While creating and sending invoices is for obvious reasons an  important part of running a business, automating the process as much as possible can certainly help to free up time for more important aspects of your daily schedule.

When I look for a new way to automate a process, I like to stick to  a (short) list of requirements

1) Ease of use and setup

2) Globally accessible – it must be web based

3) Not cost me more in time (and money)  than it would if I completed the
task manually.

To this end, I recently found FreeAgent. A web based accounts system that is actually FUN to use.

I won’t go through the whole list of features but some of the most useful are time tracking, invoicing (of course!), automated reminder and thank you emails to customers (Love this!), importing of expenses from 3rd parties like PayPal AND there’s an iPhone app I can use while on the move.

I haven’t calculated the time savings yet but needles to say, being able to send an Invoice with 3 clicks, beats my old system hands down.

If, like me, you were writing stuff down on PostIt notes, then recreating invoices, entering a reminder in a calendar to make sure invoices are paid on time, creating and sending reminder and thank you emails, FreeAgent is the tool for you.

You can try it free for 30 days and if you decide to go ahead and use it full time, I think $18 / month is worth every hour saved!

If you want to try it, here’s a referral code which give you a  (and me :-) ) 10% discount once you have completed your free trial.