We had several workarounds to hide the columns, but they all were little “hacks” that didn’t fulfil the real need, so we decided to do the real thing, and here’s what we got.

Now, below the items table you’ll notice the “Configure Columns” link. Once clicked, the menu will be shown where you can disable/enable one column. The change will be immediately applied in the items table and the corresponding column will be hidden/shown.

For example, in the table below the “Discount” and “Tax” columns are unchecked so they won’t be displayed in the editor and in the final invoice.

Like this? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Author information

Dimitar Stojanov

Co-founder at Invoicebus

Dimitar is co-founder of Invoicebus, an online invoicing tool for easy invoice management. He's passionate about creating beautiful and simple web applications and occasionally writes on this blog about web design, online business, and fighting the status-quo. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.

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It’s one thing to send email but another thing to actually deliver email. Given the fact that more than 90% of all daily emails are spam, Email Service Providers are constantly changing their policies. A small deviation from the ESP rules can easily throw completely legitimate email into the spam folder.

As the email is core functionality in Invoicebus, we have to be on top of the game to ensure your emails always land in the right inbox.

In the past few years, many popular ESPs like Yahoo, Hotmail, and others, have imposed extra restrictions to lower the spam they get. New types of email authentication and verification like DMARC policies were set in place. These rules started to cause email deliverability issues in Invoicebus.

Problem

Few years ago, Invoicebus was sending emails on behalf of our customers by specifying their original email address in the “From” field. This was working well until many ESPs decided to adopt the DMARC policy. Simply put, DMARC policy doesn’t permit the address in the “From” field to be on a different domain than the sending server domain:

Example:

From: peter.griffin@yahoo.com
Reply-To: peter.griffin@yahoo.com
Server: invoicebus.com

To solve this, we implemented a small hack – instead of putting the customer’s original email address into the “From” field we specified a permanent email address registered under our domain (notifications@invoicebus.com). As the customer’s original email address was specified into the “Reply-To” field, all email replies would go to the right inbox without a problem.

Example:

From: notifications@invoicebus.com
Reply-To: peter.griffin@yahoo.com
Server: invoicebus.com

This was working quite well until we started receiving complaints from customers that some of their emails are mistakenly marked as spam.

The problem became even more serious when a few customers reported that their emails are not delivered at all. We weren’t sure what’s happening because Invoicebus was receiving delivery confirmations from the remote servers, yet the emails were somehow dropped by their internal mechanisms. After an exhaustive investigation, we found out that this was caused by a new spam rule introduced by the popular spam software SpamAssasin. The rule requires the addresses specified into the “From” and “Reply-To” field to be on the same domain as the sending server domain. Who would have thought? Just solved one problem another one appears.

Solution

There was no quick solution nor any possible workarounds to this. We had to completely migrate our email infrastructure and the way Invoicebus handles emails. This resulted in developing two new features for handling emails:

• dedicated Invoicebus mailbox for each customer (for example username@mail.invoicebus.com)
• optional setting that allows specifying custom SMTP server

1. Dedicated Invoicebus mailbox (default option)

Note: All customers will receive a dedicated Invoicebus mailbox automatically.

Invoicebus will generate a unique email address from your original address and set it as a default “from/reply-to” address for all outgoing emails you send. For example, if your login email is peter.griffin@yahoo.com your Invoicebus email will be peter.griffin@mail.invoicebus.com. The username before the @mail.invoicebus.com part is required, and you can change it to whatever you like (if available).

Example:

From: peter.griffin@mail.invoicebus.com
Reply-To: peter.griffin@mail.invoicebus.com
Server: mail.invoicebus.com

This ensures any messages sent via Invoicebus to pass even the most restrictive spam filters.

Your clients can also directly reply to any email you send. Invoicebus catches the replies and automatically forward them to your original email address. If the conversation relates to a document, the entire message thread will be saved under the document’s activity history as an incoming email (depends on the plan). This way you can keep all your important conversations in one central place (see image below).

