As you take on more clients it becomes increasingly difficult to keep accurate track of costs and the hours you should be billing for.  Keeping poor records will ultimately start to cost you money, thankfully there are a great selection of tools available to help.

There are more to benefits to these apps than just staying organized. Some of these apps enable small businesses to take the kind of control of their finance that was once just the preserve of big businesses with dedicated accounting departments.

Below we’ve compiled a list showcasing what we believe are the best 20 invoicing tools for web designers/developers in no particular order. However a word of warning’ be sure to choose your app with caution, once you have started using one it can be difficult to migrate if you later encounter limitations. Always sign up to free trials where available and compare a few alternatives before making a decision.

Billing Boss

Billing Boss allows anyone from freelancers to a small businesses to quickly and efficiently bill clients with an unlimited number of invoices. This app lets you add as many clients as you need to your database and help you stay organized by instantly saving and cataloging you invoices.  Billing Boss seamlessly integrates with Paypal so you can reach clients worldwide with its great support for multiple currencies.

Simple Invoices

Simple Invoices, a static web-based invoicing application that allows itself to be installed on a web-sever or a Windows PC. It can also be hosted by one of the following service providers as well.

LessAccounting

Not only can you invoice but you can easily keep track all of your business expenses with LessAccounting. You can put organize your expenses into categories, add notes and even upload a pictures of your receipts for each expense.

FreshBooks

Streamline your business with recurring invoices. Set up auto-billing to automatically charge your client’s credit card. Quickly and easily invoice clients in any currency. Create your invoice, select your currency and you’re done.

Blinksale

Blinksale is a great looking web application that has a powerful feature set. Blinksale has a quaint option that allows you to send invoices via snail-mail, whatever that is!  You can also customize your invoices by uploading your very own logo or if you have some time on you hands design your own invoices with CSS.

Billing Manager by Intuit

Billing Manager is a web-based invoicing solution that lets you create invoices, send professional estimates, and helps you get paid online.

In addition to online invoicing and estimates, Billing Manager lets you send PDFs of your invoices, send reminders to your customers, process eChecks, accept all major credit cards online and choose currencies.

Simply Invoices

SimplyInvoices integrates seamlessly with Basecamp so you can easily invoice clients the exact amount of time you have spent on a project..

Cashboard

Quickly invoice for time logged against a project, materials, or other goods. Create invoices for your projects with one mouse click, or set up recurring invoices to bill your customers automatically.

Bill My Clients

BillMyClients is a hassle-free way for businesses to quickly & easily create and print invoices and bills online. It makes it a breeze to send those same invoices via e-mail and the United States Postal Service – all without leaving your desk.

The Invoice Machine

The Invoice Machine takes a new clever approach to online invoicing. It’s beautiful and simple-to-use interface makes producing professional looking invoices a very pleasant experience. Create new invoices in a snap. Set options like currency, taxes, shipping, discounts, language, notes and more.

InvoTrak

Invotrak is a full-featured online invoicing and timesheet tracking application that can save you time and money. It’s also includes many of the features you need to speed up your billing tasks.

BillingOrchard

BillingOrchard provides enterprise electronic billing solutions through a simple, secure interface, supported by top notch service and priced for small businesses.

Invoice Journal

Use the client list to enter your customers into the Invoice Journal system and easily retrieve them later when you need them. When its time to create a new invoice simply type your clients name, company name or email address and Invoice Journal will show you which clients match your criteria.

Browse, sort and search all of you invoices quickly and seamlessly. Since there are no limits or restrictions on the invoices you create there is never a need to delete or archive invoices.

SmartInvoice

Smart Invoice is an easy to use, full featured, web based billing and time tracking system designed specifically for small businesses, freelancers, and other independent contractors. Use the recurring billing feature to send regular invoices to clients automatically – no extra effort required.

MarketCircle

Billings powerful application for the Mac features with stylish designs so you can send elegant invoices right out of the box. Choose from any of the customizable templates, or create your own with the built-in WYSIWYG designer. Either way you’ll send polished professional invoices in seconds. Billings also has a fantastic looking iPhone App.

InvoicePlace

Manage your billing and quotes from the office, home or on the road. Create invoices and quotes for any type of product or service. Use Invoiceplace no matter what you sell be it paint, jumping castles, hardware supplies, or cell phones.

