Sunrise reviews

Is easy to use, I'm not an accountant nor have many experience in that field so being easy to use was a big advantage for us. It has the core functionalities we need and many others that I certainly don't know how to use so It should have the required features for advanced users.

The invoicing system is great, easy and customizable.
Has a quoting and estimating system that's easy to convert to an invoice, also has an easy way to send reminders about our invoices and has some automation once you get paid.

It has a bookkeeping system and loans offering but we haven't used those so no comment there.

Would be great if we could use our own domain to send the invoices, reminders etc instead of the @sunriseapp.com

I haven't found a way to automate the invoicing process, using a csv file or something like Zapier or similar to avoid the need to create each item of the invoice . That certainly would save us a lot of time.

Not sure if these will be offered later or if there's already a way to do it at this time, just haven't found them.

I love setting my invoicing on autopilot - every month it bills my customers and manages the transactions. I can see who isn’t paying their bills, it’s great.

They still don’t have a Zapier integration yet, they recently reached out to me to be apart of their beta which is great as I want to integrate it with my all-in-one digital marketing platform Automate CRM. Doing so will streamline my signups / billing for done-for-you clients. I also think they need embeddable payment forms. Currently have to use stripe, but that bypasses their system so that won’t work for the long term. They need to get up to speed like waveapps, I’ve been checking their software out because of the limitations I’m running into.

A basic, fairly easy to use platform for creating and managing invoices. It's utility is fine, it does allow my clients to pay us through their invoices. It's because of this, that I give it a mediocre rating. However, I think there is room for improvement.

This app lacks the design and integration capabilities of its competitors and they seem to have been experiencing some growing pains lately. The templates are basic and allow for minimal changes in font, some color, and logo changes; that is about it though.

Our company uses sales decks to issue quotes for projects and it would be great if I could integrate billy invoices into that, however design compatibility aside, billy invoices can only be structured vertically, not horizontally, which is how our deck are orientated. We've also experienced some glitches in notifications and connections to stripe, which is the processor they use.

This is the tool I recommend for any business owner/startup for double-entry accounting. It's the tool I used to get serious about my business accounting (moving out of spreadsheets). Getting organized with a chart of accounts, an real Profit/Loss statement, invoice processing/tracking/payments, and more helped me focus and grow. I purchased it when it was known as Billy, but now it's free and improving.

There is a bit of a learning curve, but it's not too bad. Lendio is improving Sunrise since acquiring Billy, but there are still some areas that can be improved. There is no account dashboard, meaning you have to go into each account individually to see if there are transactions to be reconciled or to check balances (this should be visible on a single page). Also, there is no way to save report settings, so if I want to see my P/L report by months for the current year, I have to make multiple selections each and every time I run it.

I do appreciate my accountant follow up and keeping my books very updated, she is available all time to respond to any question and updates

friendly use, but more changes are need to adjust different accounts in running the Invoices

I've used several invoicing platforms and so far, Sunrise is the easiest.
It's organized well, with the expense reports and other things I don't need to see frequently pushed to the side.
The main thing is to see an overview and then see my invoices. It delivers this flawlessly.
The overview shows an immediate comparison of the current year with your last year, and shows a pie chart for which clients have paid the most. It's always encouraging to see this clear info.

I would like it to integrate with TurboTax more easily. I often consider using Quickbooks invoicing just for this purpose.

I'd also like a receipt snapshot feature like Quickbooks Self-Employed has, where I can just take a picture of a receipt and immediately import it into my expenses.

I've been using Billy/Sunrise since I started my business. They are quick to setup, and can be very simple to track your banking and invoicing, along with some advanced features to automate a lot of your accounting.

The biggest pros I see are:

- Quick and easy invoicing (including recurring)
- Connect your bank account for automatic transaction tracking
- Budgeting
- Integrates with Stripe for collecting payments but also offers their own merchant account (good to have a backup)

I'm not a power user since I'm a one-man business, but there is one big feature missing.

There is no automatic payment/debit feature. Recurring invoices are just automatically sent, but need to be paid by the client. There is no way to auto-debit every month, which slows down a few workflows.

The price of the software is what I find the most beneficial.

They are missing a lot of features that you would normally find in this type of software such as integration.

Sunrise (formerly Billy) allowed us to streamline getting invoices out to clients. What was tedious before became very easy!

I really with they had an app to accompany the website. There are times when I need to find out info about a client's payment history, and there is no app. You have to log into the website which is not optimized for phones and can be hard to navigate.

