Top 5 Invoicing Software Options for Small Businesses

Invoicing software can help you receive the correct payment for project-based work or hours worked, while being efficient and timely.

CNBC Select has compiled a list of top invoicing software for small businesses, featuring standout options with features such as international sales, free trials, and more.

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Best free plan

What is Zoho Invoice, a service from ZohoBooks, and what does it offer for free?

Standout benefits: This platform also offers customizable invoicing templates.

Best for international sales

This may be suitable for you if you have clients and sales from various regions worldwide. Stripe Invoicing enables you to generate invoices in over 135 currencies and 25 languages, and you can also provide customized payment options based on your customers' locations.

Stripe offers a range of features to simplify the invoicing process, such as sending invoices, reviewing bank statements, matching customer payments to invoices, and marking invoices as paid.

Best free trial offer

What is FreshBooks offering for those who want to test the waters? According to its website, FreshBooks provides a 30-day free trial without requiring credit card details and allows for cancellation at any time. After the trial period, users can select a plan and receive a 60% discount for the first six months.

With FreshBooks, you can request an advance payment on your invoices, either as a percentage or a fixed amount. This allows you to receive partial payment for your services before the work is finished.

Best for unlimited invoices

What is the purpose of this? Many invoicing platforms restrict the number of invoices you can send or the number of clients you can send them to (or sometimes both). However, Square allows you to send an unlimited number of invoices, estimates, and contracts. Additionally, with its basic plan, Square enables you to add an unlimited number of customers to your invoicing.

Standout benefits: Customers can send invoices through the Square app.

Best for freelancers

Harvest is designed for freelancers and service-based businesses that bill based on hours worked. With Harvest, you can create invoices for individual projects and track your billable hours. Additionally, Harvest automatically calculates the total amount you're owed for each project based on the hours you track.

With the Harvest dashboard, you can create a budget based on the total number of billable project hours, allowing you to monitor your progress and quickly determine how much of your budget you've already utilized.

More on our picks for best invoicing software

Zoho Invoice

Zoho Invoice integrates with numerous apps to streamline your business management. Specifically, it connects to payment platforms such as Stripe, PayPal, and Square, as well as other applications including Dropbox, OneDrive, Evernote, Slack, Fundbox, Quickbooks, and Clockodo.

Cost

Free

Stripe Invoicing

Stripe is a renowned global payment processing platform that caters to businesses of all sizes. Additionally, Stripe enables businesses to automatically send payment reminders to their clients when an invoice is due and past due. Stripe's technology optimizes the timing of reminders to minimize instances of unpaid invoices.

Cost

Starts at 0.4% per paid invoice

FreshBooks

In addition to payment processing, FreshBooks provides various services to manage your business, such as time tracking, accounting, payroll, reporting, and more.

Cost

The first six months are discounted by 60% at a cost of $7.60 per month.

Square Invoices

Square is a well-known brand in the small business and payment processing industry, and it integrates with accounting software such as QuickBooks. Currently, Square Invoices does not provide the option to accept multi-currency payments.

Cost

Starts at $0/month + processing rates

Harvest

Harvest offers invoicing and payments, reporting and time tracking, along with project budget monitoring and expense tracking for each project, including travel costs, materials and supplies, and receipt uploads.

Cost

The cost of the Pro and Premium plans is $11/seat per month and $14/seat per month, respectively, starting at $0.

Why trust CNBC Select?

Our goal at CNBC Select is to deliver top-notch service journalism and in-depth consumer advice to our readers, enabling them to make informed decisions with their money. Each article is meticulously crafted by our team of expert writers and editors, who possess extensive knowledge of small business products. At CNBC Select, we maintain the highest journalistic standards and ethics, even though we earn a commission from affiliate partners on many offers and links.

Our methodology

We evaluated various invoicing software options for small businesses, taking into account features such as:

• Cost
• Payment options
• Number of projects allowed
• Number of clients allowed
• Number of estimates allowed
• Integrations with other business management tools
• Reporting and analytics tools
• Time/project tracking capabilities where appropriate

We organized our recommendations for the best features for each type of user, including free plan, international sales, freelancers, unlimited invoices, and best free trial offer.

The fee structures are subject to change without notice.

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