Removing all the bloat from free-to-use platforms and only including the features you want to see. No more forced payment methods, which take 4% of your hard-earned cash, and no more over-complicated UI's that include all the features dedicated to small business owners.
I'm including all core features, such as customer management, invoice tracking, payment statuses, finance metrics, and various optional payment methods. I want to hear what other features people would like to see.
Some ideas that I have already validated are: - customer health scores - Invoice-opened notifications - quick invoice creation - time tracking and invoice item management - customer/user invoice collaboration
This will be a platform built specifically for YOU, so your input will be the core of this project.
As a solo freelancer I never had enough clients and projects at one time to need anything more complicated than a spreadsheet to produce invoices. Solo freelancers have hard limits on billable time and number of clients/projects they can juggle at once.
Freelancers running a business by hiring other freelancers will need something more than invoicing, because they will have payroll and taxes to contend with.
Freelancers who mainly use piecework sites like Fiverr or Upwork don't have to invoice, because those sites do it for them.
Some of my customers have their own time/work tracking systems that I have to use, but then I don't have to invoice.
Since 2014 I have freelanced through an agency that does invoicing for me. They use Google Sheets for time tracking and handle the rest for me.
Ideally freelancers move their long-term clients to retainer arrangements, which makes invoicing even easier, or not necessary at all.
As for paying for credit card or PayPal, I always added that in to my invoices, passing it along to the customer transparently. They could choose to pay by bank transfer (free for me) or in the old days by paper check. If they used a credit card they paid the processing fee. No one ever complained about it.
I have seen lots of invoicing tools, and lots of low-end CRM systems, targeting freelancers. None of them seem worth the trouble to me. Tracking time and sending out invoices just doesn't seem like a hard problem, and I want something with the least friction, so I use a spreadsheet.
1. As a solo-freelancer, I only need a PDF invoice for my client. I need a few fields (ie: xxx hours @ xx/hour - $xx,xxx). I don't need metrics, tracking or customer management.
2. I will never consider an invoicing platform as my payment platform. I never understood it, understood why people do it or what the advantage is. You can give your bank account or PayPal details and that's it. Why risk your hard earned money through some third-party?
Customer Health Scores: How would these scores be tracked? I feel that, at some point, freelancers naturally act as salespeople and already have a sense of the state of their relationships with clients. However, I don’t fully understand how this function would work. If it’s simply a matter of manually noting it down myself, I fail to see the advantage of this feature.
Various Optional Payment Methods: I already use a basic payment system, as do many freelancers, such as PayPal, Payoneer, and Wise (I’m based in Europe, so this is my go-to options). Another question is about freelancer platforms with integrated payment systems, like UpWork or Fiverr. I believe there’s a strong need for integration with such platforms; otherwise, it may not be convenient for regular freelancers.
Overall Complexity: While you describe this as an invoicing tool, it seems a bit overwhelming. I’m actively searching for a tool like this, which is why your post caught my attention in the feed. Perhaps it’s just my preference, but I tend to enjoy simple tools that serve their purpose effectively. For instance, I’ve researched similar products and tried a few free trials: https://turbodoc.io/ and https://bookeeping.ai/en. You might consider looking into tools like these, as I believe they meet invoicing needs quite well, though companies may still need time to refine them further.
I'm planning a trial run with HubSpot as a replacement so I can continue to have some structure, which speaks to another problem you'll run into. If you already know you need a platform, why not just go for a full CRM with most of those features baked in from the start?