Whether your company is an enterprise or a local mom-and-pop shop, keeping up with bills and invoices should be one of your top priorities next to keeping your customers satisfied and delivering top-notch products or services. Our research team has composed a comprehensive list of the best billing and invoicing software to simplify your enterprise accounting needs. Before we proceed to our list, it’s important to know some of the recommended features.

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Recommended Features

Before picking the ideal invoicing software for your business, you should assemble a shopping list of features and requirements that you need for your business. Although popular or recommended capabilities exist, it doesn’t mean that they are ideal for your business or accounting practices. This software typically includes:

• Bill Management: This feature is a given. A useful billing tool should allow you to track and manage all of your bills and expenses, so you never miss a payment.
• Unique Invoices: This feature is another given. The tool permits you to create personalized invoices with your company logo and colors as well as notify you when clients pay them.
• Generate Various Reports: This feature offers various business and financial reports to give clear insights into your business.
• Estimation: A good estimation tool can provide thorough estimates on varying things from payment terms to discounts as well as convert estimates into invoices.
• Adjustable Sales Tax: This tool allows you to determine accurate local and state sales tax and even adjusts to match multiple regions.

Benefits

In addition to bountiful features, this billing and invoice software comes with a handful of perks to keep your related processes on easy street. These benefits include:

• Fixed Assets: This function enables you to input fixed assets such as computer equipment, vehicles, buildings, machinery and more, as well as data on acquisition and disposal transactions, depreciation, lifetimes, write ups and write downs, and more.
• Bank Connections: Typically, this module can link to several (and in some cases infinite) banks, bank accounts and credit cards so you’ll always stay up on all of your bank feeds in real time.
• Mobile-Friendly: Some billing and invoicing software are available on mobile devices that permit you to take pictures of receipts and save them, create and send invoices and manage all of your bills and payment deadlines so you can perform tasks on the go as well as within your office.
• Fast and Simple: You can input information into invoices and send them faster. Some software even allows you to set up recurring invoices that are automatically delivered to clients.

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Small Business Considerations

Billing software is not only intended for large, full-scale enterprises. It can also be of use to small businesses, entrepreneurs and freelancers alike. However, there are some serious considerations to think over before you search for the type of software that meets your needs.

Do I see my business growing in the next five to 10 years?

Do you want your business to become a large franchise with locations across the nation or overseas? Or do you want to expand in the number of employees and departments? These are questions to consider as you peruse available solutions. Software that scales with your business could be your best bet. However, if you want to remain a small business or freelancer, then you should consider getting a non-scalable platform with your desired wishlist of features.

How much am I willing to spend?

Investing in new invoicing software can be quite costly. Try finding solutions with different payment plans that work with your budget. One suggestion is to invest in a modest, less-expensive plan with a suitable amount of features and invest in another plan when your business starts growing or gaining more revenue or selecting a system with a price plan that can scale as you add on more modules based on your growing business needs. But you don’t want to spend an arm and a leg on software just as you’re launching your new business.

Do you want a cloud or on-premise platform?

Knowing whether you want a cloud-based or on-premise solution is also a top consideration. Cloud-based software runs strictly through the internet without installing or storing it on your computer’s server, leaving you with lots of space. You may also access cloud solutions from any location with an internet connection. It typically comes with strong security protocols such as two-step authentication, data encryption and more. Two other major benefits are the cost – typically these solutions have a lower cost to entry, requiring only a monthly subscription fee from the user – and security, which is typically monitored by the vendor.

On-premise solutions, on the other hand, are installed on your company computers, keeping everything in one location. It also typically enables a little more leeway for you to customize your solution the way you want with the right amount of features and designs. While these solutions offer more control and customization to the user, they also typically come with a steep one-time cost to purchase the software and require the business to handle all security for the system.

For more considerations about choosing your next billing and invoicing software, visit our advanced buyer’s guide.

Best Billing and Invoicing Software

Have your wishlist ready. It’s the moment you’ve been waiting for: our elaborate, well-crafted list of the best billing and invoice software:

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QuickBooks Online

QuickBooks Online caters to small businesses, freelancers and mid-sized businesses. This software’s capabilities include scalable sales tax, expense monitoring and accessibility as an app for iOS and Android devices.

An example of QuickBooks’ expense tracking feature.

