Plenty of options! Yet, not all of them seem to fit the needs of a small business. With the competition as tough as it is, you need to do everything in your power to make sure that yours stands out from the rest.
Small businesses might pay the price for affordability with limited features or usability issues, e.g., an invoice template which is a bit difficult to use. That’s why we have decided to hunt down the best free invoicing software for small business.
ZipBooks
Best Free Accounting Software for Invoice and Time Tracking.
ZipBooks is a free accounting software that gives you access to simple and powerful tools and also equips you with the intelligence to take your business to the next level.
ZipBooks allows you to create and send invoices and estimates in a matter of seconds. You can also accept and process credit card transactions with ease.
You can automate everything with recurring auto bills and seamlessly integrate your billing into your books.
It is a cloud-based payment and accounting software that is designed for accountants and small businesses. Users can create customized invoices with messages, themes, and logos.
This free bookkeeping software also supports accounts receivable and bank reconciliation. The system automatically imports transactions and generates reports of company expenses in real-time with the help of bank integration.
The platform helps you increase your potential for new and sustained revenue, guides you towards optimal performance in all business areas and cuts down on late payment with features like the ZipBooks Score, Invoice Quality Score, and smart recommendations.
The Starter plan on ZipBooks is completely free. Payroll integration, reputation management, and bookkeeping are add-ons that are included in this plan.
Pricing
ZipBooks has a free starter plan but offers two monthly payment plans namely, the Smarter Plan for $15 monthly and the Sophisticated Plan for $35 monthly. Custom pricing can also be requested on ZipBooks for Accountants who may prefer this option.
Pros
- Easy to use
- Free version available
- Good customer service
- More affordable pricing options than most of its competitor
- Good time and project tracking feature
Cons
- It is US-centric
- Restricted to mobile devices such as iPhone and iPad.
FreshBooks.
FreshBooks is of the most popular accounting tools in the market. It can streamline the management of all your accounting activities like invoicing, time tracking, making payments, and more. The best part is that it is fast, secure, and easy to use.
Key Features:
- Invoicing – You can personalize your emails and create your own invoice with excellent customization, including your logo and signature
- Automatic Expense Tracker – Simply link your bank account with the software and get automated updates about your spending at predetermined frequencies
- Track Your Time – Track the exact time spent on activities like engaging clients, finishing a project, and more
- Accounting – Provides easy to use, double-entry accounting tools
- Project Management – Provides holistic project management features and facilitates collaboration
Pros:
- It’s a mobile-friendly software that lets you stay connected with customers through the mobile app
- User-friendly and intuitive user interface
- Multi-language and multi-currency compatibility
- Cloud-based software, so it is inexpensive and easy to use
- Excellent customer support via phone, email, live chats, and ticket
- Allows excellent customization
- Accepts credit cards, business credit cards, and performs ACH bank transfers online
- Regularly generates project budgets to keep your team up to date
- Generates robust and actionable insights
- 30-day free trial period
- Every transaction is SSL certification encrypted to provide enhanced data security and maintain the integrity
- Provides unlimited expense tracking, time tracking, expense entries, and customized invoices
- Clean, easy-to-navigate dashboards for increased efficiency
Cons:
- On-premise deployment not possible
- Doesn’t have a free plan
- The metrics, goal-setting, and reporting features need improvement
Pricing:
Freshbooks offers four plans.
QuickBooks.
Intuit QuickBooks Online is one of the newest accounting software for small businesses and offers both cloud-based and on-premise versions. It provides a holistic solution for all accounting activities like accepting business payments, management, and payment of bills and payroll functions.
Key Features:
- Invoicing – create custom, professional invoices, sales receipts, and estimates that you can send in minutes
- Accounting reports – instantly see how your business is performing with customizable reports and dashboards
- Cash flow management – Enter bills from vendors and pay them only when due. You can schedule recurring payments as well to save time
- Expense tracking – record every expense for the month when you have to pay your taxes. You can also photograph and save receipts with the QuickBooks Online mobile app
- Inventory management – This is a module where you can view quantity on hand when you buy or sell inventory due to real-time updates. You can also access real-time inventory valuation, which is automatically adjusted throughout the day and lets you stay on top of purchase orders by keeping track of what you’ve ordered from each vendor.
