SA Internet guru and open source advocate Alan Levin's company has developed an online invoicing system called Billy for the South African market.
Levin says it "takes the pain out of invoicing" for small companies, by providing a secure centralised online billing system. He should know: his company, Future Perfect Corporation, developed the system for its own internal invoicing. Now it has teamed up with Nitric Industries to sell it as a web service to local and international businesses.
So why invoice over the web? Levin says Billy makes invoicing fun, especially for SMMEs which have many clients with recurring payments. Say an ISP for instance, which needs to charge a monthly fee to 5 000 subscribers. Enter the customer details once, set a recurring invoice, and let the system do the rest.
Because the application is web-based, users can log in from any computer anywhere in the world. The system sends invoices via email, but you can also select to send them via post (at an extra fee) if you wish.
Levin is confident that their interface is intuitive enough for even newbie web users. "We're kind of web-usability freaks," he says. But the design could do with an upgrade, he admits. "This was developed by computer scientists, not creative artists," chuckles Levin. "We still need to skin it."
He says the system is built on an open source framework, giving his team the ability to respond quickly to user requests. The web app itself, though, is not open source. "I don't think anyone would want to compile it on their own server", says Levin.
Billy could face stiff competition from US-based Blinksale.com. It is arguably the most popular, or at least best known, online invoicing system, and works out slightly cheaper than Billy, even in US dollars. But its natural US bias could be its undoing for South African users - not to mention it being based on a foreign server with South Africa's notoriously fickle international link.
Billy is available on a 90-day free trial. The standard offering costs R250 per month.