What's the right software for printing and tracking quarterly invoices?

November 4, 2013 8:18 AM

I'm looking for recommendations for a piece of software that automates printing and tracking quarterly bills to a few hundred customers that receive an ongoing service from a small business. I want to be able to import all the customers from Excel or something, place them in groups that pay different rates, and then EASILY print invoices once a quarter. Each invoice should come out automatically with the current rate for the group the customer is in. As the checks come in, I want to be able to enter those against the customers so I can track who has paid and who is behind.

The invoice should be friendly looking and customizable. You know, the standard "previous balance X ... payment received, thank you ... new balance Y" or whatever.

It would be nice to be able to add special one-time charges or credits, and send pro-rated invoices when service begins or ends. I don't need timesheets, inventory, estimates, fancy accounting, payment processing, or help filing taxes. Just printing and tracking of invoices.

I've looked at QuickBooks 2009. It doesn't seem like I can do this particularly easily, and all the other features QuickBooks is offering kind of get in the way. I can see how to make one invoice for one customer but I need to create a few hundred at a time, on a regular basis. Anything that involves clicking on each customer is not going to work. It seems like the more recent versions of QuickBooks make this easier with "Batch Invoicing"? Once I get past the learning curve and get it all set up is it going to be just a few clicks each quarter to print the invoices? Or is there something out there even simpler?

This is for a small family business that doesn't even have Internet access at their office, so no online or "Cloud" solutions please.

posted by steveminutillo to Work & Money (5 answers total)

What is the rest of the bookkeeping done in? Usually the solution here is QuickBooks because you want all those invoices/payments to be reflected in your books, so that you know what your income is for the month. I'm afraid that the level of automation you're looking for plus something that requires no internet access is tough; the cloud is very much the Hot New Thing for small business accounting and that's where the new features are going. QuickBooks can be very quirky, but it's at least useful for more than just that... if you've got some other accounting system going then there might be a better way to tie into it.
posted by Sequence at 8:28 AM on November 4, 2013

What's the right software for printing and tracking quarterly invoices?

The simple answer is: your accounting program. You definitely want those functions integrated into your GL as a subsidiary ledger. Surely Quickbooks or Peachtree products for small business still offer such a feature for the desktop...
posted by jim in austin at 9:05 AM on November 4, 2013

I don't know what they use for bookkeeping. It's probably done manually, on paper or maybe a spreadsheet? I don't need the invoicing system to integrate with anything else.
posted by steveminutillo at 9:12 AM on November 4, 2013

OK, we're talking about a cigar box with a rubber band system then. Perhaps a search on "desktop invoicing software" would be the place to start. For that matter, something in Excel or Word might suffice as well...
posted by jim in austin at 9:32 AM on November 4, 2013

If you have the data in spreadsheets/CSVs, could you just create templates in Word and do a mail merge?
posted by radioamy at 1:01 PM on November 4, 2013