2. Custom SMTP email server

Specifying a custom SMTP (depends on your plan) gives you the flexibility to send emails via your own email server/mailbox. This way your clients will get emails from your original email address (or address on your domain), rather than the one assigned by Invoicebus.

Please note that if you specify custom SMTP server, Invoicebus won’t be able to track any email events such as delivered, bounced and opened (“opened” is a new event that shows when an email is opened by the client. This is different from “document opened”, which fires only when an online document is opened).

Last but not least is the customization of your Display (From) Name, where you can specify the name your client sees when they get an email from you (see image below). If you leave this empty it will default to the last saved company name.

The new infrastructure should significantly improve the email deliverability. It should also give you a better insight of what’s going on with your emails almost in real-time. The easiest way to keep track of your emails is to take a look at the dashboard and see the status of each email, reminder, and thank-you note. Here’s a quick reference:

Author information

Dimitar Stojanov

Co-founder at Invoicebus

Dimitar is co-founder of Invoicebus, an online invoicing tool for easy invoice management. He's passionate about creating beautiful and simple web applications and occasionally writes on this blog about web design, online business, and fighting the status-quo. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.

| Twitter | Facebook | Google+ |

The post New Email Infrastructure appeared first on Garage.

All new and refined, yet instantly familiar design

We believe the design is something that can make the product or break it. It’s a phenomenon that triggers immediate connection with our senses. Sometimes it may even cause various emotional responses such as happiness and joy.

That’s why we give a great importance to the beauty of the graphical interface. The face-lifted Invoicebus brings cleaner, refined, and more appealing appearance on top the good old user experience. Here’re couple of screen shots how the new interface looks like.

Accept credit card payments instantly (kudos Stripe)

We’re thrilled to announce that from now on, you can use Invoicebus to accept credit card payments instantly through your invoices, with a click of a button.

To process payments on your behalf, Invoicebus uses Stripe – a great service that makes credit card payments incredibly easy and safe. If you don’t have a Stripe account yet, you may consider signing up – it’s super fast and you don’t need a merchant account.

We prepared a demo invoice you can use to play around and see how payments work. Feel free to use the following test card (don’t worry no real charge will be made):

Card Number: 4242 4242 4242 4242
Expiration Date: 05/19
CVC: 100

The simple payment form also allows your client to store his payment info for quick payments in future, which means he won’t be bothered to re-enter his credit card details the next time he gets an invoice from you (yay single click payments!). Furthermore, if the client has previously used Stripe checkout on any other web site, he will only be prompted to confirm the payment with a single click (Stripe already knows who the payer is only by his email address). Isn’t this awesome?

To enable credit card payments, all you need to do is connect your Stripe account with Invoicebus (Settings -> Connect with Stripe).

Google connect

Google connect allows you to use your existing Google account to login (or sign up) at Invoicebus. If you already have an Invoicebus account with non-Google email address, you can still connect your Google account and use it for all future logins. This way you won’t need to manage separate usernames/passwords everywhere.

Real-time email delivery notifications

Invoicebus deals with lots of outgoing emails per day and many times it faces situations when the email is rejected by the recipient’s email service provider due to various reasons. Even though Invoicebus tracks such emails (bounces) and notifies you as they happen, from now on it also tracks delivered emails. That means it tells you the exact time when your email was delivered to the client.

You can track these events in real-time from the document activity history. This way you won’t need to wonder anymore if the email has been delivered or not.
You will simply know

Other important changes

• Added two auto-calculable fields on the invoice: “Paid amount” and “Amount due”. If you write invoices in non-English language you may consider changing the labels of these fields.
• Added ability to set online payment options within the invoice editor.
• Multiple text filters in the dashboards are simplified and combined into one field (all keywords can be entered in one sentence).
• “Pay” button(s) are added below Amount Due in the client’s preview of the invoice. This will make them better noticeable to the client.
• “Accept” and “Decline” buttons are added below total price in the client’s preview of the quote. The “Accept” button now triggers action with a single click (no more annoying confirmation for the client).

