Invoicing with BambooInvoice
As a freelancer, something that’s probably more than just slightly important to you is getting paid. Most of us enjoy what we do, but job satisfaction doesn’t pay the bills or fund our vices. Obviously, to get paid we need to invoice clients.
To be honest, I do quite a bit of my work in the cloud. For the longest time that included using a Web-based, for-pay invoicing application called Blinksale.
Even though I like using Web-based tools, I also prefer to have as much of our data in my hands. On top of that, I’m an enthusiastic user (and promoter) of free and Open Source software (FOSS). It not only cuts my costs, but also gives me more flexibility.
While there’s nothing wrong with Blinksale, I needed a change. A few months ago, I looked around for a FOSS invoicing solution. I dug up a few, and decided to go with one called BambooInvoice.
BambooInvoice reminds me of Blinksale. It has many of the same features, and while the user interface is somewhat different it’s easy to adapt to BambooInvoice.
On top of that, BambooInvoice is fairly easy to install on a Web server and can be relatively easy to configure and customize. You’ll need a bit of technical know-how. If you don’t have that know-how, you might know someone who does. Or, ask your Web hosting company for help.
Note: This post does get a tad techie, but don’t let that stop you from reading on.
Getting going
To run BambooInvoice, you need a Web server running software called Apache and PHP 5 installed on it. You also need the ability to create a database. The database that BambooInvoice seems to prefer is one called MySQL. BambooInvoice also includes software that lets you work with other databases.
You don’t need to worry about installing all that software. Most Web hosting firms run Apache and PHP 5, and they give you access to MySQL. If you’re not sure about what your Web hosting service offers, send them an email.
To get started, download the BambooInvoice distribution file from the BambooInvoice Web site. There’s also a demo that you can fiddle with before installing it yourself.
Before installing BambooInvoice on a server, you’ll need to create a database and modify a couple of PHP files. Details about this are in the installation guide that comes with the BambooInvoice distribution.
From there, upload the BambooInvoice files to your server, then point your Web browser to the installation script (again, see the installation guide for details). After that, log in and create user accounts. If you have clients, you can add them to BambooInvoice by clicking the Clients link on the main dashboard. You can also customize your company information and add a logo to your invoices.
Creating invoices
That’s pretty easy. Click the New Invoice link, select a client from the dropdown list, and then click Create Invoice. You’re taken to the invoice creation view. Just fill in the blanks and soon you have your invoice.
Once you have your invoice, you can print it, generate a PDF file, or email the invoice to your client. The invoice is sent as a PDF attachment.
Changing the look and feel
To be honest, I really liked the layout of the standard Blinksale invoice. So, I decided to exercise my somewhat lame PHP skills and rearrange and re-label a few elements in the invoices. To do that, I edited the following files:
- /bamboo_system_files/application/views/invoices/pdf.php
- /bamboo_system_files/application/views/invoices/view.php
- /bamboo_system_files/application/language/english/bamboo_lang.php
What I did to those files is beyond the scope of this post. Mainly, my modifications involved changing the alignment and positions of some elements of the invoice.
If you’re a dab hand at CSS (Cascading Stylesheets, a way to format Web pages), you can also modify the BambooInvoice styleshseets to further customize your invoices. I haven’t done that yet, but might in the near future.
Exporting your information
My accountant likes to get a complete breakdown of my earnings for the year. And he likes to see actual revenue separated from the tax I charged. Luckily, I can do that with BambooInvoice.
How? On the Dashboard, click Utilities. On the Utilities page, there’s the item Export your invoice data to XML or Excel. You’ll probably want an Excel file — which you can (obviously) open in Microsoft Excel, in OpenOffice.org Calc, or in Google Docs. From there, you can format the information as you see fit.
Conclusion
BambooInvoice has, so far at least, been great to work with. It’s fast, easy to use, and lets us quickly generate our invoices. The fact that it’s an Open Source application makes it even more appealing to me.
I just want to point out again that there’s nothing wrong with Blinksale. It’s a good application. But BambooInvoice does everything that I used Blinksale for. I had a low-priced Blinksale account, so switching to BambooInvoice isn’t going to save me a load of money. The savings will be enough to pay my annual Web hosting bill.
And since I have the space and the supporting software on our Web server, why not use it?
Photo credit: johnridley from stock.xchng
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Thanks for the detailed write-up. We need more such success stories for open source software from actual users.
Take a look at my web site for other open source software for small businesses.
Ashok´s last blog ..ide The Open Source Tailwind To High Profitability
Hello,
nice article!
We are also looking for some invoicing app for Linux. One alternative about which I know is SimpleInvoices (http://simpleinvoices.org/), but it’s also written in PHP (I don’t know it) and it does not work (yet) with PostgreSQL.
Does Bamboinvoices work with PostgreSQL?
Sincerely, Gour
According the the BambooInvoice Web site, drivers are included for MSSQL, Postgre, OCI8, SQLite, and ODBC. You might want to contact the developer for technical details, or search the BambooInvoice forums.