playing with my hairso what?

I’m a web designer and css developer and just started freelancing full time this year. I never had much of experience with invoices, taxes payment, subcontractors and time tracking for freelance projects before. After a couple months without realizing that I needed a new software to manage my business, I end up having invoices and proposals made on illustrator, projects time tracked by another mac software and my expenses were all lost into my email in-boxes were all my online receipts would be storage, without any control of how much spending I had on each project / by month.

As mentioned by Whitney Quesenbery & Kevin Brooks  “Storytelling for User Experience”, “stories start with listening and observing”. So, that was exactly what I started to do to myself while trying to figured out what tool was going to fit my needs as a web designer freelancer.

I did some quick tests with Outright, Freshbooks and Quickbooks. But none of those softwares or online tools gave me the full solution I found with Billings.

The reasons I was so impressed by Billings:

1. First and really important – it’s a mac software
2. I could download and test the full software to see if I would like it. It didn’t take me much of time to realize that it was perfect for all my business needs.
3. I am a Designer, so a big plus was the ability to customize the look and feel of my invoices and estimates. It’s possible to upload your own logo, change colors and customize existing templates (which they have a lot of options!).
4. Clients and Projects are linked to your  Contacts – Address Book, so it’s easier to send invoices by email at the end of each month or week.
5. You can also keep track of expenses, which really helps with taxes control at each quarter of the year.
6. The time track tool can be set to fixed rate or based on 15min or less. This was really important to keep my relationship with existing customers which were used to receive invoices based on 15min rate.
7. Easy Reports based on projects, clients, categories, and dates.
8. Iphone / Ipod application. Another great feature as well, since I do travel from time to time, and being on the road it’s hard to get you the computer working at some places to send an invoice or check overdue payments, so almost essential to have this application.
9. Finally, the software also backs up all your data every time  you quit the application. Just perfect. Sweet dreams.

Two great findings:

A wonderful book about Storytelling for User Experience, which guided me to listen and observe my own actions and figured out what software, features I was looking for. And second, a very User Friendly Application, that could fit my needs in all ways possible and make my business and everyday work so much easier.

It’s amazing how much of satisfaction a great User Experience means to customers and consequently to products itself. This satisfaction is the best marketing any company wish for, is the main key to grow a successful product. Think about your User Experiences and you are thinking about great products.

Keep up the great work Billings!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 3rd, 2010 at 9:24 am and is filed under User Experience. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.