Money

Currently forinvoicing clients I use a database in Filemaker Pro 5.5. The software is currently on version 10, so I could probably modernize my workflow slightly here. My workflow for sorting out invoices is something along the lines of:

Enter what they owe me > Enter what its for > Export PDF at the end of the month and email it to the client

To track time I simply use iCal. While this is by far the most elegant system it has worked quite well for me for a few years now, but I originally started using this workflow because I had to set up an invoicing system rather quickly, and simply haven't really had time to think about finding a better solution since then!

Well, over at his blog, Sebastiaan de With just posted an overview of Billings 3, his time-tracking and invoice-management software of choice. Now I must admit, this post is partly fueled by the promise of a free license to anyone linking back to his post, but that isn't all. It actually got me thinking about how dated my own workflow is, and billings looks like an excellent piece of software that I am now thinking of migrating to anyway.

I think the key point here (plucked nicely from Sebastiaan's interview with Billings' developer) is that pretty much all of the team responsible for the app had some form of freelance experience. Too much software is developed by people who don't actually use it for what they are designing it for, or properly understand the needs of their target customers, and it really shows.

I look forward to giving Billings a whirl when I next have some paid work going on!