Download Squad's fearless lead blogger, Grant Robertson, has got his hands full in another interview from SXSW. Grant gathered a group that represents everything you need to run your small business or freelance practice, from tracking your expenses, to invoicing clients, to managing your contacts. Check out this interview to learn more about what Shoeboxed, Freshbooks, Outright and Batchblue can do for you.

UPDATE: Check the comments on this post for some excellent clarification from Ben Curren of Outright about how all these services work together. Thanks, Ben!

We're starting something new at Download Squad: guest bloggers. This week, we're proud to welcome Saul Colt to the Download Squad family. Saul is "Head of Magic" at FreshBooks, a company which managed to bring the most boring task in the world -- accounts receivable -- to the web, and make it almost fun in the process.

I am very lucky because I have great parents who tried very hard to raise me with proper manners and values. I wasn't always the best kid and had to hear the following two warnings from my parents far more than I should have: "unlock the door or you will go blind" and "put the keyboard down...you are ruining any chance you might have for beautiful penmanship". Penmanship was a big deal in my house because even though my Dad is 6'4" and looks like a retired NBA All Star he has the kind of handwriting that Mavis Beacon could only dream of having.

My parents meant well but were only half right; I never went blind, but yes, I have horrible handwriting.

Thinking about the past got me thinking about the future and I wondered what I would be warning my kids about and I think the obvious answer is going to be Twitter!

Think about it...what is the real effect Twitter is having on society?

Give up?

Kids and grownups alike will start to not only talk, but think thoughts 140 characters at a time.

I know, I know, you are probably sitting reading this and thinking I am crazy -- but I swear I am already doing it. You can't imagine how many times I have stood naked in the shower (that is sorta a trick statement because I am always naked in the shower but I encourage you to imagine it anyway) dreaming up clever and witty things to post on Twitter.

Witty things like....

We meet a lot of interesting people in the course of running Download Squad; Developers, designers, engineers, entrepreneurs, executives.

Thinkers.

Far and away the best part of this job are the connections made and ideas shared with people on the bleeding edge of the web and software. Too often, we only get to share a tiny slice of those conversations and off-topic bits.

Starting today we're opening up Download Squad in a way we've never done before. Over the coming weeks we'll invite a few of those people, to which we've loved talking, to join us as guest bloggers on Download Squad.

This week's guest is one of my favorite goofball Twitter pundits. He's also "Head of Magic" at FreshBooks, a company which managed to bring the most boring task in the world -- accounts receivable -- to the web, and make it almost fun in the process.

At SXSW 2008, Download Squad had the opportunity to talk to Saul and Sunir from the online-invoicing service FreshBooks, and we were really, really impressed with their customer dedication and the overall vision for the service. Today, FreshBooks has just released public industry bookmarks, making it easy for freelancers and small businesses to compare their billables with others in their field.

The benchmarks are similar to the industry data FreshBooks made available to customers before, but instead of compiling metrics from the previous 18-months (and that information is still available), snapshots for segmented industries are available on a quarterly basis to anyone who is curious.

The data is anonymous, released quarterly and primarily sourced (which prevents survey manipulation of data). Right now, FreshBooks has industry bookmarks available for web professionals, IT services, design, marketing and service providers. This is a real advantage for users who might dabble in more than one area, say both web development and design, to keep tabs on how both markets are performing.

In economically uncertain times, knowing what others are billing and having the ability to watch trends can give a small business or freelancer insight into overall market health. If I see my billables declining (and I'm not purposefully taking on fewer projects), but the overall market is remaining steady, I know I need to start evaluating my business practices.

Even if you don't use FreshBooks for invoicing -- and if you haven't tried it out, give it a shot, its interface and ease of use is top-notch -- you can still take advantage of this information. FreshBooks' co-founder made a video explaining the benchmarking data in-depth here.

FreshBooks has free accounts for users who invoice fewer than three active clients and larger packages start at $14 a month.