Time 59

Time59 is web-based software that let’s you track billable time and expenses, create and e-mail invoices, and record payments. Time59 keeps everything perfectly organized. Critical details and totals are instantly available. Time59 on your mobile device is included FREE with your account.

PaySimple

With PaySimple billing and receiving payments is safe for you and your customers, all information is securely stored with 256-bit encryption and SSL protection.

ProfitTrain

With ProfitTrain you’ll easily be able to keep contact information up to date, store reoccurring services and products, send estimates and export to spreadsheet for more exotic totaling.

Harvest

Harvest lets you and your staff track time and send invoices from one integrated application. Use Harvest’s visual reports to see the distribution of your company’s resources at a glance. Create an online invoice and easily bill your client. Get paid faster by collecting online payments from your clients instantly and securely via the web.

Do you know of any other invoicing tools that work great for designers/developers? or have any good or bad experiences with any of these apps?  Please contribute and share with us what you’ve found.

Today’s news focuses on only one single design resource… and what a FREE resource it is! It is The User Interface Design Framework from webalys.com, which is basically a huge design framework that consists of a complete GUI library, a set of of 260 minimal vector icons and a massive Illustrator style library. This is a must have resource for any professional designer.

License: The framework has been released as a complete web designer kit for free, even for commercial use.

You can download the UI Design Interface here: User Interface Design Framework
You can view the details of the framework below:

GUI Library

The GUI elements are based on common interface patterns (accordion, expandable panel, progress bar, tags, slide show…), that integrate usability good practices and are perfect for wireframes and interface design.

Vector Icons Library – 260 Minimal Icons for Free

This pixel precise icon collection have been created specifically for interface and web designers. They are based on a precise 16 pixels grid, which means that they stay clear and have a crisp look even at small sizes.

Graphic Styles Library

The Graphic Styles Library consists of 200 graphic styles for buttons, navigation menus or panels and 330 swatches harmonized with graphic styles for backgrounds, typography and other GUI interface elements.

You can download the UI Design Interface here: User Interface Design Framework

By Paul Andrew (Speckyboyand speckyboy@twitter).

HTML5 is gathering more and more momentum, and is looking very likely to be, in the near future, the language of choice for developers, replacing Flash. As such, in todays news round-up we focus on some fresh HTML5 resources, articles and tutorials for you to enjoy. Here they are:

The HTML5 Roadmap, Past and Present

The most publicized reason for the push to build web apps in HTML5 is that Flash is not allowed on the iPhone and the iPad, but the reasons go deeper and more technical than that. This article gives an insightful overview of how HTML5 has rapidly progressed in the last few years.
The HTML5 Roadmap, Past and Present

Build a HTML5/CSS3 Website Layout Without Images

In this tutorial you will learn how to build a decent-looking HTML5 & CSS3 website that doesn't to rely on any images for the layout elements.
Build a HTML5/CSS3 Website Layout Without Images

How to Create a Drop-down Nav Menu with HTML5, CSS3 and jQuery

In this tutorial, you’ll take a look and see what you can achieve with HTML5 and CSS3 when it comes to the staple of current web sites: the humble drop-down navigation menu. You’ll also use jQuery to handle the effects and add the finishing touches.
How to Create a Drop-down Nav Menu with HTML5, CSS3 and jQuery

The State of HTML5 Apps

The State of HTML5 Apps

HTML5 Canvas Cheat Sheet

HTML5 Canvas Cheat Sheet

By Paul Andrew (Speckyboyand speckyboy@twitter).

Web design is anything but easy, at every turn there is always a fresh problem – demanding clients, new technologies to learn, a debuggable bug, fighting with browsers that don’t like you… the list goes on and on.

That is why we always love it and are very grateful when a developer devotes a huge chunk of there time and develops a tool that makes developing that little bit easier. You will find four such tools below.

