Question of the week–
What kind of invoicing software are people running? Off the shelf? Custom? Half-and-half computer-weenied upgrades?
My previous software was a GM (grey-matter) operating system using graphite, cedar, and pink rubber hardware. It almost never crashed unless I was tired or the point snapped off. But it didn’t have enough gig of live memory to keep up (CRS strikes again!) so I finally broke down and bought an off-the-shelf Invoice & Estimates program. It contains a data base for materials, a gazillion silly pre-written letters for collections, a bunch of hokey graphics, seventy-eleven very standard templates that you can plug your company name into like those old stock forms you used to find at the corner stationery store, and a customizable template that causes me many brain cramps before I can get it to do what it shoulda done a week ago….
It does not have separate entry fields for labour and materials, so they can appear in separate sections on the printed form. For our kind of work, I think the customers kind of expect that. Does anybody know of a low-priced OTS package that has that kind of capability? Or do I have to find a 14-year-old with a bulging forehead and over-developed right forefinger to tweak the one I’ve got?
I’m gonna try to post a sample invoice in .pdf format. I hope it’ll work.
Dinosaur
‘Y-a-tu de la justice dans ce maudit monde?
Okay, the attachment works–remember you’ll need Adobe 4.0 or better to open it. If you don’t have it, it’s freeware. Download it from www.adobe.com
Edited 6/18/2003 7:35:39 PM ET by Dinosaur
Replies
Dinosaur re: your Question of the week--
What kind of invoicing software are people running? Off the shelf? Custom? Half-and-half computer-weenied upgrades? I be interested in findingoff-the-shelf Invoice & Estimates program.
As I just mentioned in another another discussion here we primarily a Macintosh OSX shop and while we do use a few off-the-shelf application I would estimate that the majority of what we need to do is done is in a custom FileMaker based solution I've developed over the years.
As for the off the shelf stuff I have Microsoft Office for which I use Word for writing but not general business communication which is done either within our FileMaker based system (Mac & Windows) or MarketCircle's Daylite (a Mac CRM Contact & Sales Management application). I do use Excel a lot for scenario planning and analysis but not for estimating which is what so many other contractors seem to primarily use it for. Estimating (and job costing) is once again done within our FileMaker based systems. Never really used PowerPoint in the past but this year is different and I'm playing around with it now using it to create some training presentations along the lines of "what are your responsibilities when working for our company" and "project management and scheduling in our company" and stuff like that. Business training and education aids so to speak.
I recently upgraded to QuickBooks5.0 for the Mac since Intuit returned to supporting the Mac platform again but we don't use it for invoicing which we do once again within our own FileMaker based system where it's very automated and connected directly to my estimating and job costing systems (not to say that invoice creation in QB 5 isn't automated, it is and it's very good too, but just doesn't link directly to our estimating and project management systems).
I'll post a link to a sample invoice but it's just one of several different versions of invoice forms that we have within that module. The contract payment collection program we use is very similar to to the system I read another builder uses and wrote in JLC back in '99. You can try to click for the article if your interested in reading it Getting the Final Payment by Brian Sutton but the JLC website has such a crazy system that links don't always work. (Too bad, their loss)
The invoice I'm posting is if for a fair sized contract where the basic contract payments are shown in the top window with just lump sum price showing while in the lower window the change orders are shown as Material Labor and a Lump Sum Total for the individual COs.
The second page of the invoice (which is printed as an option) shows:
Like I said that's only one of several versions of the invoices I use. And since it's done in FileMaker I can open up the file in layout mode and create new versions as I need to too. For instance we don't do any Time and Materials work but last fall I had one project we had to do that way so I created a new invoice layout just to accommodate that job and any other possible future T&M jobs we might do.
Regarding your question: Does anybody know of a low-priced OTS package that has that kind of capability? First of all what do you define low coat as. FileMaker 6 costs $272.99 for PC when you buy it through Amazon while it's still $299 for Mac (that's grossly unfair and prejudicial if you ask me) but it does tons more than just allowing you to create a flat file invoice. You might want to download a 30 day demo version and try it out with the Filemaker Solution Framework it comes with. You might find modifying the invoice forms they give you fairly easy (it's certainly tons easier that MS Access that's for sure!) and finding FileMaker consultants to develop or modify it for you is fairly easy too.
Sample_Contract_Invoice.pdf
The other thing is the Invoices within QuickBooks can be modified too although not to the extreme degree that that you can within FileMaker. It's around $300 but you get all the accounting system power of QuickBooks with it too. Were you thinking of something more "low-priced " than that?
You can also create a MS Office based invoicing setup using Word and/or Excel too.
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"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." - Margaret Mead
Edited 6/19/2003 10:04:47 PM ET by Jerrald Hayes
You've got to remember that I was using a ball-point pen, pads of photocopied forms, and carbon paper less than 3 haircuts ago. And 85% of my jobs are T&M+5%; I only quote flat prices on in-shop work like custom furniture. A flat contract price with progress payments such as the one you posted would not really apply to me.