Used to be desktop applications were essential to getting the job done, whatever the job may have been, large or small. Now, with all the nimble web apps to choose from, the idea of firing up a huge application for a small task seems almost, well, unproductive and wasteful.

Yeah, sure, no one is suggesting you do away with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Illustrator, Photoshop, Quickbooks and other heavy hitters. However, there are excellent tools on the web where less, in many ways, is actually more. Here are 10 of my favorites.

1. ScribeFire - essential Firefox add-on for bloggers. Allows you to to easily drag and drop formatted text from the Web into your blog(s), post entries, take notes, and optimize ad inventory, directly through the Firefox browser.

2. Firefox - great web browser whose charm lies in all those irresistible add ons that make the whole interwebs experience that much sweeter. Once you pimp out your Firefox, it seriously is difficult to function on anything else. Yes, there are the crashes and other peccadillos, but they're easy enough to overlook especially if you are truly in love.

3. Skitch - this is the best, quick image editor and photo sharing web app that is dead simple to use. For quick screenshots and sharing photos, you cannot beat it. For Mac only though. Sorry.

4. Gmail - I've done away with Outlook and Mail and rely on Gmail for several reasons: free, 7090 MB capacity, integration with Google calendar, Gtalk, great search functionality, and the portability is sweet.

5. Google Reader - free, powerful feed reader which allows you to share items with your friends and slog through all your news feeds as fast as your bleary eyes will let you. Bonus - I'm playing with Feedly (Firefox extension) which provides a magazine like start page of your feeds with complete Google Reader integration and Twitter and FriendFeed and more. So far I like, but Google Reader is still number one for now.

It turns out Zoho, Invoice Journal, Invotrak, and Freshbooks aren't the only companies offering online invoicing solutions. Intuit, the company behind the QuickBooks accounting software also has a billing solution, cleverly titled Intuit Billing Manager.

This free web service has been around since last year, but we first heard of it when WebWare ran an article this afternoon. Intuit Billing Manager offers users several templates for invoice creation, and you can slap your company logo on any invoice. You can also email your invoices to clients directly from the web site. They'll received a text based email with a link to an online version of the invoice. Unfortunately, there's no way for them to pay the invoice online using the service.

Once you've added your company info and created a few clients, you can create and send invoices in a matter of seconds. We do wish there was an easy way to save invoices as PDF files which look a little more professional than text based emails. We tried printing an invoice using a print to PDF application, but the results didn't fit properly on the page. Still, if you're not happy with the umpteen other services offering online invoicing solutions, you might want to check Intuit Billing Manager out.

SXSWi 2008: Freshbooks talks to Download Squad from Download Squad on Vimeo.

We've written about Freshbooks -- the online invoicing system -- before and have been big fans of their approach and service. We were even more impressed upon meeting Saul and Sunir, two of Freshbook's team members, at SXSWi 2008.

Grant talked to Saul and Sunir about the service, the importance of community and traveling from Miami to Austin in an RV and stopping along the way to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner with customers.

Oh day three, where the point values are doubled and the hangover is permanent. If you decided to skip SXSWi this year, joining the hip kids who claimed it was "too commercial" and "too over-hyped", shame on you. The only thing too commercial were the panels and, frankly, no one goes to those anyway.

So far today we've caught up with the guys from Bloxes, which although not a tech product is remarkably cool in its simplicity. They're also the same guys behind the uber-cool Songza, which embodies the exact same dead-simple "Why didn't I think of that?" logic. Interlocking cardboard forms may not be terribly sexy from a software perspective but, who can argue with the ability to build 3d forms out of recycled content. Bloxes are the things you use to build cheap structures in the ultra-hip loft office space where you create the future of the web.

