As a freelance web designer, I normally like to do most tasks myself. Invoicing and client management being one of them. A few years back when I started my freelance business, I researched a TON of different solutions that would allow me to keep track of my client’s payments as well as manage all the contact details like phone numbers and emails. There was one thing that I absolutely hated about most of them. Almost every invoicing software I found had a “monthly fee”. I’m thinking to myself, “really? I’ve got to pay to keep track of my money now?” wooooow. No thanks. This makes no sense to me. If I buy software too keep track of my finances, I should be able to use it, even when I’m broke.
So I did what I thought was the most logical thing to do and forked out the 180 bucks for quick books software because that is what everyone uses, right? Mistake! Well, I installed it, started messing around with it and it was the most complicated software I had ever tried to navigate. There were simple tasks that took forever to do and seemed so complicated to setup. I literally needed to take a class to learn this software. oh yeah, there are classes out there too.
Another problem, I needed the information saved outside of my computer. Online. That way, if my computer ever broke down, I would never lose all that information. That can be very scary. The answer was, FusionInvoice. It had everything I was looking for. I have been with FusionInvoice since it was called My Client Base. It has evolved over a few years and get’s cooler every time. Here are a few things I love about FusionInvoice
One Time (small) Fee. It’s mine forever
No monthly payments. Ever.
Super easy to use
I don’t need directions to figure out how to make an invoice or add a client
Simple design
Nothing super complicated. Layout is simple and colors are coordinated to help you find and see what you want at a glance.
Self Hosted
That means I can keep track of all my clients, invoices and more online, and not worry about losing it. I can access it anytime, almost anywhere.
Responsive
I can use my phone or tablet to check a clients payments or whatever I need to see at that spur of the moment.
Invoice Tracking
FusionInvoice allows me to easily see when a balance is overdue, remaining balance a client owes, The dates they made a payment and with with payment method.
Customization
If there are certain fields that I would like added to client information, I can easily add those fields myself and they will be generated on all client dashboards. For payments, I can add different kinds of payment methods myself. I recently had someone pay with a money order, something I hadn’t seen in years. I was able to add that with no problem.
Quotes
I can create quotes and send those quotes to the recipient. They can then choose to accept or decline my quote with the click of a button. From there, I can turn a quote into an invoice once the time is right. Keeping quotes separate from invoices is a pretty awesome management feature for freelancers.
Client Management
Keep track of all your client names, emails, address, phone numbers, web addresses and more.
Invoices & Reoccurring Invoices
Easily send invoices to clients. They are able to print out a PDF for their records.
Instant Payments
Clients can pay their invoices instantly if you choose to connect paypal or stripe to your software. Once you have paypal setup, a button will display next to invoices and the client will be redirected to pay at a secure paypal page. FusionInvoice also can handle many different currencies and even has a built in currency converter which scans the most current conversion rate for you and displays that.
Customizable PDF invoices
Don’t like the simple design of the default invoice? Not a problem, FusionInvoice has options to customize your own invoice templates.
Reports
Run reports on a selected date to view different data about your payments, clients, invoices and more.
FusionInvoice has great support and I’ve loved using it and will continue to use it for years to come. It’s the perfect solution for freelancers of all kinds, web designers, developers, writers, and small businesses.
Visit FusionInvoice and Test the Free Online Demo
Hey Heather – just wanted to say thanks for the review, and I hope everything is still working out for you with FusionInvoice!
I use Fusion Invoice, my favorite invoicing software for the past 3 or so years, on an almost daily basis. I couldn’t live without it. Thanks a ton for your hard work and your awesome program Jesse 🙂
Great to hear such a great review about FI, we also use it for a long while now and totally agree with you Heather!
Is this still working for you? I’m considering getting FusionInvoice too. Did you need to purchase any SSL products to get it running?
What about the task scheduler – does that work out of the box or did you have to SSL into your server and setup a Cron job?
Also, what type of hosting do you have? Shared?
Thanks for the write up. If I figure this software out and like it, I’ll make a video demo showing how to use it. There’s very little in terms of tutorials online.
Of course it’s still working for me. It’s an awesome program and he’s even created extensions to go along with it. The one I have installed is for Expenses so I can keep track of my expenses in the business too. I’ve been using FI for years now. And trust me, I tried many other compeitors and none of them hold a candle to the simplicity and flexibility of Fusion Invoice. You also can’t beat the fact that you OWN it and it runs on your own server. Never having to pay anyone a monthly fee. I don’t use the task schedular, but I’m pretty sure you have to set up a cron job which really isn’t too difficult to do. I belive there are full instructions on the FI website. I have siteground hosting. Shared. View this article about my hosting. Please do create a tutorial. I would love to see it. I should make one too. Dang!
