Ezy Invoice 7 - What's Different

If you are evaluating Ezy Invoicing 7, this page gives a summary of what's different in Ezy Invoice 7 when compared to other similar products in the market. This comparison is made with other similar products in general. It does not make reference to any specific product :

This topic is divided into 3 main groups as follows :

• Stability or Robustness
• Features
• Ease Of Use

Stability or Robustness

Stability is right at the top of our priority list in all our products. Here are some of the steps we have taken with regards to stability in Ezy Invoice :

• At the heart of the system is its database engine. This is crucial to the stability of the product. After extensive testing and evaluation we selected DBIsam database engine from Elevate Software. This engine is the joint winner of the Delphi Magazines developers choice as the best database engine. We now develop all our products in this excellent database engine. It is very stable, performs very well, is simple to setup both on standalone or network environments & has a very small footprint.
• While most other products provide only a Workgroup (File based) database engine, we provide both a Workgroup and Client Server Engine (C/S). File based or workgroup engines are ideal for small 1 to 3 users. All it takes is one unstable PC or network cable/card to affect everyone on the network. When one PC starts to hang, often, everyone else on the network will have to stop work, exit the system and reboot the Server. Usually the database becomes corrupt after this and has to be repaired before everyone can resume work.
• A C/S engine on the other hand isolates the faulty PC from the data files. All other users can continue as if nothing happened. The offending PC can reboot and reconnect to the server when ready. Rarely does the database files corrupt.
• No database system is immune to corruption. If power to a server for example is cut off midway while the server is writing to disk, the data files will corrupt. We provide built in Repair Utilities. If damage is too severe, we also provide a  backup and restore facility using the popular zip compression format to help you get up and running with minimum inconvenience and loss of data.
• As you key in Invoices etc, in the background, stock movement, stock on hand, Debtors etc needs to be updated. We extensively use "transactions" such that everything gets updated as one complete unit or nothing gets saved at all. This will helps ensure that your database as a whole does not go out of synch. We had to trade some performance for this but you will appreciate it.
• This is a very feature rich piece of software made available in a less than 3MB download size . This is made possible only through very carefully planning before even the first line of code is written. We strongly advocate inheritance and code reuse in its Architecture thus keeping the program size to a minimum. Rest assured there are no redundant libraries, unnecessary DLL files  and excess baggage on your hard disk.
• Resources (CPU time & Memory) are used sparingly. Resources are only loaded to memory as and when required. This is evident when you load the program, it loads very fast. In fact we had to put a delay just to display our splash screen. If you were to run Performance Monitor (Win NT, 2000 Pro, XP only) while loading and using Ezy Invoice, you can tell that it uses a minimal of resources and does not hog your PC's CPU and Memory.
• Data tables are also opened on demand . Only tables that are needed are opened. This will greatly minimize network traffic and conserve system resources.