Oversee Every Bill

Thanks to QuickBooks, all of your bills and payment deadlines are monitored. Recurring invoices are easy to set up so you can avoid missed payments and interest charges. You can connect the right bank accounts to QuickBooks so it can automatically record and track bills paid by check or direct deposit. The bill management tool also allows you to view all of your transactions and bill payments so they can be matched to the correct vendor bills. You can install automatic bill payments for electronic payments and pay multiple bills at once on a specific date.

Adaptable Invoices

Kiss drab invoices goodbye with QuickBooks’ invoice accessory. You can customize preset templates with your preferred logos and colors. You can create and send payment reminders to your customers and you’re immediately notified when they make payments. The accessory also links repeating invoices and billable hours with TSheets, QuickBooks Online time tracking or Google Calendar.

On-Demand Reports

The reporting tool comes with a variety of reports to keep you in the know about your business. These reports include balance sheets, income statements, cash flow statements, customer balance summaries and receivable aging summaries. Customer balance and accounts receivable aging summaries can monitor open invoices, customer balances and past due amounts. You can pinpoint problem areas and make informed decisions from elaborate insights with the monthly KPI tracking component.

Measurable Sales Tax

When you add sales tax, QuickBooks instantaneously calculates the rate. With QuickBooks’ Sales Tax Liability Report, you can review your sales tax information so you can determine taxable and nontaxable sales. The sales tax module allows you to oversee due dates for both local and state taxes as well as permit you to file manually or electronically.

Flexible Estimations

The estimation element can forecast discounts, product stock-keeping units, payment terms and other line items. You can email estimates to a customer or they can be accepted and signed via an iOS or Android device. There are tailor-made estimate templates to design and you can even convert estimates into invoices to immediately track.

Other Noteworthy Accessories

Here are more features that may tickle your fancy.

• Inventory Tracking: Stock shortages are a thing of the past, thanks to this feature’s automatic inventory tracking and quantity surveillance.
• Expense Tracking: All of your business expenses are monitored, tracked, sorted and organized in one place 24/7.
• Mobile Access: The Android and the iOS-friendly app lets you input transactions, document expenses, send invoices to customers and access and send reports. It automatically stores data to the cloud and syncs across all of your devices.

Omissions

QuickBooks Online has a few limitations that you may want to review.

• Suffers from a lot of bugs.
• Customer service isn’t always knowledgeable
• It does not include average day-to-pay reports that inform you about how long it takes customers to pay their invoices.

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FreshBooks

FreshBooks is a bookkeeping and invoicing software designed for small business teams and entrepreneurs. Accountants can access and assess your taxes and finances. This solution contains more than 200 custom-built integrations to form tailored workflows and integrates with external payroll applications.

An example of the import and export tool in FreshBooks.

Simplified Invoices

FreshBooks’ tool enables you to efficiently get your invoices to your clientele. This solution employs online payments, charges your client’s credit cards and offers instantaneous payment reminders. You can also utilize multi-language and multi-currency. This tool even allows you to personalize thank-you emails.

Organize Your Bills

All of your expenses appear as bills in FreshBooks’ dashboard. You can rebill expenses and charge them to customers with a predetermined tax rate. You can also add receipts to expenses and associate expenses with the cost of goods sold.

Hassle-Free Taxations

Admit it. Calculating the correct sales tax can be a nightmare sometimes. FreshBooks automatically determines the sales tax value when you apply it to your invoices. Generating remittances is as easy as pie because the sales tax tool allows you to locate and find the sales tax you’ve paid and collected at any time. FreshBooks makes tax season a breeze because it seamlessly categorizes all of your expenses.

A Smorgasbord of Reports

FreshBooks offers a variety of reports to keep you in the loop about your business. You can filter each report by a client, team member, or date. You can export, print or save each report. The reporting tool includes:

• Profit and Loss
• Most Recent Activity Summary
• Sales Tax Summary
• Accounts Aging
• Payments Collected
• General Ledger
• Trial Balance
• Chart of Accounts
• Expense
• Invoice Details and more.

Handle Estimates with Ease

The estimation accessory is equipped with several components to ensure your estimates get in the right hands. You can track estimated statuses as either viewed or accepted, preview your estimates and quotes before you deliver them to your customers, and even adjust the estimate to the preferred currency. You can also convert estimates into invoices, permit clients to agree to estimates online, add a discount and even allow clients to sign proposals online.

Other Noteworthy Accessories

Here are more features from FreshBooks that may interest you.

