The freelancer's fast-track guide to invoicing with BillingNow. If you're a freelancer, invoicing should take minutes, not your whole evening. The right tool helps you send clean, accurate invoices fast and makes it easy for clients to pay without endless reminders. What a time-saving invoicing tool must do. Before you install yet another app, check if it actually solves your real problems: * Create invoices in minutes - reusable templates, saved client data, automatic invoice numbers. * Handle taxes correctly - VAT, GST, or local tax rules without manual math. * Track payments and late invoices - so you know exactly who owes what, and since when. * Manage expenses - log project costs so you don't forget to bill them. * Stay affordable - especially if you're a solo freelancer. Tools like FreshBooks or Zoho Invoice tick some of these boxes, but they often lock key features behind higher tiers. You can compare those directly on BillingNow's competitor pages like FreshBooks vs BillingNow or Zoho vs BillingNow. How BillingNow speeds up invoicing. BillingNow is built so you can go from finished project to sent invoice in a couple of clicks. * Use the free Invoice Generator to create a professional invoice without even logging in. * Save your clients, services, and usual rates so you're not retyping the same lines every month. * Apply the right VAT instantly with the built-in VAT calculator. Because BillingNow follows Swiss quality and data protection standards, your client details and payment history stay secure while still being easy for you to access. Get paid faster with AI help and clear tracking. The longer it takes to send an invoice, the longer you wait for money. BillingNow's AI-powered assistant helps you: * Auto-fill invoice lines based on past projects. * Suggest payment terms and polite reminder messages. * Spot unpaid invoices so you know who to follow up with. From your reporting view, you can see: * Total outstanding payments. * Which clients always pay late. * Which services bring in the most revenue. That makes it easier to plan cash flow instead of guessing. Simple pricing that makes sense for freelancers. As a freelancer, you don't want another heavy monthly subscription. BillingNow offers: * A generous free invoicing option with no hidden fees. * Flexible plans as your business grows. * An affiliate program if you want to earn by recommending it to other freelancers. If you get stuck, the Help Center and detailed policies like the Refund Policy and Security pages are easy to find and written in plain language. Try it on your next invoice. The quickest way to know if BillingNow fits your workflow is to use it for your next invoice: * Open the Invoice Generator. * Add your logo, client details, and line items. * Use the VAT calculator if needed. * Save the invoice as a template for next time. If that process takes you more than a few minutes, you know what to optimize next. Put this into practice. Create your first invoice in under a minute - free to start.

Small business technology news this week: AI shopping searches surges, Thryv and Wix partner, Gemini Notebook gets an upgrade. ByGene Marks, Contributor. I write about tech that impacts my small business - and yours. Aug 09, 2026, 07:00am EDT Listen to the article 0:00 / 5:22 Summary. AI-assisted shopping has surged 200% in a year, making it a top priority for commerce leaders despite data integration challenges. Thryv and Wix are partnering to offer a unified platform for SMBs, combining AI-powered marketing with website solutions. Google's Gemini Notebook Pro received a major upgrade, now generating PDFs, spreadsheets, and enhanced reports, with AI executing its own code. FreshBooks and Grasshopper also announced a partnership to streamline small business cash flow, integrating invoicing, payments, and banking. Finally, the steel industry is rapidly adopting AI to revolutionize production, improving process control, safety, demand forecasting, and logistics, including robotic inspections. Let's recap: * AI agentic use in e-commerce is surging, creating challenges * Thryv and Wix join forces to help small businesses * Gemini Notebook (formerly NotebookLM) adds new features * Freshbooks and Grasshopper announce a new partnership * The steel industry leans into AI AI shopping searches surged 200% in one year - and it's a top priority for commerce leaders now. Salesforce chief digital evangelist Vala Afshar discussed the exponential growth of AI-assisted shopping. According to Salesforce's State of Commerce report, AI agentic use in shopping surged 200 percent in the past twelve months changing how people are discovering products and finding recommendations. This latest statistic is paired with the 86 percent of commerce leaders who believe that AI is raising the standard for customer experiences. (Source: ZDNet) Why this is important for your small business: With agentic AI going mainstream in the online retail space, scaling AI is a top priority for commerce leaders. Improving data quality is among the main challenges for companies who want to meet the demands of their customers - 61 percent said that has been difficult because of poor data integration. Companies are ramping up their efforts to expand AI capabilities and implementation as customers continue to rely on AI in their digital shopping experiences. Thryv and Wix announce intent to form strategic partnership to power SMB growth with unified commerce, payments and website solutions. Customer management platform Thryv and website builder Wix have announced plans to join forces, combining their technologies into a unified platform for service-based small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). Connecting Thryv's AI-powered marketing and business management platform with Wix's website-building, SMBs will have centralized access to websites, online scheduling, digital marketing, payments, and more. (Source: Business Wire) According to the announcement the goal is to make it easier for businesses to manage their online presence, bookings, and customer engagement from a single solution. On this announcement, Thryv CEO Joe Walsh said, "We can generate significant value providing a comprehensive technology suite to the service-based businesses we support, while creating new opportunities for these businesses." MORE FOR YOU Google's 'Gemini Notebook' Pro gets major upgrade, adds PDF and spreadsheet output. This week, Google announced its rollout of a significant upgrade to Gemini Notebook Pro (formerly NotebookLM) - enhancing its AI research and note-taking platform with new features aimed at helping users organize information, conduct research, and generate content more efficiently. Gemini Notebook is available to Google's Pro users. (Source: BigGo Finance) Google says the upgrade includes features that can automatically generate charts, PDFs, and spreadsheets from source materials - and enhanced summary reports. According to the update, each notebook has its own "dedicated execution environment" allowing