CSS3 Button Maker

To use this Button Maker thing, you just adjust the settings until you have a nice looking button, then press the button and it will give you the CSS. Copy and paste at your leisure. Now you can use the class name “button” on HTML elements to make them look like buttons.
CSS3 Button Maker

HTML5 Starter Pack

This HTML5 Starter Pack is a bit different than a template. It has been built with one guiding principle: scalability. As a result, you can use this to get started on your portfolio page or the next Facebook.
HTML5 Starter Pack

Tiny Fluid Grid

Inspired by the 1kb Grid, the Tiny Fluid Grid is a super simple fluid layout generator. Its download comes with a index.html with demo code, and the grid.css containing the CSS for the grid that you have created.
Tiny Fluid Grid

Smokescreen

Smokescreen is a new open-source project aimed at converting Flash to HTML5 to run where it previously couldn't (iPhone and iPad).
Smokescreen

By Paul Andrew (Speckyboyand speckyboy@twitter).

jQuery as expected is a very popular tag on Answers. It is the greatest and possibly easiest Javascript framework to work with, but of course everyone at some point needs a little help with it or even just a query.

Have you tried posting a jQuery question on Answers yet? All you have to do is post the question and when someone does answer your ‘jQuery query’ (I love the way that sounds!), you will receive an email notification, and hey presto your solution is there waiting for you!

Couldn’t be easier, could it?

It has been yet another good week on Answers, loads of great questions and lots of even better answers from our huge 450+ members. Thanks for all your support!

“Have you asked a question yet?“

What’s the best way to learn jquery?

This question was asked by Ralph.

Answer from Paul Andrew:

Downloading plugins and following tutorials will only take you so far – what if you need something that simply hasn’t been done before? You would have to develop it yourself, you would have to learn jQuery from the begining and start with the basics.

In the Woods offers a video series (15 videos) that will teach you PRECISELY how to use the jQuery library in your own projects:
jQuery for absolute beginners.

Spyre Studios has written an article about how to how to get started with jQuery, and actually writing your first script: Simple Guide: How To Get Started With jQuery (Part One) …

… As has Six Revisions: Getting Started with jQuery …

… There is also
Learning jQuery, a multi-author blog offering jQuery tutorials and demos. They have tutorials for all skill levels, and each entry is categorized by level of difficulty…

… And finally
jQuery for Designers is another cool resource for learning jQuery.

Can libraries like Jquery replace everything you can do with Flash?

This question was asked by Rjene.

Answer from Prajwal:

Definitely not everything, especially when it comes to advanced motion effects, manipulation of images (beyond a certain extent), even user input to a certain extent..
jQuery definitely cannot replace flash…

Answer from Michael Mior :

However, for the practical purposes of most websites, you can usually get away with using jQuery over Flash.

Animations on the web – Flash or jQuery? Pros & cons?

This question was asked by Filip Biel.

Answer from Alessio:

Well, Flash is becoming less and less popular among web designers because Flash movies are so heavy and because not everybody has Flash (or the latest version of Flash) installed. Similarly, not everybody has Java enabled on their browser, but it’s default so more people would see a jQuery animation than a Flash one. So, I’d say going with jQuery would be the stronger choice. JQuery tends to be lighter and thus loads faster and easier on bandwidth as well.

How Can I Validate My Forms (strictly) Using jQuery?

This question was asked by Pablo G.

Answer from Alessio:

Have you tried the jQuery form validation plugin?

How can i create a nice javascript calender?

This question was asked by Vanart.

Answer from Nikowillson:

With the following code you’ll be able to create a JS powered calander that will shift to the relevant month when you click on the buttons…good luck

function writeCalendar(){
var calString = '';
calString += '';
// calString += '' + months[this.month] + ', ' + this.year + '';
calString += '<';
calString += '<';
// calString += ' ';
calString += '' + months[this.month] + ', ' + this.year + '';
calString += '>';
calString += '>';
calString += '';
calString += '';
calString += '';

return calString;
}

Unanswered Questions

There is only one question that has been left unanswered this week which is just amazing!
So, can you help poor Melissa Davis Nichols with her unanswered question:

1. I’m looking for an easy Flash Loader tutorial?

Thanks again, firstly to everyone who asked a question, but most importantly thanks to everyone that took the time to offer always helpful and useful answers.

Even if you are a seasoned professional photographer the chances are you will from time to time need one or maybe all of these cheat-sheets, whether it be to remember a shortcut key when photo editing or it could a simple reminder when taking a difficult or tricky shot.

For today’s news we have a great collection of useful Photography cheat-sheets, visit the resources for the full articles and download pages.