• Collaborate with Partners: This accessory allows you to invite employees, contractors and clients to collaborate on various projects, install project deadlines and store all of your project conversations in one location.
• Double-Entry Bookkeeping: The double-entry accounting tool recognizes revenue items and related costs to accurately determine profits and losses. It also comes with automatic checks and balances to guarantee debit and credit amounts match.
• Straightforward Bank Reconciliation: FreshBooks organizes all your financial transactions when you import them to make bank reconciliation a breeze.
• Suitable Payment Options: This tool allows your customers to pick and choose from various modes of payment, including ACH, Stripe, FreshBooks Payments and more.
• Accurate Currency: FreshBooks bills invoices and tracks expenses in numerous currencies.
• iOS and Android-Certified: The FreshBooks app allows you to take pictures of invoices and send them to your clients. It will also notify you when a client has viewed an invoice, or an invoice is overdue.

Omissions

FreshBooks has a few limitations that you may want to review.

• Does not support mileage tracking as a built-in feature
• There are no built-in inventory management tools

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Xero

Xero is a cloud-based billing and invoicing software. You can develop financial performance reports from your budgets and cash flow. This software is equipped with an elaborate dashboard, top-notch security and a nifty search tool.

An example of Xero’s invoice tool.

Payment Analysis and Management

Xero’s dashboard offers full transparency of your bills and purchase orders. Concise charts and graphs display bill deadlines. You can bundle all of your bills together so you can pay multiple bills with a single transaction. The “pay now” button permits clientele to pay automatically with Apple Pay, direct debit, credit and debit cards and more. You may also convert purchase orders into bills and sales invoices.

Stay in the Loops

Xero automatically sends reminders to customers and notifies you when an invoice has been seen or paid. You can utilize pre-built templates and edit your payment terms and logos.

Determine the Correct Sales Tax

Thanks to Xero, you’ll always have the current sales tax on all of your records. Xero promptly ciphers and updates tax rates to reflect changes in tax regions. You can add various components to each tax rate and install as many rates as you need. This tool also permits you to set up a default tax value for your sales and purchases. Lastly, Xero integrates with Avalara TrustFile so you can prepare and submit your sales tax returns immediately.

Generate and Revise Reports

The reporting accessory enables you to use key performance indicators gathered in your dashboard to create concrete reports. You can use custom columns, formulas and text blocks to edit and revise reports. Malleable formulas can determine variables for any column in your reports, such as actuals versus budget or actuals versus other actuals. The reporting tool also allows you to share key performance indicators with advisors so they can develop and publish reports.

Other Noteworthy Accessories

Here are supplementary tools from Xero worth mentioning.

• Variety of Currencies: This tool accommodates more than 160 currencies to accept and receive bills as well as delivers invoices, quotes and purchase orders.
• Store and Add Documents: You can store files in one centralized location and add them to transactions, invoices and contact records with this feature.
• Locate Transactions and Contacts: The search tool allows you to locate the exact contact or transaction that you need from any screen.
• Mobile Access: Available for Android and iOS devices, Xero’s app allows you to generate and supervise invoices, convert estimates into invoices, oversee contact lists, systemize and coordinate bank transactions and monitor your spending.
• Painless Bank Reconciliations: Xero permits prompt and secure importing of bank transactions and recommends matching the transactions to bill payments, purchases and invoices.
• Secure and Retrieve Data: This accessory has data encryption and two-step authentication to keep all of your data secure. This tool also backs up your business’ account online so it can be retrieved and restored in the case of data loss.
• An Intricate Dashboard: Offers immediate status updates on reconciliations, expense claims and running balances across all of your accounts once you install your bank, credit card and PayPal accounts.

Omissions

Xero has a few limitations that you may want to review.

• Since Xero doesn’t have a native payroll tool, you can process and manage your payroll with third-party vendors like Gusto.
• There are a finite number of custom-built templates and it’s missing sales reports.
• Does not track subsidy processes.

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Wave Accounting

Do you need a solution with a dashboard that allows you to oversee all of your income, expenses, payments and invoices? Wave Accounting may be the billing software you need. You can also manage multiple businesses with one account, perform vigorous accounting tasks and track transactions.

A preview of Wave Accounting’s invoice tool.

Keep Invoices Regulated

Wave comes with pre-built customizable invoice templates. This accessory enables you to install notifications, so you’re promptly alerted when an invoice has been viewed, is due or has been paid. This tool also supports partial payments, recurring invoices and automated credit card payments.

