Reading this site, you may think that I live the life of a millionaire blogger who sips champagne and eats caviar as I publish my posts. Well I hate to break it to you but I have a job…I actually have two jobs. If you count this site then I have three jobs. I have a day job where I work for “the man” and I have a small freelancing/consulting business on the side.
It’s the side business that prompts most of the posts on this site because I actually use or at least try out the apps I write about. Today I’m looking at MobileBiz Pro which is an invoicing/crm app for Android. Invoicing and CRM functions are vital for a small business and especially for freelancers like myself. MobileBiz Pro aims to let you run your business from your smartphone or tablet. This is a lofty goal but I think they may have accomplished it…or are extremely close.
Key Features
- Easy invoicing from your phone or tablet
- Supports your local taxes, currency, and date formats
- Track statuses of sales and accept payments
- Track overall customer balance, invoice cost and profit
- Send customer statements and receipts too
- Customizable templates with lots of configuration options
- Run multiple companies
- Built-in reports
When you first start MobileBiz Pro you set up your company. This includes entering company name, address, contact email, website, slogan and you can even create custom fields. You can also import a company logo. There are many other settings including the ability to create multiple companies.
The initial setup actually takes a few minutes but you only have to do this once per company so it really isn’t much of a pain.
You then add your customers to MobileBiz Pro. You have two options here you can add them one by one manually or import via CSV. The good thing is that most applications on the market today offer a CSV export.
I don’t carry inventory so for the “Items” section I put in the services I offer and the rate at which I charge. So I ended up with several items such as “General Support”, “Custom Development”, “Website Development”,”Web Hosting”, etc.
After this initial setup you can then add a new quote, invoice, sales order, or cash sale. You can also record any payments received.
The real draw of MobileBiz Pro are the quotes and invoices for me. The default templates are very professional an includes the company logo that you specify in the company setup. You have the option to make changes to the default templates by enabling or disabling sections and entering you own custom text. With a little work you can create your perfect template.
Once you have generated an invoice you can view the invoice on screen or email the invoice to the client. After the client pays you can then change the status of the invoice in MobileBiz Pro.
With MobileBiz Pro you can run a variety of reports such as Monthly Tax Report, items sold report, customer profitability report and more. There is also a reminders section which shows you a quick glance of how many expiring quotes, orders to bill, and unpaid invoices you have.
You can certainly run and keep track of your business on the go using MobileBiz Pro. But if you are a Quickbooks user and can’t cut the cord, MobileBiz Pro features the ability to export sales transactions to Quickbooks and import data from Quickbooks.
This is certainly a complete and feature rich app. The cost is $22 which may seem like a lot at first glance, but considering how many features are included and the fact that it is in active development, it is a great deal. See the detailed feature list below.
Detailed Feature List
Sales transactions
* Create estimates, sales orders, cash sales, invoices
* Invoices can be emailed, sent by sms, or printed
* Send customer statements
* Recurring invoices
* Create your own reports
* Import data from Quickbooks
* Multiple pricing feature
* Capture signature on invoices
* Convert estimates to invoices
* Flexible tax setup (No tax, single tax, or two taxes)
* Add your own tax codes, payment methods, or sale statuses
* Auto tax setup for selected countries
* Apply discounts (body or line level) and shipping charges
* Use your own transaction numbers
* Get customers from phone contacts
* Can lock app and open by PIN
* Attach files to transactions
Printing
* Use your company logo
* Very professional looking printouts (PDF or HTML)
* Print/preview invoices (portrait/landscape orientation, letter/A4/legal page sizes)
* Send payment receipts
* Print invoices directly to wifi printer (use external apps)
* Change print color themes
* Print almost any information on invoice
Communications
* Send invoices by email or sms, both use templates that can be customized
* Cc or blind copy yourself when sending invoices by email
* Include PayPal links to pay invoices
Tracking
* Reports for sales, taxes, profitability, and inventory
* Alerts for estimates, bills and due invoices
* Track payments (cash, credit cards, checks or your own payment method)
* Track customer balance
* Track cost of goods sold per invoice
* Take notes for invoices, customers, and even items
* Inventory level tracking
Customization
* Customize print templates, email templates, sms templates
* Add custom fields for your custom data
Inventory
* Maintain your own catalog of goods and services
* Supports barcode scanning
* Out of Stock Items report
Data management
* Automated scheduled backup
* Restore from backup (Dropbox or sdcard)
* Import/export by CSV (Dropbox or sdcard)
* Import data from Quickbooks
Do you know of a good employee tracker app?