Helpful Photography Cheat Sheets to Make Your Life Easier

Here is a list of all the cheat sheets available from this resource: Portrait Lighting Cheat Sheet Card; The Photographic Cheat Sheet by Gordon McKinney; 49 Photo Tips Cheat Sheet; Light Falloff Cheat Sheet Card; Photography Cheat sheet; PhotoBert Cheatsheets; Reflector Card Cheat Sheet.

You can download the all of the photography cheat sheets from here: Helpful Photography Cheat Sheets to Make Your Life Easier.

12 Extremely Helpful Photo Editing App Cheat Sheets

Here is a list of all the cheat sheets available from this resource: Adobe Photoshop CS4 Keyboard Shortcuts; Photoshop Lasso, Brush and Pen Tool Cheatsheets; Photoshop Elements 7 For Dummies Cheet Sheet; Photoshop Toolbox Reference; Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Cheat Sheets.

You can download the all of the photo editing cheat sheets from here: 12 Extremely Helpful Photo Editing App Cheat Sheets.

By Paul Andrew (Speckyboy and speckyboy@twitter).

As designers and developers we generally worry about the aesthetics and behavior of a website. But what about the server it runs on that has made it all possible for this site to operate swiftly? In order to provide your clients with the best possible service you should ensure that their websites server is running smoothly on a regular basis, and what better way to do so then with intelligently designed tools that can notify you of any disturbances or irregularities that your websites server may encounter.

The following tools manage and monitor various levels of quality relating to the uptime and security of your servers. These tools will help you identify any problems so that you’re able to resolve the issues as quickly as possible. Take a look at the ones we’ve compiled below, and then test whichever ones appeal to you the most in terms of functionality and reliability.

Webmetrics GlobalWatch

GlobalWatch is an interactive tool that allows you to monitor a variety of web applications and sites. It digs deep into the root of the problem and quickly identifies and diagnoses any downtime errors, and poor performance levels in detail reports and customizable alerts. With this tool you’ll always be informed of any of your websites irregular performance.

Pingdom

Pingdom ensures that your website is accessible and responds accordingly consistently. It’s able to monitor uptime, various levels of performance, multiple applications, FTP servers, email servers and any application that’s accessible from the Internet. Pingdom provides you with detailed email and SMS alerts if anything is wrong. It also lets you read results in the form of charts and tables that are extremely legible. This tool is also available as an iPhone application.

McAfee Secure

McAfee Secure strategically monitors any and all of your severs that may be at a potential security risk. This powerful tool will protect your servers against security breaches, the end-users from being subject to identity theft, credit card frauds, viruses, scams, and your dose of annoying spam. Your site will be in good hands since McAfee will test it and certify it on a daily basis. McAfee currently monitors and certifies over 80,000 websites ranging from a wide scope of business sizes and structures.

Nimsoft Monitoring Solutions (NMS)

NMS actively monitors your servers and any applications found on the servers. Everything from CPU to memory, server resources, even logs and more are accurately monitored and recorded. Being quick and easy to install is just the beginning, NMS is also a lightweight application that has the power to monitor thousands of servers at a time. NMS is also very easy to use, alerts and details are always clear, and it also visually shows you your servers interconnected, color-coded indicators, and the response times from server-to-server. It’s a great choice no matter the size of your servers.

Simple Server Monitor

Simple Server seems to understand the importance of having a valuable application that can effectively monitor your servers. It’s designed for those on a small budget and offers a free 30-day trial. Useful features such as the monitoring of uptimes, performance levels, and FTP/HTTP/POP/IMAP servers (to name a few) are included. It’s ideal for those who wish to receive updates and alerts within their desktop in the form of pop-up messages, SMS format, and charts.

Solarwinds Orion Network Performance Monitor (NPM)

Orion’s NPM tool monitors all of your servers and ensures that their running without any problems every minute of the day. It also monitors all of your routers, switches and wireless access points within your network as well. It comes with a fairly easy set-up and the support of 100′s of expert network engineers. It’s extremely easy to use and Orion can be up and running in less than an hour right after it’s been downloaded!

ENVIROMUX Server Environment Monitoring System

Nagios hit the ball out of the park when they developed powerful tool that monitors your servers temperature, humidity, liquid presence, motion, intrusion and vibration all to ensure that your server’s in tip-top operating capacity. You’re able to create custom alarm signals, monitor and manage security conditions over IP, monitor/ping up to 64 IP network devices, and manage your servers using a single attractive web interface for all systems connected.

