Best Invoice Software for Small Businesses

It’s crucial to have the ability to invoice your customers quickly and accurately—and using invoicing software is the most streamlined way to do so. The best invoicing software for you will depend on your individual operations—what your business does, who your customers are, and what your budget looks like.

If your business is very small, or you’re just getting started, you might choose to use free invoice templates and keep track of your outstanding invoices in a spreadsheet. If you’ve outgrown spreadsheet organization, on the other hand, you might decide to use software designed specifically for invoicing or find a business accounting software that includes robust invoicing capabilities.

With the variety of invoice software options on the market, we’re here to help you simplify the search process. In this guide, we’ll break down 10 of the best invoicing software solutions for small businesses—so you have all the information you need to decide what’s right for your business’s needs.

When you’re trying to decide which invoicing software is best for your small business, you’ll first and foremost want to think about exactly what you’re looking for. Do you only need to send invoices? Would you prefer an accounting platform that included invoicing features? Do you want your invoice software to accommodate online payments? What’s your budget for this solution?

With a list of established qualifications, you’ll be able to quickly and easily determine if any particular invoicing software option can meet your needs.

The first option on our list of the best invoice software, FreshBooks, isn’t exclusively an invoicing solution. Instead, FreshBooks is generally considered an accounting software, but one with significant invoicing capabilities.

With FreshBooks, you can electronically invoice and collect payments from your clients, track and bill for your expenses, and collaborate with your subcontractors. Of course, FreshBooks also includes accounting features, but you don’t necessarily have to use these tools to take advantage of their invoicing software.

Overall, FreshBooks is not only extremely functional, but also incredibly easy to use—the setup and interface are intuitive, and their support documentation is excellent. Plus, FreshBooks offers one-to-one customer support via phone or email, Monday through Friday, 12 hours per day.

Additionally, although FreshBooks isn’t the cheapest option on our list, it’s by no means expensive. Pricing for FreshBooks starts with the Lite plan, at $15 per month, but this plan does limit you to five billable clients. The next level plan, however, includes 50 billable clients for $25 per month.

Ultimately, FreshBooks is a great invoice software (and accounting software, for that matter) for small but growing businesses. Plus, for a limited time, FreshBooks is offering 60% off for 6 months on Lite, Plus, and Premium plans when new users skip the 30-day free trial period and opt to buy now.

Similar to FreshBooks, Wave Accounting is accounting software that offers impressive invoicing capabilities. In fact, Wave is one of the only truly free accounting software options on the market.

With Wave, you can:

• Create and send customized invoices to customers
• Edit the logo, colors, columns, and content of your invoices
• Invoice in any currency
• Send estimates and turn them into invoices once approved
• Set up recurring invoices and automatic credit card payments for repeat customers
• Sync invoices automatically with your Wave accounting software
• Send invoices on-the-go with the Wave invoicing app

On top of these capabilities, Wave offers even more invoicing-specific features, as well as their general bookkeeping and accounting tools. Most notably, Wave allows you to accept online payments directly in your invoices with their Payments by Wave add-on. This pay-as-you-go tool gives you the ability to accept credit cards and ACH payments and syncs all payments within your Wave account.

Therefore, if you’re looking for a free accounting and invoicing software within a single platform, Wave is certainly going to be one of your top options.

If you serve fewer than 100 clients and are looking for a free, invoice-specific solution, Invoice Ninja might be the best choice for your small business. This open-source invoice software allows you to choose from four different invoice templates, integrates with more than 40 payment processors, and supports auto-billing and recurring invoices.

In addition, for only $10 per month, you can upgrade to Invoice Ninja’s “Ninja Pro” subscription. Ninja Pro removes the 100 client limit, gives you access to more invoice and quote templates, and generally increases your customization capabilities within the software.

Moreover, Invoice Ninja offers a mobile app for both Android and iOS devices that allows you to invoice on-the-go. This being said, as open-source invoicing software, Invoice Ninja also provides robust, web-based self-service tools. Plus, account holders can message direct support through the platform.

Due is both a free invoice software and a payment processor. With Due, you create and send an unlimited number of personalized invoices, manage multiple businesses, use multiple languages and currencies, as well as customize your invoice payment terms. Additionally, Due includes unlimited recurring invoices, unlimited clients, payment reminders, and automated late fees.

Although Due can integrate with Stripe or PayPal, they also offer their own payment processing and are known for their low transaction fees. Due’s processing fees start as low as 2.8% per transaction with no hidden or monthly fees.

Moreover, Due is user-friendly and offers time-tracking, reports, and analytics within their software. Finally, Due has a live support team available Monday through Friday, and they strive for a 24-hour support ticket turnaround time.

If you’re a busy freelancer or sole proprietor on the go, Invoice2Go might be the best invoice software for you. First, Invoice2Go lets you send estimates and invoices and accept payments (using Stripe), right from your phone. Invoice2Go is compatible with both iOS and Android devices and allows you to track your receipts and expenses, see the “read” status of the invoices you’ve sent, and run reports on your business’s performance.

Additionally, Invoice2Go has built-in expense tracking, time tracking, and payment reminders.

Plus, Invoice2Go is extremely affordable. Pricing starts at $2.99 per month for the Lite plan—with the three higher plans offering more invoices, estimates, clients, and other premium features—like phone support, client activity, and Xero integration.

