Spending your night and weekends invoicing? Invoicing whenever you can find your desk? Waiting to get paid for a job that you finished weeks ago? Technology just handed self employed awesome, easy profit capture tools. You can now quote, invoice, provide evidence, and get paid with your iPhone. Even if you are not a technology wiz, these are easy.

Email quotes and proposals before you get home. No more time waiting to get back to the office, or using you weekend time to write up quotes or proposals. These applications let you enter common products and units in a couple keystrokes. So if you are a plumber, electrician, or contractor think about those standard materials you use frequently. The quote and invoicing apps also with Google Contacts so that your customer names, addresses and emails are easily used without fat finger typos causing misspellings and frustration. Several examples to choose from include Omni Invoice, Invoice2go, or GetPaid.

Quickly turn quotes into invoices before you leave the customer. The biggest loss of profit dollars I see in my self employed clients is not billing for extra work done while they’re being to darn helpful. Many contractors don’t have an easy, professional, instant way to modify customer invoices to capture that last minute extra work. iPhone invoicing lets you add materials and hours to the original quote. You can then show it to and email the customer before leaving their home, lawn, office, or worksite. The apps I just mentioned above let you do that.

What if you have backup receipts or other documents? If you have purchased items for your projects and have receipts that you need to justify your invoice, either to forward to the customer or just for you’re your own memory, try Genius Scan. This app automatically sizes the picture size to the paper size, re-squares the image (can you get your camera to line up with the paper in less than 3 seconds, I can’t), and makes that picture bright and clear so it’s easier to see.

Now, just take a credit card payment. No more chasing the client or waiting for your money when you can take credit card payments from your iPhone. Using an application such as Square, you can swipe a card, process the payment instantly and send the receipt to the customer.

Don’t have an iPhone yet? Verizon is expected to get the iPhone by January. Also, many of these apps are available for the iPad if you were looking for a business excuse to have one in your life.

Too busy to research for yourself? What if you want this ease of quoting, invoicing, and taking payment but fear it will mess up your already hectic schedule? I’ll hook you up to the local technology guys that can set up and support you. Call, email, or see me and I’ll get you started.

Hey, my sole priority in life is to help make you profitable and happy so you can work to reach your financial goals. These tools can reduce the stress of collecting from customers so you have more time to build your business. These apps can help to improve your cash flow so much, it’ll feel like magic!

Now stop reading about iPhone Invoicing and start doing! Let’s create your personal profit strategies for growing profit. Call small business profitability coach Merra Lee Moffitt, CFP®. She can be reached at, 888-920-2030 or by email at merralee@captureprofits.com.

Upgrading my iPhone 3 to an iPhone 4 may seem like an unnecessary up grade, but hear me out. Many look to their iPhones for cool games and music, a few cool grocery, gas, and gadgets they can share with their friends. Not me; I am a total productivity gal. In my opinion, the evolving tools worth seeking on iPhone transcend beyond mere productivity, they are starting to make a difference in profitability.

We hear time and again that “the fortune is in the follow up”. Those of us who build our businesses based on relationships can attest, it takes lots and lots of follow up. Consider some of these simple, yet essential tools available on iPhone.

MailMe Voice – is a handy little app that lets you send an instant voice message directly into your email inbox. With simply two taps of the screen you can talk capturing something you want to follow up. Say, something you remembered while you were driving or you just promised to someone while you were on the cell phone. That way whatever you promise someone gets recorded even if you can’t take the time to write it down right now. Besides, this is much safer.

MailMe Text – Also very handy, will email yourself a very quick text note. For example, a reminder when you are in a meeting and want to send yourself a follow up for later. For example, I do a lot of my research at nights and mornings when I am at my computer and therefore working on the tasks assigned.

iPhone 4 Camera – I meet a lot of people and receive a lot of business cards. The camera in the iPhone 4 is crisp enough to take a picture of the card so I can email it to my assistant for data entry into MS Outlook, my primary contact manager. This is the only item on this list that really needed an iPhone 4; all the others work just as well on version 3.

Digits Calculator – Most calculators seem such a low-tech item barely worth mentioning. Digits, however, has a history tape like the old adding machine, that shows your past entries. That way if you are entering a string of numbers, and you mistype one, you can edit it. Great for when you are estimating for a ballpark price proposal and the client wants to change some assumptions along the way.

Omni Invoice – If you are selling parts that have services or services that occasionally include parts, this is a great tool. It lets you build custom proposals consisting of parts and service hour estimates and then email them right away. You can quickly turn the proposal into an invoice and send it without going back to your office.

So how do these apps help with profitability? Doing what you told someone you would do, is the hallmark of integrity. Following up is what makes others want to do business with you. Following up quickly, helps you close sales and get paid faster. And that is what leads to profitability.

Have a little gadget that you’d love to share with other self employed, email me below.

Now stop reading about the IPhone and start doing! Let’s create your personal profit strategies for growing profit. Call small business profitability coach Merra Lee Moffitt, CFP®. She can be reached at, 888-920-2030 or by email at merralee@captureprofits.com.