During the day we also had a great interview with Mindbites, which we'll have encoded and uploaded for your vicarious viewing pleasure, soon. Christina talked with Chris Saad, the founder of Dataportability.org, who is also working on a new version of his other great idea, Particls. I caught up with Saul Colt from Freshbooks, the web app that finally brought the sexyback to invoicing all your freelance clients.

We'd also like to take a minute to address a pressing social issue, Public Relations consultants. These hardworking mavens of the tech universe are largely underpaid, over worked, and almost never get glamorous perks like party invites, expensive bottles of wine and the adoration of beautiful women. You've probably asked yourself, as you lay awake at night, unable to sleep for worry over their living conditions and the status of their multi-million dollar contracts, "What can I do to help?" Fear not, there is a solution. For only hundreds of dollars a day, you can fill the tanks of their luxury cars with precious gasoline, and make the difference between the regular coffee Seattle's Best and a latte at Starbuck's.

The numbers:

• Tweets about the Zuckerberg disaster: immeasurable given available tools
• Sandwiches consumed in Bloghaus: 134
• Times the guy in the press room breaks your concentration to ask, "Can I get you anything?": 17
• Shirts we've acquired to give to our readers: 2
• Approximate number of man-minutes Mark Zuckerberg and Sarah Lacy wasted with a useless interview: 112,500
• Newly coined words overheard : 1 ("Radool", Gary Vaynerchuk)
• Parties we skipped to bring you this content: 3 (well, 2.. we couldn't resist making an appearance at Gawker)
• Times we've left messages for Mullenweg about an interview: 3
• Times Mullenweg has left return messages with no schedule detail: 1

(Matt, we love you and we're only concerned that you're ok. Please, we're worried sick. We've called all the hospitals, homeless shelters and even the morgue. Where are you?)

There are plenty of ways for small business owners to create and track invoices. You could just fill out a Word template every time you need to bill a client, or you could use free software like Microsoft Accounting Express or QuickBooks Simple Start. But as with everything these days, there are also online solutions.

Invoice Journal is a simple web site that lets you create and track your invoices. There's a simple form for entering new clients, and another for sending invoices to those clients. Easy as pie.

Invoice Journal lacks some of the bells and whistles you'd get with a more complex service like FreshBooks. There's no time tracking feature for example. But sometimes you want a service that does one thing and does it well.

If Invoice Journal doesn't do it for you, we've also looked at Invotrak, another free invoicing startup, that quite frankly, works pretty much the same was as Invoice Journal.

[via makeuseof]

Freshbooks is on of a short list of companies invited to try out Amazon's Flexible Payment Service that competes with the likes of PayPal and Google's Checkout.

Toronto based Freshbooks provides an online invoicing and time tracking application. With the integration of the new Amazon payment system, their list of payment options for customers grows to 12. This payment service not only gives a greater variety of payment options, but gives customers a greater sense of trust since many people have already used, and currently use Amazon to buy products online.

Amazon's FPS helps developers get through the complex issues surrounding payments online, just as its S3 Simple Storage Solution does for on demand web storage.

FreshBooks rolled out their API yesterday, a little early it seems as they were outed by TechCrunch.

FreshBooks is an online tool that users can create, send and manage invoices, track time and accept payments with. This new API will allow developers and businesses to integrate the FreshBooks billing platform into a variety of services and solutions they may offer, allowing for a little streamlining to take place.

The FreshBooks API support materials include an update blog, scripts, samples and examples. There is also a forum to guide developers along the way in creating their timers, planners, and widgets.

If you're a small business looking for an easy way to store and manage invoices online, Invotrak could be the solution you are after. This simple online solution lets users input, track and issue invoices to clients. Its simple and straightforward navigational structures and tracking features make this an effective way to track past due invoices, and incoming revenue without using complicated software.

There aren't many steps involved in setting up a profile and getting up and running:

• Create a login
• Add client information - client name, contact name, address, email, and notes.
• Record invoice - select client from dropdown, set date, amount, term, and upload an invoice from your standard application like word or excel.
• Enter any invoice comments
• Email to client

Through the user interface, companies can then track what invoices are out and waiting to receive payment on. When payment comes in, a simple click drops the payments to the received category, and adjusts balances in the right column.

