Paperless Invoicing: Is It Better Than Paper Invoice?

“Sick of Paper Invoices? Consider switching to a cloud app like invoicely to manage & track all of your invoices from a Single Dashboard.” Xero is a pricey billing solution but it could be worth it if you expect to need accounting features for a quickly growing business. And with so many great free invoicing tools out there today, you can streamline the process without any upfront investment. To help you avoid analysis paralysis, I researched more than 45 free invoicing apps and spent several days testing the top 25 contenders.

They also offer a robust phone app, so you can send invoices from anywhere, anytime. It’s the additional features, like payroll and tax filing, that make this platform ideal for growing businesses. You can even use Wave Money as your main business bank account. There’s a good chance you’ll need these additional features down the road. While the upgraded features aren’t free, they are affordable (Payroll, for example, starts at $20/month), and you won’t have to switch apps as your business grows. You have to itemize charges, add taxes, track who paid, and chase down clients who don’t pay.

The Best 5 Invoicing Software of 2023

From now on you’ll get paid on time, every time, as GoCardless automatically collects payment on the scheduled date. Adopting a paperless approach is an excellent way to futureproof your business. Read our complete guide to find out what you need to know before you get started. Last but not least, and related to reporting, is the ability to integrate your billing system with your back-end accounting system.

You can also do more with PayPal by connecting it to Zapier, so you can automate your invoicing workflows. All QuickBooks Online plans come with a one-time Guided Setup with an expert and customer support. You can automate the sales invoice generation process, which will save you a good amount of time. Quickbooks has helped me get paid quicker and track all outstanding invoices with quick follow-ups.

The Best Billing and Invoicing Software

It gives you the ability to generate and send electronic bills. Ted Needleman has been covering the world of technology for almost 40 years. He writes frequently on software, hardware, paperless invoicing and technology-related subjects. He has been a programmer, accountant, Editor-in-Chief of Accounting Technology magazine, and the director of an imaging and printing test lab.

• If you sell products and you need to track inventory, the Plus plan will be necessary at $42.50 per month for the first three months, then $85 afterward.
• The app offers a ton of highly-designed document templates, and you can add your logo to make it your own.
• Adopting a paperless invoice processing system is not as complicated as it might sound.
• Amy Nichol Smith spent more than 20 years working as a journalist for TV and newspapers before transitioning to software and hardware product reviews for consumers and small businesses.
• Wave is a solid option to send invoices and track where all your cash goes—including cash coming and going.

Your first step in going paperless is establishing a timeline. The subsequent steps in this process require a
strategic approach; you’ll need to consider the time it takes to procure equipment, train your team, and
communicate with customers. That timeline will vary depending on the size of your business, so be realistic. Six
months is typically ambitious but achievable, though a year gives you more breathing room. Consider your current
resources when choosing an end date and work backward from there.

Top Invoicing Software Features

Other strong features include the ability to send recurring invoices, schedule invoices to be sent at a later date, accept digital signatures, and schedule automatic payment reminders. While it lacks some reporting features (it has only a few reports), it does allow users to accept in-person payments and send unlimited invoices for free. And you can connect Square to Zapier to automate more of your invoicing workflows. You can create incredibly detailed workflows for actions like adding a discount if an invoice is paid early or sending a payment email reminder. It does take a little time to set up, but it can save you hours down the road.

We can easily send invoices to customers and match their payments to those invoices. Helps us stay organized and get a good picture of the business as a whole. By going paperless, you’ll enhance efficiency, save time and money, and enjoy faster payment times.

An online invoice generator should do more than just give you a PDF to send via email. Your invoice program should function as fully-featured billing software that lets you take care of your online invoicing in the context of your business. Because these are all free, it’s worth taking a few of them for a spin to see which one makes your life the easiest. All of our best apps roundups are written by humans who’ve spent much of their careers using, testing, and writing about software. We spend dozens of hours researching and testing apps, using each app as it’s intended to be used and evaluating it against the criteria we set for the category. We’re never paid for placement in our articles from any app or for links to any site—we value the trust readers put in us to offer authentic evaluations of the categories and apps we review.