Our Pick Of The Best Invoicing And Billing Software

Square Invoices offers a free or low-cost plan for online and in-person invoicing, making it one of the best billing software options for any small business. Service-based businesses tend to need an invoicing solution that lets them accept payments online, while product-based businesses may need to accept payment in person and require inventory management. Square’s products cover both types of businesses.

Whether you choose the free or paid plan, processing rates are the same: 2.2% per online transaction, 1.9% per in-person payment with Square Reader or Square Stand or 1.6% per in-person payment with Square Terminal or Square Register. If you ever need to take a payment with Afterpay, the transaction fee is 6% plus $0.30 AUD.

Both plans for Square Invoices allow you an unlimited number of invoices, and you can schedule recurring invoices for regular clients. Paid plan users can add custom fields to invoices and they can set up milestone-based invoices for longer projects. Square’s other products integrate seamlessly, so you can use inventory management with invoices if you run a product-based business or use Square’s point-of-sale (POS) options to manage sales for an online, mobile or brick-and-mortar store.

Square Invoices is made for small businesses and it’s versatile and powerful enough to work well for growing businesses. Also, because it gives you the ability to accept payments from anywhere and integrates with other Square apps, it’s a viable option for all types of businesses—not just service-based companies (which are typically the types that use invoicing software).

FreshBooks is one of the best billing software options thanks to its ease of use and scalability. The interface is clean and easy to navigate, plus FreshBooks tends to use terminology that’s easy to understand, rather than verbiage known to accountants. If you’re unsure of what a feature does, you can easily find a definition or explanation in its help centre.

If you only need invoicing software to bill your clients, then a low-cost FreshBooks plan could be all you need, especially if you only have a handful of clients. As your business grows, you can easily upgrade to a higher plan to allow for more clients and get more helpful features, such as unlimited proposals, bank reconciliation and accountant access. Plans range from $11.50 AUD to $25 AUD, and there’s a custom pricing plan that comes with lower transaction fees and removes the FreshBooks branding from emails.

To accept payments by phone or to set up subscription-based invoicing, you’ll have to choose at least the Liteplan ($11.50 AUD per month) and the Advanced Payments add-on ($28 AUD per month), making this an expensive choice if you need more versatility in how you accept payments. You have the option to use FreshBooks Payments (by Stripe), which charges you 2.9% plus $0.30 AUD per online transaction. There are other payment gateways you can use and those each have their own transaction fees, including PayPal.

Zoho Invoice is free billing software that includes many tools you may need to help you run a service-based business. You can track projects and billable hours in the software, send estimates and create custom invoices from approved estimates or projects. There’s a built-in client portal to make it easy to communicate with your customers and get approval for billing.

To collect payments through Zoho Invoice, you’ll need to choose one or more payment gateways. This is the only cost associated with Zoho Invoice—you have to pay transaction fees any time you get paid through an invoice. Depending on which payment processors you use, you could get paid online, through bank transfers or in person (if you use Square to accept swiped credit card payments).

Xero is first and foremost an accounting software, but its lower-priced plans give you enough of what a smaller business would need for an invoicing solution. The $32 AUD per-month plan limits you to 20 invoices per month, but there’s no limit to the number of clients you have. Quotes also count against your 20 invoices per month count. To get project and expense tracking, you’ll have to upgrade to the highest-priced plan ($115 AUD per month).

When you add in the accounting features, such as bank reconciliation on all plans, inventory tracking on all plans and the number of integrations you can connect to Xero, it makes it a viable option for growing businesses that need more features for business management. It doesn’t matter whether you run an online service-based business or you sell physical products.

Who should use it:
Xero is a pricey billing solution but it could be worth it if you expect to need accounting features for a quickly growing business.

One of the best reasons to use QuickBooks Online is that you pay a monthly fee to get access to tons of accounting and invoicing features, plus updates and customer support. With QuickBooks Online, you can track all your financial information in one place, from income and expenses to time and taxes.

QuickBooks Online plans range from $25 AUD to $55 AUD ($6.25 AUD to $13.75 AUD per month for the first three months). If you choose to accept payments online from clients, you can take credit cards or bank transfers. Transaction fees range from 2.4% to 3.4%, plus 25 cents per transaction and you’ll pay 1% on bank transfers to a max of $10 per transaction.

If you plan to use the time-tracking feature in QuickBooks Online, you’ll have to choose at least the Plus plan that costs $55 AUD per month. If you sell products and you need to track inventory, the Plus plan will be necessary at $13.75 AUD per month for the first three months, then $55 AUD afterwards. Another caveat is that there is no built-in client portal—you have to find an app that integrates with QuickBooks Online to give clients access to projects and invoices (or just email invoices).

QuickBooks Online offers features not found in most invoicing software, such as inventory management, in-person payment and tax features, so this is a good option for small brick-and-mortar businesses that accept payments online and in person.