How to Develop Online Billing Software Like Freshbooks?

With rapid digitization, online billing has become an imperative part of businesses and it’s here to stay with us. According to Billentis report, the global bill invoicing volume touched the mark of $550 billion and it’s going to grow in the future. With advancing technologies, businesses don’t need to hire dedicated bookkeepers to tally their accounts. To ease the business, online billing software comes in handy as they help in automating several tasks with no errors.

Among several online billing software available in the market, Freshbooks is the most popular platform which thousands of businesses use daily. It’s super easy to use, convenient, and requires no such training for your team.

What is Online Billing Software?

Online Billing Software is assumed to be a great tool for businesses in generating bills for products or services offered to clients or customers. In other words, with this software, one can effectively keep a track of cash inflow, payments can be processed faster with many different payment options, and personalize invoices.

Benefits of Online Billing Software

• No more late payments as it is associated with automated delivery and payment reminders.
• Easy to track missing payments and manage cash inflow.
• Such billing software develops a professional company image through personalization and businesses can customize invoices to their specifications.
• This software offers Automated billing and businesses can therefore focus on other important matters while billing is undertaken by the software.

Best online billing software: Analyze and Example

Among the above listed online billing software, Freshbooks is the most popular platform which thousands of businesses use daily. It’s super easy to use, convenient, and requires no such training for your team.

Top Online Billing Software in 2021:

There is a long list of Online billing/invoicing software. A few of them are listed below:

• Harvest
• Freshbooks
• Hiveage
• InvoiceBerry
• The Invoice Machine
• Wave
• Quickbooks

What makes Freshbooks so special?

Freshbooks is a responsive interface enabling anyone to manage accounts on any device. In addition to this, automatic tax computation and Quick online invoicing, and support for numerous cashless payment gateways are other noticeable characteristics that make Freshbooks the best online billing software.

It has been analyzed that previously businesses were using inefficient, tedious, and painful billing processes. They relied heavily on papers, spreadsheets, etc. To cite an example: there might be an application that tracks employees’ work hours, but for creating invoices, they re-enter the information manually to another application. Such hard work can be eliminated with the use of online billing software.

This platform comes with a responsive interface that lets you manage all the accounts on your mobile device on the go. In addition to this, it comes with the power of the cloud to offer tight security to ensure your financial data remains intact.

While working in a competitive industry, it’s important that your platform follows accounting systems standards and certain important compliances. Freshbooks sets you free from this tension as it follows the industry-approved double-entry accounting system. Along with this, it comes with an automated tax compulsion feature to comply with federal regulations.

Freshbooks’ quick invoicing systems and various digital payment gateways make it easier for business owners:

• Double-entry accounting system for compliance
• Automatic tax computation according to federal regulations
• Quick invoicing and support for numerous cashless payment gateways

Why develop online billing software?

If you want to see your business on the next level, then ensure you get paid by your clients quickly. For this, have online billing software. Let’s have a look at why you should have one:

• It simplifies the billing process.
• It boosts employee morale and performance.
• Allows effective project planning and management.
• Build a paperless environment and reflect professionalism.
• For automating the existing payroll system.

How does online billing software make money?

• Commission Based Billing
• Sponsored Content
• Paid Software
• Advertisement
• Paid Video Course
• Freemium Features

With so many benefits it has to offer, let’s jump into the details and see how to develop online billing software like Freshbooks. Here are some top functionalities that you need to have on your platform to boost productivity.

How to develop an online billing software like Freshbooks?

In order to develop billing/invoicing software, one needs to look into some technical aspects of development.  However, it must start with proper planning and ideation processes. Everything from “How” to “Why” need to be discussed before creating an online billing software. Let’s have a look at the below steps:

1. Targeting Audience

No matter, small or enterprise-level, every kind of digital product should be made as per the audience requirement. So, you should research a bit about your target audience to choose features and app UI to make the app more impressive and successful.

2. Choose A Development Model

This is the prime step to determine the focus of your software. For this, one can take the help of developers in examining what sort of platform you want to create a billing software. There are few models you can opt for

• Software Only Solution
• Software + Mobile App
• Software + Website
• Hybrid Software (Support All Platforms)

3. Essential Functionality

In this step, business owners should focus on the features that they want in the billing software. There are many on the list like- automation, security, personalization, etc.

For Personalization, you can include some custom features like –

• Custom UI Themes
• Custom Invoice Templates
• Multi-tier Approvals
• Optical Character Recognition
• Custom PDF Reports

4. Find An Expert Development Team

A team of software development experts is what you need next to match with suitable competencies such as database management, automation, Cloud for a cloud-based solution, AI, etc. You can hire an in-house team but the process will be time-consuming and costly. The best way is to hire an outsource software development team such as Auxano Global Services to speed up your development process with a premium product.

