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From Blinksale to BillingOrchard
Along with doing website design and development, I also resell hosting and domain names to approximately 45 of my clients. This makes for a great recurring revenue stream, but handling the invoicing for all of these can be a little tedious at times. I tried various scripts aimed at the hosting industry (WHM AutoPilot, ClientExec) but found them somewhat frustrating and slow to use. Around 6 months ago, I signed up for a Blinksale account when they brought out the recurring invoicing feature. And although it was better than anything else that I had previously used, it still had it’s shortcomings when it came to the invoicing of my hosting clients.
The main problem that I had with Blinksale’s recurring invoicing structure is that it’s set up so that it is invoice centric instead of client centric. Meaning that you need to assign clients to a particular invoice, instead of invoices or fees to a client.
This works great until you have a client that has purchased a hosting plan along with a domain name, or several domain names. What you end up with is all sorts of specific invoices for individual clients. This makes the Blinksale control panel a mess to sort through, and annoying to update. That being said, Blinksale isn’t all bad. It’s interface is wonderful to look at, and it’s dead-simple to use. If I were using it for regular invoicing I wouldn’t think to look elsewhere. It’s limited recurring invoicing functionality however, was enough for me to do just that.
I’ve seen BillingOrchard advertised for years in the back of design magazines, and have even set up demo accounts from time to time, but I never really gave it a fair shot. Part of the reason was that the interface (although much quicker than Blinksale’s) is a little difficult to look at. Once I got over that, it’s been pretty smooth sailing.
The first thing you need to do in BillingOrchard is enter in your clients information and billing cycle. I set it up so that BillingOrchard will invoice my clients monthly, and will group all of the hosting, domain, and design fees into a single invoice that is sent out on the first of each month. If the client doesn’t have any fees during a monthly cycle, an invoice is not sent out.
Once the clients are set up, the next step is to create “Miscellaneous Fees”. I created a new fee for each of my hosting plans, as well as one for domain names.
The final step is to link one of those “Miscellaneous Fees” to a client. When you do this, you’re given the option to assign a billing cycle to the fee that is independent of the client billing cycle. This is quite a flexible feature. You can, for example, have a domain name that is invoiced every 2 years, as well as a hosting plan that is billed monthly, and the client will only ever get one invoice a month (or whatever frequency you’ve assigned it to).
I now find myself billing for the little 5 minute changes that come here and there, as I know that BillingOrchard will tally it all up for me and send out one invoice at the end of the month.
I’m all for earning some additional affiliate income on products that I use, and BillingOrchard has an affiliate plan where partners earn 30% of the gross monthly revenues from referred subscribers. Is that a good enough segue into this handy trial form? Seriously, if you need a flexible recurring billing solution, make sure to check this out.
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Hello, my name is…
Jesse Bennett-Chamberlain, a stay at home designer from Grimsby ON, Canada. To get in touch use the contact form.
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matthew Smith
March 17, 2007
Jesse,
Do you recommend any resources on how to do what you’re doing (reselling to your clients) in a way that keeps your hands clean of support tickets and frustrated clients when your host doesn’t achieve their expectations? I’ve been retisent to head down that road for those reasons, but if I could figure out how to keep my hands free, I might join you in that business and I’d likely give you a nice 30% affiliate cake too! :)
Jesse Bennett-Chamberlain
March 18, 2007
Hey Matthew, I’ve never used a host that does end-user support, but I know of a couple that will do this for you. Check out ResellerZoom or Mosso. If neither of those work for you, try doing a search at Web Hosting Talk for “end user support”, and you might be able to find some more.
Matthew Smith
March 18, 2007
Great. Thanks Jesse. I’ll check those resources out.
Roman
March 18, 2007
If not a secret, who do you use for your hosting? I have a VPS in US, but some of my client need a solid host in Canada. Is your host in Canada?
Jesse Bennett-Chamberlain
March 19, 2007
Not a secret at all… right now I am with Idologic.com who use a datacentre in Georgia. I believe the company is run from London, Ontario though. They’ve been a great host for me, and they most stable I’ve ever had.
I could also recommend MyriadNetwork as a great host. I was with Myriad before I moved to Idologic, but the main reason that I moved was that I needed a dedicated server, and Idologic offered a fully managed server at a better deal. They’re based out a datacentre in Northern Virginia.
Those are both affiliate links, but I can with a clean conscience recommend them. I’ve also been with 100MegsWebHosting, Surpass Hosting, and Clook.net.
