6 Free and Low-Cost Invoicing Tools for Freelancers
Happy Wednesday!
I hope July is treating you well! ☀️
This week’s newsletter is all about invoicing tools. Whether you’re a part-time freelancer or your business is a full-time venture, it’s important to keep accurate financial records.
Invoicing your clients promptly after project completion, logging payments, and staying on top of unpaid invoices are essential tasks that directly affect your business cash flow.
With so many invoicing solutions to choose from, it can be difficult to know where to start. In this guide, I’ll share a few free and low-cost tools that can help you stay on top of client invoicing.
1. Wave
Wave Accounting is an invoicing tool that I’ve used before. I also know several freelance friends who use it. With Wave’s free starter plan, you can create unlimited invoices, estimates, bills, and bookkeeping records. You can also accept online payments via credit card or bank payment. Payment processing fees apply.
Wave’s Pro plan has more features. With the Pro plan, you can add attachments to invoices and estimates, connect third-party apps, and automatically categorize transactions by linking your bank account. You can also remove Wave branding from your invoices. Wave Pro costs $19 a month, or $190 annually.
2. Found
Found is a business banking and bookkeeping solution for self-employed professionals. With a free Found plan, you’ll get a free business checking account with no monthly maintenance fees (FDIC-insured through its partner bank) and physical and virtual debit cards. You can cash and deposit checks, send and receive unlimited ACH bank transfers, and accept online payments.
You’ll get up to 10 sub-accounts (pockets), which are digital envelopes that you can use to organize your money. The included bookkeeping and invoicing features are plentiful. Found supports automatic expense categorization, provides profit-and-loss, income, and expense reports, and displays real-time quarterly tax estimates. You can create unlimited invoices, schedule invoices for later, and set up recurring invoices.
When creating an invoice, you choose which payment methods to make available to your clients. There are no fees for processing bank transfers or domestic wire transfer payments. Found partners with Stripe, allowing you to accept credit card, direct debit, or Cash App Pay payments. Stripe charges payment processing fees.
3. Zoho Invoice
Zoho Invoice is a free invoicing platform for freelancers, small business owners, and entrepreneurs. You can create invoices, send quotes, set up recurring billing, accept multiple payment methods, and automate payment reminders. You can also manage projects, log time, and record and categorize business expenses.
Each account supports up to two users, three projects, and 500 invoices per year. You can also link up to two organizations within a single account, which is beneficial if you run multiple businesses.
Zoho Invoice integrates with payment gateways like PayPal, Square, and Stripe. Your preferred payment gateway may charge payment processing fees.
4. Merucry
Mercury is a fintech company that offers business banking services and payment and invoicing solutions. The free plan offers free business checking and savings accounts (FDIC-insured through partner banks), allows users to send and receive payments, create and send unlimited invoices, and accept invoicing payments via credit card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, wire transfer, and ACH transfer.
Stripe charges payment processing fees for credit card payments. Mercury Plus, which costs $35 per month or $29.90 per month with annual billing, includes additional features like recurring invoicing capabilities.
5. Moxie
Moxie is a business management solution for freelancers. The platform includes project management, client management, accounting, time tracking, and invoicing tools. Moxie makes it easy to create a customized invoice template featuring your business branding. The platform supports automatic recurring invoices, automated payment reminders, multi-currency support, and late fee options.
For hourly billing, Moxie’s time tracker syncs directly with the invoice builder. To accept online payments, Moxie, connect with Stripe and PayPal Business. Both payment processors charge payment processing fees. Moxie’s Starter Plan costs $12 a month or $120 annually.
6. Invoice Ninja
Invoice Ninja is an invoicing and payment platform for freelancers and small business owners. With the free plan, you can invoice up to 5 clients, create unlimited invoices from 4 professional templates, and accept online payments through connected payment gateways. This plan supports recurring and auto-billing.
Ninja Pro, which costs $14 per month or $140 per year with annual billing, offers additional features. You’ll get 11 fully customizable templates, access to a branded client portal, and can enable automated payment reminders.
My approach to invoicing is different
I haven't been using a dedicated invoicing app lately, mostly because many of my clients have their own invoicing systems. Some clients have portals that I access directly. Others have a preferred invoicing template that I'm asked to use. And some clients handle everything themselves — they track my assignments in a designated portal and pay me regularly. No complaints here!
However, if a client doesn't have their own system or a preferred template, I use Canva. I created an invoicing template a couple of years ago, and since I'm always working from that rather than starting from scratch, invoicing takes me only a few moments.
And regardless of whether I use a client's invoicing platform or create my own invoices, I track all client invoice totals and payments in Google Sheets.
I know some freelancers have difficulty remembering to manually mark payments. But luckily, I was blessed with the type of anxiety that would never allow me to forget something important like that. If you know me well, that's probably not surprising. 🤣
If you've been thinking about switching up your invoicing process, or you're a new freelancer still figuring out which tools and systems work best, these are a few options worth exploring.
Review the features and limitations across platforms and plans before committing so that you end up with a solution that meets your needs.
That’s all for today. Thank you for reading and for being a subscriber. Your continued support means a lot to me.
We're the same, you and I! I also go with whatever the client has set up for invoicing, and I track everything in a Google Sheet. Sometimes I do get behind with marking assignments as paid and then stare in horror at the blank cells and dig back through my account to find out when the payment landed!