Harvest – Invoicing Done Right
There’s been a steady dose of silence to go around my little corner of the Internet-neighborhood and it’s mostly due to the fact that I haven’t set aside enough time to write.
As I mentioned a while back, I’m about as max’d as I can get business wise and had some success offloading a bit of the work on others.
I’m actually pretty far off from being out of the woods at this point which means that areas like writing and the dreaded business side of freelancing often get back-burner’d.
I was reminded yesterday though how it could potentially be worse. Dealing with collections for my work is a necessary evil. I realize that I have to send invoices to actually be paid for my services but the time and effort that used to go into it was dreadful.
My old system included tracking my time in one program, exporting to spreadsheet and then using a pretty outdated, local-based system to create invoices. It was arduous and time-consuming to say the least.
Add in the fact that I was manually sending invoices by email and having to track and follow up on unpaid invoices all by hand and it usually got relegated to the bottom of the to do list. Only when I saw the bank account get to an uncomfortably low mark did I then realize it was time to do it all over again.
Ch-ch-changes
As the calendar year rolled for 2011, I decided I was going to try and go a different route. I was willing to spend money on a new invoicing/tracking system. I hadn’t fully decided on a local application or a web-based one but I knew I was willing to spend money on the right one.
After a bit of testing, and having to enter time/client/invoice info into multiple different avenues, I found the best solution for me and my work-flow, Harvest.
This by no means is a paid endorsement by Harvest, but I’ve now paid for three months worth of their service (plus the first month free) and I haven’t looked back. (more…)