SiteUptime

SiteUptime works like clock-work by monitoring your website 24/7 365 days a year. SU provides free and advanced remote monitoring services that notifies you when your servers are down via email and or SMS text messaging. This will ensure that the errors are sent to you with priority and speed so that you’re able to quickly fix any problems with your connections. SU allows you to view detailed statistics about your website’s availability and server response times anytime you’d like. Overall, it’s a very useful multiple monitoring tool for servers that runs tests on specific intervals (every couple seconds).

Further Resources

• How to Easily Monitor your Web Server Using PHP
• Setp-by-Step: Monitoring and tuning your IIS Web servers
• Optimizing Apache Server Performance
• How to Monitor Server Availability

There are an abundance of free tools available for every conceivable job, the only problem is you can never find the perfect one! To help you find that exact tool we have compiled a list of resources offering all of your web app solutions – as the saying goes, “we have an app for that”!

20 Fantastic Usability & Conversion Analysis Tools

Usability and conversion analysis tools, such as the examples listed in this article, will help you design or redesign your site to make it easier and enjoyable for visitors to navigate around. Such tools can be expensive, but they needn’t be. Amongst the pricier ones listed you’ll find many that are cheap or completely free to use.

20 Fantastic Usability & Conversion Analysis Tools

20 Great Project Management Tools

Project Management is often defined as the science of organizing, planning and managing the available resources of a particular organization to successfully complete a project, which aims to meet the organization’s goals and objectives.

This type of system will be useful in ensuring the timely and effective output of a project. Furthermore, the implementation of such a system will give you greater productivity in every project.

20 Great Project Management Tools

30 Twitter Tools to Help Grow Your Community

With Twitter, professionals are able to avidly share, distribute, and promote information with the people who are following them. After all, finding an effective way to spread content throughout the web is becoming scarce these days.

However, setting up a Twitter account and posting a tweet isn’t the end of the line. You need to know how to grow and manage a community of followers that will not only will be interested in what you have to say, but they will also want to share with others the things you tweet. This is the idea behind a solid community.

We can take this into account, and apply the same concepts to the success of our Twitter communities.

30 Twitter Tools to Help Grow Your Community

By Paul Andrew (Speckyboy and speckyboy@twitter).

Color is the integral element with design. It can bring a bland idea to life, it can revitalize a boring and dreary web site and can bring lifeless art to, well, life. Why is it so powerful? Because different colors can invoke different emotions with different people, thus altering our perception of how we see art.

In today’s news round up we have collected some color related articles, some tools for your inspiration and learning.

Color Theory for Designers, Part 1: The Meaning of Color

Color in design is very subjective. What evokes one reaction in one person may evoke a very different reaction in somone else. Sometimes this is due to personal preference, and other times due to cultural background. Color theory is a science in itself.

This is the first in a three-part series on color theory, were the author discusses the meanings behind the different color families, and gives some examples of how these colors are used.

Color Theory for Designers, Part 1: The Meaning of Color

25 Color Combination Tools for Designers

There are a lot of online tools to help create a beautiful color combination. They all vary slightly to suit each designers with different preferences on how they work. In this article they collected together 25 of the best color tools, with a quick overview on each to help you decide which is best for you.

25 Color Combination Tools for Designers

Colorgorize the Web

The first version of Colorgorize was published in 2007 as a project at the University of the Arts Bremen, Germany. Back then, Colorgorize was a Firefox add-on that could display similar colored websites to the website currently opened. Colorgorize has since changed to a website recently to allow it to reach a bigger audience. Today, thousands of websites are already analyzed and can be searched by colors.

Colorgorize the Web

What If Computer Graphics Ran Under Crayola's Law?

What If Computer Graphics Ran Under Crayola's Law?

By Paul Andrew (Speckyboy and speckyboy@twitter).

CSS is nearly used on every modern website design. However, having to write and structure CSS code from scratch every time you have a project is extremely time consuming. Below, we present you with 13 amazingly useful CSS tools for hacking on writing time consuming code. We tried to place emphasis on unknown tools that every developer should have a looksy at, however don’t be surprised if we included a few known sources.

