Hi All! We're looking for some ideas from you that will help us as we design future versions of Billings. Your help answering some of the following questions is highly valued.

1. About your clients.
How many clients do you have? How many do you work with at one time? Do your clients pay on time? Do you have to send them reminders?

2. About your projects.
How many projects do you have? Do you need projects at all? How many are active? How many are inactive? Do you have more than one project for a given client going on at the same time?

3. About your billing.
How do you bill (monthly, once you've reached a certain amount of money, or when the project is finished)? Do you collect deposits? Do you work from a trust account (retainer)? Do you want to bill for the same things automatically and over and over? Do you use our built-in invoice templates, or did you design your own? Which one do you use? Do you have letterhead that you put on your invoice?

4. About your work.
Do you do hourly work? Daily? Other kinds of per-project? Do you sell products? Do you track work you do for yourself or your own company? Do you have a lot of expenses? How do you keep track of them?

5. About your business.
Do you need income reports often? Do you want to forecast income? Do you use estimates? What other applications do you use? Do you use an accounting package? Do you track payments? Do you receive payments electronically? Do you have more than one user who wants to use Billings? Do you share work equally, or how do you divide it? Does more than one person do billing? Do you need to bill while out of the office? How do you keep track of time and expenses while out of the office?

Anything else you can think of that might be useful for us to know is welcome. We thank you for your feedback!

adam baker
Marketcircle

1. In one company, ONE, a master distributor. In future more distributors will be appointed.
They pay always pay on time.

2. Don't use projects.

3. We bill at shipping time. I bill for the same products aver and over. Using the Swiss template but thinking of doing my own.

4. I sell products by quantity, and also rent warehouse space by the m2. I track the work of my companies: units shipped, collections made.

5. I need income reports often. Yes, I want forecasts. Don't use estimates. DayLite, of course; DevonThink Pro Office; trying iWorks to leave Micrososft Office for the Mac; Don't use accounting package, accounting does. Yes, I track payments. All payments are electronic. I'm the sole user of Billings. Some else does the actual billing and forwards to me the data. While out of the office I don't keep track of time nor expenses.

Would like Billings to be much more flexible, i.e., to keep track several companies.

1. One client for now. Timeliness of payment has been an issue, but we're still working that out. No reminders yet.

2. I'm still figuring this out. I am presently doing one project per month, doing a new Time slip daily. I am paid per project, not by time. But I want to keep a log of my hours. One active project. Each prior month inactive.

Like I said, still figuring it out.

3. I bill incrementally through the course of the overall project. No deposits, though it was discussed. I am partial to the "Coast" template for invoicing. No letterhead.

4. 18 month contract in 90 day increments. As explained above, I track my hours in Billings, but am paid by the project regardless of time. I have a fair amount of expenses. I'm new to being a sole proprietor, tracking expenses in Quicken for now.

5. No use for income reports or forecasting yet. No estimates. Paid by check, tracked in Quicken, and presumably Billings. All work is done in house presently .

A network shared Billings database would be a wonderful thing.

1. About 20-30 clients, with 2-3 active at any one time. Very few pay on time, though most are okay after one reminder. Only a handful need more than that, and—to date—only 3 have needed letter invoking statutory interest charges. I usually send 1 statement and 1 reminder a couple of days after terms and that has the required effect.

2. Usually have 2-3 projects per client, with about 6-9 on the go at any one time. Sometimes there is more than one project for the same client on the go at once. Quite often projects ‘hibernate’, and go ‘in-active’ for weeks at a time.

3. Billing varies between at end of project and monthly, depending on total cost of project and relationship with client. In most cases a proportion is charged as a deposit up front. At the moment invoice printing is done via my accounts package (MYOB); only time-tracking and status overview of jobs is done within Billings. (I create Invoices in Billings that are never sent.)

4. I work on an hourly basis, a daily charge or a total agreed project cost, depending on size of job, client and type of work. I generally ‘sell’ only my own time, and very rarely sell product, if ever. Expenses are things such as software, hardware and consumables. Occasionally expenses are incurred for a specific job, and are charged to clients as part of their invoice.

