Recurring Payments & Subscription Management

Mark as Paid if, for example, your client mails you a check instead of paying online. After all, not every client might want to pay through the client portal. Pulling up your roster of clients is quick and easy to access and manage. You can completely white label The Hub, run on your site, bill and manage clients, and control users’ access levels.

If nothing else, a simple email where you both type out “I agree” in response to the payment terms is sufficient. Once a bill is approved, click “Share”, and your client will receive an email that allows them to pay their invoice with a credit card. Personalize Clio’s legal time and billing software to the needs of your law firm and clients. Even though it can be a sensitive matter, it’s important to approach billing with transparency and professionalism. Keep this in mind, with transparent is accounting a good major in 2023 you can build strong relationships with your clients and ensure that your business is operating as effectively and efficiently as possible.

How can time tracking help you with client billing?

All of the best billing software let you accept payments online, whether through a proprietary payment processor or through a third-party company. Some offer ways for you to accept payments in person, which is important for product-based companies, as is inventory management. Zoho Invoice is free billing software that includes many tools you may need to help you run a service-based business. You can track projects and billable hours in the software, send estimates and create custom invoices from approved estimates or projects. There’s a built-in client portal to make it easy to communicate with your customers and get approval for billing.

Either way, regardless of what you agree upon, the payment terms and the due date should be clearly stated on the invoice. Client billing is the process of billing someone for goods or services you have provided them with. You give or send them a bill stating how much money they owe you for these goods or services. Last but not least, and related to reporting, is the ability to integrate your billing system with your back-end accounting system. There’s a lot of competition to Intuit Quickbooks these days, so even small businesses need to make sure their billing system and accounting system can effectively talk with one another. If they don’t, then these businesses could wind up doing a lot of unnecessary manual entry.

Client Payments

Integrate Xero or QuickBooks Online with Ignition to automate billing and invoice reconciliation once your client accepts your proposal. Ignition creates and sends a new invoice through your ledger software, then marks it as paid when it collects payment. As we’ve mentioned, billing is the process of generating and issuing invoices. Whereas accounts receivable is the asset account that displays the balance of any outstanding invoices or money owed to a business, in the short-term. For transactions that are completed in one go, it’s more common to use a bill as documentation. This happens because a bill is short and less detailed than an invoice would be, and includes only important details regarding prices and taxation.

Consider your needs and choose the best billing software depending on your criteria. If you need to send proposals, make sure that the chosen tool supports it. If you want to save money, a free billing software might be the best solution.

Customize plans, invoices, and emails

To get project and expense tracking, you’ll have to upgrade to the highest-priced plan ($70 per month). It seems to be a common (and justifiable) notion that using spreadsheets can be bad for business. Therefore, investing in a good billing software or billing system can prove to be extremely beneficial.

• While they’re mostly used in the beginning and middle of the service delivery cycle, task assignments and scheduling are critical for streamlined client billing.
• Therefore, for a small business, billing often requires more investment (such as spending in billing or invoicing software) to improve efficiency and minimize losses.
• Taxes, such as Sales Tax or Value Added Tax (VAT), is another place at which billing-oriented systems differ from more robust accounting ones.

Forbes Advisor looked at more than cost, as you also have to take into account the value for the money you pay. If you’re paying a higher monthly fee for billing software, but you also get features to help you track expenses or manage projects, that could be worth it. Both plans for Square Invoices allow you an unlimited number of invoices, and you can schedule recurring invoices for regular clients. Paid plan users can add custom fields to invoices and they can set up milestone-based invoices for longer projects.

Types of Billing

Some of the free features include contracts with e-signature and estimates. Then, all you have to do is choose your client details (and set up your new client if you’re using Bonsai for the first time). Remember that accurate client billing is essential for the financial health and success of your business, whether you work in a company or solo as a freelancer. Let’s assume you and your client agree with the 30 days; it means that your client has 30 days from the date the invoice was issued to make the payment. Getting paid promptly is more important to freelancers and small operators than large companies. We test and compare 10 software services dedicated to keeping your revenue stream flowing smoothly.

QuickBooks Online plans range from $30 to $300 ($15 to $100 per month for the first three months). If you choose to accept payments online from clients, you can take credit cards or bank transfers. Transaction fees range from 2.4% to 3.4%, plus 25 cents per transaction and you’ll pay 1% on bank transfers to a max of $10 per transaction. Perhaps one of the most important invoicing software features is the ability to integrate with other platforms. If you choose basic invoicing software, you want to make sure it will work with the software you use regularly.