If you run a small business or do any freelancing like me, you need a convenient way to send invoices to clients. Sure, you can keep track of all customer information in a spreadsheet, but you can also use an online invoicing tool.

While there is loads of online invoincing tools out there, most of them are not free. They offer a professional commercial invoicing system, but impose strict limitations on their free offering. Such limitations usually manifest themselves in the number of invoices you can send each month, or in the number of clients you can manage, or some other thing. While this is good to try the product before buying, its unusable for serious work.

So if you want to save some bucks, here are some best free online invoincing tools:

Billing Boss

Billing Boss is a free online invoicing tool designed for small businesses and freelancers to create, send and track the status of invoices. It’s so simple to use that you can create and send your first invoice within minutes. Billing Boss is rare in that it is one of the only online invoicing programs that does NOT have a paid commercial upgrade.

Billing Boss offers:

• Unlimited invoices and clients
• Multiple currencies
• E-mail support (send invoices directly to clients)
• Full PDF support (send attached PDFs to clients automatically)
• Unbranded e-mails
• Data sharing (add a partner or bookkeeper)
• HTTPS support
• Payment recording
• The ability to accept payments online via PayPal or their own payment services
• Support for taxes, discounts, and your own logo
• Mobile-friendly site (iPhone and Google G1 support)

It does not offer:

• Recurring invoices
• Custom templates

With all the above, i think that Billing Boss is one of the most advanced free online invoice tool.

CurdBee

CurdBee is a free online invoicing template to some degree. It offers unlimited invoices, clients and items, so thats the most important, but lacks dome other features:

Free account offers:

• Unlimited invoices
• Unlimited  clients
• Unlimited  items
• Your Own Logo and Branding
• PayPal & Google Checkout Integration
• Multiple Currencies
• Data Import and Export

The Pro account (just 5$/month) offers  some more things: Unbranded Invoices & Emails, Taxes and Discounts, SSL Encryption, PDF Suppor…

So while its good to have unlimited invoices for free, i also need unbranded invoices and emails, taxes (wish i wouldnt), PDF support… So the free version is lacking the functionalities i really need – so its not free anymore :(

Intuit Billing Manager

Created by Intuit, Billing Manager is a popular online invoicing sytem that has both a free and a paid couterpart.

Billing Manager (free) offers:

• Unlimited invoices and clients
• Multiple currencies
• E-mail support (send invoices directly to clients)
• Unbranded e-mails
• HTTPS support
• Payment recording
• Support for taxes, discounts, and your own logo
• iPhone-friendly site
• Multiple templates

Billing Manager offers a lot for free. The main features lacking in the free version versus the paid upgrade are PDF support, recurring invoicing, and the ability to create and send estimates. Still, you can do a lot worse than Billing Manager.

Invoice Journal

Invoice Journal is totaly free online invoice tool – it doesnt have a paid service at all. So what do you get fo free?

Invoice Journal offers:

• Unlimited invoices and clients
• Multiple currencies
• E-mail support (send invoices directly to clients)
• Unbranded e-mails
• Payment recording
• PayPal support
• Support for taxes and discounts
• Custom templates

So, this is my favorite to use for now. I like that i can make custom template, so i can make my branded invoice (not just logo), but you need some HTML knowledge to do that. There are some missing features that I’d love to see integrated, such as HTTPS support and an easy way to grant access to partners or other staff, but for now i can live without it.