Feature requests
post78
Member Posts: 16
I have six requests that would be greatly helpful to my business.
Discounts. My old software allowed me to put in the units at a price but also enter a "discount" which would then show up in red as a discounted amount on the invoice. This was very useful for showing my clients what I would normally charge for a service and let them know they were getting a special deal, but not to expect that normally.
Category. If I'm on a multi-day job I send one invoice itemizing each day. Currently I have to add it as an item ( ------ 180727 ) and put the price at $0.00 for 1 unit. It would be nice to be able to separate them into categories or similar, perhaps even with an accent color to distinguish it from other line items.
Remember settings on email. I always want to send a PDF attachment as well as receive a copy of the invoice in my own email, but I occasionally forget to press those buttons. Please have an option to remember those settings so I don't have to select them every time.
Payment via check. I like the option to pay online via bank or card, but my clients seem to think I don't accept checks because those are the only payment options really highlighted, so I have to include that in the email. It would be very helpful to have an "accept checks" as method of payment so the invoice email can say something like "you can pay by check, bank transfer, or credit card."
Attachments. (I now see this is a common request, but I'll leave it here as an addition.) I'd like to be able to attach images of receipts for expenses, maps for mileage, and a W9 PDF directly in the invoice instead of as a separate email. Just a basic attachments option.
Additional digits in price. I have to add mileage to my invoices. Current IRS rates are exactly 54.5¢ per mile. If I type in 0.545 it rounds to 0.55. This seems arbitrary, but it is actually a problem with my clients.
Thank you.
Comments
As a result of number 2 above, this is what my "items" page looks like. I can't delete them because they are attached to invoices. It's a mess.
Thank you for all of these, @post78!
Could you tell us a bit more about your business? It'll give us more context for your suggestions and will give us a better idea of the possible impact of those features. What kind of business do you run? I also have some questions or comments about a few of your points:
Discounts
It won't do exactly what you're hoping for, but you can create discounts in Wave. You just have to create a line item with a negative price.
Categories on invoices
In your specific case, these seem to represent dates, specifically. Could you mention the date in the description of a given item instead?
Cheques
This is because those are the methods we accept for online payments. My recommendation here would be to mention something to that effect in the Notes or Footer section of your invoice. You can set the default text in either of those fields from the Invoice Customization page in your Settings.
Rounding
In Wave, the final number will always round up to the nearest cent. There is currently no way around this. Can you give me an example of a situation where that caused a problem.? It should round this way at a line-item level. In your case, it'll total the number of miles for a given line, multiply it by $0.545 and then round that number.
Thank you for responding!
I'm a Production Sound Mixer working as a Sole Proprietorship. I have over a hundred different clients and they often dictate the specifics of how an invoice needs to be itemized. Some (like major Networks) are much more strict than others and will kick back an invoice, especially if it involves travel. Additionally, in Washington State we separate Labor from Equipment Rental as taxes from those rentals are treated differently for film. Some clients are on payroll and ask for rental to be invoiced.
There are a lot of different options that need to be available depending on the client.
Discounts
I could try itemizing these separately, but then we are running into the same issue with having a ton of items in the list that I can't get rid of. I'll give it a shot to see if I can work around that.
Categories
It looks like it only involves dates from my example above, but really different dates often require different equipment which needs to be itemized for the clients under their own section. Adding notes will not make the distinction clear enough. I've tried this method before with my previous invoicing software (tiny invoice). I really do need to be able to have separate sections on single invoices. Tiny Invoice worked in a similar way and I created items for dates, however what made that work was the ability to remove those items from the list after an invoice was sent. The biggest issue here is the inability to remove those items.
Checks
I understand, but it really would make a much nicer impression to my clients. The notes are not the first thing they see. They see a big "pay online" when they first open the email and I have to explain to them that they don't have to pay online. I would much rather just keep the smaller "pay online" button at the bottom of the invoice and get rid of the gigantic buttons at the top of the email. As it stands I've had to remove the option to pay online, but it's a very nice feature and I'd like to not have to do that.
Rounding
This is another example where it shouldn't be a big deal to my clients, but it definitely is. Rounding the TOTAL is perfectly acceptable (obviously they can't pay me half a cent), but the item value shouldn't be limited. On a job where I travel 519 miles (a real number from a recent job). If I mark the mileage at .55 per unit, that gets kicked back to me as mileage is determined by the IRS and I can't ask for anything different. Some payroll companies are ridiculous like that, but it is what it is. The difference is only 285.45 vs 282.855, but that's considered unacceptable. I want to put in 0.545 per item, then have the TOTAL round up to 282.86.
Thanks again!
Thank you so much for taking the time to follow up, @post78! Extensive feedback like this really helps us make Wave better and better. I'll forward all of this to our product team. Thanks again!
Thank you!
It appears that I can't input a negative value for Price on the iPhone app. This is for discounts as discussed.
good day. in regards to inputting a negative value for price on the iPhone app, I used Notes to type the negative value then copied and pasted into to iPhone app.
That's usually my suggestion as well, @dlhall68.
This has to do with the default keyboard used with iOS, which doesn't have symbols for numbers-only fields. A third-party keyboard app might also help out, @post78. You might be able to find one that doesn't share those limitations with the default keyboard.
Thank you for your reply. Totally forgot about third party keyboards. Nice!
Happy to help out!