There are few products out there that do a job very well. One of them is Basecamp. Another one is FreshBooks.

For anyone who has ever tried to invoice and receive payments from clients can testify, AR/AP can be a real pain in the neck. On top of that, figuring out a way to track invoices and allow online payments with a desktop based software is difficult. Quickbooks has an online version of their software and invoice emailing feature with the regular version, but both of these are half baked ideas that were probably outsourced to the lowest bidder. Quickbooks online version is probably the worst software product I’ve ever used in my life. ET the video game by Atari comes to mind. Besides being clunky, slow, and hard to use, the site looks like it was designed in 1995 and then left to it’s own devices.

Freshbooks has the simplicity of Basecamp and the benefit of a healthy breakfast and a good night sleep. Integrating with an online payment system is a real breeze. I highly recommend the product for smaller companies that need a clean solution for managing invoicing and hourly based contracting.

Though we still have to use Quickbooks for the rest of our bookkeeping and accounting, FreshBooks has become an integral part of our operation.

Tags: Accounting, AP, AR, Basecamp, ET Atari Game, Freshbooks, Quickbooks