Volutive

Customize your invoices, print them and email copies in PDF

My first five minutes with Volutive weren't very positive ones. With an interface that looks like it has come straight from 1990, no getting started guide and a dead link to the beginners video, it's both ugly and confusing.

Can it get any better?

Well, yes. But only just! Volutive is a program designed to help you create very specific invoices for your small business.

When you first start it, it reminds you that you will need to click Insert on the Enterprises window in order to begin.

What it doesn't tell you is what you have to do next! Volutive does come with a help file, but it's not that useful when taking your very first steps.

After a bit of trial and error, you'll see that Volutive needs quite a bit of preparatory work before it will be useful. Once you add your Enterprises, keep double-clicking on the entries to add other elements like Items, Vendors, Invoices and Purchase orders.

When you have filled in all the relevant information, you'll be able to print out detailed invoices and reports, as well as directly emailing the documents to your clients as PDFs or JPEGs.

Volutive isn't very comfortable to use, but it is detailed, functional and - importantly to the small business owner - free! Modern business administration software has invoicing functionality built-in, but if for some reason you need a separate tool for the job, Volutive fits the bill.