Billings Touch: Handle Your Invoices on Your Phone
Marketcircle recently released Billings Touch for the iPhone to accompany their popular invoicing software Billings. When you first open up Billings Touch, you have two options. If you have Billings already set up on your computer, you can connect your iPhone to that account. By using that information, you can check up on your invoices easily from your phone and generally use your phone as a mobile extension of your laptop, when it comes to invoicing clients.
But you can also set up a brand new system on your iPhone, without a license for Billings on your computer. You can set your rates, choose your tax options and generally handle your freelancing finances in the palm of your hand. I wouldn’t recommend this approach if you have a variety of clients you need to invoice, or you bill per project rather than per hour. However, if you have only a few clients, it may prove a useful option.
Once you have Billings Touch set up, you have a variety of tools to work with. Most usefully, considering the mobile nature of your phone, you can track your time just by choosing to create a new timed slip. If, for instance, you’re meeting with a client to discuss a new freelance project, you can time the meeting and add that time to an invoice very easily.
You can also add new clients to Billings Touch, making invoicing an easy process, no matter where you happen to be sitting. You can type in a client’s information — perfect if they’re dictating information to you during a meeting — or important information from your iPhone contacts. It’s important to keep your contacts synchronized if you plan to rely on that trick, but it’s very easy to manage.
You can handle a variety of standard invoicing tasks, like adding expenses or mileage. While you’re doing it on your phone, the process is just as simple as if you were using Billings on your computer. You can also see expenses and time at a glance so that, even if you’re on the go, you have a good idea of what your business is doing.
All in all, the iPhone application is easy to use. The interface is easy to work with: while I wouldn’t want to have to site down and type out a whole stack of invoices in one go, Billings Touch is perfect if I need to time a project, update a client’s expenses or get an invoice out right away. And that’s just the iPhone version. The computer version is equally easy to use, and makes importing information from your Address Book and similar task just as easy as on your phone.
Billings is available for $39.99, while the full version of Billings Touch is an additional $14.99. The combination work well together, and are ideal for a freelancer’s invoicing needs: the tools can handle the standard requirements of a freelancer, without throwing in any extra requirements that may be necessary for a big business but just slow down the invoicing process for an individual freelancer.
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Thanks for this article, I have an Iphone and it was a good information.
I love my Billings app on my Mac, but haven’t found the need to download the iPhone app yet, I’ll probably do it anyways just to have some fun with it
The Mac app is great, bupaying additional $15 for the iPhone app is a little too much. It should be free for registered desktop app users.
Amen. I’ve paid for the last few updates/versions of Billings and I love the app, but paying an additional $15 for the iPhone app is just plain ridiculous. I’d pay $3 to $5 for the sync ability and to support them for their work on the iPhone app, but come on!!! An additional $15?!? Really?!?
I love my Billings as well but I also don’t have a need for the Iphone app. Mainly because I’m 99% of the time my computer is right there. I guess that’s another reason why I don’t even have an Iphone… Man that makes me sound lame! Anyways I kinda wished I had a good reason for this app and and Iphone. Thanks for the post and helping my reasoning to get an Iphone!
I think it’s important to note that the iPhone App is free. The $14.99 is an in-app purchase for synching with the desktop client and emailing invoices from the app.
I love Billings and Billings Touch was a long awaited for app. It’s very useful, since there are times when you are not attached to your computer and need to track time for various tasks or even just email an invoice to someone. It’s very very handy. I’m not too sure if it’s price correctly. I think more of a $9.99 in-app purchase would be more appropriate.
“Billing” is a wonderful app. All of the Image Stagers at the company uses it.
Great app to have. All the Image Stagers are using it on the company iphone.
Billings Touch is ideal for photojournalists on the go, adding mileage, other expenses, or even day rates that I have setup as blueprints. Perfect except for the bug that when I enter a day rate (fixed income), it takes me to the Timing Screen which it shouldn’t.
@Aaron Payne: ‘I don’t even have an Iphone… Man that makes me sound lame!’