5. Software Maintenance

Testing and continuous maintenance are a must for any successful project. For custom billing software, optimize the functionality and interface as the company scales.

6. Product Release

The best way to create a successful product is through planning, research, development, marketing, and deployment. Marketing an online billing software is an essential part to make your audience aware of your product.

Online Billing Software Marketing Ideas:

• Google Advertisement
• Email Marketing & SEO
• Social Media Marketing
• Micro-Influencer Marketing
• Webinar Launching Event
• PR, Guest Posting, News
• Forums – Quora, Reddit

You can start pre-marketing your product while developing it. The benefits of pre-marketing are grabbing audience attention, creating your target audience, reviewing and analyzing product/services growth easily.

When you are investing in such a crucial and beneficial product, thorough planning and careful testing at the final stages is a must.

Basic features in Billing Software Like Freshbooks

This platform comes with a responsive interface that lets you manage all the accounts on your mobile device on the go. In addition to this, it comes with the power of the cloud to offer tight security to ensure your financial data remains intact.

While working in a competitive industry, it’s important that your platform follows accounting systems standards and certain important compliances. Freshbooks sets you free from this tension as it follows the industry-approved double-entry accounting system. Along with this, it comes with an automated tax compulsion feature to comply with federal regulations.

Must-have features in Online Billing Software like Freshbooks

1. Personalized

Being in the business needs to deal with different vendors and all follow a different invoicing and billing format. So, manually managing the personalized bills is time-consuming and tiresome. To make it easier for your team and customers, you need to have a personalized invoicing system that will allow you to customize the bills. Some customers will need their taxation details, some will need their separate billing addresses, and so on. So, it’s important that you have a personalized billing option that will make it easier for the user to create custom invoices in less time.

2. Automated estimates

Several businesses procure items in bulk and their supply chain is substantial to manage manually. It’s important that your online billing software should have some kind of automation that will help users with estimated spending and expenditure. The tool will collect a company’s data, analyze it and give stats on spending, expenditure, debt, and so many other important elements that you need. It’s a handy feature as it gives an indication to the business owner where the numbers are heading. To make it more convenient, have an option for uploading excel or CSV files so that the software will process the numbers and give an estimate.

3. Handling a large customer base

As the business grows, the customer base will also grow and you need your tool to be scalable and stable to handle a large customer base. With time, the customer base will increase and that’s why you need to have a cloud-based database that can scale up or down as per the demand. For handling the large customer base, the feature of importing data in bulk will help.

4. Task management

To ensure your financial team is making the base utilization of their resources, you need to have team management and task management features. These productivity features will make it easier to see where the teams are performing well and where you need to increase the team size to get things faster. As you will only be managing the sales rep or finance team, the management will be much hassle-free and quick.

5. Multiple document formats

There is no fixed-document format that is standardized in the business ecosystem. With respect to the preferences, all businesses need documents in different formats. So, in the download invoice option, you can give options for PDF, CSV, Docx, and many more. With this feature, your billing software will become more usable across multiple businesses.

6. Mobile accessibility

As businesses are shifting to mobile devices, it’s critical that your billing software should run seamlessly on all mobile devices. It will help you gain maximum traction and onboard more customers on your billing software. Make the billing software available and work seamlessly on both desktop and mobile devices.

Additional features for competitive advantage

1. Multi-User Access

With this additional feature in online billing software, any business can stay ahead by selecting any approved staff member who can use the system to create invoices, enter his time-sheet, and add different expenses.

2. Multi-pay with automated remittance capture

This additional feature would allow customers to do a single payment for multiple invoices, while automatically capturing the remittance information.

How much does it cost to develop an online billing software like Freshbooks?

The cost of development depends on various factors like features, device compatibility, testing, maintenance, and so on. However, there are many other key factors that affect the cost of software development.

1. Size of the team

The bigger the size of the team, the more expensive it would be.

2. Add-ons

Billing software development costs will be highly influenced by time-trackers, productivity metrics, and sales tools.

3. Maintenance

It is also a widely acknowledged fact that managing a bigger project will cost more than managing a smaller one.

Any business should never compromise with the quality features of invoicing software by cutting development costs. In order to enhance the growth of any business, a major investment is required.

The cost of online billing software development depends on various factors like features, device compatibility, testing, maintenance, and so on. The average online billing software development cost for cloud-based software varies from $6000 to $30000.

Conclusion

Building an online billing software like Freshbooks will offer better cash inflow management. Creating an online billing software is not only profitable but also a sustainable idea. One can create customized online billing software for different industries. So, It’s always better to contact a bespoke mobile app development company like Auxano Global Services to get started and get ahead of the curve. Get in touch with us to know more about online billing software development services.