The Best Way To Create and Send Invoices Using WordPress

The Story

When I first started Harmonic Design around 8 years ago (wow, has it been that long?), I knew nothing about how to invoice a client, accounting, personal finance, or pretty much anything related to financial management. When my very first client cut me a check and then asked me for an invoice and receipt, I had no idea how I was supposed to create one or what format it should be in! Luckily, my good friends at Shintani Giordan helped me out when Gary sent me a simple word doc with the instructions to “fill it out, then send to the client”.

And this method worked. Well, it worked in the same way that a skateboard works as transportation to work every day, and also as well as this poorly constructed analogy. It just felt like a very bulky, ugly, and counter-intuitive way to invoice a client – especially since I am a web design and development company! There must be a better way. So I started searching for existing services that could do what I wanted: automated line items and tax calculation, simple and quick to use, and professional looking. Unfortunately, 8 years ago, the only services really around were services like Mint.com and similar. These services wanted exorbitant amounts of monthly monies from me, and as a startup company, paying ~$50/m for an invoicing tool was out of the question. Worse, even though the systems I tested were somewhat easy to use for a tech guy such as myself, they were certainly not quick to use, failing some pretty basic and common user experience tests. So I decided to make my own.

I never intended at first to release my WordPress invoicing system to the world, it was just supposed to be something simple to use for myself. However, after years of using and modifying it, it slowly started to evolve into something more. After looking at the WordPress marketplace for competition, two years ago, I decided to completely recode and design my system from the ground up to become the easiest way to quickly create professional looking invoices from your own site.

VISIT HD INVOICE

The Features

This system was originally developed to meet my own invoicing needs, and as a tech company that’s been in business for almost a decade, my invoicing platform had to be robust, fast, secure, and of course, beautiful. Here are some of the features that I personally think are the most important and useful. HD Invoice is a very powerful plugin though, so if you are worried it might not be able to do something that you need it to, please don’t hesitate to shoot me a message!

Simplicity

I really cannot express enough just how easy HD Invoice is to use. The plugin was designed from the ground up to be as simple and intuitive as possible. If I did my job right, you should never be stuck asking yourself “how do I do this?”. Of course, if you ever do need a helping hand or need to ask a question, I have a perfect 5 star support track record on WordPress.org, so you can rest easy knowing you’re in the hands of a developer who truly cares and values your input.

Security

This is something that almost none of my competitors have done, and it blows my mind because I consider this a must-have feature: invoice link/URL obfuscation. In other plugins, the URL of the invoice might be something like yourdomain.com/invoice/customer-name/invoiceID. Sure, that looks pretty, but it’s very insecure as now anyone can guess the URL of a given invoice if they know the name of your customer. Imagine how bad it would be if each customer could see how much you are invoicing your other customers! HD Invoices tackles this problem by saving each invoice as a unique and secure permalink, ensuring that your invoices remain hidden and secure from prying eyes.

Automation and Speed

Unlike competitor solutions, HD Invoice automates everything it can and only forces you to input the information that is absolutely mandatory. Going from activating the plugin to sending your client their first invoice can be done in less than two minutes – even with eCommerce! All calculations such as line item totals and tax amounts are automatically calculated for you on the fly.

Multiple and Custom Tax Amounts

Living in Ontario, I have to charge most customers the hefty HST tax of 13%. So for my own installation of HD Invoice, that’s what I set the default to. But what about customers that live in a different province or country where the chargeable tax amount may change? With HD Invoice, it’s super easy to edit any customer and add custom tax amounts to them that will carry over to all of their invoices. You can even set multiple tax names and amounts if you are in an area where you need to do so.

eCommerce

Great, you’re able to easily and quickly create and send an invoice to your client, but how do you get paid for it? Here you have two options: you can send them the invoice and tell them to mail you a check, or they can pay their invoice directly from the invoicing using either PayPal or stripe. Set up of either payment processor takes only minutes (or seconds if you are using PayPal). Currently, once a payment has been made, you’ll need to edit the invoice to mark it as paid, but a major feature coming down the pipeline is that HD Invoice will automatically know when an eCommerce payment has been made and to automatically update the invoice for you!

So, so much more

I just highlighted some of my favorite features above, but HD Invoice is capable of so much more. Customer management, customer and invoice notes, partial payments, statistics and graphs, csv export, multiple invoice themes, and a dozen more! Once again, if you want to know if HD Invoice can do something you need, please don’t hesitate to ask away!