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Need reality check on whether I'm doing invoice tracking completely wrong or if this is just how it works.
Current process send invoice from my Google Docs template, client pays to my business bank account, I manually check statements every few days, try to match payment references to invoice numbers which half the time clients don't include proper references, update spreadsheet marking invoice paid. Doing 40-50 invoices monthly.
This weekend literally took 4 hours because three different clients paid multiple invoices in single lump sum transfers with zero reference information. So I'm sitting there with calculator trying to figure out which combinations of invoice amounts add up to each payment amount it's ridiculous.
Has to be better way to do this right? Looked at Xero and QuickBooks but they seem really expensive and complicated for what's basically just a matching problem. Been researching simpler options found some platforms like Vivid Money that apparently do invoicing and banking together so payments would auto match since they're in same system but don't know if that actually works or just marketing speak.
Does anyone use tools that automatically match payments to invoices or am I missing something obvious here? Can't be the only person spending entire weekends on this nonsense.