8 Best Invoicing Software for Small Business in 2021

The best invoicing or billing software allows you to create customized invoices quickly and get paid faster by allowing customers to pay online. Before investing in specialized invoicing software, consider whether comprehensive small business accounting software, which includes an invoicing function, might be better. However, specialized invoicing software can often give your customers’ bills a more customized feel than general bookkeeping software.

Best Invoicing Software for Small Business

• FreshBooks: Best overall invoicing software
• QuickBooks Online: Best invoicing software for collecting sales tax from multiple states
• Invoicera: Best stand-alone invoicing software
• Invoice Ninja: Best free full-featured invoicing software
• ZipBooks: Best free easy-to-use software for simple invoices
• Square Payments: Best free invoicing software with inexpensive credit card processing
• QuickBooks Self-Employed: Best invoicing software for solopreneurs or freelancers
• TimeTracker: Best invoicing software for professional service firms

FreshBooks: Best Overall Invoicing Software

While FreshBooks now provides an entire bookkeeping system, it started as a way to produce great-looking, professional invoices. FreshBooks continues to stress invoicing while adding features like the ability to track hours and assign them to invoices. There’s no credit card required to start a 30-day free trial.

Our Expert Opinion

Not only does FreshBooks have great-looking invoices, but it also has all the features of a full bookkeeping system. FreshBooks accepts online payments, calculates late fees automatically, creates recurring invoices, and prints a list of outstanding invoices. Beyond those typical invoicing features, FreshBooks will connect with your bank to import transactions, reconcile bank and credit card accounts, and print basic financial statements like a balance sheet and profit and loss (P&L) statement.

QuickBooks Online: Best Invoicing Software for Collecting Sales Tax From Multiple States

One reason QuickBooks Online is our pick for best overall small business accounting software is its exceptional invoicing capability. Unlike any other bookkeeping software we’ve reviewed, it will calculate the sales tax rate automatically to apply to your invoice based on the customer address. It then tracks your sales tax collected by jurisdiction and helps you file most required returns. You can try QuickBooks Online free for 30 days with no credit card required.

Our Expert Opinion

If all you’re looking for is the ability to send invoices, then QuickBooks Online is probably more than you need. However, there are many advantages to producing invoicing from within a comprehensive bookkeeping system. For example, QuickBooks Online allows you to designate expenses as billable as you pay them so that you are reminded to add them to invoices later. This ties expenses billed to expenses actually paid, which helps prevent missed billing opportunities. Similarly, by tracking employee time in QuickBooks Online, the hours information used to produce payroll is the same hours information used to bill clients.

QuickBooks Online can produce advanced invoices for nearly any industry. For instance, construction companies can convert estimates to invoices automatically, including creating in-progress invoices by entering the percentage of the projected complete. Companies that bill multiple customers the same amount can produce invoices in batches, and companies billing customers for subscriptions can create recurring invoices.

Invoicera: Best Stand-alone Invoicing Software

Invoicera combines accounts receivable (A/R) management (sending invoices) and accounts payable (A/P) management (receiving invoices) in a single dashboard. While not a complete bookkeeping system, Invoicera makes cash flow management simple by focusing on two of the most important aspects of your business: collecting cash from your customers and paying your vendors. You can try Invoicera for 15 days without providing a credit card.

Our Expert Opinion

Invoicera is a powerful stand-alone invoicing software. Invoicera allows you to set up staff and track time and expenses by project, and then add them to invoices. You can upload your logo and choose the colors to apply to their seven invoice templates, or if you’re proficient with XHTML, you can create a completely unique template for your business.

Invoicera doesn’t include any accounting functions outside of A/R and A/P management, nor does it integrate with any accounting software. This means, for example, the actual hours used to generate your payroll will not necessarily agree with the hours you track in Invoicera, which could result in lost billing opportunities. Likewise, expenses recorded in Invoicera will not necessarily balance to the expenses recorded on your financial statements. Generally, I recommend that your invoicing be integrated with your accounting system, but if you’re looking for a stand-alone system, Invoicera is a good choice.

Invoice Ninja: Best Free Full-featured Invoicing Software

Invoice Ninja’s free plan is a great place to start for your invoicing needs. As your business grows, you might upgrade to a paid plan, which is still very affordable. The Forever Free plan has most features found in expensive plans like customizable invoices, recurring invoices, product and item library, and customer portal. You can get started in the free plan with just a few clicks.