Buy Now: from US$89 | Screen Shots | Try It | Feature List

Features

• 1. Most other product only allow you to create Invoices, some also provide Quotes. Businesses need to create and maintain far more documents than that. On top of these two documents, Ezy Invoice provides : Credit Notes, Debit Notes, Delivery Orders, Proforma Invoices, Packing List, Quick Letters, Quick Faxes and Quick Email. Why do we need letters and faxes when we can use a word processor ? Because it makes searching for your document far easier. We often spend a lot of time searching our hard disk for files/ folders or looking for recipients address info. With Ezy Invoice, you don't have to do it anymore as all documents are now in a searchable database. Also Ezy Invoice is linked to your customer/ vendor database, you don't need to search for their address, fax number etc. Just pick the recipient from a pull down list and go straight to the letter body.
• Most products we have seen don't allow you to change the layout of these documents. Some allow you to pick from a few pre-defined templates. Basically you have to settle for whatever is provided in the templates. All our document layouts are highly customizable. You can insert your logo, specify fonts, position, borders and more.
• When filling out an Invoice body, most products require you to pick items from and Inventory. This can be quite irritating at times especially if you are a service oriented company and do not often use the Inventory. Ezy Invoice allows you to pick from the Inventory or just type freely into the document body.
• You can also copy, cut, paste and insert entire rows of data in the document body. Almost as flexible as a spreadsheet.
• Option to use last transacted price for each customer. Other products use whatever selling price specified in the Inventory. Ezy Invoice can be set up to check your last transacted price of an item for the same customer and uses that price by default. All this is done at highly optimized speed. You won't even feel it. There's nothing more embarrassing than quoting in-consistently.
• Can easily view customer history when preparing quotes or other documents.
• Document Description & Product ID automatically stretches to use as many lines as required. If you have a lengthy description, it will not get truncated but will instead wrap to the new line. All items after it will also be pushed down.
• Most products allow you to convert quotation to invoice. Ezy Invoice allows you to import contents from any document. If you did a similar Invoice last week for example, you can import it as a base and work from there. There's no need to start from scratch.
• If you made 3 separate deliveries and only want to send your customer one Invoice, you can import the 3 Delivery Orders into one Invoice.
• Flexible Tax structure, you can define your own tax types and view reports for it. You can also specify if you want to quote as "Tax Inclusive" or "Tax Exclusive". In some countries you are required to use ONLY Tax Inclusive. Tax inclusive means that if your listed selling price of an item for example is $100 and your tax rate is 10% when it is brought into the Invoice or quotation, it is inserted as $110/-. At the bottom of the Invoice, Ezy Invoice shows the total tax amount for all items in the Invoice or Document.
• Able to lock Documents, Receipt Entries and Stock Movement. If you have finished checking the previous months work, you can lock it such that no one can amend these transactions unless they have the user permissions to unlock it. You will sleep much better at night knowing that all your previous months work is locked.
• For every document or record (e.g in Customer, vendor tables, Inventory etc), Ezy Invoice keeps track of :
  - Who created the document or record
  - When was it created
  - Who last edited it &
  - When was it last edited
• While this might not be useful if you are the only one using the product. It becomes VERY important when you start using it in a network environment. It helps ensure that everyone is much more alert when doing any work on the system. It helps provide a means to audit all entries and transactions.
• Can purge documents, receipts and stock movement transactions. Whilst databases these days can store records by the millions, there is still a finite or maximum file size for FAT & NTFS file systems (these are the 2 common file systems used by Windows). Once this is reached, you cannot enter anymore records. Ezy Invoice provides an option to purge outdated records to make room for new records.
• Pro version users have a fast convenient way to check Customer History. If the customer calls you on the phone and wants to know the price of a particular item. With a mouse click, you will know :
  - if this customer purchase this item before, when and for how much
  - How much other customers are buying this item for
  - Your listed selling price and cost price for the item.
  - How much stock you have on hand.
  - You can give him an answer in 2 seconds.
• Ezy Invoice provides a very friendly Customer Receipts form. When customers make payments against your outstanding Invoices or Debit/ Credit Notes you have a very convenient mechanism of entering these payments and knocking-it-off against your documents as it is quite common for a customer to pay for multiple Invoices in one single payment. This form minimizes the element of human data entry error as much as possible.
• Clean, neat and useful management reports.

Buy Now: from US$89 | Screen Shots | Try It | Feature List

Ease of Use

Ezy Invoice is a powerful software masquerading behind a simple, friendly user interface. Here are some of its features that tackle "Ease Of Use"

• Consistent Interface throughout. While it may be boring, Ezy Invoice uses a consistent user interface wherever possible. This ensures a very step learning curve. Learn one interface and you've learnt them all. To avoid users from say entering customer information to the vendor tables, we separated the different forms using color schemes.
• All menus, options and commands fields etc are logically arranged and exposed as and when you need it. We opted for a clean, neat and un-cluttered interface as opposed to a congested interface with buttons, commands & shortcuts all over the forms.
• Documentation and help are in plain English, clear & concise.
• Extensive hints are provided both on the Status Bar and also if you leave your mouse over an object.
• We used guided Wizards where appropriate at the same time taking care not over doing it such that the Wizards make the product in-flexible.

Buy Now: from US$89 | Screen Shots | Try It | Feature List