Upcoming features:

As you may have noticed, we are moving towards complete automation of the invoicing. That means we’re taking Invoicebus to a level where it will do many tasks for you, automatically – from sending quotes, to converting them to invoices, to following-up, to saying thanks to your clients when you get paid.

Considering this, we’re developing two features that will be launched by the end of the next month:

• Automatic payment reminders / follow-ups
• Automatic thank you notes

And if it’s late blame these guys:

Now it’s your turn!

How do you like the latest changes? Is there anything we could do to make Invoicebus better for you? Please let me know in the comments below, I would really love to hear from you.

Author information

Stefan Chachovski

Co-founder of Invoicebus. Huge lover of nature, science, and chocolate cherry cordials. He occasionally writes on this blog about Invoicebus' stuff. Hello him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.

| Twitter | Facebook |

The post The new Invoicebus is here appeared first on Garage.

Invoice Scheduler – Send Your Invoices Later

We thought it would be great if you could create more invoices in one day and automatically send them later on a predefined date in future. This way you’ll save tons of time because you won’t need to login every time when your invoices should be sent out + you can make sure the client always gets your invoice at the right date.

The scheduled emails are sent out during morning hours 7 a.m – 11 a.m (your local time), when the chances your message to be seen are highest. Upon sending, we send you appropriate notification. You can cancel or preview each scheduled email from the Invoice Activity History.

All scheduled emails are marked with a small clock icon in the dashboard, so you can easily find/sort them.

This option is available for Quotes as well.

Email History – Preview Sent Messages

We know how frustrating can be when you can’t find an email you’ve sent, so we implemented an option for you to preview all sent messages directly from the Invoice Activity History. Of course, this way you can preview all sent reminders and thanks notes + all emails that are scheduled for sending.

Bounce Notifications

Even though Invoicebus guarantees 100% deliverability of your emails (all emails are anti-spam signed and verified) , many times errors occur during email delivery due to various reasons beyond our control such as typos in the email address, remote provider firewalls, remote server outages etc.
That’s why we implemented Bounce Notifications – notifications that are sent to you when some of your emails are not properly delivered to the final recipient. Bounce occurs when Invoicebus detects that your email cannot be delivered after couple of attempts. Then we send you a bounce notification email (similar to those which Gmail sends when your message is not delivered) and put a record in the Invoice Activity History with all details about the problem and possible solution.

I hope you’ll find these features useful. Thanks for using Invoicebus.

Questions or Suggestions?
Feel free to drop some in the comments below, would really love to hear from you.

Author information

Stefan Chachovski

Co-founder of Invoicebus. Huge lover of nature, science, and chocolate cherry cordials. He occasionally writes on this blog about Invoicebus' stuff. Hello him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.

| Twitter | Facebook |

The post 3 New Features: Invoice Scheduler + Email History + Bounce Notifications appeared first on Garage.

1. Responsive Email Windows

The old email windows were nice, but they felt a bit narrow when you were writing longer messages, so we decided to redesign them. Now when you open a window to send email, the whole area is bigger and cleaner with more space for writing and nothing squeezed-in.

The most awesome thing is their resizable and responsive nature. For example, you can change the size of the window to any dimension and all underlying elements will adjust accordingly. Also, at the top right corner there’s a little “Maximize” button that puts the window in full screen and lets you focus only on your writing. The white space is plenty enough so you can read easier with more enjoyment.


BONUS
We redesigned the window for entering payments as well. Now, it looks more appealing with beautifully organized data. Here it is.

2. Email Templates

Previously, you had the option to save default messages for your invoices, quotes, reminders and thanks notes, but the option to save the subject lines was missing. Now, we’re introducing the amazing Template feature that allows you to create complete templates including the subject, the message and the attachment.

There’re 4 different templates you can create, one for each email type:

• Invoice
• Quote
• Reminder
• Thanks Note

To edit the template, click the “Edit Default Template” link from the bottom left corner of the respective window.

