What is Invoice Ninja?
Invoice Ninja is one of the lesser-known invoicing solutions in the marketplace, but that doesn’t mean it is an inferior accounting option for your business. The free version of Invoice Ninja can be installed locally onto company desktops. However, those who don’t wish to have their accounting software restricted to just a handful of devices can also avail themselves of the paid-for cloud-based version of Invoice Ninja.
Although Invoice Ninja lacks the mega-bucks marketing budgets of more established brands in the online accounting space, it has managed to build a loyal user base of more than 80,000 businesses since its inception. Within that user base, there is a breadth of freelancers, contractors and small to midsize businesses (SMBs) that prefer Invoice Ninja’s flexible open-source platform to tailor and streamline their experience of invoicing and payroll.
Small businesses with experienced in-house developers to call upon can really maximize the benefits of the Invoice Ninja billing software, with total freedom to customize the user interface to fit your company’s unique accounting and reporting needs. With dozens of integrations with popular payment gateways, impressive customer support and rock-solid invoicing functionality, Invoice Ninja compares favorably against other software providers for the ease and simplicity with which users can settle their obligations.
Pros of Invoice Ninja
As the Invoice Ninja software is continuously refined and enhanced by its global community of developers that consider the feedback and requests of clients, the functionality of the Invoice Ninja platform is ever-changing. However, you can be sure of the following benefits as an end-user of Invoice Ninja:
Dynamic solution for SMBs
Although some might consider Invoice Ninja to be a light alternative to well-established accounting platforms such as QuickBooks Online and Xero, a quick glance at the capabilities of the Invoice Ninja software demonstrates that its functionality is up there with the best in the industry. There are a plethora of integrated tools to handle invoice management, process estimates and send invoices in real time. Speaking of estimates and invoices, these templates give you total freedom to customize the look and feel of your documentation to truly reflect your brand.
Responsive mobile platform
You’ll be pleased to hear that Invoice Ninja’s developers have recently announced the availability of mobile apps for iOS and Android devices, seamlessly synchronizing your company accounts across desktop and mobile devices. The apps offer secure logins for users via 2-Factor Authentication (2FA) and with full persistence functionality, the app saves all your work on the move in real time. This ensures you never have to worry about lost data again, wherever and whenever you manage your business finances.
Time-saving auto-invoicing and recurring payments
If you are a time-poor freelancer or small business with a growing pool of clients, it can be frustrating having to prepare and send the same invoices to customers each month. That’s where Invoice Ninja’s automated billing and recurring invoicing functionality comes in very handy indeed. It doesn’t matter whether you need to invoice a client weekly, monthly, quarterly or annually, within Invoice Ninja you can pre-set recurring invoices to run in the background and maintain that all-important steady stream of income.
Simplicity
The developers in the Invoice Ninja community were empowered in the first instance to build an open-source accounting platform that was simplified so that even small businesses with no accountancy expertise could manage their invoices and get paid for their products and services without delay. When you sign up to become an Invoice Ninja user, there are four easy steps to getting paid online, fast:
- Set up and confirm your new business account
- Upload your company information, logo and explore the invoice designs
- Enable one of 40 popular online payment gateways to enable clients to pay you directly
- Create bespoke invoices that enable clients to pay you without even leaving the system
Great reporting
If you want a feature-laden invoicing software that offers a range of financial reports to digest, Invoice Ninja should tick all the right boxes. In fact, the platform can generate up to 13 different reports to give you a comprehensive overview of everything profit and loss through to aging. Enterprise clients can also take advantage of the software’s data visualization function, which gives you all the same data in a more creative, visual way.
Time tracking
Invoice Ninja can also assist with keeping track of projects and tasks, thanks largely to the software’s inbuilt timer. Alternatively, you can enter hours and minutes elapsed on a project manually. Admittedly, the manual feature is somewhat fiddly, so it’s probably best to utilize the inbuilt feature. It’s easy to create new projects or tasks in the "Tasks" section of your Invoice Ninja dashboard.
Invoice-to-pay function
Invoice Ninja makes the invoice-to-pay process extremely slick and intuitive. In fact, with one-click functionality, you can send your invoice with one tap of the mouse or trackpad. It’s also designed to make it easier and faster for clients to pay you, with invoices capable of being connected to one of over 45 payment gateways, allowing you to receive invoice payments online, direct to your account.
Invoice Ninja features
- Real-time invoices
- Create estimates and quotations in rapid time
- Easy project and task time tracking
- Customize invoice templates with your business branding
- Accept client deposits and even partial/staged payments
- Supports 45+ online payment gateways
- Professional invoice template designs
- Automated and recurring invoices
- Enhance customer trust with custom URL invoice links
- Build item and product libraries
- Intuitive dashboard
- Data visualization (for Enterprise users)
- Straightforward contact management of customers and/or vendors
- Expense tracking
- Up to 13 financial reports available
- Support for 95+ fiat currencies
- Support for 30+ languages
- Import and export client data
- Seven third-party integrations
- RESTful API access for developers
Invoice Ninja pricing
If you’ve spotted a host of features that you like the sound of, you’ll probably be desperate to know how much Invoice Ninja billing software costs. There are three tiers of pricing plan that you can choose from based on your business’ accounting needs:
Invoice Ninja pricing plans
- Forever Free – Pay nothing to get access to the basic package of Invoice Ninja, allowing you to send unlimited invoices and quotes to up to 100 clients.
- Ninja Pro Plan – Pay $8 a month to get all the free features, with the ability to have an unlimited number of clients. Ninja Pro users also get more invoice and quotation templates and a chance to customize more of their portal.
- Enterprise Plan – Pay $12 a month to get all the free and Ninja Pro features, plus a host of premium features including the chance to create more user accounts, attach third-party files to invoices/quotations and send fully-branded client portal links to customers.
With both the Ninja Pro and Enterprise Plans you can pay annually if you so wish. They incentivize you for doing so by allowing you to pay for ten months and get two months free.
Technical details
Subscription Model
- Free
- Monthly subscription
- Annual subscription
Supported Languages
- English only
Target Customers
- Freelancers
- SMBs
Platform Deployment
- Exclusively cloud-based
Supported Devices
- Windows
- Mac
- Linux
- Android
- iOS (iPhone/iPad)
- Web browser-based
Customer Service
As you would expect from invoicing software operated by an open-source online community, Invoice Ninja offers outstanding customer support. Most support forms and emails are typically answered within a matter of minutes rather than hours. Aside from email support, Invoice Ninja also has an extensive Knowledge Base, answering common questions and providing "how-to" guides. There’s also an active online forum for those wishing to ask more "niche" questions to fellow software users or the platform’s developers.
Bottom line
On the whole, this Invoice Ninja review is a very positive one. With an intuitive, simple platform that’s easy to learn and use, swift customer service and responsive mobile connectivity on the go, Invoice Ninja billing software works for all individual professionals and SMBs. Its affordable pricing plans are also highly attractive, including the "buy ten months, get two months free" annual plans. The only downside is a lack of telephone support, which can put some traditional firms off. Nevertheless, it’s a solid entrant to the online invoicing marketplace and a great starting point for anyone new to running their own business.