5. Income reporting is not something I tend to do, but would be nice to have. I do use estimates when quoting for jobs. Payments are usually received via cheque, though a couple of clients pay electronically; I would prefer it if more did, but they are luddites I am the only person in the company, so I don’t share Billings data. It would be nice to keep track of time outside the office, as it does sometimes happen.

HTH

1. 50 + clients. I work with 2-10 a week. Most of my clients pay on the spot - the rest pay on time. No reminders.

2. One project per Invoice (I thought you HAD to use projects). 1 project per client open at a time.

3. My 'billing' is split between sending an invoice with a PAID stamp after the fact (already been paid) and sending an Invoice to be paid.
The Invoices sent for payment are sent when the project is finished.
No deposits.
No retainer.
No auto-billing.
Coast Template.

4. I work hourly.
I sell some product.
I don't track work I do for myself.
Don't have a formal way of tracking expenses.

5. No on income reports.
No on income forecast.
I don't use estimates.
No accounting package.
Payments in hand when leaving job (most of the time)
No electronic payments.
No other users of billing.
I don't bill out of the office but it could be useful.
I track time & expenses in a notebook.

1. Two clients that I work with simultaneously. One pays promptly, one is slow and requires several reminders. A statement page option along with the invoice would be wonderful to show unpaid invoices and payments made since the last invoice.

2. 6 projects open and one closed. Projects are a great way to keep track of various aspects of the work I do for a given client. I have at least two open for each client at any given time.

3. I bill monthly. I generally bill by time, but I also bill back hard expenses I incurr to the client. No deposits or retainers. I use the built-in invoice templates and prefer "Swiss" for its simplicity. Some day I would like to design my own. Expenses are tracked with individual slips. It would be nice if they could be grouped together on an invoice with an expense subtotal and then the time slips grouped with their subtotal and then a final Total Invoice listing.

4. Hourly work mostly (depends on the project). No product sales. I definitely keep slips for myself to track "Complimentary work" and personal research that I do which does not apply to a specific project or client. It lets me know how much time I am spending outside of paid work. I keep one slip open per month to track this under ME as the client. (To date I have not invoice myself

5. Income reports would be very helpful if they will subtotal by client and projects under that client. No forecasting and so far no estimates needed. Quicken for basic accounting but I would like to find something else. I don't personally need a shared component to Billings, but I set up a client with it and he has two people using it. He exports and imports the other person' data at the end of each month to send out a single invoice. He would really like to have a more elegant way to handle this, like through a shared single datafile. Only one person does the billing in this situation. Time away is tracked manually and then input manually.

This is a great product that just needs more robustness in it's output options primarily. Statements showing past history for billing should be the highest priority. Also an easier mechanism to build your own reports and invoices would go along way toward curbing the angst that is often expressed on these forums.

Thanks for listening.

1. I have 25+ clients. I'm usually working with 5-10 clients at one time (sometimes more). My terms are 30 days, most clients pay around the 20th day but a few drag on. A couple have gone to 90+ days. I send e-mail reminders after 30 days and phone them after 60 days. A statement feature would be nice to have.

2. Just checked, I currently have 19 active projects and many more listed as completed. I like the project feature in Billings but would prefer it if it was an option. If a job has multiple aspects to it I'd like to be able to list it as a project. Some jobs with only one slip don't really require them to be a project. I often have multiple projects active for a client.

3. I normally bill at the end of a project although for some things I need to bill monthly or yearly. I require deposits (retainer) of all new clients and from existing clients for certain jobs. Recurring billing would be useful. I use the Swiss template but I've modified it some.

4. I charge by the hour for most jobs although I have had need to charge by the project. I act as a middleman (broker) sometimes and order, mark-up and re-sell products on occasion. I don't track work I do for myself. I have a fair amount of expenses but all I do is gather receipts and let my accountant take care of it.

5. I use the income reports often but don't see a need for forecast reports. I don't use any other applications other than Billings. I've never received a payment electronically. I'm the only one requiring and using Billings. While out of the office I keep receipts and write down what I need and then enter it into Billings when I'm back.