3. Custom Placeholders

Placeholders are used when you create default template, such as email template, where Invoicebus should replace the variables with actual data from the document. You can also use them when you send non-template (unique) messages and need to include invoice data within the message context.

There’re many different placeholders you can choose from: client name, document number, total price, due date, outstanding balance etc. To insert a placeholder, just type “{“ (Left Curly Bracket) and the list with available placeholders will show. Ta-da! You don’t even need to scroll the whole list – we implemented search-as-you-type. Yay laziness.

4. Email Preview

We thought it would be awesome if you could preview the emails before sending, so we created the amazing real-time preview. You can even use it in the middle of your writing, preview the message and continue writing again, without losing a bit of your focus. To toggle the preview, just hit the “Show/Hide Preview” link and the panel will slide in/out (see image below).

5. Multiple Recipients

Also, we re-considered the option for sending document to multiple recipients. Now you can specify up to 5 comma separated recipients and send the document to all of them at once, just like you do with conventional emails. For example, into the “To” field you enter: fred@flintstone.bed, barney@rubble.bed, dino@dinostore.bed (see previous images).

We hope these features will improve your invoicing experience and make it more pleasant and enjoyable. And if you think there’s something else we are missing, don’t hesitate to give us a shout – we’re all ears!

Thank you so much for using Invoicebus.

Author information

Stefan Chachovski

Co-founder of Invoicebus. Huge lover of nature, science, and chocolate cherry cordials. He occasionally writes on this blog about Invoicebus' stuff. Hello him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.

| Twitter | Facebook |

The post More Awesomeness – 5 New Features appeared first on Garage.

During the development, we wrote a short log of changes, so I’ll share that with you and thoroughly introduce you with all changes.

Changelog

The link is automatically generated and included in the email right after your custom message. In order to open the link, the client will be prompted to enter access code (unique for every document, contained within the email as well).

Additional functionalities of the online document are:

• Print option (with printer friendly formatting);
• Download to PDF option;
• Accept Option (only for quotes);
• Decline Option (only for quotes);
• Document Status;
• Activity History;
• Custom comments;
• Email notifications (optional):
  – Document is viewed by client;
  – Quote is Accepted/Declined by client;
  – New comment is left (if you left the comment, client is notified and vice versa).

Other benefits of the online document are:

• Improved overall experience;
• Improved security;
• Invoices/Quotes can be easily accessed from anywhere;
• Invoice/Quote can be easily forwarded;
• Resolved problem with email clients that don’t support HTML content;
• Resolved problem with email clients that block images;
• Resolved problem for ‘Document Viewed’ notification accuracy.

2. Plain text version of all email messages

• Improved readability for email clients that don’t support HTML content.

3. Invoice Menu renamed to Invoice Actions

4. Quote Menu renamed to Quote Actions

5. Document View/Edit update

• Direct link with unique access code is included at the bottom of the document, right above Activity History section (only for logged-in users)

6. Activity History update

• Refresh button included
• Comment notification checkbox (weather to notify the client about newly entered comment or not. Only for logged-in users).

Author information

Stefan Chachovski

Co-founder of Invoicebus. Huge lover of nature, science, and chocolate cherry cordials. He occasionally writes on this blog about Invoicebus' stuff. Hello him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.

| Twitter | Facebook |

The post Fresh New Features & Updates appeared first on Garage.

Currency Symbol Position

In different countries the currency symbol placement can differ, so can be placed either from the left side or from the right side of the number. That’s why we implemented global option so you can set how the symbol appears on your documents.

The option can be managed from System Settings which are global for the whole system.

Subject Lines of the emails

Instead of the predefined subjects that your clients usually see (“Incoming Invoice”, “Incoming Quote”, “Payment Reminder”, “Thank You Note”), from now on you can enter your custom subject line, so your message can be more descriptive, and of course in a language of your choice.

If you have any suggestion for future update, please let us know. We’re eager to hear your thoughts.

