Questions and answers

No, no adver­ti­sing appears on Billomat.

No, only cust­o­mers from Ger­many are requi­red to pay the cur­rent Ger­man VAT rate. This is also the case with trade professionals/freelancers. Cust­o­mers (trade professionals/freelancers) from the EU are also exempt from Ger­man VAT as long as they can pro­vide evi­dence of a valid Value Added Tax Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion Num­ber (USt/VAT-ID). Cust­o­mers from third coun­tries do not have to pay Ger­man VAT.

Back-ups take place daily, so as to be able to save vir­tually all data if the worst should hap­pen. The data are stored on mir­ro­red hard dri­ves to mini­mise the risk of hard­ware failure.

We host Bil­lo­mat on a high-performance ser­ver in a data centre in Ger­many. Opti­mal acces­si­bi­lity and ser­vice is the­reby guaranteed.

As soon as the con­tract is ended and all out­stan­ding pay­ments have been made, your data will be deleted.

The free ver­sion does not include encryp­tion. From tariff S+ a 256-bit SSL encryp­tion is inclu­ded (please refer to the tariff list). When log­ged on, you can change to a char­ged tariff with SSL encryp­tion at any time under “Settings”.

Regis­tra­tion and log-in are always encryp­ted (inclu­ding with the free tariff).

No, Bil­lo­mat is a web-based ser­vice which can only be used online. Instal­la­tion on your local PC is not possible.

Bil­lo­mat is web-based soft­ware having no spe­cial requi­re­ments in terms of hard­ware. Bil­lo­mat can be used with any modern web-browser that sup­ports the cur­rent web stan­dards. We recom­mend Fire­fox, Apple’s Safari, or Inter­net Explo­rer Ver­sion 7. We can’t gua­ran­tee that Bil­lo­mat will func­tion well with other brow­sers. Bil­lo­mat might look “awful” on other browsers.

Bil­lo­mat is desi­gned for trade pro­fes­sio­nals and free­lan­cers. Bil­lo­mat is opti­mally sui­ted to free­lan­cers and pro­fes­sio­nals (lawy­ers, manage­ment con­sul­tants, archi­tects, jour­na­lists), crea­tive pro­fes­sio­nals (gra­phic desi­gners, free­lan­cers, web desi­gners, soft­ware deve­l­o­pers, copy­wri­ters), tra­de­speople, people star­ting a new busi­ness, and many others besi­des. In short, Bil­lo­mat is for anyone not wan­ting to spend much time labo­riously wri­t­ing out quo­tes and invoices. In this con­text, whe­ther someone is sel­ling pro­ducts or ser­vices is unimportant.

• No signi­fi­cant invest­ment in hard­ware and software
• No signi­fi­cant expen­diture in terms of imple­men­ta­tion costs (Bil­lo­mat is “sign up and go”)
• Con­ti­nuous pro­gram updating – you’re always working with the latest ver­sion of Billomat  
• Acces­si­ble and usa­ble from any internet-enabled com­pu­ter — any­where in the world
• Daily data back-ups (high degree of data security)

Natu­rally, we can under­stand your con­cerns regar­ding ente­ring per­so­nal and/or busi­ness data into an internet-based sys­tem. The data are no lon­ger held locally with you, and you don’t have imme­diate, con­crete access to them. Also, this is a new and unusual way of working for you. But please remem­ber that in many respects you most pro­bably alre­ady trans­fer and manage your data over the inter­net. Here are some exam­ples: When you work with an email ser­vice such as Yahoo, GMX, WEB.de or MSN (all trade­marks are the pro­perty of the pro­vi­ders lis­ted), you also pass on a cer­tain amount of your data and infor­ma­tion. All online ban­king tran­sac­tions and your tax return also fall into this cate­gory. In these cases also you trust the tech­no­logy and the banks, toge­ther with their respec­tive ser­vers and hosts, to keep your data secure. It’s no dif­fe­rent with Billomat.

You can also find more infor­ma­tion in the data pro­tec­tion notes.

Billomat’s free tariff has the same range of func­tions as all the other tariffs. The dif­fe­ren­ces con­sist in the num­ber of cust­o­mers, arti­cles and docu­ments which can be mana­ged, and in the size of the memory.

With the free tariff your data are not trans­fer­red via an SSL encryp­tion and your docu­ments and emails include a small refe­rence to Billomat.

There’s no pro­blem with choo­sing a monthly con­tract period and you run no risk in doing so.

Howe­ver, we also offer lon­ger con­tract periods of three months, six months or a year. There are attrac­tive reduc­tions for these:

• Per quar­ter: 3% reduction
• Per half-year: 6% reduction
• Per year: 12% reduction

Upgrades (chan­ges to a hig­her tariff) can be car­ried out at any time, inclu­ding before the end of the con­tract period. Down­gra­des (chan­ges to a lower tariff) are in prin­ciple only pos­si­ble at the end of the cho­sen pay­ment period.

Please note also that you can only down­grade if you haven’t excee­ded the allo­ca­tion for your cho­sen tariff. If this is the case, you may need to delete some data.

When log­ged on you can change tariffs under “Settings”.

