Get A Grip

Entrepreneur, July, 1999 by Cassandra Cavanah

Simple invoicing program make handling accounts receivable more manageable.

No matter what the size of your operation, accounts receivable management should be one of the most important jobs in your company--and one, as the owner of your business, you should keep your eye on. Without proper management of where the money is coming from and when it will arrive, you'll be hard pressed to stay in business.

There are plenty of accounting programs out there that offer full-scale, in-house management of all your accounting tasks; however, many entrepreneurs prefer to entrust their bookkeeping to a professional accountant. Although this option may not be as affordable as using a popular accounting program, it often creates fewer headaches, freeing you to take care of building your business rather than overseeing day-to-day bookkeeping chores. Still, even if you opt to outsource, there's one aspect of your accounting that should remain in your hands: accounts receivable.

There are a few simple but useful invoicing programs on the market that enable you to produce invoices and manage your accounts receivable. You should consider buying one of these if you have any employees who spend a lot of time in the field taking orders and creating estimates. Adding a program like this to your sales-people's laptops gives them the tools needed to quickly and easily manage each customer's accounts receivable, while easily producing professional-looking invoices and estimates while on the road. All three programs reviewed here offer the same basic functions: the ability to create invoices that automatically tabulate totals, including state taxes, and to keep a running report of accounts receivable.

LOOK LIKE THE BIG GUYS

Of the three programs reviewed here, MySoftware Co.'s (www.mysoftware.com) MyDeluxelnvoices & Estimates is the only one you'll find in your local software store. This program offers small businesses a simple, affordable way to look like a much bigger business.

Installation is a snap; as promised on the box, I was up and running within five minutes. The software's interface is easy to follow, allowing you to choose between various functions that let you create invoices and estimates, view your register, input payments, and manage your customer and product listings. The initial setup asks basic questions about your business to determine which fields your invoices and estimates should use. A Customize option lets you change the appearance of your invoices even more.

Setting up your customer and product listings is just as easy. You can import a customer list from almost any popular database program, alleviating the need to input your records one at a time. Managing customers is a fairly simple procedure; you can even input special discounts and credit limits for individual customers. A Notes field highlights activities for each customer.

The estimating module works exactly like the invoice module, giving you the ability to seamlessly convert estimates into invoices. A reporting function lets you view accounts receivable, aging, cash receipts and more. What makes this program such a pleasure is its simplistic, yet thorough, view of accounting. With this program, you don't need any knowledge of accounting to keep track of your accounts receivable and get a handle on your basic finances.

My DeluxeInvoices & Estimates is available on a CD-ROM, runs under Windows 95 and requires 8MB RAM and 26MB hard-drive space.

WISE, BUT SIMPLE

Simple Business Invoices & Inventory (SBII) from OWL Software (www.owlsoftware.com) is a shareware program that can be easily downloaded for a 30-day evaluation period, after which you pay $59 if you decide to keep it.

As its title suggests, this program not only focuses on the management of invoices but also on a company's inventory. To test OWL's program, I input a few customers and inventory items. Although the program's interface isn't very elegant, it proved incredibly simple to navigate. Within moments, I was inputting my fictitious company's products, services and inventory information. A thorough, well-written user's manual is easily accessed from within the program.

There's nothing fancy about the basic look and feel of the program; however, its extensive reporting capabilities, including inventory reports for costs of goods sold and stock on hand, are very useful. A sales summary report gives you an idea of what kind of sales performance your company has had over a specified time period, and there's a function for printing out your customers statements. Customers can be grouped (by sales-person or geographical area, for example) to allow for easy tracking and reporting.

SBII also works with OWL's Simple Business Accounting program, allowing you to import data from SBII. The program runs on Windows 95/98 and only requires 8MB RAM and 1.5MB hard-drive space.

INTUITIVE INVOICING

Invoice! 98 is also a shareware program, available for a free 30-day trial at BLS Software's Web site (www.blssoftware.com). Downloading and installing this program is easy. Its interface is much more sophisticated than SBII's and more closely resembles the polished look of MyDeluxeInvoices & Estimates.