After sorting out a task managing application (see my post on Teux Deux) I went on a mission to find a similarly impressive invoicing app. I was previously using Google Docs to create invoices; exporting them as a PDF and then emailing the invoice as an attachment to my clients. This was OK as I had my invoices backed up / saved to the cloud – which meant they were safe and accessible from any computer or mobile device, the downside was that it took time to write out the invoice, export it and then send the email.

After reading lots of blog posts and articles on various invoicing apps (such as this one from Freelance Switch) and people on Twitter mentioning the applications they use – I went on a search.

After seeing a tweet praising Invoice Machine I decided to give it a go. It’s a gorgeously designed application and has everything I needed, it also didn’t come with all the bells and whistles that many applications came with – which I find can end up weighing them down. I signed up for a free account and set about trying the app. The free account gives you 3 invoices a month – which wasn’t enough, so after playing around for a while I decided to take the plunge and upgrade. This is where my issue with Invoice Machine began, their payment system would not accept my credit card payments, I contacted customer services to see if my issue could be solved – but after a couple of emails to and from Invoice Machine, all went quiet and I didn’t get a solution – so I had to look elsewhere.

The next app I tried was CurdBee, I had previously had a look at the app before choosing Invoice Machine – the feature list and price made it very appealing, but it wasn’t quite as slick in terms of design as Invoice Machine. I chose design over function and it didn’t work out!

Again CurdBee had everything I needed, without it being clogged down with functionality that I didn’t need. I really do believe the best apps do one job brilliantly, and it’s only when they try and do too much they fail. CurdBee has a free account that lets you use it until you feel the need to upgrade – actually the free account is pretty good as it allows for unlimited invoices to be created for an unlimited amount of clients. After trying CurdBee for a while – I again took the plunge, held my breath and decided to upgrade. Crossing all my fingers – payment was accepted and I suddenly had access to unbranded invoices, PDF downloads for my invoices and email reminders that could be sent out for late payments. These 3 features alone are worth the $5.00 per month, I also went a step further and added on recurring invoices for an extra $5.00 a month. This feature is ideal for invoicing my clients for their yearly hosting renewals, I can just set up the invoice and let CurdBee do the rest. You can also add the ability to send estimates for another $5.00 per month – but that’s an option I don’t need.

My work flow now for sending an invoice is logging on to my CurdBee account, clicking on new invoice, filling in the relevant details – which take a couple of minutes, then when it’s done – I click send. CurdBee then sends the email to my client for me, which includes a link for the client to view the invoice online – which is great as I can see when my client has viewed their invoice.

so this is a post for Blog Action Day, “what’s that?” i hear you cry. well it’s a bit of a shout for a good cause that is being made by lots of bloggers on the world wide web and the cause is the environment – yep, the hot topic at the moment.

so what do i think about the environment? i think it needs to be there for a lot longer than we are going to be here that’s for sure. i also think it is stupidly easy to stop or change the majority of the things that we are doing to harm the planet [tree hugger moment alert], but we are just the little people, it’s businesses that are doing the lions share of the polluting at the moment and they are the ones that need to shift direction. fortunately this ‘being green’ look is pretty fashionable at the moment and many companies want to look as green as possible and certainly greener than the competition – have you noticed the amount of companies that are starting to advertise the fact that they are carbon neutral!

but there is a flip side to this coin.

did anyone see the fascinating documentary about the other side of the argument for global warming? entitled ‘the great global warming swindle‘ it was shown on channel 4 here in the uk about 6 months ago, little has been heard about it since, but some of the theory’s and explanations for the rise in the earth’s temperature made a lot of sense and in some cases a lot more sense than al gore and his inconvienent truth – which is something that i have yet to see. Many of the scientists involved were highly respected in their fields, a lot of them working for some of the largest universities and institutions around.

I really don’t think that it’s completely black and white – it just can’t be that simple. You know?!

So, what do I do? Well, assuming that I go along with the argument that we are helping to ruin the earth I recycle a lot and I buy recycled products where possible, we have started to use recycled paper and card for many of our printing services at work, I don’t use the car for unnecessary trips, I walk to work daily and I have used public transport for the majority of my life – I’ve only learnt to drive very recently. We use energy efficient light bulbs, we turn off stand by switches and power plugs when things aren’t in use and we try to stick another jumper on before whacking the heating up!

You see, the thing is, a lot of the things that you can do to help the environment will actually save you a fair amount of money – when added up. And that’s where I think a lot of advertising could be going wrong, the marketing and advertising people are trying to tug at our heart strings and the majority of people don’t care enough to make the changes, but if the angle was that it will save you ‘x’ amount of pounds, dollars, euros, yen or whatever then the little ice cube could start to snowball, quite literally!

btw, the photograph used at the top of this piece is “true energy” by Suat gursozlu.