I'd like it if Billings would automatically remind me somehow that an unpaid invoice is past it's due date. I know I can use reports to see this info but it would be nice to be notified without having to go look myself.

I'd also like it if the timer menu listed Clients and not just Projects. It gets confusing when I have a similarly named project for two or more clients.

[quote]Hi All! We're looking for some ideas from you that will help us as we design future versions of Billings. Your help answering some of th1. About your clients. 150+ Generally work with 5-10 projects at one time. About 50% pay on time, the rest ( all contractors and developers ) never do, and often exceed 90 days. Then there's Holdbacks.

2. About your projects. Currently 6. No. I'd prefer to archive inactive projects/clients. Many of my clients have multiple one off or ongoing projects or both. I like the project feature, it works well for me and is one of the components that attracted me to Billings. Thatand integration with the Address Book !

3. About your billing. Many of my clients are pretty straight forward however many are developers or contractors. They have, to say the least, the most protracted and cumbersome billing requirements. Generally it goes like this. (A) Deposit invoice, (B) Progress invoice(s), Final invoice and after 90 days ' Holdback' release invoice. A & B are usually percentages of the project total. I get around this by creating duplicate Estimate slips ( i.e: 0.3 Deposit, 0.3 Progress, 0.3 Final and 0.1 Holdback ) and create invoices from them when needed. It's clumsy but works. Quickbooks Pro had a nice feature that allowed us to specify a percentage amount of the Estimate to bill. Made the whole process a lot easier. It also gave the option of creating an invoice from any the remaining amounts of the estimate. It would be nice to see used slips remain in the Estimate and Working windows with some indication that they have been used, rather than have them disappear.

I use the Swiss invoice, modified slightly.

4. About your work. Per project. We also sell product. Billings works well for this with the exception of STATMENTS ! and the layout of the Tax and subtotal fields of the invoice. It would be nice to see the tax amounts shown for each line item rather than just the tax class and rate. I have many expenses but I deal with them manually. The book-keeper get a bag at months end and figures it all out. I use Billings for just that...Billing. I don't need anything more.

5. About your business. Only so far as the tax implication go. Forecasting would be nice to have. Yes I use Estimates, but changed the title to Quotation. No I don't use and acc app. Yes I track payments. Our company has two division. We have separate Billings app for each. One person bills in each division. I bill from the office only. The book-keeper does all the expense reckoning. I run the business.

I certainly need additional Reports and more detail in the Reports. These are mostly for the book-keeper, she reminds me every month that they are inadequate. I wrote to Marketcircle a while back about this:

"As far as I can tell the GST & PST reports only show totals collected. It would be great to see additional detail here such as project name, invoice #, date, net amount for each project, net total for the period as well as the Taxes broken down by invoice and a grand total for each of the taxes. I see some of this information is available in Unpaid Invoices, but there is no indication of taxes in the Unpaid Invoices report. It would also be nice to have the Unpaid Invoices outstanding balanced totaled and to be able to specify a date range for Unpaids. My bookkeeper need a report to show Accounts Recievable at the months end, unless I remember to generated the report on the last day of the reporting period I'm snookered. Same kind of breakdown would be helpful in Billed & Collected, currently it shows only the totals. "
Another feature that would be helpful is some visual indication of Client status in the client list. Whether they are active and in what state of activity and whether they have an outstanding balance. Yet another would be to be able to adjust invoices and re-issue same, rather than have to delete and start over with a new number. We all make mistakes. I realize this probably offends some accounting principle and the tax man would have a fit but that's something MC should allow us to explain to him if necessary.

At a glance company overview would be good too. Particularly total AR and details if wished. Reminders of overdue accounts would be good too.

Oh and it would be nice to be able to add more than one file at a time to projects.

Fundamentally this is a great product for me, it has great potential, even though I gripe about it. Thanks for this Adam !

Phil

1. Clients
About 30-40 clients (some of which are the same people with different billing addresses). 10-15 are very ocassional, and 10-15 ongoing but only intermittent (because not necessarily related to a specific project), some 5-10 regular clients with set project objectives. It would be useful to be able to have only active clients display.
Most pay within 3 weeks, one or two larger institutes with complex procedures take longer, a few need reminding (usually without penalising them).