Pros:
- Offers a 30-day free trial period
- Offers both on-premise and cloud-based deployment
- Extensive customer support available via phone, email, tickets, and live chat
- Takes automatic backups every day so that you’re always up to date
- Provides bank-level data security (128-bit SSL encryption) for security and integrity
- 24/7 access to accountants from any device
- Allows efficient, real-time collaboration between different team members and teams by providing unlimited access
- Bookkeeping software works with Windows, Mac, Android, and other operating systems
inFlow Inventory: Best budget buy
Must-have features at a low cost
inFlow helps you maintain accurate stock levels and keep your business running smoothly—without making you pay the exorbitant rates charged by other inventory control software providers.Get Started
For businesses on a budget, inFlow Inventory is a great inventory management system. inFlow offers, in our opinion, the best free inventory management service on the market (inFlow On Premise). Or you can enjoy more features with inFlow’s paid plans—some of the cheapest available, starting at a low $79.00 per month.
Also, inFlow is remarkably easy to use, with many of its inventory tracking features automated. It’s even got a great mobile app that facilitates barcode scanning and keeps your sales agents and inventory manager on the same page for stock inventory levels.
One thing to keep in mind, though? inFlow Inventory is cheap because it’s more scaled back than other platforms on our list. While it makes managing inventory a breeze, inFlow caps the number of orders you can process monthly before you’re charged extra. For example, the most expensive plan includes 10,000 sales orders per month.
Should you need to handle more orders, you’ll be charged between $19 to $29 for each batch of 50 orders above the limit. If that’s a problem, you may want to check out another of our top budget choices, Zoho Inventory.
Be sure to read our inFlow Inventory review to get more details on the features and drawbacks of this low-cost inventory platform.
Upserve: Best for restaurants
A unique platform for unique inventory needs
Restaurants need more than simple order management because restaurants use their inventory differently than other types of businesses. Fortunately, Upserve is an inventory management solution designed specifically to help restaurants.Get Started
Upserve provides a dynamic inventory solution for the unique needs of restaurants. Specifically, Upserve offers a greater focus on expiration date tracking and specialty supply chain needs (like refrigerated shipping) than other inventory control software options.
What’s more, Upserve provides features just for restaurants. For instance, you can use Upserve inventory software to create recipes for the dishes you sell, customizing each recipe with the precise ingredients and amounts needed. Then, when you sell that dish, Upserve can automatically deduct those quantities from your inventory levels for the ingredients used. You can even use this feature to determine pricing for your menu items and identify food waste.
We also like that Upserve comes with a built-in point-of-sale (POS) system—though admittedly, we don’t love that you’re restricted to using (and paying for) Upserve’s unique proprietary POS hardware. Still, if you’re running a restaurant, Upserve is probably the best inventory management software you could hope for.
Cin7: Best ERP solution
Enterprise solutions at midsize costs
Cin7 offers an inventory management system that can do more than just inventory management. In fact, it’s a one-stop shop for all your business needs, including everything from inventory optimization to point-of-sale and manufacturing—pretty much everything except for accounting software.Get Started
Most enterprise resource planning (or ERP) platforms feature modules for every aspect of your business (like accounting, point of sale, inventory, and shipping)—and they charge you for each module you add to your plan. Those costs add up, making ERP systems outlandishly expensive for all but the largest companies.
Cin7 breaks the mold by offering built-in modules that come standard with your plan. In addition to a fully integrated POS system, Cin7 comes fully loaded with B2B ecommerce features, manufacturing features, and even a payment portal. And that’s all in addition to the barcode scanning, inventory tracking, and order fulfillment features you’d expect from your inventory solution.
Cin7 also offers advanced demand forecasting and multichannel support, including cross-channel syncing every five minutes. This ensures you have a dynamic inventory system that stays up to date, helping you achieve proper inventory management with minimal effort.
The downside? While Cin7 isn’t as expensive as most ERP solutions, it is among the more expensive platforms on our list (starting at $299.00 per month). Be sure to read our full Cin7 review to see if the service is right for your business.
