Marketcircle, the company behind Billings (which I mentioned in some depth recently), knows that a freelancer (or small business) needs every advantage they can get to survive in this economy. Sympathetic to the plight of the individuals on "Main Street," they're offering Billings 3 for $20 off the usual price, and upgrades for $10 off until November 30th. If you'd benefit from time tracking and high-quality invoices but weren't ready to drop $59.95 to get there, see if $39.95USD sounds a little better.

If you've already purchased or upgraded to Billings 3, you're not excluded from the party. Emailing a proof of purchase to Marketcircle will get you a voucher for the difference, redeemable for anything else in their store. See AJ's blog post for directions. Prices have also been reduced in the U.K., Canada, Europe and Australia with slightly modified numbers based on exchange rates. Stop by the Marketcircle store for details.

Marketcircle just released version 3 of Billings last week, greatly expanding the functionality of the time-tracking and invoicing application. One of the major reasons I've chosen Billings in the past for my invoicing is the professional-looking documents it can create for electronic and paper delivery. Billings 3 adds new templates and new features, making it an application which any professional individual who needs to manage estimates, invoices, statements and collections should take a look at.

Billings 3 started as a ground-up rework of the program's foundation, focusing on future extensibility, workflow improvements and the user interface. Billings has always had time-tracking and invoicing features, with an easy-to-use timer window, menubar timers and professional invoice templates. This version expands those areas, but it's got a bevy of entirely new features designed to make the lives of self-employed individuals, freelancers and small business owners easier. Read on for an overview of what's new.

If you own and run a small business, part of your work involves creating and sending invoices to clients. For many Mac users, invoices are created in Word, Excel, Numbers, or some other application that really isn't designed for that purpose.

Media Atelier might have an answer in their new Leopard-only invoicing package for Mac, GrandTotal. GrandTotal provides a number of design tools for creating a good-looking invoice to represent your organization, and free templates are available from Meda Atelier's website. You can then set up your customers, create a catalog of goods or services, create estimates or full invoices, and send them out either immediately or on a timed basis. Invoices are marked off when paid, and the Dock icon always shows how many invoices are due or overdue.

GrandTotal works hand-in-hand with Media Atelier's TimeLog 4 application, so for those of you who work on a billable hour basis can enter your time into the TimeLog app, then import into GrandTotal. A free trial is available for download (click downloads file), and the application can be purchased from within the demo for €49.

What do you use to create invoices? Leave a note in the comments.

The billing and invoicing shareware space sure is heating up lately, what with iBiz (my personal favorite), Billable and now iRatchet from Pretty Good Software. It has a nice array of features, including the typical Address Book, iCal and Spotlight integration, as well as mileage tracking, "robust" tax support, international formatting and - a pleasant surprise - .Mac and local backup support.

A demo of this Universal Binary is of course available, while a license costs $45.

[via Iconfactory Links]

I just noticed that my favorite freelancing app, iBiz, is now in a v3 beta phase. At first glance the most notable change is that brushed metal has been given the pink slip, but there is a veritable storm of new features under the hood, including:

• a Document Monitor so iBiz can keep track of project files and how much time you spend on each
• iCal syncing via Sync Services - goodbye to manual lifting
• a Billing Section for more better tracking of invoices, estimates, payments and deposits
• new job events to help track commute mileage, as well as 'non-billable' for the freebies
• AppleScript and Automator support - if they keep this up, your clients won't even need you anymore
• Quick Timers and an improved menu bar utility
• HTML templates with full-blown CSS support

and a ton more. iBiz went universal a while ago, and users of previous version can upgrade to 3 for a mere $19.99, though its retail price has increased from $29.99 to $49.99 (in my opinion, from tinkering with this beta: it's still more than worth it). iBiz Server, for multi-employee and computer environments, is $89.99, which includes two client licenses.