GrandTotal for Your Invoicing Needs

Most freelancers and small business owners no doubt dread the tasks of keeping up with financial matters. It's great to get paid, but the hoops that you must go through to request client payments and monitor what invoices have been sent or paid can often take the fun out of services you provide. So having access to an intuitive and comprehensive bill collection application can often make the process easier and more efficient.  

I've tried several invoice creation applications, from QuickBooks, Billiable, to Bento and FileMaker Pro. I've even toyed with creating invoices with Apple's Numbers software. But each of these applications seemed to be more than I needed or had limitations that have kept me looking for something different. Well, its seems that Media Atelier GrandTotal 1.1.3 might well fit my needs. And it might fit your needs as well.

GrandTotal has an impressive design and seems very comprehensive in its features. As with most new applications I download for trial purposes, I first see how much I can figure out without resorting to the manual. In the case of GrandTotal, I was able to get quite far. The application is pretty intuitive, especially if you have had some experience with other invoicing software. But if you are in need of documentation, the Help section of GrandTotal is very comprehensive and easy to print out, unlike many software manuals that require you to print out each page separately. GrandTotal includes small video tutorials that download into the application. Unfortunately, these tutorials don't have voice-over directions, but at least the attempt was made to provide visual documentation that is helpful when getting started with the software.

It's also interesting to note that the Help part of GrandTotal also includes-in addition to the Screen Casts-FAQ's, templates and sample invoices, recommended 3rd party software such as PearLabelizer for printing labels, and VectorDesigner for creating layout backdrops and logos that are useful for enhancing the features that GrandTotal provides. This is Help area of application also includes the developer's blog, which also downloads from the developer's website into the window of the application. GrandTotal is both a stand-alone and companion application to Media Atelier's tracking software, TimeLog 4.


How GrandTotal Works
As you might expect, GrandTotal connects with your Address Book where you can access your client information or add such data in GrandTotal, which is then automatically exported to your Address Book. Once your client information is set up in GrandTotal, you can maintain all your invoices for each of your clients right within the application. You can even customize different invoices for different type of jobs and groups of clients.  

When you start generating lots of invoices, this is where you need an application that is easy to manage, helping you keep track of which invoices have been sent and which are still unpaid. GrandTotal clearly helps in this area. All invoices are labeled as drafts until they are either emailed or printed out and sent to the client. A list all invoices are kept in the left side of the Invoices panel. Additionally, a list of invoices is kept under the History section for each individual client. The History section provides a detailed list for each invoice including invoice numbers, payment status, and debit information. You can preview the layout and content of each invoice in this section as well a few other places in GrandTotal.  

Similarly, the Overview section of the application provides detail information for all your invoices, including a breakdown by year and month, open invoices, and a calculated total for all selected invoices. You can even create smartlists, similar to the smart album feature in iTunes, for isolating certain information. The parameters for the smartlists are pretty basic, but they are adequate for the first version of the application. Above all, the Overview section provides the most updated information about your client accounts, including when invoices were sent, and which ones are paid or overdue.

The Layout section of GrandTotal is also pretty intuitive providing both templates and presets for customizing your layouts. Media Atelier put a lot of thought into helping users not have to re-enter data in various parts of the invoice creation process. For instance, you can set up the email feature so that when invoices are prepared for emailing, the PDF-converted invoices are attached to the email and the receiptent's address is automatically included in the email. Nice little time saver.

 

Designing or re-designing an invoice template might be the biggest challenge in using the application. But Media Aterlier has provided a way to really make templates customizable. You can of course add your own business logo, select how you want your invoices dated and numbered, indicate the conditions and terms of payment, select what kind currency and taxable amount you want to use, as well as choose from over a dozen other templates to help you get started.

What I especially like about GrandTotal is the Catalog feature in which you can create items that represent the work you do and that you're billing for. Once these pre-set items are created, you can drag and drop thems into an invoice and update any changes that needed to be made. In my catalog items, I include a basic description of the work done for that item. That helps remind the client the services they are paying for. In addition, these catalog items can be used to create an estimates for client projects that can later be turned into invoices.  

While I'm not an expert in accounting, GrandTotal seems pretty comprehensive and well developed to me. It's a feature rich application, but it not weighty or complex. I'm sure there will be more to come in this application, such as the ability to download invoices from Internet services like Paypal.  

If you rather not be bothered with the $200 price tag for an accounting application like QuickBooks, you pay around $69.00 for GrandTotal (£49.00 Euro.). That might be a tad bit pricey, but after you work with the free trial download, I think you'll be convinced that GrandTotal is an awesome application, meeting the standards of powerful and intuitive Apple applications.