Seriously? Because everybody seems to have an Iphone you should have one too? Seeing all those people being busy with their mobile phones every hour of the day, makes me even more glad that I don’t have one. Every now and then people ask me in disbelief how I could survive without a mobile phone and shake their heads. I truly am sorry for those who are made to believe you have to have one to survive in daily life. I take the peace of mind it gets me to not owning one anytime over the ‘convenience’ it supposedly would give you.
And, to be not totally off-topic: Billings is a great program, but I have no need for a Iphone-version.
The desktop app is great and the iPhone app is very good also. I think that charging existing customers $14.99 to link the too up though is a bit steep. They are both really good products, but do I have to think about that….
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I was waiting for this
Billings is a great program, highly recommend it!
to Wanderer – Well spoken! couldn’t agree more with you on that.
ben
Brilliant news!!! – I’ve been using Billings at home for over a year and love it, glad to hear I can now use it on my iphone.
I’ve been searching for a good invoicing/billing program and decided to try BillingsApp. I love it so far. Turning on the timer really forces me to focus and not be distracted. Plus I can keep more accurate track of my time.
One sweet feature is if you go idle, when you come back a message says you’ve been idle for X minutes – do you want to subtract that amount from the timer? Pretty sweet.
Billings Touch is a great app. Ditto Billings. I’d be prepared to pay for the desktop client but not nearly 40% again for the iPhone client.
After much research and trying various apps, I chose GetPaid for the iPhone. US$2.99 and i can email invoices from it or export the data to CSV to do desktop reporting in a spreadsheet.
Billings Touch could have been the opening for Billings to upsell but they missed the boat. So Billings lost two sales with me.
Be interesting to know how many other sales opps they have lost because Billings Touch is so expensive.
Is there an equivalent to Billings for the PC? I use a mac at work but own a PC at home. I do all my work at work but because I have no admin rights I can’t install new programs without getting approval.
We would love someone to do a curated list of iPhone apps for freelancers over at Appolicious:
http://www.appolicious.com/curated-apps/featured
Any takers?
Best,
Shara
I have been using Billings for over a year. I was really anticipating its iphone app launch. I was also using Daylite for quite a bit and invested a lot of time and and money in trying to learn that app. Bottom line is this, I have been all over the different blogs reviewing this software and people love it. But the supporters who have been using their software for a quite a while now are utterly disappointed in the fact that they are trying to charge $15 for a full app version for your phone.
My take on it is this, as a mobile designer and business owner, I am always running around. When I started to realize that I would need to have to work with my laptop as well as a desktop, I started to notice that I was at a dead halt with Billings. There is no syncing with more than once computer. Since all my time was being tracked on one computer, it would be way too difficult to try and match the time with two different machines. So, the next solution, although not ideal, was to use the iPhone app when with my laptop. Well, at $15 I just abandoned the app all together. This was based on shear principal. I felt like the company was not being fair by charging this price from users who had paid full price for their desktop software.
I have since moved on to Harvest, online billing with free plug-ins for your iPhone, multiple desktop syncing, integration with Basecamp (online project management), online invoicing and the ability to accept payments via paypal. It is a monthly fee, but to me it was worth it since feeling disappointed in Market Circle and their products.
Amen. I’m still hoping that Billings Touch either lowers their price or offers a special deal to owners of the desktop app. If they don’t I may look into other services/products for precisely the same reason Marwan mentions in his comment.
Billings really screwed up.
They’ve stood on the toes of their existing customers and priced themselves out of the market for new customers who’d find them through the iPhone app. I’d be surprised if Billings touch has brought in many new Billings desktop users.
Thought I’d share the Billings Touch Easter Egg hunt with everyone:
http://www.marketcircle.com/blog/?p=287
I bought Billings for the iPhone, but I don’t own a Mac. I only found out after purchasing that there is no PC equivalent.
Always the optimist, I just purchased the “Pro” addon to enable invoicing directly from the app. Only then to find out I have a choice of 3 invoice templates and cannot customise them! I can’t even add payment info, unless I add it as plain text within the Notes area every single time I invoice. Invoices without payment information are pretty bloody useless.
I love the UI, I love the simplicity of the app, but it DESPERATELY needs custom invoice templates for the iPhone, perhaps via an XHTML file we can import or something similar.