Sunrise offers even better features and functionality for my small business than QuickBooks online, and for a fraction of the cost!

My accountant is not interested in learning to use Sunrise. She is a Quickbooks expert, so I still have to keep my bookkeeping there and currently only use the invoicing features in Sunrise. I would really like to switch, however.

I originally started using this product when it was called Billy and since Lendio bought them out and turned it into Sunrise they have added options that have been very helpful. The best so far (for both clients and myself) is the subscription feature for recurring invoices. The software is intuitive and has more features than I actually use, but I do think using the expenses features would be great for myself and my business, I just have not set it up yet.

The editing of recurring invoices is clunky at best. If there are changes to recurring invoices I generally delete the old one and replace it with a new one because I've have several instances where an edited recurring invoice sits in the system and never sends which of course is bad for both us and the client.

I purchased a lifetime deal of Billy through AppSumo, which is really the only reason I am using it. Admittedly, my experience with Billy is colored by me being a longtime user of Freshbooks (which I was very happy with!), so perhaps I had a set of expectations coming into Billy. That being said, Billy is a nice software that gets the job done. They've recently implemented Paypal payments, which I couldn't believe was missing, but so glad it's here, as I have many clients who prefer to pay that way. It shows that they listen to feedback and are actively working on their roadmap. Another plus I appreciate is that you can collect signatures for quote approvals, which is nice.

However, the two pros mentioned above, Paypal and the quotes functionality, have a flip side.

The downside to Paypal is that I can't offer the option on an invoice for clients to pay via Paypal or credit card, I can only offer one or the other -- which completely defeats the purpose! Ideally, I would offer clients as many options as possible, since I don't know in advance which way they would prefer to pay. So, in order to continue to offer payment via Stripe, I can't use the (much anticipated!) Paypal feature.

For quotes, it's not immediately apparent in the UI when a quote has been accepted (you have to navigate to each one individually and open it, and even then, it's not glaringly obvious). When you have multiple open quotes, this is a waste of time to continually be checking in this way. There is an option to be notified via email when a quote is accepted, but for a while this wasn't working. I ended up missing a few quote acceptances.

I have also run into some weird glitches when setting up payment options. Customer support was pretty slow to respond via email, and I had to follow up multiple times to get any sort of closure on my issue.

The biggest con for me (and this is only because I am used to Freshbooks) is that there is no integrated timekeeping feature. I had to search high and low to find a cost-effective solution to track time against projects.

The ease of use, the simplicity of getting started, the clean and minimal look of the invoice templates.

There are not many bells and whistles, and that's what makes this program so simple and easy to use, but this also means some very useful features are absent -- features which are NOT complicated and should be the norm. For instance, there are two (2) features which are not overly complicated, and yet, would be very useful, if we had them:

1) Let us hyperlink a term, with a URL. I am invoicing for content, and need to reference a URL where this content can be reviewed. I must cut and paste the URL as plain text, and cannot hyperlink it to the URL. This is tedious and looks amaturish.

2) Let us have a text / narrative / summary field at the BOTTOM of the invoice, instead of the top. There is a "message box" at the top of the invoice template, which positions itself immediately under the client's address. This is great for a simple greeting or other short message, but what we really need is this same feature at the bottom of the invoice, also, as a summary, or to include a narrative of some kind that gives a bit more detail on the invoice charges, or confirms a special arrangement or a message between me and my client, which may be too long to put at the top, where it gets in the way of the most important information -- the invoice details / charges.

The best thing about Billy is the ease of use. Now usually ease of use means "it doesn't do much."
WRONG, this is a powerful bookkeeping program. I recommend it to all my clients. You could invest more in other programs, spend time trying to figure them out, set it up wrong, pay a consultant and then only use a small portion of it, but with Billy you can do it all. (If you want they have a list of accountants and bookkeepers who use Billy and can help - but you won't need their help.)

The other big PRO is that this software is rapidly and constantly improving.

Additionally, they have a community of users who are very active in helping one another. This community also provides suggestions on how the software can improve and Billy listens. Go ask for improvements with any competing accounting software packages and you'll find you're wasting your time. Billy listens and then acts.

Bottom Line: If you are an entrepreneur you don't want to waste time or money get Billy. You don't want your employees to waste time or money get Billy. If you want to keep track of your money get Billy. If you have time or money to waste get some other program and THEN when that doesn't work like you wanted it to get Billy.