The service was created by Draconis Software using Ruby on Rails to manage and keep track of their own invoices. Draconis says that they make every precaution to ensure information that is stored under your profile is secure. That's always great to know, but what happens if something goes wrong? Or, knock on wood worse case scenario, Draconis goes out of business? What happens to our information then? That's the main concern I always have when storing my data online. You can't get much simpler than Invotrak though, however, we would like to see a way to export information to a spreadsheet application for desktop storage purposes.

Mac users, check out the Dashboard widget so you can easily catch a glimpse of your invoices.

For another simple invoice option look at Freshbooks.

The Invotrak service is free, and super easy to use. Check out some screenshots of the interface.

It's been a while since we've mentioned FreshBooks, the web 2.0 project tracking and invoicing app for freelancers and small businesses alike, but an upcoming v3.8 release is a great excuse for a refresher. FreshBooks is already pretty packed with features like creating, sending (via mail or email) and managing invoices, tracking time on projects, accepting payments and even sending late notices, so this v3.8 upate is more about refining features. Specifically:

• You can easily add staff members to any or all projects, making it far easier to bring on new personnel.
  
• Items can now be inserted into the middle of invoices, with AJAX goodness for updating the page and not interrupting your workflow.
  
• Timesheet details can be filtered by project or client, allowing you to track down just what you need.

The 'what's coming' list offers a bit more to sink one's teeth into, however, with features like quotes and estimates, future revenue reports and account statements to display all money owed and paid for a client.

FreshBooks version 3.8 lands Tuesday, April 17th 2007, and the actual update is scheduled to occur between 6:30 am and 8:00 am EDT.

Who wants to spend time and energy on accounting? Most people would rather wash the car or even scrub toilets. That might change soon thanks to Less Accounting.

The whole goal behind Less Accounting is to make book keeping as simple and easy as possible. The team behind Less Accounting, Less Everything, believes that users will never again use Quickbooks. In fact, they're so bullish, they see themselves changing the accounting landscape as much as 37Signals changed project management with Basecamp.

So how does it rank in real-life? Less Accounting provides users with three main categories, Money In, Money Out and Watch Money. Money In allows users to easily drop in sales leads, notes, proposals, invoices, and deposits made. Money Out has areas to input Expenses and Mileage. In the Watch Money category, users can get an account summary with bank account activity and view all paid expenses and deposits. It does not tie into your online banking; it's merely another tool to use for cross referencing. Through Watch Money, Sales reports can also be generated, as well as reports for both paid and unpaid invoices.

Everything is pretty straightforward to use, and the design is clean and very attractive. A few things that were missing in the beta test included some kind of tutorial or walkthrough of the application, and it wasn't very evident where data could be exported from reports, which I later came across on the top right navigation which might blend in a little too much. Aside from that, it wasn't too earth shattering. I would like to maybe see this application tie into 37Signals for contact and project management the same way that Freshbooks does, now that might be something to get people going on this.

Over the years I've done plenty of consulting, and I've always loathed every billing solution I've ever used. Either they locked me down to one machine (usually a Windows one) to do my billing and invoicing chores, or were labor intensive to a degree that was totally unnecessary.

Freshbooks is a breath of fresh air for the invoice weary consultants of the world. A simple interface allows you to enter invoice data, track payments and late paying clients, and even resolve disputes. Its an invoicing service that makes me want to generate a billable event, just to try it out!

A free trial allows you to manage up to three clients, and send unlimited invoices. The basic plan allows 25 clients for $14/month, which may be more expensive than some other solutions but, offers a great deal of flexibility that other options can't. Freshbooks even has plans to allow consultants to send paper invoices via snail mail, for your fussy paper-obsessed clientele.