We encourage you to find use of these tools and find ways to improve your development process. After all, developing websites shouldn’t be a task, it should be fun and rewarding. If there are any new tools, please feel free to share with us in your comments.

CSS Cheat Sheets

As simple tool as this may seem, the CSS Cheat Sheet can be very useful. As developers we don’t always know every tag and piece of code in the book by heart, this is where this one-page reference sheet that lists all selectors and properties comes in handy. The cheat sheet also includes an effective visual example of the box mode and unit reference for CSS units.

Telerik Visual Style Builder

Telerik Visual Style Builder is an online CSS customization tool that allows you to easily, point-and-click customization of skins for the RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX. This visual style builder eliminates any need to have working knowledge of the front-end HTML and CSS structure of the RadControls to create custom skins.You’ll have complete control over the elements of the RadControls’ skin and allows you to develop a custom built skin in very short time.

This tool is ideal for ASP.NET developers. Probably one of the easiest ways to create a RadControls skin. This tool also satisfies your need for ready made menus and images for calendars and such.

CSS Type Set

CSS Type Set, a hands-on typography tool which allows the every day designer and developer fully test and learn how to style Web content. You’ll be able to test different font-styles throughout a piece of text and also allows you to select a font-style and easily copy/paste into your stylesheet.

CSS Frame Generator

This tools lets you input your XHTML code in a box displayed on the front page, the code will be sent back to them and they will return your code with a corresponding CSS frame. This service is completely free This is great for the developer that’s big on multi-tasking.

Grid Designer

Grid Designer is a simple and basic tool that will help you create solid layouts. This tool will enable you to set columns, typography and export the HTML and CSS code. You even have the option of bookmarking every design in order to come back and edit it at a later time.

MoreCSS

MoreCSS is like a designer placing a JavaScript library in paradise. It allows you to effectively write code for applying automatic hyphenation and creating pop-ups, tool tips, tab menus, zebra tables, advanced list styling and cross-browser opacity style. The only requirement this tool has is the use of regular and simple CSS.

YAML Builder

This builder is designed for quick and effective development of CSS layouts, that are based on YAML. Yet Another Multicolumn Layout is a highly versatile (X)HTML/CSS framework, produced under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 License. Creating neat layouts is easier then you think with YAML Builder. This truly is one tool worth your time.

Drawter

Drawter Beta 2 written in JavaScript and based on the jQuery library enables you with the possibility to literally draw your website’s code. It can run on every single web-browser which makes it really useful and versatile. Every tag is presented as a layer you have drawn.

Working knowledge of HTML and CSS is required in order to utilize Drawter, however developing code is easier then writting by hand. Drawter anticipates a version where you will not need much knowledge of CSS and HTML, this is foreseen in the near future.

Deploy

Deploy is a free open-source Web application that allows designers to select the name of a project, the Doctype, whether you want a CSS reset or jQuery integration, and it creates a zipped, ready-to-use package with all specified files and folders. With current versions you can utilize this tool for Fluid, the Mac application that creates SSBs (site-specific browsers) for websites. Deploy saves time and organizes your codes parent folders and more.

Blueprint Grid CSS Generator

Blueprint Grid CSS Generator will help you generate various flexible versions of Blueprint’s grid.css and compressed.css and grid.png files. Doesn’t matter if you prefer 8, 10,16 or 24 columns in your design, this tool now enables you that flexibility with Blueprint. This generator allows you to cut down on your development time and build your site on an easy to utilize grid.

Format CSS

With Format CSS, you’re able to upload your CSS code and select from the options available to achieve code formatting the way you want. You can easily convert a compact CSS code into readable form with proper line-breaks and indentation or vice-versa. Use this tool for quick code organizing and the production of clean code.

Firdamatic

Firdmatic is an online tableless layout generator that lets you create and customize layouts easily only by completing forms, making creating skins for your Firdamatic-based layout is fast and easy.

JS Bin

JS Bin is a Web application that’s specially designed to aid JavaScript and CSS developers to test snippets of code in a specific context and debug the code collaboratively. In other words, it’s collaborative JavaScript debugging at your fingertips. You can also edit and test JavaScript and HTML as well. To finalize, you can save and send the URL to a colleague for review or help. They may make any needed changes if you allow them to.