App for quotes/invoices

Hi, just wondering what apps people are using.

The one I've been using now wants to charge and i'd prefer to keep to a free app as every penny I spend has to be accounted for and ultimately passed on to the customer.

I'd prefer to stick to a free app to keep my costs down and prices competitive.

Cheers.

We type our own quotes up. We have a one off template or a more complicated contract.

We are VAT registered and found accounts time consuming even in our first year of trading while turnover was picking up. It saved so much time to buy quickbooks. It does all our VAT returns as we enter all our purchases and invoices on it. It saves so much time and effort. Easy to see outstanding invoices and how long they are outstanding. Its not much to pay for running a business.

Does quickbooks not have an estimate/quote facility?

I've come to realise that as business has grown I cant continue to rely on free/cheap but still conscious of cash flow etc.

Its an accounting software package. Get a free trial here:

https://www.quickbooks.co.uk/accounting-software/

Have a look. We have never had a look at doing our quotes on there. We prefer to keep them with any relevant scanned docs in one place.

We need our quotes to be quite specific, add lots of caveats etc. Its easier for us to use a standard document we have in word then amend as per each quote then file it on the computer external hard drive. We can then access it from both offices and its stored safely as another backup.

QuickBooks has saved us a lot of time.

Hubby recently looked at the on line version but its not as good as the one we buy on a disk if you want to run reports. My brother couldn't get on with the on line version either.

Edit - we now send all our invoices directly to someone via email so they can't say they haven't been received. It has saved us loads of time gong to the Post Office to buy stamps, saved us lots of money in envelopes and letter heads etc. Our logo goes on the emailed version. I know you may need to post some if you are dealing to consumer rather than business to business.

I tried QuickBooks. I liked it and it was very easy to use. However, what i didn't like was that the Sole Trader version wouldn't allow you to put the company logo on invoices etc. To me, it was very important to keep the consistency of using the logo on all paperwork. I did go back to them to see if there was anyway to do this but apparently not. This was for the online version.

Otherwise I would recommend

I tried QuickBooks. I liked it and it was very easy to use. However, what i didn't like was that the Sole Trader version wouldn't allow you to put the company logo on invoices etc. To me, it was very important to keep the consistency of using the logo on all paperwork. I did go back to them to see if there was anyway to do this but apparently not. This was for the online version.

 

Otherwise I would recommend

I did notice their sole trader version isn't really sole trader. It's meant for someone working as a sub contractor type role if you look on their website. You could always print invoices on to headed paper. We did that in the early days anyway even though we aren't sole traders. Our invoices go to others SMEs and large corporates.

It depends how much detail you want in a quote. One sage instant accounts you can do a quote which you can then change to an invoice if required. Might save you a few quid on accountants fees too if your accountant uses sage.

We use Sage One, its the newer cloud based Sage, its about £10 per month but it has saved us a fortune in book keeping fees as we couldn't work the Sage accounting packages and had to pay a book keeper before we paid the accountant. We don't actually use the invoices out part but I assume it is all working OK.