Invoicing in WordPress need not be a nightmare any longer. With WP-Invoice by Usability Dynamics, your business can invoice clients directly from the WordPress dashboard quickly and easily.

There are very few solutions for invoicing in WordPress. Maybe people don’t think to fully monetize their blogs, or they use custom-built platforms, but in either case, the offerings for a solid invoicing solution have been few and far between.

WP-Invoice is a solution that can help your business fully utilize the power and customizing power of WordPress.

Let’s take a quick tour on how to make this plugin work for you, shall we?

Step 1: Installation

Installation is easy. WP-Invoice is available through the WordPress Plugins installer. Just click Plugins->Add New and search for WP Invoice. You want the result made by Usability Dynamics.

Step 2: Basic Setup

In order to start using WP-Invoice, you need to go through a First-Use Setup. This tells WP-Invoice how to interact with WordPress.

The Basic Setup is very simple. Configure it to your needs and select a page that the invoice will display on.

Step 3: Credit Card Configuration

In order to accept direct credit card transactions, you need a merchant account. You will insert the appropriate merchant account data here.

For those of you without a merchant account, your only options are to accept paypal or google checkout payments. You configure these options in Basic Setup. If you do not have a merchant account, uncheck the yes box besides “Accept Credit Card?”

Step 4: Issuing Invoices

Once you have configured WP-Invoice (it will not allow you to proceed without proper configuration) you will have the option to issue invoices. In order to issue an invoice, you add the email address of the client you are invoicing.

Once you have determined who the invoice is going to, you need to fill out the invoice. You are given every field necessary for a legal invoice, including billing information, methods of accepting payment, and customer information.

Your business’s information will be added into the invoice from the Basic Settings you worked with earlier, which is why it isn’t listed in the individual invoice.

Step 5: Invoice Tracking

Issuing invoices isn’t all you need to do when you’re billing clients. You need to track who has paid and who hasn’t. WP-Invoice offers a set of reports that do just this. The Invoice Statistics page includes data on your funds.

The three major reports provided include:

• Collected and Uncollected Funds
• Top 10 Most Valuable Clients
• Top Grossing Line Items

While there are other bits of information that would be good to know, these three are major concerns for the average company.

Invoices->View All is also an excellent way to know what invoices you have issued, when they were issued, and their current status. When used in conjunction with the Reports section, this is an extremely powerful tool for businesses to use. Those are the major features of WP-Invoice. While it could have more depth, it is clean, simple, and easy to setup and use.

Best,

Seth C

Thanks to meddygarnet for the photo.