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Billings3 Invoicing App for Mac Giveaway and Review
Posted on Sunday, November 1st, 2009 under Giveaway by Dustin Brewer.There are a lot of invoicing options available to agencies, freelancers and anyone needing to send a bill to a client or customer. Market Circle approached me wanting me to give an honest review of their app and write a blog post about it. They also gave me the opportunity to giveaway 2 licenses to my readers, more on that later. The Billings3 application is only for Mac OS X, so if you aren’t an Apple user you might not get a lot out of this article.
Before checking out Billings3 I used Freshbooks for invoicing, so using a local app was a pretty big change. The best thing about using Billings3 for invoicing is that you aren’t limited by the number of clients or invoices you can send a month, so a one-time payment is all you need to manage your clients and invoicing for your business. The application has a multitude of options available for the beginner and more advanced users that need to manage more than just a few clients.
Time Tracking
I think as a freelance web designer one of my favorite features, oddly enough, was the way the Timer worked within Billings3. It is a simple timer that puts the time elapsed in your Apple bar so you can easily keep track of the time elapsed for the project you are working on. It has the ability to easily pause or stop the timer directly from the Apple bar which is nice if you are in a hurry.
In the preferences you can setup what your typical hourly rate is, or adjust it as you create the project within the system. It also allows you to specify in what increments you bill your clients. The timer also has an “idle” notification, so if you aren’t active on your Mac for X amount of time the timer will automatically stop timing and ask you if you would like to count the time or dismiss the elapsed idle time.
Managing Clients
You can manage your clients and their projects really easily within the system. You simply add the client to your address book, get a multitude of options for notes and various other information you might want to have easily accessible and then you can create the project you are working on for them. Which is great if you work for a lot of agencies and just need the top level client with various projects under that one client.
The only downfall I found in creating the client is you have to use your Mac’s address book. Which can be a little frustrating if you really don’t use the address book on your Mac. A quick way to get around adding all of my clients to my address book on my Mac is exporting them from my Google Apps Mail account and then importing them into the Address book. A bit of a hack to not have to add clients directly into the Address book, I wish the option were available to create the client just in Billings3 rather than anywhere else.
Invoicing
The other thing I found helpful in using Billings3 is the customization of the invoice you send to your clients, there are several dozen templates to choose from or start with for sending to your client. The system is incredibly flexible so if you already use a pretty standard invoice template it wouldn’t be difficult to duplicate in Billings3. Along with the sending of the invoice there is a nice “accounting” system that allows you to keep track of the money outstanding, and you can easily enter the money you have received so managing your income and collections through the app is a snap.
Because the system automatically knows what your hourly rate is per a project you can easily keep track of of how much each client owes you before you create the invoice. You can view per project or per client so if you are working for an agency it is easy to distinguish where you are with each project budget. You can also easily setup recurring invoicing for your clients, so if you do hosting or any other monthly billing you can set it and forget it.
Billings3 is intuitive
Overall, the Billings3 app keeps with your typical OS X interface and is just as intuitive as anything else you would expect. Most of the most commonly used options are readily available and some of the more advanced options are kept behind easily found menus. Which makes time tracking, accounting and invoicing take little to no time out of your work load. They have a 30 day free trial you can check out on their website, and, of course, I am giving away 2 licenses of the software to 2 lucky readers.
How to Enter
There are two ways to enter to win a copy of Billings3, commenting on this article will get you 1 entry and tweeting will give you another entry. So do both to ensure you have the best chance to win. The contest will end November 15th at Midnight CST.
Whats Next?
30 Responses to “Billings3 Invoicing App for Mac Giveaway and Review”
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About Dustin Brewer
Dustin Brewer is a freelance web designer based out of Oklahoma City, OK passionate about web standards, and beautiful web design. Dustin Brewer has been in the web design industry for over 8 years through freelance and professional experience. If you are interested in hiring Dustin Brewer please visit the web design services page to find out more information. You can also checkout my web design portfolio.
I’ve been looking at this app for a while, it seems quite robust, Hope i win
As someone who is starting a career as a freelancer and who was looking for some decent invoicing software, it looks to me that Billings is a lot more than that and solves a lot of problems I didn’t knew I was going to face.
