These days you can find web-based invoicing and business management tools that are quite powerful, yet cost a monthly usage fee. The one I found used to have a $20 monthly fee, but got bought by Fiverr and is now free to use as you wish.
AND CO is a web-based tool, with a mobile app, designed for creators. It was recently bought by fiverr.com, which is a creator platform for freelancers. We’ll focus on what AND CO does and why I think it’s one of the tools I’ll stick with because it gives me so much for so little, or rather, for nothing at all.
Clients
I can create clients, send them pitches, contracts and invoices, all with the web-based platform or the mobile app. I get notified when the client views the invoice, and I can set up reminders within the platform of when I want to follow up and when the payment is supposed to have taken place.
Projects
Start projects, link up the client and send a proposal with a customizable contract for them to view, sign and send back. You can set it up for subscriptions, recurring payments, charge per hour or per project with a flat fee or per item, like when you are selling printed photos.
Invoicing
I can send invoices that arrive via email as PDF. The PDF has hot-linked Paypal and credit card gateways built in, so the client can click and pay which is truly one of the most convenient ways for them, and for you to get your money, and it adds value to your personal brand.
With every invoice, I can also attach files, whether it was for retouching or the photography, so the client is reminded what the invoice is for.
I can edit the invoice before sending too, so I can add details regarding taxes and information required depending on the country, and I can also change the currency, so it’s really a nomad’s dream and you can work from any place in the world and invoice on a global level.
Upload Receipts and Invoices Into the Shoebox
We all have that shoebox in the office or studio where all the slips get thrown into to dig out and log in a spreadsheet or give to your finance guy. But now you can scan documents by snapping them on your phone and it goes into a digital shoebox on their cloud which is safe an easy to get back to when you need it.
View In and Out
You can view graphs and analyze your year’s turn-over and see what months were your best to plan the next year’s marketing activities. For visual creators, it's great to be able to see your business in a visual way, and AND CO does this beautifully.
Tasks
The mobile app opens with your tasks so you can see at a glance which client needs attention. It’s a well-rounded way to do your client relationship management correctly.
There's More
You can do time tracking with the mobile app, you have a quarterly Tax Calculator and a Slack app that integrates which makes it easy to integrate with your team.
Conclusion
It’s a very intuitive client management tool, and it’s something I can’t find anything wrong with, except the fact that the scanning of documents are only photos and not as advanced at scanning as Dropbox or Evernote is, but I’m sure they’ll add it over time. We now have a tool you can run your business at no cost to your business. Get it here, get the iPhone app here and the Android app here.
This is really cool, I’m going to check it out. Thanks for sharing Wouter!
Excellent. Thank you for this info, I am just now on their web site.
I've been giving this a test run for about 3 months now and it's been pretty awesome. Along with all of the features and great app, the customer service is also stellar. Super responsive, easy to talk to (via chat within the app) and quick to work with you. I've been paying for Ball Park for the last few years, which just had a huge re-design itself, but it's looking like And Co might be the move! Thanks for sharing!
Yes, thank you for sharing this. I think I'm moving over from Billings Pro as it seems pointless to pay them monthly for software that doesn't sync properly, doesn't evolve and doesn't quite suit my needs.
Needs a lot of trust in Fiverr. Frankly you can find endless setups for Microsoft Excel or LibreOffice Calc to do stuff like this.
Because sitting and creating a massive Excel workbook is how I enjoy spending my time. This goes beyond what Excel can easily do.
It still requires faith in Fiverr. ;-)
hey guys, i'm trying to figure this one out. Is this a competitor for Tave or Studio Ninja CRM or alike software ? sounds pretty cool, nice work
Having used this extensively over the past week, this feels like a beta product to me. Can't change some elements of the contract, it randomly deletes blocks of text mid-writing and doesn't always update when you hit save, despite showing you that it has.
It's just too unreliable to run a business with right now.
Hello Graham, I will check if I have the same problem. Although I have no relationship with the people at AND.CO I have let them know through their in-app support service. Let's see if they can improve on it. I think the overall tool is a great business management tool, although I haven't used the contract section as much.
Hey there, Graham! Thank you so much for your feedback here. We are so sorry that you've been experiencing issues and we want to fix this for you. We haven't heard of this issue yet, so if you haven't already, please reach out at hello@andco.nyc or on the in-app Support chat and we will get right on it!