2. Projects
I have both specific project-related work and ongoing small jobs which really do not need a project. This means that some projects can remain active for a long time (e.g. all year). Some clients do have several distinct projects and they are billed separately to better facilitate the client's project-tracking. Projects can run in parallel, and not only because some are ongoing as mentioned.

Every so often a client with several companies would rather I billed a certain slip to a different company. It would be useful to be able to transfer slips between companies(clients), not just projects.

3. Billing
Projects are billed when finished or as agreed in contract (can be after a certain amount has been reached). Ongoing mini-jobs are billed when I feel enough has collected together to make billing worthwhile. I hardly ever work as retainer. As services, prices and units vary according to the kind of service, I have made my own template that doesn't force me to have units and quantity in the usual tabular manner, but appends them to the description of each slip. I'd like to be able to tailor custom units (as described in this thread http://forums.marketcircle.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/2931083693/m/1831083494)

4. Work
I offer only services. Some are flat rate based on an estimate (usually informal, have not used billings for estimates), many are quantity-based, and others are also time-based. Ocassionally there are specific expenses (e.g. printing) that are passed directly onto the client. I don't track my work I do for myself.

5. Business:
AM freelancer and have very simple income versus expenditure accounting requirements. I find reports useful, some are imperative, e.g. for VAT returns. I like to be able to track payments.
I don't as yet use an accounting package but record business expenses with excel. If billings were to include a way of recording business expenses (not related to client), I would use it and would value having a report that showed income/outgoings for specific time periods, e.g. for but not limited to VAT returns.

Billing out of the office not needed.
I use estimates for my own use (e.g. a project/slip is waiting for ok) but actually don't issue estimates using billings.

1. 70 clients. Can have about 10 - 20 on the go at a time. Most pay on time and if not usually just require a quick reminder

2. Have 20-30 projects on the go at a time and some clients have several projects running at the same time.

3. Usually invoice all the completed projects at the end of the month but depending on the client, I sometimes bill partially completed project as well. Don't use retainers or collect deposits (except large projects with a new client). Would use automatic billing for monthly services (ie web hosting). I've designed my own invoice template which has my company header etc and a cut-off payment slip.

4. Charge per hour for my time and also sell product & services at set prices. Don't track time on my company, although have thought I should - also for charity work. There are a lot of expenses - only track the ones associated with a particular job

5. Reporting is one area I would love to see improved in Billings - especially been able to filter reports by client and see where I've spent my time from day to day/week to week. Don't use estimates within billings and I don't use any other accounting package. I do receive payment electronically. I am a sole trader, so I do the work and billing myself. Time out of the office is just tracked by noting the time.

Most wanted features:
1. Statements (the lack of this one has had me looking at other apps - some of my clients require this from me which I have to do manually each month - major hassle)
2. Activity Report

1.
20+ clients on my books.
Generally work with 5-6 at any one time.
Some clients pay on time. Others require gentle nudging

2.
I typically have 1 project per client on the go. Sometimes a client has up to 3-4 projects active.
Having projects is good.
Some projects are inactive. These are typically ones awaiting approval of the estimate or postponed projects.

3.
I bill monthly, or when the job is finished. If I bill monthly, I bill for time and materials used during that calendar period (20th - 20th of each month).
Yes I collect deposits.
No retainer, only deposits.
Yes, I have recurring monthly/ 3-monthly invoicing needs. These are for things like maintenance and web hosting fees. This feature would save me a LOT of time.
I am in the process of designing my own invoices but it is hard to get it working correctly.
Yes, I intend on printing my invoices on my letterhead.

4.
Yes, I bill by the hour. I estimate by the project, based on hrs required.
Sell products? Maybe in the future.
Yes I track my work using the Billings timers.
I don't have a lot of project-related expenses but it would be great to have a functionality to track those that require it. e.g. couriers, special stationery.

5.
Income reports, no.
Forecast income, no.
Yes, I use estimates. they are very important in my business.
No other accounting package. Excel was used previously for estimates etc :/
I now track payments with Billings and all expenses/income on Excel.
Yes I receive about 50% of my payments electronically.
More than one user, yes. It would be great to have a multi use license that shares the same central data.
Bill out of the office, no.
Track time out of the office -- pen and paper.