Unlike some of the other invoicing software solutions on our list, Bill.com takes more of a bookkeeping approach to invoices. With Bill.com, you can easily manage your invoices (receivables) and bills (payables). First, Bill.com allows you to automate your payable processes—eliminating the need for manual data entry by giving you the ability to create an approval flow that’s customized to your business.

Additionally, Bill.com allows you to send automated invoices, which customers can review and pay from any device. You can also send personalized, automated payment reminders and even sync with your accounting software to update your books. Moreover, if you have customers who aren’t using online invoicing, you can pay a small $1.69 fee per invoice to have Bill.com mail invoices to your customers.

This being said, like the other solutions on our list, Bill.com also supports electronic payments, including credit cards and ACH payments. With Bill.com’s bookkeeping focus, however, it will be one of the more expensive invoicing software options. Pricing for this platform starts at $39 per user per month.

If you’re looking for an invoicing software that offers significant scalability and can grow with your business, you might consider Zoho Invoice.

Zoho Invoice lets you send estimates and invoices, accept payments, and track billable expenses, either on your desktop or using their mobile app. In addition, Zoho Invoice gives you the ability to create a client portal, where your customers can access their estimates, invoices, and timesheets in one place. Moreover, Zoho Invoices has built-in time tracking tools—allowing you to log and track time spent on tasks by creating a project, inviting staff, and assigning tasks.

All of this being said, however, on top of the range of features included in their invoice software, Zoho’s suite of other products makes this solution so noteworthy. Whether you want to add products as your business grows or bundle multiple solutions from the get-go, Zoho Invoice can integrate with Zoho CRM, Zoho Projects, Zoho Books, and more.

The best part? Zoho Invoice is free and includes 1,000 invoices per year. If you have additional needs, you can contact Zoho directly for assistance.

If you’re an architect, engineer, or attorney, BQE Core might be the best invoicing software for your small business. In fact, BQE Core is actually much more than invoicing software—you can manage your accounting, time, HR, and expenses with it, too—but it’s often the “next step” invoicing software for growing project-based businesses.

With BQE Core, you can track project time, mileage, and other billable expenses, and then quickly turn this information into an easy-to-understand invoice for your customers. Plus, beyond invoicing, BQE Core has a reporting feature that shows you how profitable your projects are, which can help you make better business decisions as your business progresses.

Unlike the other solutions we’ve discussed thus far, BQE Core prices their software by the role—in other words, an accounting-specific subscription starts at $22.95 per user, whereas a time and expense subscription starts at $7.95 per user. Overall, however, BQE Core is a quote-based service—meaning you’ll have to work with their sales team to find out how much their invoice software will cost for your business.

Like BQE Core, Harvest goes beyond invoicing and delves into practice management and project profitability reporting. Harvest isn’t quite as robust as BQE Core, but it’s still a great solution for project-based businesses.

With the Harvest time tracking and invoice software, you receive time and expense tracking, reporting, unlimited invoices and estimates, project budget alerts, timesheet approval, integrations with over 100 apps, phone and email support, and more. Plus, as your business grows, you can incorporate Harvest Forecast, which helps manage your team’s workload across multiple projects.

Pricing for Harvest starts at $0 per month, which includes two projects and one user. If you upgrade to the Pro plan, however, you receive unlimited projects, unlimited users, and only have to pay $12 per person, per month, or $10.80 per person, per month if billed annually.

Finally, the last solution on our list of the best invoice software for small businesses is Online Invoices. With Online Invoices, you can choose either to use just the invoice features, or you can enable different modules to get a fully customized accounting, CRM, or inventory management solution for your business.

This being said, in terms of invoice-specific capabilities, Online Invoices offers:

• Invoice management and tracking
• Invoice log history
• Quotes and estimates management
• Printed and online invoices
• Automatic recurring invoices and payments
• Online client portal
• Payments tracking and reports
• Pre-filled invoices templates
• Multi-taxes and currencies, among other features

In addition, Online Invoices has both simple and advanced reporting tools to show you how your business is performing. Furthermore, perhaps one of the most notable features of Online Invoices is the customizable client portal. You can brand the portal to your business and create your own emails and notifications. You’ll be able to provide your clients access to the portal so they can view and track invoices and payments.

This being said, the most basic level plan for Online Invoices has no cost, but it limits you to five clients, 15 invoices per month, seven subscriptions per month, 30 estimates per month, and two invoice layouts. On top of their free plan, however, Online Invoices offers three paid plans, the first of which starts at $9.95 per month. This plan significantly increases your threshold for invoices, subscriptions, estimates, and layouts.

At the end of the day, any of the 10 invoice software options on this list will be able to help you streamline your invoicing processes and collect payments from your customers quickly and easily. But only you can decide which of these invoicing software solutions—if any—is best for your business.

Ultimately, if you own a smaller business, you’ll likely want to start with a simple, more affordable option and upgrade within that system, or to another system, as your business grows. If you’re already running a larger business, on the other hand, you might look to one of the more comprehensive solutions that will allow you to manage multiple processes within one platform.

Overall, we’d once again recommend breaking down exactly what you’re looking for in an invoicing software—in terms of features, usability, accessibility, integrations, budget, and more—so that you can more easily compare any option to your preset qualifications and determine whether or not that particular solution can meet your business’s needs.