FreshBooks Online Billing System

I’ve been freelancing for 10 years. Over the course of the past decade, I have tried many different types of time keeping and invoicing methods. QuickBooks (recommended by my first accountant) was more than I needed, so I ended up with a tried and true paper-based system. I keep a calendar on my desk and simply write down client tasks and the associated hours worked on each day.

As I returned to full-time this year, my paper-based system has become quite tedious. At the end of the month, I must pull out my calculator and add up all the hourly notations under each day. I just finished my invoices for May and was frustrated at how long this process took, so I decided to revisit my method. Enter FreshBooks.

I’ve reviewed both FreshBooks and BlinkSale in the past, when recommending similar tools to readers of my books. I was impressed with their features over a year ago, but FreshBooks in particular has grown quite a lot since my last review. I love that they offer the ability to send snailmail copies of invoices for you (at minimal cost). This is not offered by BlinkSale.

Another reason I selected FreshBooks is its integration with a Mac OSX Time Tracking Widget, making it super easy to track client time on the fly (without having to visit the FreshBooks web site).

So this morning I created a FreshBooks account (free for the first 30 days) and am going to test it out. I’ll be able to send my first invoices at the end of June and am looking forward to testing the time tracking tools in the meantime. I’ll let you know what I think next month. In the meantime, check out FreshBooks for yourself.