Author information

Stefan Chachovski

Co-founder of Invoicebus. Huge lover of nature, science, and chocolate cherry cordials. He occasionally writes on this blog about Invoicebus' stuff. Hello him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.

| Twitter | Facebook |

The post New features: Currency Symbol Position & Subject Lines of your Emails appeared first on Garage.

We love Mondays, we really do, especially those when we launch new feature. The last one was one of those. We’ve introduced another great option as an answer to many requests from our users about localization of the invoices and customization of the field labels.

The localization of the invoices has been planned from the very beginning, but was not ready for the initial release, so we postponed a bit. The implementation was planned to be with combo box, so the user can switch among multiple languages. In the meanwhile, we’ve received numerous requests from our users about invoice label customization, so we came up with another idea. Instead to translate the invoice in various languages, we decided to make the labels fully customizable so the user can enter any text he likes in any language. And yes, Invoicebus automatically save it for future re-use.

This solution gives more flexibility in a more intuitive way. Therefore, you can:

• Localize the invoices in any language, in any country;
• Customize the field labels with your text (e.g., change the field ‘Quantity’ to ‘Hours’);
• Omit some fields/labels (e.g., if you don’t want the field ‘Terms & Notes’ to be shown, simply hit space inside the label and the final invoice won’t show anything. Booya!)

Here’s an example with custom labels.

If you have any suggestion or feature request, don’t hesitate to give us a shout. We’d love to hear from you and consider it as a future update.

Author information

Stefan Chachovski

Co-founder of Invoicebus. Huge lover of nature, science, and chocolate cherry cordials. He occasionally writes on this blog about Invoicebus' stuff. Hello him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.

| Twitter | Facebook |

The post Great New Feature – Customizable Field Labels appeared first on Garage.

This Monday we put something new, something fresh at https://invoicebus.com. If you look in the right bottom corner of your browser you’ll notice bar showing Live Support. Yes this is for real, now you can talk directly with the creators of Invoicebus, and get help directly from us. You can even just stop by and say hi, we really would like that. Here is preview of the chat window, but can go at Invoicebus and see for yourself:

We are using this wonderful open source live chat platform http://mibew.org, and so far we tested it and prove itself as one reliable and fast live support platform.

But the Live Support is not the only new thing at Invoicebus. As some of you already noticed we have slight improvements in other parts of Invoicebus like the new navigation bar at the top and the overall website copywriting. So let have a chit-chat and tell us what you think about that.

Author information

Dimitar Stojanov

Co-founder at Invoicebus

Dimitar is co-founder of Invoicebus, an online invoicing tool for easy invoice management. He's passionate about creating beautiful and simple web applications and occasionally writes on this blog about web design, online business, and fighting the status-quo. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.

| Twitter | Facebook | Google+ |

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The invoice editor of Invoicebus is “What You See Is What You Get” tool for creating fast and easy invoices, and at the same time, centralized place for management of other data like:

We spent a lot of time to raise this concept on a level that allows incredibly natural, fast and focused flow of the invoicing process as a whole. You can see it in action from this video:

The main concept here is to rid of all separate management pages, screens, pop-ups, back and forth navigation, page reloads; and instead, to integrate all assets on the same page, accessible exactly when and where you need. The result is uninterrupted workflow experience with significantly increased speed and focus.

Invoice editor for creating and editing invoices	View of already created invoice	Invoice in PDF format Download the example in PDF
Invoice shown in the client’s inbox	Printed version of the invoice	Email notification that the invoice has been viewed by the client

After creating your first invoice, Invoicebus learns all settings by himself and automatically applies them in future.

Feel free to try it by yourself and see how it works. Thereafter, leave a comment of how much time you needed to make your first invoice. We would be happy to hear from you.

Author information

Stefan Chachovski

Co-founder of Invoicebus. Huge lover of nature, science, and chocolate cherry cordials. He occasionally writes on this blog about Invoicebus' stuff. Hello him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.

| Twitter | Facebook |

The post Feature Preview 3: The Invoice Editor appeared first on Garage.