Regardless of the size of your company, sending invoices & tracking expenses is an obvious part of doing business. Online-invoicing services enable you to send invoices and estimates, web-based time tracking (which is good if you want to monitor how much time you spend on each project or task within a project), and expenses that your business picks up along the way.

If your business has grown to a size that you have several clients and/or employees then the choice of keeping records of invoice & expense is no longer an option. Whether you are a current online-invoicing user or will soon be, then be certain to check out the services that offer tax/expense tracking.

FreshBooks seems to offer many additional accounting-type integrated services for the small business invoice application user. Many of these invoicing services rivaled traditional bookkeeping software like QuickBooks. While other invoicing services like Paymo offer services such as a downloadable client-side time clock to track time against an allocated project or task.

No one disputes that online invoicing has made doing business more organized for independent/freelance businesses, but at what price? Most online invoicing services offer a spectrum of services, but only the basic services (invoicing/expenses) seem to be the common core. Investigating the specialized services (e.g. expense tracking for taxes [that is compatible with your tax software]) is key when trying to differentiate between the herd of invoicing like-services out there.

Regardless of which service you end up using, I did notice that all of them appeared to have solid web hosting – no hanging or locking up. I have experienced many more errors/troubles with the free version of Quicken “Starter” that I downloaded. So performance shouldn’t be an issue with any of these services. Here is a list of the services I researched, and the ones mentioned throughout this post seem to be the ones that offered the most bang for the buck.

http://www.blinksale.com/home

http://www.freshbooks.com/

http://www.simplyinvoices.com/

http://www.paymo.biz/

http://pulseapp.com/

http://www.simplifythis.com/

http://www.getcashboard.com/

http://www.chronopipe.com/

http://lessaccounting.com/

http://invoicemachine.com/home

http://www.cannybill.com/index.html

http://invotrak.com/

The high point to online-invoicing is that most of these services will let you setup an account for free, and send 1 to 3 invoices a month without paying. This will get you ‘in the door’ to examine the control panel – hopefully to explore more of the differences – allowing you to find which services are important to you – maybe even finding something you didn’t even know you needed(?)… Once you have all your vendors setup/all the account addresses entered, it becomes easier to just stay with your online-invoice provider rather than going through the trouble to switch. So spending some time exploring your expense/invoicing needs, before you commit, may spare you from – the more time-consuming & painful job of changing invoicing providers.

This is a post from Web Dev News, a site brought to you by Xavisys Web Development.

Online Invoicing Pimps – The First One (Or Three) Is Free

If you are a freelance web designer, developer, graphic artist, or outsourcing service provider, there are a wide range of sites available on the web to connect with other people to build new business. We take a look at some of the best of these that should be on your short list, and review some of the pros and cons of each. Freelancers should make one site that they feel most comfortable with their base of operations, building accounts and feedback on the site for core business, while keeping aware of the new posts and new projects being offered on others to catch the ones that are most relevant to their area of specialization. The competition on freelance websites is strong among service providers, and the rates can be quite low when set in an international context. Developers may find it valuable to build a support team through these sites as well when the work load becomes too heavy. The sites vary as to whether they require a paid membership and what commission they take from service providers and buyers. Smart management and attention to details will help you reduce your costs, but as always – caveat emptor. Make sure you test providers by giving a small project to complete before diving into a large project. You’ll want to confirm the working relationship, communication, and production quality before making any large commitments or site changes.

Freelance Web Development – Site List:

1. odesk.com

Without a doubt the best freelance site on the web today. From the number of jobs listed and the quality of development projects, to the innovative billing, collaboration, and work monitoring options, oDesk is recommended for developers and service buyers for any project.

2. getafreelancer.com

GAF, or getafreelancer.com, has one of the most active user communities for freelance project development. The quality of projects isn’t always great here, but the volume of bidding and the prices are low. Recently opened a Euro branch of the site, so may split business between the two, weakening overall brand and community.

3. elance.com

eLance is owned by eBay and as such attracts a fair number of high quality project listings, and a lot of freelancers are doing really well here. However, their subscription fees for connects have you basically paying for every bid you make on site, and extra fees for extra categories, etc. Worth it if you take the time to build a presence on site and manage it like your eBay store.

4. rentacoder.com

RentACoder doesn’t have the best design, but gets a lot of project traffic and has a lot of options. The user interface is somewhat counter-intuitive and intrusive, but the site boasts the largest number of completed software development projects of any of the freelance boards and some good projects do come through the vine here.

5. getacoder.com

GetACoder is a nice site, and some good projects seem to come through here on occasion, but it also has a site marketing campaign that makes it feel as if you are working on a ClickBank site. Overall, a mixed bag but worth watching for occasional gems.

5. scriptlance.com

Scriptlance is a good place for programming projects and finding web developers, a middle of the road site with about 200 new projects a day. Domain name and traffic are excellent, so expect this site to grow and improve over time. Still one of the main boards to watch for new jobs.

7. guru.com

Guru should be a much better site for freelance than it is currently, with a great domain and design. But doesn’t get much traffic, and costly for freelancers for a yearly account. Good to monitor and you may get a top quality contract from the site with a lot of activity, but not really much business here generally.

8. serebra.com

One of the newest of the main freelance sites, launched with a large PPC ad campaign to bring traffic, but Canada specific interest makes it kind of limited overall. Big budget, promotions, and a lot of hype – may turn out to be a good place to network for big contracts. Nice site design overall.

9. sologig.com

Sologig is another underperforming freelance site, worth watching and building a presence on for the reference or occasional contract, but not to be expected to provide steady work. Maybe a good place for consultants to meet up with corporations seeking specialists, should become better over time.

10. Sourceforge Marketplace

Sourceforge being the main development repository for so many Open Source projects really should be a natural place to find programmers. The Marketplace isn’t as developed or active as it could be, but a good place to network your services and find new clients.

Second Level Freelance Sites:

Maybe worth a look – some good jobs & resources

http://www.gofreelance.com/
http://www.freelance.com/
http://www.drupaljob.com/forum
http://www.eoola.com/
http://freelanceswitch.com/

Third Level Freelance Sites:

Industry related but not much going on here

http://www.freelanceindia.com/
http://www.freelancedesigners.com/
http://www.ifreelance.com/
http://www.allfreelance.com/
http://www.freelancewriting.com/
http://www.freelancerstore.com/
http://www.freelancefree.com/
http://www.freelancers.net/
http://www.freelanceuk.com/
http://www.outsourcetoday.net/
http://www.profreelancejob.com/

This is a post from Web Dev News, a site brought to you by Xavisys Web Development.

Freelance Web Design – Top Sites