Joel,
I'm a sole proprietor and I use Quickbooks Self-Employed. It's not as robust as the full version of QB, but after making some adjustments it's worked really well for invoicing and electronic payments.
Clients can pay invoices by check (hardly any do) OR by credit card payment OR by bank transfer. Credit card payments cost 2.9% + 25 cents, but bank transfers are free. You don't have to accept credit card payments.
1. The money goes into my business account. There's up to a week lag between the client making the payment and the $$ showing up in my bank account.
2. I've never heard that it wasn't easy for my clients to use. My clients do tend to pay very promptly, and it's likely because the electronic payment option has made it so convenient.
3. I have my QB app notifications turned on, so I get notifications when they view the invoice and again when they pay it. The invoice automatically gets marked "PAID" in QB and I'm prompted to send out an electronic receipt. (optional)
4. Quickbooks S-E is less than $200/year when you bundle it with TurboTax. I think it's around $150/year without TurboTax.
5. Have had no issues with security.
6. Clients receive an auto-generated e-mail with a link to a professional-looking invoice, which you can personalize with your business logo. The invoice contains a link that takes them directly to an online payment option.
Hope this is helpful. Here's a link to an online article about S-E
here, if you're not sure it's right for you.
Edited to add: I see in their list of Pros and Cons that they consider SE to have invoicing limitations. Even though it doesn't let you set up client records, it does remember previous clients so that as soon as you input the client's name again, it populates the rest of the contact fields for you. This article also claims you "can't track unpaid invoices," which seems misleading. It's easy to call up a complete list of invoices and check their statuses. Plus, you'll get notifications asking if you'd like to send reminders to clients in danger of missing their payment due dates, or even those who haven't opened their invoices yet. Handy features.
Again, I had to adjust my expectations downward from what I could do with the full version of QuickBooks, but if you don't have any employees, it's hard to beat for the price.
Sarah
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Sarah Mannes Homstad AIA
Mannes Architects, LLC
Yankton SD
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Original Message:
Sent: 02-02-2022 02:34 AM
From: Joel Niemi
Subject: Online Client Payment Options
My client billings request payment by check (personal, cashier's) or money order. Being able to copy those checks (when they do come in) as a record of payment is favored by my bookkeeping support.
But in the digital world, it does seem to be a quaint request. Maybe it is time to accept electronic payments. I'm sure that many of you do so.
I think my requirements are rather simple:
1. Needs to go into my business account (so the person-to-person transfers are out).
2. Needs to be easy for someone to pay, from whatever account they want to pay from.
3. Should tell me when a payment has been made.
4. Should be affordable. Paying 3% to a credit card processor is something I want to avoid. 1.5%, maybe.
4a. If it could automatically charge the processing fee to the payer (many government online payments do this), that would be OK.
5. Must be secure. I don't want someone draining my account.
6. Ideally, when I send an invoice, there is a link built-in which the client can click and readily make payment.
What am I missing?
Which services seem to work?
What practices have you used?
Thanks,
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Joel Niemi AIA
Joel Niemi Architect
Snohomish, WA
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