However, like most startups and freelance consultants, it’s hard to want to make a commitment to shell out $20 a month for a service that I haven’t really settled into completely because I still could’t figure out how to do some of the most obvious things like extend a credit to a client, or take a simple down payment (retainer/deposit) without doing some silly hack-ass backwards run around!  You would think after enough people had asked for such a simple request, that Freshbooks would have responded to the needs of their users and got their programming team to add this seemingly simple and basic functionality.  If you do a search for “deposits” on their support forum you will see that it has been a long standing issue for many of their users for quite some time now.

So here I kept trying to make the best of the free account which restricts you to 3 clients, adding a new client when an old one was no longer needed, but in doing so I’d lose the client’s payment history in the online app, backing it up in my local install of Billings and trying to keep the 2 in sync which was tedious… so while I hated making that sacrifice, I still wasn’t comfortable or ready to invest my hard earned money to upgrade to an account that would allow for more clients, or spend time building client records into a solution that didn’t give me everything I needed for my business, or a team that couldn’t even address one of the most basic needs of their customer base.

Recently, since I made the move back to fulltime freelance work for my own brand consulting company after leaving a full time brand management/marketing director position, I was browsing around in the Chrome Web Store and I stumbled upon a little treasure of an app…

I signed up to take RONIN for a little test spin, and now I can safely say that all my invoicing problems are simply solved, so I just wanted to take a minute to let you tech savy business professionals that are just now starting, or have your own small businesses know about how easy and amazing this app is an how useful it has been for me over the last 2 weeks in getting my freelance consulting company back into invoicing overdrive mode. This software just ROCKS!

Its so simple and easy to use, AND unlike Freshbooks you can take partial payments without adding a negative sign to your balances and sending multiple invoices. They even have a bomb referral program which is the main reason for me writing up this blog post, so don’t wast another minute…

Give it a go right now. Its free! >> USE THIS LINK.

Like most of the others, they have a free account that is limited to 2 clients, but their base pay model is only $15/month which is still $5 cheaper than Freshbook’s $20/month, and now that I have been able to take some deposits without hassle, I have no issues paying.  ;)

Now if you really want to get things going for your business, how about being able to accept credit cards on your smartphone or from your iPad!?

SquareUp is now sending out free credit card readers that plug directly into your phone’s or your iPad’s audio jack that will allow you to take credit card payments anywhere you go. The cost of service is a 2.75% processing fee on all transactions. The combination of these two apps together, along with the proper branding direction from a certain guru, and your are now an unstoppable beast.

GO GET THAT MONEY!

Pinterest Etiquette

>BEGIN RANT< If you are going to pin, please give your viewers some courtesy and at least come up with a word or two to describe your images.  Not to mention, the search engine functionality on the website is of great use to help people find the content they seek, and to help participants drive traffic to whatever it is that you wish to be sharing. Drive more traffic effectively by using complete precise and descriptive keywords. >END RANT<

Thanks for viewing.

Scott

I finally freed up some time from my clients to pull together some of the best select samples of recent work that I have completed.  Its a work in progress so please bare with me.  You will see up dates to the site coming in here and there when i get the time, but you get the idea just by looking around a bit.