Help for PPE providers
Right now, Cin7 is offering free inventory management services to any manufacturer or distributor of personal protective equipment (PPE) as part of its response to COVID-19. You can apply here!
Zoho Inventory: Best for small businesses
Free and low-cost plans with lots of features
Very small businesses don’t need all the tools and features that an enterprise-level company needs. Zoho caters to small businesses with free and inexpensive plans designed for companies with a limited number of orders per month.Get Started
Zoho Inventory has a lot to offer. For starters, Zoho offers a pretty comprehensive free plan that allows customers to accept backorders on out-of-stock items, arrange dropshipping, and handle multi-currency transactions. That gives small businesses a chance to keep their inventory organized without worrying about their limited budgets.
If you opt to upgrade your plan, though, you get enhanced features. You can manage multiple warehouses, enjoy serial number tracking and batch tracking, and sync multiple Shopify stores to your account.
Ultimately, though, we think Zoho works best for small businesses only. Even on the platform’s most advanced plan, businesses are limited to a total of 30,000 online and offline orders per month. Zoho also limits your invoices, warehouses, packing slips, and shipping labels—not great considering other software (like Cin7) costs roughly the same and doesn’t impose such restrictions.
But if you’re a small business that doesn’t need to fulfill thousands of orders per month, Zoho Inventory can be a very effective and inexpensive option that can also help tackle your accounting and project management needs.
Fishbowl Manufacturing: Best for manufacturing
Local software with in-depth production features
Fishbowl Manufacturing is an excellent inventory control software if you need a way to track inventory levels in your production facility, assign work orders, and supervise manufacturing on multiple projects.Get Started
Fishbowl Manufacturing is our top choice for manufacturing businesses due to its advanced production management features.
For starters, Fishbowl Manufacturing lets you create advanced bills of material (BOMs). The platform features multi-level BOMs, allowing you to track inventory costs on an item-by-item basis for every job you complete. And because Fishbowl’s inventory software was made to integrate with QuickBooks accounting software, you can easily sync your inventory and accounting systems to keep track of these costs.
Fishbowl Manufacturing also features multi-level work orders, which allows you to group work orders across multiple production stages to create an overarching production plan. Each phase can be assigned to an individual employee and include its own instructions and build calculations. This helps you better track your manufacturing jobs and helps your clients with their supply chain management.
Keep in mind, though, that Fishbowl is a local software, so it’s only available on desktops and laptops. To get barcode scanning and other on-the-go warehouse features (like physical inventory counts), you’ll need to pay extra for the Fishbowl Go add-on. See our Fishbowl review to get more information.
Fishbowl Warehouse: Best for warehouse management
Excellent value for warehousing
Fishbowl Warehouse makes it easy to check stock levels, pick and pack orders, and ship items to your customers. Plus, you don’t have to pay a monthly fee for your inventory management system.Get Started
In our opinion, Fishbowl Warehouse is the best inventory management software for warehouse management.
WIth Fishbowl Warehouse, you can track inventory levels for individual parts (not just complete products). This allows you to track manufacturing, storage, and labor costs for each individual part in your warehouse, which means a more detailed, in-depth cost of goods sold (COGS) calculation. You can even have help calculating your COGS since Fishbowl integrates seamlessly with QuickBooks accounting software.
Fishbowl Warehouse also includes built-in UPS shipping features, which allows you to print pick lists and shipping labels—all within your inventory system. Fishbowl also supports multiple warehouses, making it capable of handling more complex business models than many other inventory management solutions.
You can also get the Fishbowl Go add-on and get easy barcode scanning on your mobile device. And since Fishbowl is a local software, you pay one up-front fee and get lifetime access to your inventory software—no monthly fees. To find out more, read our complete Fishbowl review.
Conclusion
A wide variety of email invoicing software is now available at affordable price. These invoicing softwares are used by companies that standardize their work processes and demands transparency towards management. They enable automation of different business tasks which help you to operate your business with absolute accuracy. A well-designed invoice will what you want to convey to the customer. Therefore, it is important to pick up best invoice software for small businesses so that you can have an effective way of sending invoices within minutes after completing the transaction.