Other bits.
I would really really really like to see a statement facility. I have posted about this already (search for my name, Andi). At the moment I'm doing my statements manually in InDesign and it's really painful. I need to be able to send clients a summary of all invoices sent for the month (20th - 20th) and also any payments made. I need to be able to list the opening and closing balances, and total of all $$ invoiced and all $$ paid for that time period.

I would also like to be able to organise my client list into folders. I have some clients that I no longer do work for and I would like to keep them in the Billing system but not amongst my current clients.

A reminder feature would be good. Something like : Billings shows overdue invoices and I can select which clients to send reminders to. It will then generate a text-based email that has a generic reminder notice. It would state the client name, project name, invoice number(s), amount due, due date

Please do not make Billings more complicated than it has to be. I use it just because it is not complicated.

I use it pretty much as-is. I don't use timers (haven't figured that out yet). I use iBank for general accounting, but I do use the retainer and totals and outstanding and the pending functions. Reports and more advanced accounting? maybe, depending on what it does. Because I pay referral fees and of course have many expenses, it would have to mirror iBank to be functional.

I would like to be able to "store" closed clients in a separate folder/window, but its not that important. I just want to be able to put in my hours, description, and crank out a bill every month.

I made my own template which is posted in the share forum.

Mike

Am managing a 2 person business as broker / agent in worldwide (fysical) commodity (metal/scrap trading) .
1. About your clients
Clients + suppliers = +/- 30
@ one time : variable +/- 20/mth
They pay on time, reminder is more like a friendly mail

2. About your projects.

15 projects/mth
Projects in my case are the contracts I make .
I use the Estimates Tab to store and send the contractconformation between supplier and buyer as we need to keep historical track of our transactions based on Forex and Metal Exchange .
When the transaction is made and we can invoice our commission (fixed comm x tonnage) , I chnage the unit price in the workingslip to our actual commission for invoicing . IN this way I store the actual contract info in the estimates but still can invoice out of this slip for my commission . Very nice workaround for my particular bizz.
We can have multiple projects going for one client at one time

3. About your billing.

We bill for certain clients on a per contract basis, for other on a monthly basis .
In the first case every contract is a project with basically 1 slip, in the second case that client has one project by month but with the different slips for the tranasactions.
We get monthly retainers for som eclients . These would be handy to have recurrent billing .
Using a modified invoice template .

4. About your work.
No hourly work . All is measured in quantity x price/commission .
Tracking work we do as a broker : contract from buer/seller - shipment follow up - payment follow up - ... and studying how Daylite will fit in for this (allthough i would have liked to turn this around , but this won't be possible because Daylite/Billings data exchange is insufficient) .



5. About your business.

Income reports are handy and needed for the accountant on a quarterly basis.
Forecast income is in our case : open invoices + open workingslips .
Estimates : YES (see above)
Other bizz applications :Iworks, NeoOffice, Ical
No accounting sw : external accounatnt
We track payments
All payments by wire trasnfer
Would be VERY handy top have multi user support for Billings.
Work is shared between : 1 person commercial bizz (myself), 1 person admin + financials (my wife)
1 person does billing , no need to bill out of office.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Didier Legein,

1. About your clients.
About 12-15, a third of which are regulars, though I hope to double this. Clients pay, some quick, some up to 120 days, I usually email the invoice again to remind clients.

2. About your projects.
I have 3-5 active projects and another 3-5 slow burn projects on the go at any time. I may have 1-3 projects per client. Projects are the backbone of my system.

3. About your billing.
Billed at the end of a job. Deposits will be required as I get new clients that may not be 'Blue Chip'. No retainers yet, no need for auto billing yet, but may do in the next 12-18 months.

I adapted the built-in templates for branding, logo, look and feel, different info displayed. I'm now trying to build reports such as Invoice Register, Client Sin Bin (overdue list by amount outstanding), and so on.

