Sunrise

Avantages

Is easy to use, I'm not an accountant nor have many experience in that field so being easy to use was a big advantage for us. It has the core functionalities we need and many others that I certainly don't know how to use so It should have the required features for advanced users.

The invoicing system is great, easy and customizable.
Has a quoting and estimating system that's easy to convert to an invoice, also has an easy way to send reminders about our invoices and has some automation once you get paid.

It has a bookkeeping system and loans offering but we haven't used those so no comment there.

Inconvénients

Would be great if we could use our own domain to send the invoices, reminders etc instead of the @sunriseapp.com

I haven't found a way to automate the invoicing process, using a csv file or something like Zapier or similar to avoid the need to create each item of the invoice . That certainly would save us a lot of time.

Not sure if these will be offered later or if there's already a way to do it at this time, just haven't found them.

Avantages

This is the tool I recommend for any business owner/startup for double-entry accounting. It's the tool I used to get serious about my business accounting (moving out of spreadsheets). Getting organized with a chart of accounts, an real Profit/Loss statement, invoice processing/tracking/payments, and more helped me focus and grow. I purchased it when it was known as Billy, but now it's free and improving.

Inconvénients

There is a bit of a learning curve, but it's not too bad. Lendio is improving Sunrise since acquiring Billy, but there are still some areas that can be improved. There is no account dashboard, meaning you have to go into each account individually to see if there are transactions to be reconciled or to check balances (this should be visible on a single page). Also, there is no way to save report settings, so if I want to see my P/L report by months for the current year, I have to make multiple selections each and every time I run it.

Avantages

A basic, fairly easy to use platform for creating and managing invoices. It's utility is fine, it does allow my clients to pay us through their invoices. It's because of this, that I give it a mediocre rating. However, I think there is room for improvement.

Inconvénients

This app lacks the design and integration capabilities of its competitors and they seem to have been experiencing some growing pains lately. The templates are basic and allow for minimal changes in font, some color, and logo changes; that is about it though.

Our company uses sales decks to issue quotes for projects and it would be great if I could integrate billy invoices into that, however design compatibility aside, billy invoices can only be structured vertically, not horizontally, which is how our deck are orientated. We've also experienced some glitches in notifications and connections to stripe, which is the processor they use.

Avantages

I love setting my invoicing on autopilot - every month it bills my customers and manages the transactions. I can see who isn’t paying their bills, it’s great.

Inconvénients

They still don’t have a Zapier integration yet, they recently reached out to me to be apart of their beta which is great as I want to integrate it with my all-in-one digital marketing platform Automate CRM. Doing so will streamline my signups / billing for done-for-you clients. I also think they need embeddable payment forms. Currently have to use stripe, but that bypasses their system so that won’t work for the long term. They need to get up to speed like waveapps, I’ve been checking their software out because of the limitations I’m running into.

Avantages

I've been using Billy/Sunrise since I started my business. They are quick to setup, and can be very simple to track your banking and invoicing, along with some advanced features to automate a lot of your accounting.

The biggest pros I see are:

- Quick and easy invoicing (including recurring)
- Connect your bank account for automatic transaction tracking
- Budgeting
- Integrates with Stripe for collecting payments but also offers their own merchant account (good to have a backup)

Inconvénients

I'm not a power user since I'm a one-man business, but there is one big feature missing.

There is no automatic payment/debit feature. Recurring invoices are just automatically sent, but need to be paid by the client. There is no way to auto-debit every month, which slows down a few workflows.