Hey, business owners, what is more fun than invoicing clients and managing expenses?! Having teeth pulled? Running marathons? Being savagely eaten a pack of wild wallabies in the Outback? We all know that keeping track of billing and costs, for most people, is not the most glamorous part of running a business, but we all want to get paid, right? FreshBooks.com offers a solution to all of you business owners who dread the hours in the week that you have to sit down and start tracking income, salary, payments, assets, benefits, equity, annuity, and all of those other financial words. FreshBooks, an online invoicing, billing, and time tracking program, makes addressing your finances extremely easy and manageable and reduces that daunting feeling the word “billing” brings on.

FreshBooks offers a single online portal for all of your bookkeeping and billing needs. They offer so many different services, things you did not even realize you ever needed, but will make your life so much easier. Let’s start at the beginning, the look and feel of all of the FreshBooks services is extremely professional, so your clients will be far more impressed than they were with that last invoice you scribbled on generic “invoice” stationary you picked up at the dollar store. They even give you the option to brand your system and all of your invoices with your company logos and colors. Forget those generic invoice e-mails, even with messages sent automatically through the FreshBooks system, you have the opportunity to personalize. For those of you willing to drop a little extra dough, you can even make your custom FreshBooks login page look like your company’s webpage, all in the name of consistency and professionalism.

Right, now that you’ve taken the time to make your FreshBook page all fancy ‘n stuff, you can move on to the meat and potatoes of the site. Assumedly, you want to make money from your clients. As far as invoicing goes, you can set up automatic billing with a credit card, create automated payment reminders so that both you and your client can forget your payment schedule, and collect payments through PayPal, VeriSign, and other online payment methods. For those of you who have crossed the threshold into international business (or just those of you who think it would be funny to send a client a memo requesting 14,000 Gambian Dalasi), you can invoice your clients in any currency.

Is the primary use of your desk calendar to practice writing your signature and doodle stick figure drawings of the annoying girl in the office with devil horns? Forget calendars, FreshBooks is all set to organize your time for you. You and all of your employees can track your hours and specify which projects you were working on and when. Share your budget plans, your deadlines, and your project management with your clients to make sure that you’re all on the same page. Beyond invoicing and time tracking, you can send estimates, track expenses, and manage your relationships with independent contractors.

Want to know what makes FreshBooks most legit? There’s an app for it (sorry, Apple, is it okay to use that phrase?). So say you’re out on client meetings all day long and suddenly realize that you forgot to do all of your billing and invoicing. You certainly don’t want an angry mob of paycheck-less employees at your door on Friday. You can fix that through your iPhone app, MiniBooks. There’s also a widget that you and all of your employees can download directly to their computers in order to do time tracking right from your desktop.

Best of all, FreshBooks saves you the hassle of dealing with the crazy middle-aged billing lady you thought you were going to have to hire. Sure, you might miss out on a little bowl of candy and stories about how crazy her 1st through 14th husbands were, but we promise FreshBooks is still the better option. The customer service that you receive from FreshBooks is absolutely top-notch. Despite being an online company, you can always get in touch with a real live person during business hours. The people you talk to are friendly, helpful, knowledgeable, and so reliable. Obviously, when disclosing tons of information about your company’s finances, it’s important that you trust and can depend on the service and the service providers. Give them a shot, you will not be disappointed. And you will definitely no longer find yourself making dentist appointments and doing distance training in order to avoid sitting down and bookkeeping.

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