Somebody claims that Fusion Invoice has little to no after support. What do you say to that claim?
See the comments i nthe following video link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4TzsH3q38U
I myself have been using fusion invoice, back when it was called My Client Base. I’ve always had great support from fusion invoice and Jesse. but, I’m also a developer. 9 times out of 10 I’m able to answer most of my questions by reading the thorough and clean documentation he has on his site. In the event I’ve needed assistance, i’ve always gotten a reply whether it be from jesse and/or the forums. In the event we have discovered it was a bug (rather than user error) he’s always given me a solution to fix it and has fixed the issue permanently in future updates of the software. I highly suggest, because it is self hosted software, if you are attempting to install it yourself and you don’t know anything about FTP or databases that you should contact a professional IT person to do the grunt work for you so it’s working smoothly from the get go and you can get on with your business. Some of these DIY people who run into problems, don’t always know how to fix it or even how to communicate what went wrong. So, you can pay these crazy invoice companies a monthly payment for the rest of your life ($300 per year) to use their software on their website OR you can attempt to self host your own software (fusion invoice) and pay only ONE fee for the software and the possibility of hiring a professional. In the long run, you still win. In fact, you bring up a great point. I should probably email Jesse and tell him to list preferred professionals who can install your software for you in the event you don’t want to attempt to do it yourself from the documentation and tutorials.
Hi Heather,
I’m sure I’ll be fine. I’ve been working with FTP and databases for years. It cannot be any harder than a WordPress install.
It’s easier. haha Let me know if you need any help! Also, try sending support a question if you do have problems and see how support treats YOU. Let me know if you have any problems at all. It would be interesting to find out and compare.
Hi Heather,
Do you know anything about the adding of “recursive write permissions” as explained in the setup guide?
https://www.fusioninvoice.com/docs/Setup/Installation#step6
I’ve not purchased a FI licence yet but intend to.
It’s basically just changing your write permissions on the folders. And like he states here, if you have trouble with that, you should contact your web host. You can find out more about write permissions here.
Hi Heather, you’re mostly on the subject of invoicing here, but you also mention creating quotes.
We’ve created a nice free tool for creating quotations quickly, would be great if you and your readers had a look at it.
https://webdesignquote.beewits.com
Cheers
David
I STILL haven’t gotten around to setting this up!
I’ve been reading about some of the https provisions, and I’m expecting to get the mixed content warnings when setting up a TLS cert.
My host provides Let’s Encrypt, free, but I think I’d be better off purchasing a Comodo cert.
I poked around on the FusionInvoice forums a little and see people are fairly actively involved. That’s a good sign.
Now that Fusion Invoice has been sunset, what are you using for invoicing? Are you still using the legacy install of FI?
Just wondering.
Thanks.
JC.
It’s not exactly sunset. It will more than likely be handed over to someone new. But, I haven’t thought about it. I’ll have to check out what’s available out there if need be. Right now, FI works just fine. Is there anything you suggest?
The Fusion Invoice website suggests using InvoicePlane (https://invoiceplane.com/). Here is the text of their last post:
“Back in 2014 when free and open source FusionInvoice v1 moved to a commercial license as FusionInvoice v2, Kevin Kovah approached me about the possibility of carrying the v1 code base forward for the FOSS community. Thus, the InvoicePlane project was born.
For the past four years, Kevin has been volunteering his time, energy and skills to the InvoicePlane project which has since taken a life of its own. I’m very thankful of Kevin’s efforts in serving the FOSS community, especially since that’s where FusionInvoice started out.
I’m very happy to announce that Kevin has adopted the latest version of the FusionInvoice 2018 code base as InvoicePlane 2. Please give the InvoicePlane community a visit, say hi, and help their journey be an amazing one.
Jesse”
Personally, I have chosen to use Zoho Invoice — a cloud-based service. At my level of usage, there are no fees. I can put my logo on the invoices and Zoho can send recurring invoices as well as reminders for payments not made on time. In addition, Zoho integrates with PayPal and Stripe. Those are all I care about (at least for now).
Thank you for your response.
I did not realize until now that Fusion Invoice is back! It was reincarnated in early 2019! Did you know this?
Have you been using Fusion Invoice all along, even during its hiatus?