The program I bought cost me $49 Canadian; after seeing the prices you quoted in your post, I'm starting to think I got a better bargain than I thought at first.
The software does contain some accounting stuff; not a full suite by any means, but a variety of reports generated from the data: inventory analyzed three or four different ways; customer activity analyzed by date, item, $ amount, etc. From the invoice information and the deposit information, it will generate a statement automatically; it will turn an order into an invoice; there's a bunch of other stuff, but none of it really applies to my situation.
The data base is the most useful aspect of it, I think. It took me a few hours to key in the basic data base for all the different labour types and rates and then add in the standard materials from our two major suppliers with this year's prices--a list of about 300 labour or material items. Materials we didn't enter can be put into the data base as the invoices are being keypunched. I can mark-up prices automatically, by group or by series. There's also a function for selling price categories you can assign to each customer in the customer data base. So now I just have to remember the code for each item, like the guys at the lumber yard, and punch it in and the program spits out the description and unit price, then generates the extension from the quantity input.
On my sites, every worker has a pad of blank daily reports. Each person fills out one sheet for each site or job he works on for each day. The lead is in charge of listing materials received or returned that day on his sheet; everyone else just fills in their hours. At the end of the day, these are all turned in with suppliers' invoices clipped to them and they then get keypunched into an invoice. When the job is finished, I punch in the last day's daily reports to the incomplete invoice, and then print or e-mail the whole thing. If progress payments are part of the deal, I just print out an invoice each time one is due, and let the program generate a statement at the end of the job.
Systematically, it's not bad. My main beef is that I can't get the program to generate separate subtotals for Labour and Materials, so if there's a beef about part of a job, I've got to drag out a calculator and go through it line by line to find out where the problem is.
I'd try downloading the FileMaker program you mentioned, but right now I'm downloading Netscape 7.02 to create a web-site, and it's been two and a half hours already with a half hour left to go. Maybe it'd go faster if I got off Breaktime and let it have the whole bandwidth...?
Dinosaur
'Y-a-tu de la justice dans ce maudit monde?
Dinosaur you should post the name (and possibly a link) of that $49 Canadian program here so other people could consider it. It sounds like a pretty good deal to me and for someone who's a little tight on money or just starting out and the power of FileMaker and Quickbooks is beyond what they need and can handle immediately I think it probably a very good little application. It not all in French is it?
However from what you just said about your business and the kind of customization you want ("My main beef is that I can't get the program to generate separate subtotals for Labour and Materials ") you might find yourself growing out of it soon enough and wanting something like FileMaker.
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"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." - Margaret Mead
The program is called NOVA INVOICES & ESTIMATES PRO; it's distributed by a company in California called Nova Development Corporation. Their web site address is http://www.novadevelopment.com
I know there's a lot of stuff in the program I haven't played with yet, more because I don't see a use for it than any other reason. As you say, it's doesn't seem a bad deal for the money, especially based on what you told me; I'm just too new to the whole desktop computer culture to have an idea of what's out there and what kind of prices I could have to pay.
My background with computers goes back to the 1970s when I owned a graphic design operation in NYC--but the computers then were about the size of a pick-up truck. They were all hardware: you turned it on, and it did only one thing. The keyboards had dedicated keypads all over them; my main typesetting computer had 6 or 7 different keypads, each for a different general function. It ran an 8" floppy disc the sole purpose of which was to store keystrokes. And, of course, the screen was all in white on black, with no graphics whatsoever. The whole unit weighed something close to a thousand pounds, drew 30 amps of 240vac, and generated enough parasitic heat to require an extra 10k BTU of A/C in the office. When something stopped working, a repair usually involved changing a circuit board, of which there were about 25, each 8½"x11". When I bought it, it cost me $65,000; six or seven years later when I sold it, I was lucky to get $4000, and that included about $12,000 worth of filmstrips for the photo output printer and the $8,000 photoprocessor.
And now we bitch about a few hundred bucks for a CD full of code! My, how times have changed.
Dinosaur
'Y-a-tu de la justice dans ce maudit monde?
PS--No, the program is not all in French; it's rigged so you can choose the operating language from a list of I'm not sure how many. I run it in English; most French translations for programming were done by what we call 'French-From-France' translators, and the terminology is absolutely incomprehensible. In Quebec, we speak a very practical French; in France--or at least in Paris--the object seems to be to impress the listener with one's erudition at the expense of communication.
Dino
Edited 6/20/2003 6:40:59 PM ET by Dinosaur
students get a good buy on software at the university. Use to be about 25% of retail. So if you know a student have them buy it for you or better yet if you have the time take a class that uses program.
It may be different in Canada
Edited 6/20/2003 11:48:32 PM ET by fredsmart