Doing the books

August 13, 2008 3:56 PM

Please suggest a job-tracking/invoicing application for freelance services. Either Mac-based or Web-based. I have a bunch of persnickety requirements.

I've looked at a lot (a looot) of Mac-based apps, but perhaps I've overlooked the magic bullet.

My requirements:
- Must support multiple currencies. Some clients I bill in US$, some in ¥, and I want to leave the door open for € and whatever. This seems to be the most common dealbreaker.
- Must support various billing units. None of my work is billed by time. Some by the word, some by the character, etc. Time-oriented features are useless and time-oriented billing is frustrating.
- Should support a fair amount of customization in invoice formatting.
- Lets me keep track of payment status, earnings over time, that sort of thing.
- Can export data into some kind of interchange format.

During 2008, I've been making do with a Numbers spreadsheet that seems to have gotten too big for the application to digest. Before that, my system was even worse. iBiz would be just about perfect, but it can only handle one currency last time I checked.

posted by adamrice to computers & internet (4 comments total)

Never needed to use them, but you might try Freshbooks, which is web-based, or search to find a list of their competitors.
posted by acidic at 4:07 PM on August 13, 2008

Bad link! Go here instead.
posted by acidic at 4:08 PM on August 13, 2008

Freshbooks is completely time-oriented, and best as I can tell, single-currency.
posted by adamrice at 5:05 PM on August 13, 2008

You might look again at Freshbooks, which is not "completely time-oriented." I bill by the unit and I use Freshbooks. Set up items for the units or things you sell. When it's time to invoice, select the unit from the drop-down list, enter the quantity, and you're done.

Here's info on a klugey-sounding a multiple-currency workaround for Freshbooks. I have clients in several countries, but I charge them all in one currency, which makes my life a lot simpler.
posted by PatoPata at 7:33 PM on August 13, 2008