Under “Set­tings” go to “Sub­scrip­tion” and “Tariffs” – in the bar view you can imme­dia­tely see what per­cen­tage you have used up so far and how much remains avail­able to you for wri­t­ing docu­ments, mana­ging arti­cles and mana­ging cust­o­mers. Your cur­rent memory usage is also dis­played there.

At the moment we accept credit cards, Pay­Pal, bank trans­fers and pay­ments made by direct debit (Ger­man bank accounts only).

With Bil­lo­mat there are no hid­den costs. The pri­ces quo­ted are the pri­ces you have to pay (if not using the free tariff) plus sta­tutory VAT (cur­rently 19%). There are no set-up char­ges, no can­cel­la­tion char­ges and no char­ges for upgra­ding or down­gra­ding to a dif­fe­rent tariff.

We at Bil­lo­mat believe that as you suc­ceed we will grow too. You can use the free ver­sion as long as you want to. Bil­lo­mat is great soft­ware for wri­t­ing, over­see­ing and orga­ni­sing your invoices and other docu­ments quickly and effi­ci­ently. If you need to write more than five docu­ments per month you can change to ano­ther good-value tariff at any time.

By choo­sing “Add employees” under “Set­tings” you can add as many employees as you wish and give them an indi­vi­dual pass­word and email address for logging-in. There is no limit to the num­ber of employees you can add.

Note that your employees are sub­ject to no restric­tions when using Bil­lo­mat. Like you they can see (and alter) all data.

The dash­board is where you can get a quick over­view of your due invoices. At the same time the “Sales deve­lop­ment over the last 12 months” tab shows you a gra­phic dis­play of your sales and also a gra­phic dis­play of actual pay­ments received.

Fur­ther down you can also view your “open” quo­tes, i.e. quo­tes which you should, or could, fol­low up.

The dash­board also pro­vi­des two fur­ther pie charts under the “Pro­fi­ta­bi­lity ratio” tab. These show you respec­tively the num­ber of quo­tes won and lost, both in terms of the num­ber of quo­tes and the amount/total involved.

Again — no pro­blem. Bil­lo­mat sup­ports signa­ture solu­ti­ons alre­ady in use and also an inter­face to PixelLetter.

When a par­ti­cu­lar signa­ture solu­tion is alre­ady in use, invoices can be down­loa­ded from Bil­lo­mat, signed locally, and then re-transferred to Bil­lo­mat (and also sent directly by email if requi­red). This ser­vice is com­ple­tely wit­hout charge.

Bil­lo­mat has also incor­po­ra­ted an inter­face to Pixel­Let­ter whe­reby the invoice signa­ture from Pixel­Let­ter can be used directly from Bil­lo­mat.
For this a one-off regis­tra­tion with Pixel­Let­ter is requi­red, and your user creden­ti­als must then be lod­ged with Bil­lo­mat. For the invoices signed by Pixel­Let­ter to also be avail­able through Bil­lo­mat, an encryp­ted address needs to be lod­ged with Pixel­Let­ter. Details on this can be found in the Bil­lo­mat set­tings.
Pixel­Let­ter makes no ser­vice or set-up char­ges. No con­trac­tual obli­ga­ti­ons or mini­mum sales volu­mes are requi­red. Pay­ment is only requi­red for ser­vices actually used.
Bil­lo­mat cust­o­mers also receive a dis­count for Pixel­Let­ter services.

With Bil­lo­mat all docu­ments can be sent free by email.

For sen­ding let­ters and faxes Bil­lo­mat has incor­po­ra­ted an inter­face to Pixel­Let­ter, by which many Pixel­Let­ter ser­vices can be acces­sed directly from Billomat.

For this a one-off regis­tra­tion with Pixel­Let­ter is requi­red, and your user creden­ti­als must then be lod­ged with Billomat.

Pixel­Let­ter makes no ser­vice or set-up char­ges. No con­trac­tual obli­ga­ti­ons or mini­mum sales volu­mes are requi­red. Pay­ment is only requi­red for ser­vices actually used.

Bil­lo­mat cust­o­mers also receive a dis­count for Pixel­Let­ter services.

Yes, this can be done very easily. As soon as you have won one of your quo­tes, i.e. you have recei­ved the order, you need to set the sta­tus of the quote to “Won”. As soon as the sta­tus has been chan­ged to “Won”, the instruc­tion “Create invoice” appears on the right hand side. Just click on this and an invoice is crea­ted which inclu­des all items con­tai­ned in the quote.

Learn more about the opti­ons for lin­king docu­ments: Opti­ons for lin­king docu­ments.

Besi­des quo­tes and invoices, at pre­sent remin­ders, credit notes and order con­fir­ma­ti­ons can be crea­ted. Fur­ther docu­ments are gra­dually being inte­gra­ted into Billomat.

The best way is to first select the cust­o­mer and open the cust­o­mer file. There, under “This customer’s docu­ments”, you will find an appro­priate menu. All docu­ments rela­ting to this cust­o­mer are lod­ged there. From there you can then search for a par­ti­cu­lar invoice using a search func­tion, or you can sim­ply pick the appro­priate column.

Cur­rently there is the option to export your cust­o­mers as a busi­ness card file (“vCard”).

We are cur­rently working on fur­ther export options.