Some recommendations?

[Brian]

Hello folks,

I am looking into getting some sort of customer management / invoice management software, either online or standalone.

I would still use HSphere to plop in customer payments and such, but I do more than just web hosting, so I am looking for a single point to track all my lines of business (some are subscription based, some are professional services, and some are product based).

Not sure if my customers want to have yet another login/password to manage... but if the tool is online and does the job really well, I would give it a shot.

I am hoping to find something easy to use, can do recurring invoices, one-offs, email the invoices (customize the look) in PDF, and ?? are there features in your solution that you find very useful?

So far, after reading various posts here, I have looked at a few things:

ClientExec
ModernBill

and after some searching on the Internet, I also am looking at:
Typical Invoice
QuickBooks
Perl Bill
PHP iManager

So far, I think my preferences are:
QuickBooks (but I can't figure out if it does recurring invoices)
Perl Bill
ClientExec

Can anyone offer some input?

Thanks!

[admin]

We use H-Sphere of course, ModernBill for CPanel and colo customers 1U to 4U customers for anything large goes to QuickBooks ( for the printed invoices and such ).

[Brian]

Does QuickBooks do recurring invoices?

[admin]

Not sure, if vixen shes this she might now, she is the one that works with QuickBooks here.

[Vixen]

By recurrent, do you mean will it remember what they were billed for the previous month?? If so, then yes it will if you tell it to memorize the invoice. If you are asking will it automatically generate the invoice on a certain date then the answer is no. However, you can set a reminder for yourself to create the invoice on a particular date.

[Brian]

Yes, I am hoping to have invoices generated automatically...

If I could setup a customer, and configure all their services they use... then once every X days, I tell the system to generate invoices, and it can figure out who ows what, for whatever is in the system... generate PDF, which I can either print and mail, or it gets emailed out...

that would be ideal !

[Silverbug]

how much are you looknig to spend on something like this? i may have a solution

[Brian]

How much I am willing to spend would depend on how many features the product would do for me.

Are you referring to the ASP based billing software you are coding? (my site is not running on IIS)

[jmbeach]

No, I think Silverbug was going to offer to be your accountant

[Brian]

Originally Posted by jmbeach

No, I think Silverbug was going to offer to be your accountant

I think I have decided on QB Pro 2004. I did a small survey of my customers, and they don't want another ID/password to remember... they would rather call and ask about their account... And QB will email PDF invoicesand such, and apparently the Pro version will do recurring invoices..

Thanks for the feedback!

B

[mresell]

Yeah qb does alot and many things work with it. I just don't like the clunky interface.

[Brangwyn]

I've developed a wee interface to QB that will take HSphere data and import it as invoices etc ... it's really not ready to show anyone yet but if I get the chance I'll finish it up and see if I can make it generic enough so that others may use it as well. Basically takes HSphere CSV transaction reports and converts them to QIF format.

[mresell]

Nice Brangwyn

[Brian]

Sounds really nice!

[Silverbug]

well seeing as i failed my 5th form(year 11) accounting i dont think you want me as your accountant