharing
Click to expand...
Interesting Ballpark does what I use Freeagent for - Timesheets, invoices and quotes but Freeagent does a lot of other stuff to related to tax. Does Ballpark do recurring invoices (we use that for annual web hosting fees)?
 
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