Wedding Registry Direct Blog

This blog is going to provide tips and tricks to be a better wedding vendor. These will include many aspects of the wedding business--today we will talk about invoicing. Specifically about a wonderful invoicing site called FreshBooks.

Concerns About Online Invoicing

I can hear you now:

Online invoicing? That sounds complicated and expensive, and plus I've already got invoicing taken care of the old way, and that has worked well for me so far.

Today's online invoicing applications are no longer complicated, nor expensive, and there are some good reasons that you might want to consider moving that direction.

Good Reasons for using Online Invoicing

Not that long ago, people didn't know their www from their http. However times are changing. The average age of people getting married in the United States is around 26 years old. This is a very important number because every year, you can look back and see that 26 years ago computers were more and more embedded in culture.

2008 - 26 = 1982

When people born in 1982 were in middle school, the web was already an integral part of their young education. They were buying books on Amazon and writing reports on their Macintoshes.

Every single year, more and more couples getting married are increasingly computer literate. They not only are as familiar with the internet as their parents were with radios, but they come to expect to use the internet more and more. They use the internet to buy shoes (http://www.zappos.com/), groceries (http://www.safeway.com/), and crafts (http://www.etsy.com/).

Couples these days also in larger and larger numbers are funding their weddings themselves, so the invoices go directly to that young, internet savvy couple. What better way to present yourself as the modern wedding vendor than to present them with a modern internet based invoice.

Online Invoicing is no Longer Expensive or Complicated

Many of you probably tried to use online invoicing at some point but found it hard and expensive. With the advent of Web 2.0, this has all changed. Web 2.0 has been an internet revolution that has created an immense wealth of better websites that are focused on being more usable and more affordable.

Two of the best of breed invoicing sites that have emerged are Blinksale and FreshBooks. Blinksale is a little bit easier and cleaner to use, but FreshBooks is more powerful and more flexible. Both of these sites have free trial accounts that let you have a limited number of free clients or invoices to test the system out.

FreshBooks even has the option to "snail mail" an invoice through their system automatically. This would work great for your clients who's parents are paying for the wedding and who you expect would prefer a snail mail version.

Features of Using Online Invoicing

Some of the benefits of using online invoicing include being able to have the system automatically send reminder notices for delinquent payments, being able to track and send invoices from the road or in internet cafes where you might not have access to your regular expense tracking applications. Plus, all of the data from the online invoicing sites can be imported into your regular expense tracking applications very easily. You can even accept payment through your merchant account or paypal through FreshBooks.

Conclusion

It is important to distinguish yourself and stand out to your clients. Making good impressions goes a long way to improving reputation and client referrals. I hope this information helps as you think about how to become more competitive in today's market. Good luck.