The one thing that I like least about Billy is that they don't connect with every bank. Granted, I use a small regional bank, but it is my bank and I get special treatment at my bank. I'm not going to give up Billy just because it doesn't (yet) interact with my bank.

The Income and expense overview - I always know where my money is and isn't, Creating Invoices is almost too easy, just enter the details, generate a PDF (with your company logo on), and email to the customer, done and dusted. Bills, scan, upload, everything in date order, I always know whatI've had to pay out, and to which customer to deliver their final invoice.
Top customers and Top vendors, AWESOME feature, s much information from these two tools can be streamlined, who is happiest with what I do, who do I need to check in with so I don't lose a client, cost per vendor, find a cheaper better way to save money, yet maintain the same level of service I've personally come to expect, always streamlining :)
Seriously, this is the greatest app in my arsenal, don't believe me, TRY IT FOR YOURSELVES, Billy really does deserve a 10 star rating.

There are two things (one I know is happening), and one that would just be a cherry on the cake. The first is currently no way to link UK bank accounts, although I've been told that will appear hopefully Q2 this year, the only other feature I feel is needed, is a personal diary/journal & a personal calendar. I do a lot of meetings, it would be great to integrate new clients and their idea's from the initial meeting as part of the historical process and the calendar because it's always a useful tool to share information with to whoever is working with you. There the only things that for me would make Billy the ultimate app for anyone.

Sunrise is extremely easy to set up and simplifies most accounting processes. We love how easy it is to upload receipts, even via mobile, and connect them to their relevant expense.

Still waiting for a recurring bills feature to be added. Like most companies, we have bills that must be paid on a monthly basis. As of yet, there is not a way to set up a recurring expense, so these same bills have to be input manually each month.

Another, more recent downside is that the connection to one of my bank accounts stopped working 30 days ago which means I am unable to reconcile transactions without completing a manual download/upload. Thus far, we have been waiting for a reconciliation from Sunrise support for over 3 weeks and each time we've requested an update we are informed they are still trying to get the 3rd Party provider to assist on this.

Since day one I was able to quickly get set up and running the first day. The UI is simple yet intuitive and has may build in options that usually would come as a premium.

The only drawback for my company is the the inability to run payroll. That's it!

The invoicing is amazing, The software is very easy to use,

The cost of goods sold is confusing and difficult to use, the voided invoices can't be reviewed and the expenses are difficult to post as well. Also we can't connect other merchant accounts other than Chase.

After being a long time QB user, I appreciate being able to get in quickly, do what I need and get out. I use it primarily for invoicing.

Nothing. Everything works great for my needs

I like the ease of use in general and the fact it is free is a great help for startup companies like myself.

I haven’t found anything I don’t like yet.

Bookkeeping is not a sexy task, but Sunrise makes it bearable. And, the results are impressive.

Getting up to speed on the learning curve could be a little better.

I love how easy it is to use. As a former quickbooks user, I was tired of how complicated they were for smaller businesses and just didn't like the look of it overall. Using Sunrise is very simple and has everything I need as a small business owner. I love how it integrates and matches my expenses and payments with my bank account, credit card and invoices.

The only process I found difficult was when I have made a return of a product. Trying to reconcile that was not as simple as I feel it could be.

Ease of use. The interface is easy and very accessible. Workflows and billing are simple. I don't need a professional accountant to help me get used to this software.

Pre-set settings or personalization features a bit lacking in the interface. For example, if I am looking at all my invoices, I want to see the fiscal year only. But whenever I go to that page, it shows me the full history of things which I don't prefer.

(We don't use the accounting features so the focus is on the billing features). It is very easy to create a professional-looking invoice and share it with the customer instantly via email. It's simple to use, user-friendly and self-explanatory.

One feature that I would like to see is that I can go to the products overview and see all the invoices that have one of these products on it. In addition, it would be nice to be able to select certain products and bulk-change products (for example, increase pricing on all items selected by 2%).

For the first time in 20+ years accounting is not a frustrating and overly expensive task. Billy has provided my companies a easy to use and nearly complete solution that does not cost a fortune or hold me hostage. Using Billy has saved me countless hours each month for the past 18 months. It's streamlined and logical workflows, dead simple invoicing, and reasonable fees make Billy a real winner for small business.

The only gotcha with Billy is their integration with PayPal accounts is not as clean as it could be. The company is on the right track and should have this issue resolved shortly. The support team at Billy has been fantastically helpful and understanding. They not only know accounting, they know how to help people.