Software

Tag: Software

Equipment – New Data Capture System

Y’alright, so it’s about a week since I got my iPhone and thought it was worthy of doing a post about how my workflow has changed since then. I used to roll with my olde Samsung cell (on the right below) a Moleskine Notebook (that looks decidedly traveled in this image) and a Bic four color pen.

iPhone and Samsung with my Moleskine
New vs. Olde. How my life has changed since I switched to "the new hotness" - © Kurtis Stewart 2010

Now with the introduction of my iPhone I can capture all that info I got from cell messages/client phone calls in one device. I remember a thing I have to get done it goes straight into Remember the Milk (no more flipping through pages of the notebook wondering if I missed anything). Get an idea for a shoot BAM it gets fired into Evernote for future reference (it takes images, voice and text input so). Have some time to kill ? I can draft up a Blog post with Simplenote (I get and there it is on my browser). It tracks my spending so I think twice about getting that new photo accessory with Left to Spend and Ace Budget. I could go on but…

There is an app for that.

Hate me.

Going from a super base model cellphone to the iPhone has been a day and night change and I can’t believe I waited this long for it. Silly me. The one thing I will miss of my old system is the raw feeling of capturing an idea. Typing onto a touch screen doesn’t seem the same as writing it down with a pen. I’ll miss my Moleskine but at the same time it looks so much more professional to be pulling out an iPhone than my old ratty notebook, sad, but true.

Thank you to everyone who suggested awesome Apps for me to try out and here’s to many more in the future.

Equipment – …the result of iBiz vs. Billings 3

Since my last post about searching for an invoicing program I’ve finally made a desicion…

It’s official, I’m now a Billings 3 man. Now you’re probably wondering how it eeked out iBiz in the competition. There are a couple things that made it the better choice:

  1. Billings 3 has the option for you to send out an estimate and based off of that you can start the job and pull from those items depending on what you and the client agree on. Up until now I’ll admit estimates were on full scalp …now, nice clean workflow.
  2. It syncs wonderfully with my Address book, simple right? Something a lot of invoicing software I tried doesn’t get right.
  3. It has an iPhone App. I spend a lot of time on set with photographers, times change, you’re asked to pay for a courier/coffee/lunch I can keep track right there on my new iPhone. Get a payment from a client while away from the computer, input it right then and there on your phone.
  4. One click invoicing, click and BAM it’s into Mail and gone.
  5. One click statements, invoice overdue? Send a quick polite remainder to the client that the amount is still outstanding.
  6. Awesome Reports, again simple thing done right.  I can see how much I’ve collected over the year, what I’ve spent on expenses. Information that can help me see where my business is going and what I need to tighten up.

All of these were enough to get me to switch over. Still a bit of a learning curve as with any new software but I think this is a change for the better. Anything else great pops up I’ll be sure to let you all know.

A screenshot of the Billings 3 website, my new invoicing software - © Kurtis Stewart 2010

With any luck this is formatted properly with a tiny excerpt at the top and a remainder of the article below, crossing my fingers that WordPress plays nice on this.

Equipment – Invoicing Software

I've been trying to hunt down an awesome invoicing program for...well... ever since my second year at the Langara Professional Photo Imaging Program. Right now I'm using On The Job, initially it worked very well, it helped me track who had paid me and it sent out nice looking invoices (read as it looked better than the excel sheet I was using before...). The major issue I have with it is it doesn't sync to your Address Book and you can't run a report on how much you have invoiced this year, FAIL. It was a quick fix that served its purpose, you get what you pay for.

So now it's down to the final two contenders. In one corner we have Billings 3 and in the other we have iBiz. Billings 3 is just a nice slick UI with some great "blueprint" billing options, like if you have a set wedding package you know all your cost for one click and it's all there (assistant, shooting fee, travel, expenses etc etc). iBiz is nice in the fact that it syncs to a program called iBank which helps with expense tracking, something I'm always doing with Excel right now.

Stay tuned for who will be left standing after today's stress tests.

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