The world is shrinking, and business is becoming more dependent on mobility. Even small businesses are seeing the value of using tablets as point of sale (POS) and single point of entry for their businesses transaction needs. Thankfully, tablet software — like MobileBiz — is up to that task.
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MobileBiz is a powerful invoicing application that can make in-the-field and on-the-job invoicing a breeze. Here are some of its features:
- Easy invoicing
- Supports local taxes, currency, and date formats
- Track sales status
- Accept payments
- Track overall customer balance, invoice cost, and profit
- Send customer statements and receipts
- Customizable templates
- Multi-company support
- Built-in reports
There’s a free trial version of MobileBiz, but it only allows up to 10 records of each transaction type at a given time. MobileBiz Pro costs $22.00 (USD). Is it worth the price? Let’s install it, kick the tires, and find out.
Installation
The installation of MobileBiz is quite simple. Here are the steps:
- Open the Google Play Store
- Search for “mobilebiz trial”
- Tap the entry for MobileBiz Trial
- Tap Accept
- Tap Download & install
When the installation is complete, you’ll find the MobileBiz launcher in the app drawer. Tap the launcher, and you’ll start the preliminary setup.
First run
When you run MobileBiz for the first time, you’ll have to take care of a few configuration procedures. First, configure your company (Figure A).
Figure A
Here you see MobileBiz installed on a Verizon-branded Galaxy Tab.
If you’d like to add custom fields to the standard information, you can tap the Add/Edit button and enter pretty much any information you need. However, if you skip these custom fields, you can still come back to them after you’ve set everything up.
The next step allows you to configure the locale (Figure B).
Figure B
Configure the localization information for your installation of MobileBiz.
Make sure that you configure your currency properly. The currency configuration includes a currency symbol — just tap the button under “Currency symbol” and then select the correct symbol from your device’s keyboard. When the locale is configured, tap the Next button to continue.
The next window (Figure C) requires you to set up taxes. You can have more than one tax configured (in case you deal with multiple states or non-taxed income).
Figure C
By default, the tax is 5%.
Tap the Tax 5% button, and then tap the Add New button. You can then add a new tax by giving the tax a name and a rate (Figure D).
Figure D
You can also give the tax a description if necessary.
Finally, you have to set up the information for your device (Figure E). This only requires an email for the device and a device name. The information is used to recover device PINs.
Figure E
Make sure to give this device a unique name, especially if you install MobileBiz on multiple tablets.
Tap the Finish button, and you’ll find yourself on the MobileBiz main window (Figure F).
Figure F
If you need to go back through some of the setup steps, tap the Setup button and select Settings.
At this point, you can begin the process of customization. Tap the Customize button to work with the following:
- Email templates
- SMS templates
- Print templates
- Custom Fields
Once you open one of the above, there will be sub-entries to take care of. For example, in the Email templates section, you can configure:
- Cash Sale Emails
- Statement Emails
- Payment Emails
- Quote Emails
- Invoice Emails
- Sales Order Emails
The process of customizing a template is not difficult. Here are the steps:
- Tap Customize from the MobileBiz home screen
- Tap Email templates
- Tap Cash Sale Emails
- In the resulting window (Figure G), configure the template to suit your needs
- Click Save
Figure G
You can set up different types of templates as easily as this one.
For a complete tag reference (such as those found in the email subject line), check out this MobileBiz reference page.
At this point, you’re ready to start setting up your customers, items, sales, and more. Tap the New button, and you can create a new:
- Quote
- Invoice
- Sales Order
- Cash Sale
- Accept Payment
- Add Customer
- Add Item
Give MobileBiz a try. You might find it to be an ideal solution for helping your business become more mobile. If you do, purchase the full version to remove the limitations.