Detailed Billing System

The dashboard allows you to view which bills and bill amounts are due. Wave can also add relevant vendor information to specific bills. The recurring bill tool saves your preferred payment method, offers flexible scheduling and even carries time zone control.

A Variety of Reports

The reporting component organizes reports into five sections to provide deep insights. Wave supports these type of reports:

• Trial balance
• Cash flow
• Account transactions
• Balance sheets
• Profit and Loss
• Sales Tax
• Aged receivables and aged payables
• Account balances and more.

Other Noteworthy Accessories

Here are some other features and tools included with Wave Accounting that might tickle your fancy:

• Take Photos of Receipts: The Wave Android and iOS app let you take photos of receipts and immediately syncs on all of your devices.
• Navigable Dashboard: View cash balance and invoice statuses on this cohesive dashboard.
• Robust Bookkeeping: Do you have bulk transactions to bookkeep? Wave has you covered with its powerful bookkeeping tool.
• Supervise Income and Expenses: This feature permits infinite income and expense tracking, so you’re always aware of your profits and losses.
• Unlimited Bank Networks: This tool gives you infinite bank and credit card connections so you can kiss manual receipt entries goodbye.
• Traceable Transactions: Utilize the search tool to find transactions by description.
• Prompt Reconciliations: Instantaneously streamline reconciliations for payment transactions.
• Incorporate Shopify: Integrate with Shopify to maintain Shopify transactions.
• Integrate with Web Stores: Seamlessly connect with PayPal, Shoebox and Etsy for easier transactions.
• Repeatable Payments: Assists in installing credit card payments and alternates between automatic and manual billing as necessary.
• Handles Different Currencies: Ensures delivering invoices and accepting payments in different currencies and promptly determines exchange rates.

Omissions

Wave Accounting has a few limitations that you may want to review.

• It does not allow you to create purchase or sales orders.
• It does not advocate time tracking.
• Contact management has limited capabilities.

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Dynamics 365 Finance

Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 Finance is powered by artificial intelligence (AI) to provide automated financial operations. It is available as an independent invoice software or part of the Dynamics 365 Suite. It comes with budgeting, integration and expense management tools.

An example of Dynamics 365’s dashboard.

Built-In Invoice Templates

Dynamics 365 Finance has built-in templates that you can personalize. This tool also allows you to create customer invoices from sales orders and packing slips as well as establish a recurring status.

Organize Bills Hassle-Free

The billing classification tool allows you to set up custom billing processes that include details like terms of payment, item name, description and billing codes. There’s plenty of filter options so you can sort and locate specific bills when you need them. This feature also directly bills invoices to your customers.

Adaptable Reports

The reporting element allows you to craft adaptable reports needed for your business. The designer tool enables you to create reports with building blocks. The report wizard seamlessly aids less-experienced users in generating reports. You can also save dimension combinations and reuse dimensions for multiple reports. You can automatically schedule report generation on an annual, monthly, weekly or daily basis.

Other Noteworthy Accessories

Here are some other Dynamics 365 Finance features worth mentioning.

• Deep AI Analysis: Dynamics 365 Finance offers thorough reporting components with immediately embedded analytics through AI.
• Visibility of Expenses: This tool allows process automation, budget control, financial planning and analysis to assist you in saving credit card information, inputting credit card transactions and streamlining expenses across numerous business locations.
• Manage Accounts Payable: Dynamics 365 Finance seamlessly reviews and approves vendor invoices with an approval journal or the Vendor invoice page once it is received or entered into the system.
• Maintain Budgets: This accessory comes with budget register entries that permit you to maintain your budget with revisions, transfers and rollover amounts from previous budget years.
• Current Financial Regulatory Compliances: This component allows you to manage ever-changing regulatory requirements with various formats, including no-code configurable tax, e-invoicing, payment and reporting.
• Integrations: Dynamics 356 Finance can integrate with Office 365 Suite.
• Subscription-Based Economy Operation: This solution adapts to updated revenue recognition standards, depletes audit costs and determines and reports financial statements by functioning on a subscription-based economy.

Omissions

Here are some limitations that come with Dynamics 365 Finance.

• The iOS app has bugs and stops working halfway through constructing a report.
• It has finite cross-platform support when it is integrated with business products outside of Microsoft.

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In Conclusion

This list of top billing and invoicing software may have all the features you need to keep your business afloat. Some of these features may not be what you need. Either way, it’s important to pick the billing software that aligns with your specific needs.

Which invoice software is your first choice, and why? Let us know in the comments!