A colleague of mine has spent more than a year going through a very messy and very expensive divorce settlement. It all recently came to an end with the end result being her walking away from the marriage with amongst other things, a very decent payout. But, before she got to see a cent of the money, it went to what was a a kind of escrow account from where it was to be released to her only after the costly legal fees were paid.
This should have been a very simple and straightforward process but, when the time came for the lawyer to present my colleague with an invoice for services rendered, they hit a sticking point. One funny thing that happened was that the lawyer went as far as asking my colleague to give it a guess as to how much time had been spent on the case. This was something that she could not do and the lawyer had to spend a bit of time trying to figure out how much time she had spent on the case. After a couple of weeks or so she eventually came back to my colleague with an invoice and who’s to know how accurate it was.
In the case above, the service provider is a lawyer (not an accountant) and when engrossed in work and concentrating on the matter at hand, keeping track of time spent may not have been top of mind or she didn’t have an effective way of keeping track. Whatever the case may be, after a successful win, a considerable amount of time had to be invested in trying to figure out what was owed. That time spent (maybe wasted) could have been put towards other revenue generating activities.
At the end of the day, you do need to get paid for services rendered and that is something you can’t forget about. What was clearly lacking in the case above was an effective way of keeping track of time spent on particular clients. This is where we bring in FreshBooks.
In a nutshell, FreshBooks is cloud accounting solution that is targeted towards small business owners who aren’t too fond of accounting. Its allows users to easily create custom invoices with as much or as little information as you or your clients want them to have. Its also makes getting paid easier with its available payment options that include credit cards and PayPal. To add to that, you can bill in any currency which is handy if you have clients scattered across the globe! It also makes expensing a breeze which for many would be a godsend as I am yet to come across someone who enjoys that task.
Invoicing and expensing is a snippet of how FreshBooks can help small business owners stay organised and simplify the process of getting paid. One feature that it has that would be perfect for our lawyer friend is Time Tracking. Its makes tracking billable hours a walk in the park and leaves you in a position where after completing work, you have an accurate record of hours spent on specific clients. All it takes is one click to pull those hours into an invoice that you can then send on to clients. That easy!
Having used FreshBooks myself, I can attest to it being a simple and intuitive (in their words) to use. If you are looking for an easy way of tracking your billable hours, expensing, invoicing and getting paid, sign up for a Free 30 day trial (No credit card required. Cancel anytime) and see if it will work for you.
Please do stop by again and let me know what you think about FreshBooks.
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