Invoicing with Vebio

After spending a good deal of time looking into invoicing services and writing about them last month, I got an e-mail from the folks at Vebio. After trading a few e-mails, I decided to use Vebio for my invoicing this month and see how I liked it. Overall, my impression is rather positive.

The Good

The core functionality I was looking for:

• Ability to set up recurring invoices.
• Ability to e-mail invoices directly to my clients (not require them to log in to a web site to get the invoice).

is there and it works. I uploaded my logo and it looks pretty good on the PDF invoices.

Navigation is pretty direct and there are no crazy required fields when creating a customer¹.

The pricing model has been updated since I last wrote about Vebio, however my usage still doesn’t fit very well into their pricing model. I’ve explained my usage and thoughts to them in the e-mails we traded so I know this is on their radar, but don’t know if they plan to make changes.

Vebio allows me to export my data quite easily and also supports data import (though I haven’t used this feature).

I have traditionally billed my clients monthly, including hosting charges and any development charges in the invoice. Vebio makes this really easy with their ‘Charges’ feature. As they occur, I can add charges for any of my clients. Then when their monthly recurring invoice is generated, it will (optionally) bring in any outstanding charges for inclusion in the invoice automatically. Very cool!

The Bad

Vebio is still a young service and there are still some rough edges. While everything I tried worked, the UI is a little less clear than it could be in places².

I was also a little surprised to find that Vebio was a new service because it feels more like a web 1.0 service. There are a number of places in the system that would be ideal for a little AJAX. I imagine that these will be the sorts of things they look at adding now that they have the base functionality in place.

Though I was able to attach my logo to the PDF invoices, I’d like an option for CSS styled HTML e-mail or plain text versions of the invoices as well. PDFs have the benefit of printing well, but they always feel a little heavy to me. I guess that is a personal preference thing.

Conclusion

While I’ve only used the service for this first month, I feel comfortable and confident in it. The dialog I’ve had with the Vebio team and the experience using the service thus far have given be a very positive feeling about Vebio’s offerings. Of the services I looked at, this is the best fit for me.

Full Disclosure

Vebio has an referral program that I have signed up for. If you’re thinking about using their service, please click on one of the links in this article to visit their site so that I get “credit”. Here’s that link again for good measure.

Vebio - web based invoicing service

1. I e-mail the invoices, no need for address, phone #, etc. [back]
2. This is actually where I’d love to come in if they were to bring me in as a UI consultant. The functionality is there, the screens just need a little attention to make the system more usable. [back]

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