the AI to write and execute its own code. FreshBooks and Grasshopper partner to streamline small business Cash Flow and digital banking. FreshBooks and digital bank Grasshopper have announced a strategic partnership to give small business owners a more connected way to manage invoicing, payments, banking, and cash flow. By integrating their platforms, the companies aim to reduce financial administration and help entrepreneurs make better financial decisions by offering: Automated Cash-Flow with real time tracking giving business owners better control over their cash flow; an Integrated Financial Management system that connects FreshBooks' accounting, invoicing, and payment platform with Grasshopper's digital banking services. (Source: FinTech Finance News) Forbes Daily: Join over 1 million Forbes Daily subscribers and get our best stories, exclusive reporting and essential analysis of the day's news in your inbox every weekday. The companies say that the partnership is also designed to lessen the burden for business owners with resolving complex financial issues and eliminates the task of managing separate applications for bookkeeping, invoicing, banking, and cash flow. The steel industry is rapidly embracing AI. Here's how. In the past few years, the steel industry has been accelerating its deployment of large-scale AI that's revolutionizing steel production. This week I did a deep dive into steel manufacturers and how they're integrating artificial intelligence into their operations. For example: Steelmakers are using AI to analyze data from furnaces, rolling mills, and production lines to improve process control, reduce scrap, minimize downtime, and enhance worker safety. AI is also helping to forecast demand, optimize inventory, improve production scheduling, and coordinate logistics, allowing steel producers to respond more quickly to market changes. Robotics is making a huge impact in the steel industry with technology such as robotic dogs that inspect high-heat and hard to access areas, minimizing risk for workers; and a recycling robot that can pick out metal scrap through a whole shift without tiring. (Source: Forbes) To read more about the steel companies that are leveraging AI, visit the link. Note: Have a technology story that small business owners should know about? Don't mind me sharing my opinion? Share it with me on X @genemarks. Read our community guidelines. LOADING VIDEO PLAYER... FORBES' FEATURED Video Less than $2/week.

Best invoicing software 2026 contractors: Forbes missed. Forbes named the best invoicing software of 2026, but its general picks skip what contractors actually need. Here's the gap and what to look for instead. Forbes just published its best invoicing and billing software of 2026. The names: Square, Zoho Invoice, HubSpot, Invoice Ninja, Stripe, Harvest, Xero, and Paymo. Good tools, all of them, for a business that bills the same way every month. A contractor does not. 70% of construction contractors face routine payment delays. The average small-business invoice now waits 28.8 days to clear. The Forbes list will generate your invoice in minutes. It will not touch the part that starves you: the waiting. Who actually made Forbes' 2026 list. Forbes' top tier spans Square, Zoho Invoice, HubSpot, Invoice Ninja, Stripe, Harvest, Xero, and Paymo. Zoho Invoice takes the free-software nod for freelancers and solopreneurs, with a 4.1-star rating from the research team. FreshBooks is flagged as the easiest to use, Xero as best for growing businesses, and QuickBooks as best for mobile invoicing. Look at what ties the list together: every pick is a general small-business tool that added invoicing. A contractor-focused roundup lists a different set. A contractor-focused roundup includes Joist, Jobber, QuickBooks, FreshBooks, and Invoice2go. The contractor cash flow crisis the list skips. Cash flow is one of the biggest challenges for contractors. The numbers behind that sentence are not gentle. 70% of construction contractors face routine payment delays. By the end of 2023, 71% of subcontractors reported delayed payments from general contractors. Only 13% of businesses say their average invoice is paid on time or before the due date. The backlog compounds. 64% of small businesses are carrying invoices more than 90 days overdue. 43% of the total value of credit-based B2B sales in the US was overdue. US small businesses are owed more than $17,000 in late invoices on average. None of this is a bookkeeping nuisance. 1 in 4 bankruptcies happens because of late invoice payments. And 38% of small businesses close because they exhaust cash reserves or cannot secure more capital. The crisis lives in the days after you send the invoice, which is why payment delays in construction deserve their own attention. QuickBooks just raised prices 41 to 70 percent. QuickBooks sits on both lists, which makes its 2026 price change relevant no matter which roundup you read. Renewals on or after August 1, 2026 moved. The increase is not small. QuickBooks Online Plus went from $99 to $140 a month, a 41% increase, and Advanced jumped from $200 to $340, a 70% increase. Desktop Pro Plus and Mac Plus rose from $999 to $1,149 for single-user licenses. The price went up, but the thing a contractor needs most did not change. QuickBooks is accounting software that also invoices; the follow-up is a separate job. Paying 41% more for the same general tool is a rough trade when cash flow is already the problem. What general invoicing software gets wrong about construction. The gap is not the invoice itself; it is everything after it. Manual invoice processing is one of the largest preventable causes of payment delays in construction. A contractor who invoices by hand, then remembers to follow up by hand, is funding their own delay. Freelancers spend 8.5 hours a month chasing late payments. And 29% of freelancer invoices land at least a day late. Scale that to a crew running several jobs at once, and the chasing becomes a second, unpaid job. The follow-up deserves the same care as the invoice, which is why invoice follow-up emails matter more than a fresh template. What contractors should look for. Skip the category labels and ask what a tool does after the invoice goes out. A contractor needs follow-ups that fire on their own and a paper trail that keeps a late invoice from turning into a write-off. This is where Nudgepay fits. Nudge is an invoice reminder tool. It sits on top of the invoice you already send and does the chasing, the part the numbers name as the bottleneck. If your accounting software builds the invoice and nothing follows it up, the invoice is just a document. A reminder turns it into cash. Getting paid faster is a reminder problem as much as a billing one, and timing those reminders is what shortens the wait. Stop chasing invoices. Nudge sends automatic SMS and email reminders on every invoice - before the due date, on the due date, and until you're paid. 14-day free trial, no credit card required. Start free trial