Great review for a great piece of software!
I would love to have a cope of this app. Had the chance to play with it for the trial period. Would very appreciate a license. Thank you
I’d really appreciate if I get one. Good job for the article.
Why not RT it and comment. I’d love the chance to use Billings3. All the reviews I’ve read make it blow the rest of the competition away.
I am interested in checking this out. I’ve been ragtagging all my stuff using an online invoicing system, paypal, and other software.
Hey, thanks for the post. I’ve heard a lot about Billings, and just got a Mac Book Pro not too long ago.
Thanks for the review. I recently downloaded the 30-day trial of Billings, and so far, I like it a lot. The time-tracking feature is my favorite as well. I also just downloaded the trial of Daylite…have you had a chance to try this production manager? I’m curious to see how others like it. Thanks again…
I’ve tried the trial, and was hoping for a giveaway soon. The application worked really awesome! Hope i win
(@yummygum)
Nice review guys. Billings seems to be a nice app to manage invoicing.
Great giveaway!
I have had my eye on Billings for a while. I have been looking for a reason to replace my current solution.
I’d love to get this app on my new iMac so I stop using Freshbooks. Great review.
Seems like this could easily replace my FreshBooks account and be a seemless addition to my MBP.
Heard a lot of good things about Billings – would be good to use it myself
I played with it some yesterday. Looks well done. My problem is that I have no clue how to use it. I am so used to hobbling my billing together with the methods I’ve been using that I am clueless when it comes to something organized.
I tried that Billings a few weeks ago. I’m in love with that app. As a beginning webdesigner it would been a great start.
Played around with the software a bit. I have to say I’m very impressed overall. I could definitely see myself using this for my invoicing.
I have tried billings and loved it. It was very intuitive and user friendly. I would definitely start using it on a daily basis.
I’ve used it in the past as a demo (busted) and it’s as awesome as you say. Love it.
For those of you who have used another method… how well did you think you adapted to using it for your misc billing? What kind of learning curve etc?
I am old and have my ways set already, but want to change.
I have hourly rates for different things, like Photoshop, layout, etc. But I tend to bid jobs and bill them based on the client, the actual work I put in, etc. I bill by feel most of the time, and usually way under what I should.
I am hoping that if I adopt something like Billing, where I can track time, details of the job, etc more efficiently, it will help me to make MONEY on the jobs. Because, if I am forced to see exactly how much I put into it, I will fight for the price I need to make money.
I am totally lost in Billings right now. I need to figure out how to create hourly rate things for each of the things I do, build my custom invoice out, etc.
Even at what $40, it looks like its a good piece of software that Id buy regardless. Just need to motivate myself.
Oh, yeah, and find some PAYING work.
Billings3 would be perfect for my freelance startup. Thanks for the chance to win a copy!
@Robn
Try watching the intro. video on the Billings website, as it may help you get started.
http://www.billingsapp.com/movies/intro.html
Good luck to everyone!
Ryan
Marketcircle
PS: Dustin, make sure you don’t pick me as a winner
Its the only thing I have been looking forward to get. Wishing my luck the best!!
As someone who has been using FreshBooks and loving it for a while, but doesn’t like the monthly fee, especially during slow months, this sounds like a great option! Crossing my fingers that I’m a winner and heading off to Tweet now!
Ryan, I’ll have to do that… if things here at work will stop being crazy.
Played around with the demo and would love a copy. Fingers crossed I win one!!
Ryan, I would absolutely LOVE a copy of this program. This would help me jump start my freelance business so much!
Yo quiero!!!
Hey All
I have been using the services of http://www.invoicera.com for quite sometime now and they are coming up with the new Invoicera with features like time-tracking, expense tracking, import function, and much more. Check out their blog at http://www.invoicera.com/blog for updates
Cheers!!!
@Robn
Try watching the intro. video on the Billings website, as it may help you get started.
http://www.billingsapp.com/movies/intro.html
Good luck to everyone!
Ryan
Marketcircle
PS: Dustin, make sure you don’t pick me as a winner