Now for the Web Invoice.

Lots of times online when people use Paypal, Clickbank, 2Checkout and Google Checkout or any of the other payment processors, we leave the receipt/invoice to whichever of those payment options, to send to the purchaser/client.

In many cases that is fine but in others, it is not.

A lot will depend on, if the people you are dealing with are in business and what records they need for their business.

What is received from the payment processors are, in a lot of cases not acceptable as invoices for business records purposes.

So we as providers of goods or services should provide an invoice to our customers/clients.

I was looking for a simple system for myself, something easy to use and not the accounting programs that are out there, something much simpler for me and the client, something the client could access online too, and me not having to make up the invoice, then PDF it to the client.

I found two such plugins for WordPress.  Very similar, one had extra features added to it.  That is the one I chose, not because of the added features so much but it just worked better.

The original plugin had been neglected, there were problems like, not working if there was a minus sign anywhere on the invoice, this was reported half way through 2009 and had not been corrected.  There were a few other little things like that but little things can mean a lot, like the plugin not working properly.

With the web invoice plugin I chose, it turned out that there were a couple of plugins that it was not compatible with, I only had one on my site, a redirect permalink plugin, which I was able to find a replacement to do the same job.

What these little ‘things’ did was not allow the invoice to show on the invoice page, so the client would see nothing.

There was another area where the  plugin I chose, won out too.  That was the client payment options, including ‘other/bank details’.  If you or your clients didn’t have Paypal or the other merchant facilities, then once you entered your ‘other’ and ‘Bank details’ into the setting up area, they would be automatically added to all your invoices.

It can handle recurring billing too, you need Paypal Business or one of the other merchants for this but it is there.

There is another very handy feature and that is the ability to ‘copy another invoice’.  This will set that invoice up for you and all you need to do then is add or take out details for the current invoice.

I’m in Australia and here we have to add the words “Tax Invoice” to all our invoices, plus note on the invoice whether GST (tax) is included or not.  I found this very easy to do.  There is a box to add the tax percentage and then that is added onto the total.

When the invoice is ready to send, the client is sent an email with a link to their invoice, it is all set up for you with the invoice email template.  If you add anything in the description box on the invoice, they will be included in the email, so right off they know what the charge is for, that is as long as you enter the details in the box.

On any invoice you can have the current items, the outstanding and recently paid.

If you are providing a service and that requires so much done each day or week, it is very easy to add that item to the invoice as soon as you finish, so the invoice is up to date as the month goes along.  Much easier than going through one of those accounting programs and trying to get your invoices ready for the end of the month.

If you are using Paypal as your payment processor, don’t forget the Paypal credit card option, then all you need to do is enter your Paypal email when setting the Web Invoice up and select Yes for the Pay Now button and there on your invoice is that button for the client to click on to be taken to pay you.

There is another really good feature and that is for the clients who are a little slow on the paying side……’the reminder’ email.

Nobody likes sending reminders or asking someone to pay but this is easy too, the reminder email is a template, just like the invoice email. You simply tick the client’s invoice, select Send Reminder from the dropdown box and hit Apply.

There is another email template and that is for the payment confirmation.  When you apply Paid to the invoice, the confirmation email is sent to the client.

There is also an option to print the invoice, which is a good feature, it could probably do with a little improving as it prints the webpage,  The client also has access to their own area for their invoices so they can go in to check them anytime they like, that is why they need the login and password.  If you don’t want them to do that, then don’t worry about the access, they can print the invoices off as they go or could ask you to resend them.

Okay I’m going to give you both links

This is the one I found worked better for me and the developer is active
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/web-invoice/

This one may work for you, it didn’t for me and past problems haven’t been addressed.
http://twincitiestech.com/services/wp-invoice/