Thank you!
Do you know of a good employee tracker app?
Thank you!
What kind of tracking are you talking about? There are apps that let you keep notes and stats on employees. There are also apps that actually monitor employees via their company issued device.
What kind of tracking are you talking about? There are apps that let you keep notes and stats on employees. There are also apps that actually monitor employees via their company issued device.
Ben, have you considered the privacy implications of apps like these forwarding details of your business (and your clients) transactions to there own or third party servers for the purpose of PDF creation? Typically there is never a privacy policy to be found and the opportunity to harvest this data is rarely discussed.
Ben, have you considered the privacy implications of apps like these forwarding details of your business (and your clients) transactions to there own or third party servers for the purpose of PDF creation? Typically there is never a privacy policy to be found and the opportunity to harvest this data is rarely discussed.
John, that’s a valid concern. You have to decide for yourself based on the type of data that is being entered (specific project details or general job costs) and whether you feel the developer is on the up and up.
I believe this is more of a concern with free apps since the developer is generating no income from the sale of the app. An app such as MobileBiz Pro, which costs $22, “should” provide you with more peace of mind. But you could always inquire. So a quick email to the developer asking about whether stored data is encrypted on the server and if they sell the data would be prudent.
However, in the end, you have to go with your gut and your instinct. Personally, as a consultant, I’m not too concerned with anyone seeing what invoice data since the majority of my clients are government agencies and the data is subject to FOIA requests anyway.
Thanks for the question…it is certainly something people should consider.
John, that’s a valid concern. You have to decide for yourself based on the type of data that is being entered (specific project details or general job costs) and whether you feel the developer is on the up and up.
I believe this is more of a concern with free apps since the developer is generating no income from the sale of the app. An app such as MobileBiz Pro, which costs $22, “should” provide you with more peace of mind. But you could always inquire. So a quick email to the developer asking about whether stored data is encrypted on the server and if they sell the data would be prudent.
However, in the end, you have to go with your gut and your instinct. Personally, as a consultant, I’m not too concerned with anyone seeing what invoice data since the majority of my clients are government agencies and the data is subject to FOIA requests anyway.
Thanks for the question…it is certainly something people should consider.
I agree the users decision to engage these services will depend on how they perceive the importance of their own data. Unfortunately they are making that choice for their clients as well. People may believe the data in these day to day business transactions is of little value to others. Where it can be highly valuable is as a base for activity such as spear phishing or other forms of socialy orinented attack. To a competitor or marketing organisation the advantage of knowing who is trading what with who AND at what price is also obvious.
Not particular to this product but I fail to understand the common business model among many mobile apps. When there are clear ongoing costs to provide the app backend but no apparent ongoing revenue stream after the initial purchase, my suspicion is raised.
I agree the users decision to engage these services will depend on how they perceive the importance of their own data. Unfortunately they are making that choice for their clients as well. People may believe the data in these day to day business transactions is of little value to others. Where it can be highly valuable is as a base for activity such as spear phishing or other forms of socialy orinented attack. To a competitor or marketing organisation the advantage of knowing who is trading what with who AND at what price is also obvious.
Not particular to this product but I fail to understand the common business model among many mobile apps. When there are clear ongoing costs to provide the app backend but no apparent ongoing revenue stream after the initial purchase, my suspicion is raised.
I have the app for mobilebiz and i love it. I run 2 businesses off of the app on my razr.. heres my problem. I was fishing and fell off a boat. PHONE GOT WET. I didnt panic due to when i set it up i backed it up by my sd card. I have a spare razr (identical) to one i used.. i put in my sim card and sd card.. im not finding my mobilebiz. Ive had the app since august 2012 went paperless.. whats ways to recover my info?
I’m guessing you weren’t backing up to Dropbox. I would have highly recommended that. For redundancy you always want to have your data in at least two locations. SD cards are known to fail so that becomes your single point of failure. So, do you see any files on your SD card at all?
Is this app still serviced by its developers? I have not been able to find any type of help file or users tutorial for getting started
I’m not sure, it looks like it was last updated in May. Have you checked out the support site http://help.imsunny.com/?