4. About your work.
I charge daily, and have begun to charge hourly for certain services. I provide a service, I hire freelancers to provide the service if I can't, and also charge for equipment (which I either own or rent in). Invoices are per-project. I have a complex amount of invoices, and would like to track 'negative' items in the invoice that are hidden from the client, so I know how profitable a job is from the same data as the invoice (e.g. if I supply two cameramen, one of which is me, I want to include a non-invoiceable 'my eyes only' item for the other cameraman's invoice to me, so I know how much I bill the client, AND how much the job as a whole is worth to me).

I also want to keep track of how much my equipment earns, and how much I spend on renting kit, so I can work out when it's advantageous to buy rather than rent. And, for that matter, what are 'good earners' and what are 'toys'.

5. About your business.
Lots of questions!

- I'd like to have income reports (see above), but forecasting income isn't quite there yet.
- I must use estimates more often. Clients love it, and it makes my billing SOOO much easier.
- I pass reports/invoices to an accountant
- I receive 50% of my payments electronically
- I may expand my billings to my wife/accountant, but she's still strictly Excel.
- I do the billing, I hate billing, I am rubbish at billing, it's always late, but Billings is cool.
- I keep a vague note of what I'm doing either in iCal or a paper Filofax style diary

Anything else you can think of

I'm a bit wary of asking for too much because Billings works great because it just does what it says. I want to have special 'Negative' Expense slips so I can see how much a job is really worth, I want to collect certain costs (e.g. Camera hire, Lighting Kit, Tape Ingest) to see how much I'm spending and earning (I may be able to do this, still learning the ropes beyond the basics).

I WOULD LOVE A NOD TO US BRITS: I like weeks to start on Monday, I like dates in MM/DD/YY format.

I'd like a little more help on making custom reports (apologies if I haven't found it in available data yet). There's some nice simple videos, then there's a big void and suddenly we're into obfuscated code and shorthand.

I'd like a 'Backup to iDisk/FTP' - maybe this will be part of Leopard, but nothing beats that 'Backed Up' feeling

I'd like the PDFs of invoices to be named using the invoice number up front (e.g. '1047 Dog food commercial.pdf' '1048 Death by PowerPoint.pdf' and so on) , and put in a folder of my choosing.

I'd like the app to remember little things when I go to build an invoice, enter some comments, preview, think 'Bother, spelled 'Camera' wrong, cancel, edit, re-build, then... Oh. What did I put in the comments last time? It's gone.

There's some wierd 'double click' issues when trying to enter in data labels into custom designs. Sometimes it needs a double-double-click. And I don't understand why some labels all seem to have the same label (no, can't be specific as I'm confused, would just like more info on how to build cooler templates)

Clients: How many clients do you have? 20 How many do you work with at one time? up to 10 Do your clients pay on time? Mostly Do you have to send them reminders? No

Projects: How many projects do you have? Do you need projects at all? How many are active? All my work is divided into projects How many are inactive? Many, design projects sometimes freeze Do you have more than one project for a given client going on at the same time? Yes

Billing: How do you bill? When project with all slips in it is finished Do you collect deposits? No Do you work from a trust account (retainer)?No Do you want to bill for the same things automatically and over and over? No Do you use our built-in invoice templates, or did you design your own? I have extremly customizid version Do you have letterhead that you put on your invoice? Yes

Work: Do you do hourly work? No Daily? Other kinds of per-project? Everything is project based. Do you sell products? No Do you track work you do for yourself or your own company? Yes Do you have a lot of expenses? Yes How do you keep track of them? Manually

Business: Do you need income reports often? Yes Do you want to forecast income? Yes Do you use estimates? No What other applications do you use? iBank Do you use an accounting package? My accountant uses Do you track payments? Yes Do you receive payments electronically? 100% Do you have more than one user who wants to use Billings? No Does more than one person do billing? No Do you need to bill while out of the office? Thats why i have my laptop How do you keep track of time and expenses while out of the office? Yes

I find very useful iBiz's way to quickly sort projects (You know, its on upper left, little All, Open, On Hold, Active etc buttons). This needs more project status options.. Maybe project color coding/labelling is also helpful.

Thank you for great product! Hope it helps.