Our Expert Opinion

Invoice Ninja’s Forever Free plan is large enough to handle many small businesses with unlimited invoices and quotes for up to 100 customers. You can generate quotes and proposals and convert them to invoices with a few clicks. Recurring invoices can be emailed automatically at whatever interval you choose. Invoice Ninja utilizes a product and item list, similar to expensive software. Once set up, items from this list can be added to invoices quickly to save time.

A major weakness of the Forever Free plan is the lack of reports, which requires the Pro plan. However, you can view the dashboard in Forever Free, which summarizes the current period activity and outstanding balances.

ZipBooks: Best Free Software for Creating Simple Invoices

Creating invoices with ZipBooks couldn’t be easier. ZipBooks provides a template that you can customize with your logo and then input your sales information. While not as customizable as some other software, the invoices look nice and provide a good first impression to your customers. The ZipBooks free subscription is all you need to create, send, and track invoices to an unlimited number of customers.

Our Expert Opinion

ZipBooks doesn’t require any sophisticated setup to create and send invoices. You can type your services and products directly in the invoice template, upload a logo, and send your invoice. The downside is that by not setting up predefined products and services, you’ll need to type the description every time you create an invoice. If you send many invoices, you’ll want to upgrade to the Smarter plan to save item descriptions.

Square Payments: Best Free Invoicing Software From a Merchant Services Account

Square is a merchant services provider with no monthly fee, making it a great choice if your business processes less than $10,000 per month in credit card transactions. Included with your free Square account is free invoicing software.

Our Expert Opinion

You can keep life simple by using the invoicing feature of your credit card processor, and Square offers one of the best invoicing features along with affordable rates for low-volume businesses. While not as feature-packed as accounting or stand-alone invoicing options, Square Payments does let you create, send, and track invoices online or through their mobile apps. You can also create automatic payment reminders and recurring billing.

The downside of Square is that it only accepts credit cards, not ACH transfers or digital checks. If you like Square’s processing fees, another option would be to choose an invoicing option that integrates with Square like QuickBooks Online. You could then use Square for credit card payments and another payment gateway for ACH transfers and digital checks.

QuickBooks Self-Employed: Best Invoicing Software for Solopreneurs or Freelancers

QuickBooks Self-Employed is simple accounting software for self-employed individuals. It makes it easy to track income and expenses, help you calculate your quarterly estimated tax payments, and will even transfer your income and expense information to TurboTax to prepare your return. You can start a 30-day free trial without providing credit card information.

Our Expert Opinion

I don’t recommend QuickBooks Self-Employed based purely on invoicing features because they are pretty limited. However, the program is very user-friendly and provides an easy way for self-employed individuals to track their expenses and file their tax returns. Since self-employed individuals generally have very basic invoicing needs, the invoices within QuickBooks Self-Employed will suffice and avoid the need for learning additional software.

If your self-employed business frequently sends invoices, then while QuickBooks Self-Employed might still be a great software to track your income and expenses, I’d recommend stand-alone invoicing software for your invoicing needs.

TimeTracker: Best Invoicing Software for Professional Service Firms

TimeTracker offers lawyers, accountants, engineers, and other professional service firms an invoicing option integrated with powerful features to track the time of your professionals. It makes sense to combine these functions for professional service firms since billable hours are the primary item on your invoices. TimeTracker offers a 14-day free trial without requiring a credit card.

Our Expert Opinion

TimeTracker is a unique invoicing option because it is built around a time-tracking system, which makes it perfect for businesses where time tracking and invoicing go hand-in-hand. What sets TimeTracker apart from other invoicing options is that it tracks billable hours that are written off. A billable realization report shows the billable hours invoiced to clients vs written off, which is a crucial report to gauge the productivity of your professionals and the profitability of your firm.

Here are a few crucial features to consider when you are selecting your invoicing software:

• Customize invoices: You should be able to make your invoices distinct with your company’s colors and logo.
• Email invoices: Invoices should be emailed without having to leave the program.
• Accept online payments: Always allow your customers to pay electronically as soon as they receive their invoice.
• Add expenses: If your business passes through the cost of expenses to customers, your invoice program should track expenses and allow you to add them to an invoice with just a few clicks.
• Automate recurring invoices: If your business bills customers a set amount monthly, choose a program that can generate these recurring invoices automatically.
• Track unpaid invoices: You need to be able to review a list of unpaid invoices, or A/R, to identify customers that may need to be contacted. Some software has an advanced feature that will send reminder emails automatically to customers with overdue invoices.

Bottom Line

If you’re unhappy with the invoicing function in your bookkeeping software, or you choose not to use bookkeeping software, there are plenty of good invoicing options available. The effectiveness of whichever software you choose will largely depend on how you use it. Be sure to email invoices whenever possible and always provide a way for your customers to pay electronically.