Paul Annett
March 19, 2007
About a year ago I made the switch in the opposite direction. Blinksale suited my needs better, as at the time I was a freelance web designer with no recurring invoices, and only a few each month. Hope you continue to find Billing Orchard useful!
Eric Barstad
March 19, 2007
Jesse, how do you tie these invoices back into your bookkeeping—or do you have a bookkeeper and make them do it? ;) I’m just curious because I’ve thought about an online solution for invoicing, but just felt that I’d end up doubling my work since I’d also have to create the invoices in QuickBooks.
By the way, Idologic is amazing. I’ve rarely encountered such awesome customer support.
Jesse Bennett-Chamberlain
March 20, 2007
Hey Eric, Good point on the book-keeping integration. I find it easiest to just enter the invoice and payment at the same time (in one step) in MYOB once I receive the cheque in the mail.
Eric Barstad
March 21, 2007
Thanks, Jesse. Makes me wonder when MYOB and QuickBooks will start offering Blinksale/Billing Orchard type services that will sync into their offline software.
Ross Chapman
March 22, 2007
Hey Jesse,
Great work on EE, I too am recovering from SXSW, what a good one it was too!
I’m currently looking at billing systems and came across Billable, which I may try myself.
How is MYOB working out for you – I used a very old version a few years back – worth checking out again?
Jesse Bennett-Chamberlain
March 22, 2007
MYOB has worked good for me. It’s an old version as well, but we’re pretty limited as to what we can use up here in Canada. We have a dual tax system, and I’m not sure how well the new quickbooks for mac supports it. Next year I think I’m going to hand over all the book-keeping to someone else anyhow, so I’m not in a rush to replace it.
Navneet Kaushal
March 31, 2007
We been using Fresh Books http://www.freshbooks.com/ for over a year and I must say it is very easy to use over Billing Orchard. They offer a free trial as well. We have been using it over 2 years now.
Janis
April 09, 2007
Have you all seen Cashboard? I don’t think it does recurring invoices, but I’m loving the current features.
I moved from FreshBooks to Cashboard and it’s great. Even syncs to Basecamp!
Ben
April 10, 2007
I can personally vouch for Myriad Network as well. What a small world! I have been with those guys for about 3 years now, and every company I have worked for has been converted to Myriad.
Mark Davis
April 23, 2007
Hi Jesse,
I’m the new web-guy at Macsimum News, and I’ve developed a project timer to log my hours directly to web services.
The software is called Timepost, and it supports Basecamp, Blinksale, Cashboard, Harvest, and Tick (a big chunk of the timer/invoice services out there).
I use a combination of Timepost and Harvest to keep track of my time. I’ve considered using Blinksale for invoices, but I still prefer creating them in Pages for now.
Nick
May 02, 2007
Both Blinksale and BillingOrchard are good but I use my own software and believe that there is nothing better :)
venera
May 18, 2007
Our company develop the synchronizaion between Blinksale and MS Outlook. We think it would be useful – because Blinksale is really good application, that has the sync only with BaseCamp. So we decided that it should also have sync with Outlook (to import and invoice clients and customers from MS Outlook without having to re-enter their data into Blinksale).
I hope that it would be useful for you.
To learn more, please follow the link: http://www.grabsync.com/blinksale/
or you can Email me personally: venera@grabsync.com
Thank you
Webmaster
May 25, 2007
You have some great points about Blinksale, and it was great to hear more of the features in BillingOrchard too.
I’d love to hear more feedback on Blinksale from people who care to share… if you have time to start some conversations—because I believe the product has a lot of potential but it seems there has been no community available for users to discuss this and communicate as a whole with the Blinksale team.
I’ve setup a forum just for discussions on Blinksale it’s an open forum for users by users… not affiliate with Blinksale/Firewheel.
Skillet
June 07, 2007
Are you using the Authorize.Net package that BillingOrchard offers? What about Paypal integration?
Jesse Bennett-Chamberlain
June 08, 2007
Hey Skillet, I’m somewhat limited to credit card transactions because I live in Canada… so no.. I’m not using authorize.net
Paypal integration is as simple as a paypal link on the invoice itself.
Skillet
June 12, 2007
I also checked out WHM AutoPilot and it looks promising. It looks like it automates the entire hosting process by setting up the account and recurring billing at the same time.
Have you ever messed with that billing system and if so, what are your comments?
Sanjay
June 14, 2007
All of you who are trying out or using an invoicing solution, take a look at simplifythis.com . If you bill your client periodically and often have miscellaneous charges that you want to put in a single periodic invoice, you would not find anything that beats Simplifythis.