Getting Started

Thanks for your interest in ProfitTrain. ProfitTrain is an application for Mac OS X that helps freelancers and small businesses create and manage invoices. ProfitTrain requires Mac OS X 10.5 or later.

Related: Introduction to ProfitTrain Screencast

Setting up your business

When you first launch ProfitTrain it will create a business based on your contact info from Address Book. To edit this, open the Business Editor using the main menu Window > Show Business Editor or choose Edit… at the bottom the Active Business pulldown in the main window toolbar.

Business Editor

ProfitTrain has built-in support for running many businesses. Using the Business Editor you can edit various attributes of existing businesses or create new businesses from scratch. To switch which business you want to manage in ProfitTrain use the Active Business pulldown in the main window toolbar.

Contact Information

Under the contact tab you’ll see various fields to store the contact information related to this business. The contact information can be linked to an Address Book card by clicking on the card icon in the top right corner. Once linked, the contact info is no longer editable in ProfitTrain directly. To edit, use AddressBook.app. The changes will be synced into ProfitTrain from Address Book when you are done. To unlink the Address Book card uncheck the “Get changes from Address Book” checkbox. At this point all edits are stored only in ProfitTrain.

Defaults

Under the next tab, Defaults, you’ll see a series of fields for hourly rate, taxes and so on. These values are copied over to new clients when they are created. Later when you make an invoice the values are copied again, this time from the client to the invoice.

The reason we do all this copying is to support future changes. You wouldn’t want a change in the tax code or your hourly rate to effect previous invoices in the system so all the values are copied. Furthermore this pattern enables you to have different hourly rates for different clients.

If you ever need to change one of these defaults and you’d like to update the existing clients, edit the values then use the button at the bottom labeled “Update Existing Clients…”. This will bring up a sheet asking you which fields to update.

The rest of the tabs in the business editor help you customize the invoice number schemes, logos and invoice language. For now let’s keep them as-is and make some clients.

Adding some clients

Before we make some clients, make sure you have the correct business selected in the toolbar under Active Business. Then from the File menu choose New Client.

“New Client” will now be in the source list and unless you have clients with bizarre names like “New Client” you’ll probably want to edit their name and contact info. To do so, right click the client and choose Show Client Inspector or choose the similarly named menu under Window in the main menu.

Client Inspector

The client inspector is very similar to the business editor. You can optionally link client contact information to an Address Book card and it has similar defaults. There are some more interesting things under settings but for now update the contact info with a real name and feel free to close the inspector.

Creating Invoices

ProfitTrain is flexible about your invoice workflow and offers a few different paths.

From ToDo Items To Invoices

One popular workflow has you create to do items to track what you’re doing for the client. You can create todo items, assign due dates, mark them as complete, track your time with the built-in timer, etc. When you are ready you can select the to do items you want to invoice and click “Invoice Selected” in the bottom toolbar to make an invoice based on these todos.

Blank Invoices

If you like you can also jump right in and create a blank invoice from scratch. While in the Invoices view click on New to create a new blank invoice and bring up the edit sheet. Inside the sheet you can add line items and edit a custom message.

Line Item Blueprints

If you find yourself creating invoices with the same line items over and over again you can create some line item blueprints. Adding blueprints to an invoice is a nice way to say some data entry time.

After building your invoice you may notice its status is “Open”. In ProfitTrain an invoice status can be:

  • Estimate - similar to open invoices, however says “Estimate” on the PDF instead
  • Open - an invoice that has not been sent to the client
  • Published - has been sent off to the client
  • Paid - has been paid in full

Publishing Invoices

After you are satisfied with your “Open” invoice and are ready to send it off to the client click on the publish button in the bottom toolbar.

Publish Window

Publishing an invoice will give you an opportunity to set the sent date and the due date as well as do a few special things such as generating a charge transaction for this invoice and converting line items to expenses if needed.

In the publish window you can optionally choose a publish action such as emailing the PDF to the client or sending it off to the printer. You can perform these same actions after publish as well by clicking the publish button while viewing an invoice that has already been published.

Publish Actions After

Recording Payments

After receiving your invoice the client has sent you a check. To store this payment, bring up the invoice and in the bottom toolbar the payment button will now be enabled. Use it to enter in a payment date, amount and note (such as the check number they paid with). The payment will be stored in the balance sheet and the invoice will be updated to a “Paid” status if payment was in full. If the payment was a partial payment the invoice will be updated with that info and totals will now show the amount paid and amount still due.

While you can enter in a “raw” payment right on the balance sheet, doing it under the invoice makes the connection that this payment was in reference to this invoice. This connection allows the invoice to show “Total Paid”.

This is the typical workflow of invoicing and tracking payments. To get a history of your client’s transactions you can view and edit the balance sheet directly.

Tracking Business Expenses

One of the core features of ProfitTrain is reports, and not surprisingly, reports about profit. To do this we need to know your business expenses.

When using the expense view you’ll notice the source list changes from clients to expense categories. You’ll get a few by default but feel free to create more. Each expense is created and stored under a category. Expense have types (just like line items) so you can enter fixed costs or derived costs like quantity or distances.

Reports

The reports view, like the expense view, has a special source list. This time the source list represents the reports themselves. Choose a report and then some options, such as a date range then run the report. The report will be presented and can be printed if needed.

What else?

So this covers the basic workflow of ProfitTrain. There are of course lots of other little details that may or may not be applicable to your business, such as taxes, international clients, expenses on invoices, and so on. Be sure to check out those or any of the other help articles for more info.

If you have any questions, be sure to check out our support options, and if need be contact us directly.